David Peace - GB84

The suitcases full of newspapers. The obscenities on the walls –

Back down the stairs to the kitchen. The radio in the sink. The food on the floor –

The open biscuit tins full of rainwater or piss. The cracked mirror in the hall –

The blank Christmas cards. The empty photo frames in their hands –

Terry stared at Bill and Len in the mirror. Terry opened and closed his mouth –

‘There never was any wife, was there?’ said Len. ‘No kids. Nothing.’

In the shadows of South Yorkshire, in the suburbs of Sheffield –

‘Nothing but bloody lies,’ said Bill. ‘Lies and fucking fantasies.’

In the house with the lights on but nobody home –

Terry Winters had forgotten his lines.

*

Power —

Harsh service station light. Friday 8 March, 1985 –

Diane Morris puts a cigarette to her lips, a lighter to her cigarette.

Her dog dead at her gate —

Neil Fontaine waits.

Diane inhales, her eyes closed. Diane exhales, her eyes open.

Neil sits and he waits in his car, his soiled black car.

Diane looks at her watch. Diane glances out of the window.

Neil sees her in his mirror, his mud-splattered mirror.

Diane stubs out the cigarette. Diane picks an envelope off the table.

Neil squeezes the steering wheel between his dirty fingers and bloody palms –

Ruin’d and damn’d is her state.

Diane looks at her watch again. Diane stands up.

Neil shuts his eyes until she’s almost gone. The stink still here. Everywhere –

Loss.

The Mechanic turns into the car park. He is early. The place packed with Saturday lunchtime shoppers. He drives slowly through the car park. Turns into a space next to one of the trolley parks. The Capri faces the supermarket —

A mohican rattling a bucket by the automatic doors —

The Mechanic watches for the car through the rearview mirror and the wing —

Fuck –

A panda car turns into the car park. Makes a circle and pulls up at the back of him. A policewoman gets out of the passenger door. Puts on her hat and walks down the side of him. Off to have a word with the mohican and his last of the plastic buckets —

The Mechanic glances over at the passenger seat. Looks up into the rearview—

Fuck –

A policeman is getting out of the driver’s side. The Mechanic boxed in now by an empty police car. The policeman puts on his hat and walks down the passenger side of the Capri. Stops dead. The policeman opens the passengerdoor. TheMechanic reaches for the passenger seat —

The policeman is first to the shotgun. He puts it to the Mechanic’s stomach —

Fuck –

The Mechanic looks up into the policeman’s eyes —

Just. Like –

Neil pulls the trigger.

Neil Fontaine stands outside the door to the Jew’s suite on the fourth floor of Claridge’s. He listens to the silence and the shadows inside. He thinks about coincidence of circumstance, meeting of motive and convergence of cause. Neil Fontaine opens the door to the Jew’s suite on the fourth floor of Claridge’s. He thinks about the end of a war and the start of an era. The timing of a meeting and the opening of an envelope –

The closing of a pit and the calling of a strike –

The writing on a wall. The knocking on a door –

Neil Fontaine steps inside the Jew’s suite. He closes the door behind him.

There are bottles on the floor. There are bodies on the bed –

Drunken scabs and their wanton wives, satiated and salacious.

The Jew benumbed and naked upon the bones and the sheets –

Hair matted and moustache stained, his carcass bloated and cock limp.

Neil stands at the foot of the bed, a candle and a knife in his hands –

A white bandage around the blade, six inches of Sheffield steel naked at the point.

He kneels down and rests the candle and the knife on the carpet before him –

He sits cross-legged. His head shaved. A white towel across his knees.

He undoes the buttons of his blazer. He unfastens the collar of his shirt –

He loosens the belt and buttons of his trousers.

He pushes the white towel down between his underwear and skin.

He begins to massage his abdomen with his left hand.

He folds back his left trouser flap to reveal the top of his thigh.

He draws the blade lightly across the skin. Blood runs. The blade is sharp enough.

He looks up at the Jew –

He moves the knife around to his front. He raises himself slightly on his hips –

He leans the upper half of his body over the point of the blade.

He cries out as the knife pierces the left side of his stomach.

He loses consciousness.

The six inches of naked steel have vanished –

The white bandage in his hand pressed against the flesh of his stomach –

He regains consciousness. The blade inside him. His heart pounding –

The enemy within.

The pain is coming –

His fist moist around the bandaged blade. He looks down –

His hand and the bandage are drenched in blood –

The white towel monogrammed a deep and violent red.

Neil looks up at the Jew again –

The pain is here.

He begins to cut sideways across his stomach using only his right hand.

He cannot.

His intestines push out the blade.

He has to use both hands to keep the point of the blade deep in his stomach.

He pulls across. It does not cut easily.

He forces himself to pull again with all his strength.

The blade cuts four inches. He has cut past his navel.

There is blood in the folds of his trousers now. There is blood on the carpet –

Writing on the walls. Darkening the doors. Painting the shadows —

A single spot on the corner of one of the Jew’s white hotel sheets.

But the blade will not cut deeper. It slips out in the blood and grease.

Neil starts to vomit. The pain worse. His intestines spill out into his crotch.

He looks up at the Jew –

His head droops. His shoulders heave. His eyes close. He retches repeatedly.

He sits in his own blood. The tip of the blade exposed. It lies in his hand.

He throws his head back –

The tide of his blood laps at the feet of the bed –

He raises the knife in his right hand. He thrusts the point at his throat –

He misses.

The blade falls. He raises the knife again. He thrusts the point at his throat –

He misses.

The knife falls. He raises the blade. He thrusts the point at his throat again –

The point of the blade touches his throat –

His head falls forward. The blade emerges at the nape of his neck.

He thinks and he thinks and he thinks and he thinks –

The Earth tilts. The Earth turns. The Earth hungry. The Earth hunts —

He thinks and he thinks and he thinks –

This is the way the world works. This is the way —

He thinks and he thinks –

There are the things I know. The things I don’t —

Neil thinks. Neil knows –

For both, there is a price.

Their muted pipes — That whisper. That echo — Their funeral marches. Their funeral music — That moans. That screams — Again and again. For ever more — As if they are marching their way up out of their graves. Here to mourn the new dead — The country deaf to their laments. Its belly swollen with black corpses and vengeful carrion — Rotting in its furrows. It waits for harvests that never come — The day their weeping will burst open the earth itself and drown us all. In their tears — In their sweat. In their blood — In our guilt and in our shame. Until that Day of Judgement — There will be no spring. There can be no morning — There will be only winter. There can be only night — Lord, please open the eyes and ears of the people of England. But the people of England are blind and deaf — The Armies of the Night. The Armies of the Right — We are here because of you, they say. Here because of you — And they strip us of our language and our lands. Our families and our faith. Our gods and our ways — We are but the matchstick men, with our matchstick hats and clogs — And they shave our heads. Send us to the showers — Put us on their trains. Stick us in their pits — The cage door closes. The cage descends — To cover us with dirt. To leave us underground — In place of strife. In place of fear — Here where she stands at the gates at the head of her tribe and waits — Triumphant on the mountains of our skulls. Up to her hems in the rivers of our blood — A wreath in one hand. The other between her legs — Her two little princes dancing by their necks from her apron strings, and she looks down at the long march of labour halted here before her and says, Awake! Awake! This is England, Your England — and the Year is Zero.