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

up and put the kids in the bath. I read them their stories and kiss them goodnight. Then I sit down on the sofa with the wife to watch a bit of telly:

Nixon and Cyprus. Nixon and Cyprus. Nixon and Cyprus –

So my wife goes up to bed but I know I won’t be able to sleep, not yet, not for a long time, so I stay up in the rocking chair and end up looking in the bloody paper again, the results spread out, working out a fucking league table on the back of one of my daughter’s paintings, a league table for the first two games, a league table that leaves Leeds next to bottom, next to last, so then I go through the fixture list inside my head, inside my skull:

If Leeds win this game and Derby lose that game; Derby lose that and Leeds win this; if Leeds get five points from these three fixtures and Derby only three, then the league table will look like this and not that, that and not this, and so on, and so on, and so on –

Until the sun is shining in my house, through the curtains and across the floor, and it’s just another morning; another morning when I wish I wasn’t there –

I wish I wasn’t going back there.

Day Twenty-four

You go back home to Middlesbrough to cremate your mam –

The end of anything good. The beginning of everything bad …

When you’re gone, you’re gone; that’s what you believe –

The end of anything good. The beginning of everything bad …

No afterlife. No heaven. No hell. No God. Nothing –

The end of anything good. The beginning of everything bad.

But today, for once in your life, just this once, you wish you were wrong.

* * *

The board have called me upstairs, upstairs to their Yorkshire boardroom with their Yorkshire curtains drawn, upstairs to break their bad news: ‘The FA have ordered Clarke to appear before the Disciplinary Committee, along with Bremner and Giles.’

‘For what?’ I ask them. ‘That’s unbelievable.’

‘It is a bit of shock,’ agrees Cussins. ‘But –’

‘It’s more than a bloody shock,’ I tell them. ‘It’s a fucking outrage and an injustice. I’m not having any Leeds players put on trial by television. He wasn’t even bloody booked, he wasn’t even fucking spoken to by the referee, so the only reason they’ve called him down there is because of them replaying his bloody tackle on Thompson, over and over again, morning, noon and fucking night.’

‘Brian, Brian, Brian,’ pleads Cussins. ‘Look, calm down –’

‘I won’t bloody calm down,’ I tell them. ‘I’ve only just got him fucking back so I’m buggered if I’m going to lose him again for another three or four bloody matches, just because of fucking television.’

‘Brian, Brian –’

‘No, no, no,’ I tell them. ‘If this is what’s going to happen, then I want the television cameras banned from the bloody ground, from Elland Road. If that’s what it fucking takes to stop this kind of operation against me then –’

‘I believe Mr Revie often felt the same way –’

‘Fuck Don bloody Revie!’ I shout. ‘Ban them! Ban the television!’

‘Those who live by sword,’ laughs Bolton, ‘die by sword.’

* * *

You are still in your tracksuit playing cards in the hotel bar in Turin, playing cards with the team – your team, your boys – twenty-four hours before the first leg of the semi-final of the European Cup.

There was a magpie on your lawn when you left your house for the airport. There was also one on the tarmac as you got off the plane in Turin. Now one’s just flown into the window of the hotel bar. But you don’t believe in luck. In superstitions and rituals –

You believe in football; football, football, football.

Pete comes down the stairs, down the stairs in his tuxedo –

‘You not ready yet?’ he asks. ‘The dinner’s in half an hour.’

‘You go.’

‘But it’s a bloody dinner for us,’ he says. ‘All the Italian and British jour nalists are going to be there. We’re the guests of fucking honour.’

‘You go.’

‘Brian, come on,’ he says. ‘You’re making a bloody speech.’

‘You make it.’

‘You what?’ he says. ‘I’ve never made a fucking speech in my life.’

‘Now’s your chance then.’

‘Come on, Brian,’ he says again. ‘You know I can’t.’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘We’re going to be late,’ he says. ‘Stop playing silly buggers, will you?’

‘You bloody go and you make the fucking speech for a change.’

‘Don’t do this to me, Brian,’ he says. ‘Please –’

‘You wanted your slice of fucking cake,’ I tell him. ‘Now here it is.’

‘Fuck off.’

‘No,’ you tell him. ‘You bloody wanted it. Now you’ve fucking got it.’

‘Please don’t do this to me, Brian.’

‘Do what?’ you ask him. ‘What?’

‘Don’t do this, Brian. Not in front of the team.’

‘Why not?’ you ask him. ‘Don’t you want them to see you for what you really are? A big fat spineless fucking bastard who can’t go anywhere or do anything without me to hold his hand –’

Peter picks up a glass. Peter throws the whisky in your face –

‘Fuck off! Fuck off!’

You jump up. You lunge at him –

‘You fuck off! You fat cunt!’

The players leap up. The players pull you apart –

‘Dinners. Speeches,’ you’re shouting. ‘This is what it’s all about. This is the fucking slice of cake you’re after. This is what you’re always going on about, fucking moaning on and on about. Now you run along. Don’t be late –’

He lunges at you again, tears down his cheeks –

‘Go on then,’ you shout. ‘Go on then, if that’s what you want.’

‘Fuck off! Fuck off!’

You are in your tracksuit fighting with Peter in the hotel bar in Turin, your best mate, your only friend, your