The Fiftieth Week
Monday 11 — Sunday 17 February 1985
Neil Fontaine dreams of her skull. The nightmare interminable. Her skull and his candle. He screams in his room at the County. The light always on. He kneels down by the bed. The notebooks all gone. He picks apart the hours. The days. The months and the years. Their lives and their deaths. He throws the pieces against the wall. He pulls down the curtains. He throws them on the bed. The bed empty. The sheets old and stained –
They want some things to fail. They want some things to succeed.
Neil Fontaine stands at the window. The dead light and the electric –
They let some things succeed. They let some things fail
There are always moments like this. Only ever moments like this –
But for how much longer?
*
Click-click –
He had called from out of the shadows (where there was only night) –
‘Malcolm,’ he had said, ‘you busy, are you?’
‘Why?’
‘I’d like to temporarily borrow your auricles, if they’re available.’
‘Anywhere nice?’
‘Shrewsbury,’ he had said. ‘If you fancy it.’
‘If the price is right.’
‘Two and a half, plus expenses.’
‘You know where I am.’
‘Yes,’ Neil Fontaine had said. ‘I know where you are.’
In the shadows (where there was only night, only endless fucking night). Click –
It had been a Friday; Friday 9 March 1984.
*
The Jew is at sea again. Down at Bournemouth with the Young Conservatives to celebrate her first ten, glorious years. Her Great Leap Forward. The Jew bought a card specially –
‘Valentine,’ he’d sung. His hand on his heart. ‘Won’t you be my valentine?’
The Jew has a place in his heart for Neil too. And the Jew’s left him with lots to do –
‘Idle hands,’ he’d said. ‘Know what they say about idle hands, don’t you, Neil?’
Neil Fontaine had nodded. Neil Fontaine had taken out his pen –
‘So much to be done,’ the Jew had said. ‘Minds to be moulded. Hearts to be won.’
To monitor the returns. To assist Piers & co. To chauffeur the Chairman –
Non-stop Neil, that’s Neil now. From A to B and back again –
Hobart House to Eaton Square. Eaton Square to Congress House. Congress House to Eaton Square. Eaton Square to Thames House. Thames House to Eaton Square. Eaton Square to the Ritz. The Ritz to Congress House. Congress House to Eaton Square —
Non-stop Neil with the bodies and the bottles. The people and the papers –
The Minister and the drafts. The TUC and the whisky. The Board and –
The eight points thrashed out between the Chairman and the General Secretary.
Neil fetches and he carries. He takes and he leaves. He waits and he watches –
The tensions. The mistrust. The deceits. The misgivings. The lies. The mistakes –
These plays within plays within plays within plays –
The games and the hunts. The traps and the baits –
The meat rotten. The prey starved. The flies fat —
‘We’ll be watching developments very closely,’ Piers is telling the Chairman in the back of the Jew’s Mercedes. ‘If we find evidence that these orders are not being complied with, if coach firms are still carrying mass pickets to the pits in clear breach of the injunction, then we shall take legal action against them.’
‘And what of Yorkshire?’ asks the Chairman. ‘The Heartland?’
‘Tomorrow,’ says Piers. ‘After tomorrow there will be no more mass pickets.’
Neil drops the Chairman and Piers at Hobart House. Neil checks the Jew’s office –
The office empty. The lights and the heating off. The windows open to winter –
His maps and his pins. His charts and his tins. In boxes by the door.
‘I need to know everything,’ the Jew had told him. ‘Absolutely everything, Neil.’
Neil switches on the lights. Neil closes the windows. Neil calls the Jew –
Neil tells the Jew one thousand one hundred and ten men returned this week –