Authors: Danny Rhodes
Fan (21 page)
His flatmate reappears, the mug of tea in his grip.
‘Is this for me?’ he asks.
Finchy nods.
‘Cheers,’ says his flatmate.
‘Listen,’ says Finchy. ‘If they come back, if they ever ask
you, there was no fucking American college bird. When you left for work I was settled on the sofa in front of the telly. When you got home I was not paralytic on the stairs. Do you understand?’
‘You want me to lie to the police in a murder investigation?’
Finchy nods again.
‘In that case,’ says his flatmate. ‘There are no pills. There were never any pills, not here, not at the all-nighter, nowhere.’
‘They don’t know about the all-nighter,’ says Finchy.
‘Fuck me,’ says his flatmate. ‘You really are on thin fucking ice.’
He hauled his suit and sports bag down the avenue to BJ’s.
‘I’ve the one bedroom,’ said BJ. ‘You’re fucked if you think you’re kipping in there. You can have the big sofa until the weekend and then we’re done.’
The big sofa in BJ’s living room. The big sofa nestled between stacked ‘twenty packs’ of lager and boxes of football programmes amassed over twenty aggravated years.
For fuck’s sake.
He milled about the place, waiting for evening. He took the season ticket out of his back pocket, turned it over in his fingers, put it back. He wondered if he could do this thing, drag back the years like this, expose himself to the new while mired in the old.
Could he do it?
Could he really fucking do it?
He had to do it.
He had to.
He passed the old pub at five, the old pub where so many nights started, moved on up the High Street, the Guildhall and the green, the trees shedding their leaves in the bitter wind, darkness coming on.
Ever-repeating patterns.
To the corner, the PO yard, the iron gates, vans parked up on the ramp, strangers in those vans, strangers on the ramp, just a single smoker there, shuffling his feet to keep warm, the bright lights of the sorting office beyond the clear plastic doors, men gathered at the sorting table, blurred misshapen
men pushing barrows in one direction and then the other, feeling it, smelling it, connecting with it, and yet separated from it. No longer a part of it.
Somebody else.
He was somebody else.
The long ascent to the station, the lights bright and harsh on the platform. He felt a stirring in the air, a distant tremble. A train came hurtling through, heading north, buffeting him, rocking him on his heels, creating its own vacuum.
Everything was a vacuum.
He watched the single light diminishing, made his way over the bridge to the isolated platform linking West to East, insular Midland towns to coastal resorts for one week of respite. He found himself a seat, waited, stared across the tracks, beyond the sidings, beyond the remnants of scrub to the housing development. Warm light crept from the windows of the new houses and spilled on to the station yard.
The old and the new.
A remnant of one, an infiltrator of the other.
The train was quiet, just a handful of people, too early yet for the Forest faithful, too soon after tea. He watched the lights of the old town slip past, studied the unaltered profile, stared once again at the brightly lit church, felt the drag of the long left-hand bend as the train turned in its westward arc. And then there was nothing much at all outside the window except black fields, the ribbon lights of the trunk road in the distance, the glow of the next town beyond the flat horizon, the quiet rocking of the train in motion.
And a thousand memories.
The city station. Busy. Him against the tide, taking his time, more uncertain of himself with each step. Meadow Lane masked in darkness, the black river, silent, toiling, the flood-lights of the City Ground aglow, forming a washed-out
reflection on the water. He stopped and stared from afar, feeling it now, the fluttering in his belly, the first signal that it all still remained, coiled deep inside of him, deep in the gut. A part of him really, of his inner workings, the fragments that shaped him. He wondered how he’d ever come to doubt that, to forget it, to live without it.
But he had, for fifteen years.
He walked down the steps and along the river path, up behind the Trent end, no longer a squat fucking shed but a great hulking two-tiered structure teetering on the riverbank. He took the ticket out of his wallet, felt it in his fingers, folded it back in place.
Precious fucking cargo.
He walked a circuit of the ground, seeing what else had changed and what had not, took himself off behind the Bridgford end, picturing the old open terrace, the waves of sound drifting away, the packed away end when United visited in 85 and 86, the day the scoreboard became a perch, the floodlight a climbing frame, United crammed on top of each other, making room where they could find it, throbbing and surging, him watching from the Trent end, watching the visiting end fill to overspill, the stewards opening the adjacent pen, the United hordes growing like bacteria in a fucking petri dish. He’d fallen in love with it all in that moment, become energised by the electricity building around him, energy that charged his days and nights for much of his teenage years.
It was all just yesterday, a fleeting moment ago.
He moved on until he was stood beneath the Executive Stand, got to thinking about the lower tier, of season-ticket Saturdays, of the lads together all in a row, close to pitch side, close to the away end.
Friends and enemies.
Enemies and friends.
And then a different feeling engulfed him, the sense of
something dying, of something taking its final painful breath, of 96 final breaths.
And Tracey Carlton. And Janet Allen. Two more sets of final breaths.
Soon he was back where he started, on the bank beside the river, looking up at the Trent end, looking back towards the bridge, dark shapes crossing the water, hunched silhouettes against the headlights and tail lights, becoming clumps, becoming a throbbing mass at the turnstiles, the newly fledged creature revealing itself.
It was cold and he was feeling it. He drifted back along the riverbank against the flow of the water and the flow of the gathering crowds, bought a tea from a burger van, crossed the bridge to the far bank and sat himself down, sensing something missing, a void that couldn’t be filled.
Or was it terror? Was that the thing turning his stomach inside out?
He sat on a wall, arse on cold stone, looking at the Trent end brightly lit against the night, and he saw the Trent end as it used to be. He was fourteen again, paying his £1.50, pushing through the turnstile, feeling the cold metal against his stomach, turning right, to the end of the terrace and the corner flag, moving along the front of each pen, ducking and diving from pen to pen, to the middle section behind the goal, moving towards the pulsing heart of the beast, attaching himself, singing and singing and singing, swaying, rocking, raising his hands, singling out each player, greeting each one in turn.
Players and fans.
Fans and players.
Feeling the ebb and flow of the game, its beat, being part of the game, part of the ninety minutes, riding each wave and surge of energy that came down upon him from above, riding it forwards and riding it backwards, him and the boys filled up with adrenalin, with living something that was not the old town, something none of their fucking mates lived, knowing a
secret world, the simple joy of being part of something bigger than themselves.
Every fucking Saturday.
He sat on the far bank, separated by the river, in the same place he’d wound up in in his nightmares. He could hear the crowd, the gentle ripple of applause as the players entered the pitch. But it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t the fucking same.
And it wasn’t enough.
He mulled about for a bit, weighing things up, more uncertain than before, the fluttering in his stomach becoming cramps that threatened to turn him inside out on the banks of the Trent, reveal all that was him. He imagined his inverted cadaver slipping silently into the black river, disappearing forever.
He searched for some resolve, wrestled with what had been and what was gone, forced himself to cross the bridge again, made his way to the gates, heart beating nineteen to the dozen, feeling sick, feeling drained, knowing he had to go through with it for the sake of BJ and Jen White, for Jeff and for Kelly.
And for Stimmo. He had to do it for Stimmo.
The click of the Trent end turnstile was the same but well oiled. He had to apply no pressure at all to get it turning. He climbed the steps to the upper tier, emerged above the pitch. A steward glanced at his ticket, pointed him in the direction of his seat. He disturbed people by pushing his way along the row, twelve seats from the gangway as the steward instructed, slid on to his plastic perch.
A mixed bunch around him, blokes in pairs, blokes with their dads, blokes with their women, blokes on their own, no groups of lads, the game played out to a polite murmur, punctuated by moans and groans, by the occasional wave of sound, the occasional ripple from the away end. But he could hear the players calling out to each other, could hardly believe his ears.
Was this it? Was this what it had become?
It went on that way, songs forming and dying.
Ghosts of songs.
When the home team scored, when the ball hit the net, when the player turned his back and pointed with his thumbs to the name on his shirt, when that happened he realised how much he’d come to loathe it all. The people around him were on their feet, the stewards already urging them to sit down again.
Music sounded out through the tannoy.
Fucking music.
‘No,’ he shouted, to nobody. ‘No.’
He forced himself clear of the row, ran down the steps, pushed past the steward who tried to slow him down and shot away from the place.
He thought of Goodison in 85, FA Semi-Final, United and Liverpool slugging it out, the packed terraces, fans perched astride walls and fences, limpets clinging to extremities. Fifty-one thousand Scousers and Mancs riding every tackle, breathing every breath.
Euphoria at every goal.
Something deep within the soul.
Fans and players.
Players and fans.
He thought of Ashton Gate and White Hart Lane and the Baseball Ground, the frenzy of a goal. He thought of Highfield Road, that fucking cage, his ribs close to breaking under the strain of his jubilant peers.
He thought of Hillsborough 81, 87, 88, the unheeded warning signs.
He thought of that day in April 89, blue skies, the football special fringing pastel peaks, boarding the bus outside Sheffield station, great swarms of red and white on the pavements, the green splash of Hillsborough Park, the old brick turnstiles, the steep steps leading up in zigzag pattern to the back of the Kop and the darkness beneath the roof, the pitch in sunlight, Leppings Lane in sunlight, his life in sunlight.
Endless contradictions.
Blind alleys and dead fucking ends.
Black clouds rolling in.
He turned his back on it all, made his sullen way towards the station, back to the old town, reeling, wishing for the hotel room and the bed in the room with no windows, wishing for that but knowing he had to go to BJ’s instead, curl up awkwardly on a sofa, wake to cramp and the smell of damp and share this fucking tragedy with someone who already knew the game was up.
He needed to go back down south, back to the life he’d built from the ruins of the one that had collapsed around him. If it was still there. If it still existed.
Because.
Because.
Because.
Just because.
Just another Friday evening after another week of flirting with the girls on the High Street, the girls that want to know when he’ll be out next, when he’s going to buy them a drink, make good on his promises.
Jen at home, waiting for him to make his next step. But he’s unable to take a step in her direction. He can’t do it. What he wants is to be out with the others, free of the shackles. What he wants is another all-nighter to come around, to take another pill and float away on its magical ride, swap this life for another. He can’t fucking help himself. Everything builds and begs for release.
And it’s seven already. Her mam and dad will be poring over the takeaway menu in anticipation. Friday night’s curry night. He has the responsibility of depositing it in front of their faces.
Because Jen and him are not over, not really, because he doesn’t have the courage to cut the rope. He doesn’t have the fucking balls.
Such a cunt.
Such an ungrateful cunt.
So here he is, still in the flat, neither ready to head over with the food or to go out on the fucking town with the boys. He picks up the phone, puts it down, picks up the phone, puts it down, wanders the flat, a caged fucking animal. It won’t be long before he wears footprints into the fucking carpet.
His flatmate surfaces, spruced up, no longer a fucking walking zombie.
‘I thought you were off to see Jen…’ says his flatmate.
‘Yeah, so did I,’ says Finchy.
‘What’s the score, then?’
He looks his flatmate up and down. He smiles a wry one.
‘You’ve got her from over the way on a promise, haven’t you? You’ve called a sickie.’
‘What of it?’
‘Then I’ve got to fucking go out.’
‘It would help,’ says his flatmate. ‘It would definitely fucking help.’
‘I’m sure it fucking would,’ he says.
It’s no good. He has to sort things with Jen, find some common ground. He picks up the phone, dials the number. She answers on the second ring, voice shaking, uncertain of herself, uncertain of him. He feels a terrible weight fall upon him.
He’s fucking damaging her, wringing her out.
‘You should be here by now,’ she says, trying to act casual, trying to act like there isn’t some great unspoken shadow hanging over them.
‘Yeah, I know,’ he says.
‘What’s up, then?’
He sighs, hoping his silence will do his work for him, hoping not to have to say anything.
‘You are coming?’
Further silence, genuine this time, the words stuck in his throat.
‘I can’t,’ he says.
A different type of silence.
‘You said you’d come over tonight.’
‘Andy’s got a date.’
‘So?’
‘So we can’t come back here.’
Pathetic. Scraping the barrel. Not even a reason.
‘You can stay here,’ she says. ‘I thought that was the plan.’
He doesn’t say anything.
‘Are you seeing someone else?’ she asks.
‘Eh?’
‘Are you?’
‘Fucking hell—’
‘Well?’
‘No,’ he says.
He can hear her mam and dad in the background now.
Where’s the food? I’m bloody starved.
Hasn’t he left yet? Tell me he’s on his way.
‘I can’t stay at yours,’ he says. ‘I’ve work tomorrow. I thought you were coming back here.’
On and on and fucking on. Weaker and fucking weaker. Running out of options. Running out of room.
‘I don’t believe this,’ she says.
‘I’m going out for a bit instead,’ he says. ‘With the others. Then I’m coming home to sleep. I need sleep.’
Silence on the other end. The sound of further voices. The sound of the TV. The sound of shouting. The phone slamming about.
Jen’s distant voice.
‘Pills! I hate those things. I fucking hate them.’
Trailing away.
Her mam’s voice on the line instead. Seething. Tanked up.
‘Hey. What are you playing at?’
‘Nothing,’ he says. Weakly. Tragically.
‘Do you want to be with my daughter or not?’
Jen’s voice in the background. Screaming. Grappling for the phone. Terrified of the question. Terrified of the answer.
‘Mam…’
‘If you do, get your arse over here. If you don’t, then fucking well leave her alone.’
‘I can’t,’ he says. ‘I do. I don’t…’
He doesn’t know what the fuck he’s saying. He doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing.
The phone goes dead. He stands holding it limply in his hands. His flatmate scoots past him, reeking of aftershave.
‘Thirty minutes,’ says his flatmate. ‘Thirty minutes and then you’re gone.’
His flatmate heads down the steep stairs and out of the front door.
Finchy makes his way upstairs instead, shuts his bedroom door and slumps on the duvet, the life knocked out of him. He’s a shambles. It’s a shambles. And suddenly he doesn’t want to go any fucking where, not to Jen’s, not to town, not even into the hall. He doesn’t have the energy or the interest. He locks his door, switches off the light, buries himself in darkness.
He spends the evening listening to his flatmate and the woman from over the road, listening to them pant and groan, listening to the bed creak under the shifting weight of their oblivious fucking.
The phone rings three times before midnight. He ignores it each time. He doesn’t have the guts to speak to Jen and he doesn’t have the patience to speak to any fucker else.
He doesn’t speak to Jen for two fucking weeks.
He doesn’t call.
She doesn’t call.
He thinks about calling.
He thinks it’s best to leave it.
He thinks about calling.
He thinks it’s best to leave it.
He imagines her with another.
He imagines himself with another.
He imagines her with another.
He imagines himself with another.
These are the things that circulate in his head.
Around and around and around in his head.