How I Killed Margaret Thatcher (17 page)

You didn't kill him, Charlie, I said to him on the night he told me all this.

I did, son, in a way. I just wish we'd gone to the hospital straight away or gid up instead of running. I wish that every day.

I don't think he could believe I was sitting there talking to him about it. He kept glancing up at the bar door, which had the bolt across, but only one. I think he weighed up whether he could beat me to the door or not, but there was no way. He resigned himself, I think, slumped down in the chair, went for confession, contrition. A lot of it was true, I think. He meant what he said. He couldn't make me out. I think he didn't understand why I didn't want to kill him. By that time I'd had enough of wanting to kill people. This was fifteen years later, after I came back, after my mum died.

You didn't kill him, Charlie. Yer day kill him.

I wish I'd done summat different.

I know. Yer day kill him, Charlie. Someone else killed him. Something else did.

He looked at me. He had no idea what I was talking about. His hands were shaking and I poured him a drink.

They rode around with him bleeding to death for an hour, keeping away from the police. They didn't know he was bleeding to death. He said he was okay, not great, keep the towel pressed to his leg, he'd be okay. They'd been disturbed shifting the parts from a machine at a plastics place that hadn't long closed over off Greets Green. My dad was on top of the machine when the police arrived, he slipped and fell onto the blade he was trying to remove. Harry pulled him up off the blade and helped him run to the car. It hadn't seemed that bad. He'd run, held up by Harry, his hand pressed to the wound, and they'd got in the back of the car. The police were at one end of the factory but the car was at the other so they got away. The police had to drive out onto the industrial estate and back around, in a loop of the building, which meant Charlie could pull out onto the main road. They could get away, they thought. Charlie's mind was already racing. He'd burn the car out in the field behind his house. It was a piece of shit anyway. They could hear the police siren.

He needs the hospital, Charlie. Harry said.

I'm all right, I'm all right, my dad said.

There's blood gooin everywhere.

Harry was beginning to panic. Charlie turned to have a look: my dad's legs were across Harry's lap, bleeding into it and the seat, but then he took the car up the kerb and nearly into a lamp-post.

Hold summat on it, he said. There's a towel on the floor somewhere.

Tommy was in the passenger seat. Charlie never usually took him with them but he'd stayed when Charlie was in prison, even remembered to feed the horses. He was pissed, no use to anyone. Charlie was cursing bringing him, now.

Just hold summat on it.

That helped, stopped the blood coming so strong.

Tight as yer can, thass it, Charlie said.

My dad was breathing through his teeth.

I'm all right, he said, all right. Less get out of here.

Tie summat round his leg, Ron, above the cut. Stop it coming as much.

Harry ripped his shirt, wrapped it round my dad's thigh above where he was holding the towel. The towel felt hot.

Thass it, thass it.

I'm all right, my dad said. I'm all right.

They rode around West Bromwich for an hour with him bleeding to death, looking out for police cars, the sounds of sirens around every corner.

We need the hospital, Harry said. We could go to Hallam, up there, Sandwell Hospital.

I'm tougher than I look, my dad said as a joke.

They tried to go to the hospital. Charlie said they rode past twice in ten minutes. The first time there was a police car parked at the entrance to Casualty. The second time, as he slowed down, they saw the flashing lights in the rear-view mirror, heard a siren and got scared and drove off again. They talked about dumping him on the pavement outside.

I'm all right, I'm all right, my dad kept saying.

Harry wanted to get on the motorway, drive down to Kidderminster, up to Walsall, drop him at a hospital there, dump the car, get the train back, walk back, for Christ's sake.

Just get me home. I'm all right. I'm all right. I can get a bandage on in the house. I'm all right.

They got him back, driving around, back roads, thought they'd done it, got away. Charlie turned the car around on the drive, backed right up and Harry helped my dad through the front door. Harry sat my dad on the chair by the telephone, told him to phone for an ambulance, told him to say he'd fallen off a step-ladder doing a bit of decorating, something like that. He left him on the chair with the phone in his hand, he said. He hadn't dialled it for him, could hear the sirens and panicked.

They got pulled over around the corner from our house, in the bus stop. The police asked why there was blood all over the seat, all over Harry with no shirt on. They didn't answer. Tommy told a policeman to fuck off. They punched him in the balls and got him in the van, he threw up on the policeman's shoes. He threw up everywhere and the policeman punched him again. Off they went to the station. If I'd looked up when I got to the corner of the road, I'd have seen the car, listing into the bus stop, a police motorbike parked alongside it, waiting for a wagon to come and pick it up.

The day of the funeral is hot and bright. We should have been thinking about the caravans, the sunlight on the sea. The funeral car drives past the shops by the Pig on the Wall on the way to the crematorium. All the boys there have got their shirts off, lying in the sun eating ice lollies. I see two lads from football. One of them, David Harvey, has transferred a tattoo from a comic on his shoulder. It's the Incredible Hulk. David laughs at something Jason Kelly says to him. Jay plays up front and all the girls fancy him. His ear-ring glints in the sun and I think, My dad's dead, and we drive right by them and they don't look. They wouldn't look up at a funeral car, not boys my age, eating ice lollies, messing about with cartoon tattoos, and I think, I am the same as them, but I am looking at them through the glass, wearing an itchy suit in mourning for my dad I want right now, more than anything, to be sitting there by the shops at the Pig on the Wall, where the people put the pig up on the wall to watch the band go by, that was the story; to be happy, to be laughing there in the sunshine, laughing about some silly joke or noise, being happy. And my dad to be alive.

We went back to my nan and grandad's. I remember my mum holding me and crying, saying how we had to look after each other now that it was only the two of us and that we'd make sure to look after each other. But we didn't. We didn't do a very good job of that at all.

I'm silent. There's nothing to say. Sometimes at school they get people to come in and talk to me about it, like that's going to help, talking to a stranger, like that's going to bring him back. There are two of them. They come at different times. One of them says she's an educational psychologist. I don't know who the other one is, maybe a government agent come to kill me too, a Tonton Macoute straight from Margaret Thatcher's skeleton army. They try to get me to draw pictures to show how I feel. They can see how I feel. They don't need a bloody picture. I can't draw. I should get Johnny to do it for me. Talking to them about it isn't going to make me feel any better.

I wasn't stupid. I didn't think government agents had broken into the house and killed him, of course I didn't. We knew what had happened, although I didn't know the details until later. I used to look up at the castle battlements and wait for his ghost to appear. I'd talk to him, tell him that something was rotten, all right, the whole country, top to bottom.

I want to say to them that you helped kill him, coming here and nodding your heads and looking like you care, when really you turn up in your cars from wherever your offices are and go through the motions and shake your heads and say what a shame and get paid for it, like that's a proper job, not making anything or doing anything, writing reports saying this boy is very sad and angry because his dad's dead, and his family has lost his house, his mum's started drinking, his world has been blown to bits.

Michelle says she's sorry about my dad and gives me a hug. Then she goes to watch
Jaws
at the pictures with Rodney James.

I sit on buses, not going to school, not going anywhere, there and back, fourteen years old, reading Orwell on the top deck, dreaming. I take the books from Johnny's bookshelf, get others from the library. It is
1984
. I read
1984
over and over, Thatcher's boot stamping on our face for ever,
Homage to Catalonia
,
Down and Out …
,
The Road to Wigan Pier
. He missed a trick there. I got a book from the library that had Orwell's diary at the beginning of the Wigan Pier journey. He started in Birmingham, went to Stourbridge, Wolverhampton, skirted us somehow, like Queen Victoria. Dudley Port: Wigan Pier.

Shouldn't yer be at school, son?

On strike.

Who? Yow or the taychers?

The bus drivers nod when I get on, don't say much. I look at the blue patterns tattooed on their bare arms, the heater on in the cab. I like the number
74
best, or the
120
. So I sit in traffic at Dudley Port or on Soho Road and Winston Smith scribbles away in the corner of his room; or we'll be outside Thimblemill Baths or at the level crossing by the Langley Maltings and a sniper fires down the Ramblas, crack, crack, crack. By the twisted pipes, rising above the wall at Albright & Wilson, O'Brien explains how I will come to love Big Brother.

I could've gone anywhere, within reason, off to the countryside at least, Clent, Kinver, got the bus to Stourbridge and then out to Stourport or somewhere. If I'd left early enough on a morning I could have ridden the train all the way to Machynlleth, Aberystwyth, Porthmadog, back again, dodged the fares, it was easy, looked at hills and mountains, waterfalls. I could've gone for good, disappeared, got on my bike like Tebbit told us to. I never did, though. I made for the ruins. Last factories, red bricks gone black from soot, stained concrete, smashed glass, rust everywhere. On the railway bridge over Tipton Road someone had written:
MY NAME IS OZYMANDIAS, KING OF KINGS
.

Yer need to watch him, Dad.

How dyer expect him to be with what's happened?

I doh expect nothing. I'm just saying we've gorra keep an eye on him. I cor if I ay back from work till now.

Johnny is talking to my grandad at the kitchen table. They think I'm upstairs but I came down to get a biscuit.

I just think, how dyer expect him to be? He's all right. In the circumstances.

Watch him, thass what I say.

What dyer think he's gonna do?

Johnny doesn't reply straight away. Through the gap in the door I can see him dipping bread in his gravy. My grandad looks at him, not like he used to, waiting for him to say something stupid. He wants him to say something that makes sense. Johnny shrugs.

I doh know. All I'm saying is we need to keep an eye on him. Iss common sense, really. We need to watch him.

I ride on buses or sit in the library. I have to wait until the afternoon for the library because the women there phone school if they think you're skiving off. Skiving off to learn things. I'm doing research, I say. I am. I turn a school exercise book I've never written in into my assassination journal. I sit in the library and think about Catesby, how his gunpowder plot failed because too many people got involved. There are traitors everywhere.

I daydream revolution. The royal family will go off in exile. We don't have to kill everyone but we'll release people from prison and put the people who have caused all the problems in there instead. We'll have trials. We'll put Margaret Thatcher on trial and we'll have all sorts of people giving evidence to prove what she's done and she'll be found guilty and sentenced to death. And everyone will want to see it, like we'll have to think about doing it on a Saturday afternoon at Wembley so it'll be like the cup final or maybe we'll chop her head off in Trafalgar Square and let people celebrate in the fountains like on New Year's Eve. We could take her head around the country on a spike on the back of a van so people can see that she's really dead, although maybe that's too much. We don't want a reign of terror. The killing will have to stop, although there are a lot of people asking for it. Maybe we'll handle it really carefully and she'll be shot somewhere in a prison yard early in the morning without much notice and we'll do a little announcement on the news: Margaret Thatcher was killed early this morning. All factories that have been closed will open again on Monday, all mines, all shipyards, all docks, open as usual. Please report to work as normal.

I will raise my dad from the dead.

I know where there's a gun.

I go to the library every day, think about how to do it, scribble plans in a code in my exercise book. I read the papers. I look at maps. I ride my bike and ride on buses. I want something that will work. You can forget things like the opening of parliament. I don't want symbols. I'm not Catesby. I want something that will work. I am the enemy within.

She was our enemy within.

Her body. We'll have to do something with it, dump it somewhere, burn it maybe. There will be people who will still be on her side.

Leave her for the bastard crows, my grandad said when he heard them talking about the possibility of a state funeral.

I take the gun from the shed. I feel for it at the back of the shelf and there it is: a blue tin box with an old gun inside it. I put the newspapers back in the box, along with the message I've written, and then I take the gun out and put it in my bag.

I ride my bike up to the quarries; the bike that had been Eric's that I am big enough for now. I go all the way to Quarry End, up to the ridge of ash trees on the lip of the quarry, watch the light dim and the men in the quarry as they park up the diggers and chain them together and go clumping up the path in their boots to clock out. When they've gone and it's almost dark I creep past all the signs, more signs, saying
DANGER
and then
DANGER OF DEATH
. I think, oh there's that, all right. There's danger at every turn. I look for a guard. It's a new job for people, guarding places that are empty, to stop people like Charlie and my dad taking the stuff, but there is no guard here.

I have a torch and I walk to the middle of the quarry, tell myself I'm at the spot where my dad was born, out past the diggers that are still now in the half-light and look like giraffes paused at a drinking hole and I put the greasy bullets into the chamber. It's true that my grandad must've cleaned the gun. I can sense it will work. It's heavy in my hand. I hold it out in front of me with two hands like in
Starsky and Hutch
and I point it at the wall of rock in the distance. I squeeze the trigger, gently at first, because that's how I've read you do it, and then, just as I think it's no good, maybe it won't work, maybe I'll go home and stop all this, it goes off with a crash and throws my hands up above my head. I almost topple over, stumble backwards and the shot echoes and echoes. The roar stays in my ears and I pick up my bag and run. I scamper through the last of the light, the scree giving way on this shallow side of the quarry and think I must have woken the whole of Dudley with the explosion, my ears still ringing and hurting, my arms and body aching from the impact.

Then, from the corner of my eye, there it is, the grey fox slinking up and off the path in front of me, into the trees, maybe the son or daughter of the one I'd seen with my dad right here, when it had been a road, a row of houses, here where we had lit the bonfire of all that furniture. All of it gone: the house, the road, the people, their things, like they had never been here at all.

I throw up when I get to the cover of the trees, being careful not to be sick on the gun. The gun is hot. I turn the torch on to check it and then lie on the soft grass at the edge of the quarry to listen to sounds on the road. Lights are coming on in the houses. I walk out of the shadows and head home for tea feeling about ten foot tall. I think about the man they chased down into the quarry all those years ago. I swagger with the gun in my bag. I'm going to do this. My nan has cooked sausages. She looks after me now. My mum sits in the chair, with my nan watching her drink, saying she can't go on like this. I don't know what to say to her. I put my clothes in the bag on top of the gun and put it under my bed.

The next morning I got on my bike, pretended to leave for school, like I did every day, sometimes going to school, most often not. I'd taken some cash from the back of my mum's bedside cabinet, where she tucked the odd note away to buy bottles of gin with. I freewheeled down the hill to Dudley Port station and bought a ticket to Birmingham, chained my bike to the railings, and waited for the train. When I got to Birmingham I bought a ticket to London and from London on to Brighton. I remember the feeling of riding down the hill, the gun heavy in the bag. I felt free. If I ever had to talk about it to anyone now I'd probably say, Oh, I didn't know what I was doing, all that stuff you hear. That morning as I rode down the hill I knew exactly what I was doing.

I'd imagined riding all the way there, sleeping in fields, barns, ditches at the side of the road. It would become part of the legend after I'd killed her. People would talk about glimpsing me on the route. A girl in Oxfordshire would remember taking apples to a strange boy who had crept into her father's barn; taking him apples and lying him down on the straw. People would follow the route like a pilgrimage: Dudley, Stratford, Chipping Norton, Abingdon, Aldershot, English places, to the soft slope of the Downs and England's descent into the sea.

They were in Brighton for their conference, their victory rally.

I watched the country as the train slipped through it, a patchwork of autumn green and brown. Once you left Birmingham not much of it looked like it did where we lived. It made me think. I wondered if what I was doing was for the whole country and whether they'd thank me. Who was I kidding? What I was doing was for me. The bag on my lap, I would put my hand inside and on the gun for reassurance. I looked out across the green and brown of the hills and fields.

I sit on the pebbles and look at the piers, the one with the glowing lights off to my left and the ruined one in front of me. The metal makes criss-crosses against the white band of sky behind it, between the grey clouds and the grey sea. It looks like the gantry at Cinderheath. It looks like an abandoned city, out there in the sea, like Atlantis, like Dudley Castle jutting out of its ocean of dead trilobites and dead factories.

I think I might have realized then, sitting there on the beach, that it was gone. I could kill her, but it wouldn't change anything. Nothing would come back.

I sit on the beach for a long time, watch it get dark. I move my legs on the pebbles and I push my back against the sea wall. The beach is different here from the one in Wales. We're not going to Wales again.

It's bigger, busier, the beach here, even with no one out there. I can feel the rumble of cars against my back through the sea wall and hear the tyres as they swish along the wet road. There's an orange fishing net laid out and held down by rocks next to a few boats. A fat seagull sits and pecks the edge of the net and another one sits in the boat. Others are out on the sea watching it get dark like I am. They are the kings here. There are big ships out near the horizon. I think about them going off to America, Russia; think maybe I could keep going, get on a boat and head off to sea. But I don't really know how you do that and the ships don't stop here. My bravery is disappearing, leaking out of me onto the beach, into the sea. I am fourteen years old, only a boy. I want my mum to be okay, my dad back. Thoughts slap against me like the waves on the shingle. The rhythm of the traffic against my back and the shushing of the waves make me close my eyes. Maybe I could sleep here. I hold the gun inside my bag to keep me warm.

I wake up, soaked through by a giant wave, swallowed by the tide. I jolt upright in panic, soaking wet and scared that I might drown, be swept away, but the sea is still. The sound I heard, of the wave crashing into the beach, of a giant wave to end it all, echoes through the darkness, not only in my head, but in the damp sea wall behind me. It comes through the air now like the sound of shingle being torn off the beach. Then come the shouts, people, and seagulls screaming. I am freezing and I dig my fingers into the tops of my legs to try to get them both to work. I can smell burning, taste dust, ruin. It's not a seaside smell at all, it's something else, like the taste of the ash that day with my dad up at Quarry End, burning everything that was left in the house he grew up in. Sirens start, there's more shouting. I get my legs going and wobble out of my little hollow and across the shifting pebbles.

The hotel has fallen down. That's what I can see. Or more, it's like the front has fallen off so all the layers that made it look like a cake have landed on top of each other. I keep my hand on the sea-wall rail and walk towards it. My heart is thumping. There is grit and dust in the sea air, in my eyes, making them water and blink. I'm scared. I've been scared for a long time. There are people where the hotel has fallen down. I hear voices, groaning, crying. I heard my great-granny once when they moved her downstairs, crying out in this deep moan, right near the end, like nothing I'd ever heard before except maybe from my mum when she heard what had happened to my dad. I can hear it now, in among the people, running now, and calling out to each other, and the sirens starting, flashing lights. I cling to the rail and listen to the sound, underneath it all, mixed with the grit and the dust, the argh, argh, argh sound, not words. There's shouting and running and tyres swooshing down to the hotel and police radios crackling and ambulance doors clattering open.

It's a bomb. Somebody has blown the hotel up. I can hear people say it's a bomb, and it is, hotels don't just fall down.