Seeing the Wires

by Patrick Thompson

  ‘Ex-students,’ I said.

  ‘Even worse,’ he said. ‘Feel like digging?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ I lied.

  ‘Good, because it would trouble my conscience greatly if I had to sack you because you were useless.’

  He often gave us these pep talks. I think it was something to do with morale.

  V

  Other than Mr Link and the physical problems – blisters, aches, herpes – working on building sites was fun. It was like playtime. At school the only time you were allowed to mess around in mud was at lunch break, unless you were in remedial class. You weren’t allowed to handle tools.

  On building sites mud and tools were only the beginning. After that there were mechanical things, scaffolding, swearing, and tea.

  There were pranks, too. I had to go to Supplies and get a left-handed screwdriver. Darren sent me to get a spirit level with a slower bubble. Spin asked me to get something but I didn’t know what he meant. It was something that rotated, but I wasn’t tuned in to his gestures and Darren was out getting some dents knocked out of the scaffolding. I was the new boy, so I was the stooge for all of the pranks. I didn’t mind, as it passed the time and I wasn’t often injured.

  After a while I noticed that I was still the new boy.

  ‘We’re a good team,’ explained Darren. ‘Mr Link likes to stick with people he knows.’

  Spin nodded.

  ‘It saves training people up. You’re the best we’ve had, so far.’

  I was pleased. I hadn’t been told I was the best at anything by anyone before. Except for Jack, who said I was the world’s best wanker.

  ‘Well, you’re the only one, really,’ said Darren. ‘No one wants to do trenches these days. Most of them go into burgers until they get something in an office.’

  Spin mimed frying burgers with one hand, and picked his nose with the other. I hoped that was part of the gesture.

  ‘I don’t mind trenches,’ I said. ‘I like digging.’

  ‘You’re still the new boy, though. Can’t be much fun. Get all the jokes played on you. Haven’t you had any offers yet? Office jobs?’

  ‘Not yet,’ I admitted. I hadn’t applied for many. I worried about that, but not enough to do anything about it.

  ‘We’ll have to do better jokes then, won’t we? Can’t keep sending you to Supplies for things that don’t exist. Don’t worry, me and Spin’ll think of something new while we do the roof.’

  They went up the scaffolding. All that afternoon I watched them, wondering what they were up to. I couldn’t hear anything Darren was saying, and Spin’s gestures were difficult to follow. I was a bit worried, to tell the truth. They buried one of my boots once, filled the replacement with hot tar and I scalded my toe. They were boisterous, as my mother used to say of schoolyard psychopaths.

  So I had an idea. I would strike first. I couldn’t get them to fetch something from Supplies, because they always made me do that. I couldn’t fill their boots with anything. It had to be something mild, just enough to make them think twice. And it would have to be Darren. I had no idea what Spin would find funny, other than me with hot toes.

  I thought about Darren’s hair. It had looked dyed the first time I saw it. After working with him for a few weeks I was sure that it was dyed. From time to time it would start to look less black, and thinner, and then he’d go off to fetch something and come back with a head of glossy jet hair and inky fingers. I was suspicious.

  A weak spot, I decided. That night I popped into a pharmacist’s and bought a quantity of Grecian 2000. I took it home, wrapped it in brown paper and addressed the parcel to Darren. I wrote on the back:

  ‘If not delivered, return to Building Standards Office.’

  The next day I left it next to the kettle in the Portakabin that was our headquarters, after Darren and Spin had made their way up the scaffolding. I left it leaning against a packet of Hobnobs and then got on with digging. The foundations were widespread, and it was difficult to keep close to the Portakabin. I didn’t want to miss anything. Darren and Spin didn’t seem to want to come down. Most days they were down every few minutes, for tea or cigarettes. That day they were happy in the scaffolding, thirty feet up, basking in the drizzle. I tried not to look as though I was hanging around. I noticed I’d dug the foundations much deeper than usual that day. If I wasn’t careful we’d end up with a leaning warehouse. I didn’t think Mr Link would like that. I kept going off and digging, trying to leave myself with a clear view of the Portakabin at all times. I angled around, turned back on myself, dug where I’d already dug. I thought about putting the kettle on and attracting them down with tea, but then they’d know I was up to something. I never made the tea. I knew how, but it didn’t interest me.

  It was lunchtime before they came down. Darren made for the Portakabin, patting his pockets and frowning.

  ‘No fags,’ he said. ‘Here Spin, do us a tea. I’ll pop down the shops and get some. Want anything?’

  Spin indicated his preference and Darren made his way off the site. Spin entered the Portakabin. A moment later he emerged and looked about. He held the parcel. He shook it. Hearing an engine, I thought that it would be Darren returning with his cigarettes and whatever it was that Spin wanted. A tongue, perhaps. Then I remembered that Darren had walked to the shops. It was Mr Link. He pulled up close to Spin and got out.

  ‘What’s this?’ he asked. Spin handed over the parcel and gestured at length.

  ‘By the kettle?’ asked Mr Link. ‘I don’t think so. Post comes to the office, not out here. Let’s have a look at it then.’

  He opened the parcel and inspected the contents. His face grew bleaker. He was never exactly a bundle of joy, but this was as grim as I’d seen him.

  ‘I think we’ll be having a word with our student friend. Mr Haines, could I trouble you to pop out of that deep pit you’ve dug for yourself?’

  I considered hiding.

  ‘There’s no point hiding down there, the foundations are square and we can find you. Come on.’

  I dragged myself up to ground level and squished over to them. Mr Link raised the Grecian 2000 and looked at it.

  ‘Getting old isn’t funny,’ he said. ‘You’ll find that out one day.’

  He looked at Spin. Spin gestured at length, and then held his sides.

  ‘Ah,’ said Mr Link. ‘I see. So this was a prank, then? This waste of company time? Bit of a laugh? I have nothing against a bit of a laugh.’

  Spin raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Is this your idea of a joke?’ Mr Link asked me. I nodded.

  ‘Fair enough. Jokes happen on building sites. But I think we’ll have no more. And we’ll say no more about it,’ he said, surprising me. I’d expected to get the sack. Perhaps I really was the best temp they’d had. Anyway, it did the trick. It must have done. They only played one more joke on me.

  VI

  To cut things short, I used to work on the building sites. After we finished that factory, we moved to the other side of town and put up a warehouse and then we did some office buildings in the classical warehouse style. My overdraft became smaller despite the best efforts of Mr Fallow and his staff. I worked on sites as far away as Wolverhampton and Tipton, despite the language barrier.

  The buildings were always the same. I mean, they had different functions – this one was a hospital, this one an office, this one a luxury hotel with many and varied facilities – but they all looked like warehouses.

  ‘That,’ Mr Link would say, surveying whatever we had just finished bundling together, ‘is what a building is meant to look like. Square, straight, flat on the top and no fancy business.’

  Darren and I had decided that Mr Link genuinely believed this. Strange beliefs and superstitions were common on building sites. Spin believed that scaffolding formed matrices that could tune in to otherworldly broadcasts. Darren believed that if he dug far enough down, his trench would connect with the mines that ran under Dudley and he’d be able to tunnel under
the off-licence and get all his drinks for free. Mr Link believed that all buildings should be cuboid and without decoration or, ideally, doors and windows. I believed that I was at the beginning of my life and things would turn out okay without me putting much effort into it.

  ‘Square and straight,’ Mr Link would say. The rest of us would look at each other and try to get away. ‘Nothing fancy. Gargoyles and curlicues and all of that are all well and good for cathedrals, but the modern building is regular. Solid. No weaknesses in the structure.’

  This was clearly untrue. In high winds the warehouses we put up fell apart, great sheets of prefab spinning off into the night like a giant conjuror’s playing cards. The structures were riddled with weaknesses, apart from the foundations. Those were solid.

  ‘Some of them fall down,’ Darren said.

  Mr Link gave him a poisonous look. ‘That,’ he said slowly, ‘is because there are weak spots. Windows! Doors! How can we make a solid structure when there are parts of it that open?’

  ‘It’s sort of fashionable to have doors and windows,’ said Darren.

  Spin explained, by use of gestures, that it was traditional to have doors set into buildings so that people could enter and leave them.

  ‘That’s the thing,’ explained Mr Link. ‘If it was a decent building, they wouldn’t want to leave.’

  Spin explained, by use of gestures, that he had thought of something else he could be doing. Darren and I went with him, leaving Mr Link looking at our latest construction – a theme pub on the main road between Stourbridge and Wolverley – and thinking how nice it would look without the windows spoiling the purity of the architectural line.

  One morning, the building society sent me a letter including a monthly balance. There was a note of congratulation enclosed, signed by Mr Fallow. My account had become positive for several days. It had since become negative again, of course.

  They charged me £15 for the congratulatory note.

  The next month, there were more positive days. My account went from red to black, like an infected wound. I no longer needed to work on building sites to pay off my overdraft. I was able, instead, to look for a less well-paying graduate job.

  I said a farewell to Mr Link and the gang on a Friday at the end of a bright and cold February. We went to the pub.

  ‘I knew you’d be going,’ said Mr Link. ‘You’ve been even less use than usual these last couple of months.’

  I waited for him to say something good about my trench-digging abilities. He sipped his stout instead. Then he looked up.

  ‘I’m always sorry to see a good worker go,’ he said, ‘and I’m seeing one go now.’

  I was startled and grateful. He caught my expression.

  ‘Bloody hell, not you,’ he said. ‘Our Spin here is leaving today. Got a job with local radio.’

  Seemed about right, I thought. Spin had always had this thing about receiving signals.

  VII

  I left the building trade and got a job with the local council. I can’t say which one, because they’ll sue. I worked in the banking section. This made me think of heavily defended vaults and leather-topped desks, for reasons known only to my subconscious. The reality was less impressive. In a large open-plan office – much like the interior of one of the buildings I used to dig foundations for – rows of desks were set regular distances apart. The distances had been chosen to minimize what the team leaders had learned to call Unauthorized Human Interaction, which is to say chatting. There was a lunch hour which it was mandatory to take but which, it was hinted, might better be used for working in. There was an agreeable overtime rate for which no one qualified. A shift system meant that you always had to get up too early and always got home too late. At Christmas a certain amount of jollity would be tolerated: a few strands of sparse tinsel stapled to the ceiling tiles for twelve days.

  I would get in at 7.30 AM, regardless of which shift I was on, because I couldn’t afford a car and the bus service was unreliable. I would switch on my computer so that the people in IT would know I was there.

  IT was housed on the top floor in a chaotic office full of dangling wires and tangled cables and parts of things that had become dislodged. IT was not subject to the same rules as other departments. IT had a different timescale. They would say, I’ll be there in five minutes. They would arrive in anything up to a month. Everyone wanted to work in IT but there was no way to get there without having arcane and detailed knowledge of Babylon 5.

  After logging in, I would look out of a window until nine when a few other people would start to trickle in. I would open up a spreadsheet or two and mess about with figures.

  I would do that for eight hours. Then I would go home.

  I once asked the man at the next desk to mine – a breach of council policy but I was in a daredevil sort of a mood – what happened to all of the figures we put into spreadsheets.

  ‘Well,’ he said, pushing his spectacles onto his nose, ‘when we finish each sheet they are amalgamated into another spreadsheet and ratified against a third spreadsheet held at head office. If they match, they are themselves amalgamated into another spreadsheet. Each of these transactions is logged on a fifth spreadsheet. This fifth spreadsheet is checked against the performance timetable laid down in the spreadsheet kept at area headquarters, and then the results of all of these cross-checks are entered into a spreadsheet.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Then they bin it and we start all over again.’

  ‘Why?’

  He looked at me. His spectacles – the perennially unfashionable type with a heavy black frame – began their descent to the end of his nose.

  ‘What?’ he asked, confused.

  ‘Why? Why do we do all of this work just to have it thrown away?’

  He looked at me some more.

  ‘Because they pay us to,’ he said, and never spoke to me again.

  VIII

  I still work there. I’ve moved up, or rather across. Diagonally, really. I’ve moved diagonally. I now lead a team of six people. I know the names of four of them. I meet with other team leaders and we discuss our teams as though we were talking about badly behaved pets. I have been on courses designed to encourage bonding between staff, and I have not been in any way encouraged to bond with staff.

  I’m like everyone else out there in the world of meaningless office jobs. It’s what I do in the daytime to pay for the rest of my life. It’s what I do to pay for what I do.

  The rest of my life is far more interesting. For example, there’s my best friend, Jack who can’t go through those metal detectors in airports without bells going off and guns being drawn.

  Chapter Two

  I

  After working on building sites I was glad to have a job in an office. I wanted a job in an office. I also didn’t want one. I wanted to be unconventional, but I didn’t have the money for it. An office job would provide the money to be unconventional, but an office job was all about being conventional. I had to fit in to make enough money not to fit in.

  Having an office job meant being unconventional in less exciting ways. I would put paper clips in the drawing pin box. I coloured in red sections of the year planner that should have been coloured yellow. This wasn’t the sort of anarchy I’d imagined when I listened to the Sex Pistols all those years ago. So an office job was conventional, I was right about that. I was only wrong about the money.

  I must have got something wrong somewhere. I had less money than when I was a student earning nothing. In those days there had been more money to spend. Working on building sites the money turned up in envelopes and there was no mention of tax. Working in an office, the money didn’t turn up. Once a month I got a piece of paper explaining where most of my wages had gone and how much of them I could keep. Then the B&S Building Society kept the rest. I began to want to work on the building sites again, getting fat little envelopes at weekly intervals and telling B&S nothing about it.

  I had outgoings. I had to pay
the rent and buy groceries and bus passes and other non-frivolous items, like cigarettes. Cigarettes aren’t frivolous; the health warnings prove it. I don’t like smoking, but not being able to afford to smoke makes me want to smoke. It wasn’t as though I had money to burn. I didn’t even have money for firelighters. My wages belonged to everyone but me. Leaving little for entertainments. Once a week I’d go for a drink with Jack and get mildly confused. We usually went to the Messy Duck, a quiet pub which was situated down the road from the zoo, standing alone next to an area of ground designated unsuitable for buildings. I would look over the ground with my practised trench-digger’s eyes, spotting the greasy pools of rainbow-topped water, the cracks leading down to the mineshafts, the thrown bricks and the broken glass, the condoms.

  I couldn’t understand that. There must have been better places. Even in Dudley.

  The Messy Duck was a quiet pub. I’d been in louder monasteries. You often got the impression that you were keeping the landlord up. He was a thin man with sad eyes and an off-putting manner. At around ten he’d switch off the jukebox and unplug the fruit machine. Between ten and half past he’d yawn pointedly. After that he’d just turn off the lights and stand by the door, holding it open. I would feel uncomfortable and intrusive, but it didn’t bother Jack. He seemed to like being in uncomfortable situations. That helped to explain his hobby, I suppose. He would have to enjoy being uncomfortable. How else could you explain his piercings? They were all about discomfort. If they didn’t bother him, they bothered the people around him.

  Jack was coloured and studded. I didn’t know the full extent of it – I didn’t want to know, there were parts of him I wouldn’t want to see in any condition, with or without rivets – but I knew that it was extensive. I imagined bolts and studs connected by chains. I imagined nails driven into areas of unnatural colour. I didn’t know what sort of tattoos he had. I doubted whether he went for the old-fashioned tigers and hearts with daggers. He’d prefer something more modern, like Celtic twiddles and spirals, or perhaps barcodes.