David Peace - GB84

Terry tore the microphone off his chest. The micro-recorder off his back.

Clive Cook slid down the side of the car –

‘They pay me fifty quid a day,’ Clive Cook wept. ‘Fifty quid. Monday to Friday. A grand a month. Tax free. Just to tell them what they already know.’

Terry threw the equipment onto the ground. Terry stamped on it –

Repeatedly.

Clive Cook looked up at Terry Winters. Clive Cook said, ‘I’m sorry, Comrade.’

Terry grabbed him by his hair. Terry spun him across the car park.

Clive Cook fell on the floor. Clive Cook lay on the ground. Clive Cook smiled –

‘I’m the one you’re meant to find,’ he laughed.

Terry spat on him once. Terry got into his car –

Terry went back to work.

sound now. Hooves. Horses’ hooves. I start running. Running and running — Like a bastard. A bastard — Shitting bricks. Sweating buckets — I stared up at bedroom ceiling. I was thinking about my father — How my father died. How my father lived — Then alarm went off and I jumped. They said talks were going well. They said there was a dock strike in offing — It was a bloody beautiful day and all. Felt like we were winning — Then I got down Welfareand saw queue. Be double if it weren’t for Women’s Action Group and Welfare Rights folk — It was still out door, like. Knew what half of them were going to say before they’d even opened their gobs and all. Arthur Larkin was back about his compensation claim; Paul Garrett’s wife had had another run-in with YEB; John Edwards was still being given runaround by DHSS; and Mrs Kershaw would want to know why Mrs Wilcox had got two cans of beans in her food parcel and she’d only got one and did I know that some had got a bag of potatoes and others hadn’t? And, while she was here, what about all them tins from Poland. How was that fair? I nodded and wrote down what she said. What they all said — I didn’t say I knew her husband was working cash in hand on a building site in Chesterfield and that was why he never went on a picket. Didn’t say I knew he’d be first on mesh bus when they started it here. I just nodded and wrote down what she said. What they all said — Didn’t say there were folk ten times worse off than them. Folk that never came down here. Folk that never asked for anything. Folk that said thank you when you did see them and gave them something. Folk that didn’t tell us what we already knew — That we were unprepared. That we were badly organized. That things were going to get worse — Folk whose bloody addresses we didn’t even have. Faces we couldn’t remember — You’re not even bloody listening, are you? shouted Mrs Kershaw. Typical. Bloody typical. I nodded and I wrote it down — Day of Jitters, they were calling it down in London. Not up here, they weren’t — Not at Sheffield University.The Extraordinary Annual Conference — High Court or no High Court, we were still here — Here to say you cannot break ranks to our collective disadvantage. Here to accept Rule 51 with a two-thirds majority. Here to say sod state interference. Sod pit closures. Sod scabs — And sod her. King Arthur stood up and we all stood up with him — Through the police, the judiciary, the social security system, he said. Whichever way seems possible, the full weight of the state is being brought to bear upon us in an attempt to try to break this strike. On the picket lines, riot police in full battle gear, on horseback and on foot, accompanied by police dogs, have been unleashed in violent attacks upon our members. In our communities and in our villages, we have seen a level of police harassment and intimidation which organized British trade unionists have never before experienced; the prevention of people to move freely from one part of the country, or even county, to another; the calculated attacks upon striking miners in streets of their villages; the oppressive conditions of bail under which it is hoped to silence, discourage and defeat us — all these tactics constitute outright violation of people’s basic rights. So to working miners, I say this: Search your conscience — Ours is a supremely noble aim: To defend pits, jobs, communities and the right to work, and we are now entering a crucial phase in our battle. The pendulum is swinging in favour of NUM. Sacrifices and hardships have forged a unique commitment among our members. They will ensure that the NUM wins this most crucial battle in the history of our industry. Comrades, I salute you for your magnificent achievement and for your support — Together, we cannot fail! We will not fail! We were stood with him — Stood by him. Stood for him — Shoulder to shoulder we were all stood. And they must have been able to hear applause and cheering in Downing Street — The new war cry: Herewe are — TGWU had voted to extend their strike to all ports. Here we are — Pound had collapsed. Herewe are — Billions had been lost in stocks and shares. HERE. WE. ARE — I drove down to Annesleybefore Panel today. Took

Monday 16 — Sunday 22 July 1984

Neil Fontaine stands outside the door to the Jew’s suite on the fourth floor of Claridge’s. He listens to the Jew whimper and whine in his dreams. He listens to him weep and wail. Neil Fontaine stands outside the Jew’s suite on the fourth floor of Claridge’s and wonders where the angels are tonight. Those better angels, their wings tonight –

The lights out. The shadows long –

The scars across his back.

Neil Fontaine stands outside the Jew’s suite. Neil Fontaine listens to the summer –

Inside.

‘— at the time of the Falklands conflict, we had to fight the enemy without —’

Malcolm Morris had found Clive Cook first —

He was sitting in the road outside the telephone box in Hoyland.

Clive was a mess. His shirt open. His buttons gone —

He was pissed. Frightened.

‘I’m fucked,’ Clive had kept saying. ‘I’m fucked! Fucked! Fucked! Fucked!’

Malcolm got Cole to take Clive’s car. Malcolm stuck Clive in the back of his. Gave him a lager —

To keep him pissed.

Malcolm drove him down through Mexborough and Doncaster to Finningley —

Eyes in the rearview mirror, ears bleeding.

Malcolm took Clive into the barracks —

Light inside, dark outside. It was night now, and that was good —

Things changed in the night. Things always looked different in the morning.

Clive woke in the room with the mirror. In a change of clothes.

He said, ‘I want to go home now. I want to go backhome.’

‘OK,’ said Malcolm. ‘I’ll get the car.’

But before Malcolm reached the door Clive had remembered —

Clive said, ‘No, wait. I don’t —’

‘What?’ said Malcolm.

Clive looked at him. Clive said, ‘I don’t want to go home any more. I’m fucked.’

‘Relax,’ Malcolm told him. ‘She’ll be here any minute. Then everything will be all right.’

Clive nodded. Malcolm nodded, too. Clive smiled. Malcolm smiled back —

Clive said, ‘That’s good. That’s very good. Diane will make things better.’

‘— but the enemy within, much more difficult to fight, is just as dangerous to liberty —’

Neil Fontaine picks up the Jew in the small hours. The Chairman and the Great Financier carry the Jew down the stairs from the flat in Eaton Square and out to the Mercedes. They have been drinking jeroboams again. The Jew demands that Neil pin black cloths over the inside of the windows in the back of the car. He demands that Neil play the elegy from Tchaikovsky’s Serenade in C for String Orchestra, Op.48. He demands that –