Fan

by Danny Rhodes

  And he called his place again, of course he fucking did. The phone rang.

  And rang.

  And rang.

  He pictured it, crying out in the kitchen, yearning for a palm to clutch it.

  It clicked to answerphone, to Kelly’s ghostly voice.

  He didn’t bother to leave a message.

  It was Lacoste and Ralph Lauren, Barbour and Burberry.

  It was Lyle & Scott, Paul & Shark.

  It was Fila and Benetton, Ellesse and Adidas.

  It was Pringle and Patrick.

  It was Nike.

  It was all of these things.

  King’s Cross.

  Saturday, 5th December 1987.

  Seventeen days.

  The dead smell. Human fucking flesh. He catches scent of it the moment he steps off the train. Perhaps it’s in his head but he catches fucking scent of it all the same. It’s melded into the walls, into the charred metal and melted plastic. Two fucking weeks and it’s still there. One fucking cigarette. One discarded match. Piles of rubbish, rat hair, fluff, sweet wrappers. A wooden escalator, sixty years old. And tunnels, draughts from passing trains, tubes and shafts, solvent-based paint, a bastard blowtorch.

  A funeral pyre. A cremation pit.

  Choking black smoke.

  Death by asphyxiation.

  But the station’s open for business and here they are about their business, lads, taking the piss, looking out for colours, wearing their own in little ways, the tucked-away scarf, the subtle enamel badge, the East Midlands accent.

  Forest till I die.

  Underground, overground. Edgware Road. Earl’s Court. Parson’s Green. City to suburb. Concrete metropolis to leafy lane. SW19. A stone’s throw from the dog track. No sign of the fucking tennis. A right fair walk from the station, mind. No fucking crowd. No sign of a Div One ground or football match. Just a December day. No fucker about. It might as well be the fucking Simod Cup.

  And there it is.

  Plough Lane.

  ‘A shithole.’

  ‘Fucked if I’m coming here again.’

  ‘Where’s Bob’s bus when you need it?’

  He’s seen this many people at Meadow Lane. And that on a Tuesday. A better atmosphere at the Lane as well. But here they are watching Forest trying to stroke the ball around whilst the Wombles lump it. Here are Carr and Rice shitting bricks on each wing, looking like kids against Sanchez and co. Here’s Fash the Bash bruising it out, giving Chettle an elbow, a knee, a fucking hard afternoon. Here’s Clough Jnr nervously twitching each time he receives the ball with his back to goal. Tackles come straight through him, raking studs, swinging fists, no fucking protection. Clough Snr motionless on the touchline. Only Psycho looks up for it, in his element, carrying the others. Not for the first time. The Forest end uninspired. Tail ends of half-engineered songs drift up and out over the back of the open terrace, disappear into the December air.

  Plough fucking Lane. There are more exciting ploughing matches.

  Half-time. Nil fucking nil. He can hear his dad chuckling in the kitchen, the radio droning away.

  ‘When have you been to a fucking ploughing competition?’ asks Jeff.

  ‘I dunno. When I was a kid, maybe.’

  ‘Sad bastard.’

  ‘At least we got outside. You and your fucking darts.’

  ‘Plenty of tits.’

  ‘When you were seven?’

  ‘I’ve always been a tit man, mate. Gaaahhhhhhhhhh.’

  ‘Fuck off, Jeff.’

  Black Jack. Capable of fluctuation. Good to have on your side.

  ‘Plenty of tit in the Shovel last night.’

  ‘Don’t get started on your fucking barmaid stories.’

  ‘Nope. Donna. Barmaid’s best mate. Her bloke’s in the nick until New Year. Gagging for it.’

  ‘And you’re the man to supply it.’

  ‘If she wants it.’

  ‘Well, she won’t want it from you.’

  ‘Not what she was saying last night.’

  ‘What’s her bloke inside for?’

  ‘GBH.’

  ‘Ha ha. You fucking idiot. RIP Jeff-er-y.’

  Laughter. Always laughter.

  Some of them fuck off for burgers. The rest shuffle about on the terrace in the December gloom, flicking through the programme.

  ‘At least Courtney’s not reffing.’

  ‘Cunt.’

  The second half no better than the first. Webb strolling about.

  ‘Do some work, you lazy bastard!’

  Psycho flexing his muscles, puffing out his chest. Wilkinson up top, hands on hips.

  Minutes tick by like hours. Stoppage after stoppage. The ball in the air. The ball in the stand. The ball lost in SW20.

  A Wimbledon corner. An unchallenged header. One fucking nil to the Crazy Gang.

  ‘How much for this shit?’

  A late equaliser. A 1–1 draw.

  Forest we love you…

  For better, for worse.

  Even on days like this.

  Even in places like this.

  Back through the city, back through the blackened station. Stevenage. Peterborough. Lager from a can. All the way home. Geordie fans in the next carriage. Mad as fuck. Wanting to be like them.

  ‘With an N and an E and a Wubble U C…’

  BJ in his element, lapping up the banter.

  ‘He’s not Black and his name’s not Jack…’

  Their hometown, emerging out of the darkness.

  ‘Straight down the Bell?’

  Fuck that. He’s knackered. It’s home for tea, to change, to do his hair, to get himself looking presentable. No wonder the other fuckers never pull. And he needs something inside him, something to soak up the beer. He isn’t like them. He can’t sink it like they can. It always comes up again.

  He’s three pints behind when he gets into town but that’s alright. By half-eight he’s in the Hound, programme neatly folded in his back pocket.

  A badge of honour. A validation.

  Catching up with Lincoln and County and Portsmouth, sharing stories.

  ‘At least you cunts got a point.’

  ‘It was shit.’

  ‘Not as shit as 0–3. What a fucking shambles.’

  ‘Bury? Rather you than me, mate.’

  At closing he shuffles home, worse for wear but not so bad, not really, munching on kebab and chips, keeping his place in line amongst the late-night revellers on the long road back, not wanting to overtake or be overtaken, not wanting to gain on anybody, not wanting to be gained upon.

  Happy to be invisible.

  Monday

  A leafy cul-de-sac, dead still in the grey afternoon. Not a fucking soul about, not a breath of the living anywhere. He felt it when he reached the end of the close, felt the anonymity, twelve detached, four-bedroom houses, twelve neat tarmac driveways, twelve double garages, twelve freshly mown front lawns. He could picture the scene, twelve fucking lawnmowers on Sundays, the whir of machinery, the unravelling of hoses, sponges and chamois leathers, twelve pristine people carriers for twelve wives and twenty-four perfect fucking kids. He’d almost arrived at that place himself. Almost. He’d been teetering on the brink of it for months. And then the proverbial shit had hit the fan.

  The shit of fifteen years.

  He scanned the numbers, thinking it could only ever have been this way for Neil Hopley. Number nine. Our Nigel’s number. Our fucking Nigel.

  He walked up the drive. Two o’clock on a Monday afternoon. A couple of doves on the telephone wire. No sound. Not a breath of wind. The old town living up to its mediocrity, almost revelling in it.

  The most boring town in England.

  The iron bitch’s roots hung out to dry. Her ignominious burden.

  Lower middle class and from the provinces. Embarrassed and irritated by her origins. She turned her back on the place, struck through her history.

  Fucking elocution lessons.

  He pressed the doorbell.
Somewhere inside the place he heard it sound, quiet, reserved, polite. The patter of feet. An image of a child behind the frosted glass, a child’s voice calling out. A girl? He couldn’t tell just yet. And then a second image. A mother. Hopper’s wife.

  ‘Ellen, come here.’

  A girl.

  Somewhere in the house, a baby crying.

  He saw her hesitate, Mrs Hopley, not expecting anyone, probably thinking he was one of those men who turned up on doorsteps in the middle of nondescript afternoons like this one to hawk household products, five dusters for a pound, the latest revolutionary aid to clean, well-ordered living. He thought about Janet Allen coming home to her perfect suburban dwelling to find death waiting in her kitchen. The summer of 89 rearing its ugly fucking head, choosing the opportune moment.

  Fifteen years.

  Fifteen fucking years.

  A breath away.

  The lock clicked open and then the door, to reveal a beige carpet, magnolia walls, the scent of pine-fresh.

  To reveal Mrs Hopley. Neil’s missus. Neil’s lady wife.

  A look. Suspicious. A foot resting against the frame. A nod all the same. A quiet voice.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  Prettier than he expected, but burdened, by motherhood, by a four-bedroomed house in a cul-de-sac, by keeping up the fucking pretence.

  He realised he was nervous, ridiculously nervous, looking guilty, feeling guilty. He shouldn’t have fucking come. He really shouldn’t.

  ‘Is Neil in?’ he asked.

  ‘He’s at work.’

  Of course he was at work. It was two o’clock on a Monday afternoon. Every fucker was at work. Every fucker except John Finch.

  ‘Can I ask who you are?’

  ‘An old friend,’ he said. ‘We went to school together.’

  ‘Okay?’

  ‘And we watched football…’

  She was still looking at him, seeking more, wanting answers to questions a wife wants to know about a husband she thinks she knows but sometimes wonders about. At times like this, times like now.

  ‘I’m up for a few days, from down south,’ said Finchy. ‘I just thought I’d catch up…’

  … to ask your husband about the day we went to a football match and witnessed a fucking tragedy, to ask him how he’s dealing with that after all these fucking years, how he’s coped, how he’s managed to get himself a wife and two kids and a fucking people carrier and a lawn that looks fit for the 18th green at Wentworth, how he’s managed those things.

  The little girl pushed past her mum’s legs. He looked down and smiled at her. She stared up at him.

  ‘He’ll be in this evening,’ said the mother, Mrs Hopley, Neil Hopley’s fucking wife. ‘Can I tell him your name?’

  He hesitated. He wasn’t certain. He hadn’t thought things through.

  In the end he said, ‘John. Tell him John called.’

  ‘A surname?’

  ‘He’ll know me as John. John from football.’

  He retreated after that, back down the drive. He could feel her eyes on him, working him out, calculating the risks involved in allowing this man to rekindle a relationship with her husband, thinking about what it might jeopardise, what skeletons it might unearth. He wondered how it might have panned out differently if he’d turned up with Kelly and the children they were yet to have, a dog perhaps, turned up in a great fuck-off people carrier, the latest fucking model and all the trimmings, called Mrs Hopley by her first name, trendily kissed her on each fucking cheek.

  Curtains twitching as he wandered back into the estate, on to the lane, into town, back to the fucking hotel, the church spire bearing down upon him, the room shrinking, his head shrinking with it until there was no room for anything of the present, only memories that pressed against his consciousness, seeking recognition, demanding attention.

  And the room was too warm. There was no air.

  DO NOT OPEN THIS WINDOW plastered on the glass.

  What the fuck did they think he was planning to do? He thought about complaining but he didn’t have the energy. He flicked the TV on and stared at that instead, trying to get himself back in the land of the living, desperately fending off the memories threatening to tumble out and bury him.

  Doncaster.

  Wakefield.

  Leeds.

  North to Geordieland.

  Hopley and BJ off to the café together.

  BJ and Hopley in the bar at Darlington station.

  Bosom pals.

  Inseparable.

  Fogged-up windows. Yorkshire and Teeside swamped with rain.

  Grey skies. Low-slung cloud. The train rocking and swaying.

  Soporific.

  Knackered.

  In need of a kip.

  The longest away day of the season.

  And then some.

  At seven he ambled down to the hotel restaurant. Nobody there. Monday evening, dark October chill in the room, Polish waitress smoking a cigarette in the doorway, blowing smoke into the night. When she saw him she took one last drag, threw the cigarette out into the darkness and pulled the door shut behind her. He picked up a menu, scanned it briefly. He wasn’t hungry. He dropped the menu and made his exit. The waitress stared after him, brushing ash from her uniform.

  Out into the night then, fog descending on the old town, clinging to the trees, an eerie glow from a solitary street light. A car traipsed past, a silent ghost. He thought about faces pressed against wire mesh, blue lips, the dead propped against the living, bodies on advertising hoardings, bodies laid out in rows along the touchline like fucking stewards at ninety minutes, frantic CPR, sirens wailing but no fucking ambulances, heads covered by jackets, jumpers, football flags that read Liverpool FC, the Liver bird. He thought about being penned in, forced to watch it all unfold before him.

  Take it all in. Take it all in because you are never ever going to put this to bed. Run, hide, do what the fuck you like but don’t try to forget, don’t ever try to forget because you can’t. It will find you. It will fucking find you.

  He made his way down the Parade and into town, turned up towards the commuter estate that transformed the old town in the eighties. A heart transplant. For better and worse. The old town’s heart still beating but it wasn’t the same. The commuter estate grew, a malignancy, until it hit the railway line and then it stopped, nowhere left to go. Another estate popped up somewhere else, commuterville in the bloodstream of the old town, altering the fabric of the place, bringing its money, its aloof superiority.

  Bad blood. Death in the veins.

  Janet Allen, arriving home in the middle of the day, into the big house with the big driveway, not knowing what was waiting in the kitchen, who had let themselves in through the French windows that backed on to the railway. The roar of the 11.35 to Leeds smothering her screams.

  A second car in Hopper’s driveway. Lexus. Smart. Parked behind the people carrier, boxing it in. Curtains closed. Warm light beyond the curtains, the cul-de-sac transformed now, a snug security blanket. Him at the end of the driveway, half in and half out, uncertain of himself. Beyond the porch, beyond the light that snapped on when he stepped on to the drive, Neil Hopley. Hopper to his mates. Fellow fucking witness number two, rising from the sofa at the sound of the doorbell, puffing out his cheeks, sharing a look with his wife, knowing only too fucking well who would be standing at the front door when he opened it, why the fucker was there after all these years.

  John fucking Finch, no less.

  He’d aged. Of course he fucking had. The same round face, the same glasses, but taller, much taller than Finchy remembered. And more confident. More at ease. Obvious from the start.

  Hopley didn’t say anything. He just stood in the doorway, guarding it.

  What the fuck are you doing here? What the fuck are you doing outside my house?

  ‘Alright, Neil?’

  Nothing.

  ‘You haven’t changed.’

  Not a thing.

  ‘Nice car. N
ice house. Your parents still around the corner?’

  Somewhere up the line, a train sounded its horn.

  ‘Before you begin, I’m not interested.’

  Hopley. Some sort of fury behind his eyes. Steadfast in the doorway, protecting his own. Everything to fucking lose.

  ‘Why are you here?’ he asked.

  Rhetorical question.

  ‘T-Gally tells me you’re engaged,’ said Hopley.

  Finchy nodded.

  ‘Then why aren’t you at home with the missus?’

  ‘I came to talk…’

  ‘I don’t want to talk. Not about any of that.’

  What might that be?

  ‘I thought you might fancy a drink,’ said Finchy.

  ‘I don’t. I don’t want to talk about Stimmo either. I haven’t seen him in fucking years. He’s just a name in the paper…’

  ‘He was our mate…’

  ‘He was a stranger from another lifetime.’

  Train thundering through the old town. The air reverberating. Lights flickering through the dead growth. Hopper giving it some. Train hurtling through the old town, sucking the oxygen after it.

  ‘You come here, set my wife off asking questions, cause a row, upset my fucking kids.’

  ‘Sorry, Neil…’

  ‘It’s not their fucking burden. Do you understand? I don’t want anything to do with you or anything to do with what we used to be. You stopped going before any of us. Do you remember? You weren’t part of the Cup run in 91. You weren’t with us in Europe 95.’

  ‘I couldn’t be a part-timer, could I?’

  ‘So what the fuck does any of this have to do with you?’

  Hopley shifted his weight. The doorstep creaked under it.

  ‘Fucking turning up here after fifteen years. I take my eldest to games. He loves it and he knows nothing about any of that shit. Why should he? It was a different time. A different fucking world.’

  ‘Old habits die hard,’ said Finchy, forcing a smile.