Fan

by Danny Rhodes

  He’d go up after work, stay overnight, get it over with and come home again. And tonight he’d give Kelly what she wanted. Because if he was anything, if he was man at all he’d do that at least, sit down and talk it all through, tell her honestly what he was feeling about the two of them, about babies and fatherhood, what he felt their next steps were. Not that it would make a difference. She was set in one direction. There was no fucking doubt about that.

  Maggie’s settled in Downing Street. Maggie’s got a second term. It means nothing to you except that she comes from where you come from, was born where you were born. But it means something to your town.

  Your town is floundering and forgotten, ransacked and ridiculed.

  The most boring town in England.

  He’s taking the morning register while his form stare absently out of the classroom windows, stare absently at their mobile phones, stare absently at the blank desks in front of them. He can’t blame the fuckers, not on this dismal day. He’s hardly with it himself.

  A crisp packet blows against the window and he momentarily loses himself. He forgets where he is on the list, whose name he’s called out and who he hasn’t. He can’t be arsed to start again. Besides, the bell is ringing for the end of registration, for the start of period one.

  He turns to Kirsty Watson.

  ‘Can you count up before we go?’ he asks.

  And without question, without comment, she takes on the job, rising to her feet, counting each body rising from the chair, each body moving towards the door.

  ‘One, two, three, four…’

  Cars lined bumper to bumper.

  ‘… nine, ten, eleven, twelve…’

  Ashen faces and blank expressions.

  ‘Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen…’

  Adidas Sambas pounding the concrete.

  Adidas Sambas on the Penistone Road.

  ‘Sir? Are you okay, sir?’

  The classroom is empty save for Kirsty Watson, Kirsty Watson and her eager to please smile. Her sweet smile.

  ‘Twenty-four, sir,’ she says. ‘All except Becca Smith.’

  He nods.

  ‘Are you sure you should be back in, sir,’ asks Kirsty Watson, who is thirteen years old. ‘Only you don’t look too good.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ he says. ‘I’m fine and dandy.’

  But the first two lessons of the day are bastard trials and today it is his break duty. Things can only go downhill from here.

  2 p.m.

  Finchy’s in the head’s office.

  He’s staring at a monitor, staring at an incident that happened two hours earlier, living a moment from another lifetime.

  The camera shows a narrow corridor, a set of stairs leading away, an extra down-step, vending machines, kids huddled in the corner, paying homage to the vending god. At the top of the frame, the double doors leading to the playground, a splash of pale light beyond.

  The pinch point.

  Kids are moving to and fro, in dribs and drabs, in twos and threes, in larger groups. Girls linked with girls. Lads marching shoulder to shoulder. Much posturing.

  The camera shows a northern city, a street deviating at an outer concourse leading to a set of turnstiles.

  The slender elbow of Leppings Lane.

  It’s 2.30 p.m. on match day.

  There are fans in the ground and fans not in the ground.

  There are fans who’ve been delayed on their journey.

  There are fans leaving The Five Arches pub, The Horse and Jockey, The Dial House, The Park Hotel.

  There are fans who’ve been enjoying the sunshine on this warm spring day in April.

  A football crowd like any other is descending on Leppings Lane well in time for kick-off, moving through the Hillsborough gates and into the outer concourse.

  But something is wrong in Leppings Lane. There is no filtering system in place to direct fans to where they need to go, no system to turn fans away, no system to manage their arrival.

  And once they’re in this cul-de-sac there’s no obvious way out. The mass of people congeals to form a clot in the outer concourse. There’s no way of passing the message back to those that can alleviate the pressure. Not at 2.30 p.m. on match day. And so the crowd swells, becomes a compression, becomes a melding of exposed flesh, becomes a crush of bones.

  Occasionally, the back of Finchy’s head appears in the picture, there and not there, joking with Carly Edmunds, having a go at the lads with trainers and the two little shits kicking at the vending god for not delivering their dreams. Break duty like all break duties. A disruption to his day. A pain in the fucking rear.

  It’s 2.40 p.m. on match day.

  Mounted police are imprisoned within the coagulation, unable to manoeuvre. A police horse is lifted off its feet in the swell. Police are waving their arms in helpless abandon, eager to move the crowd back. But there is nowhere for this crowd to move to. People are pressed against the brick wall. People are pressed against the blue concertina gate. People are pressed against each other, suffocating each other where they’re stood. The ageing turnstiles creak and click under the strain. The ageing turnstiles jam. The ageing turnstiles are overwhelmed.

  The clock ticks towards kick-off.

  The camera shows a scene of chaos, shows a swaying, fluctuating mass of people. The camera shows perplexed faces, aggravated faces, the face of a fan desperate for help, the face of a policeman bewildered by an impossible problem.

  The camera shows fans clambering over the wall to escape the confusion.

  The camera records the cacophony of sound, exuberance becoming frustration becoming anger becoming pain, becoming the helpless mewing of the injured and the afraid. It records the indecipherable tannoy announcements that are lost in the dissonance, the growing sense of urgency, beginning as one sound, becoming something else.

  Get back! Get back!

  But they can’t hear. And they can’t move. They’re trapped in the outer concourse of Leppings Lane, trapped between their brothers and their sisters.

  Open the gate!

  Open the fucking gate!

  Nobody opens the gate.

  Break is over. The camera shows a growing swell, shows dribs and drabs thickening in that space between the vending machines and the bottom of the stairs. Kids struggling to get in, kids struggling to get out. The biggest laughing and joking.

  ‘I told them,’ he says. ‘There, see that one look back over his shoulder? That’s Billy Stubbs. He’s looking at me. He’s heard me having a go. I bloody told him.’

  But the daft bastard’s not listening, not acknowledging him at all.

  2.48 p.m.

  The concertina gate is opened to eject a supporter. One hundred and fifty fans spill in. The gate is closed.

  2.50 p.m.

  The camera shows the back end of the Leppings Lane turnstiles, the inner concourse, shows fans waiting for their mates, lost to them in the melee. Blokes are filing through, shaking their heads. Girls are filing through shaking their heads. Kids are filing through, clinging to the shirt-tails of their dads. These people file across the screen from left to right, preparing themselves for a football match, for the biggest day out of the season, a game that will kick off in ten minutes’ time, in six hundred seconds from now, because the opportunity to delay the kick-off has already passed.

  These people file across the screen from left to right, across the concourse and into Gangway 2, under the sign that reads ‘Standing’ because where else should they fucking go? They file across the screen from left to right. Nobody stops them.

  The tunnel should be closed but it’s not.

  The fans should be re-directed but they’re not.

  Nobody directs them anywhere.

  They file under the sign that reads ‘Standing’. Into the central pens. Into pens 3 and 4. Into pens that are already full to capacity.

  Lambs to the fucking slaughter.

  More kids come through the doors, fighting the tide. A tiny blonde th
ing is caught up in the flow. There are big lads in the foreground now, the last to leave the canteen. In their fucking element. Bodies press against bodies, press against plaster, press against glass, until the artery is blocked. The little blonde thing’s there one moment and gone the next. He is simply engulfed. And there are three or four on the ground now. But Finchy can’t see them. All he can see on the screen is a collection of heads and shoulders, confused, anguished faces. They’re down there, though, down amongst the boots and the trainers and the heels and the knees.

  That’s why he’s here.

  In the head’s office.

  In the fucking shit.

  2.52 p.m.

  Open the gate before someone is killed!

  Open the fucking gate!

  The police open the concertina gate. Fans flood through it. But there’s nobody telling the poor fuckers where to go and nowhere for the majority to go except where momentum and common sense takes them.

  Across the concourse.

  Under the flaking blue-and-white sign that reads ‘Standing’.

  Into tunnel 2.

  Into the tunnel with the 1 in 6 gradient.

  Into the valley of death.

  2.57 p.m.

  The gate is closed.

  A voice from far away.

  ‘What are you doing now?’

  A voice on the fringes.

  ‘John, are you listening to me? What are you doing now?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘In the video. What are you doing?’

  He’s frozen to the spot.

  A statue.

  A useless cunt.

  He opens his mouth to speak but no words come out.

  3.00 p.m.

  They’re moving through the re-opened gate. They’re eager, urgent, keen to get a vantage point because it’s gone 3.00 p.m. and the game has fucking started.

  They don’t know what’s happening in pens 3 and 4.

  They don’t know the pens are overfull.

  They don’t know that people are dying in those pens.

  They don’t fucking know.

  They can’t fucking imagine.

  And the tunnel is dark. Dark and dank. It stinks of piss and shit.

  At the end of the tunnel a blue sky is beckoning. At the end of the tunnel is the far-off sound of a football match.

  ‘Two minutes,’ says the head. Says Chris. Says his mate. ‘Two fucking minutes of inaction, John.’

  He shrugs.

  ‘Fucking hell, John. We could have a serious problem here. We’ve three kids in hospital.’

  The camera shows pens 3 and 4 of Leppings Lane. The camera shows a compacted multitude of heads and shoulders. A crowd full of turbulence. People are lifted off their feet. People are carried down the terrace with no free will. People are facing in every direction. People are trapped between the torsos of their neighbours. They’re shouting or trying to shout, but even that’s becoming too much. Breathing in deep to shout means not breathing out again. They’re floundering. There are people on the ground, people underfoot. There are lifeless bodies with bleached faces propped against the living. Limp heads rest on lifeless shoulders. People are killing people simply by being. With each second that passes the pressure grows. The barriers designed to protect are transformed into rudimentary killing machines. One fan’s arm snaps against the metal, another’s ribs cave in.

  A barrier gives way, a barrier designed to withstand 400lbs per foot of pressure, a barrier with too much work to do, a barrier displaying corrosion visible to the naked eye, a barrier later found to contain a rolled-up copy of the Yorkshire Telegraph and Star, 24th October 1931.

  Fans tumble down the terrace. Fans tumble on top of other fans. There’s a pile of bodies at the bottom of the terrace, set upon set of wide staring eyes, of vacant expressions, a tangled mass of limbs. There are bodies covered in bruises, blue bodies, bloated bodies. There are bodies pressed against the perimeter fencing. There’s vomit and saliva and mucus and God knows what else.

  Some are clambering up and out of the pens to safety.

  The lucky ones.

  Some have nowhere to go and no way of getting there.

  The sky is perfectly blue.

  The dead are propped against the living.

  The symphony of a football match has been replaced by the desperate dirge of the dying.

  ‘John, are you listening to me? Do you understand what I’m saying?’

  He’s not listening.

  He’s fifteen years away, crammed into his own little space on the Spion Kop at Hillsborough. 15th April 1989. He’s seventeen years old. He’s watching a Liverpool fan dance a jig in front of the bank of Forest Fans, watching the guy being led away by stewards in bright yellow bibs.

  The clarity is extreme.

  He’s feeling the crowd swell in number as kick-off approaches. It takes him a while to find his footing, to find his voice, to find his place in it all.

  He’s watching the players enter the pitch. He’s singing his songs. He’s watching the game take off at a tremendous pace, watching Clough dispossess Ablett on the halfway line, watching Forest force a corner and then another, watching Forest pass the ball clean and true, watching the Forest players bite into tackle after tackle. He’s believing, like all the rest around him, that this is Forest’s season, that they’re in the form of their lives and ripe for revenge.

  Why fucking not?

  And then he’s watching Liverpool fans scale the fencing to gather on the track behind Grobbelaar’s goal, gather behind the advertising hoardings for Bic Razors, Coalite and Fly Thai, watching a solitary St John’s Ambulance steward leading one fan away, watching Liverpool fans tumble now over the fences of Leppings Lane, to gather in clusters at the edge of the pitch, a growing mass of fans, watching policemen filing along the perimeter in the direction of Leppings Lane. He’s watching Liverpool force a corner of their own, watching Beardsley’s rasping effort crash back off the bar, watching Forest manoeuvre the ball to the Liverpool end, watching the black shape of a single policeman race across the 18 yard box towards the referee.

  Everything changes.

  Everything.

  Forever.

  ‘John, John. This is a serious business.’

  Tell me about it, Chris. Fucking tell me about it.

  He’s listening to Forest give it to the Scousers for ruining it all. He’s giving it himself, shouting ‘you Scouse bastards’ with everybody else. He’s not seeing. He doesn’t understand. He’s watching hundreds of bewildered insects scramble over the fencing, hundreds more climbing into the stand above. He’s watching a dark shadow spread across the green baize.

  A dark shadow that will engulf him.

  There are scuffles on the Kop, Forest with Forest. There are scuffles between the drinkers and the non-drinkers, the sensible and the senseless. All around him, bemused faces are struggling to comprehend what is happening in front of their eyes.

  And he’s watching the living carry the lifeless on makeshift stretchers made out of advertising hoardings, watching a line of police lock together across the playing surface to deflect a threat that’s not even there.

  They’re doing fuck all.

  Fuck all.

  He’s watching a bunch of lads in tracksuits trying to give the kiss to a mate, trying to do that when they’ve no fucking clue, witnessing their desperation as they frantically seek help where there is no help, watching them cover the face of their mate with a leather jacket.

  He’s hearing a bloke behind him mutter something to another bloke.

  ‘He’s fucking dead. They’re all fucking dead.’

  ‘The governors want to know what happened,’ says Chris. ‘The parents are demanding answers…’

  Lost within the veil.

  Lost in darkness.

  ‘And it isn’t just the parents and governors, John. I’ve had members of staff complain too, about the language you used.’

  That brings him back.

  ‘The l
anguage?’

  ‘The swearing.’

  ‘Did you see what was happening?’

  ‘Regardless…’

  ‘They were in danger, Chris. They were all in danger.’

  A row of bodies in the goalmouth. The row lengthening, becoming six, becoming eight, becoming a dozen. Row upon row of bodies in the goalmouth.

  The dead and the living.

  The living and the dead.

  3.10 p.m., Semi-Final Saturday.

  At 3.15 p.m. a solitary St John’s ambulance tries to force its way across a field littered with the stricken and the exhausted, the dead and the dying, pathetic in its isolation.

  At 3.20 p.m. a second ambulance makes it no further than the corner flag at the Kop end.

  The clock ticks forever onward. He and the others trapped in limbo, wanting to help but penned in, helpless, not able to help. A veil of silence falls over Hillsborough and everybody in it, a veil that settles as realisation and awareness surface in the mind. There are fifty-four thousand people in the ground but he can hear his own shallow breath.

  It’s 3.36 p.m. on 15th April 1989 before a third ambulance reaches the stricken of Leppings Lane.

  It is the end of one era and the beginning of another.

  He’s still in the office an hour later. In Chris’s office, waiting for the telephone, waiting for the hospital.

  ‘You’ve not been yourself lately, John,’ says Chris. Says his mate. ‘Why don’t you take a few days?’

  ‘I like being busy—’

  ‘Just until you’re feeling better.’

  Sleet rattling the windows, the head’s beloved flag billowing, threatening to tear itself free.

  ‘They’ll think you’ve suspended me.’

  ‘I’ll assure the parents you were only concerned with the safety of their children. I can’t suspend you for that. So take a few days. Take a week. Then we’ll reappraise. Go to the doctor. Get signed off.’

  ‘I’m not ill,’ he said.