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Extract from ‘Bulletproof Suzy’
So this guy with a dead bright white
shirt starts running about on the stage hauling wires and tapping
mikes and all that, then these others get up on the lorry. Joanne
passes me a smoke but we don’t have a light so I ask this wee
guy in front of me, who’s like a hundred and fifty or something,
dead wee and thin and pure sweating and he takes out a lighter, all
shaking hands and grunts and wheezing and all sorts. He’s got
these big red blotches all over his face, but not like birthmark scars,
so maybe he’s got cancer or somesuch and Joanne offers him a
smoke as well which is maybe a bit dodgy if it is cancer that’s
all over him, but he takes one and emits many more grunts and wheezes
by way of thanks, then lights us all up and turns away.
Maybe it’s about ten minutes later, but
not much more, and it starts getting really squashed, and it’s ending
up that I’ve got my face practically in the old guy’s thin white
hair, and I can hear him breathing, fast and shallow like he’s got asthma
or something, and I’m almost getting the boak what with being able to
smell his hair and his papery old skin and thinking that those reddy blotches
might be able to sort of jump right off him and onto me and that’ll be
me fucked with cancer.
There’s a couple of girls behind me and
they’re getting really squashed as well, and it must be pretty bad cos
one of them starts panicking and giving it gush and sob and I-want-to-go-home
and all that to the other lassie, maybe her big sister, but it’s getting
more and more packed all the time behind us and the two girls eventually sort
of slip in between me and Joanne, then the old guy, and try to snake their
way further to the front, maybe hoping to get out that way. I don’t really
mind crowds and that but this is getting dodgy, and I can tell that Joanne’s
not enjoying it much either.
Joanne pulls my arm again, and I can hardly
turn, but when I do I see her on tippy-toes giving it big wave and shouting
how-you-doing to someone I can’t see.
~ That’s Bobby down here. Come on, says Joanne, and I, of
course, go follow her like some sad puppy, as is my usual form these days.
So it’s total murder getting through
to the guy, but when we eventually do it turns out that he’s got a bit
of a perch on one of the plinths holding the big black glossy statue of some
long-dead horsebacked city-father type.
Joanne’s had a bit of a sweat for young
Robert Harris, but she’s been quite cool on the subject for a while and
I haven’t heard his name mentioned for some weeks. He’s a nice
enough wee guy, quite thin and wasted like he maybe has some mild needle problem,
but his gear is cool and he has a nice smile. He always looks at me and Joanne
a bit funny, as if he thinks perhaps we're an item. Or maybe it’s because
I don't smile too readily and he thinks I don’t like him, but whatever,
he’s all big grins and can’t be nicer.
~ Come on up! he shouts, and he bends right down and grabs Joanne’s
hand.
By the time she gets squeezed up there with
the rest of them, all balancing on this like very thin ledge, there’s
no space at all for me, especially with me being slightly broader of beam than
the slender Joanne, but sundry youths perched alongside her and Bobby do a
very considerate shuffle to create a further gap, and I am duly hauled up.
And even on this slightly elevated position the difference in the view is amazing,
and we’re even nearer the stage than before, maybe thirty feet or so
away from it.
Atop the Council Halls there’s a team
of camera-folk, all shoulder-strapped vidders and tripods and such, scanning
the George. Bobby points out others on top of the higher office buildings.
A helicopter passes over, quite high right enough, doing a big arc way above,
and that’s maybe a radio copter doing the normal weather and traffic
bumph, but then, a minute later, another copter comes in, lower and slower
and this is certainly a rozz-copter, with bright stripes and numbers and letters,
and that gets the biggest cheer of the day so far, all squinting upwards and
roaring at it to fuck off and giving it the fingers, but it takes its time
arching over the George before dipping out of sight, the noise staying a lot
longer. And the mike is tapped along to the beat of the copter, which does
eventually fade, and the guy with the big bright white shirt cracks a couple
of limp jokes and introduces some suit or other.
I don’t know the speakers, but Joanne,
who’s on the other side of Bobby, shouts over to tell me who’s
who, and Bobby, also being interested in such things, tells me a bit of background.
So-and-so isn’t a bad egg, but such-and-such is a brown-nosing two-faced
fuck who’s a cheek showing her face and this other one is trapped in
the past, and it’s all a bit dry for my liking but the last lassie is
good, some housewifie from up our way, and she gets tore right in, suggesting
that we might like to make a bit more space for ourselves by going into the
Council Halls and making ourselves a cup of tea seeing as how it’s our
hall and our tea and if we’re not going to be asked then we can be forgiven
a one-off lapse in manners etc etc and that gets the crowd going good style.
At first it’s like a joke, and I don’t know if maybe she’s
had a wee bead in her or perhaps she’s one of those wifies who gets hammered
into the tranquis as soon as she gets out of the sack, but she starts getting
really sort of carried away and saying that we really should do it, that it’s
our cally and our city and if the bastard councillors won’t turn up to
do their job then why don’t we just team in there and do it ourselves,
her claim being that at least we would do it right.
So there’s a few bodies down the front
who do start actually making their way over towards the front of the Halls,
but the rozzlings are thick in force and stay well-put, reinforcements strolling
in cool-style from the side drags. The rozz-copter suddenly reappears, much
higher than before, and starts making a circle, in view all the while.
So this woman’s really set the cat among
the proverbials, and this suit has appeared and grabbed the mike off her and
she’s giving it laldy, trying to get it back, it’s like something
out of a bar brawl, and you can only hear snatches of what she’s saying
and he’s saying, and it’s almost all abuse, and the drumming of
the copter above makes it impossible, so then the other bodies are getting
into it, and a few punters are trying to get onto the stage from the crowd.
The boos start up close and loud, and this
head-bummer rozzer with mega-glistening bunnet and fluorescent stripes suddenly
strides right up onstage, two underlings in tow, grabs the mike and passes
it to one of his boys. It’s switched off. The heid-rozzer gets the woman
and starts reading her the works, but she’s still game for him, maybe
she’s gone into like hysteria or something, and even with the racket
from the copter and the crowd you can hear her screaming fuck you, fuck off
and all that, and every time she does the crowd gives it yoo-ha, so this burly
underling rozzer makes a bid for her, gets her in like an arm-clamp and the
other one helps and they all just march right off, dragging her in a fairly
brutal manner which causes mighty upset, the cheers becoming very dark and
angry and merging into a huge and rather scary thundery-type roar.
Someone close behind us, maybe on the next
plinth, lobs a bottle. A glass bru bottle. It misses the rozzers, who by this
time are dragging the woman off the back of the stage, but is almost immediately
joined by a hail of other missiles, mostly empty cans. From where we are I
can see the heid-rozzer talking into his jacket. The bottles are starting to
fall atop the rozzers stationed afront the Council Halls, and the bunched yellow
coats get closer together, bowing their skulls and turning their black round
hats towards the crowd by way of paltry defence. But the missiles start to
connect, and the roar of the punters is now a nasty thing altogether, filled
with screams and the sound of genuine panic. Those below us start shoving forwards,
but it’s hard to tell if they want to, or are just being forced to by
those behind, and looking at them it’s impossible to say if they want
to either. It’s like the crowd is getting sucked towards the Halls, and
can’t stop, even if it wants to, and it’s like within a few seconds
it’s turned into one of those mad surges you see on old football games,
and thank fuck we were where we were and not down there.
But right then Joanne starts trying to get
down. Bobby jumps, holds his hands up for her. She jumps, then they both help
me, and right away I make for the nearest drag.
~ Where are you going? Joanne shouts to me, wide-eyed and flushed,
and I’m amazed that she is actually enjoying this, which by her expression
she surely is.
~ Where the fuck do you think? I shout back, home!
But I’m going nowhere fast cos the surge
comes again and it’s a definite suicide shot to try and get across it
to the side-drag, so I turn back and get myself in firm against the base of
the plinth. The bodies pour past, like stones in a river, bouncing off each
other, getting squashed for a few seconds against someone or something, then
getting pushed around it or them and flowing on. I’ve got a good grip
on the stone base of the statue. Joanne and Bobby have gone altogether now,
and even though I know they can’t be that far away there’s no chance
of seeing them unless I get back up on that plinth.
I stay put for a minute, hoping a gap might
appear so I can make a bid for Glassford, but the bodies slow and start to
get madly compact. Someone nearby must’ve fallen cos there’s a
really blood-curdling scream that you can’t even tell if it’s a
man or woman, and it’s so muffled and horrific, then suddenly stops and
starts so you can tell that someone’s being trampled. And there’s
folk screaming to stop, and trying to give directions, and then there’s
another one down and howling and fights are happening and people are pulling
at each other, holding their kids up in the air, climbing onto each other’s
shoulders. The screams spread, and even the sound of the copter seems to fade
even though it’s right overhead, and there’s no shouting any more,
no roaring, no cans and bottles landing, no cheering, just screaming from the
entrance to the Halls where the crowd has become a big solid unmoving lump.
The rozz copter suddenly veers up and back
and away, but another comes in low to take its place, and it’s unmarked,
maybe a news crew or suchlike, and at the same time you can see the roofs of
a couple of the meat wagons pushing into the square, coming off the drag to
the left of the Halls, and also I can see the assembled banners of all the
folk who’ve not been let in, and they’re still coming forward.
Maybe these other punters have taken the general rumble and screaming to be
a sign of action and they want in on it, and it’s like the same thing
is happening at the other three drags into George, so that everyone is trying
to get in, but looks like no-one is interested in getting out, though by the
screams it’s clear that this is not so. I know I want out and offsky
but many others are not even in as fortunate as situation as me, and I’m
staying well put.
I get myself up on the lowest of the plinth’s
ledges, and even this is just a couple of feet off the deck but now I can see.
No sign of Joanne and Bobby. The vans open and the riot rozz start jumping
out, all black shininess and thick plastic shields, and the Halls’ massive
black double-doors open right at the same time and a solid team of similarly
clad riot rozz come belting out, giving it deep grumbly roar, banging their
thick sticks on the shields and behaving in a tribal and beastly fashion which
brings more shouts of fear in angry reply. The crowd tries to surge inside
the Halls, but they only get a few feet before the sticks are extended and
the shields are coming down on heads like dustbin lids and folk start going
down and it’s soon like an invisible wall at the stairs into the Halls,
and those who cannot get away tumble into the pile and are being severely seen-to
if they get beyond it. I think I catch a glimpse of Joanne quite near the Halls
entrance, but the brief flash of blonde is swallowed and I soon lose the place
what with the seasick-inducing movements of the crowd.
By now the noise is totally unreal, like it
just keeps getting louder and can’t be turned down at all, and then,
I josh not, this team of horsebacked rozz appears from the goods entrance to
the train station, which is like a normally quiet and rather decrepit looking
ramp which slopes into the building housing the north-bound rail traffic, and
the horses are stiff-eared and rearing and giving it loud and frightening horse
noises as their riders urge them into the crowd, and just at his time a siren
goes off somewhere and I’m sure my ears will burst, like someone is stabbing
knitting needles right inside them, so I turn, pure panicking now, mercury
aslop, and start clawing my way up the plinth, trying to get back to where
we were earlier.
Someone tries to pull me down as I start hauling
up to the highest ledge, but there’s no way I’m staying down there,
and it’s this older guy who’s grabbed me and he’s screaming
as well, but I just let one arm go, turn half-way and elbow him a cracker right
in the face and he sort of howls and drops onto the bodies below. Someone else
grabs at my leg as I’m almost up, but I kick and kick and connect with
something softish, get free, and right away I look to see if there’s
any way of getting further up, there being nothing further to mount bar the
statue itself. I manage to get a hold of the horse’s tail, and I’m
surprised that it’s actually quite hot to touch, what with the black
metal absorbing the bright sun, but it’s a good shape to get a hold of,
and with a mighty haul, then another, I get on the back of the thing, shimmy
along then grab the city-father’s coat-tails, then another serious haul
and I’m up and astride the shoulders of this long-dead bastard and I
sit with arms wrapped about his head, legs fastened about his chest, and I
can see it all, hear it all, and closing my eyes doesn’t help, and it’s
like hell is happening right there below me.
Maybe it’s about an hour before I get
back down. I wait until I’m sure I can make a clear run to the Glassford.
By now the ambulances have managed to get through and the corpses are being
loaded into the meat wagons. Bodies everywhere, mostly in a long heap covering
the half-dozen steps up to the Halls entrance, but dozens of others scattered
throughout the square like so much rubbish among all the cans and bags and
empty sweet-pokes and fast food boxes, and dozens of green-clad paramedic types
go round the bodies as fast as they can, checking who’s alive and signalling
when they find someone who is. The dead are loaded into the vans pronto, and
there’s a few camera-snappers moving about. And the helicopter’s
still buzzing over every few minutes.
The van nearest me, with doors open, must have
at least ten, twelve bodies piled inside, and at the bottom of the pile is
the old guy, and I can’t see his face but I can make out the large strawberry
blotches, not as red as they were before, on his white-grey scalp.
© Ian Brotherhood 2006 |
