by Jules Grant
I pick up a book.
When I remember your love I weep and when I hear people talking of you something in my chest where nothing much happens now moves as in sleep.
I hold it out to the girl, turban wrapped round her head, tatty blonde dreads. Twenty pence, she says. Her fingernails are dirty, torn, so she’s either straight or a minger, maybe both.
I put the book under my jacket, cross over the road to the Peace Gardens, sit down on the bench, watch the students messing around in the snow. Carla says it’s just weird me coming here like I do, calls them wasters. Sends her mental, watching them marching around with those placards, Jobs for the Workers, then they all fuck off skiing for Christmas.
Me, I like the way it makes me feel when I sit here. Gives me a wide-open feeling, like there’s no doubt about it, there’s something beyond. I get the same thing at the airport, and Piccadilly station. Things moving, people going somewhere. Things rolling forward somehow. You can’t beat it.
I turn the book, look at the cover. Some dude called Rumi. Beat that for a tag.
I must have forgotten the time because I look up and it’s getting dark, sleet falling soft then melting away into wet on the ground. My shoulder’s throbbing and tight, right down my arm.
Oxford Road is humming now, jammed, people running home, cars crawling bumper to bumper, chasing tail lights. Below the steps of the Met Union, a Big Issue seller is crouched against the cold, dog between his knees under the blanket. As I go past he looks up at me, holds out the cup.
Eat the dog, I says. He gives me the finger and a smile.
The bookstall’s nearly cleared away, just the girl, packing everything away into plastic boxes. I give her back the book.
She smiles at me. Want your money back?
I tell her no, I’ve read it, she might as well sell it again. I don’t tell her about the page I’ve ripped out and put back in my jacket.
She takes the book and looks at the cover, squints at me. You like poetry, then?
Poetry? Is she shitting me?
Do I? I says. I suppose.
On the way home and the A57 is rammed and there’s a tailback, Friday afternoon, everyone heading out to the sticks.
I pull into the garage for petrol. Across four lanes there’s the 24-hour Asda, old gaffer herding trolleys in the rain, looks like somebody’s grandad. Poor bastard, no chance I’d want to be herding trolleys when I’m seventy. Probably worked all his life and paid all his taxes, now he’s got to manage on sixty pounds a week or work till he drops. If I had a grandad, no way I’d let him eat shit like that.
Give nowt to the government take nowt back, Dad used to say, but then he was a real grafter, never paid tax or took a benefit in his life, made his own way. You get on that radar, girl, you’re done for, he’d say. Next thing you know they know everything about you, got you tied up to the merry-go-round like a rat in a wheel.
Well Pops, times are more complicated now. I fill up the van, go up to the metal grille to pay, get out the Artemis card, give the taxman a nod.
I get to Lise’s, park the van round the back and carry the containers into the house, two in each hand. It’s heavy, and I wonder if this stuff actually weighs more than bleach or just feels like it does.
Inside, it’s nearly dark, curtains drawn. Boxes of knock-off perfume and lipsticks everywhere, the whole house smells like a WAG’s bedroom on Derby night. Don’t ask me how I know, it’s not something I’m proud of.
Jeez, it stinks in here Lise.
Lise is sitting at the table, cig in the corner of her mouth, squinting, bucket full of cheap perfume just by her chair. Uhmmmm, the smell of money, she says.
She’s got the last of the old containers in front of her, nearly empty, and half a dozen empty perfume bottles waiting to be filled. About time an’ all, she says, I’m about running out.
I put the new stuff down on the table, and she unscrews the top off one container, jams a funnel into an empty perfume bottle, starts to fill it with E.
Hey, empty the bucket for me will ya, she says.
I bend down to get it. Christ, don’t put that bucket right beside you and smoke, I tell her. One day you’re gonna flick some ash in there and it’ll all be over. That stuff’s flammable stupid.
She pulls her face at me.
I take the bucket into the kitchen, tip it all down the sink, gagging, the smell of cheap perfume knocking me sick.
All she’s got to do is get the new stuff into the bottle, but I get back just in time to see her licking up some that she’s spilled on the table.
Fuck’s sake, I say, don’t suck up all the profits.
Then she gives me this smile. I love you, she says.
I’m not fucking surprised, how much have you had?
You gotta keep Lise away from stuff, see, especially stuff like Liquid Ecstasy. The rest of us, it’s no bother, but with Lise she’s always on the edge somehow, mostly where drugs are concerned, and even though she knows the rules I still have to keep an eye on her.
Sonn thinks maybe that’s what makes her so creative in the whole drugs department thing, how she gets her ideas: perfume atomisers filled with E, lipsticks with speed in, all the rest of it. And fair do’s, the trips are a real money-spinner on a Friday night. I mean, no one checks a girl’s perfume bottle, do they? We make a fortune at Heaven, a fiver a squirt.
I take the rest of the stuff off her, put the lid back on, get out the books to take home.
It used to take ages, doing the books, till I got a system going. Now there’s one for the tax man, and one in code, just for us. Most of the boys don’t keep books, but I figured out early on, if this was going to work, it better look legit. When Operation Balboa went down that’s how they got them in the end, all that cash and nothing to show for it. You have to learn by mistakes, see, and it’s handier if they’re someone else’s.
Just as I’m about to leave, Sonn turns up with Rio, asks how it’s going.
Coolio, says Lise, smiling at Sonn, eyes half-closed.
Sonn looks at me, raises one eyebrow. I nod. Off her face. Then Rio jumps up. Rio’s half pitbull, half Staffie, blind in one eye now, looks mean as hell. Sonn found him wandering round Lower Broughton with a firework round his neck, reckoned she’d keep him for a guard dog. Thing is, he’s afraid of his own shadow. Has his uses though. You always know when things are about to kick off, on account of how fast Rio turns tail and disappears.
I ruff him where he likes it, round his neck.
I never used to be into dogs that much. But I’ve got to admit, Rio’s kind of grown on me lately, and Sonn, well, she loves him to death. Aurora’s been whining for a dog for ages and I’d probably give in if it was up to me, but Carla’s not really up for it. Just one more responsibility, she says.
Sonn wants to know where Kim and the kids are. I tell her it’s OK, it’s sorted, they’re in Ardwick. She doesn’t say much, Sonn, but she’s got a good head on her shoulders when it comes to what matters. I feel jumpy, she says.
It’s a relief to be honest, knowing I’m not the only one with the jitters, even though I can’t let it show. I’ve got that feeling I get, in the pit of my belly, like things just won’t settle.
Don’t worry, I say, we’re on our own turf. Tonight it’s Heaven, right bang in the middle of our own patch, and the club’ll be full of Darts as well as us. Cheetahs are no match for all of us together.
She doesn’t look sure.
I tell her I saw Tony today, and if he’d heard something he would have said.
Deep down I know for a fact that might not be true but I can’t afford for them to all get nervy, and I don’t want to even think about what it means if he does know and kept shtum. No harm in staying ready, I say.
Just then, I hear one of my phones go. I look at the screen, check it isn’t Louise.
It’s Mina. I pick up. Hey Donna, you wanna meet up?
I feel Sonn watching me. I take it you’re joking, I says into the phone.
There’s silence at the end of the line.
Yeah, I’ll tell her, I say, and cut her off.
Sonn’s still watching.
I shrug. Message for Carla.
Then Mina’s face is right there in front of me, big storm eyes looking up, and I’m thinking maybe I’ll ring her back in a bit, and explain.
I make my way to the lock-up to drop off the van. By the doors, Carla’s new red Ducati winks smooth, right next to the old 950.
The answer-machine’s flashing but it’s just some old biddy from Chorlton Green, wants her office cleaned. I ring her back and tell her we’ll go round on Monday to give her a quote, mark it up in the book.
I try Mike again, no answer. I could ring Tony, find out where Mike’s at, but somehow I just don’t want to.
I turn on the computer, go on to the web and log into Flyway. Nothing.
We got identity codes for Flyway after Xcalibre was set up. Serious and Organised Crime Unit, that’s who they really are, and ever since they did that whole exchange thing with Baltimore they’ve been red-hot on tracing mobiles. Beats me why they need to make up pretend names for it, as if calling themselves Xcalibre’s gonna turn them all into King Arthur. That’s the way they like to see themselves, make up for them being total losers.
So now they got all that new tracer equipment, think we don’t know about it. Emails are too risky, being how you can never get them off a main server, but messaging on Flyway’s a breeze, no trails. One account between everyone; open a message and keep it in draft. Someone else goes into the account and when they’ve read it, they delete it. That way it never gets sent anywhere, leaves no trail. It’s not rocket science. Finn’s got it all down to a fine art now, B-Tech in computing from the Adult-Ed and everything, so now we just use Flyway and the codes.
I peel the plates and the sign from the van, put them in the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet, go over to the old Metro van. It’s a shed now, but it was the first wheels I ever had, done just about everything in it over the years, can’t seem to let it go.
The door creaks when I open it, needs oiling. I sit in the driver’s seat, for a think.
Don’t know why I still do that, when we got three leather armchairs and the old red sofa, even a proper swivel chair pulled up at the desk. But there’s something about the old van, seats all cracked and torn and dust on the dash, driver’s door hanging on by a thread, kind of makes me feel safe. The door hasn’t worked properly since that time Keira left her old man that day over in Glossop. Us driving off, him hanging on through the window trying to grab on to the keys. Then I kicked the door open, him still clinging on to it, and if it hadn’t been for that bollard he’d be hanging on yet. Then we were off, up and away, laughing, over Woodhead Pass at eighty, me holding the door on with one hand. Still makes me smile when I think of it.
I wind down the window, put my knees up on the wheel, lean right back. The seat fits round me like an old pair of Docs.
I turn the knob on the old CD radio. Key 103, old classic by Aretha, Respect. Sing to me baby.
I sit for a bit, staring out through the windscreen, thinking about Mike and where he could be and then what he’s gonna say when I tell him about Kim, when something catches my eye.
The IKEA rug, the one we put down to hide the trapdoor, has got one corner turned up, like someone’s been down there, didn’t put it back straight.
I’m out of the van and over there before you can say Jack Shit.
I pull up the trap, climb down the ladder into the vault. The vault’s just a concrete cellar really. In the far corner there’s the old cell door blocking the hole we made in the bricks. Took Sonn two whole weeks and a Manchester City pneumatic drill to get through to the canal tunnel.
Door’s pretty neat too. Paid a fortune for it, on account of how it’s a Strangeways original. Some guy up in Radcliffe picked it up after the riots in the ’90s, back when they did the big refurbishment, kept it in his hallway, been polishing it ever since, saddo. Story goes, it took ten lifers on E Wing to rip off the hinges. Then they dragged out the nonce, threw him over the railings, thirty feet straight down to the net. Then they threw the door right down on top of him, smashed his head open like a watermelon.
Solid steel, six inches thick, eight of us couldn’t move it, until Sonn made a rope and tackle to get it down to the vault. Still got the cell number on the top. Local History that, Lise says.
Even Mike doesn’t know about the vault, nobody does. Not many people know what’s underneath Manchester, which is handy, from our point of view. It’s a maze down there, all the channels for the old canals, the ones that aren’t used any more, Spaghetti Junction in the dark.
Where we cut through the wall, looks like there was an old air-raid shelter, benches still along the walls, dry as a bone, sealed up where there used to be steps up to the street. Lise won’t go down there on her own, says she hears things, babies crying and shit, but that’s just Lise. As far as I’m concerned it’s perfect. On the other side of the shelter we put a trapdoor, so we can always get out if we need to.
I get down into the vault and the hair on my arms starts up, tingles. You can tell when a person’s been in your space, even if nothing’s been moved. As if somehow something’s been changed, the air rearranged.
So I’m looking round but everything looks like it should.
I check the safe. Money, snide passports, licence plates. Everything’s still there. Then I get one of those shivers, like someone walked over my grave. I’m out of there pretty smart, put back the rug, lock up. Then I’m outside on the cobbles. Must be imagining things. Can’t believe I got the heebies like that, feel like a right soft cunt.
5
By the time we pick everyone up it’s gone ten, cars swishing past in the rain, air smelling like wet wood and tobacco, catches the back of your throat. We get to Sonn’s last, on account of how she always takes the longest to get ready. I never known anyone as particular as Sonn when she’s going out: irons everything, even her jeans, goes mad if she can’t sit in the front, stretch out her legs, just in case they get messed. One time when she’d got in the back all squashed up with Marta and Lise we got all the way there and had to turn right round again, take her home to get changed. Kept saying we’d creased her, even though none of us could see it. Lise says it’s some kind of weirdness comes from right down inside her, most likely from worrying and stuff.
I can’t see it myself. Sonn’s solid as a brick shithouse, never seems to worry about anything, just likes things organised. Now and again it can get you down, her going mad if someone’s a minute late, or when she has to check all the plugs three times before going to bed. Sometimes it’s just funny though, when you ask her what day we went somewhere, and she can tell you the exact date, time, everything, along with what we got up to, no kidding. Can be useful, that.
We crawl through Rusholme in the traffic. It’s chucking it down and Wilmslow Road got a life all its own at this time of night, students pouring out from all over, the lights from the curry-houses and shebeens. I got my eyes everywhere seeing how it doesn’t do to get caught mob-handed down Curry Mile without a pass or a nod from Tanweer.
Way back, when we was kids, before things got so hot, we used to come down on a Friday night, hang about outside Taj or the Asian Kitchen, looking for a free bag of pakora, jug of sweet lassi if we were lucky. Sometimes we’d offer to sit on the pavement, mind the punters’ cars, in return for some scran. All the kids went down Rusholme on Fridays, and I swear, none of us ever went hungry back then. Me and Carla did better than most, on account of us having Samina whose dad worked at Taj on and off. Must be every kid’s dream, that, have a dad who works on Curry Mile.
Eid was the best. Everyone down, three deep on the pavements, watch the Mile End boys, handsome as, doing their wheelies and handbreak-turns, spinning and whirling against the dark, sky all lit up by the fireworks. Then all the grown-ups would come out of the curry-houses, bring trays of food and them funny-s
haped sweets, right out on to the street. Didn’t matter back then, who you were or where you came from, everyone got fed.
Nice folks, the Pakis, Dad used to say. You want kindness, Donna? Find someone who doesn’t have much, and had to risk everything just to get that.
He was right. Well, except for the Paki bit, but that was just ignorance, and I know he didn’t mean anything by it. Nice folks. My mouth still waters just thinking about it.
We pass the turn-off for the Mancunian. Used to be the Interstellar, best live venue in town. Cheetahs put paid to that, back in 2002, the day Marty Smith got sprung from Group 4 on his way to the court. Tiny Stewart’s boys drove the prison van off the M602 and they were all in Liverpool before anyone could say Jack Shit. Things were humming for sure, something was bound to go down and that night the Cheetahs took out three Mile-Enders over some poxy door deal, caught two sociology students in the crossfire, gave them some free scrap metal to take back home to the south.
Back then I didn’t know what sociology even was, and when Lise told me I laughed till I cried.
The Council closed the club down after that. Just goes to show, you can take out a dozen Mancs from Moss Side and no one gives a toss, but creep up behind a fee-paying student from Surrey and the whole place goes up. Don’t teach that over at Owens Park, do they?
By the time it reopened it had given up on real music, given in to all that whiny-whiteboy singer-songwriter shit, and no one who’s anyone goes there any more.
We drive up Oxford Road, under the Precinct walkway, past the student flats and the Rec. The Rec’s just a flat piece of wasteland, between the flats and the road. It’s what’s left after the Council pulled out all the trees and the bushes, cleared all the rubbish; put some paths and a bench in, so mummy and daddy won’t fret.
Across the grass the globe access lights stare like cold little moons. In the distance the halls of residence are all lit up, every single window with a light on. You can tell none of those bastards pay for their own electricity. In a couple of years they’ll be squeezing us out all over Chorlton Green and Whalley Range, or piled up in some fancy loft apartment in Castlefield. Don’t even have the good grace to fuck off back where they’re from.