The Damned Utd by David Peace (easy readers txt) 📕

Revie; Leeds United and Don Revie who have lost the league by a single point to Arsenal; Arsenal who have not only won the league but also the cup and become only the second-ever team to win the Double –

Tottenham being the only other team. Tottenham and Dave Mackay.

Two minutes from the end, from the end of his last match, a match Derby are winning 2–0, and Dave Mackay is still rushing to take a throw-in; still clapping urgently, demanding concentration and 100 per cent –

He has played all forty-two games of this season. Every single one of them.

Then the final whistle of his final match comes and off he goes, running from the pitch with a quick wave to the 33,651 here to see him off, off down that tunnel, down that tunnel and he’s gone –

Irreplaceable. Fucking irreplaceable.

Derby County have finished ninth, scoring fifty-six and conceding fifty- four, drawing five at home and five away, winning sixteen and losing sixteen –

The symmetry being no bloody consolation whatsoever –

Because there is no fucking consolation –

No consolation for not winning –

That’s irreplaceable.

* * *

I don’t go back to the Dragonara. Not tonight. I go back home to Derby. Past the Midland Hotel. Past the Baseball Ground. But I don’t stop. Not tonight –

Tonight, I get back to the house, the lights off and the door locked. I put away the car and I go inside the house. I put on a light and I make myself a cup of tea. I switch on the fire and I sit down in the rocking chair. I pick up the paper and I try to read, but it’s all about Nixon and resignation, resignation, resignation:

‘I have never been a quitter. To leave office before my term is complete is abhorrent to every instinct in my body …‘

I put down the paper and I switch on the telly, but there’s nothing on except documentaries and news programmes about Cyprus, Cyprus, Cyprus:

Deceit and division; division and hate; hate and war; war and death.

I switch off the telly and I switch off the fire. I wash up my pots and I switch off the lights. I go up the stairs and I clean my teeth. I look in my daughter’s room and I kiss her sleeping head. I look in my sons’ room and my eldest one says, ‘Dad?’

‘You still awake, are you?’ I ask him. ‘You should be asleep.’

‘What time is it, Dad?’ he asks me.

I look at my watch, but it’s not there. I tell him, ‘I don’t know, but it’s late.’

‘You going to bed now, are you, Dad?’

‘Course, I am,’ I tell him. ‘I got work tomorrow, haven’t I? You want to come?’

‘Not really,’ he says. ‘But will you tell us a joke? A new one?’

‘I don’t think I’ve got any new jokes.’

‘But you’ve always got jokes, Dad,’ he says. ‘You know loads of jokes.’

‘All right then,’ I tell him. ‘There’s this bloke walking about down in London and suddenly London gets hit by an A-bomb …’

‘Is this the joke, Dad?’ he asks me.

‘Yes,’ I tell him. ‘Just listen …’

‘Is it a funny joke?’

‘Just listen to me, will you?’ I tell him again. ‘So there’s this bloke walking about and London gets hit by an A-bomb and now this bloke is the only man left in the whole of London. So he walks around and around London, the whole of London, and it takes him four or five days, until finally he realizes that he must be the only person left in the whole of London and he suddenly feels very, very lonely because there’s nobody else to talk to. Nobody else but him. So he decides that he’s had enough, that he doesn’t want to be the only man left, and so he climbs up to the top of the Post Office tower…’

‘The Post Office tower’s all right then, is it, Dad?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘After the bomb,’ he says. ‘It’s still all right, still there, is it?’

‘Yes, it’s fine,’ I tell him. ‘Don’t worry about the Post Office tower. So anyway, this bloke, he climbs all the way up to the top of the Post Office tower and then he jumps off the top and he’s falling down, down and down and down, the sixteenth floor, the fifteenth floor, the fourteenth floor, and that’s when he hears the phone ringing!’

‘When?’

‘When he’s passing the fourteenth floor!’

‘But you said everybody else was dead?’

‘But they’re not. That’s the joke.’

‘I don’t get it, Dad,’ he says.

‘That’s good,’ I tell him. ‘I hope you never do.’

Day Sixteen

Times change. Faces change. One season ends and another one starts –

New season, new hope, and your first game of the 1971–72 season is at home to Manchester United; a crowd of over 35,000 and a pre-match thunderstorm. It is also your first game without Dave Mackay; Roy McFarland injured as well.

Half-time and you’re two down; soft goals from Law and Gowling, both from Charlton corners. Soft, soft fucking goals. You go into that bloody dressing room and you let them have it, both fucking barrels:

‘Fucking rubbish the lot of you. You might as well get dressed and bugger off home now, the bloody lot of you. Useless every last fucking one of you. First day of the bloody season and you’re playing like this; first fucking day. You bloody lose today and you’ll lose every fucking day and you’ll be doing it in empty grounds and all. There are over 35,000 folk here to see you, bloody paid to see you, good money, hard-earned fucking money; you think they’ll be back next week? Will they bloody hell. Now get out