by Danny Rhodes
She gets up off the yellow sofa, coughs.
‘Your flatmate’s smoking shit again,’ she says. ‘I can’t stand it.’
She reaches for her jacket.
‘Where are you going?’ he asks.
‘Home,’ she says.
He sighs.
‘When the season’s done, we’ll go away,’ he says. ‘I promise.’
He grips her hand. She tears herself free.
‘I’m sick of Lisa and Kevin,’ she shouts. ‘I’m sick of football and I’m sick of you.’
And then she’s slamming the door, gone from the place. He doesn’t get up to follow her. He doesn’t do anything at all.
18th March 1989
FA Cup Quarter-Final
Manchester United 0 v 1 Nottingham Forest
Old Trafford
Monday lunchtime. The Cup draw on the radio.
Not United away. Not United away. Not fucking Manchester United away.
Manchester United will play … Nottingham Forest.
Highbury one year, Old Trafford the next. Forty-five thousand baying for blood but Forest impregnable. The classic away day. Franzie Carr jinking, twisting, turning, freeing himself on the right. Franzie Carr to the byline, Franz Carr squaring the ball, Garry Parker in the middle, Garry Parker in the centre of the goal. The simplest of tap-ins.
One Garry Parker.
One fucking nil.
The second half. Forest under the cosh, the Stretford end in full voice but ten thousand mighty Reds giving it back. Ebb and flow, end to end. Hodge off the goal-line. Sparky Hughes in the referee’s face. Thirty-five thousand in the referee’s ear. Ten thousand voices singing their boys home.
Wembley, Wembley, we’re the famous Cloughie’s army and we’re going to Wembley…
Fuck me, you might be going three times.
The Simod Cup.
The League Cup.
The FA Cup.
Nottingham Forest are in the Semi-Final hat.
Norwich are in the Semi-Final hat.
Everton are in the Semi-Final hat.
Liverpool are in the Semi-Final hat.
Norwich (let it be Norwich).
Everton (you’ll take Everton).
But not the fucking Scousers again.
Not fucking Hillsborough again.
Not the fucking Kop again.
The same fucking arguments.
In the boardrooms and corridors.
In the pubs and clubs.
Behind closed doors.
The SYP.
The FA.
The strategy and the struggle.
‘I’d be happy with Leppings Lane.’
‘They had the Kop last year.’
‘Share and share alike.’
It doesn’t matter.
Because this year you’ll have the bastards whichever end you’re in.
It’s written in the stars.
You’re a believer.
15th April 1989
The thousands in a crowd move as one,
with no shared intelligence.
Prof. Dr G. Keith Still
It’s dark when he wakes, dark when he cycles through the streets, dark when he arrives at the sorting office gates on this Saturday in April.
It’s dark when he steps away from his frame to check the boxes.
At 6 a.m. he goes out to the ramp and waits there, knowing he can’t bundle up yet, can’t bag up yet, knowing eyes are on him, knowing the limits. It’s too fucking early so he stands on the ramp and watches the black sky shift to cobalt blue, watches it brighten into a cloudless morning.
Back inside he readies the round. By 6.30 a.m. he’s out of the place, not hanging around, not looking over his shoulder as he slips out of the gates, not caring about Webster or anybody. He’s set on one thing today, one thing only. In six hours’ time he’ll be on the football special. In seven hours he’ll be on the Penistone Road, Sheffield. In eight hours he’ll be at Hillsborough, him and twenty-eight thousand Forest.
His heart skips a beat.
There’s a spring in his step as he makes his way up the path of the first call on Hope Close. There’s every fucking reason for it. Forest are flying, beaten just twice in twenty-two games since the turn of the year. They’ve won at White Hart Lane, Highbury, Old Trafford and the Baseball Ground. They’ve won the League fucking Cup at Wembley.
Everything comes easy on this morning. He glides from letter box to letter box, street to street. By 9 a.m. he’s back at the office. Harcross gives him the thumbs-up and ushers him out of the place before Webster and his cronies get an opportunity to stick their oar in.
At 10.30 a.m. he’s on the train, him and all of the others and then some. It’s an FA Cup Semi. Every fucker who is any fucker has a ticket for this one.
And every fucker who isn’t.
Nottingham station rammed with red and white, the football special awash with beer and song.
Langley Mill, Alfreton, Chesterfield, Dronfield.
Beer and song, all the way to Sheffield.
He loves it and loathes it in equal measure. Twelve hundred of the fuckers at Plough Lane two weeks earlier, twelve hundred diehards. Today there will be twenty-eight thousand at Hillsborough, four thousand more than the average home gate at the City Ground.
The station at Sheffield is top heavy with SYP. There’s nowhere to go except where the SYP want them to go, no chance of slipping the net. There’s a fleet of double-decker buses lined up outside the station and he files aboard the upper deck. It’s 1 p.m. on match day, zero minus two hours. There’s alcohol in the air but no sign of it anywhere. Not now. The top floor of the double-decker is manned by two members of the SYP. Some of the lads crack jokes but the SYP aren’t laughing. The SYP never fucking laugh. Not on match day.
It’s slow going through the city of Sheffield, slow going on the Penistone Road.
‘We could have walked there quicker,’ says BJ.
Finchy nods. Finchy looks at the old bill. The old bill stare back.
Finchy looks out of the window instead. There are fans streaming up the Penistone Road, fans draped in red and white. There are fans spreadeagled on the grass of Hillsborough Park. The sun is shining. The sky is blue. It’s the perfect day to watch a football match.
The bus crosses the River Don and pulls in outside the Kop end turnstiles. It’s 1.30 p.m. A year ago they were straight in from here but they’re older now and some of the lads are looking for a drink. They mill about on the pavement outside the Kop, choices to be made. There’s talk of this pub and that pub, talk of time to enjoy themselves. He’s not up for it. There’s the SYP for starters. There’s the fucking part-timers.
‘I’m going in,’ says BJ.
‘I’m with you,’ he says.
Finchy hands over his ticket, shoves through the turnstiles and makes the steep climb up the concrete steps to the back of the Kop. He buys a programme, moves through the clusters already in place to locate a view similar to the year before. It means the others might find them later, if they’re not too fucking late. And then there’s fuck all to do but wait, room still to sit on his arse on the Kop and flick through the programme, to breeze over the message from the Sheffield Wednesday Chairman describing his ‘perfect venue’ overlaying a photograph of Leppings Lane, to glance at the ‘Flashback’ article of a year before, to enjoy the photograph of Garry Parker turning in Franz Carr’s cross for the winner at Old Trafford and Bobby Robson’s article suggesting the match ‘could be a classic’. He feels it too. Fifty-four thousand souls are feeling it, but there aren’t fifty-four thousand in Hillsborough, not yet, not by a long shot. The Kop is filling up, as are the North and South Stands but the Leppings Lane end is all wrong. The pens to the left and the right are only sparsely populated. Just the central pens are truly occupied.
‘What the fuck’s that all about?’ asks one voice to his left.
‘They’ve not sold their tickets,’ laughs another to his right.
He�
�s thinking the same, that there’s been some enormous fuck-up, that none of what he’s seeing makes sense.
And nothing changes as the clock ticks onward, except that the central pens become fuller, tighter, become a mass of heads and bodies and that some fans clamber over the lateral fencing from the central pens to the wing pens.
But he doesn’t know anything. He only knows that it’s 2.40 p.m. on match day, just twenty minutes before the biggest game of the season.
Outside the ground, in the narrow elbow of Leppings Lane, more than five thousand fans are still trying to get in.
And the Leppings Lane end has not reached capacity. There is room in the wing pens. Plenty of room.
But the wing pens will not reach capacity.
Not on this day in April.
Not on this day.
15th April 1989
Semi-Final
Liverpool v Nottingham Forest
VOID
You’re always there.
5.20 p.m.
He’s traipsing his way back to Sheffield station, casualty numbers drifting from the open windows of cars trapped bumper to bumper on the Penistone Road, finding his ear.
Thirty dead.
Fifty.
Sixty.
Seventy.
Over seventy dead.
There are queues of lads lined up outside the phone boxes at the station. Pick a queue, any queue, wait your turn. He waits forty minutes. His dad answers. His dad tells him to get home safely. It’s okay because he’s safe. Everything will be okay.
But it’s not okay. It will never truly be okay.
He doesn’t call Jen. He’s only got one ten-pence fucking piece. There are queues of lads behind him. His own crew have already fucked off to the platform.
6.10 p.m.
The ‘Special’ inches out of the city and through the peaks. Some lads are talking about it. Some lads are telling jokes about dead Scousers. Some lads are picking fights with the blokes telling jokes. Some lads are worrying about the football, about the FA Cup, if the game will be replayed, if the whole thing’s been ruined. Some lads are staring out of the train windows at England’s green and pleasant land, their eyes filled with tears.
Some lads aren’t anywhere at all.
Dronfield. Chesterfield. Alfreton. Langley Mill. Nottingham.
Lads alight the train.
Lads drift away.
Lost souls slip back into lives they no longer own.
Lives removed.
Forever.
Finchy calls Jen when he’s back on his terrain, back in the flat, pacing the hall, unable to settle.
‘You’re alright?’ she asks. ‘Do you want me to come over?’
‘I need to be out,’ he says. ‘With the others.’
‘But you’re alright,’ she says. ‘You’re safe.’
‘Aye,’ he says. ‘Aye, I suppose I am.’
There’s a cool breeze blowing when he steps out of the flat. He sets himself against it and heads into town. A chill runs through him. The hairs on his arms stand to attention.
The sun is dropping beyond the trees that border the river. The sunset is a pink wash that darkens and thickens as he makes his way in. By the time he reaches the pub the sky is the colour of blood.
It’s 8 p.m. on 15th April 1989.
9 p.m.
They’re all out but no fucker’s really out. They’re six hours and seventy miles away, on the Spion Kop at Hillsborough. The same lads as a year ago, the same location, the same beers on the table. The pool table’s there but no fucker’s on it. Music’s playing but no fucker’s listening to it. Fanny coming and going. No fucker gawping. Amidst all of this, they pick through the cost of it.
‘They’ll cancel the fucking Cup.’
‘Fuck that. It’s a Semi-Final.’
‘We’d have won today. I fucking know it.’
‘It’ll be all Merseyside now. The papers’ll be all over it. Fucking Scouse bastards.’
BJ offers his two penneth and everybody listens.
‘Listen to yourselves,’ he says. ‘Fucking listen to yourselves. People are dead. It’s over.’
‘Fucking hell,’ say the others.
‘Fuck me.’
‘It’s well and truly fucking over.’
BJ slams his fist on the table. Beer sloshes on to the carpet, the dirty sticky carpet that has seen five hundred nights like this.
But never like this.
‘You’re all cunts, do you know that? All a bunch of fucking cunts.’
He picks up his bottle and fucks off, leaving them there. Finchy watches him go, knowing BJ’s frustration will turn into something else before the night is through, force its way upon some poor unsuspecting fucker that doesn’t know any better. It’s guaranteed.
Finchy observes Stimmo pick up his own pint and slip away towards some lads that don’t go to football. Finchy sits thinking about Jen, wanting to catch up with her now, to tell his story, not sure how the fuck he’s going to tell it. He doesn’t realise it will be that way for the rest of his life. He sits marooned, a pile of fresh shit to deal with, a new understanding about the workings of the world on his plate. And from this day forward no fucker will speak about it. No fucker will offer to help. The boys will all be stuck with it, guilty as fuck for living. And the response will always be the same if they ever get up the nerve to mention it, forever a look, a shake of the head, the fear of dwelling in that place. He’ll want to talk about it. He’ll fucking need to talk about it. But no fucker will be interested. And in the end, they’ll stop talking about it with each other, too. It will became a thing they share without sharing, something to bury at the bottom of a fucking pint glass. For fifteen years.
He thinks about his grandfather and the army days, how each time the old guy brought those days up the family would move on from it. Will it be the same, him trying to talk about things and everybody else ducking and weaving?
Of course it fucking will.
And that poor guy had to carry it for fifty fucking years.
Mention it in passing. Drop a line in. Measure a reaction.
But no fucker reacts. Ever.
So bury it then. Bury it deep.
He drives to Jen’s on the Sunday, turns up for Sunday roast, for beef and Yorkshire pudding, for Brussels fucking sprouts. He’s got no appetite for any of it, their sombre faces, their furtive glances over the table, their attempts at light conversation. After the charade he and Jen go for a walk through the village.
‘You didn’t call,’ she says.
‘I couldn’t,’ he says. ‘There was nowhere to call from.’
‘You called your mam’s.’
‘Eventually,’ he says. ‘Eventually. There was a queue a mile long for every fucking phone in the city. That’s how it was.’
‘I just thought you might…’
‘I called you when I got home,’ he said. ‘I called you then. That’s all there is to say about it.’
And Sunday bleeds into Monday.
Nobody speaks when he walks into the sorting office. Nobody looks him in the eye. Spence is unnervingly quiet, focused on slotting the letters into his frame. Robbie Box is nowhere to be seen. Harcross comes over with the barrow, hands him another bundle, pats him on the shoulder and trundles away. In the locker room, Jack Stanley, ex-Fire Brigade and one of the old boys, pipes up without looking in his direction.
‘How are you, lad?’
‘Alright,’ he says. ‘Alright.’
‘Good,’ says Jack Stanley. ‘That’s what we like to hear.’
That is all.
The newspapers are full of photographs. He catches them on his round, finds himself pulling the things out of letter boxes where they’ve been stuffed by the paperboy, standing on the doorsteps of his people reading about the thing that will come to separate them from him. Images of men, boys and girls, terror, pain, panic, an unforgiving compression. Eyes and cheeks and noses. Bloated faces press against wire-mesh fencing.
/> The living and the dead.
The dead standing up.
There’s a list of names in the paper too, a list of the deceased and their ages. He can’t look at the list, can’t bring himself to read it. He will never be able to read it.
Tuesday bleeds into Wednesday. An endless flow of misery.
He writes a note to the local rag, fan to fan, works on the words for hours, changing this, changing that. Something to do with them all being united, Liverpool, Forest, across the miles. He takes the note down to the newspaper offices and hands it over. It appears on the Friday, at the foot of an article about some bloke who was there. No fucker asks him for his story. No fucker wants to know.
April 22nd 1989
Middlesbrough 3 v 4 Nottingham Forest
Ayresome Park
You travel out of duty, out of respect for the dead and for the game you love. And you travel for the lads too, your brothers, to be with them.
Grey April skies. You’ll Never Walk Alone ringing from the terraces as the teams take the field. One minute of silence while a solitary car alarm cries a forlorn lament for the lost. Black armbands, eyes on the turf, a drawing of breath and then they’re off again, football picking up the pieces, trying to mend things.
Middlesbrough 3 v 4 Nottingham Forest.
The game is a homage to football, a nod to better days but the game is an afterthought. You and the boys on the terrace in the corner, still numb from it all, not knowing when to laugh, when to cheer, when to sing. Not knowing what the fuck to do.
Middlesbrough away.
Seven days after tragedy.
Wanting to be there. Not wanting to be there. Having to fucking be there. Numb with shock. An undigested thing in the gut. An indigestible thing. A fucking tapeworm. A parasite feeding off your guilt and shame. And nothing to be ashamed about. Nothing to be guilty about.
Guilty of nothing.
Guilty of everything.
Finchy and Jen.