Fan

by Danny Rhodes

  The Grimsby escort came marching down the street on the opposite side of the police line, seven hundred mariners heading for the station.

  Thirty-six miles on a map. The same fucking county.

  Half a world away.

  Two fucking tribes.

  Somewhere in the chaos of those moments, BJ started shouting.

  ‘It was ours, mate. It was ours and they stole it. They kicked us when we were down and then priced us out of our own fucking manors. Never fucking forget that.’

  Finchy nodded.

  ‘Take these,’ said BJ. ‘I’ll see you later.’

  BJ chucked him the keys to the flat, then he turned away. A brick went careering over his head, then another and another. Pint glasses went flying back. Finchy wanted to disagree with the daft fucker but he couldn’t. He was fighting back tears. His head was a mess, riddled with half memories and uncertain tomorrows. BJ was in the melee now, pushing against the police line with the others, moving ever onwards towards some final destruction, his boys all around him.

  He turned around one last time.

  ‘They fucking stole it,’ shouted BJ. ‘Tell that to your lads at school. The bastards fucking stole what was ours! Tell them that for Nev and Stimmo and every fucker else!’

  The police line broke. Everything kicked off then. Lads piled into lads. Blokes piled into blokes. The police scattered. The melee swallowed BJ in its midst.

  Finchy wheeled away, ran to the corner, ran down the next street. He lost it then. Tears came in floods. A grown fucking man blubbering on a fucking street full of terraced houses, in the shadows cast by molten floodlights at dusk on a Saturday. He heard the wail of a police siren. A riot van came shooting up the street. He watched it draw to a halt, watched eight baton-wielding policemen clamber out. Another van pulled in behind it. He tried wiping the tears from his cheeks but it was no fucking good. He wasn’t one for crying, not in public or private, not fucking any place.

  But he was crying now.

  And it wasn’t just Stimmo or Jen White or seeing BJ again or being in the old town for a spell. It wasn’t the fucking trouble he was witnessing. It wasn’t even that one day in April. It was everything, being a man, being a dresser, having a past to hark back to, having one life and then another and then another, a box full of broken threads and loose endings.

  He’d had more than enough. He wanted to go back and deal with the Kelly business. He wanted to sort it, get it all on the table, find her there and tell her some truths he’d kept buried for too fucking long.

  One broken thread he might mend.

  If she was there. If he hadn’t throttled the life out of her.

  He spent the night in BJ’s flat listening to the local radio phone-in, listening to bloke after bloke and woman after woman have their say on the aggro of the afternoon; the disgrace; the shame; the thuggery. He listened to the presenter lap it all up.

  Animals…

  Worse than animals…

  Put down the lot of them…

  He’d heard it all before.

  And still they didn’t understand.

  They would never understand.

  Sunday

  When he woke the next morning there was an envelope on the mat in BJ’s hall. It had his name on it. He opened it with anxious fingers, knowing it would be from her. He read the contents and sucked in a lungful of air, readied himself for one last rendezvous.

  He climbed the stairs and peered into BJ’s bedroom. The bed was empty. Wherever BJ was, he wasn’t home.

  She was waiting at the bandstand, sat undercover out of the rain. He sat down next to her, careful not to get too close, one eye on the park, nervous that she’d been followed, that at any moment he’d find himself cornered by the Big Fucker.

  Out for pulverising revenge.

  ‘Please don’t,’ she said. ‘Either you’re here or you can fuck off.’

  He halved the distance between them, stretched his legs out, folded his arms. He thought once again about how she’d changed, how there was no trace of the meek creature of fifteen years ago, the wreck of a girl he’d left behind.

  ‘We didn’t have to do this,’ he said.

  ‘You came to me,’ she said. ‘You started it.’

  ‘I didn’t start this,’ he said.

  He pointed to his head, at the scrapes and bruises.

  ‘Big fucking deal,’ she said. ‘You can have that for fifteen years ago.’

  ‘That big bastard’s off his nut.’

  ‘Am I supposed to give a shit?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Are you?’

  A pause.

  ‘His name is Roland. He’s one of Stimmo’s mates, not mine,’ she said. ‘And my brother’s a prick. His heart’s in the right place but he hangs around with the wrong sorts. He always has…’

  ‘I’m not fussed about your brother.’

  ‘The two of them got a hammering the other day.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’

  ‘Roland had his nose smashed in. Know anything about that?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Not a fucking thing,’ he said.

  ‘Short bloke. Curly hair?’

  He shook his head again, shrugged, smiled. She smiled back. She knew. Of course she fucking knew.

  ‘Did you sort it?’ she asked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Whatever it was you came back to sort?’

  He stared through the veil of rain and across the park towards the river. There was nobody about, just the raindrops dripping from the branches, the park strewn with fallen leaves, a solitary thrush busy amongst the debris of autumn.

  ‘I came for the service and failed to make it,’ he said. ‘So no, I haven’t sorted it yet. There’s more to it than expected.’

  He heard the sound of the church bell calling the faithful to worship. It drifted across the rain-smeared morning, reminding him of the school bell, the choked corridor, that whole business.

  ‘And when you do, then you’re off back?’

  ‘I guess so,’ he said. ‘I’ve a job down there.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, that’s not all.’ Then he said, ‘That’s the first time you’ve asked me…’

  ‘It’s none of my business,’ she said. ‘I’m just not stupid.’

  ‘I don’t think you’re stupid,’ he said. ‘I’ve never thought you stupid.’

  ‘But all’s not well, is it? Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘But this has nothing to do with that.’

  He changed the subject.

  ‘I’m just sorry I turned up like I did. I had a lot on my mind. I needed some answers.’

  ‘We all need fucking answers,’ she said. ‘You should see somebody, a professional. Stimmo should have seen somebody. Maybe we all should, eh?’

  ‘Maybe,’ he said.

  ‘But you won’t.’

  He shrugged.

  ‘I know you won’t,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll deal with it,’ he said.

  ‘That’s not the same,’ she said. ‘That’s not what I’m talking about.’

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I know it’s not.’

  The two of them in the bandstand. The two of them in their own worlds.

  ‘It’s like fifteen years never happened,’ he said. ‘This week. That’s how it’s made me feel, like I never went anywhere, never did anything. I feel like I could walk through the sorting office doors in the morning, pick up my mail and step right back into the life I was living.’

  She turned to him, on her own tangent.

  ‘I don’t feel guilty,’ she said. ‘Sitting here, feeling these feelings, I don’t feel guilty about any of them. Just shame. I’m ashamed of myself for not feeling the guilt I should be feeling…’

  ‘Nothing happened,’ he said.

  She looked at him.

  ‘Between us, I mean,’ he said.

  ‘
You never change,’ she said. ‘You still think everything’s about you when nothing’s about you.’

  He opened his mouth but she cut him off.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Don’t fucking bother. You’ll only make things worse.’

  She sighed, got to her feet.

  ‘I need to walk. I can’t sit here.’

  She started along the river. He followed a pace behind. They meandered through the oldest streets of the old town, each of them burdened by memories of each other, places triggering new memories; the patch of green where he used to wait for her after college; the bridge where they’d stand watching the swans on the water; the bar where they first met, places that remained, places that were lost, replaced by other places that meant nothing to either of them. He caught up with her and they walked together, sometimes leaning against one another, sometimes laughing. In stray moments he thought of Kelly, of the answerphone that refused to yield its secrets.

  Somehow they reached the end of her street.

  ‘I missed you so much when you left,’ she said. ‘I didn’t think it was possible to miss somebody the way I missed you. But then I realised I’d been missing you for a long time, ever since…’

  He looked down at the river to see a fish flick against the surface. He noticed the flash of scales.

  ‘Did I really change?’ he asked.

  She nodded.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, you did.’

  He started to speak, cut himself short.

  ‘Before that day I was everything to you and after it I was nothing. I’d say that was changing, wouldn’t you?’

  When he still didn’t say anything, she smiled, at him, to herself, he couldn’t tell.

  ‘Small things at first,’ she said. ‘Then bigger things. You were with me before. Afterwards you were against me. Or it felt like that.’

  ‘I’m not saying you’re wrong,’ he said. ‘Just that it wasn’t deliberate.’

  ‘Thank fuck for that,’ she said. ‘God knows what sort of person you are if any of it was deliberate.’

  He turned towards her.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean that.’

  ‘A lot happened all at once,’ he said. ‘I woke up to the world. Or I thought I did.’

  He could see how that might register, what that might do to her to admit such a thing, but there was nothing he could do about it then and there was nothing he could do about it now.

  She looked past him, down the street. His eyes followed hers to her front door. Then she turned to look directly at him. He realised he couldn’t read her. He didn’t know what she wanted, only what he imagined she might want from him.

  ‘It’s all wrong,’ she said. ‘I know it’s all wrong. I’m just not sure I care any more.’

  She held his gaze, refusing to yield. The two of them stood like that, locked in position. Here was that need he’d argued with Kelly about, the thing neither of them could allow in themselves. Here was that nakedness, that rawness, here in the old town. Here it was exposing itself to the fucking bone.

  He imagined himself following her down the street, entering the house, imagined making love to her, her making love to him. He wondered where that might take them, what wounds it would heal, what wounds it would open. He imagined all of this in a microsecond of time.

  ‘You should leave,’ she said. ‘You’re right. You were right then and you’re right now. Because if you don’t go you’ll be here and I don’t think that’s the answer…’

  She turned her back on him, started down the pavement.

  He shouted after her.

  ‘I need to ask you something,’ he said.

  She stopped. A sudden breeze buffeted her jacket. She stiffened against it, turned to face him.

  ‘I never hurt you?’

  She puffed out her cheeks.

  ‘Physically, I mean. I never did that, did I?’

  ‘You want to know if you beat me? You want to know if you did that?’

  He nodded.

  ‘You don’t remember?’

  He shook his head. She paused. He felt the weight of fifteen years on his shoulders, forcing him to buckle.

  She laughed quietly.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘You never did that. Do you think you’d be standing there if you had?’

  ‘Not even at the end?’

  He was thinking of that spring and summer, of a pitiful white corpse in a ditch, a housewife strangled in her own kitchen, stories in newspapers, shattered husbands revealing their secrets to shattered wives, blue Sierras and blue pills, every fucker looking at every fucker else.

  ‘Never,’ she said. Then she said, ‘Fuck me, is it really such a fog for you that you can’t remember a thing like that?’

  He felt the relief coursing through his being.

  ‘Some of it,’ he said. ‘Not all of it, just some of it.’

  She turned on her heels.

  He felt a rising desire to go after her, but he knew that fucking scenario, how all of that shit worked. So he let her go instead, let her walk away from him, watched her from the corner until she reached her door, watched her look back at him. She didn’t wave. She simply opened the door and disappeared inside, gone from him. Again.

  A new season.

  A new beginning.

  Murder drifts away on the autumn breeze.

  The blue Sierra stops haunting your waking hours.

  For a while everything settles.

  And you?

  You’re back on twenty-one walk, back to the grind.

  A new season.

  A new beginning.

  The same seat in the lower tier.

  The same lads all around you.

  But it’s not the same somehow, even if everything is the same.

  And so begins the separation.

  Lads at the pool table. Lads at the bar. Talking about those boys from the pub team, taking a fucking minibus, stopping off for one too many, every fucker needing a piss. Stopping for a piss. Taking off again, the driver not looking, not fucking seeing the car coming the other way. One great fucking mash-up. Bodies scattered in the road, in the field, in the ditch, bodies every fucking where. The minibus driver dead at the scene. One player paralysed for life. The rest of them fucked up in all sorts of ways.

  And now the cunts want to take a minibus to Southampton, to the Dell, a right royal piss-up, one hundred and eighty miles each way. He isn’t having any of it.

  And so begins the separation.

  The parameters have changed. It isn’t about the football in 89–90. It isn’t about anything. Their souls have been sucked out of them. Nothing matters except the moment and no fucker’s sober when the moment happens.

  He sits in the pub listening to their stories, taking the flack for missing this game and that game, thinking ‘this is what it is now, a chance to get rat-arsed.’ Half the fuckers don’t remember where they’ve been.

  He’s sick of their glazed expressions, the way they can’t hold a conversation past Saturday lunchtime. When he wants to talk tactics and football they want to talk shit. And they’re unpredictable, forever pushing the fucking envelope, getting into scrapes. It’s only a matter of time until a scrape turns into something else. He isn’t sure half of the fuckers, the sheep, will be able to handle it when it comes. There are only two or three that can. He isn’t one of them, doesn’t want to be.

  When the lads down their pints and up sticks, move one pub along on their weekly Sunday night route, he slips away. He calls Jen from a phone box, begs her to come over and then he sits on the yellow sofa to wait for her, thinking things might be better if he takes a step away from the football for a while, goes back to playing perhaps, picks and chooses his games a little more, saves a few quid. That things might be better if he stops popping the beans, if he stops going out, if he stays in and concentrates on Jen and nothing else.

  It’s not as if she doesn’t deserve it.

  Jen arrives in a taxi. He pays the driver.
>
  ‘You said you were working tomorrow,’ she says.

  ‘I am,’ he says. ‘But I wanted to see you.’

  ‘I thought it was a lads’ night,’ she says.

  He shrugs.

  ‘It was,’ he says. ‘It was shit. A shitty lads’ night.’

  ‘Sunday,’ she says.

  ‘That’s not the reason,’ he says.

  It’s past eleven already.

  He pulls her to him, feels the warmth of her, the soft flesh.

  ‘Is this what you got me over for?’

  ‘It’s an added bonus,’ he says.

  ‘Okay,’ she says. ‘But please promise me something?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Please let things be normal again. Call me when you say you’re going to call me. Turn up when you say you’re going to turn up. Stop taking the pills. That’s all I’m asking.’

  ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry. I will.’

  They kiss. The room is dark. He undresses her and she undresses him. They drop into the bed, disappear into the warm folds of the duvet. He feels comfortable tonight. It suits him. He feels good about it. Her sister is right. It’s time he made a choice and stuck to it.

  And the other stuff, the doubts, he forces them down. She doesn’t deserve those things, this girl who opens herself up to him on a mournful Sunday evening, offers him shelter from the worst of it all. She doesn’t deserve anything but his graciousness.

  But the next morning is a bastard, laden with phone bills. It’s 7.50 a.m. when he reaches Hope Close. He’s an hour behind before he starts, an extended morning stretching ahead of him, threatening to break his spirit. The night before with Jen is already burdensome, a conflict between her soft white flesh and his black fucking heart. And there’s something in the air on this morning, an electricity building. There’s no sunshine. It’s just fucking muggy. He’s sweating like a prick as he works. Dark clouds roll in over the estate. He watches them swallow the school and the row of shops near his mam’s place. He watches them consume the whole town, watches them turn the day to night.