GB84
Page 53
The closing of a pit and the calling of a strike –
The writing on a wall. The knocking on a door –
Neil Fontaine steps inside the Jew’s suite. He closes the door behind him.
There are bottles on the floor. There are bodies on the bed –
Drunken scabs and their wanton wives, satiated and salacious.
The Jew benumbed and naked upon the bones and the sheets –
Hair matted and moustache stained, his carcass bloated and cock limp.
Neil stands at the foot of the bed, a candle and a knife in his hands –
A white bandage around the blade, six inches of Sheffield steel naked at the point.
He kneels down and rests the candle and the knife on the carpet before him –
He sits cross-legged. His head shaved. A white towel across his knees.
He undoes the buttons of his blazer. He unfastens the collar of his shirt –
He loosens the belt and buttons of his trousers.
He pushes the white towel down between his underwear and skin.
He begins to massage his abdomen with his left hand.
He folds back his left trouser flap to reveal the top of his thigh.
He draws the blade lightly across the skin. Blood runs. The blade is sharp enough.
He looks up at the Jew –
He moves the knife around to his front. He raises himself slightly on his hips –
He leans the upper half of his body over the point of the blade.
He cries out as the knife pierces the left side of his stomach.
He loses consciousness.
The six inches of naked steel have vanished –
The white bandage in his hand pressed against the flesh of his stomach –
He regains consciousness. The blade inside him. His heart pounding –
The enemy within.
The pain is coming –
His fist moist around the bandaged blade. He looks down –
His hand and the bandage are drenched in blood –
The white towel monogrammed a deep and violent red.
Neil looks up at the Jew again –
The pain is here.
He begins to cut sideways across his stomach using only his right hand.
He cannot.
His intestines push out the blade.
He has to use both hands to keep the point of the blade deep in his stomach.
He pulls across. It does not cut easily.
He forces himself to pull again with all his strength.
The blade cuts four inches. He has cut past his navel.
There is blood in the folds of his trousers now. There is blood on the carpet –
Writing on the walls. Darkening the doors. Painting the shadows –
A single spot on the corner of one of the Jew’s white hotel sheets.
But the blade will not cut deeper. It slips out in the blood and grease.
Neil starts to vomit. The pain worse. His intestines spill out into his crotch.
He looks up at the Jew –
His head droops. His shoulders heave. His eyes close. He retches repeatedly.
He sits in his own blood. The tip of the blade exposed. It lies in his hand.
He throws his head back –
The tide of his blood laps at the feet of the bed –
He raises the knife in his right hand. He thrusts the point at his throat –
He misses.
The blade falls. He raises the knife again. He thrusts the point at his throat –
He misses.
The knife falls. He raises the blade. He thrusts the point at his throat again –
The point of the blade touches his throat –
His head falls forward. The blade emerges at the nape of his neck.
He thinks and he thinks and he thinks and he thinks –
The Earth tilts. The Earth turns. The Earth hungry. The Earth hunts –
He thinks and he thinks and he thinks –
This is the way the world works. This is the way –
He thinks and he thinks –
There are the things I know. The things I don’t –
Neil thinks. Neil knows –
For both, there is a price.
Martin
Their muted pipes – That whisper. That echo – Their funeral marches. Their funeral music – That moans. That screams – Again and again. For ever more – As if they are marching their way up out of their graves. Here to mourn the new dead – The country deaf to their laments. Its belly swollen with black corpses and vengeful carrion – Rotting in its furrows. It waits for harvests that never come – The day their weeping will burst open the earth itself and drown us all. In their tears – In their sweat. In their blood – In our guilt and in our shame. Until that Day of Judgement – There will be no spring. There can be no morning – There will be only winter. There can be only night – Lord, please open the eyes and ears of the people of England. But the people of England are blind and deaf – The Armies of the Night. The Armies of the Right – We are here because of you, they say. Here because of you – And they strip us of our language and our lands. Our families and our faith. Our gods and our ways – We are but the matchstick men, with our matchstick hats and clogs – And they shave our heads. Send us to the showers – Put us on their trains. Stick us in their pits – The cage door closes. The cage descends – To cover us with dirt. To leave us underground – In place of strife. In place of fear – Here where she stands at the gates at the head of her tribe and waits – Triumphant on the mountains of our skulls. Up to her hems in the rivers of our blood – A wreath in one hand. The other between her legs – Her two little princes dancing by their necks from her apron strings, and she looks down at the long march of labour halted here before her and says, Awake! Awake! This is England, Your England – and the Year is Zero.
Sources & Acknowledgements
This novel is a fiction, based on a fact. That fact was found in the following sources:
A Century of Struggle: Britain’s Miners in Pictures by the National Union of Mineworkers (1989)
A Word to the Wise Guy by The Mighty Wah (Beggars Banquet, 1984)
Blood Sweat & Tears by Roger Huddle, Angela Phillips, Mike Simons and John Sturrock (Artworker Books, 1985)
Coal, Crisis and Conflict by Jonathan and Ruth Winterton (Manchester University Press, 1989)
Counting the Cost by Jackie Keating (Wharncliffe, 1991)
Digging Deeper edited by Huw Beynon (Verso, 1985)
Enemies of the State by Gary Murray (Simon & Schuster, 1993)
Free Agent: The Unseen War 1941–1991 by Brian Crozier (HarperCollins, 1993)
Germinal by Emile Zola (1885)
Lobster: The Journal of Parapolitics, issues 1–40, edited by Robin Ramsay (CD-ROM available from www.lobster-magazine.co.uk)
Microphonies by Cabaret Voltaire (Virgin, 1984)
Miners on Strike by Andrew J. Richards (Berg, 1996)
Neither Washington nor Moscow by the Redskins (London, 1986)
One of Us by Hugo Young (Pan, 1993)
Open Secret by Stella Rimington (Hutchinson, 2001)
Policing the Miners’ Strike by Bob Fine and Robert Millar (Lawrence & Wishart, 1985)
Scargill: The Unauthorized Biography by Paul Routledge (HarperCollins, 1993)
Small Town England by New Model Army (Abstract, 1983–4)
Smear: Wilson and the Secret State by Stephen Dorril and Robin Ramsay (Grafton, 1992)
State of Siege by Jim Coulter, Susan Miller and Martin Walker (Canary Press, 1984)
Strike: A Sunday Times Insight Book by Peter Wilsher, Donald Macintyre and Michael Jones (André Deutsch, 1985)
The Enemies Within by Ian MacGregor with Rodney Tyler (Collins, 1986)
The Enemy Within by Seamus Milne (Verso, 1994)
The English Civil War Part II by Jeremy Deller (Artangel, 2002) The
Miners’ Strike: Loss without Limit by Martin
Adney and John Lloyd (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986)
The Miners’ Strike Day by Day by Arthur Wakenfield (Wharncliffe, 2002)
The Miners’ Strike in Pictures by News Line Photographers (New Park, 1985)
The National Front by Martin Walker (Fontana, 1977)
The Political Police in Britain by Tony Bunyan (Quartet, 1977)
Thurcoft: A Village and the Miners’ Strike by the People of Thurcoft, Peter Gibbon and David Steyne (Spokesman, 1986)
Understanding the Miners’ Strike by John Lloyd (Fabian Society, 1985)
Welcome to the Pleasuredome by Frankie Goes to Hollywood (ZZT, 1984)
I would like to thank Charlie, Darren, Jim and Mick for sharing their information, their memories and their time. I would also like to thank Jon Riley for his faith and Lee Brackstone for his devotion.
About the Author
David Peace – named in 2003 as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists - was born and brought up in Yorkshire. He is the author of the Red Riding Quartet (Nineteen Seventy Four, Nineteen Seventy Seven, Nineteen Eighty and Nineteen Eighty Three) which has been adapted into a three part Channel 4 series that aired in Spring 2009, GB84 which was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Award, and The Damned Utd, the film version of which (adapted by Peter Morgan and starring Michael Sheen) was released in Spring 2009. Tokyo Year Zero, the first part of his acclaimed Tokyo Trilogy, was published in 2007, and the second part, Occupied City, in 2009.
Copyright
This ebook edition published in 2010
by Faber and Faber Ltd
Bloomsbury House
74–77 Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3DA
All rights reserved
© David Peace, 2004
The right of David Peace to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
ISBN 978–0–571–26842–9