David Peace - 1983

Up on the Cross, there’s Christ -

Just hanging around as usual, waiting for someone to save or seduce -

Some lonely old widow trapped in her house by the endless night and its kids.

The boy is leading the old woman down the aisle. They reach the back pew where you are sat. The boy takes the book from under his arm. He opens it and hands it to you.

You look at the boy and the old woman.

They look back at you, familiar.

You start to speak but they walk off.

You look down at the pages of the book -

The Holy Bible -

Look down at the passage marked:

Job 30, 26-31 .

Look down and read it:

When I looked for good ,

Then evil came unto me:

And when I waited for light ,

There came darkness .

My bowels boiled ,

And rested not:

The days of affliction prevented me .

I went mourning without the sun:

I stood up ,

And I cried in the congregation .

I am a brother to dragons ,

And a companion to owls .

My skin is black upon me ,

And my bones are burned with heat .

My harp also is turned to mourning ,

And my organ into the voice of them that weep .

Back in the car on Great George Street, you rummage around in the bags until you find Jimmy’s wallet. You take it out. You open it. You find the fiver, his driving licence, the stamps to the value of twenty-five pence -

Not the Mass card -

It isn’t there.

But tucked inside the split silken lining is a photograph -

A photograph of a girl:

Not Tessa.

It’s a photograph cut from a newspaper -

A cutting:

Hazel.

Dawn or fucking near enough -

Sunday 12 June 1977 -

(You better paint your face) -

Banging on Joe’s door: ‘Open fucking door!’

‘Who is it?’

BJ hiss: ‘We’re fucking late!’

Locks slide, keys turn/new locks, new keys -

BJ: over right shoulder/over left -

(Hair in his face, he is dressed in the black of the corner of my eye) -

Him: wide white eyes at crack -

(Here is your friend again) -

Paranoid looks to left/paranoid looks to right -

(Me, my face, my eye) -

BJ push open door into this private little Chapeltown hellhole:

Joe’s mate Steve Barton on mattress and angry: ‘You the late boy, not me.’

BJ: ‘You fucking ready?’

Steve: ‘Been waiting for you.’

‘Things to do.’

‘No shit,’ nods Steve. ‘You get them done, them things?’

‘Fuck off with him,’ says Joe.

‘You fuck off,’ he spits.

BJ: ‘Fuck is with you two?’

‘Bad night.’

‘Aren’t they all?’

Joe is shaking his head: ‘Word is Janice be dead.’

‘Janice Ryan?’

He nods.

‘Fuck that,’ BJ say. ‘She’s protected, double I hear.’

He snorts: ‘Aren’t we all?’

Steve: ‘First Marie -’

BJ: ‘Stop man, stop right there.’

‘Be out of hand, I say.’

BJ turn to Steve: ‘Then this is your fucking payback, man.’

‘Be that Pirate,’ whispers Joe.

‘Fuck her,’ BJ say. ‘Fuck him.’

No-one speaks.

‘We going or what?’

No-one moves.

BJ ask them again, check them two-times: ‘You up for this?’

Joe, he doesn’t smile, just says again: ‘Show me mine enemy.’

BJ turn to Steve: ‘Payback time?’

He shrugs and gets up off mattress, tracing sevens on walls and sevens on door, sevens on ceiling and sevens on floor -

All them pretty little sevens, dressed up in red, dressed up in gold and green:

Them two sevens -

Joe stagger-dancing out door, his voice of thunder still chanting: ‘War in the East, war in the West; War in the North, war in the South; Crazy Joe get them out…’

Steve: ‘Heavy Manners.’

Heavy fucking Manners -

COMING DOWN.

Three young men sitting in a stolen Cortina:

(Down we slide, further) -

Steve Barton, Joe Rose, and BJ -

(On Satan’s side) -

Edgy with cause/edgy with reason -

(Treacherous times) -

BJ look at BJ’s watch:

Seven twenty-five, nineteen seventy-seven .

BJ nod.

Everybody gets out of car.

Everybody walk across Gledhill Road, Morley.

Everybody pull on their masks.

BJ knock on back door.

Everybody wait -

Wait, wait, wait:

The key turns.

The door opens.

Steve kicks it straight back in bloke’s face.

Bloke goes down on other side of door (like a sack of fucking spuds):

His hair in his face, his teeth all covered in blood -

Everybody step over him -

Steve giving him a kick (just to make sure he’s going to be a good boy).

‘What the -’

Granny coming down stairs -

Steve straight across room to give her a slap, hard.

He bungs a bag over her head, ties her arms behind her, pretends to suck her tit:

‘Please, please -’

Bound, gagged and bagged.

Steve back on his feet and through into Post Office, pointing Joe upstairs -

Joe saying: ‘Upstairs?’

Steve turning and nodding, finger to his mask.

BJ stand in back with old bloke still out for count, his wife crying in a pool of her own piss.

Steve is back with a bag of cash.

Joe coming down stairs, empty-handed and shrugging his shoulders.

BJ walk over to Steve. BJ peer into bag:

NOT ENOUGH -

Not a grand, nowhere near .

Nowhere near and BJ tell him so: ‘Someone’s fucked up here.’

‘Shut up, man,’ hisses Steve. ‘Deal with it later, not here.’

BJ shake BJ’s head.

BJ walk out back door.

They follow.

Everybody leave -

Leave them lying in their little pools on floor of their little Post Office:

He will need thirty-five stitches in his head and in six months she’ll be dead .

Everybody take their masks off.

Everybody get in Cortina.

Everybody drive back into Leeds, old sun already behind new clouds -

Steve laughing as he drives, shouting: ‘Payback!’

Joe chanting to himself: ‘War in the East, war in the West; War in the North…’

Old sun already behind new clouds, shadows across car -

BJ say: ‘We’ve fucked up.’

Joe counting cash: ‘Still be more than seven hundred here, man.’

‘We’ve fucked up,’ BJ say again. ‘It was a set-up.’

‘No set-up,’ Steve is saying, shaking his locks. ‘Just pure fucking payback.’

BJ nodding, knowing -

(The never-never, can’t go on forever) -

Knowing what’s coming -

(Close my eyes but he will not go away) -

COMING -

(But I have the will to survive) -

COMING -

(I will cheat and I will win) -

COMING -

(You think I’m a raving idiot, just off the boat) -

COMING -

(But I’ll be round the back of your house in the dead of the night) -

COMING -

(Watch you sleeping in your bed) -

COMING -

(When the bloody heavens clash) -

COMING DOWN -

(The Two Sevens) .

Saturday 25 March 1972 -

‘You wake up some morning as unhappy as you’ve ever been…’

I lie alone in our double bed, listening to the sound of things getting worse:

‘Protests mount over direct rule in Northern Ireland after the Government’s agreement yesterday that Ulster is to be ruled direct from Westminster for a year ran into opposition immediately with both wings of the IRA saying they would fight on and militant Protestants demanding widespread strike action despite calls from Mr Faulkner for calm .