Fan (3 page)

Munching on toast, the phone erupting in the hallway. He waited for Kelly to get it.

‘It’s for you,’ she said.

‘Not work…’

‘No, I don’t think so. It’s nobody I recognise.’

He didn’t get up.

‘Not a fucking sales call.’

Kelly moved across the kitchen to the sink, flushed her mug under the tap.

‘He asked for John,’ she said.

He lugged himself out of the chair and barefooted it across the cold tiles to the phone, lifted the receiver, listened, waited a moment.

‘Alright?’

A voice on the other end. East Midlands accent. A voice from the old town?

‘Alright—’

‘Remember me?’

‘Who is it?’

‘You don’t remember?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘No, I don’t.’

A fucking fruit machine, the images revolving and flashing. This face. That face.

‘Black Jack,’ said the voice.

His felt his stomach drop away.

Reels dropping into place.

‘I’ve some news, mate.’

‘Right.’

‘It’s not easy…’

Dead tone. Monosyllabic.

‘It’s Stimmo.’

Stimmo.

‘He’s only gone and done himself.’

A chill in his bones, a raking down his spine.

‘Hello?’

‘Yes, mate, I’m here.’

‘The service is on Friday. I know it’s late notice. Took me a while to find you…’

‘Right. Cheers. For letting me know.’

‘10 a.m. at the crem.’

‘Right, mate.’

‘We thought you’d want to know. We’re all in shock. Right fucked up, to be honest.’

‘How did you…’

‘T-Gally. His mam called your mam. Friday. See you there.’

‘Right. Cheers, mate. Cheers for calling.’

Silence at the other end.

‘Hello?’ asked Finchy.

‘Yes, mate.’

‘I said thanks for calling.’

‘I heard. I said we’ll see you Friday.’

Finchy paused.

‘Aye,’ he said, at last. ‘I’ll be there.’

The reels at a standstill. Him at a standstill, in the kitchen, bare feet on the cold tiles.

Stimmo. Stimmo. Fucking Stimmo.

The black mares in free gallop, running wherever they fucking pleased. The black mares trapped in a mass of bodies.

Kelly came into the kitchen. He stared ahead of himself, feeling her in his peripheral vision. A blur. A shadow.

‘Are you okay?’

An absent nod of the head.

‘Who was it?’

‘An old mate of mine. A bloke from years ago. Nobody you’d know.’

She stood there watching him. He didn’t say anything else.

‘I have to go,’ she said.

‘Yeah,’ he said.

‘Will you be okay?’

He nodded.

He spotted the twist in her lips, knew what she was thinking. And then he said, ‘Tonight. We can talk about it tonight. We can talk about everything tonight.’

After she’d gone, after she’d shut the door behind her, he went upstairs to get ready for work. He pulled on a shirt and stood at the window doing up the buttons, looking down on the little patch of lawn, the scattered leaves, the cluster of houses.

The Close in autumn.

Stimmo ahead of him in the queue for the Trent end, the turnstile clicking and counting them in. The two of them slipping in the side of the end pen, along the fence, into the centre pen, up behind the goal. Into the action. Stimmo at Derby giving the sheep-shaggers grief. The rain pelting down. Stimmo piling on top of the others at Tottenham as Forest nick a late winner. Stimmo on the train on the way back from Hillsborough, staring out of the window, blanking the guard when he came for the tickets, telling the guard to fuck off, telling each and every one of them to fuck off. Stimmo at the bar in the Hound during Italia 90, older than his years, yet a lesser being. That was the last time he saw the guy. He’d stopped going to football, worked every Saturday, said he had to, said he had no fucking choice. Maybe it was true.

Or maybe it was bollocks?

He pulled a tie out of the wardrobe and placed it around his neck, thinking about method, wondering, imagining, trying not to imagine. The postman came up the drive. He watched him sort the letters in the bundle, pick out a couple. He heard
the letter box snap. The woman at number nine was in her window, standing looking in his direction, there in just her bathrobe. She pulled the curtains shut. The postie was two doors down already. Finchy looked at the clock on the dresser. Time was ticking on. He had to get going. He coughed. He wasn’t sure he wanted to go anywhere.

Town was busy, the streets rammed, the sky full of charcoal clouds. It was raining again. Everything was blurred streaks. When he reached the school he sat in the car park with the engine idling, watching the kids meander through the gates and scatter in all directions, watching the buses pull in and kids flood out. He looked at the school building, bent out of shape by the water droplets on the windscreen. He sat there for fifteen minutes trying to drag himself in the direction of his classroom, lost in a fog.

He’d go up after work, stay overnight, get it over with and come home again. And tonight he’d give Kelly what she wanted. Because if he was anything, if he was man at all he’d do that at least, sit down and talk it all through, tell her honestly what he was feeling about the two of them, about babies and fatherhood, what he felt their next steps were. Not that it would make a difference. She was set in one direction. There was no fucking doubt about that.

He’s taking the morning register while his form stare absently out of the classroom windows, stare absently at their mobile phones, stare absently at the blank desks in front of them. He can’t blame the fuckers, not on this dismal day. He’s hardly with it himself.

A crisp packet blows against the window and he momentarily loses himself. He forgets where he is on the list, whose name he’s called out and who he hasn’t. He can’t be arsed to start again. Besides, the bell is ringing for the end of registration, for the start of period one.

He turns to Kirsty Watson.

‘Can you count up before we go?’ he asks.

And without question, without comment, she takes on the job, rising to her feet, counting each body rising from the chair, each body moving towards the door.

‘One, two, three, four…’

Cars lined bumper to bumper.

‘… nine, ten, eleven, twelve…’

Ashen faces and blank expressions.

‘Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen…’

Adidas Sambas pounding the concrete.

Adidas Sambas on the Penistone Road.

‘Sir? Are you okay, sir?’

The classroom is empty save for Kirsty Watson, Kirsty Watson and her eager to please smile. Her sweet smile.

‘Twenty-four, sir,’ she says. ‘All except Becca Smith.’

He nods.

‘Are you sure you should be back in, sir,’ asks Kirsty Watson, who is thirteen years old. ‘Only you don’t look too good.’

‘I’m fine,’ he says. ‘I’m fine and dandy.’

But the first two lessons of the day are bastard trials and
today it is his break duty. Things can only go downhill from here.

2 p.m.

Finchy’s in the head’s office.

He’s staring at a monitor, staring at an incident that happened two hours earlier, living a moment from another lifetime.

The camera shows a narrow corridor, a set of stairs leading away, an extra down-step, vending machines, kids huddled in the corner, paying homage to the vending god. At the top of the frame, the double doors leading to the playground, a splash of pale light beyond.

The pinch point.

Kids are moving to and fro, in dribs and drabs, in twos and threes, in larger groups. Girls linked with girls. Lads marching shoulder to shoulder. Much posturing.

Occasionally, the back of Finchy’s head appears in the picture, there and not there, joking with Carly Edmunds, having a go at the lads with trainers and the two little shits kicking at the vending god for not delivering their dreams. Break duty like all break duties. A disruption to his day. A pain in the fucking rear.

Break is over. The camera shows a growing swell, shows dribs and drabs thickening in that space between the vending machines and the bottom of the stairs. Kids struggling to get in, kids struggling to get out. The biggest laughing and joking.

‘I told them,’ he says. ‘There, see that one look back over his shoulder? That’s Billy Stubbs. He’s looking at me. He’s heard me having a go. I bloody told him.’

But the daft bastard’s not listening, not acknowledging him at all.

More kids come through the doors, fighting the tide. A tiny blonde thing is caught up in the flow. There are big lads in the foreground now, the last to leave the canteen. In their fucking element. Bodies press against bodies, press against plaster, press against glass, until the artery is blocked. The little blonde thing’s there one moment and gone the next. He is simply engulfed. And there are three or four on the ground now. But Finchy can’t see them. All he can see on the screen is a collection of heads and shoulders, confused, anguished faces. They’re down there, though, down amongst the boots and the trainers and the heels and the knees.

That’s why he’s here.

In the head’s office.

In the fucking shit.