Now, listen, young man, he says, the only teams in red worth talking about are Nottingham Forest and the Soviet Union, no more talk of Liverpool and Manchester United, please.
I’m allowed to stay up on New Year’s Eve and wait for midnight. We open the front door to let the New Year in and to shake hands with Harry, who feeds Natalie’s baby with a bottle and staggers drunk up the entry. We open the back door to let the old year out. It is black and silent across the allotments and all the works. My grandad shivers and pours himself and my dad another whisky when we go back into the kitchen. Johnny is back from the pub and fetches a glass from the cupboard.
Happy New Year, he says.
Yow’ve had enough, son.
Yer doh know how much I’ve had.
I can tell the way yome looking at me.
I ay had no more than yow.
I said yow’ve had enough.
My grandad screws the top back on the whisky and puts it on the table. He wears a gold paper crown that has slipped almost over his eyes. He looks out at Johnny from underneath his crown until Johnny looks away. They both fall asleep in the chairs. Johnny wakes up after a few minutes and walks over to the table and pours himself a glass of whisky and tops my dad up. I am meant to be in bed, asleep.
The Wolves: if I’d known what was going to happen to them I’d have let them win everything while they could.
Later, people would ask if I was related to Steve Bull when they saw my name. At first I’d say no. We’re not, as far as I know. Then I started mumbling some answer about him maybe being my cousin’s cousin’s cousin. Maybe he is. It was a useful thing to say when I bought the pub and was serving behind the bar. There are pictures of him up at either end of the bar; one of him banging a goal in for Wolves, one when he came on and scored for England against Scotland. He came in once; we got him to sign the pictures. There’s a photo of him with Johnny and Josh pinned up next to the optics. The camera that my dad got back for us sits behind the till. I found it again, tucked in a drawer, bought some of the old film off the internet.
Ronnie isn’t coming back. His dad sits at the kitchen table, talking to my nan. None of them are coming back. Ronnie’s mum has left with a man who sells beer for the brewery. They weren’t even in Kidderminster. The man is moving to a new job on the south coast, miles away, past London, and they are all going with him, Ronnie and his sisters and his mum. They are never coming back. My nan tells me to go upstairs while she talks to Harry. She puts a cup of tea down for him. My grandad tips some whisky into it.
Natalie stayed with her dad and the baby, Leah. Natalie never saw her mum again, couldn’t forgive her. Leah died ten years ago, just before her twenty-first birthday. They found her in one of the boarded up houses on Cromwell Green; heroin.
Ronnie and I never got to play the Man United game. In the little ground I’d made around the Subbuteo pitch I’d done a board saying NEXT FIXTURE: MANCHESTER UNITED FA CUP. I left it there for ages; it made me think of the clock at Old Trafford that’s stopped at the time of the Munich crash. I got a postcard from Ronnie once, from Brighton, where they’d go on day trips from the little town where they lived. Ronnie couldn’t write that well but he said everything was okay and that he liked living by the sea, but he missed all of us, and Dudley. I wrote a long letter to him, but never got anything back. They moved around a lot. The brewery rep left them and Vanessa moved on to someone else.
I’d have her back, Lil, course I would, like a shot, tomorrow, I hear Harry say to my nan, sitting at the kitchen table. I’m trying to feed Albert the tortoise some lettuce through the fence. I can’t get him to eat like Ronnie could. He used to pretend to talk to him in a tortoise language.
I doh think her’s coming back, Ron.
I miss the kids. I miss her, he says. He’s crying, a big man crying, and he isn’t even drunk. My nan is standing up rubbing his back.
What am I gonna do, Lily? he says.
Iss all right, Harry, come on, my nan says. Come on, iss all right.
‘Oh, but you know, you do not achieve anything without trouble, ever.’
A man shoots Ronald Reagan. He walks up to him and shoots. Bang, bang, bang, and the bodyguards jump on the man with the gun and on Ronald Reagan. I wonder if the man’s a Russian agent. They show it on the news. Ronald Reagan doesn’t die, though.
Iss like bloody voodoo, Johnny says when he sees it, and then the newsreader comes on to say that Ronald Reagan is fine and can carry on being president. I think Johnny thinks it would have been better if he’d been killed.
I know what voodoo is. There is a country called Haiti, where there is a ruler called Baby Doc Duvalier. His dad’s name was Papa Doc Duvalier. I saw a picture in the Daily Mirror and a clip on the news. The people in Haiti are poor and miserable but they can’t get rid of Baby Doc, or Papa Doc before him, because the Duvaliers have got their own police, like the SAS, called the Tonton Macoute and they have magical voodoo powers, because Baby Doc made a deal with the devil. This means that you can try to kill Baby Doc but he won’t die. He’ll probably rule Haiti for ever and the people will stay poor and miserable and frightened for ever unless someone can undo the magic. You can’t undo it by shooting Baby Doc.
My grandad is angry all the time now. He is angry at the telly and even angrier at Johnny. My mum and dad are angry too, but only at each other.
There are riots in London, in Brixton. All the black men run around smashing windows and looting and throwing petrol bombs. A riot is when a group of you get together and go wild. Looting is when you take things that you might want but can’t afford, like a new television set, from out of a shop after you’ve had the riot. A petrol bomb is a milk bottle with petrol in and a rag dipped in it and sticking out of the top. You set light to the rag and then throw it at the police. Johnny tells me how to make them. He laughs as the black men throw the bricks and petrol bombs at the police in Brixton. My grandad is angry with them and with Johnny.
They’m fighting back, Dad.
Fighting back at what?
This government. Yow ought to be grateful that somebody’s got the spine to say enough’s enough.
They ay fighting the government. They doh know who’s in the government. They just wanna go wild and tek things that ay theers.
Well, have yer thought they might wanna take things cos they look around and see that other people have got things and they see how unfair it is? Yow’ve said yerself iss unfair. Yer tode me how unfair it is. From each according to his ability to each according to his need. Yow taught me that.
Here yam then, my grandad says, waving the newspaper apart in front of his face. Here yam. David Banks, sentenced to two years, receipt of stolen goods. The Woodhouses and the Bankses, they’m the people fighting our corner? I doh think so. Fightin their own corner. Givin everybody else a bad name.
The Woodhouses, some of Ronnie’s uncles, and the Banks families are the two names you always hear to do with crime round by us. They are ‘notorious criminal families’ it says in the paper when they have the trial about robbing the post office.
It ay the same.
What dyer mean it ay the same? Crime’s crime. This ay political.
Yow sound like bloody her now.
He means Margaret Thatcher.
I doh sound like nobody. Iss plain hooliganism. They ay political. Or if it is political, it ay nothing to do with my politics. The politics of I’ll just take what I want even if doh belong to me, is what it is. The politics of I’ve never done a day’s work in me life an I doh intend to if I can get away with thieving off everybody else. They got more in common with the Tories than wi me.
Yow ay mekkin sense now.
They should arrest em. And deport em.
What?
If they doh like it they can leave.
What dyer mean?
Well, if they’ve come from somewhere else then they can allus goo back theer.
I’ve heard it all now.
I mean it. They come here but it must be better than Jamaica or wherever because they’ve come here in the fust place. I know they’ve got it hard. Course they’ve got it hard, but it just meks it wuss for everybody else, rampaging around and not respecting the law. They’m theer own wust enemies. They am. Yer see it round here. It ay right. It ay. Yow cor tell me iss right. That policeman who got injured, he’s got a wife and family. They’ll bloody kill somebody next and then where ull we be?
Have you heard this? Johnny’s eyes have gone wide and he’s waving his arm towards my mum. He sounds like Enoch Powell.
There’s no need for that, Dad. It doh matter what colour they am. My mum usually doesn’t take sides. Usually she thinks what Johnny says is stupid. She looks angry with my grandad. He doesn’t care, though.
Well, if thass true how come they’m all black? I doh see em rioting in Neath or Newcastle or rahnd here for that matter.
Yow wait, Johnny mutters.
Yer need to calm down, all on yer, my nan says. And doh start ropin her into yer argument, she says, pointing at my mum. Her’s a married woman with a son. Her’s got her own problems. Yer’d think we’d got enough to worry abaht without all this carry-on a hundred miles away. Let em riot if they want. It ay nothing to do with we.
Look, my grandad says slowly, putting the newspaper down on the table and his hand on Johnny’s arm. All I’m saying is that they’m doin more harm than good. If yome serious about gerrin rid of the government then, yeah, protest, demonstrate all yer want, but yer doh have to break the law, tek other people’s stuff, hurt people, not like that. There’s a proper process. We have elections. If yer doh like the government then yer can vote to get rid of em. Thass how we do things.
And a fine mess thass got us in.
My grandad shrugs.
What if yome outside the process?
What dyer mean?
Well, if yer cor see that there’s anybody representing your voice.
This is the blacks now, is it?
Well, yeah.
Well, tek Solomon Abrahams at our work, he voted Tory.
Thass it then, now. On the strength of one black man, they’m all Tories.
No, I ay sayin that. All I’m sayin is they’ve got a right to vote, same as anybody else. Solomon’s a fool if he thinks voting Tory’s gonna do him any favours but he’s got every right to do so. I bet none of them voted. I bet none of them doing the rioting am even registered to vote.
Thass my point.
No, thass my point. They ay got a leg to stand on. Black, white, pink with yeller spots. They ay doin nobody any favours except theerselves. They should round em all up.
This tops the lot, this does.
They ay rioting to cause a revolution, son, they’m rioting so they can nick some tellies!
Right, thass it, yome finishing it now. I doh want to hear no more about it. No more, no more, no more.
My nan bangs the kitchen table each time she says No more. My grandad and uncle look shocked.
‘Crime is crime is crime, it is not political.’
They had the same argument on and off for years. Later, during the miners’ strike, when the miners fought the police at Orgreave, exactly one year after my dad died, I watched, excited, as they looked like they were winning. Arthur Scargill was arrested. You saw him being dragged off towards a police van still talking at the camera, wearing a cap with a slogan that you couldn’t read. I wanted the miners to smash them.
Why doh they have a proper vote? my grandad had said.
They doh need one, Dad. We’m past that point.
Why have they all gotta come out, why not be strategic, tactical?
Her’s gonna shut all the mines, Dad. Her’s gonna close em all. Her’s gonna close everything. Look around yer. Look what her’s done here and we just rolled over. They’ve gorra fight. Iss now or never.
Why doh he listen to Kinnock?
Neil Kinnock wanted the miners to ballot before going on strike. Scargill said no. I could see what voting gave you. Voting gave you Margaret Thatcher. The more they attacked Scargill, the more I loved him.
I doh know why he doh have a vote, my grandad said, but that didn’t stop him stuffing a few notes into the collection bucket that the miners brought to the marketplace in Dudley. I was with him. That money was for the gas bill, though. We’d seen one of my uncle Eric’s new work vans drive past and it had sent my grandad into a rage. He held the money up to show him it was notes he was putting in there. The papers said the money came from Russia, from Libya, as well as from our gas bill. I wanted the miners to have guns. Arthur Scargill, too. They could get guns, weapons, all sorts. They could blow up police stations, power lines, the enemy. They needed to do more than throw a few rocks, I could see that. They might have been winning the fighting at Orgreave on the telly, but it was chaos and the next time the police would win. It was the same with the riots. Everyone would fight the police for a bit and smash windows and steal a few televisions, but then a few days later the police would be back in charge again.
You still hear people say Enoch was right. I’ve heard it muttered like a kind of mantra in the pub when I’m serving the last old men their pints of mild, when they’re talking about whatever the latest disaster to plague the town is. People have been saying it pretty much since he made that speech, as an act of defiance, as a self-fulfilling prophecy. Two of them, Stan and Malcolm, were draymen back when there was the brewery walk-out in Wolverhampton in support of Powell, not long after the speech. They get the bus up from Gornal on a Saturday, sleeveless pullovers under their suits. They talk about how they stopped the traffic, how people looked at them, about how they were somebody. I don’t say anything, serve the beer meekly and wipe the bar over and they sit there in their comfy chairs, drinking on the banks of the rivers of blood.
‘I learned from childhood the dignity which comes from work and, by contrast, the affront to self-esteem which comes from enforced idleness. For us, work was the only way of life we knew, and we were brought up to believe that it was not only a necessity but a virtue.’
I hardly see my dad now. He’s at work all the time. Machines break down and he has to fix them. That’s his job. He goes to work at the normal time, half past six, and I hear him talking quietly to my mum while she makes him a cup of tea and then he’ll be back late, or early, to have a sandwich and then go back out to work again. My mum is angry, I know that, at him going out to work, at the machines for always breaking down, at the men at the factory for always phoning up and asking if they can speak to Francis and can he come and fix the machine so they can cut more shapes in the steel and not lose their jobs. If you lose your job it means you can’t go to work any more because the factory has to close down because the machines keep breaking or Margaret Thatcher doesn’t want you to work there any more. It’s happening all over the place. Even at Cinderheath, my grandad says, some of the men have been told not to come back. They’ve been made redundant. That means you have to sit around or stand on the step of your house drinking cups of tea not doing much. Instead of going to work you get given dole money by Margaret Thatcher. That sounds okay; being given money to listen to the radio and drink tea but it’s no good. It isn’t very much money, not if you worked in a factory and got paid your wages and did overtime and got paid time and a half for that as well. If you do that you are rich, but if you get dole money you aren’t rich any more.
Margaret Thatcher wants to stop our people being rich and wants other people, her friends, to be rich. She’s attacking us because we rich and powerful and she doesn’t want us to be. I think she’s jealous of us.
Do you think Margaret Thatcher is breaking the machines at Dad’s work on purpose? I ask my grandad.
He smiles and says, I shouldn’t rule it out, son, I shouldn’t.
That was the last year we went to the caravans. We had days of bright, hard sunshine and the sands to ourselves, all the way between the
castles at Harlech and Criccieth; that’s what it felt like, anyway, especially knowing everyone else was at school or at work or doing their dole. It was like we’d escaped. School wasn’t the same by then. Jermaine had gone, and I missed Ronnie, and there was only Paul left to bicker with in between lessons. Rodney and Michael and their class were off to secondary school. I was already trying to find excuses not to go to school at all. Later, when I stopped going altogether, it was easy to say it was because of what happened to my dad but I’d already begun to daydream about not going. I imagined days stretched out in front of me like the wide green valleys of Wales, free. I talked to Michelle, I suppose. She had her own problems then. Her dad had come back to live with them and the house got raided.
She told me about it one wet break-time when we sat and watched the rain like waves breaking against the window. I imagined we were on a boat, sailing far away, down the cut to the river, down the river to the sea.
The policeman, the fat one, sat on his head, she said.
What did you do?
I hid under the table in the kitchen. The police had him in the hall. Michael tried to kick one of em.
Did he?
Yeah, me mom tried to stop him and he kicked a hole in the kitchen door.
Shit.
Michael hates the police.
What happened to yer dad?
They took him off.
What did they want him for?
She took a while to answer, just looked at the rain.
I doh know, really. He was looking after something for somebody, I think.
He still looks after things for people, Isaac. He comes in the pub for his pint of Mickey Mouse every few weeks. He makes the kids laugh, his grandkids, loves them in his way, forgets their birthdays then sticks a roll of twenty pound notes in my hand at odd times. Sometimes Michelle pretends to be out when she sees him limping along from the bus stop. I like him, but then I never had to live with him on and off for twenty years.
How I Killed Margaret Thatcher Page 10