Authors: Danny Rhodes
Fan (24 page)
He’s out on the High Dyke, him and the van. With no fucking sleep. Everything’s a fog. And everything’s coming at him. The droning fucking engine. The monotonous drone. The monotonous landscape.
The thin black ribbon road is a causeway through the nothingness. There are only the drainage ditches and the droves and the nothingness.
And the grey, smothering sky.
The smell of cabbage.
No fucking sleep and no fucking radio.
Drifting. Pictures in his head. Indelible. Wire-mesh fencing. Faces pressed against wire-mesh fencing. A tangle of limbs. A mass of bodies. The dead standing up.
The road. The fields. The sky. The drone of the engine.
The car park. The hedge bottom. Wet foliage. Pink fucking panties. Skin like polished bone. Red hair. Matted. Tangled. Slugs. Black fucking slugs and snails. The hedge bottom. A body in the fucking hedge bottom.
Spiders. Fucking spiders.
Smudged and rubbed out.
A faint remnant.
There and gone.
The monotonous drone filling his head. Coming in waves. Drawing him down. Down amongst the shit. And no fucking radio. No fucking radio. An empty black place. Calling him in. Two wheels on the grass. The steering wheel shuddering against his palms.
Snapping out of it. Too fucking late.
Gripping the steering wheel, white knuckle tight, bracing himself, feeling the world slow to a crawl. But not the fucking van. On the grass verge now, the dial reading fifty miles an hour, the dial stuck there. No fucking chance. And now the van is careering across the grass verge. The van is heading for the drainage ditch. There are tree branches striking the windscreen. There is a sound of thunder all around him. The
steering wheel dances in his grip. The van hits the ditch. There’s a crashing and tearing of branches. The sound of thunder. The van in the ditch. Him in the ditch. Eighteen years flashing before his eyes, his mam and dad, his brother, his grandparents, the garage block, the estate, the school. The TV at his mam’s place, the living-room carpet, his bedroom, his cot, his mam’s fucking womb. Over in a blink of time.
Staring into the laughing faces of the living, seeing only the bones of the dead.
The van rattles to a halt in the ditch. The van fills the ditch. But the ditch is shallow, thick with summer vegetation.
He stares at the blackness behind his eyelids.
The soothing blackness behind his eyelids.
He stares at his palms. He stares out of the van window.
He’s lucky. He’s so very, very lucky.
He clambers out of the driver’s window, clambers up out of the ditch to the edge of the road, into the road. A car swerves to avoid him.
Coming to his senses he gets off the road, stands in the long grass, wanders along the verge to a lay-by, stares back at the van. The van’s nose is buried in the ditch. The windscreen is fractured.
There’s a pheasant in the field.
He stares at the pheasant.
The pheasant stares back.
A still moment with him at its centre. A moment of absolute clarity. He’s still alive. He’s crashed the van, buried it in the good earth but he’s alive.
And he knows now.
He knows for certain.
He has to start again. Start again in a new place, put all of this shit behind him.
Put the beans behind him.
Put Hope Close behind him.
Put every fucking thing behind him.
He doesn’t have a clue where to begin the process, what the fuck to do.
BJ in the corner of the Crown, one eye on the TV. Some League of Ireland game. Sectarian bragging rights and all that. Something to bite on. BJ in a Celtic shirt that had seen better days. A game of darts going off in the lounge. When Finchy sloped off for a piss at half-time, he stopped to watch some bloke slamming in ton forties like they were going out of fashion.
‘Have you seen him over there?’
‘You’re a daft cunt,’ said BJ.
‘Eh?’ ‘You’re a daft cunt who’s been away too fucking long to
know his arse from his elbow.’
‘Who is it?’
‘You know who it is.’
‘I’m not seeing…’
‘You’re not fucking looking.’
‘Not Forest…’
‘No, but of our time…’
Finchy watched the guy step up to the oche once again, watched the way he caressed each dart before the automatic motion kicked in, before the dart thudded into the board front and centre. And he watched him lean away again immediately afterwards, somehow lessened in that moment, weakened by an absence of tungsten.
‘Leppings Lane,’ said BJ.
‘No fucking way.’
‘Serious.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘You still don’t recognise him?’
‘How about you tell me? How about we do it that way?’
‘Doddy…’
A trip switch somewhere in the back of his head.
What’s in a fucking name?
Everything.
Doddy
.
Doddy. Dodd. Jamie Dodd. They played together as kids, went fucking fishing together in the long-drawn-out summer before secondary school.
Every fucking day.
Doddy lived at the top of the road, had a sister, was forced down the other educational pathway aged eleven so that they hardly spoke to one another save jokes about football when their paths crossed in the pubs and clubs. The Semi of 88 top of the list, the 5–0 drubbing at Anfield a close second.
The match of the fucking century.
And here he was all these years later. So much fucking fatter. So much balder. Back at the oche, garnering another smattering of applause for another ton forty, shrinking back, standing to one side, a separate being amongst a pub full of blokes and a dartboard that had seen better days.
And worse.
‘He looks half decent.’
BJ smiled.
‘District champion since fuck knows when. Blokes tell me he’s good enough to move up a notch or two, but he doesn’t fucking bother.’
‘Isn’t that the fucking way around here?’
‘Aye, mate.’
Finchy stared at Doddy, watched him sink the double he needed to win the match, watched his opponent shrug in resignation, watched Doddy slip his darts into their case. The guy at the scoreboard was still wiping the thing clear when Doddy slipped out the pub door.
‘Thirty-five-year-old bachelor,’ said BJ. ‘Thirty-five-year-old nobody. He’s gone in the head.’
‘You think he’d talk to me?’
‘What do you want to talk to him for?’
‘Dunno. Old time’s sake. What do you fucking think?’
‘What do you want to talk to him about
that
for?’
‘I don’t. You’re fucking right. I want to forget it ever happened like the rest of you.’
BJ pushed his pint glass to one side.
‘What is this, John?’
‘Eh?’
‘What is this? Some sort of fucking therapy? If it is you can fuck off. I’m not a shrink. Jen fucking White’s not a shrink. Doddy certainly isn’t. None of us are. We don’t have any fucking answers.’
BJ stared Finchy down and Finchy stared back. Because it mattered, didn’t it, to talk to people, to share things. Surely it fucking mattered.
‘I’ll see you later,’ said Finchy.
‘I thought we were watching this.’
BJ pointed to the TV, at twenty-two blokes lining up for the second half on a freezing fucking night in Belfast.
‘I’m going after him,’ said Finchy. ‘I’ll see you at yours.’
He raced out of the door, knowing he was a mad bastard for leaving the confines of the Crown, opening himself up to all sorts of trouble if Jen’s brother was about, or any of his crowd come to think of it. All it would take was to be spotted. All it would take was one fucking phone call.
In the kebab shop on the corner he shifted himself alongside Doddy, waited to catch his eye.
‘I knew it was you,’ said Doddy, without turning his head, without looking at Finchy at all. ‘I saw you when you came out of the toilet. I never forget a face.’
‘BJ pointed you out,’ said Finchy. ‘I’ve been away a while.’
‘Ah, the Forest faithful. The Hillsborough hoodoo. I suspect the likes of him think I’m emotionally scarred. The fat fucking Scouse fan who never got over the horrors of Leppings Lane.’
‘That’s pretty much the sum of it.’
‘Aye, well. It’s a convenient untruth.’
‘It’s the reputation you’ve gained,’ said Finchy.
‘Ironic that, seeing as I’ve spent much of the last decade trying not to have a reputation.’
Finchy forced a smile.
‘The darts keep you in the spotlight.’
‘Yeah? Well these are the only thing I do that gets me out.’
He patted his pocket where the darts were snug and warm.
‘Nothing to do with Leppings Lane, mind,’ said Doddy. ‘I dealt with that years ago. I told myself rather than dwell on what didn’t happen that could have, I’d concentrate on what might have happened that didn’t.’
‘Aren’t those two things the same?’
Doddy shook his head.
‘Are they fuck! I stood in Leppings Lane, got shoved around a bit, fell to the ground, broke a couple of ribs and got pulled out of the place. There were seven hundred like me and ninety-six a whole lot worse. The other stuff, the things I saw, the things happening around me, I put them all to bed.’
Finchy wondered how that could be.
‘I came up for Stimmo’s funeral.’
‘Aye. I heard all about it. Bit of a shame. He was half decent with the arrows himself. Can understand it though, living with a bird like that.’
‘How do you mean?’
Doddy laughed to himself.
‘Living with a bird that didn’t love him, mate. I know something about that. If your mates really want to know why I keep myself to myself they should try barking up that tree.’
The guy behind the counter presented Doddy with his food, a great fuck-off pile of kebab meat and chips. Finchy ordered the same for himself.
‘Where are you staying?’ asked Doddy.
‘North Hotel. Or I was. I’m at BJ’s now.’
‘BJ,’ Doddy chuckled to himself. ‘Now there’s a character. We can walk together. I’ve a flat on Cyril Street.’
‘Just you?’
‘Fuck me,’ said Doddy. ‘I made that clear as mud.’
They started down the High Street, two souls reconnected after twenty-five years.
‘You remember the reservoir?’ Doddy asked. ‘Biking out there day after day. Morning, noon and half the fucking night?’
‘Good days,’ Finchy said.
‘Never fucking bettered,’ said Doddy. ‘Not that I hark back to it. I don’t do that either. I just know we had it good then, had it simple. Not like the kids today. You got kids?’
Finchy shook his head.
‘And you’re not married either?’
‘I live with my fiancée. We’ve reached a crossroads…’
Doddy laughed.
‘To the left happiness, to the right drudgery. Straight on for abject failure.’
‘You’re a wordy cunt, do you know that? You should take up teaching.’
‘Not for me, mate. I don’t fancy anything that involves those bastards in government. Where is your missus wanting to go that you don’t then?’
‘She wants kids,’ he said.
‘That’s usually the way,’ said Doddy.
‘I’m not convinced.’
‘Yeah, that too. But what’s the alternative? Give her up and start again with Jen fucking White?’
Finchy kept his mouth shut, started wondering if Doddy was one of Stimmo’s lot after all.
‘My ex didn’t want kids,’ said Doddy. ‘Now she’s shacked up with some bloke and three of the little bastards. So what she meant was she didn’t want kids with me. What’s your missus up to now you’re here?’
Finchy thought of the dark stairwell, the bedroom door. He thought of Kelly fucking some stranger behind it, one of her call-centre toy boys, gathering his seed. He thought of the
other potential scenario, the one he’d almost managed to suppress. Fucking Doddy and his questions. He shrugged.
‘Do you remember that summer after Hillsborough?’ he asked. ‘Do you remember the killings?’
‘Fuck me,’ said Doddy. ‘Are you sure you’re carrying enough baggage around the place?’
Finchy shrugged.
‘Let’s just say I’ve been turning over a few stones,’ he said.
‘I remember one better than the other,’ said Doddy. ‘It was the talk of the fucking estate for long enough. Right on the bloody doorstep. Nasty fucking business that. Nasty horrible business.’
‘I walked past the scrub the other day. I got thinking about it. It was on my delivery.’
‘I remember,’ said Doddy. ‘I remember you plodding up and down our path.’
He wrapped up the rest of his kebab and chips, chucked it in a wheelie bin.
‘Didn’t some bloke in the nick own up to that one?’ asked Doddy.
‘Eh?’
‘I’m sure he fucking did. Some bloke already in for murdering women. Linked himself to a load of other cases.’
Finchy grunted. Was it that simple, after all?
‘I didn’t hear about that,’ he said.
They walked on, neither of them speaking.
‘I played fucking darts the night we got back from Hillsborough,’ said Doddy at last. ‘Just me and a couple of mates who don’t give a shit about football. Played darts and got pissed at me mam’s gaff. Played for hours. Normally me mam would have come down and caused a stink about us keeping her up but she didn’t. She left us to it.’
‘My parents heard it on the radio,’ he said.
‘Aye, well, our mam knew fuck all except that I was in Leppings Lane. Because I told her that morning. I showed her the
fucking ticket. So she knew nothing about how I was until I walked through the door at nine in the evening. It didn’t cross my fucking mind to give her a ring. I was too spaced out. My error that. She’s just about forgiven me.’
Doddy stopped walking, felt his back pocket for his darts.
‘I’m off this way,’ he said.
‘Right, mate,’ said Finchy. ‘I’m down there.’
‘Do yourself a favour,’ said Doddy. ‘Don’t get mired in it all because it could have been you. I bet there were days you were so close you didn’t realise it. At Upton Park for instance, somewhere like that. Crowds, mate. They go where they go. You think you can get out but you can’t. And you wanted Leppings Lane, remember? You thought it was only fair. A bloke died at Hillsborough because my forearm was pressed across his neck. I couldn’t fucking move it. I had no fucking option but to stand there and watch him fade away. Except I didn’t fucking watch. I looked up to the heavens and prayed I wouldn’t be next. When those cunts start on about bringing back terracing, think of the days you spent when you nearly had your own Leppings Lane. All those crowd surges. Forward and back. In Leppings Lane we all went forward but nobody went back. No fucker’s died since then, have they? That’s reason enough to keep things the way they are. If they don’t like it, nobody’s forcing them to go.’