by Danny Rhodes
Naked, tracing his fingers up and down the backs of his arms, across his shoulders, feeling his skin, picking, busying himself with blemishes, drifting off into some netherworld where thoughts wrestled for attention without ever becoming thoughts and memories surfaced without ever becoming memories. Time became timeless, meaning meaningless. He remained like that, naked on the landing, shivering with cold, arms and shoulders scratched and reddened, muscles tight and twisted, cock shrivelled to nothing, his head running at incredible speed, repeating itself, reaching overload. There was just the automotive action of his busy fingers.
And he wasn’t there.
He wasn’t fucking anywhere.
The summer after Hillsborough.
Top floor of National Express, en route to Torquay.
Just you and the boys.
The Stone Roses on the stereo.
I Wanna Be Adored.
‘What the fuck would you want to be a door for?’
‘Adored you daft fuck. Adored.’
Or is it Newquay?
No fucking sunshine either way, just football on the beach, endless fucking crazy golf and pissed-up evenings.
And birds. Chasing birds. On Fistral and Tolcarne, down Bank Street and Central Street, into the early hours, a relentless quest to make the holiday mean something, for it to carry some of the burden.
Or is it fucking Torquay?
Hanging out at Castle Circus, chasing the foreign birds. Seeing it in the fucking papers and magazines each and every day.
Story after story.
Image after image.
Bloated faces pressed against wire mesh fencing.
Seeing it and thinking ‘I was there. I was fucking there’ and telling the girls at Castle Circus and nobody giving a shit and showing them the pictures and the girls turning their faces to the ground and telling you to be a happy boy and the lads calling you a miserable bastard for dwelling on the subject and chasing the girls away.
Memories swamping your head. Memories threatening to sink you.
The rot setting in.
Even then.
He snapped out of himself, shuffled in the direction of the bedroom. The hall light came on. Kelly appeared, on her way to the bathroom.
2.10 a.m.
‘You should see someone about that,’ said Kelly when she climbed back into bed. ‘Sixteen fucking minutes you were stood there. I sat here and watched you. It’s not fucking normal.’
He blinked in the darkness.
Sixteen minutes lost to a slice of something that was nothing.
3.05 a.m.
The sound of a freight train inching its way through the city. The clack and clank of the trucks, the whine and squeal of the brakes. He listened to them dissolve into the darkness, listened to his own beating heart.
Years passing like days, a life racing away.
He turned on his side, watched the breeze flirt with the curtains, the window open to let the air in, Kelly’s pet hate, his unconditional need. Alongside all of the others: his routine at bedtime; cleaning the house prior to leaving it; tagging ‘all being well’ on to every arrangement; sleeping on the right side of the bed. He told himself it was his broken nose but he knew the truth of it.
Averseness to sleep.
Sleep reduced to necessity.
He climbed out of bed, his bare feet nestling on soft carpet, wandered silently down the stairs to the dining room, to the French windows, slid them open, reached high on the shelf for the cigarette packet Kelly kept there, fumbled for the lighter. He didn’t smoke, had never smoked, only the odd drag when he could think of nothing else to do with himself. And so he lit the cigarette in the doorway, stepped outside on to the decking, felt the chill in the air.
He took a drag on the cigarette, coughed, took another, coughed again. He looked across at the shed, thinking of the box and its contents, its collection of translucent days. He thought about the lads and how long it had been since he last thought of them. He thought about Cloughie.
A man amongst men.
Cloughie shooting two fingers at the Trent end when Nicholas was stricken versus the Arsenal.
Cloughie and his fucking random programme notes.
Cloughie and his presence.
No fucking nonsense Cloughie.
The night was cold. He was stood on the decking with a cigarette he didn’t want. There was fuck all else happening, no fucking moon, no fucking stars. He half-willed Cloughie to turn up, Cloughie in his fucking green sweater, the scruffy bastard.
But nobody came.
He took a final drag on the cigarette, coughed, stared down at the lawn. Nothing stirred. There wasn’t anything in the darkness except his past. He retreated inside, locked up and climbed the stairs, went back to bed.
‘What are you doing now?’ asked Kelly.
‘I can’t sleep.’
‘Go downstairs then.’
‘I’ve been downstairs. Now I’m back.’
‘You stink of fags.’
‘I had—’
‘Fucking disgusting habit,’ she said.
‘… one of yours.’
29th May 1985
Liverpool v Juventus
Heysel Stadium, Brussels
Wednesday. You ride your bike up through the estate to Gav’s place. A quiet evening bathed in soft sunlight, full of the promise of summer. You’re breathless with excitement, set fully on the spectacle.
Tonight will be Tardelli, Platini, Rossi and Boniek.
Tonight will be Grobbelaar, Hansen, Dalglish and Rush.
And Heysel.
Tonight will be Heysel.
One word.
Heysel.
A word that will blemish the English game.
But you’re thirteen years old tonight. You are glued to a portable TV in your mate’s bedroom. You are just boys, staring at the TV, waiting for a football match, staring instead at running battles on decrepit terraces, at missiles raining down on cowering policemen, at a wall collapsing and people dying.
You’re numb with shock, numb with shame.
The game is an afterthought. You’re not sure what to do, whether to watch it or turn away from the screen.
You cycle back as night’s coming on, the estate quiet now, full of menace. You go to bed feeling bemused, understanding there is no way of knowing what’s coming at you, no way of preparing.
In the darkness the thought chills you to your bones.
You’re just a boy.
The blackest days are ahead.
Because there are episodes where some horrific calamity plays out before your eyes. You’re locked in a cage, your eyes taped open, forced to witness it all, unable to do anything, unable to influence the outcome. Anguished people beg you to help them but you are powerless to come to their aid. One by one they collapse in front of the metal bars that contain you. They lay, row upon row, on a carpet of green baize.
The clock reverses an hour.
The episode begins all over again.
Another day mooching about the house. Kelly at work. Kelly home. In the evening everything kicking off again.
‘I spoke to Mike,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘I spoke to Mike, about the other day. I called him.’
‘He’s walking on eggshells. He’ll exaggerate everything,’ he said. ‘You know how these things work.’
‘Mike said they have it on film. Mike said it wasn’t very pleasant. Those were his exact words.’
He moved away from her, across the room towards the sofa, keeping his distance.
‘Not-very-pleasant,’ she said, stressing each syllable like it meant something.
‘Fuck off, Kelly,’ he said.
‘It’s a miracle it hasn’t made the papers,’ she said.
Mike’s machinery clicking into gear. Closing fucking shop on him. He puffed out his cheeks.
‘That’s over-dramatic,’ he said.
In truth, he couldn’t remember much about it, just the big la
ds, the rest toppling and tumbling into one another, legs, arms, torsos. And screams. Shrill, involuntary screams. Hollowed-out fucking screams. Swimming-bath screams. Him a helpless bystander. The big lads laughing, cracking up, two of them legging it but the third holding his ground, gagging for a confrontation, him shouting down the corridor, the lad bigging it up, the two of them chin to fucking chin.
Him and the lad.
The lad and him.
Billy Stubbs and John fucking Finch.
In the corridor. In the camera’s eye.
And then everything falling away. A void.
Dark fucking matter.
Kelly standing in the doorway to the kitchen, looking high and mighty, like he had some burden to bear that would damage the both of them, like she was tied to his shame.
‘It’ll not be a week,’ she said.
‘It’ll be fine.’
‘It might be weeks and weeks.’
‘It won’t be.’
‘What if they sack you?’
‘They won’t sack me.’
‘What if they take your teaching licence away?’
‘They won’t do that either. Nothing happened.’
He could see her dropping out, see the faraway look in her eye. He was pushing all the buttons, aggravating her to ‘tilt’.
But he couldn’t fucking help himself.
‘Whose side are you on, Kelly?’ he asked at last.
‘How about the mortgage? Or the fucking credit card? How about I’m on their side? And you being the man I moved in with instead of the miserable bastard you’ve become.’
He felt the bad stuff rip through him, the two of them adept at crucifying each other.
‘Something’s going on,’ she said. ‘I’ve not seen you like this before.’
‘Nothing’s going on.’
She turned away from him.
‘Kelly,’ he said. ‘Kelly…’
He could tell her now, he realised, tell her everything. Tell her about the phone call, about Clough and Stimmo, the whole fucking mess. Maybe she’d listen. And perhaps if she listened she’d understand. But she wouldn’t fucking listen and she wouldn’t understand because people didn’t understand. They carried the burden on their own terms, slotted it in a neat little place of their own design and chose to leave it there. It didn’t matter if that person was a pal, a parent or a fucking fiancée.
Brussels
A hot day in May.
Serene outside Brussel-Centraal station.
Peaceful on rue de la Montagne.
Not so in the Grote Markt, the central square.
The Grote Markt occupied by two thousand fans.
Fans bathing in the fountains of the Grote Markt.
The Grote Markt swamped with beer.
The Grote Markt littered with broken glass.
A carnival atmosphere or the first sparks of a riot.
One drunk fan in a dress-up police hat directing traffic.
Fans robbing. Fans pillaging.
A stand-off with the police.
Tear gas and trouble.
In the streets surrounding the stadium.
A ban on the sale of alcohol not enforced.
Bar upon bar making the most of the opportunity.
Fans drinking their beer.
Fans singing their songs.
The police watching on.
Two cordons of token security checks.
Fans with genuine tickets.
Fans with forged tickets.
Fans without tickets.
Two cordons of nonchalant, blasé policemen and baying police dogs.
Too easy.
At the turnstiles.
Fans using their tickets.
Fans passing tickets back to fans waiting outside.
Fans paying cash for entry.
Holes in the cinder block perimeter wall, holes big enough for grown men to push through.
A fractured water pipe.
A sea of mud.
A mess.
Inside the stadium.
The Liverpool sections packed to their limit.
Two sweltering cesspits.
Belgian police pelted with missiles by Italian fans.
Twenty-seven Belgian police injured by flying debris.
The temperature rising as the temperature falls.
Fans with genuine tickets.
Fans with forged tickets.
Fans without tickets.
Liverpool fans.
Juventus fans.
And neutral fans.
Neutral sections for neutral fans occupied by the partisan.
Neutral section Z occupied by Italian fans.
Neutral section Z placed beside Liverpool sections X and Y.
Cricket-ball-sized stones littering the crumbling terraces.
Perfect ammunition for those inclined.
An exchange of missiles.
From section Z into section Y.
From section Y into section Z.
Flares and rockets.
Rockets and flares.
Provocation and fighting on the terracing.
A free-for-all.
Three waves of assault on section Z from section Y.
A wall collapses.
A poorly constructed wall.
Thirty-nine people die in the crush.
Thirty-two Italians, four Belgians, two French people and one person from Northern Ireland die.
Hooligans are to blame.
History is to blame.
Twenty years of terrace culture is to blame.
Indiscriminate ticket touting is to blame.
Poor policing is to blame.
Poor crowd management is to blame.
Poor stadium maintenance is to blame.
But UEFA absolve themselves of ignoring the warnings, of staging a match in an arena unworthy of the role.
A condemned structure crumbling to pieces.
A ground in an advanced state of decay.
Such a stadium hosting the centrepiece of the season.
The European Cup Final.
Chicken-wire fencing separating rival supporters while Rome 84 still burns in the blood.
A request from Liverpool CEO Peter Robinson to have the game moved due to safety concerns filed in a drawer.
The Belgian police absolve themselves of not employing the manpower, of inertia, of not knowing how to handle a football match on such a scale, of not understanding what the fuck to do when two sets of fans turn on each other.
English football is on its knees, bruised and bleeding from open wounds.
UEFA observer Gunter Schneider sticks the boot in and the bitch in the blue dress draws the knife.
Liverpool FC shoulders responsibility for the actions of hooligans.
The city of Liverpool shoulders responsibility for the actions of hooligans.
English football shoulders the blame for the actions of hooligans.
English clubs are banned from European competition.
Up and down the country fans are treated with contempt. They’re the scum of the earth, the dregs of a nation. An honest supporter is a thug taking a day off.
There’s a war on football.
Much, much later a Belgian judge concludes that blame should not rest solely with English fans and that some culpability lays with the police and authorities.
Fourteen supporters are convicted of involuntary manslaughter. UEFA officials are threatened with imprisonment but receive conditional discharges. A member of the Belgian Football Union is charged with regrettable negligence. A Belgian police captain who made fundamental errors is charged with negligence. Both receive a six-month suspended sentence.
But this is much, much later.
And the damage is already done.
In all sorts of ways.
Thursday
When he reached the bedroom she was sleeping. Of course she was, it was 3 a.m. for fuck’s sake. He slipped into bed next to her, lay there for ten minutes unable to find an
y sort of restfulness. Lying on his back he felt the weight of the duvet against his chest, the obvious presence of his beating heart. He felt the blood rushing through his body, felt it in his limbs, his toes and fingers. He heard it racing through his head in pulsing torrents. He thought about cut-off points, about when a life starts and when a life ends, about when a life is and when a life isn’t. He looked at the clock on the dresser.
3.13 a.m.
He thought about a solitary St John’s ambulance threading its way through a disaster zone, a policeman lifting the corner flag from its berth, a second policeman tearing along at the ambulance’s flank. A solitary St John’s ambulance soon mobbed by the desperate and the distraught.
A single St John’s ambulance.
He pictured the Liverpool skyline, the two Liver birds, the monolithic cathedral, the gates of Anfield draped in scarves that hung like tears, a carpet of grief on the sacred turf.
The dark of the room unsettled him. He listened to the trains shunting around the station, tried to search for an away day, any day that wasn’t that day, a day with a happy ending. He couldn’t locate one.
He turned to look at Kelly, the familiar outline of her turned-away shoulder.
The two of them lost in the darkness.
Again.
Tragedy after tragedy.
Warning after warning unheeded.
Stairway 13, Ibrox. 1961.
Two fatalities.
Stairway 13, Ibrox. 1967.
Eleven injured.
Stairway 13, Ibrox. 1969.
Twenty-nine injured.
Stairway 13, Ibrox. 1971
Sixty-six fatalities.
Judge Smith’s chilling verdict.
‘The board would appear to have proceeded with the view that if the problem was ignored long enough it would eventually go away.’
Tragedy after tragedy.
Warning after warning.
Kelly sniffed. He noticed her breathing had changed, that she was awake as he was awake, locked in her own thoughts.
‘Kelly…’ he whispered.
‘What?’
Agitated. Again.
‘Kelly?’