by Danny Rhodes
He shakes his head again. He steps towards her, steps away from her.
‘They’re right,’ he says. ‘I’m a cunt. I’ve been doing this to you for months.’
She starts to panic then, starts to tremble and cry and beg him not to open the door and all he can do is shake his head and tell her he’s sorry. And still she isn’t angry with him, only desperate for him to change things. But he can’t change things. He’s incapable of changing anything.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I need to man up.’
He starts down the stairs, gets halfway before the glass window smashes. The Scotsman appears, steps into the lobby. Finchy watches as he’s bundled out of the way by Jen’s mam. Then she’s on the stairs, energised by plain fucking fury, shoving him to one side. They start going at it, Jen and her mam, on the first-floor landing, Jen shouting that she isn’t going anywhere, her mam having none of it. He stands there in the stairwell, weak and pathetic, trying to sink into the shadows that are too delicate to protect him. Her sister follows, shoots him a look, spits words in his direction.
‘You fucking bastard,’ she says.
‘She just turned up,’ he says.
‘Fuck off.’
She pushes past him too, climbs the stairs. And then Jen’s sister and mam enter the stairs again, heading downwards this time, Jen locked between them, Jen reduced to a kicking, screaming child. They have to pry her off every fucking surface to get her from the flat to the car and she won’t go and now the neighbours from over the street are out to witness the fucking spectacle and he’s reduced yet further to a mere scrap of a man, weak and pathetic. When she’s finally trapped in the back of the car, her mam comes for him, swearing into his fucking face, telling him to fuck off and to never, ever speak to her daughter again and there’s nothing he can do but stand and take it. Because he fucking deserves it.
For what we are about to receive…
Jen’s mam slams the door behind her, causing what’s left of the glass to fall out and then she launches herself at his car, giving it a flying kick, denting the bodywork. He catches one last sight of Jen, turning to look at him through the rear window, tears streaming down her face, make-up smudged, hair a mess, a wreck of a girl.
And may we always be mindful of the needs of others…
And they’re gone, the show over. The Scotsman stands staring at the hole where the glass panel used to be.
‘Fucking hell,’ he says, ‘better than EastEnders.’
Finchy turns around and heads upstairs, leaving the foyer exposed to whatever, leaving the dent in his car, not wanting to step into the street. He gets himself a beer and carries it to his room, sticks the Carpets on full fucking blast, collapses on the bed feeling like a fucking scolded teenager, lays there until the Scotsman starts banging on the wall and telling him to shut the fucking noise up.
He fucks off out instead, drives through the old town until he reaches the car park by the canal, pulls up there, sits with the engine idling, staring at the spot in the hedge where they found Tracey Carlton, wondering how he’d come to miss a body in a hedge, white skin in green foliage, sitting there in the driving seat with all of it racing through his fucking head.
Again.
Nine months. Nine fucking months.
He sits there for ten minutes, the engine turning over, his stomach performing somersaults. It takes him that long to notice the car sat in the corner of the car park, the driver hunched in the driver’s seat, much like he’s hunched. He might be staring at himself, at some all-revealing reflection. He stares across the car park, stares right into the cunt’s eyes and the cunt stares back at him. There’s no reason for anybody to be parked up in the car park of a boarded-up business, no fucking reason at all, but here they fucking are, the two of them.
A moment passes, a moment where Finchy feels himself folding inwards on himself, and then he makes a move to step out of the car. As soon as he does the other car pulls away. He watches it turn left down out of the car park, disappear into the evening. Finchy sits there, half in, half out of the car, thinking only of the bloke’s eyes.
Dark eyes.
Furious eyes.
The same as the pair staring back at him now in the fucking rear-view mirror.
Exactly the fucking same.
14th April 1990
Liverpool 2 v 2 Nottingham Forest Anfield
You would like to go to the World Cup with England but you don’t. You would like to be there when it all kicks off in Cagliari but you won’t.
But you’re at Anfield on this day of remembrance, on this day of mourning. You visit the gates and the memorial to Hillsborough. You place your palm on the metal and close your eyes.
But you do not look at the list of names.
You will never look at the list of names.
You’re there when the Kop pays you its respects and you pay your respects in turn.
There are tears in your eyes when you see the flags bearing testament to ninety-five lost souls. There are tears in your eyes when the Kop sings ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’. There are tears in your eyes when you wander in the direction of the coach and the life you no longer recognise as your own.
It has been three hundred and sixty-four nights of turmoil.
It has been three hundred and sixty-four days of waking to another morning.
You are guilty of nothing.
You are guilty of everything.
There is April, there is May.
There are Mondays and Tuesdays and Wednesdays and
Thursdays and Fridays and Saturdays. An ever-spinning wheel.
There are patterns.
There are routines.
There are fixed fucking duties.
There are no pills.
There is no Jen.
Not any more.
There are no surprises.
There’s no football either.
Italia 90
The press have predicted a summer of blood. The government have fanned the flames. The Italian authorities fear the worst.
Sardinia is a fortress.
Alcohol is banned.
There are limited ports of entry and restricted movement.
There is a stop-and-search policy at the border.
Moynihan in his element.
Moynihan the opportunist.
Moynihan.
Thatcher’s poisonous dwarf.
Leading the war on football.
Fucking revelling in it.
Those fans that get in risk summary deportation just for being.
It’s a crime to be English.
11th June 1990
England 1 v 1 Republic of Ireland Cagliari
The old town cinema showing the game on the big screen. Big John Robertson guest of honour. Big fucking mistake. Lads barrelled up, barrelling in.
Beer in the aisles.
Beer on the seats.
Puke on the seats.
Puke in the aisles.
The owner fretting and fussing.
England 1 Rep. Ireland 1.
Forest fans like lapdogs in the post-match Q&A. Robbo slagging off England. Every fucker slagging off England. Half the Irish players from the best fucking English teams.
Heroes and villains.
Villains and heroes.
You’re not having any of it. You’re on your feet, making your point to a bloke you’d once worshipped, the bloke you used to pretend to be on a Tuesday evening at football club, on a Saturday in the park, you in your yellow Forest away shirt with the blue trim.
And Robbo is playing to the crowd, taking the piss. The crowd are lapping it up.
Cunts.
The boys are lapping it up.
All cunts.
You want the earth to swallow you and you are a laughing stock.
But England make it out of the group.
He moves across to cover the old boys, a different route each week, mental stimulation, delivering to the country, a fucking day off midweek, a ch
ance to do something less boring instead. Eight walk, pushing his barrow up the High Street, flirting with the shopgirls. Thirty walk, on his bike, nice and easy does it, roasting in the summer sunshine. Nightingale in the van, job done by mid-morning, parking up in the woods, munching on his sandwiches, having a kip, the best fucking job in the world.
The rough with the smooth.
The smooth with the rough.
Thirty-three walk, his old favourite but growing with the new estate, becoming a pain in the arse, fourteen walk, with the schoolgirls’ ‘Morning Mr Postman’, twenty-two by the old canal, twenty-one’s dirty sibling, the rabbit warren estate, alleyways and dogs, broken fences, broken houses, broken lives.
The deadland.
Two walk, nipping into his flat for tea and biscuits, terraced houses, easy fucking money. And every day throughout the summer, each and every time he delivers to a school, he feels the pull of it, hears a calling, wonders how that might be, how he might get there, if it’s too late for that already, at nineteen, if the chance has passed him by, if he’s earmarked for this life and no other for the next forty-five years. When he brings the subject up in the canteen the blokes have a field day.
‘A fucking teacher?’
‘Don’t you need a brain to do that?’
‘You just want to shag the girlies.’
‘Fuck me, I couldn’t do that job. I’d murder the little bastards.’
‘I couldn’t keep my dick in my pants.’
‘Bollocks, I hated school.’
Only Harcross truly listening, delivering a quiet word in his ear.
‘Do it. You’re too fucking intelligent for this place.’
He doubts that but he listens to Harcross all the same because he loves the skinheaded bastard.
He doesn’t know it yet but he always will.
26th June 1990
England 1 v 0 Belgium
Bologna
One hundred and nineteen minutes. Penalties looming. Gascoigne free-kick. Platt volley.
One fucking nil.
The lads in the living room at Gav’s place, piling on top of each other, piling in. And you on the sofa, strangely out of it.
Thinking.
Weighing things up.
Loving it and hating it.
Thinking it’s coming to an end, feeling that and not knowing what to do, thinking about journeys, about new beginnings, about endings and partings, saying goodbye to nineteen fucking years of growth in the old town, thinking about your college application, thinking about the lads, about leaving one life and starting another, thinking about all of that in the slice of time it takes for them to get to their feet and call you a miserable bastard.
And so you’re dancing.
Dancing in the living room at Gav’s place as England book themselves a place in the Quarter-Finals.
She was standing outside with her back against the brick wall of BJ’s house.
‘I thought I’d walk you to the station,’ she said. ‘Then I’ll go. For good this time…’
He felt it then, a terrific surge of sadness. He didn’t want to leave but he knew he couldn’t stay. There was no way in the fucking world he could stay. He’d grown apart from the old town, grown into a different person in another place. Not a better person, not a more accomplished individual, none of those things, he’d simply changed from the person he was into the person he’d become. It was natural. It could happen to anybody. But the old town would always be with him. She would always be with him.
And so they walked the labyrinthine alleyways one last time, him with his bags, her trotting along beside him, heels clicking on tarmac, to the station foyer, the platform. Somewhere along that journey they took to holding hands.
‘You’re a daft bastard,’ she said. ‘You always were a daft bastard.’
‘Maybe,’ he said.
People were filing inside the train when they arrived, passengers gawping from the windows, not having a fucking clue what they were witnessing, him out of kilter on the platform, her awkward beside him.
‘I’ll take a seat next to them,’ he said. ‘Tell them the whole fucking story.’
She smiled.
‘They wouldn’t believe you if you did,’ she said.
‘They fucking would,’ he said. ‘The way I’d tell it…’
He picked up his bag and stepped on board.
‘You take care,’ she said.
‘You too,’ he said.
And then the door was sliding shut, hissing out air and she was lost to him for good. He watched her from behind the window, watched her diminish in size and shape and texture, held it in until the train pulled away, choking it all back, and he failed a little in that and had to hide his face from the other passengers by keeping it pressed against the window, exposing himself to the old town as it slipped away. He turned around. He didn’t bother with a seat in the end. He sat on his bag by the parcel shelves, not wanting to look at anybody, not wanting to watch the old town disappear, not wanting to see any of it or feel it or have to deal with it.
But he would have to, he would fucking well have to.
He sat there wondering if he’d achieved anything except to stir up fifteen years of sediment, and flee before the sediment had time to settle.
He wondered if one day, out of the blue, he’d come back to stir it all up again.
Sometimes he dreams of pouring petrol on the yellow sofa, lighting a match to it and watching it burn.
Sometimes.
He switches on the stereo. The Blue Aeroplanes. Swagger. He listens to Gerard Langley spout his poetry, drags his body out of bed and over to the window, gazes out at the quiet street.
A movement in the bathroom opposite. He catches his breath, shuffles into the shadows, watches the vague outline of the woman opposite struggle out of her clothes, watches the red sweater come off, the blue jeans, the black underwear, revealing pink skin, the dark patch between her legs, all of this a suggestion through frosted glass.
The woman opposite, single mum, no bloke on the scene, his flatmate providing the interim entertainment whenever the two fancy it.
Bizarre.
Not his type, truth be told, but he watches her anyway, watches her step into the shower and pull the curtain across, watches the frosted glass mist over, so that when she steps out of the shower he can barely distinguish the shape of her at all. He waits for her to move from the bathroom to the bedroom, her in a towel, black hair pushed back, watches her do all of those things then draw the curtains across and shut him out.
Selfish cow.
He drifts to the kitchen, sticks some toast under the grill, goes to the phone in the living room, drops on to the yellow sofa and calls up Gav.
‘Half seven?’
‘Sounds good.’
‘I’ll pick you up.’
‘Is that it?’
‘What else do you want me to fucking say?’
‘I don’t know. How was your day, something like that.’
‘Okay. How was your day?’
‘Shit.’
‘Right. See you at half seven.’
He puts the phone down, smells the fucking toast burning, races into the kitchen to save it. Too late. He goes back to the packet. Just the crusts left. He takes out a knife and starts scraping the burnt edges of the toast into the sink.
‘Bollocks to this,’ he says.
He drives to his mam’s, hoping to strike lucky, to stumble in on a hot pot, sausage and mash, something wholesome. Six-thirty on a Tuesday evening, the streets emptying of traffic, the dead day of the week, no fucking football, no fucker in the pubs, early to bed and early to rise.
There’s no hot pot, no sausage and mash, just the dog end of a steak and kidney pie. His dad throws some chips in the oven to go with it. He sits at the kitchen table, the radio in the background, the local news, the same locked-in places, the same dull stories. He stuffs himself, talks about the job and football and when he’ll be around again.
He
drives back to the flat as the long summer day comes to an end, unlocks the boarded-up door, steps into the dark foyer, climbs the steep stairs. He hates coming home to the flat as much as he hates going home to his mam and dad’s to steal a meal.
There’s just him and the twilight again, him and the alarm clock, him and the dark hours counting away towards another day in paradise.
And a World Cup Semi-Final.
4th July 1990
Germany 1 v 1 England
Turin
The Hound packed to the rafters. Shilton flat-footed on that deflection. Jammy German bastards. Lineker levelling. The place erupting.
Beer on the walls.
Beer on the ceiling.
A right fucking mess.
Extra time. The landlord weighing up the damage against the dough. Waddle off the post.
Jammy – German – bastards.
The fucking penalty shoot-out.
The cheers and the tears.
Blokes spitting blood at Pearce. Your Stuart Pearce. But he’s not yours, he’s England’s and England are out of the World Cup. Blokes spitting blood at Forest all the same, Forest spitting back with fists and foreheads, everything kicking off in the pub, spilling into the street, the throng joined by other throngs from other pubs.
Police on the High Street and the Market Square, barking their orders and sticking the boot in but not enough police, not on this evening. Lads and lasses drunk on the drama. A horde marching up the High Street towards the clock tower.
Bottles exploding as grenades.
Shop windows shivering.
Car windscreens.
Everything a fucking target.
The Guildhall decorated with scaffolding, the throng gathering there, nowhere left to go except home and no fucker going home, not yet.
Blood still up.
Some mad fucker on the scaffolding, clambering up the outside like Spiderman. Police on the tannoy. No fucker listening. Spiderman at the clock tower now, turning to the massed ranks, tearing off his T-shirt to show his bulldog tattoo, raising his fists to the cheers, climbing onwards, upwards, fearless. A gaggle of police urging him to come down, booze and bottles raining down. The police issuing their ultimatums.