Fan (4 page)
Authors: Danny Rhodes
A voice from far away.
‘What are you doing now?’
A voice on the fringes.
‘John, are you listening to me? What are you doing now?’
‘Eh?’
‘In the video. What are you doing?’
He’s frozen to the spot.
A statue.
A useless cunt.
He opens his mouth to speak but no words come out.
3.00 p.m.
They’re moving through the re-opened gate. They’re eager, urgent, keen to get a vantage point because it’s gone 3.00 p.m. and the game has fucking started.
They don’t know what’s happening in pens 3 and 4.
They don’t know the pens are overfull.
They don’t know that people are dying in those pens.
They don’t fucking know.
They can’t fucking imagine.
And the tunnel is dark. Dark and dank. It stinks of piss and shit.
At the end of the tunnel a blue sky is beckoning. At the end of the tunnel is the far-off sound of a football match.
‘Two minutes,’ says the head. Says Chris. Says his mate. ‘Two fucking minutes of inaction, John.’
He shrugs.
‘Fucking hell, John. We could have a serious problem here. We’ve three kids in hospital.’
The camera shows pens 3 and 4 of Leppings Lane. The camera shows a compacted multitude of heads and shoulders. A crowd full of turbulence. People are lifted off their feet. People are carried down the terrace with no free will. People are facing in every direction. People are trapped between the torsos of their neighbours. They’re shouting or trying to shout, but even that’s becoming too much. Breathing in deep to shout means not breathing out again. They’re floundering. There are people on the ground, people underfoot. There are lifeless bodies with bleached faces propped against the living. Limp heads rest on lifeless shoulders. People are killing people simply by being. With each second that passes the pressure grows. The barriers designed to protect are transformed into rudimentary killing machines. One fan’s arm snaps against the metal, another’s ribs cave in.
A barrier gives way, a barrier designed to withstand 400lbs per foot of pressure, a barrier with too much work to do, a barrier displaying corrosion visible to the naked eye, a barrier later found to contain a rolled-up copy of the
Yorkshire Telegraph and Star,
24th October 1931.
Fans tumble down the terrace. Fans tumble on top of other fans. There’s a pile of bodies at the bottom of the terrace, set upon set of wide staring eyes, of vacant expressions, a tangled mass of limbs. There are bodies covered in bruises, blue bodies, bloated bodies. There are bodies pressed against the perimeter fencing. There’s vomit and saliva and mucus and God knows what else.
Some are clambering up and out of the pens to safety.
The lucky ones.
Some have nowhere to go and no way of getting there.
The sky is perfectly blue.
The dead are propped against the living.
The symphony of a football match has been replaced by the desperate dirge of the dying.
‘John, are you listening to me? Do you understand what I’m saying?’
He’s not listening.
He’s fifteen years away, crammed into his own little space on the Spion Kop at Hillsborough. 15th April 1989. He’s seventeen years old. He’s watching a Liverpool fan dance a jig in front of the bank of Forest Fans, watching the guy being led away by stewards in bright yellow bibs.
The clarity is extreme.
He’s feeling the crowd swell in number as kick-off approaches. It takes him a while to find his footing, to find his voice, to find his place in it all.
He’s watching the players enter the pitch. He’s singing his songs. He’s watching the game take off at a tremendous pace, watching Clough dispossess Ablett on the halfway line, watching Forest force a corner and then another, watching Forest pass the ball clean and true, watching the Forest players bite into tackle after tackle. He’s believing, like all the rest around him, that this is Forest’s season, that they’re in the form of their lives and ripe for revenge.
Why fucking not?
And then he’s watching Liverpool fans scale the fencing to gather on the track behind Grobbelaar’s goal, gather behind the advertising hoardings for Bic Razors, Coalite and Fly Thai, watching a solitary St John’s Ambulance steward leading one fan away, watching Liverpool fans tumble now over the fences of Leppings Lane, to gather in clusters at the
edge of the pitch, a growing mass of fans, watching policemen filing along the perimeter in the direction of Leppings Lane. He’s watching Liverpool force a corner of their own, watching Beardsley’s rasping effort crash back off the bar, watching Forest manoeuvre the ball to the Liverpool end, watching the black shape of a single policeman race across the 18 yard box towards the referee.
Everything changes.
Everything.
Forever.
‘John, John. This is a serious business.’
Tell me about it, Chris. Fucking tell me about it.
He’s listening to Forest give it to the Scousers for ruining it all. He’s giving it himself, shouting ‘you Scouse bastards’ with everybody else. He’s not seeing. He doesn’t understand. He’s watching hundreds of bewildered insects scramble over the fencing, hundreds more climbing into the stand above. He’s watching a dark shadow spread across the green baize.
A dark shadow that will engulf him.
There are scuffles on the Kop, Forest with Forest. There are scuffles between the drinkers and the non-drinkers, the sensible and the senseless. All around him, bemused faces are struggling to comprehend what is happening in front of their eyes.
And he’s watching the living carry the lifeless on makeshift stretchers made out of advertising hoardings, watching a line of police lock together across the playing surface to deflect a threat that’s not even there.
They’re doing fuck all.
Fuck all.
He’s watching a bunch of lads in tracksuits trying to give the kiss to a mate, trying to do that when they’ve no fucking
clue, witnessing their desperation as they frantically seek help where there is no help, watching them cover the face of their mate with a leather jacket.
He’s hearing a bloke behind him mutter something to another bloke.
‘He’s fucking dead. They’re all fucking dead.’
‘The governors want to know what happened,’ says Chris. ‘The parents are demanding answers…’
Lost within the veil.
Lost in darkness.
‘And it isn’t just the parents and governors, John. I’ve had members of staff complain too, about the language you used.’
That brings him back.
‘The language?’
‘The swearing.’
‘Did you see what was happening?’
‘Regardless…’
‘They were in danger, Chris. They were all in danger.’
A row of bodies in the goalmouth. The row lengthening, becoming six, becoming eight, becoming a dozen. Row upon row of bodies in the goalmouth.
The dead and the living.
The living and the dead.
3.10 p.m., Semi-Final Saturday.
At 3.15 p.m. a solitary St John’s ambulance tries to force its way across a field littered with the stricken and the exhausted, the dead and the dying, pathetic in its isolation.
At 3.20 p.m. a second ambulance makes it no further than the corner flag at the Kop end.
The clock ticks forever onward. He and the others trapped in limbo, wanting to help but penned in, helpless, not able to help. A veil of silence falls over Hillsborough and everybody
in it, a veil that settles as realisation and awareness surface in the mind. There are fifty-four thousand people in the ground but he can hear his own shallow breath.
It’s 3.36 p.m. on 15th April 1989 before a third ambulance reaches the stricken of Leppings Lane.
It is the end of one era and the beginning of another.
He’s still in the office an hour later. In Chris’s office, waiting for the telephone, waiting for the hospital.
‘You’ve not been yourself lately, John,’ says Chris. Says his mate. ‘Why don’t you take a few days?’
‘I like being busy—’
‘Just until you’re feeling better.’
Sleet rattling the windows, the head’s beloved flag billowing, threatening to tear itself free.
‘They’ll think you’ve suspended me.’
‘I’ll assure the parents you were only concerned with the safety of their children. I can’t suspend you for that. So take a few days. Take a week. Then we’ll reappraise. Go to the doctor. Get signed off.’
‘I’m not ill,’ he said.
‘Just a week or two. To see you right.’
‘Chris…’
‘Please, John. The governors will be furious.’
He left the cunt to it, walked back to the Department Office feeling like the whole world knew his business. He closed the door to his classroom and wandered over to the window, stared out at the clouds tumbling in from the coast, at the trees whipping in the wind, at the squalls of rain tearing across the playground. He picked up his briefcase and shut off the lights. Fuck setting cover. They could deal with it. He went to the stockroom, dug out a box of cellophane zip files, nicked the fuckers for his own purposes.
He was wet through by the time he reached his car, a drowned fucking rat scurrying away.
They were talking about Cloughie on the radio again, about legacy and longevity, about forty-four days at Leeds, about why he never got the England job. Talking bollocks. He turned the radio off. He didn’t want to hear about it. He sat in the evening traffic, the wiper blades raking at the window, listening to the repetitive motion, drifting away, thinking about his teaching career and how a week or two of sick leave was no great event in the grand scheme of things. There were fuckers in the place who couldn’t get through a week without taking a day to get over themselves.
A car horn sounded. The road ahead of him was clear, the traffic stacked up behind. He lurched himself awake, stalled the fucking engine. Another fucking horn. He re-started the engine, turned in the direction of the surgery.
‘All fucking right,’ he shouted. ‘Alright!’
And then he was off up the road in pursuit of another traffic jam, away into the dregs of autumn and its haunting fucking endings.
7th March 1984
UEFA Cup Quarter-Final (First Leg)
City Ground
Bright lights, big city. It is these things to a twelve-year-old.
The UEFA Cup Quarter-Final.
Fried onions. Cigarettes. People. Lots of people. More than you’ve ever dreamed of. Bustling. A lot of stairs.
A panoramic view.
The lush green turf. The red and white. A goal. A 1–0 win.
You’ve never seen anything like it and now that you’ve seen it you want more.
Germinating seeds send out their little tendrils.
An addiction takes root.
In the car on the way home your dad is listening to the news on the radio, news about the National Coal Board. In the car on the way home your dad is swearing at the radio.
‘Bastards,’ he says. ‘Bloody bastards.’
He walked in to find Kelly sprawled on the sofa. Split fucking shifts.
‘What are you doing home?’ she asked.
‘Signed off.’
‘Signed off?’
He gestured his incredulity with a shrug.
‘What’s the matter?’ she asked him, not getting up, not taking her eyes off the shit on the TV. The same old Kelly. All aggression, no fucking sympathy.
‘Stress,’ he said. ‘Let’s call it stress.’
‘Stress?’
‘Fucking hell, Kelly. Stop repeating everything.’
He dumped his bag, wandered through to the kitchen and the kettle, filled it.
‘You didn’t say anything.’
‘Eh?’
‘About feeling stressed.’
‘I don’t feel stressed. I’ve just been signed off with it.’
‘You said you had a sore throat.’
‘It’s nothing to do with that.’
He clicked the kettle on, took off his jacket and shoes, went to the cupboard and picked out two mugs. She appeared in the doorway.
‘Are you having one?’
She nodded.
‘Did something happen?’
Kelly. A dog with a bone.
‘I swore at some students,’ he said. ‘In the corridor. At break.’
‘Is that all?’
‘I shouted in their faces. I pinned one against the wall – the head called me in.’
‘And then what…’
‘We talked and he suggested I get signed off.’
A roll of the eyes.
‘How long?’
‘A week. The doctor said a week. To begin with.’
‘You’ve been to the doctor?’
‘Briefly,’ he said. ‘She gave me this.’
He pulled the leaflet out of his back pocket.
Coping with Stress.
‘And school gave me this.’
Another fucking leaflet.
Managing Conflict.
Kelly grabbed the thing, laughed, threw it on the table.
‘What were they doing?’
‘Who?’
‘The students.’
‘Crushing each other.’
‘Something dangerous, then?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you stopped it?’
‘Sort of.’
‘And now you’re signed off with stress.’
‘One of the parents phoned in.’
She shook her head.
‘This fucking country’s gone mad,’ she said. ‘You should leave that profession.’
He stiffened.
‘It’s fucking true. What are you doing if you can’t discipline them? There’s a fucking real world out there…’
He didn’t say anything. What was there to fucking say? He squeezed the tea bag against the side of mug number one, watched the liquid darken, binned it, moved on to mug number two, watched the liquid darken…
‘They’ll not last five minutes.’
He nodded. He stared at his mug. He stared at the tiles.
‘Get a job with adults,’ she said. ‘Deal with adult situations. Every day you come home with these stories.’
She took her mug and moved into the living room. She was animated, wound up. She placed the mug on the table. Some of the tea spilled over the side of the mug. Her way of caring, to get angry and slam about the place. Her only way.