Forever Is Over

by Wade, Calvin

  Mum, a creature of disgusting habit, had finished her drink and was heading our way, she must have been aware that something was going on as she slurred as she shouted up,

  “Are my darling daughters still awake, are they? Don’t fret my babies, Mummy’s home. I’ll come and tuck you up in a minute. You first, Jemma, you know how much I love to tuck you up!”

  Jemma passed the knife from hand to hand. A tear rolled down her cheek.

  “Bring it on, Vomit Breath! Bring…..it….on!”

  I started to cry. Not a composed tear like Jemma, floods of tears.

  “Jemma, I’m begging you, don’t do this.”

  I could hear Mum double locking the front door, within seconds, this was all going to kick off. Jemma was pumped full of adrenalin. She gestured at me with the knife.

  “Get out of here, Kelly! Get into your room, close your door and do not move until I tell you to come out.”

  I pleaded with her, tearfully.

  “Jemma, please don’t do this! Please!”

  “OUT!”

  I ran across the landing into my room. Everything Jemma had said was right. I had badly let her down. Mum wouldn’t have been a match for the two of us, but without a united front, she was too physically strong for either of us, on our own. I had just protected myself and let Jemma take Mum on alone. A battle she was never going to win.

  Mum was in the hallway. She must have seen me run across the landing. I heard the floorboards creak as she drunkenly began to climb the stairs. I was petrified, this was turning into a horror movie that I did not want a part in. I pushed my back into my closed door to barricade it shut. Once again, self-preservation was priority number one. Mum spoke in tones of foreboding doom,

  “What’s going on, Jemma? You upsetting your sister? Naughty children are answerable to me. Your mother doesn’t suffer fools gladly.”

  I heard Jemma’s door open. I guessed Mum was halfway up the stairs by now.

  “Have you had a nice evening, Mum?”

  Jemma had not referred to Mum as anything other than “Vomit Breath” for some time, it was even longer since she had called her Mum.

  Mum growled back,

  “Like you care!”

  Once Jemma began talking again, there was a quiver in her voice, a quiver that told me the knife was now on show. Jemma was trying so hard to sound calm and in control,

  “Of course it matters to me if you’ve had a good night, Mum, because we both know what happens when you have a bad one. You come and show me just how bad it is, don’t you? You’re thoughtful like that, aren’t you mother? You like to share. If you’ve had a shit night, you make damn sure that I have a shit night too.”

  Mum laughed. A laughing “at you” not “with you” laugh.

  “Well, honey pie, you’ll be glad to know, Mummy’s coming again. To-night was crap. Fucking shit! Everyone was miserable. I feel as sorry as the next person for all those Liverpool fans, but what can I do about it now? I can’t bring them back, can I and neither can anyone else, so why let it spoil the whole night out?”

  Mum paused for a few seconds to let her sympathetic views on the Hillsborough tragedy to be digested, before adding,

  “What’s the knife for, Jemma?”

  “Protection.”

  “Don’t blame you. Nasty world out there these days. Does no harm to protect yourself. Sensible kid. Who are you protecting yourself from?”

  It was Jemma’s turn to laugh sarcastically.

  “A bully.”

  “I see. Let me tell you something, Jemma. A word from the wise. You shouldn’t allow yourself to get bullied. It’s a dog eat dog world where only the fittest survive. If you allow yourself to get bullied, that’s a sign of weakness. The strong don’t get bullied, just the weak.”

  “That’s not how I see it, Mum. In my eyes, it’s the weak that bully. They bully because they’re scared.”

  “Scared?”

  “Something scares them, something they don’t know how to cope with. They lack the intellect to adapt, so they resort to physical force. The physically weak though, may not be weak mentally and they start thinking about things. Thinking about how, in the end, they will triumph over physical force.”

  I could tell Mum was becoming increasingly vexed.

  “That’s how it works in fairytales, Jemma. Not real life. In the real world, the poor are always poor, the rich are always rich, the weak are always weak and….”

  “The drunk are always drunk!”

  “Very funny, Jemma. Let’s give you a round of applause for that.”

  Mum clapped slowly.

  “Pass me the knife, Jemma. We both know we could stand here until we’re both grey haired old biddies and you would never find the nerve to use that knife. Do you know why?”

  “Educate me.”

  “Because I’ve brought you up to be middle class! That ugly shit of a boyfriend of yours would certainly not want a jailbird girlfriend. How would that look amongst his snooty banker friends, if he had to piss off to Walton prison every lunchtime to see you? He was all brave when he came round here the other day, reading me the riot act, but he wouldn’t be so brave at Walton. He would visit you once and that would be that. Wash his hands of you, that’s what he’d do, so let’s stop pretending you’re tough, Jemma. Pass me the knife.”

  “Not a chance!”

  “Look Jemma, if you pass me that knife, we’ll just forget this little incident, both say sorry, give each other a nice, big hug and go back to being a family.”

  “Family! Who do you think we are, mother, the fucking Waltons? Think about this. I’ve got a knife out. Now if I don’t use it, I’m not stupid, I know exactly what will happen. You’ll beat hell out of me, even more than you do already, for ever and a day. My life will not be worth living. So now this knife is out, my cards are on the table. I have absolutely no choice but to use it.

  If I were you, Vomit Breath, I would start a very quick, drunken run, because you have got me all wrong. I hate you and using this knife on you, does not scare me at all. Think about it for a second. If I kill you, which incidentally I am going to do. If I kill you, what do you think would happen to me? I’ll tell you. I’d get hauled up in front of a judge and jury and charged with your murder. Then, Kelly, Ray and everyone else at the bank, would testify that I’ve been battered and bruised recently, at your evil hands. The judge would take one look at my innocent little face and take pity on me. I’d be sent down for eighteen months, serve six, then I’d be smelling of roses whilst your rotting corpse would be pushing up the daisies and your sorry soul would be Lucifer’s.”

  Listening to this was unbearable. My head was in my hands, my face was now drenched in tears and my knickers were wet with urine. It was like two tom cats squaring up. I knew them both too well. I knew neither would back down. There was a disaster heading their way, impending doom and all my tears and fears were for Jemma. I loved Jemma, she was everything a sister should be, but she was in a situation now whereby it was impossible to emerge victorious. She was going to be a murderer or murdered. The verbal sparring was relentless.

  “How fucking stupid are you, Jemma? Do you really see me running away from you? Knife or no knife, what makes you think for a second, I would run away from a snobby little bitch, like you? I’d rather die!” “RUN MOTHER!”

  “NOT A CHANCE!”

  I could hear the slow creaks of the stairs and could just tell Mum was slowly edging her way up towards Jemma.

  “I’m warning you, do NOT come any closer!”

  “You don’t scare me Jemma, not one bit!”

  A futher creak of a stair. They must have been so close now that they could almost touch.

  “Back off, MOTHER!”

  Jemma spoke in panicky tones. Mum spoke in an aggressive, assured tone. The experience of a million stand-offs.

  “Jemma, I am warning you. If you don’t put that knife down, I’m going to rip your head off and dip soldiers in your neck!”

>   “MOVE….AWAY!”

  I suddenly flipped. I stood up, opened my door, put my head down and screaming as loud as my lungs had the capacity to scream, I ran along the landing towards Mum, who was barely a few feet away, a couple of steps from the top of the stairs. I caught her off guard, seeing me hurtle towards her, she took half a step back and then I put my two hands out and PUSHED. She instinctively reached out to grab me like a woman teetering on a mountains edge, but the drink inside her meant her reactions were too slow. Mum fell backwards, flipping over and then tumbling. Our hall was tiled rather than carpeted, so when Mum hit the bottom, there was an almighty thud. Then silence. I broke it.

  “Oh my God!”

  Jemma dropped the knife.

  “Quick!” she said. I couldn’t do anything quickly now. Shock had kicked in. What had I just done? I had pushed my mother, with all the might I could muster, down our stairs. Mum was going to kill me. I was the little sister again.

  “What do we do?” I asked.

  I needed an answer. I needed Jemma to make everything right. When Mum got up, Jemma was going to have to protect me. Jemma was not going to be the sole victim any more.

  When I was in primary school, Jemma would come into my room, when I was having nightmares, hold my hand, talk soothingly and wipe my brow. I wanted Jemma to do that now, hold my hand, comfort me, give me a big sister kiss, stroke my hair and tell me not to worry. Let me know it was all going to be OK. Please God, let it all be OK.

  Richie

  Throughout the first half, stories were spreading, emanating from men with portable radios, about trouble at Hillsborough.

  “Bloody Liverpool fans!” was the initial reaction, “I can’t believe they are doing it again after Heysel.”

  Football violence had overshadowed football itself in the 1980’s and the tragedy at Heysel , four years earlier, where thirty nine Juventus fans had died, following riotous scenes pre-match, had led to English teams being banned from European competition. Wrongly, many Evertonians assumed, based on the first radio reports, that this was another incident of football hooliganism. The cursory words aimed at Liverpool fans soon eased though, as news slowly spread, that it was not violence on the terraces but an incident triggered by overcrowding.

  “They’ve called the game off,” someone reported, “they are saying one person may have died. On the radio they are saying it may be a young lad.”

  There was universal concern. Football loyalties in Merseyside and the surrounding areas often divided families in two, half blue for Everton, half red for Liverpool. The vast majority of Evertonians would have had friends and family at Hillsborough. Several of my friends from school had gone, as well as a couple of Uncles and many close friends of my Mum and Dads.

  “These things get blown out of all proportion,” one middle aged man said as he switched off his radio, “no-one will have died. Remember when Liverpool won the League at Stamford Bridge in ’86, when Dalglish scored? Rumours went around Goodison that Chelsea had equalised, then gone 2-1 up, 3-1 then 4-1. One nil it ended. I’ve heard it myself, there’s been some overcrowding in the Leppings Lane end, everyone’s really worried, but the police, the stewards and the paramedics will sort it out. It’ll be something and nothing. Might just teach the FA a lesson. Liverpool should have been in the home end, not that away one.”

  Minds that had temporarily been drawn away from events on the pitch in front of us, were soon focused back on our game. Everton were on top for most of the game, but it was a nervy match, full of mistakes with Everton eventually squeezing home one-nil with a scrambled goal from our Scottish winger, Pat Nevin. A bundled shot hit the post and Pat tapped in the rebound from about two feet out. It was never going to win “Goal of The Season”, but at the time it was our “Goal Of The Season” and when it went in, I hugged the stranger on my left rather than prostitute myself by hugging Ray.

  When the final whistle went, I was elated, even high fiving Ray. FA Cup Final here we come. A chance to avenge the 1986 defeat against Liverpool. I was so pleased, I almost hugged Ray at the end, then came to my senses and settled for that high five. I skipped, child like, all the way back to the car.

  “Put the radio on,” I implored Ray, “you’ll catch the match report and see if there’s any truth in that story about the other semi-final being called off.”

  Amazingly Ray switched it straight on without even a hint of a bullshit story about the day he played in a Semi-Final that was abandoned because he had to rugby tackle three dozen lions that escaped from the back of a passing circus lorry. I immediately twiddled the dial to find “Sport on Two”. I found it in an instant and the sombre voice of the presenter, Peter Jones, painted a horrendous mental image,

  “….well I think, the biggest irony is the sun is shining now and Hillsborough is quiet and over there to the left, the green Yorkshire hills…who would have known that people would die here, in the stadium, this afternoon.

  I don’t necessarily want to reflect on Heysel, but I was there that night, broadcasting with Emlyn Hughes and he was sitting behind me this afternoon and after half an hour of watching stretchers going out and oxygen cylinders being brought in and ambulance sirens screaming, he touched me on the shoulder and he said, “I can’t take any more,” and Emlyn Hughes left.

  The gymnasium here at Hillsborough is being used as a mortuary for the dead and at this moment, stewards have got little paper bags and they are gathering up the personal belongings of the spectators and there are red and white scarves of Liverpool and red and white bobble hats of Liverpool and red and white rosettes of Liverpool and nothing else………….and the sun shines now.”

  “Fucking hell!”

  We swore in unison.

  The dead. How many dead? As Ray drove home, initial figures were discussed, it was thought that over seventy had lost their lives and by the time we reached Stafford, that estimate had risen to over eighty. Men, women, boys and girls, out for the day to cheer their team on, would never return home. It was impossible to take in. This was not young men going to war, this was a football match. Rivalries existed but for most people they weren’t real, it was all just banter. Radio reports indicated that there were definitely several children amongst the dead.

  At a petrol station on the East Lancs Road, the enormity of the tragedy kicked in. Some of the delayed Liverpudlians had stopped to re-fuel and to grab a quick hot drink or a sandwich, still wearing their hats, scarves and badges. The red of Liverpool and the blue of Everton all mixed together, some relieved families who that morning had gone to their separate Semi-Finals were meeting back up. Everyone was united in grief for those less fortunate than them. I could not control my emotions any longer, my tears flowed.

  People are shallow creatures and to an extent I think grief is a selfish emotion. We do not cry solely for the dead, their family and their loved ones. We cry through empathy, often a selfish empathy, that, “it could have been me” feeling. Here I was, returning from the other FA Cup Semi-Final with a strange lump lurking in my ball sack. I sobbed from the depths of my soul, for the red half of my nearest city, for the families who had been or would be told of losses they would never learn to live with and I cried because I was one of the lucky ones at the

  “safe” Semi-Final and I cried because I did not know how long my luck would last.

  Throughout that day, my loathing for Ray had grown as quickly as a beanstalk in a fairytale, so at that precise point, I did not think it possible to hate him more, but Ray rose to the challenge. He put a consoling arm around me.

  “Don’t upset yourself, mate! Just think of it as karma.”

  My emotions shifted. Hairs stood up on my neck. Sadness was replaced by anger. I could not believe what I was hearing, even from him.

  “What?”

  “It’s karma, mate. For those Italians that died at Heysel. For us Evertonians that missed out on a European Cup campaign because of their hooligans. Do you know what this is? It’s a higher power levelling up
the score, that’s all.”

  Of all the stupid things I have ever heard in my entire life, this one wins. In fact, it does not just win, it ranks as a billion times more stupid than anything else I have ever heard before or since. For me, Ray’s words were the pinnacle of tactless stupidity in the aftermath of an almighty tragedy. When I look back at my reaction, I have always thought, considering who I was dealing with, I did exactly the right thing. I could have punched him in the face. I could have spat in his face, but I didn’t. I just leaned across the car, put my right arm around his neck, pulled him towards me and kissed him, throwing in a little tongue for good measure. Ray had just made me feel sick to the pits of my stomach and now I was making him feel the same.

  Pulling away forcefully, Ray looked at me in horror, bemusement and shock.

  “What the hell are you doing? That was disgusting! What are you playing at?”

  I opened my car door.

  “No, Ray, you are disgusting.”

  I closed the door behind me. I didn’t slam it, to make a scene, just gently pushed it to. As I walked towards the petrol station, I heard his engine start. I kept walking. As he got level with me, he rolled his window down.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  I looked straight forward, ignoring him. I had no intention of speaking to Ray that minute, that hour, that lifetime. I was not getting back in his car!

  “Are you getting back in this car so we can go home? Answer me, you weird little shit! What are you on?”

  Ray’s questions were met with silence. I just kept walking. Millions of people were united in a collective grief that day, yet I was stuck with one man who’s head was so far up his own arse, he did not understand.

  “Sod you then, Richie! Find your own way home!”

  Ray let his foot off the clutch, slammed his other on the accelerator and wheel span off.

  It wasn’t hard to get a lift back to Ormskirk. Half the supporters travelling home virtually passed by Ormskirk on the M58, which runs through to North Liverpool. I managed to get a lift off a married Liverpudlian couple, in their thirties who were very shaken up, particularly the lady, as they had been together in the Leppings Lane end when the tragedy had happened. They had been away from the main incidents as they had stood by one of the corner flags, but they had seen the events unfolding from only twenty metres away.