Walking the Invisible

by Michael Stewart

  A few years after quitting my factory job at Mather and Platt, I got a fundraising job at an animal charity called Animals in Distress, the head office of which is just around the corner. It was an eventful time, and I remember driving back from one of the charity shops in Withington with a cat in a box, to take to the sanctuary, but somehow the cat had escaped and was running around the car in a state of high excitement. I remember trying to steer straight as the cat leapt up my chest and onto my head.

  I traipse along the unremittingly dull Cadishead Way, which again skirts the edges of post-industry. By the time I get to Hollins Green, my feet are throbbing, and I’m in pain from a blister underneath my heel bone. The rain is dropping out of the sky like bowling balls. I stop at the Black Swan. I need to rest my feet. I need to eat. I need a strong drink. Inside, the pub is vast. It comprises a dining area, a tap room and a hotel. My plan is to hide out here till the rain stops and refuel. It’s late afternoon, and there are a few punters around the bar and a few diners in the dining area. I order a pint of Guinness and a Jameson chaser. I neck half the whiskey then pour the rest into the stout to sweeten it. There isn’t much that is vegan friendly on the menu, so I settle for the halloumi and vegetable kebab without the halloumi.

  I drink my Guinness and order another as the food arrives. I eat my kebab. The rain is hammering against the window. I finish my Guinness and order another. There is no let up. It’s early evening when the rain eventually stops. I’m four pints in and suitably rested. I settle my bill, haul my sack onto my back again and hit the road, dog in tow. I stop at a corner shop to buy a bottle of red wine and a tin of Butcher’s Tripe. I plod and toddle, wincing from the blister that has now popped, exposing fresh red skin. I walk down the A57, turning right at Warburton Bridge Road, passing Hollybank Caravan Park. I think about stopping there for the night, but I reckon I’ve got about another hour’s walking left in me before I collapse.

  Along Warburton Bridge, I cross over the River Irwell, close to where it merges with the Mersey. It’s a toll bridge, and cars queue as their drivers furtle for change. I pass St Werburgh’s Church and approach the village of Warburton. I must have hit the thirty-mile mark by now, and I’m done in. I start looking for somewhere to get my head down for the night. Just outside of the village is a large detached property surrounded by nice flat green fields. It looks uninhabited. I climb over the fence and find a sheltered area under some trees and parallel to a hawthorn hedge. I take off my sack and unload my tent. I start to erect it. As I do, a black 4x4 Range Rover approaches and a man in a blue suit gets out.

  ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

  Thinking on my feet, I say, ‘Is this not a campsite?’

  ‘Does it look like a fucking campsite? Do you see any other campers?’

  ‘Sorry, I thought it said on my map that it was a campsite.’

  ‘Well, it’s not, so fuck off!’

  I try a different tack: ‘Look, I’m sorry. It was an honest mistake. I don’t suppose you know anywhere close by I can camp, do you?’

  He pauses before answering, thinking it through. He’s in no mood to give me salient advice, but at the same time I can see he wants me as far away from his land as he can manage. Eventually, he says, ‘Listen, there’s a campsite up the road. I’m going past that way. Jump in and I’ll give you a lift.’

  ‘But I’ve got my dog.’

  ‘He can go in the back.’

  He opens up the back of his 4x4. There are two guitars in there in hard cases, along with some cables and other sound equipment. He shifts them across and makes room for Wolfie, who jumps in. I get in the front, next to the man. He starts the engine.

  ‘Are you in a band, then?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Do you get any gigs?’

  ‘Just pub gigs. It’s just a laugh. Me and my mates. Used to play every day. Then I didn’t pick up a guitar for twenty years. Went into estates. Made a lot of money. But I wasn’t happy. One day I was in my garage, and I just picked up a guitar and started playing again. It felt great.’

  ‘Why did you leave it so long? I mean, if you enjoy playing so much.’

  ‘Long story.’

  He goes silent.

  ‘Sorry if I’ve touched a nerve.’

  ‘I used to be in a band in the eighties. We had a bit of chart success. We were going places, do you know what I mean. But we couldn’t get on with each other. Then the lead singer walked and that was it. The chance of making it big. We blew it.’ We drive in silence for a while. ‘We could have been massive.’

  ‘Still, you’ve done all right. Made a load of money.’

  He nods, but I can see he is not convinced. Money is a poor substitute for adulation. He drives us back out of the village and over Warburton Toll Bridge. Bollocks, I think, as he pulls up outside Hollybank Caravan Park. That’s three miles I didn’t have to walk today, and three miles I’ll have to walk again tomorrow, and my heart sinks.

  ‘There you go, mate.’

  ‘Cheers.’

  I rescue Wolfie from the back and wave the driver off. The reception to the Caravan Park is in the dark. I try the door. It’s locked. There is no one around. It doesn’t look like much of a place. I go around the back and pitch my tent in the middle of a field. There are no other tents, and I wonder if perhaps the campsite has gone out of business. Not that it matters to me, really. I’ll stay here if I can, move if someone makes me. I open the can of dog food, spoon it into a bowl and chop it into bite-size chunks. I also open the wine and swig out of the bottle. It’s sweet and soft.

  I’m thinking about the man who gave me a lift. He looked familiar. I think about all the Manchester bands that were big in the eighties but didn’t quite make it all the way – Northside, Candyflip, The Bridewell Taxis – but I can’t bring any of their faces to mind. The Happy Mondays, The Inspiral Carpets, The Stone Roses. They all made it in the end, so they don’t count. I’ve already mentioned that I went to the same school as The Happy Mondays. They were leaving as I was starting. We used to watch them rehearse in Wardley Community Centre next to the school. I remember Bez hanging around outside the school gates, trying to cop off with a schooley.

  The bloke in the Range Rover looked to be about my age, so they couldn’t have been a band from the early eighties, as he would have been too young. Of course, he could have been in The Fall. Pretty much every Manchester musician was in The Fall at some point in the eighties. But their lead singer never walked. The Fall start and end with Mark E. Smith.

  I’m halfway into the bottle and still racking my brains when it occurs to me that I should have just asked the man. It would have saved me the headache. And he might have welcomed the chance to chat about it with someone who was interested.

  ‘Do you want a glass for that?’

  I look up. A big, fat bald man with tattoos everywhere and no top on is standing over me. He points to my bottle.

  ‘Er, yeah, that would be very civilised. Thanks.’

  He disappears and returns with a wine glass: ‘You staying long?’

  ‘Nah, just the night. How about you?’

  ‘I live here.’

  ‘You live here?’

  ‘Yeah, we all do. I’ve got a caravan behind that line of trees there.’ He points over. ‘There’s a dozen of us live here. We’re having a bit of a party later. Why don’t you join us?’

  ‘Thanks. I’d like that.’

  He nods then walks back the way he came. I take off my boot and my sock and examine the wound. The skin is a livid pink-red and stings like hell. I dig out my first-aid kit, rub soothing cream into it and then apply a plaster. I lie back on the grass and watch the gulls gyre and the clouds drift and mutate. Wolfie curls up beside me, and I stroke his belly. I leave it half an hour or so, before making my way over to where the tattooed man disappeared. I don’t have much to offer, just half a bottle of warm red wine.

  The campsite beyond the trees is comprised of a dozen caravans, mainly wit
h brightly coloured awnings attached. I hear voices coming from the largest one. There’s a flagged patio and a barbecue. I smell it before I see it. The bald, tattooed man is stood over it with a pair of easy-grip tongs in one hand and half a spliff in the other. He flips a steak.

  ‘Hey, you made it. Want some grub?’

  ‘I’ve eaten, thanks.’

  ‘This is Jenny,’ he says, pointing to a woman with shaggy blonde hair. I assume it is his wife or girlfriend. ‘And this is Tom.’ He points to a boy who is playing with an iPad. He’s a mini-me, a slimmer, younger version of his dad, I think, as I look from one to the other. I can see his mum in him too. They share the same oversized philtrum. He’s probably about twelve years old.

  ‘Hiya,’ Jenny says. The boy just grunts and goes back to his tablet. ‘Do you want a lager?’ She offers me a can of Stella.

  ‘I’ve got this, thanks,’ I say, and wave my half-full bottle at her.

  ‘Have a sit down. The others will be here in a bit.’ I sit on a striped deckchair next to where she is sitting. ‘Patrick was saying you’re just staying the night?’ She takes the spliff and has a toke.

  ‘Yeah. Moving on in the morning.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Liverpool.’

  ‘What for?’

  I think about telling her the reason but then realise that they will probably think it’s a bit of a weird thing to do. But maybe not. I can’t decide whether to make something up or to let them in on it. Whatever I make up will probably sound just as weird. Besides, what does it matter. I’m unlikely to ever see any of them again.

  ‘Have you heard of Wuthering Heights?’

  ‘The book? Oh, yeah, I had to read it at school. I fucking hate that book. All that Yorkshire dialect. I mean, what the fuck’s that all about?’

  ‘Right, yeah. Well, do you remember the bit where Mr Earnshaw goes to Liverpool?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘You know, the dad. He comes back with Heathcliff.’

  ‘Oh, yeah.’

  ‘Well, I wanted to make the same journey.’

  ‘What for?’

  Should I tell them I’m writing a book? I’m just going to dig myself deeper. Make them think I’m an even bigger weirdo. ‘Just something to do, I suppose. Every summer, I do a big walk. Last year, I did Hadrian’s Wall.’

  ‘Oh, right. Whatever. I couldn’t be bothered. Want some of this?’ She passes me the spliff. ‘You ever read it, Patrick?’

  ‘Have I fuck.’

  A black man with jazzy dreads appears with a bag of booze. ‘Hey, Buff, how you doing?’ Jenny introduces us. He’s a plasterer. Lived in Irlam with his missus, but they split up, and he moved here. Two years ago.

  ‘It’s how I like it,’ he says. ‘They can’t get me here. No one knows my address.’

  Another couple arrives. Then another bloke in a bucket hat. He doesn’t suit the hat. No one suits a bucket hat. Then two more, another couple. Before I know it, I’m surrounded by people. The wine has gone, and I’m drinking rum. I’m drinking tequila. I’m drinking vodka.

  The next thing I remember is waking up, entombed in my tent. I don’t know where I am at first. I stare at the green ceiling, my nose almost touching it, and listen to the sound of a rhythmically roaring engine. I wonder, is it an aeroplane? Or what else could it be? And then it dawns on me that it’s not an engine. It’s the sound of Wolfie snoring. He’s lying on top of me. My tongue is stuck to the roof of my mouth, and my eyelids creak. I’ve got a heavy feeling in my head that I know is going to grow into a full-blown headache in a bit. I unzip the tent and crawl out like an imago emerging from a chrysalis, but instead of morphing into something more colourful, more beautiful, I just collapse on the grass and squint in the light of the rising sun. The horizon is golden. White mist laces a line of trees.

  Once on the move again, I walk back over Warburton Toll Bridge and yet again through the village of Warburton. I then walk down Townsfield Lane until I hit the Trans Pennine Trail, which is going to take me all the way to Liverpool. I reckon I’ve got at least twenty miles until I reach my destination: Liverpool docks.

  In 1771, Liverpool was a bustling port, including 105 fleets engaged in the African slave trade. These ships went to the west coast of Africa to pick up their human cargo, before transporting them to the West Indies to work mainly on sugar plantations. Many died on this middle passage, and the dead bodies were thrown overboard. In fact, it was legal to throw the living overboard as well, and those showing visible signs of illness or pregnancy were sometimes despatched in this way. Let’s give it a name: murder. Those who lived were confined in tiny boxes, like sardines in a tin. The passage took weeks, and during this time they would be sitting in their own shit and piss. The stench must have been overpowering. It was big business: at that time, 80 per cent of England’s wealth was a result of the slave trade; eleven million Africans were transported into slavery and 1.4 million died on the voyage. Between 1763 and 1776, Liverpool was Britain’s main slave-trading port. Twice as many vessels engaged in the slavery business here than they did in Bristol. By the end of the century, Liverpool merchants were responsible for 84 per cent of the total British transatlantic slave trade.

  The many slaves who were brought to Liverpool were bought and sold openly on the streets and in the town square. I think about this when I arrive at Liverpool docks. It is now a place to drink and eat and shop. You can also visit the Tate gallery. The main dock, the Royal Albert, would not have been built in 1771, but there were several large docks back then: King’s Dock, Salthouse Dock and George’s Dock. There were goods sheds, tobacco warehouses, spirit vaults, breweries, inns and taverns. The air would have been rich and sharp with strong aromas. The stench of things baking, boiling and burning. Mashing, malting and milling. Sweet yeast and bitter hop. There is no trace now of the poor house or the house of correction. There are no cooperages, block-and-spar-makers’ shops or boat-building yards.

  I see a young family sitting outside a cocktail bar with a designer pram. The mother drinks a glass of prosecco with a strawberry garnish. The father fiddles with a bottle of fruit cider. I, on the other hand, am here to access the public records of Liverpool Central Library and also the slavery archives of the Maritime Museum just around the corner. The shrieking gulls above connect then with now. As I make my way to the museum entrance, I think again about Mr Earnshaw. In my mind, there can be only one reason why he made this journey, as I have just done, on foot. He came here for a slave.

  6

  Branwell’s Bastard and Black Combe

  It’s a bright spring Saturday morning, and I’m driving down the A595 in my campervan towards the town of Broughton-in-Furness, where Branwell Brontë was employed as a private tutor by the Postlethwaites in 1840 after failing to establish himself as a portrait painter in Bradford. He only lasted about six months before he was abruptly dismissed, and there is a mystery around why he was sacked so suddenly. Some say he was drunk on the job, others that he neglected his duties, but the theory that interests me most is the one put forward by Juliet Barker: that Branwell got a local servant girl pregnant and was run out of town.

  I stayed in my van last night on the driveway of old friends whom I’ve known since the late eighties. We used to hang around the same places in Manchester: Affleck’s Palace, Dry Bar, Night and Day Café, and The Hacienda. They now live close to Arnside, on the edge of the Lake District. Donna is the recently appointed head teacher of a special school in Ulverston, and Christian is a part-time librarian. They have three daughters, with similar age gaps to the three younger Brontë sisters. We drank a lot of beer and gin and red wine.

  There are hardly any other cars, and for a large part of the journey I have the roads to myself. Wolfie, who has been slumped on the bed in the back of my van, sits up sentinel, instinctively sensing that we are arriving somewhere. As I drive off the A595 onto the C5009, I’m thinking about Branwell’s journey to Broughton-in-Furness, setting off by coach
from Keighley on New Year’s Eve 1839. He came the same way as I’ve done, travelling by coach out of Yorkshire on the Kendal road, passing Cowan Bridge, where all his sisters except Anne had received a rough education. It was where the two eldest sisters contracted TB and died, which is why Patrick immediately removed Charlotte and Emily to home educate them. It was fictionalised in Jane Eyre as Lowood School.

  It’s a remote spot. As I approached it the previous day, I decided to stop outside the building to read the plaque embedded in the wall: ‘Maria, Elizabeth, Charlotte & Emily Brontë lived here as pupils of the clergy daughter’s school 1824–25’. I wondered if Branwell had stopped to look around. He would almost certainly have dwelt on the memory of his four sisters leaving and only two returning. He would have been six years old when his eldest sister died, and, having only just lost his mother a few years previously, Maria may have been something of a substitute mother.

  He stopped that night at the Royal Hotel in Kirby Lonsdale. As I reached the town, I took a right and parked in the centre. Branwell wrote to his friend John Brown about the night, telling him how he drank whisky and joined a party of gentlemen at the Royal Hotel: ‘they gave cunt and pillock … washing it down at the same time as the room spun round and the candles danced in our eyes … a regular rumpus ensued … I found myself in bed next morning with a bottle of porter, a glass, and a corkscrew beside me.’ Sounds like he had an eventful evening.

  I too called into the Royal Hotel, which is located in the market square. It still provides drink, food and accommodation to the weary traveller, but yesterday’s clientele appeared to be more sober – mainly young families, preferring to take advantage of the three-course meal deal rather than strong spirits. Juliet Barker wonders to what extent Branwell’s account was exaggerated for the entertainment of his friend. It must be hard to be the son of a holy man. As a young man in your late teens and early twenties, you want to prove your manhood, but being the son of a clergyman makes you square. How tempting it must be to play up your wild side. But if his version is accurate, he would have been nursing a hangover as he travelled to Broughton on New Year’s Day 1840, as I am, as I travel into Broughton on 4 May 2019. I park up in the square, get out of my van, let Wolfie out and stretch my legs.