David Peace - 1977

‘You know what I mean.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Addresses, phone numbers?’

‘Probably, if they went through the books but, believe me, I doubt they all did.’

‘If you could get us names and anything else on models that’d be great.’

‘What you want them for?’

I glanced at the back office and said, ‘Look, I sold a job lot of old Spunks to Amsterdam. Got a bloody bomb for them. If your Lordship is too busy to earn himself a cut, then I’ll see if I can’t set myself up.’

‘Twenty quid?’

‘Twenty quid.’

She said, ‘I can’t do it now.’

I looked at my watch. ‘What time you finished?’

‘Five.’

‘Bottom of stairs at five?’

‘Twenty quid?’

‘Twenty quid.’

‘See you then.’

I stood in a red telephone box in the middle of Piccadilly Bus Station and dialled.

‘It’s me.’

‘Where are you?’

‘Still in Manchester.’

‘What time you coming home?’

‘Soon as I can.’

‘I’ll wear something pretty then.’

Outside, the rain kept falling, the red box leaking.

I’d been here before, this very box, twenty-five years before, my fiancйe and I, waiting for the bus to Altrincham to see her Aunt, a new ring on her finger, the wedding but one week away.

‘Bye,’ I said, but she’d already gone.

I stepped back into the sheets of piss and walked about Piccadilly for a couple of hours, going in and out of cafйs, sitting in damp booths with weak coffees, waiting, watching skinny black figures dancing through the rain, the lot of us dodging the raindrops, the memories, the pain.

I looked at my watch.

It was time to go.

Going up to five, I found another telephone box on Oldham Street.

‘Anything?’

‘Nothing.’

At five to five I was huddled at the bottom of the steps, ringing wet.

Ten minutes later she came down the stairs.

‘I’ve got to go back up,’ she said. ‘I’m not finished.’

‘Did you get the stuff?’

She handed me an envelope.

I glanced inside.

She said, ‘It’s all there. What there is.’

‘I believe you,’ I said and handed her twenty folded quid.

‘Pleasure doing business with you,’ she laughed, walking back upstairs.

‘Bet it was,’ I said. ‘Bet it was.’

I went down to Victoria where they told me the Bradford train went from Piccadilly.

I ran up through the cats and the dogs and caught a cab for the last bit.

It was almost six when we got there, but there was a train on the hour and I caught it.

Inside, the carriage stank of wet clothes and stale smoke and I had to share a table with an old couple from Pennistone and their sweating sandwiches.

The woman smiled, I smiled back and the husband bit into a large red apple.

I opened the envelope and took out tissue-thin pieces of duplicate paper, three in all.

There were lists of payments, cash or cheque for February 1974 through to March 1976, payments to photoshops, chemists, photographers, paper mills, ink works, and models.

Models .

I ran down the list, out of breath:

Everything stopped, dead.

Clare Morrison , known to be Strachan.

Everything stopped.

I took out Oldman’s memo:

Jane Ryan , read Janice.

Everything -

Sue Penn , read Su Peng.

Stopped -

Read Ka Su Peng.

Dead.

There on that train, that train of tears, crawling across those undressed hells, those naked little hells, those naked little hells all decked out in tiny, tiny bells, there on that train listening to those bells ring in the end of the world:

1977.

In 1977, the year the world broke.

My world:

The old woman across the table finishing the last sandwich and screwing up the silver foil into a tiny, tiny ball, the egg and cheese on her false teeth, crumbs stuck in the powder on her face, her face smiling at me, a gargoyle, her husband bleeding his teeth into that big red apple, this big red, red, red world.

1977.

In 1977, the year the world turned red.

My world:

I needed to see the photographs.

The train crawled on.

I had to see the photographs.

The train stopped at another station.

The photographs, the photographs, the photographs.

Clare Morrison, Jane Ryan, Sue Penn .

I was crying and I wanted to stop, wanted to pull myself together but, when I tried, the bits didn’t fit.

Pieces missing.

1977.

In 1977, the year the world fell to bits.

My world:

Going under, to the sea-bed, better off dead, that evil, evil bed, those secret underwater waves that floated me up bloated, up from the sea-bed.

Beached, washed up.

1977.

In 1977, the year the world drowned.

My world:

1977 and I needed to see the photographs, had to see the photographs, the photographs.

In 1977, the year -

1977.

My world:

An imagined photograph.

Wear something pretty…

I didn’t stop in Bradford, just changed trains for Leeds and sat on another slow train through hell, hell, hell, hell, hell, hell, hell, hell, hell, hell, hell, hell, hell, hell, hell, hell, hell, hell, hell, hell, hell, hell, hell, hell:

Hell.

In Leeds I ran through the black rain along Boar Lane, stumbling, through the precinct, tripping, on to Briggate, falling, into Joe’s Adult Books.

‘Spunk? Back issues?’

‘By the door.’

‘You got every issue?’

‘I don’t know. Have a look.’

On my knees, through the pile, stacking doubles to one side and holding on to every different issue I came to, clutching their plastic wrappings.

‘This it?’

‘Maybe some in the back.’

‘I want them.’

‘All right, all right.’

‘All of them.’

I stood there while Joe went into the back, stood there in the bright pink light, the cars outside in the rain, the blokes browsing, giving it to me sideways.

Joe came back, six or seven in his hands.

‘That it?’

‘You must have them all.’

I looked down and saw I’d got a good thirteen or fourteen.

‘It still going?’

‘No.’

‘How much?’

He tried to take them from me but then said, ‘How many you got there?’

I counted, dropping them and then picking them up, until I said, ‘Thirteen.’

‘Eight forty-five.’

I handed him a tenner.

‘You want a bag?’

But I was gone.

In the Market toilets, the cubicle door locked, on the floor, ripping open plastic bags, tearing through the pages, through the pictures and the photographs, the photographs of bums and tits, cunts and cuts,the hairy bits, the dirty bits, the bloody, bloody red bits, until I came – came to the yellow bits.

This is why people die.

This is why people.

This is why.

I stood upright in another box and dialled.

‘George Oldman, please.’

‘Who’s calling?’

‘Jack Whitehead.’

‘Just a moment.’

I stood and waited inside the box.

‘Mr Whitehead?’

‘Yes.’

‘Assistant Chief Constable Oldman’s office is not accepting any more calls from the press. Could you please call Detective Inspector Evans on – ’

I hung up and puked down the inside of the red telephone box.

On my bed, a bed of paper and pornography, in prayer, the telephone ringing and ringing and ringing, the rain against the windows falling and falling and falling, the wind through the frames blowing and blowing and blowing, the knocks on the door knocking and knocking and knocking.