The Ned Wood Archive

Hold My Hand For Me, I’m Waking Up

I was sat in Glen bar with Jo and Sonia, trying to make my pint last all evening, when Mary and Gray walked in.  I’d allowed myself a whole pint to celebrate beating Blackburn 3-0 and going back up to sixth and I was trying to spin it out.  Alex can make half a pint last all evening right from 6 till 11, but a couple of hours is the best I can do.  Maybe I’ll allow myself another.  We were only a couple of points behind Wolves who were second.  In those days I was the eternal optimist.  We could have played like damp sawdust all year, but I’d assume we were going to win the cup and get promotion, so two points behind was nothing, especially as the top three went up.  But, in reality, we were a bit hit and miss, winning one week, losing the next. And what’s worse, Terry Curran is out injured. Can we cope without him? Anyway, a win is a win, even if it was only worth two points in those days.

And I’m also thinking: If I hang around long enough I may get to talk with Mary.

Eventually Neil and Tim turned up and I hung around some more and got invited back to Mary’s with them all for tea (just me) or coffee (everyone else).  We sat around the floor, although I think Mary was on the bed or a chair or something, because it seems I remember her more vividly that evening.  She certainly was on good form.  Me Mam would have said she had a bee in her bonnet.  Mind, I think that Mary had a whole hive of bees, but that Saturday night she entertained us with her history of Chile.  Now I guess it makes sense if you’re a Spanish student that you learn about countries that speak Spanish – especially as you have to spend your third year in one of them, but at the time I didn’t know what was so special about Chile.

Well it seems that there was this guy called Allende who was elected Prime Minister or something.  Seemed fair enough to me, although some of these Latin American countries have dodgy elections sometimes you know.  Well Mary and Neil, who also knew something about it, but not as much, treated this Allende chap as if he was some rock star or footballer.  I mean I expected them to have his picture on the wall or something the way they talked about him.  If they’re socialists like they say, why don’t they talk about Wilson in the same way, or Callaghan it was then, wasn’t it?

Anyway this Allende bloke was busy nationalising all the stuff in Chile when this other guy called Pinochio or something came along and got rid off him, killed him.  Now nationalisation is something dear to our Neil’s heart which explains why he’s on Allende’s side, but it turns out that this Pinochio guy who was some general in the army is supported by the USA, so what Mary is actually saying is that the US decided they didn’t like the guy nationalising everything so they kicked him out.  Which I thought was bollix.  For a start, the Americans don’t go round shooting everyone do they – they’re the same as us.  For another thing, Chile is miles from America – if they wanted to push their weight around they’d pick on the Cubans, who I knew were Commies.  So I said so and Neil looked as if he was going to hit me and said what makes you think they haven’t tried.  And Mary gave me one of her pitying looks and said for Neil to leave me alone, because me Mam had only just let me out.  I can remember Gray laughing a lot at that and Neil but Tim sort of looked sorry while I squirmed and just got hot and red everywhere.

Then Mary started to tell us about this Chilean folk singer called Victor Jara who used to sing protest songs and the like.  Now you have to remember this was before I’d heard of Phil Ochs or Ewan MacColl or Woody Guthrie or Dick Gaughan or anyone, so the idea of a folk singer singing protest songs and not some crap about dancing round the maypole was pretty novel to me.  Well, this Pinochio bastard didn’t much like this singer, so he had him taken away and locked up in the stadium.  And I was thinking it was a football ground and like how that wasn’t going to be very secure – because we used to joke about climbing over the fence at the City Ground especially in the days just after we’d gone down, and we used to say that some days the cops would catch us and throw us back in, saying you stay and watch it like the rest of them have to.  And while I’m thinking, Mary was saying they locked up as many of Allende’s supporters as they could find and they had to put them in a big place, so they put them in the stadium, and so naturally, I had this vision of this great big football stadium.  Not just any stadium, Santiago Stadium, the biggest football ground in the country.  The place where Brazil won the World Cup in 1962.  So apparently, Victor Jara was in this stadium and he had a guitar so he started singing, probably just to cheer all these guys up.  And as she’s telling us this Mary’s eyes are crying.  And she’s holding her head high as if fighting against some wind and rain she thinks is blowing in her face.  The wind and rain of oppression.  Her eyes are blazing with anger. Crying and blazing.  We’re all spellbound, listening, watching, silent.  The guards chopped off one of Victor Jara’s hands to stop him playing guitar, but he kept on singing.  They chopped off his other hand, still he kept singing.  They started just shooting at his legs, stabbing him with knives, kicking him around.  They were shooting at everyone in the stadium, just killing them off.  The way she told it you could see the blood, you could hear the screams coming through in her voice.  I could tell the others were affected by this, even Neil who it seemed already knew the story.  Mary had that way with words, when she got going.  And you know, Victor Jara was still singing when he died. 

I didn’t sleep much that night.  I’d eventually dozed off, but then woken up cold at about three thirty in the morning.  I just lay there thinking about whether this had really happened.  I just kept seeing this guy standing underneath these goalposts singing ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ as these faceless figures took an axe to him. It was worse than just a sleepless night, something was missing, something that I didn’t know I had had gone.  What was it ?  Why was I so cold? What had I forgotten to do?  Why was I in trouble?  What was it I’d lost?