Fan

by Danny Rhodes

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I want you to love me,’ he said.

  He just came out with it, like that, could hardly believe it himself.

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘I want you to empathise with me,’ he said. ‘Just the once. I want to know that it’s possible for you to do that.’

  The darkness had him. Somehow it was spiralling and hurtling around him, a fucking maelstrom. He was trapped at its centre. He could hear the discomfort in her voice as she responded, Kelly thrown off balance, the two of them teetering on the brink of two different lives, two separate pathways, neither of them prepared for that.

  Not yet. Not yet.

  ‘You’re incapable of loving me,’ she said. ‘Why should I love you?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m just incapable of saying it.’

  ‘So you love me?’

  ‘Fucking hell, Kelly,’ he said.

  ‘Tell me you love me…’

  ‘Shut up. You’re not listening.’

  ‘Say it,’ she said. ‘If you really feel it, then say it.’

  ‘You’ve fucking turned it around,’ he said. ‘You always turn it around.’

  And that’s what she did. Just like Cloughie, turned defence into attack in the blink of an eye. Slick. Sublime. Ruthless. The irony was fucking blinding.

  He climbed out of bed, pulled on his T-shirt and boxers, moved across the room, out on to the landing, down the stairs, heard her shouting after him.

  ‘Say it! Say it!’

  He pushed open the doors and stepped out into the garden, took himself off to the summer house, shut himself away. For a while he was alone with it all, his head a mess, his hands shaking, his heart beating at ten to the fucking dozen. Then she appeared in the doorway, wrapped up in his Paul Smith cardigan, quieter now, calmer, almost understanding.

  ‘Why can’t you say it?’ she asked him.

  He shook his head. He stared at the box of programmes, picked his way absently through the pile that was 88–89, seeking it out. The FA Cup Semi-Final 1989. Liverpool v Nottingham Forest. Hillsborough. He turned it over in his hands, considering that this item and nothing else in his possession had witnessed what he had witnessed. He almost forgot Kelly was there.

  ‘John,’ she said.

  ‘It’s not in me to say it,’ he said. ‘Not to you or anybody.’

  ‘That doesn’t make it better,’ she said. ‘How does that make it any better when you’re talking to your fiancée?’

  He felt himself shaking. He stared at his quivering fingers, at the pages of the programme shivering in the damp air. He couldn’t leave them out here, he realised. He had to bring them back inside, look after them, allow them access to the world he inhabited.

  ‘Look at you. Look at how cold you are. Come inside,’ she said.

  ‘It’s not the cold,’ he said, but she was already on the garden path, already walking away from him, back towards the house. He replaced the programme in the pile, packed the piles back into their boxes, carried the boxes across the garden into the house. When he reached the lounge she was waiting for him.

  ‘What the fuck do you do out there, anyway?’

  He walked past her into the kitchen, placed the boxes on the table. She followed him.

  ‘Come on. What do you do out there that’s so fucking interesting it’s better than sitting in here next to me.’

  ‘I don’t want to watch TV,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You watch TV and I don’t want to watch it.’

  ‘Except that when I fuck off to bed, then you’ll come inside and watch the thing.’

  ‘It’s just on,’ he said. ‘I don’t watch it.’

  ‘No, you just sit up half of the night, staring into space. You could come to bed with me.’

  ‘I don’t need much sleep,’ he said. ‘You know how I am.’

  He felt exposed in the brightness of the kitchen, the subject of a fucking lab experiment. He opened the fridge and fished about, not really looking for anything, simply trying not to look at her, not to have his eyes meet her eyes, expecting her to go to the boxes on the table, fish about, start asking questions. But she didn’t.

  ‘You’re a useless prick these days,’ she said. ‘A fucking useless prick. I’m not talking about sleeping!’

  And then she was gone. He heard her storming up the stairs, heard the bedroom door slam shut.

  He went into the hallway, grabbed his school bag, dug out the pile of cellophane zip files he’d nicked from the stockroom, carried them back to the kitchen. He sat at the table and started the job of filing his programmes, one cellophane wrapper for each, a protective cell to keep everything in place, to prevent the past from spilling everywhere and making a mess, to protect the present from the things coming its way. He turned his head to look at the kitchen clock.

  It was 3.50 a.m.

  It didn’t matter what the time was.

  Are there fifty thousand others like you?

  Fifty thousand souls going through this again and again?

  Night after night when the lights go out?

  Fifty thousand living it over and over again?

  In the morning. Kelly on afternoon shift. Kelly slamming around the house, making her fucking statement. He stayed in bed out of the way, drifting in and out of himself, fighting the rushes when they came. A war of attrition. Later, when he ventured down, she was sat in the living room watching Jeremy Kyle. He wondered what the fuck had happened to her, the woman who once kept him up all night analysing the set design and social commentary of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. Kelly who once loved the movies of David fucking Lynch.

  Kelly and her adult situations. She worked in telesales for fuck’s sake, managed a bunch of lads and lasses in their twenties, managed their behaviour, their absenteeism, their prospects. Or lack of them. There was hardly a difference between his job and hers. And now their routine was set out of joint, neither of them knowing what to do with themselves, fresh wounds festering.

  But Jeremy fucking Kyle. It niggled at him until he couldn’t help himself.

  ‘This is what you get up to on your day off?’

  ‘It’s not my day off. I’m in at eleven.’

  ‘Even so…’

  ‘It’s just on,’ she said. ‘Background noise.’

  ‘While you do what?’

  ‘While I wonder what happened to my fucking life…’

  Just like that. A short and sharp stab to the ribs. Kelly at her cutting worst.

  Multiple fucking stab wounds on his person, on his wretched cadaver.

  He left her to it, took the bus into town, wandered in and out of bookshops and charity shops, killing minutes, playing for time, running down the clock, one minute after another, acutely conscious of their passing. When he was done, when he had no imagination left to play with he took himself back to the house, made himself useful by cooking up some pasta, left Kelly’s in the fridge in case she fancied a bite when she got home. Humdrum stuff. Nothing extraordinary about any of it. But trying. Trying to retreat his ten yards and forget about Stimmo and every fucking thing else.

  He watched his own daytime TV, observed the clock on the Sky menu tick on and on towards nightfall, watched the sky darken beyond the French windows, considered where the fuck another day of life had disappeared to.

  To the local pub then. To a replay of some Premiership game on the TV. Villa versus Palace. Hardly fucking inspiring. A smattering of souls in the place, the football an afterthought. In between glances at the barmaid, he watched the match over the top of his pint, trying to claw back some interest. But it wasn’t the same, would never be the same, would only be different in ways that made others baulk and laugh and pour scorn because they didn’t know about the edge, the raw energy, the chipped paint, the crumbling concrete, the cages. They didn’t know about Derby at the Baseball Ground in clinging drizzle, crammed into the away end, piss wet through but pissing on the fucking sheep. They didn’t
know about Maine Road on a filthy Wednesday evening, 0–3 down at half-time, Loftus Road when the chips were down, Selhurst Park in the snow. They didn’t know. They hadn’t lived those days. They weren’t fucking there.

  And so he watched Villa versus Palace and watched the barmaid until he’d had enough then wandered back home to find the house empty. He nipped upstairs, pulled out the laptop, clicked through to some pictures of Kelly displaying her wares, worse for drink and up for a bit, thought about what his chances were of taking more pictures like that, a fresh batch, knowing it would be a while, knowing it might be never, knowing that the way they were he’d be lucky to catch a glimpse of her bare arse, let alone have the thing shoved in his camera lens.

  And all he was really doing was delaying the inevitable, delaying packing his bag, folding his suit into it, stepping out of the house and out of the close in the direction of the station, delaying a journey he’d put off for fifteen years. With nowhere left to turn he found himself searching the boxes for his old DVDs, Goals of the Season, Champions of Europe, stuff like that. He carried them back to the living room, laid himself out on the carpet, slipped the first one in the pile into the machine, dropped seamlessly into another era.

  In the past it might have been a porno.

  In the past.

  The Football League receives £6.3 million for a two-year TV rights deal.

  Conservative Member of Parliament and Luton Town chairman David Evans introduces a membership scheme at Kenilworth Road.

  Luton Town bans away supporters for the start of the 1986–87 season instigated by hooliganism during a home game versus Millwall in 1985.

  But you live for your away days.

  You hate David Evans and you hate Luton Town.

  You hate their plastic pitch.

  There is talk of the ban spreading to all football clubs.

  There is talk of banning away fans from every ground in the country.

  But football strikes back.

  Luton Town are thrown out of the League Cup.

  And you obtain a membership card for Luton Town.

  You visit Luton Town to support your team.

  You applaud your team off the field at Kenilworth Road.

  You have defeated David Evans and you will defeat him again because some things are worth fighting for. The membership system will not be forced upon you. You will not allow that to happen.

  You’re a fucking working-class hero.

  By five he’d made his decision. He’d shoot straight up to the old town that evening, get a hotel, attend the service and shoot home again. He packed his bag and stuck it in the hall, fixed the enamel badge to the lapel of his suit and folded it away. He was contemplating writing a note to Kelly when he heard the key in the lock.

  Fuck.

  He considered making a bolt for the back door, sneaking around the side of the house and legging it. Instead he listened to the sound of her heels coming to a halt on laminate, the sound of her muttering to herself.

  ‘John?’

  He kept his mouth shut, uncertain whether to make light of it or lay it on thick. From the living room came the sound of the TV, still showing the goals of the eighties, Psycho banging one in from outside the box versus Ipswich.

  ‘John?’

  ‘Yep?’

  Casual. Forced. Ridiculous.

  She opened the door, looked him up and down, saw straight through him.

  ‘What’s the bag for?’

  ‘The bag?’

  Pathetic.

  ‘The bag in the hall.’

  ‘Just some things,’ he said.

  ‘Some things?’

  ‘Some things I need.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘I’m going away…’

  ‘Fuck off.’

  ‘I have to,’ he said.

  Liberated. Shit scared.

  ‘Where?’

  Her posture stiffened. He imagined how it would be if he tried to push past her, if he went for the bag and the door. He didn’t move a muscle.

  ‘Just away,’ he said.

  ‘For how long?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘Forever?’

  He shook his head. Not forever. Surely not forever.

  ‘If it’s not forever you can tell me where you’re going.’

  His head a pitch invasion now, cunts running in all directions, climbing the floodlights, clambering over the scoreboard, dangling from it. A fucking mess.

  ‘It’s for a few days,’ he said.

  ‘If it’s another woman you can fuck off now and not bother coming back.’

  He glanced out of the kitchen window. Two kids were kicking a football up and down the street in the twilight. He could hear the smack of leather on tarmac.

  ‘Is it?’ she said.

  ‘Is it what?’

  ‘A woman.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Of course it’s not. It’s no big deal.’

  She clocked the notepad on the table.

  ‘Were you going to leave without telling me?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘You’re a liar,’ she said.

  She looked him up and down, really seeing him now, really taking him in.

  ‘Why are you wearing that?’

  She pointed at his shirt.

  ‘You never wear things like that.’

  He shrugged.

  ‘I found it in the attic.’

  ‘You’re going to football? Is that it? What is this, some lads’ weekend? A stag do? You don’t have to keep it a secret.’

  ‘Can I tell you when I get back?’

  She pursed her lips.

  ‘Do what you like,’ she said. Then she turned and slammed the kitchen door behind her. He heard her thundering up the stairs. Somewhere in that whirlwind moment, her heels must have come off.

  He wondered what the hell he was thinking.

  Warning after warning unheeded.

  Hillsborough 81. Leppings Lane.

  The FA Cup Semi-Final.

  Tottenham v Wolves.

  Congestion at the Leppings Lane turnstiles and crushing on the confined outer concourse results in the opening of exit gate C and serious crushing on the terraces.

  Thirty-eight injured.

  The police suggest reducing the capacity of Leppings Lane.

  ‘Bollocks,’ says Wednesday Chairman Bert McGee. ‘No one would have been killed.’

  The introduction of lateral fencing reduces movement into the side pens.

  Inadequate and poorly recorded inspections.

  No revised safety certificate.

  The introduction of further lateral fencing creates two central pens.

  Sideways movement is reduced.

  Recommendations to feed fans directly from designated turnstiles into each pen are not acted upon, rendering the turnstile counters irrelevant. The 1 in 6 gradient tunnel breaches the recommendations of the Green Guide but is deemed not to be a safety risk.

  No mass admission anticipated.

  No information available regarding crowd distribution between pens or the capacity of each pen.

  The width of the perimeter fence gates well below the standard recommended in the Green Guide.

  And warning after fucking warning.

  Hillsborough 87.

  The FA Cup Quarter-Final between Sheffield Wednesday and Coventry City. Tightly compressed away supporters in the central pens of Leppings Lane are pulled to the safety of the upper tier.

  The FA Cup Semi-Final.

  Coventry v Leeds.

  Leeds fans unable to raise their arms above their heads due to crushing on the Leppings Lane terrace. Leeds fans pulled to the safety of the upper tier.

  Hillsborough 88.

  Liverpool v Nottingham Forest.

  Your Nottingham Forest.

  No updated safety certificate.

  Access to the tunnel closed prior to kick-off.

  Fans redirected to the side pens.

  But there’s still crush
ing in the central pens.

  Fans collapsing.

  Fans fainting.

  It’s impossible to breathe.

  In April, 1988.

  Considerable concern for personal safety.

  Some Liverpool fans vow never to enter Leppings Lane again.

  At Hillsborough.

  On the Leppings Lane terrace.

  In April, 1988.

  The Safety Certificate’s stuck in a drawer, out of date and out of mind.

  Nobody wants to be reminded of the Safety Certificate.

  Nobody’s listening.

  Heading north through the heartland, north through the patchwork. Heading to the old town. Kelly’s screams in his head. The two of them in the bedroom. That cutting tongue of hers. Her in that towel. Fresh out of the shower. Her naked shoulders. Her wet skin. Her wrists slipping from his grip.

  The two of them in the bedroom, wrestling, grappling, fighting.

  Truly fighting.

  The same piece of track. Sunday, 9th April 1989. Heading home from Wembley. League Cup Winners. First trophy in a decade. With the boys all the way, Chester, Coventry, Leicester, QPR, Bristol fucking City, a sun-drenched Sunday in London town, stuffing the holders, stuffing the Hatters.

  Psycho in his little white hat.

  Forest on a fucking roll. Confidence soaring. Tearing all and sundry to shreds. Seventeen wins in twenty-two games.

  Cloughie clasping his hands, punching the air. A lone figure on the dog track, skirting the celebrations, slipping down the tunnel and away.

  One job done.

  They’d criticised him, the daft bastards, for sloping off like that, but they didn’t fucking understand. They didn’t see the bigger picture. Let the players have their fifteen minutes, then get on with things. There was so much more. There was Hills-borough for fuck’s sake, the FA Cup.

  One big job left to do.

  Kelly naked on the bed, the towel at her feet, her head buried in the pillow. Him breathless in the doorway, shocked at himself.

  Lads on the 19.00 out of King’s Cross, revelling in it, the stuff of dreams. Spilling into the aisle, dancing the miles away. Conga up and down the carriages, blokes joining blokes, strangers united, five, ten, twenty deep, up the train and back again. Even the fucking guard joining in, the rest of the passengers laughing along, a party on the 19.00 King’s Cross to Leeds.