by David Peace
‘No!’
‘Which way?’ I said at the gate.
‘No, no, no.’
‘Which fucking way?’ I tightened my grip.
She spun round, looking back and beyond the bungalow.
I pushed her through the gate and marched her round the back of Maple Well Drive.
There was an empty brown field behind the bungalows, rising steeply up into the dirty white sky. There was a gate in a wall and a tractor path and, where the field met the sky, I could see a row of black sheds.
‘No!’
I pulled her off the road and pushed her up against the dry stone wall.
‘No, no, no.’
‘Shut your bloody mouth you fucking bitch.’ I gripped her mouth in my left hand, making a fish head of her face.
She was shaking but there were no tears.
‘Is he up there?’
She looked straight at me, then nodded once.
‘If he isn’t, or if he hears us coming, I’m going to fucking do you, you understand?’
She was looking straight at me, again she nodded just once.
I let go of her mouth, make-up and lipstick on my fingers.
She stood against the stone wall, not moving.
I took her by the arm and pushed her through the gate.
She stared up at the black line of sheds.
‘Move,’ I said, shoving her in the back.
We started up the tractor path, its trenches full of black water, the air stinking of animal shit.
She stumbled, she fell, she got back up.
I looked back down at Netherton, the same as Ossett, the same as anywhere.
I saw its bungalows and terraces, its shops and its garage.
She stumbled, she fell, she got back up.
I saw it all.
I saw a white van bumping up this path, throwing its little cargo around in the back.
I saw a white van bumping back down, its little cargo silent and still.
I saw Mrs Marsh at her kitchen sink, that fucking tea-towel in her hand, watching that van coming and going.
She stumbled, she fell, she got back up.
We were almost at the top of the hill, almost at the sheds. They looked like a stone-age village, built from the mud.
‘Which one’s his?’
She pointed to the end one, at a patchwork of tarpaulin and fertiliser sacks, corrugated iron and house bricks.
I went ahead, dragging her along behind me.
‘This one,’ I whispered, pointing at a black wooden door with a cement sack for a window.
She nodded.
‘Open it.’
She pulled back the door.
I shoved her inside.
There was a work-bench and tools, bags of fertiliser and cement stacked up, plant pots and feed trays. Empty plastic sacks covered the floor.
It stank of the earth.
‘Where is he?’
Mrs Marsh was giggling, the tea-towel up over her nose and mouth.
I spun round and punched her hard through the tea-towel.
She shrieked and howled and fell to her knees.
I grabbed some grey perm and dragged her over to the workbench, forcing her cheek into the wood.
‘Ah, ha-ha-ha. Ah, ha-ha-ha.’
She was laughing and screaming, her whole body shaking, one hand flailing through the plastic sacks upon the floor, the other squeezing her skirt up into her cunt.
I picked up some kind of chisel or wallpaper scraper.
‘Where is he?’
‘Mmm, ha-ha-ha. Mmm, ha-ha-ha.’
Her screams were a hum, her giggles rationed.
‘Where is he?’ I put the chisel to her flabby throat.
‘Ah, ha-ha-ha. Ah, ha-ha-ha.’
Again she began to kick out, thrashing through the plastic sacks with her knees and feet.
I looked down through the sacks and the bags and saw a piece of thick muddy rope.
I let go of her face and pushed her away.
I kicked away the sacks and found a manhole cover threaded through like a giant metal button with the dirty black rope.
I coiled the rope around my good and bad hands and pulled up the manhole cover, swinging it to the side.
Mrs Marsh was sat on her arse giggling under the bench, drumming her heels in hysterics.
I peered into the hole, into a narrow stone shaft with a metal ladder leading down into a faint light some fifty odd feet below.
It was some kind of drainage or ventilation shaft to a mine.
‘He down there?’
She drummed her feet up and down faster and faster, blood still running down from her nose into her mouth, suddenly spreading her legs and rubbing the tea-towel over the top of her tan tights and ruby red knickers.
I reached under the bench and dragged her out by her ankles. I pulled her over on to her stomach and sat astride her arse.
‘Ah, ha-ha-ha. Ah, ha-ha-ha.’
I reached up and took some rope from the bench. I hooked it round her neck and then ran it down round her wrists, finally knotting it twice round the leg of the bench.
Mrs Marsh had pissed herself.
I looked back down the shaft, turned round and put one foot into the dark.
I eased myself down into the shaft, the metal ladder cold and wet, the brick walls slippery against my sides.
Down I went, ten feet down.
I could hear the faint sound of running water beneath Mrs Marsh’s shrieks and screams.
Down I went, twenty feet down.
A circle of grey light and madness above.
Down I went, thirty feet down, the laughter and the cries dying with the descent.
I could sense water below, picturing mine shafts sunk with black water and open-mouthed bodies.
Down I went towards the light, not looking up, certain only that I was just going down.
Suddenly one of the sides to the shaft was gone and I was there in the light.
I twisted round, looking into the yellow mouth of a horizontal passage leading off to my right.
I went a little way further down and then turned, putting my elbows on to the mouth of the hole.
I pulled myself up into the light and crawled on to the shelf. The light was bright, the tunnel narrow and stretching off.
Unable to stand, I forced my belly and elbows across the rough bricks, along the passage towards the source of the light.
I was sweating and tired and dying to stand.
I kept on crawling, thinking of feet and then miles, all distance lost.
Suddenly the ceiling went up and I got to my knees, shuffling along, thinking of mountains of dirt piled on top of my head, until my knees and shins were raw and rebelled.
I could hear things moving in the dim light, mice or rats, children’s feet.
I put out my hand into the shale and the slime and brought back a shoe; a child’s sandal.
I lay on the bricks in the dust and the dirt and fought back the tears, stuck with the shoe, unable to throw it, unable to leave it.
I stood in a stoop and began to move again, banging my back on girders and beams, making a yard here, a foot there.
And then the air changed and the sound of water was gone and I could smell death and hear her moaning.
The ceiling went up again and there were more wooden beams to bang my head on and then I turned a corner at an old fall of rock and there I was.
I stood upright in the mouth of a big tunnel in the glare of ten Davy lamps, panting and sweating and thirsty as fuck, trying to take it all in.
Santa’s bloody grotto.
I dropped the shoe, tears streaking through my dirty face.
The tunnel had been bricked up about fifteen feet ahead, the bricks painted blue with white clouds, the floor covered in sacking and white feathers.
Against the two side walls were ten or so thin mirrors all lined up in a row.
Christmas tree angels and fairies and stars hung from the beams, all shini
ng in the glow of the lamps.
There were boxes and there were bags, there were clothes and there were tools.
There were cameras and there were lights, there were tape recorders and there were tapes.
And, beneath the blue wall at the end of the room, lying under some bloody sacking, there was George Marsh.
On a bed of dead red roses.
I walked across the blanket of feathers towards him.
He turned into the light, his eyes holes, his mouth open, his face a mask of red and black blood.
Marsh opened and closed his mouth, bubbles of blood bursting and popping, the howl of a dying dog coming up from within the pit of his belly.
I bent down and looked into the holes from where his eyes had once seen, into the mouth from where his tongue had once spoken, and spat a little piece of me.
I stood up and pulled back the sacking.
George Marsh was naked and dying.
His torso was purple, green, and black, smeared with shit, mud, and blood, burnt.
His cock and balls were gone, flaps of loose skin and pooled blood.
He was twitching and reached up to me, his little finger and thumb all he had left.
I stood up, kicking the blanket back at him.
He lay there with his head raised, praying for an end, the low moan of a man calling for death filling the cavern.
I went to the bags and to the boxes, tipping them over, spilling out clothes and tinsel, baubles and knives, paper crowns and giant needles, looking for books, looking for words.
I found pictures.
Boxes of them.
Schoolgirl photographs, head-shots of wide white smiles and big blue eyes, yellow hair and pink skin.
And then I saw it all again.
Black and white shots of Jeanette and Susan, dirty knees pulled up in corners, tiny hands across shut eyes, big white flashes filling up the room.
The adult smiles and the child’s eyes, dirty knees in angel suits, tiny hands across bloody holes, big white laughs filling up the room.
I saw a man in a paper crown and nothing else, fucking little girls underground.
I saw his wife stitching angel suits, kissing them better.
I saw a halfwit Polack boy, stealing photos and developing more.
I saw men building houses, watching little girls playing out across the road, taking their photos and making their notes, building new houses next to the old.
And then I was staring down at George Marsh again, the Gaffer, dying in agony on his bed of dead red roses.
‘George Marsh. Very nice man.’
But it wasn’t enough.
I saw Johnny Kelly, a hammer in his hand, a job half done.
It still wasn’t enough.
I saw a man wrapped in paper and plans, consumed by dark visions of angels, drawing houses made out of swans, pleading for silence.
And it still wasn’t enough.
I saw the same man crouched down on his arches in a dim corner, screaming do this for me George, because I WANT MORE AND I WANT IT NOW.
I saw John Dawson.
And it was too much, much too much.
I fled from the room back down the tunnel, stooping then crawling, listening for water and the shaft to the shed, his screams filling the dark, their screams my head:
‘There was a lovely view before they put them new houses up.’
I came to the ladder and pulled myself up, scraping my back on the lip to the light.
Up I went, up.
I got to the top and hauled myself back into the shed.
She was still there, trussed on her belly and tied to the bench.
I lay on the plastic sacks, panting and sweating and running on fear.
She smiled at me, drool down her chin, piss on her tights.
I grabbed a knife from the bench and cut through the ropes.
I pushed her over to the shaft and pulled her head back by her perm, the knife at her throat.
‘You’re going back down there.’
I turned her around and kicked her legs into the void.
‘You can climb or fall. I don’t give a fuck.’
She put a foot upon a rung and began to climb down, her eyes on mine.
‘Until death do you part,’ I spat after her.
Her eyes shone up from the dark, not blinking.
I turned round, picked up the thick black rope, and swung the manhole cover back over the hole.
I grabbed a bag of cement and hauled it over on to the manhole, and then another, and another, and another.
Then I took bags of fertiliser and put them on top of the bags of cement.
I sat on the bags and felt my legs and feet go cold.
I got up and picked a padlock and a key off the work-bench.
I got up and went out of the shed. I closed the door and locked it with the padlock.
I ran down the field, throwing the key off into the mud.
The door to Number 16 was still ajar, Crown Court on the TV.
I went inside and took a shit.
I turned off the TV.
I sat on their sofa and thought about Paula.
Then I went through their rooms and all of their drawers.
I found a shotgun in the wardrobe and boxes of shells. I wrapped it in a bin bag and went out to the car. I put the shotgun and the shells in the boot of the Maxi.
I went back to the bungalow and had a last look around, then I locked the door and went down the path.
I stood by the wall and looked up at the black row of sheds, the rain on my face, me covered in mud.
I got in the car and drove away.
4 LUV.
All for love.
Shangrila, raindrops falling from its gutters, crouched alone against the worn grey sky.
I parked behind another dirty hedge on another empty road and walked up another sad drive.
It was sleeting and I wondered again if it made a blind bit of difference to the giant orange fish in the pond and I knew George Marsh was suffering and that Don Foster must have suffered too and I didn’t know how that made me feel.
I wanted to go and see those big bright fish, but I kept on walking.
There were no cars in the drive, just two wet pints of milk sitting on the doorstep in a wire-frame basket.
I felt sick and scared.
I looked down.
I had a shotgun in my arms.
I pressed the doorbell and listened to the chimes echo through Shangrila, thinking of George Marsh’s bloody cock and Don Foster’s bloody knees.
There was no answer.
I pressed the doorbell again and started knocking with the butt of the gun.
Still no answer.
I tried the door.
It was open.
I went inside.
‘Hello?’
The house was cold and almost quiet.
I stood in the hallway and said again, ‘Hello?’
There was a low hissing noise followed by a repeated dull click.
I turned left into a large white living room.
Above an unused fireplace there was an enlarged black and white photograph of a swan taking off from a lake.
She wasn’t alone:
On every table, on every shelf, on every windowsill, wooden swans, glass swans, and china swans.
Swans in flight, swans asleep, and two giant swans kissing, their necks and bills forming a big love-heart.
Two swans swimming.
Bingo.
Even down to the matchboxes above the empty fireplace.
I stood staring at the swans, listening to the hissing and the clicking.
The room was freezing.
I walked over to a big wooden box, leaving muddy footprints on the cream carpet. I put down the shotgun and lifted up the lid of the box and picked the needle off the record. It was Mahler.
Songs for Dead Children.
I turned around suddenly, looking out across the lawn, thinking I could hear a car com
ing up the drive.
It was just the wind.
I went over to the window and stood looking down at the hedge.
There was something down there, something in the garden.
For a moment, I thought I could see a brown-haired gypsy girl sitting under the hedge, barefoot with twigs in her hair.
I closed my eyes, opened them, and she was gone.
I could hear a faint drumming sound.
I stepped back on to a deep cream rug, kicking a glass that was already lying on its side in a damp stain. I picked it up and placed it on a swan coaster on a glass coffee table, next to a newspaper.
It was today’s newspaper, my newspaper.
Two huge headlines, two days before Christmas:
RL STAR’S SISTER MURDERED.
COUNCILLOR RESIGNS.
Two faces, two sets of dark newsprint eyes staring up at me.
Two stories, by Jack fucking Whitehead and George Greaves.
I picked up the paper, sat down on a big cream sofa, and read the news:
The body of Mrs Paula Garland was found by police at her Castleford home early Sunday morning, after neighbours reported hearing screams.
Mrs Garland, thirty-two, was the sister of Wakefield Trinity forward Johnny Kelly. In 1969, Mrs Garland’s daughter Jeanette, aged eight, disappeared on her way home from school and, despite a massive police hunt, has never been found. Two years later, in 1971, Mrs Garland’s husband Geoff committed suicide.
Police sources told this correspondent that they are treating Mrs Garland’s death as murder and a number of people are believed to be helping police with their enquiries. A news conference has been scheduled for early Monday morning.
Johnny Kelly, twenty-eight, was unavailable for comment.
The dark newsprint eyes, Paula not smiling, looking already dead.
William Shaw, the Labour leader and Chairman of the new Wakefield Metropolitan District Council, resigned on Sunday in a move that shocked the city.
In a brief statement, Shaw, fifty-eight, cited increasing ill-health as the reason behind his decision.
Shaw, the older brother of the Home Office Minister of State Robert Shaw, entered Labour politics through the Transport and General Workers’ Union. He rose to be a regional organiser and represented the T.G.W.U. on the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party.
A former Alderman and active for many years in West Riding politics, Shaw was, however, a leading advocate of Local Government reform and had been a member of the Redcliffe–Maud Committee.
