The Last Man in Yorkshire.
Your eyes are open and you are staring up at the cracks in the ceiling, listening to the footsteps above, a kettle boiling and a cup breaking, raised voices in an argument about where all the money had gone, the rain falling hard behind the words -
You lying there -
Lying there -
The branches tapping against the window pane.
You get out of bed and walk into the kitchen.
It is eight o’clock -
Thursday 26 May 1983:
You put the kettle and the radio on:
You open the fridge and there’s nothing -
No milk, no bread -
The cupboard and there’s nothing -
You turn the kettle and the radio off.
D-14 .
The Parthenon, Wood Street, Wakefield -
Milky coffee with a skin and a toasted teacake inside -
Rain and umbrellas out.
The papers, your paper, everybody’s paper -
Fuck ’em all and watch their Rome burn.
Not one single fucking word about Jimmy Ashworth -
Not one single word about Hazel Atkins -
Not one.
You look at your watch:
Almost ten, almost time.
The drive out in the rain -
The deserted spaces as depressing as the houses and buildings between them -
Jimmy Young kissing Thatcher’s arse on the radio, the cum drying in his y-fronts as members of the Great British Public call in -
‘No Jimmy, it’s not,’ you shout alone in your car. ‘And neither are you, you thick and greedy old cunt. But we’ll not forget you and your cruel ways, not when we’re round your house to do the Mussolini.’
Alone in your car on the way to see another Jimmy -
A very different Jimmy -
Jimmy Ashworth -
Alone in your car on the way to his funeral.
The funeral of a suicide -
Your third.
Second funeral in a fortnight -
The same smell:
The flowers that stink of piss, that stink of sweat.
Wakefield crematorium, Kettlethorpe.
Sheets of rain battering the crocuses back underground, beheading the daffodils, the petals stuck to the soles of your shoes, with the cigarette ends and the crisp packets.
You sit near the back, seven other people down the front:
Mrs Ashworth, her husband, and her other son -
Two boys in denim jackets, two girls with back-combed hair -
The vicar says the words and they shed their tears. They set fire to him and shed some more. Then everyone walks away for a cigarette and a piss, a sandwich and a pint.
There are three coppers at the back by the door, Maurice Jobson one of them.
There’s a new Rover parked outside -
The window’s down, the driver looking at himself in the wing mirror -
A smug cunt looking back at him.
‘Give you a lift, can I, John?’ says Clive McGuinness.
‘No,’ you say and light a cig.
‘Five minutes, John?’ he says. ‘That’s all I ask.’
‘Didn’t have five bloody minutes on Monday night, did you?’
‘John,’ he sighs. ‘Look, I’m sorry about that.’
You drop your cigarette into the gutter with the yellow petals and the crisp packets. You walk around the back of the Rover. He has opened the passenger door for you. You get in. He leans across you to close the door -
‘Thank you, John,’ says McGuinness.
You turn to face him -
The smug cunt as immaculately turned out as ever:
Head to toe in Austin Reed and Jaeger, he stinks of aftershave.
The fat man from C &A says: ‘I’m all ears, Clive.’
‘There’ll be an inquiry, John.’
‘An internal police inquiry.’
‘He confessed, John.’
‘Bollocks.’
‘It was too much for him, John.’
‘What was? The torture? The beatings? His own fucking solicitor?’
‘The guilt, John. The guilt.’
‘About what?’
‘John, John -’
The back door opens -
You glance in the rearview mirror:
