Red or Dead (87 page)

That is very kind of you, Bob. Very kind of you to say that. But I know I’m not immortal, Bob. I know I’m mortal. Very mortal.

The game not finished, the match never finished. The pain in his heart and the smoke in his eyes. The city had been in flames, sirens in the air. Bill closed his eyes. On a stretcher, in an ambulance. Bill opened his eyes. And Bill saw Ness. His daughters and his granddaughters.
And Bill smiled. In the bed, in the hospital. Bill closed his eyes again. His eyes closed, for the last time. Bill was in the field. For all time. Bill had rolled the stone from the tomb. In the field. Bill saw the tree. Its blossoms gone, its leaves fallen and its branches bowed. In the field. Bill walked towards the tree. In the field. Bill stood before the tree. In the field. Bill looked up at the tree. Its branches that would rise up again, its leaves and blossoms that would come again. In the field. Bill touched the tree. This tree standing tall, this tree standing triumphant. Triumphant and resurrected now. Now and for all time. In the field. Bill knew this tree, Bill loved this tree. Her name was Liberty, her name was Liverpool.

This book is a work of fiction. And so this book is a novel. The following books all helped to inspire this work of fiction, this novel. However, I would like to pay particular tribute to four books:

And then …

The crowd attendances, team sheets and goals for many of the games in the novel were taken from the website www.liverweb.org.uk. Chris Wood of the www.lfchistory.net website also kindly pointed out many factual (and grammatical) errors in the original proof. Thank you, Chris!

Many of the scenes involving Bill Shankly and the supporters of Liverpool Football Club were also inspired by the recollections of people on the many fan forums and websites dedicated to Liverpool Football Club.

There remains a great deal of debate about when
You’ll Never Walk Alone
was first sung by the supporters of Liverpool Football Club. However, the closing scene of Chapter 12 was inspired by Wooltonian’s post of 30 April, 2004, on the www.redandwhitekop.com forum. Thank you.

The original idea for this novel came out of a conversation with Mike Jefferies. I would like to thank Rob Kraitt for putting Mike in touch with me. And to thank Mike and Rob for all their encouragement, help and support during the writing of this book. I would also like to pay particular thanks to John Roberts: very generously, John lent me the tapes of his conversations with Bill Shankly and also a tape of the Radio City interview between Bill Shankly and Harold Wilson.

Astrid Azurdia, Sam Dwyer, Robert Fraser, Ann Scanlon and George Scott also very kindly provided me with documents and materials that helped in the writing of this novel. Thank you very much.

I would also like to thank the following people for their assistance and their support. In Liverpool: Ian Callaghan, Stephen Done, John Keith, Stephen F. Kelly and Paul McGrattan. In Huddersfield: Stephen Dorril and Michael Stewart. In Leeds: Stephen Barber, Emma Bolland, Anthony Clavane, Robert Endeacott, Rod Dixon, Chris Lloyd, Alice Nutter, Jane Verity and all the Red Writers at Red Ladder, Leeds. In Tokyo: as always, Hamish Macaskill, Junzo Sawa, Peter Thompson, Atsushi Hori and all the staff of the English Agency Japan; Motoyuki Shibata, Ariko Kato and all the staff and students of the Department of Contemporary Literature at the University of Tokyo; Mike and Mayu Handford, David Karashima, Justin McCurry, Akiko Miyake, Shunichiro Nagashima, Richard Lloyd Parry, Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert and David Turner. In London: Ruth Atkins, Ian Bahrami, Andrew Benbow, Lee Brackstone, Angus Cargill, Anne Owen, Anna Pallai and all the staff of Faber and Faber. Also Jake Arnott, Matteo Battarra, Andrew Eaton, Laura Oldfield Ford, Stephen Frears, Carol Gorner, Tony Grisoni, John Harvey, Michael Hayden, Richard Kelly, Eoin McNamee, Keith and Kate Pattison, Maxine Peake, Ted Riley, Katy Shaw, Steve Taylor, Paul Tickell, Cathi Unsworth, Paul Viragh and
the staff of the Working Class Movement Library in Salford. Finally, I would like to thank all my family and friends, in Britain and in Japan, particularly Julian Cleator, Jon Riley and,

most of all, my father, Basil Peace,

and William Miller, always.

David Peace was chosen as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists in 2003. He is the author of
The Red Riding Quartet
, adapted by Channel 4 in 2009,
GB84
, which was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 2004, and
The Damned Utd
, which was made into a film in 2009. These were followed by
Tokyo Year Zero
in 2007 and
Occupied
City
in 2009, the first two books of his acclaimed Tokyo Trilogy.

NINETEEN SEVENTY FOUR

NINETEEN SEVENTY SEVEN

NINETEEN EIGHTY

NINETEEN EIGHTY THREE

GB
84

THE DAMNED UTD

TOKYO YEAR ZERO

OCCUPIED CITY