by David Peace
The Thirty-eighth Week
Monday 19 – Sunday 25 November 1984
Terry Winters waited until the children had left for school. Theresa for work. Terry went out onto the landing. He pulled down the ladder to the loft. He climbed up the ladder. Terry looked into the loft. He saw the two suitcases standing in the shadows –
Kiss me.
Terry got up into the loft. He walked across the chipboard. He took down the two suitcases. Terry went down the stairs with them. He left them on the kitchen floor. Terry went out to the garage. He opened the boot of the car. He took out two more suitcases. He carried them back inside. He put them down on the kitchen floor, next to the two suitcases from the loft –
Kiss me in the shadows.
Terry Winters went over to the cupboard under the sink. Terry took out a black dustbin-liner from under the sink. He took the bin-liner into the pantry. Terry emptied cream crackers and digestive biscuits out of their tins. He threw away cakes. Terry filled the bin-liner. He took it outside. He put it in the dustbin. Terry went back inside –
Kiss me, Diane.
Terry laid the four suitcases out on the kitchen floor. Terry opened the suitcases. He stared at the money. The money in the suitcases. Terry put his hands in the suitcases. The suitcases full of money. Terry sat at his kitchen table and counted out the money. The money into piles. Terry put some of the money into the empty biscuit tins. He put some of the money into the cake tins. He put the tins back on the shelves in the pantry Terry split the rest of the money between the four suitcases. He left two of the suitcases up in the loft again. He put the other two suitcases back in the boot of his car –
Kiss me in the shadows.
Terry sat at the wheel of his car. He had followed Diane’s instructions to the letter. The instructions she had written out. The instructions he was to destroy –
Kiss me in the shadows of my heart.
Terry Winters turned the key. Terry Winters was on his way to work –
Revenge. November 1984.
*
The nightmare is persistent. Neil Fontaine dreams of her skull. Her beautiful, white skull. Her skull and his candle. Her skull on the table and his candle in the window. He wakes in his room at the County. The light is still on. He sits on the edge of the bed. The notebook in shreds. He picks apart their lives and puts the pieces back together his way. He stands up. He pulls back the dawn curtains. The bed is unused. The sheets cold –
His prayer unanswered.
Neil Fontaine stands at the window. The real light and the electric –
Jennifer scowls and sticks out her tongue.
There are always, always, memories like these –
‘You want a fucking picture, do you?’
These scars across your country. These scars across your heart.
The Mechanic stands in the phone box. He dials the number –
Phil Taylor’s wife picks up the phone. Click-click. She says, ‘Hello?’
‘Is Phil there?’ the Mechanic asks her.
‘He’s at work,’ she says. ‘Who’s this?’
‘He feeling better then, is he?’
‘Who is this?’ she says again.
‘Just tell him Dave called,’ the Mechanic says and hangs up, then picks up again –
Click-click, what a beautiful noise that is; the sound of surveillance; of –
Predictability –
There’s nothing special about Special Branch. They follow people. They watch people. They go through people’s dustbins. They blackmail people. They bully people. They like to dress up and pretend they’re not themselves. Pretend they are other people. Not what they seem. But they’re just perverts –
Dirty old men.
They go through the files. They find someone they like the look of. They study that person. They follow them. They watch them. They wait until that person does something bad. Something illegal. Like an armed robbery or the theft of a car. Then they blackmail that bad person. They bully them –
Intimidate and cajole them.
They make that bad person their slave. They make them do anything they ask. They make them do more bad things. Much worse things. Dirty things. Like burglaries. The theft of documents. Then they blackmail that bad person all over again. Bully them. Groom them for other men. Then they pass them on up the chain –
Like a parcel of meat.
Terry Winters sat under the portrait of the President. Terry took another two aspirins. There were now thirty individual legal actions. Thirty separate requests to examine the books and accounts of the national and individual areas. There was no end in sight now. The President said the strike was solid. The Board said the strike was crumbling. The President said there were one hundred and forty thousand men on strike. The Board said there were sixty thousand men breaking the strike. Terry knew the figures didn’t add up. It didn’t matter either way. The Board said there was nothing to talk about. That there could be no more negotiations. The door now closed. No more secret talks about talks. The door locked. No more words about words. The key upstairs. The ball in their court. Terry picked up the telephone on his desk –
Click-click. He dialled Huddersfield Road. Click-click. He asked for Clive Cook –
But no one had seen Clive. Not this week. They could put him through to Jack.
‘It’s OK,’ said Terry. ‘I’ll call back.’
Terry Winters hung up. Terry took another aspirin. He put his head in his hands.
The telephone buzzed. The light flashed –
Terry picked it up again. Click-click. Terry said, ‘Chief Executive speaking.’
‘It’s Joan,’ said Joan. ‘The President would like you to step upstairs, Comrade.’
‘This very minute?’ asked Terry. ‘I was just –’
‘This very minute,’ said Joan. ‘It’s urgent, Comrade.’
Terry started to speak, but Joan had already hung up. Terry put down the phone. He swallowed another two aspirins. He stood up. He left his office. He locked his door. He walked down the corridor. He didn’t take the lift. He took the stairs, one at a time –
There were no index cards in the right-hand pocket of his jacket.
Terry knocked on the President’s door. Len opened it. Terry stepped inside –
Joan was standing at the President’s shoulder. The President sat behind his desk.
Len closed the door. Len locked it. Len leant against it. Len folded his arms.
‘You wanted to see me, President?’ asked Terry. ‘I was told it was urgent.’
The President put his finger to his lips. The President nodded. Joan nodded too. The President scribbled something on a piece of paper. He handed it to Terry –
Terry read, The Soviets have delivered. We are expected at the Embassy.
Terry looked up. The President put his finger to his lips again. Terry nodded –
Terry pointed to himself. The President nodded again. His finger to his lips.
Len took the piece of paper out of Terry’s hands. Len held it to his lighter. Len burnt the piece of paper in the glass ashtray on the President’s desk.
The President and Joan put on their coats –
Len went with Terry for his.
Phil the Grass lives with his wife and two children in a nice private house on a nice private estate in Selby. Phil has a haulage company that used to be on the brink of bankruptcy. But, thanks to the miners’ strike, Phil will soon be able to afford to live in an even nicer private house on an even nicer private estate –
If Phil lives that long (which he probably will).
The Mechanic knows they intimidated and cajoled Phil Taylor to grass. He knows they bullied him. He knows they blackmailed him. He knows they waited until Phil had done something bad. Something illegal. Like an armed robbery. He knows they were watching him –
Just as the Mechanic knows they are watching Phil Taylor now. In his nice private house on its nice private estate in Selby. Knows they are sat watching
Phil in their six-month-old Montego. In their sweater and their jeans. Their polished size tens –
Desperate for a piss behind a nice private tree (if they live that long) –
He has his cock in his hands. Piss on the bark. Piss on his boots.
The Mechanic puts the nose of the gun against the back of his skull and says, ‘Hello. Hello. Hello.’
He doesn’t try to turn round. There’s no point. He knows who it is.
‘Put your hands on your head,’ the Mechanic says. ‘Do it slowly.’
He puts his hands on the top of his head. He does it slowly.
The Mechanic puts handcuffs on his wrists. He says, ‘Now turn round.’
He turns round. Handcuffed hands over his open fly. His dripping cock.
‘Hello, Paul,’ the Mechanic says. ‘Did you miss me?’
Paul Dixon, Special Branch, shakes his head savagely from side to side –
He sees his widowed wife. His fatherless daughter –
‘It was Fontaine,’ sobs Paul Dixon. ‘Neil Fontaine.’
The Jew dances across the rugs and carpet of his suite on the fourth floor of Claridge’s. The Jew is still in his tails, a late cocktail in his right hand, tomorrow’s Times in the left. The Jew asks Neil Fontaine to turn up the radio –
‘– you could drag me to hell and back, just as long as we’re together –’
Neil Fontaine turns up the radio. Neil Fontaine mixes the Jew one last cocktail. Neil Fontaine hands the Jew the latest photographs with a screwdriver.
The Jew sits down on the sofa. The Jew examines the photographs one by one –
The President speaking in Cardiff. Birmingham. Edinburgh and Newcastle.
The President in his car. His office. His street and his home.
The President meeting the TUC. The Labour Party. The French and the Soviets.
The President talking. Whispering. Grimacing and glowering.
The Jew puts down the photographs. The Jew says, ‘His war is lost.’
Neil Fontaine nods. Neil Fontaine hands the Jew a fresh cocktail to celebrate.
The Jew smiles. The Jew laughs. The Jew thanks Neil and raises his glass.
The Jew’s insistence on intransigence has been vindicated –
No one mentions power cuts any more; no one talks of general strikes –
Man by man. House by house. Street by street. Village by village. Pit by pit –
The Jew is winning his war –
4484 back last week; 4982 this week.
The Jew downs his drink in one and picks up yet more reports from the pile –
The Jew never rests. The Jew loves to dwell here among the details and analyses; to speak of the deterioration of the coal faces and the need for compulsory redundancies; the prospects for privatization, the rebirth of the industry and the creation of wealth –
Remarks here and remarks there; words in this ear and words in that –
Words in her ear; words that win wars.
For the Prime Minister is winning her war; her many, many wars –
The IRA. British Leyland. GCHQ. Cammell Laird. CND. The Belgrano. The GLC.
She never rests. Ever. But she prefers to live among the larger print and syntheses; to talk of the dangers to democracy from the ruthless few; the terrorist gangs at one end of the spectrum and the Hard Left at the other; inside our system, conspiring to use union power and the apparatus of local government to break, defy and subvert the laws –
These are her words; her words that win wars; her many, many wars.
The Prime Minister and the Jew; together they are winning the war, all her wars. But the Jew knows there is still work to be done. Much more to, come. Much worse –
The sight of strikers in the snow. Their children in the cold –
Northern funerals and famine; local poverty and pain.
The Jew knows there will be those without the stomach, the guts or the balls –
Neither the courage nor the conviction. Not the will to triumph.
The Jew puts down his papers. The Jew raises a last glass before bed –
‘Now is the time to steel ourselves‚’ declares the Jew. ‘The final hours are here. The endgame approaches, Neil.
‘That one last battle nigh.’
*
The four of them caught the five o’clock early evening train from Sheffield to London. The four of them got a table in second class. The other passengers in the coach stared. One man threw a meat pie at the President. An old woman chucked a cup of scalding tea. Loyal Len and the guard tried to calm things down. Joan wiped pie and tea from the President’s suit and tie –
‘This wouldn’t happen if we were sat in first class,’ said Terry.
The President picked pieces of hot pie from his hair. He shook his head. He said, ‘This wouldn’t happen if we abolished first class, Comrade.’
Terry Winters nodded. Terry sponged his newspaper dry with his handkerchief. He looked at his watch –
The train was fifteen minutes late into London. Len went off to get them a cab –
The President, Joan, Terry and Len took the taxi direct to the Embassy.
The President borrowed Terry’s calculator. The President punched numbers. The President wanted cash commensurable to the Soviet support of 1926.
The taxi stopped at the back door to the Embassy. Terry Winters paid the driver.
The Soviet Labour Attaché and diplomatic staff were waiting to welcome them. To take them inside. To offer them tea and biscuits in large and under-heated chambers. To make small talk about composers and goalkeepers –
The living and the dying. The dying and the dead.
Then the Labour Attaché asked to speak with the President in private.
Joan, Terry and Len went outside to wait in the large and under-heated corridor. To sit and stare at the social-realist paintings of the Soviet state. To shiver and snooze.
The President came out fifty minutes later with a smile and a spring to his stride –
The President had got his way. The President had got what he wanted.
The President, Joan, Terry and Len stepped out of the Soviet Embassy –
The flashbulbs exploded. The cameras rolled. The microphones pointed.
Len hailed them a cab to the Barbican. They sat in silence in the back of the taxi. The taxi stopped outside the President’s block of flats. Terry paid the cab driver again. The President and Joan walked on ahead. Len waited for a word with Terry Winters. Terry put away his wallet. Terry smiled at Len. Len punched Terry in the stomach –
‘That was the fucking last time,’ said Len Glover. ‘Last time you betray us.’
Terry knelt on the pavement. Terry held his stomach. Terry coughed.
‘There was just us four that knew about that meeting,’ said Len. ‘Just us four.’
Terry coughed again. Terry clutched his stomach. Terry shook his head.
‘It had to be you that tipped off the press,’ said Len. ‘It had to be you, Winters.’
Terry shook his head again. Terry rubbed his stomach. Terry tried to stand up.
Len pushed him back over. Len kicked him in the stomach. Len spat on him.
Terry tried to stand up again. Terry gripped his stomach. Terry shook his head.
Len pushed him back over onto the ground again. Len walked away. Len shouted, ‘You’re fucking finished, Winters. Fucking finished.’
Terry shook his head again. Terry touched his stomach. Terry tried to stand –
But Terry was laughing. Terry’s sides splitting. Terry howling –
‘Look in the mirror, Len,’ shouted Terry. ‘Look in the mirror, Comrade Len!’
Martin
This stede is dimm. I watch fires die up ahead. I pick up a fragment in my hand – Don’t fly as much as before. Can’t. Problems enough on our own doorstep. Half of cars are knackered and all. Mine’s still out front with black bin-bags for a windscreen. Pete’s asked Barnsley for some brass for it. He’s heard nothing ba
ck. They’ve got a van for this morning. Lot of usual lads – Keith. Tom. Chris – No sign of Gary or Tim again. They told me they were going on spoil seven days a week now. I’ve not been for a bit. There are no more blind eyes and back handers on top now – They catch you, they sack you – That was message from pit. Likes of Tim and Gary don’t give shit, though. No choice, way they see it – They catch them, they catch them. They sack them, they sack them – Makes no odds to them. Fucking DHSS are withholding another bloody quid from folk. Them that even fucking get anything in first place – Talk about nails and bloody coffins. Turns of fucking screw. Fuck me – This morning it’s Frickley. More to show willing than anything else – Down Welfare for half-four. Bacon sandwich and a cup of tea and we’re on road for five. Usual arguments about best way versus this way and that way. Head up through Thurnscoe and Clayton. Back way into Frickley and another front line. Keith parks up and out we get. It’s cold and damp. Krk-krk. There are about sixty police. Two hundred pickets, maybe. Scab bus comes up and there’s a big push – Line breaks for a moment. But only for a moment – Bus goes in and that’s that again. People start to walk off. Back to their cars and their vans. Police giving out their usual wit – I catch eye of one of them. Always a fucking mistake – He steps out into road in front of all his mates. He gives us a right boot up my arse. He says, Come on, Doris, pick your fucking feet up. He kicks me again couple of times. I just keep walking – Keeping my head down. Feel fucking daft, though. Two foot tall. Everyone watching him kick us like that – Two foot tall, that’s how I feel. Every fucking day. Two foot fucking tall – Day 269. Keith drops us off. Has a laugh with us about state of our car, then he goes back home. He’s his wife and his kids. Has it hard but he has them – Police can spit on him. Make their comments. Push him about. Kick him up arse. Chase him. Beat fuck out of him. Take out his teeth even – But he’s got his wife and his kids. He’s one of lucky ones – I open door. Nothing. No one – Just another fucking copy of Coal News waiting for us on floor with another fucking letter from Mr Moore at Colliery. That and a letter from TSB in Rotherham and another one from solicitors – They never give up, those kind. Never – Nails and coffins. Turns of screw – Bloody lot of them. Like an army, they are – I shut door. I stand in hall – I look at my watch. It isn’t even twelve o’clock yet – Not even halfway there. Not even close – I walk through into kitchen. Place where kitchen used to be – I look out on back garden. I light a cigarette – Expensive habit that, she says. I turn round – I fly off handle. Shut up! Shut up, I shout. Shut up! I go back into hall – I pick up that letter from Mr Moore. I stand there in hall with it in my hand – I put the fragment to my face – I open it – It is cold and it is old – I read bloody thing this time – I hold the fragment to firelight – I read his offer – I see it for the first time – To meet me any time I want – I see it and I stare – To meet me any place I want – I step back – To discuss my future – I look around me at this place – My welfare and my happiness – This place is old. This stede is niht – My safety and my security – This place is cold. This stede is dimm – My change of heart and my piece of mind – I see this place for what it is. I see this fragment for what it is – To arrange my return. My return to work – I hold the fragment of a skull in my hand, stood upon a mountain of skulls – I drop letter on pile. Pile of statements and bills. Bills and final demands – The skulls sat in monstrous and measureless heaps. The empty nests of dreams and desires – Demands and threats – Delusions and deceptions – I close my eyes – I whisper. I echo. I moan. I scream – I open my eyes. I stand in my hall – Under the ground – I moan and I scream.