Gary Speed

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE: SUICIDE

Gary Speed sat on the graveyard wall. Gary Speed was 42 years old and the manager of the Wales national football team. Gary Speed was thinking about killing himself.

In front of him was a gravestone; it read: Anthony Jenkins, 1887-1952; also Elizabeth Mary Jenkins, beloved wife of the above, 1901-1984, Reunited Forever. Then there followed the names of their children: Richard, Margaretta, Ernest, Ann; died 1944, 1919, 1973, and 1996 respectively.

Gary Speed shook his head. All this dying, all this being born. Two people presumably finding love, making babies, having happy times - 'cept one of the babies dies in infancy - and then the husband dies at a reasonable old age and Elizabeth lives her last 32 years alone.

The graveyard is full of these couples. Finding their soulmates. Remaining true. Doing everything they're supposed to do to earn their happy ever after. And from a still young 50 or 51 years old she - this Elizabeth, this Liza, this Liz - endures a whole three decades without her beloved.

Unheld, untouched, unfucked, unloved.

Mourning, and looking back.

Gary Speed thought about his own wife. She wasn't as pretty as she once had been, and if he was honest with himself, he knew he didn't fancy her anymore. This woman who had driven him crazy when they were first together...and now she drove him crazy in an altogether different way.

Probably they would get a divorce soon and some other man would tuck his children into bed at night, berate them over breakfast, help them with their homework.

Why had he ever brought them into this woe-filled world? What were their chances of escaping unscathed? Of not ending up where he was now?

A man who had done everything he ever wanted, achieved so much - and still could find no way to escape misery.

What hope would they have when glorious, carefree childhood came to an end, and teenage years and drugs and the encroaching ravages of a harsh and difficult world got its claws into them?

He hoped that they would grow up good, not fuck women over, not do horrible things or have horrible things happen to them. He hoped that they would find love, not think too much, and maybe find the contentment that had always eluded him. Live simple lives. Find some meaning. Be happy, like the happy people on TV.

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He hoped that, but what he wished was that they had never been born. That he had known then what he knew now: that life was futile, and there was no escaping the horror of having to watch your own body shrivel and die before your eyes. Watching what was once strong and athletic and beautiful begin to crumble to dust. And for what?

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safe from the storm, as he had promised - and then still left her alone.

The whole graveyard was full of them. Stories of shiny-faced, scabby-kneed youths playing in dirt, playing with dolls; and then grown handsome and full of cum; and then grown old, and withered, and glum.

Gary Speed lifted up his shirt and grabbed a handful of flesh. His belly seemed to be softening, expanding by the day.

What was happening to him? Wherefore now the sculpted, toned abs and thighs and arms of five years ago?

I should work out, thought Gary Speed, and get it back.

But then, how long would it last? How long would he have to keep it up? How long could he forestall the inevitable march of flab and sag and wrinkles and pain?

One day he would be an old man, unrecognisable in the mirror. Bald, maybe; certainly grey. An old man like his old granddad, bent and broken, incapable, doomed.

I am crumbling into dust, thought Gary Speed. 42 years of youth and fitness, a beautiful face and a beautiful body, and now it’s all being robbed away from me, the injustice of time and its one-way motion. The inevitable, painful, achingly-slow destruction of a human being.

Gary Speed didn’t like thinking like this, but these last few years he didn’t seem able not to.