Authors: Danny Rhodes
26th May 1989
Liverpool have won the FA Cup, beating Everton 3–2 at Wembley. You watched it thinking about what might have been. You watched it with a lump in your throat.
Guilty of nothing.
Guilty of everything.
Now Liverpool are playing Arsenal to decide the Division One Championship. Arsenal have to win by two clear goals at Anfield. It’s unlikely to happen.
It’s more unlikely to happen when half-time comes and the score is still 0–0.
But something happens in the second half. Smith scores for Arsenal. The Kop goes quiet. You watch the TV and you watch the Arsenal fans. They sense it and you sense it. Every fucker senses it.
The clock ticks on through sixty minutes, seventy, eighty. The clock reaches ninety minutes. The Kop comes to life. Shrill whistles materialise from three and a half sides of Anfield. Liverpool are virtually home and dry, done and dusted with the Division One championship, done and dusted with the double. Again.
And then Barnes loses out to Richardson. Richardson returns the ball to Lukic. Lukic throws to Dixon. Dixon finds Smith. Smith finds Thomas.
In your flat, in the room with the yellow sofa, on the edge of the yellow sofa, you watch with wide, wondrous eyes. You watch the Arsenal fans on the North West Terrace. You watch the ball ricochet off Nicol back to the Arsenal player’s feet. You watch the ball hit the Liverpool net.
You look for John Aldridge.
You imagine walking up to him at this precise moment, ruffling the fucker’s hair.
You can’t see him anywhere.
Finchy heads into town where the blood is up.
There are fights in the pubs. There are police in the pubs. Finchy skirts around the people massed on the pavements.
He watches the police drag some idiot in a Liverpool shirt out of the pub.
He wonders why the cunt’s not at Anfield.
He laughs.
Into the Hound. Out of the Hound. Into some fucker’s car. Six lads crammed in the back. Finchy prone across the fucking seats.
Tunes on the stereo. Pounding tunes. Too fucking loud.
Keep yer fucking head down.
A blur of street lights.
The cunt driving too fast. Too fucking fast.
Tyres grappling with the tarmac.
No fucking street lights.
Tyres grappling with gravel.
The night fucking sky.
Pulling up. Piling out. The car speeding off.
A field. A fucking field.
And beat.
Beat. Beat. Beat. Beat. Beat. Beat. Beat. Beat. Beat. Beat. Beat. Beat.
And people.
People he knows. People he doesn’t know. This town and that town. Every fucker gathering.
Gav grinning. From ear to ear.
He wanders about in the darkness, into the mass of bodies, into the movement, into the pulse, becomes part of the pulse, part of the beat.
No fucker talking. No need to talk.
No fucker drinking. No need to drink.
Every fucker dancing. Every single fucker dancing.
It might have been a Saturday on the terraces. It might have been but it wasn’t.
No aggro. Just the beat. Just the music.
Some girl he’s never met. All legs. All legs and smile. She hands him a pill. She laughs. He thinks of his flatmate. He doesn’t look down. He pops it home. Of course he fucking does.
And now he’s dancing, in the pulse. He’s dancing and dancing. And everything is racing. Everything is racing. And everything is perfect. Everybody is perfect. The girl is fucking perfect. The stars are on fire. They’re fucking on fire and they’re beautiful. The girl is beautiful. Everything is beautiful.
He’s dancing with the girl and the girl is dancing with him.
Later, somehow, fuck knows how, he’s dancing with her in the living room of his flat. She’s taking another pill. He’s taking another pill. They’re crashed out on the sofa. He’s laughing. She’s laughing. He can’t stop laughing. The yellow sofa is liquid gold. He’s sinking into it, sinking into a river of gold. The girl’s naked skin is gold. The girl is a river of gold. Everything is a river of gold.
Later still he’s on a black street. The girl is ahead of him, all legs. He follows the legs. He kisses the legs goodbye. He follows the legs. He follows the legs. He kisses the legs goodbye. He’s alone under the railway bridge, alone by the river.
The river.
The river.
The river is full of legs. The river is full of eels.
The narrow street is a river, a river of liquid. His front door is liquid. The stairs are liquid. He can’t climb the liquid stairs. He’s marooned on the liquid stairs.
He wakes at five in the morning in a crumpled heap at the foot of the stairs, his body clock primed even when he abuses it. He gets dressed and falls out of the front door, his head a fog, the whole fucking street spinning. The streets are lathered in fog. Everything is a fog. He can’t remember a thing about the previous evening, not a fucking thing. He leans over a garden wall, pukes into a patch of daffodils.
The lights in the depot are too bright. He has to shield his eyes.
Harcross comes over.
‘You’re late,’ he says.
Finchy raises his hands, surrenders.
‘Worse for wear?’
‘Leave it, please,’ says Finchy.
‘Don’t blame me for burning the candle,’ says Harcross.
‘It wasn’t a candle.’
‘I guessed as much.’
The first hour of his round is bathed in fog, a void with him at its centre. He tries to recall the previous evening but there’s nothing there, nothing for him to cling to except an American accent and the most beautiful legs he’s ever seen, the most beautiful body he’s ever seen.
For some fucking reason he feels like crying.
The fog burns off as the day grows into itself. His head clears a tad. The air is warm, the trees in full leaf, insects on the wing. He’s in the flats, in no fucking rush, the flats rank in the sunshine, him sweating in rolled-up sleeves. Kids are roaming the estate before breakfast, gone for the day. Some bloke is hanging around outside block six, a great fuck-off tattoo on his neck.
Loitering.
Waiting.
For the postie.
‘Al-alright, mate. G-got anything for twen-twenty eight?’
Fuck. He hates this shit.
‘I’ve to deliver it, mate,’ he says, forcing a smile. It’s the best he can muster on a difficult morning.
‘It’s okay. You can just give me it.’
Finchy punches in the code for the door, shakes his head, feeling sick in the stomach. He thumbs through the bundle.
‘There’s just a giro,’ he says. ‘I can’t give you that.’
The guy shifts in his stance, eyes wide, all pent up.
Cunt.
‘But it’s mine.’
Finchy shrugs, tries to look apologetic.
‘So I’ve got to climb the stairs, let you deliver it, let myself back in and then get it?’ says the bloke with the tattoo.
Finchy nods.
‘Those are my orders,’ he says.
‘What are you? Fucking army?’
‘There are people that hang around waiting for the postman to come along. I’m not saying you’re one of them.’
The guy’s cheeks flush red.
‘Come on, mate, I’m going out. I’m late.’
‘I would if I could. If you climb the stairs, let yourself in…’
‘Fuck it,’ says the bloke.
It will come now, if it’s going to come, the blow to the face, the bloodied lip, the broken nose. Finchy closes his eyes and waits.
‘You’re a prick.’
The sound is further away. He opens his eyes to see the bloke on the mucky grass. Lying bastard.
‘Cunt,’ shouts the guy, at the other flats, at the morning, at life itself. He kicks a wall. A brick comes loose so he kicks it again. He kicks the fucking wall like he wants to break somebody’s head.
Finchy pushes his way through the doors, climbs the stairs. When he reaches the top floor he looks out of the window. The bloke is nowhere to be seen.
Ten minutes later and his bag’s empty. He freewheels down the road, enjoying the sun on his face, done for the weekend, wanting to go home, shower, clear the shit out of his head, collapse on his bed, sleep until lunchtime.
But something’s going on at the top of the lane. There’s a police car parked across the white lines, deflecting the Saturday morning traffic. There’s a crowd of people hanging around the road block, topless blokes, skinny guys with cigarettes on the go, fat women in T-shirts and leggings, sweat-stained armpits, kids milling about, tugging at the blue-and-white tape.
‘Can I do the box?’ he asks.
The policeman shakes his head, goes back to watching the kids and the tape. Finchy looks at the crowd, spots Porn Billy amongst them. Porn Billy, the man who can get anything, for a price, in 1989.
‘Alright?’ he says. ‘What’s going on?’
‘A body,’ says Porn Billy.
‘What?’
‘A body in the hedge. Down by the swings.’
‘Fuck off,’ says Finchy. ‘I was there not three hours ago.’
‘Been there all night.’
‘No.’
‘It was on the radio. Body of a woman discovered in hedge bottom. Some kids found her.’
‘I’d have fucking seen,’ he says.
‘Obviously not,’ says Porn Billy.
‘Did you hear who it is?’
‘They’ve not said. Woman over there says she’s a barmaid.’
‘Local?’
‘Aye.’
‘Fuck.’
‘Aye.’
A series of images form in Finchy’s mind, photofits of the
barmaids who’ve served him on Saturdays like this one. Blonde. Blonde. Red head. Short hair. Long hair. Thin. Fat. Pretty. Not so pretty.
He races back to the office, cutting through the primary school, through the rat-run behind the mental unit, through the industrial estate, eager to get back, to let the fuckers know the news.
But they know already. They always know. If you want to know anything about anything in the old town, ask a fucking postie.
‘Barmaid from the Crown,’ they say.
‘Worked the Bell at weekends,’ they say.
The Crown. Postie pub. Mainly the older blokes, the ones who leave the office at lunch to wander straight in, the ones who emerge from the place before the evening shift, the ones that reek of alcohol at the facing table, at the sorting frames, the ones who can’t do the job without a few pints in their bellies.
An image forms in his mind, a face, a body, a smile. But it’s not clear, not yet. It will take a photograph in a newspaper to plant the indelible image in his head, a grainy face staring back at him, for a moment, for hours, for fifteen fucking years.
Murder.
On his twenty-one walk.
Fuck.
He walks back to the flat, taking the path along the river’s edge, the sun well up now, sunlight flickering and flexing on the water, insects skimming the surface.
Across town, a body in a hedge bottom. It’s hard for him to set the two things against each other, in a town where nothing ever happens.
A body in a hedge bottom.
In the summer.
In the sunshine.
Despite the warnings.
Despite the doubts.
Despite himself.
Out of duty. Out of shame. Back to the two-up two-down, back to the living room and the TV. Back to the past.
Jen White’s place. Dredging through the mire.
There was tea with milk this time. He supped at it, stared at the steam rising from the surface.
‘You drove me to the woods,’ she said. ‘I was babbling on about college and you cut me off, told me you wanted to break up…’
He shifted in his seat, knowing what was coming. ‘I remember that,’ he said.
‘You were so fucking deadpan about it. You sat there staring out of the window, telling me it was over, that you couldn’t carry on with any of it.’
‘I remember,’ he said.
‘I was heartbroken, in floods of tears, a right mess…’
She walked across the room until she was standing in front of him.
‘You didn’t say a fucking word. You just turned the car around and took me home. You pulled up outside my house and you waited until I was climbing out of the car and then, you fucker,
then
you told me you didn’t mean any of it…’
He remembered all of it, the engine idling in the woods, the shivering trees, her face streaming with tears.
‘That was you,’ she said. ‘That was the person you became.’
He tried to reach back to that person. Fucked-up, frustrated, floundering.
Always fucking floundering.
He shook his head. He shrugged. He didn’t say anything. There was fuck all he could say.
‘You spent two weeks begging me to forgive you for that, calling and calling, turning up at the house, posting letters…
‘Jen…’
‘… and everybody was telling me not to bother, to fucking ignore you until you went away…’
‘Jen, listen…’
‘… but you didn’t fucking go away so I took you back. And all of that, all of that just gave you fucking licence to do what you did next, to give me the fucking runaround for months and months.’
He got to his feet, made for the door. She blocked his path. When he went to step around her she pushed him back down on to the settee.
‘No, you fucking well don’t,’ she shouted. ‘You were going to say something. So say it. Say it and then it’s done.’
‘I just don’t think we should be talking about this.’
‘Why? Because of him? Because of that selfish prick?’
She grabbed a photo frame off the television and threw it to the floor.
‘Fuck him,’ she said. ‘Fuck the both of you.’
He moved to get up again.
‘Sit the fuck down,’ she said. ‘Stop fucking thinking about yourself. You deserve this. You deserve to sit there and listen until I’ve said what I’ve got to say. Then you can fuck off if you want. You can fuck off and never come back.’
Silence.
‘Because it’s the same,’ she said. ‘You fucked off and he fucked off. Both of you left me fucking treading water, both of you are selfish bastards.’
He leant forward. With his elbows on his knees he buried his head in his palms. It was the drink, of course it was the drink, night after night in the hotel room with the minibar for company, but it was still difficult to sit there, to sit and take it all and not be able to explain himself. And yet what the fuck was there to explain? He could hardly deny any of it, or try to make out she had it wrong. He’d been an insecure, jealous fucker and those things had dominated him for a time, then he’d changed, become somebody else, lost interest, looked for
others. He’d fluctuated like that for months and months and she’d been the one to live through all of that with him. She’d shared the fucking journey, or been dragged along for the ride. And he knew when it had all started, when it had all changed.