David Peace - 1983

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck -

You open your eyes:

Fuck .

You feel sick again, your fingers burnt again.

You put out the cigarette and press the buttons in and out on the radio until you find some music:

Simple Minds .

‘Mrs Myshkin? It’s John Piggott.’

In a telephone box on Merseyside again, listening to Mrs Myshkin and the relentless sound of the hard rain on the roof -

‘Yes, he’s fine,’ you say.

The rain pouring down, the car lights on in the middle of a Sunday afternoon in May -

‘Where was Michael arrested?’

The kind of wet Sunday afternoon you used to spend in bus shelters, huddled around ten cigs and the readers’ wives, afraid -

‘You’re certain?’

Sitting in the bus shelter, listening to the rain fall on the corrugated roof, the world outside so sharp and full of pain, listening to the relentless sound of the hard rain on the roof and not wanting to go back home, dreading it -

‘I should have asked you before, but how did Clive McGuinness come to represent Michael?’

That vague fear even then -

‘One last question,’ you ask her. ‘Who did Michael call the Wolf?’

That fear real and here -

‘You’re certain?’

That fear again now -

She hangs up and you stand there, listening to the dial tone -

The dial tone and the relentless sound of the rain on the roof of the telephone box, not wanting to go home, dreading it -

The fear now:

Sunday 29 May 1983 -

D-11 :

That fear here -

Dogs barking -

Near.

Wolves .

You drive from Merseyside back to Wakefield -

‘An active IRA unit of four or six men is thought to be planning the assassination of a leading British politician or a bombing during the General Election campaign.’

The motorways quiet -

‘Mr John Gunnell, the leader of West Yorkshire County Council, has alleged that new photographs conclusively prove that British nurse Helen Smith was murdered in Saudi Arabia.’

Everywhere dead.

She is sat on the stair. She is waiting for you. She has brought cold Chinese food and warm alcohol. She hears you on the stairs. She looks up. She is wet. She smiles.

‘Thought you might be hungry,’ she says.

‘I am,’ you lie and open the door -

The telephone ringing, the branches tapping.

Breathing hard and spitting blood, running blind -

But here it is again, his car:

Fuck .

Let it get within six foot and then BJ off again -

Wind, rain, his voice:

‘BJ!’

Over a fence and on to wasteland, tripping and falling on to ground on other side, bleeding and crying and praying, stumble across wasteland and into a playground, into playground and scrambling over another fence, over fence and into some allotments, drip blood through vegetable patches and over a wall and into a small street of terraces, down street and right into another street of terraces, turn left then right again -

Got to get off streets .

BJ turn off street and down side of a quiet little house -

Into their back garden:

Bingo .

A shed, black in rain at bottom of garden.

Door isn’t locked, just kept shut with a brick.

BJ go inside and sit down on a pile of old newspapers beside a spade and a lawnmower, a wheelbarrow and a trowel.

BJ wait -

Wait for it to get dark -

But it’s always dark.

BJ sit and BJ wait in dark, endless dark, and BJ cry -

Cry -

Cry for cuts on hands and cuts on legs, cuts on face and cuts in hair -

For mud on trousers and mud on shoes, on jacket and on shirt -

For mess -

For fucking mess BJ in -

Not only BJ:

BJ cry for mum -

Cry for mum and all other people BJ either loved or fucked or both -

Or ones BJ simply just fucked over:

For Barry Gannon and Bill Shaw -

Even Eddie Dunford and Paula Garland -

But most of all BJ cry for Grace and Clare:

Here in some nice little person’s shed in a nice little garden in Preston at half-past ten in morning on a wet Friday -

Friday 21 November 1975 -

BJ crying and crying, over and over, finally crying -

Knuckles red and fingers blue, biting hands and cuffs of shirt, wishing BJ could stop -

Wishing it all would fucking stop -

Stop and rewind -

That dead be living, living never dead:

‘Clare!’

BJ take photograph out of pocket:

Clare with her eyes and legs open, her fingers touching her cunt .

But it isn’t her, it really isn’t her, and BJ screw it up and hide it deep inside BJ’s jacket, and BJ close eyes to make it stop and go away -

But when BJ close eyes, BJ see her body again -

Her body on a stretcher, wind raising bloody sheet:

A light green three-quarter coat with an imitation fur collar, a turquoise blue jumper with a bright yellow tank top over it, dark brown trousers, brown suede calf-length boots .

BJ open red eyes and BJ steal a glance through dirty wet window at nice little garden and nice little house with its nice little curtains and its nice little ornaments on nice little windowsill, even nice little flap for cat and nice little table for birds -

Birds with their wings, their little angel wings that raise them high -

BJ pull up BJ’s shirt and with dirty wet fingers, BJ search among shoulder blades and back bones, search for stumps -

Stumps of wings -

But BJ cannot find them.

BJ pull down dirty star shirt and BJ think about BJ’s mother and nice little house with nice little garden that never was; Clare and her kids and nice little house with nice little garden they never had and never will -

BJ wait in endless dark and BJ cry.

It is Friday 21 November 1975:

North of England -

Clare is dead.

It’s dark when BJ open shed door -

Always dark -

There are still no lights on in house so BJ walk down side and back out on to street.

BJ jog down to end of street and peer round corner:

All clear .

BJ weave through side streets and terraces, wishing it would stop raining for just one single fucking minute.

BJ come to playing fields where on far side behind houses there is a dual-carriageway.

BJ start to cross playing fields. BJ see them:

Fuck .

A line of coppers with sticks, searching playing fields for something -

A murder weapon .

Someone -

A missing child, me .

Torches and capes in rain, fanned out like a bloody army of night marching towards BJ -

But they can’t see BJ, not yet:

They are walking away from lights of road, into shadow -

BJ hit mud and ground, crouching and crawling across one pitch, rolling and tumbling on to another, slowly -

Slowly until they pass and they’re gone, behind, and BJ start to crawl again -

Crawl and crouch off towards dual-carriageway and road to fuck knows where -

Anywhere but here -

Glancing back at coppers with their sticks, their torches and their capes, thanking fucking Christ they hadn’t dogs out tonight -

BJ get to gardens, gardens of houses that stand between BJ and road.

BJ slink along looking for another one without its lights on, at least its curtains drawn.

BJ come to one, dark.

BJ scale wooden fence and drop down into their shrubbery and cross their neatly trimmed lawn and go along side of their house and into their front garden where BJ hide in their privets while BJ check coast is clear -

Like in a war film .

After a minute or so BJ step out into street and walk along pavement next to big and busy road, walk towards roundabout where BJ will hitch a way out of here -