by Nick Hornby
I’ve never met any of the ones I’ve done the meal for. They don’t let them in the canteen area, so I never set eyes on them. I suppose I am curious sometimes, to know what they’re like. Thai-style dipping sauce – I’d like to have seen him. And the one who killed his children. I’d have liked to try and tempt him into something more than a sandwich. I do feel I know them, in a way. I feel close to them. I wonder if they feel the same about me. And it’s funny because the next morning they’re gone. And we never even spoke. Sometimes the wardens will pass something on; either ‘That went down well,’ or ‘He looked happy with that.’ John sometimes says, ‘There was someone up there wanted to marry you last night, Maggie, but you missed your chance.’ And as I’m always telling John, ‘Flattery will get you everywhere.’ The lawyer sent a note down saying ‘My compliments to the chef’. No one had ever done that before. I blushed when I read it, I was so pleased. I think everyone likes a compliment. It makes you feel appreciated.
The meal goes up at 8.00 and the executions are directly after midnight. There’s some legal reason for that, I think. But that’s four hours between the meal and the end of it and I often wonder if they get peckish again. Every now and again, you’ll send the meal up and they’ll eat it, and then the phone call comes through from the judge and they get a reprieve. All very dramatic. Well, good for them. But often it’s only temporary and, a month later, you’re cooking the same meal for them all over again. This can go on a while. There’s one up there now who’s had his last meal five times. Always the same: roast beef with Yorkshire pudding and all the trimmings, vanilla ice cream afterwards with two boudoir biscuits in it and a cup of tea. You’d think he’d be bored of it by now and fancy a change. One time I’d done a chilli con carne for someone. Deadly Dudley took it up, but by the time he got up there, the reprieve had come through and they’d already taken the prisoner off the Row. So Deadly Dudley turns round and comes back in and sets the tray down on the counter. And then he starts hovering, the way he sometimes does. ‘Seems a pity to waste it,’ he said. ‘Oh, go on, then,’ I said, and he sat down and tucked in. Men and food, honestly.
I can be away by 8.30 which is plenty of time for the bus. Normally, I’ll go home and do myself something from the freezer. One of those individual cottage pies – Sainsbury’s do a good one. Imagine: me eating croquettes out of a packet. I wouldn’t have dreamed of it while Derek was alive. It was always fresh vegetables then. But somehow, to peel a potato for yourself … When you’re on your own, it doesn’t seem worth it.
There’s often a crowd outside when I leave. People come to the gates when there’s an execution. Often it’s the same people. I notice them. There’s a man with a big black parka and a Woolworth’s carrier bag. He’s always there. I don’t know why. It’s not like there’s anything to see. There isn’t even a clock that chimes. It just gets to be after midnight, and at that point they all go away again. So the wardens tell me. Sometimes, when I leave, there might be some banners and there might be a bit of shouting going on. But more often than not they’re just standing there quietly, like they’re waiting for something, I’ve no idea what.
Last night was odd, though. I hadn’t quite managed to get the monthly freezer check done during the day, so after they’d taken up the cauliflower cheese for the boy in the tree, I finished the job off. It must have taken about an hour and a half, all told. And I’d got my coat on and I’d got my bag together and I was just tying a scarf around my head, because it was a filthy night, when Dave came back with the tray. He looked a bit embarrassed when he saw me and I didn’t know why at first. And, of course, ordinarily I wouldn’t get to see the trays because usually, by the time I get in the next day, they’ve been cleared away by the overnight cleaners. And Dave didn’t say anything, just put it down and turned away and I got a good look then and I wished I hadn’t because, do you know what, he hadn’t touched it.
Peter Shelley
PATRICK MARBER
Where was I when Kennedy got shot?
Between my mother’s legs, getting born.
Georgia thought this was the coolest thing.
It’s summer, 1978. We’re both fourteen.
We’re at the same school in the same class.
She hates me. Because she does.
She’s got three items of clothing: a cotton slash-neck dress down to her knees and a pair of black brogue lace-ups.
She says underwear’s for hippies.
She has three dresses: one black, one pink, one white.
Each month she dyes her hair one of these colours.
She also has different coloured laces.
I like her best when she has white hair, a black dress and pink laces.
That’s what she’s wearing the day school breaks up.
I’ve gone to the record shop to buy the new Buzzcocks single.
Last winter they’d done a single called ‘Orgasm Addict’.
The sleeve was screaming yellow with a collage of a naked woman on it.
She had mouths on her breasts and instead of her head she had an iron.
If I could be anyone I’d be Pete Shelley.
Georgia’s coming out as I go in.
‘What’ve you bought?’
She says, ‘New Buzzcocks single.’
‘ “Love You More”?’
And she says, ‘Yeah … you like Buzzcocks?’
And I say, ‘What’s more, they like me.’
She smiles a bit, showing her funny, gappy teeth and I wonder what it would be like to slither my tongue around in her mouth.
She’s not so good looking but she has this way of being her which is just her thing. But I’m no oil painting either, I suppose.
She thinks about something and then she says, ‘Do you want to come back to my house and listen to it?’
I say, ‘Maybe,’ and she says, ‘Well, fuck off then.’
I say, ‘Maybe I will fuck off,’ and she says, ‘If you want to come with me I live above that pub.’
She points.
‘The Swan?’ I say.
‘Go to the black door at the side and push the buzzer saying
“Murphy”.’ So I say, ‘OK, I’ll just go and buy it myself.’ And she says, ‘OK’, and I say, ‘See you.’
I go into the shop and buy the record and I also buy her a copy of ‘Gary Gilmore’s Eyes’ by The Adverts in case she doesn’t have it. The B side is better than the A side. It’s called ‘Bored Teenagers’ and the chorus goes, ‘We’re just bored teenagers, see ourselves as strangers’, or something like that and at the end the lead singer (T.V. Smith) goes, ‘We’re just bored teenagers, bored out of our heads bored out of our MINDS’, and the way he screams ‘minds’ is really quite passionate.
I buy her this record for two reasons: first, I think she’ll be impressed that I’ve even heard of it and the second reason is that on the collage on the front cover it says, ‘One rural oaf in Georgia even sent me a hunk of rope’. I don’t know why. But I know from geography that Georgia is a state in America. I think Georgia will like seeing her name in print.
So I press that buzzer and she lets me in and I follow her up a long flight of dark stairs. They have red lino on them and steel edges so you won’t slip. It stinks of old smells and some new smells, too. As she goes up I look at the creases in the backs of her knees.
We go into the kitchen and she gets two cans of beer out of the fridge and throws me one. The fridge is full of beer. She opens her can and I open mine and we both drink. Georgia sits on the table dangling her legs and I lean in the doorway, just leaning and drinking my beer. We don’t say much.
She says, ‘You got a fag?’ and I say, ‘No, I don’t smoke.’ Georgia looks disappointed and then she calls down the corridor, ‘Mum, you got any fags?’ and a voice (Irish sounding) comes back, ‘Yeah, in here.’
In our house, our flat, no one smokes and everything is clean, plus if I invite someone round for tea my mum will always be there fussing around and making
sure we’ve got enough food and stuff. Georgia gets up from the table and says, ‘Come and meet my mum.’
We go down a corridor full of old newspapers, beer crates and musical instruments and speakers all in their black suitcases. The carpet is like fungus on cheese.
In her mother’s room the curtains are closed and she’s in bed. The TV’s on showing the horse racing. She makes a shushing noise to us. The race ends and as it does she goes, ‘Ahh, shite.’
Georgia sits on the bed and gives her mum a kiss. Her mum says, ‘That’s your father in a filthy mood all night. Someone gave him a tip, this “dead-on certainty” and he’s rushed off to the bookies like greased arse lightning. Get us the cigs would you love, they’re on the table.’
I thought she was talking to Georgia and then I realize, when nothing happens, that she’s talking to me.
I go over to the table. It’s a round, Formica pub table with a rectangular mirror propped up against the wall. The wallpaper has strange yellow flowers on it. I give her the cigarettes. There’s a book of matches, ‘The Swan’ matches, tucked into the cellophane. I say, ‘Here you are’, and she says, ‘Have a seat then.’ There are no chairs in the room so I sit on the bed, on the other side from Georgia with her mother in between us.
The sun is coming in through a gap in the curtains and wherever the sun touches in the room it looks clean and everywhere else looks like it’s been smeared with dishwater.
‘So, Georgia, who’s your friend? Are you going to introduce us?’
Georgia lights a cigarette.
‘This,’ she says, ‘is my friend, Peter Shelley. Peter Shelley, this is my mum.’
We shake hands.
I say, ‘Pleased to meet you, Mrs Murphy’, and she says, ‘Call me Claire.’
Then she takes a drag and says, ‘Now, if you’ll forgive me for a while I need a snooze before we open this evening. Will we be seeing you later, Mr Shelley?’
‘I don’t know, maybe.’ Her calling me ‘Mr Shelley’ gives me a little snigger inside.
‘Well, you’re welcome to stay if you want, have you far to go?’
‘The Attlee. On the other side of the park.’
‘I’ve heard it’s quite nice, the Attlee.’
‘It’s OK.’
‘Good. Georgia, give him some tea, he’s wasting into thin air.’
‘Bye, Peter.’
‘Bye.’
On the way back to the kitchen Georgia has her hands behind her back. She quickly clenches and unclenches her hands; three pulsebeats.
In the kitchen she makes tea. She says ‘How many sugars?’ and I say three please.
I tell her I like her mum and she says she does too. She says her mum lets her do whatever she wants. I say my mum lets me do whatever she wants me to do.
Georgia smiles and gives me a funny look.
I ask her why she said I was Pete Shelley and she says, ‘Because I want you to be’; and I say, ‘So do I’, and she replies, ‘So, there you are.’
We go into her bedroom. Ads from the NME are stuck on the walls, posters of The Clash, Buzzcocks, Sex Pistols, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Ian Dury, Dead Kennedys and some others. Records everywhere. Two dresses on a clothes rack.
I give her The Adverts single and she’s pleased. She touches my arm for a second and I go hard. It’s the weirdest. It goes down after a while.
So we sit on her bed with the mugs on the floor.
We get our Buzzcocks singles out of their bags. We decide to swap.
For a lark you could say. We agree that this cover is better than the last two (‘What Do I Get?’ and ‘I Don’t Mind’). It’s a pink and purple graphic of nine rooms seen from above.
The Buzzcocks logo (with the second Z raised above the first) is in pink in the bottom left-hand corner. In capitals at the bottom of the sleeve it says UP36433: LOVE YOU MORE.
The back of the sleeve is more complicated: a cartoon man and woman are in the same nine rooms but never together. They’re moving speakers around … maybe to get the right sound. Who knows?
In the bottom right-hand corner room there’s a man holding a board or tray with the letter K on it. It’s hard to say what he’s up to. It’s all quite mysterious.
Georgia takes the disc out of the sleeve and because it’s brand new it kind of sticks to the paper producing a tiny static crackle. We look at it.
The first thing we notice is how short it is: 1.45.
The B side which they always call ‘1 side’ is 2.49. It’s called ‘Noise Annoys’.
Georgia holds the side of the record with her finger tips.
Her fingers are pretty chewed up but they look nice all the same.
I sip my tea to be polite. It’s evil. The milk’s all sour and floating about.
She says, ‘Do you think it’ll be quite fast or very fast?’
I say that as long as it isn’t slow I don’t care, but given that it’s very short it will probably be very fast.
We examine the inner spiral for more information.
Scratched in capitals it says, ‘THE CROSSOVER MARKET’. We don’t know what this means.
Then, Georgia says, ‘Come on, let’s put it on.’
I nod. My mouth is full of tea. She puts her hand on my leg and holds the record with her thumb on the A side and her fingers on the 1 side.
I’m looking at her, my face is three inches from hers and she says, ‘Spit it out all over me.’ I shake my head. Meanwhile, my cheeks are bulging and my mouth is smiling. She says, ‘Dare you.’ Her hand is between my legs now and she’s beginning to move it further up. I spit my tea in her face and then she buries her face into mine and it’s hot and wet. Her mouth tastes of beer and cigarettes and she’s waggling her tongue about and I’m doing the same. I can feel her teeth and the gaps between them and I go, ‘I like these bits,’ and she says, ‘They’re horrible,’ and I say, ‘No, I love them.’
We’re like two dogs scrapping.
I can’t get my hands and mouth in enough places at once.
I’m thinking I might come any second and I don’t know if this is allowed.
Does she know about spunk? She must do, she’s got ‘Orgasm Addict’.
I vaguely wonder if she has spunk or some equivalent thing that would come out.
I hope so.
Suddenly she gets up and puts the record on at top volume and we start squirming about again.
The record plays over and over because her record player has something that makes it do that. After about the fourth time we can make out more of the words in the rushing, relentless noise and we sing along and we’re at each other like mad.
I’m on top of her, her dress is up to her waist and she’s got her shoes on, I put my hand down between her legs and put some fingers (three) up her and take them out and taste it. It tastes of
God knows what but something interesting.
Georgia licks my fingers and then wrinkles her nose.
‘Do you know what to do?’
I say, ‘Not certain, do you?’
She says, ‘No, but don’t stop.’
She puts her hand down my trousers. She begins to wank me just how I do it to myself and I’m really totally shocked.
How does she know how to do it? How could she know?
I say, ‘Don’t, I’ll come,’ and she whispers in my ear, ‘Go on then.’
So I do.
She wipes some of it on her sheets and then licks her hand and then kisses me so I can taste some of it.
‘Love You More’ is tearing out of her crappy speakers.
The song is so loud and fast it just comes and goes and the ending is desperately sudden and sad. My trousers are down and her dress is up to her neck, her chest is as flat as mine. I say too loud right in her ear shouting over the music, ‘Now what?’
She nods and suddenly her mouth is on my cock and her cunt is in my face and we’re wriggling away like fish. I start to lick all round the area and to be honest I feel a bit stupid for a second b
ecause the music stops while the record player does its thing and we’re just making these noises. And suddenly I imagine my tongue is painting in a wall where the plaster’s broken off, which is quite a nice thing to do but only quite nice. And she’s kind of gnawing away on some bone I can see out the corner of my eye and it all seems a bit ridiculous. I can’t quite concentrate on enjoying what she’s doing because I’m having to do the stuff to her and it’s really quiet and just these slippy sloppy noises but then the song starts again and it’s OK again. So we do that for a bit and then when the song begins again, maybe the sixteenth time, she crawls up to my face and she says, ‘Come on, let’s fuck.’
I get on top of her and she smiles and Pete Shelley’s wailing away. I find the right hole quite quickly and I’m not, to tell the truth, sure it is the right one but Georgia says it is and then when it goes in, we’re both holding our breath and staring wide eyed at each other and I go, ‘Fucking hell,’ and she says, ‘Jesus fucking Christ’, and we’re both sort of laughing and it’s the most totally weird feeling for me so for her it must be equally if not more weird and I’m also thinking this is what the world makes such a fuss about your whole life and I get it now.
I lie on top of her and it goes all the way in and we’re both by this time very sweaty and covered in spit (and tea and a bit of spunk) and we suddenly lie very still. Just contemplating our situation.
I say, ‘What does it feel like?’
Georgia says, ‘I don’t know, full, funny, it feels nice. What does it feel like for you?’
‘I don’t know, like someone’s taken all my skin off and put me in a warm bath.’
She says, ‘Move about, like this.’
She begins to move and I move with her very, very fast and she says, ‘Tell me when you’re coming, I’m coming, tell me when you’re coming,’ and I say, ‘Now, Now’ and we come and then collapse in a heap as they say.
After a while she leans over and unplugs the record player just before it starts again.
