Limestone Man

by Robert Minhinnick

  Stick in there, kid, said Mina, taking an interest. Who opens up for you?

  I do, said Nia.

  Who closes up?

  Me too.

  Hey, maybe you could help, encouraged Parry, looking at Mina. After all, you’re always telling me about your insomnia.

  Bore you, do I?

  No, said Parry. But you say it’s tough. And I know what it’s like. Sometimes I can’t sleep.

  Maybe you should all come down here, smiled Nia. Doesn’t anyone sleep round here?

  It gets better, said Mina. After a few years. You know, I used to think I wasn’t tired enough, that I shouldn’t have gone to bed. But it’s not that. Some nights, dead of night, it’s just me and the World Service. On quiet in case the flat next door can hear.

  That’s… said Nia

  Life, said Mina. Had problems with sleep on and off for twenty years. Maybe it started when my daughter was about ten. But it’s not always so bad. Have my little rituals of course, with candles and drapes over the lamps. So everything’s red and pink. But subdued. Like a Paris brothel.

  I’ll bring some CDs round, said Parry. Got these gentle Indian ragas that last forever. You play them so low you hardly know they’re on. They help you switch off.

  And I love the radio, added Mina. That’s my greatest friend. Radio and halogen heater, with that orange glow.

  Soothing, said Nia.

  Making life bearable, laughed Mina. Yes anything as long as it’s not pills. A friend gave me some of those.

  Okay, she added, it’s own up time. I’ve tried the lot, and yes, some worked. But I took this different tablet once. Was told it would really do the trick. Woke up fifteen hours later with a head like a bucket. My tongue had turned green. Not healthy, those sleeping pills. Take my word.

  Yes, said Parry. Stay off the medication. Music’s the answer. Try ‘Riverman’ by Nick Drake. Or I’ll record the sea for you. You know, that slap and tickle of the tide on Caib Slipway.

  Hey, maybe I’ll market a CD in the shop. Call it ‘Soothing Sounds’. Then we’d expand the idea. Record the wind in the dunes, then real Caib seagulls. Call one record ‘All the Moods of the Sea’. We could create Caib Records…What sound does the fog make?

  Is there no stopping the man? asked Nia.

  We know people who’d join in, said Parry, warming to his subject. Think of Gil and his website and all that recording equipment…

  Nia raised her eyes in mock horror.

  No, we need younger people, added Parry. Like Glan and Serene, so we can spot trends…

  Was it to do with children that you stopped sleeping? Nia asked Mina.

  No, Alys was only ten. Perfect age. Before the terrible twelve.

  She looked round the bar. There were fewer people in now the excitement generated by free drinks was wearing off.

  There was a man in the corner, the moisture on his sleeves pearls in the striplight. He hadn’t pulled down his hood. Yet Mina thought she had seen him somewhere before.

  IV

  Once, Parry recalled, he had fallen into stinging nettles. The rash had lasted three weeks. Or so it had seemed.

  Parry could still see those nettles. Tall and violet, the flowers bearded. How his fingertips had tingled, smothered in white freckles. Sea foam on limestone.

  His father’s fault, of course. Jack Parry wanted to cut nettles for his ‘luxurious nettle soup’.

  Ideally the nettles should have been fresh and green. But the whole expedition proved a disaster. Parry had tumbled into the nettle bed and the soup turned into gruel. Even his father refused his own cooking. Parry sat blowing on his fingers, tormented by the nettles’ needles.

  But now the discomfort was elsewhere. He tested his tongue again, pushing it between his teeth. Yes, the dentist had been a careless fool. He had nipped his tongue and weeks later, Parry still felt tender.

  As a child he remembered visiting the speech therapist. Being told to keep a pebble in his mouth. A stone that rolled around, an impossible word in his cheek.

  But it had worked. There was barely a trace of the stammer he had suffered as a boy. The hesitancy was gone. The unhappiness it brought hardly a memory.

  V

  Like a hamster, he thought. Or more likely a chicken. A stone in its gizzard. A grindstone of the throat.

  Yet it had worked for him. A forgotten miracle of childhood had restored language. Stones in the mouth, breathing through straws.

  Whatever the treatment, it had helped. He had been able to quit the classes, leaving the stutterers behind with their smashed words.

  Yet Parry imagined he knew what was causing the hold up ahead. Words, he guessed. Unsayable words.

  All Parry wanted was a morning paper. He had waited outside the supermarket until 7am.

  He liked the idea of a routine that a newspaper created. Also, the unbroken bundles of newsprint that could be glimpsed at such an hour. Newspapers he never otherwise saw, Irish and Polish titles, racing papers, red-topped bales. All possessed a seductive urgency.

  But the man ahead who was guilty of the delay was no stammerer. Rather, he was counting out change from a succession of moneybags.

  None of the aisles was yet open, only the kiosk working. The man had asked for a bottle of the supermarket’s own-label vodka, Krazy Kremlin, £3.53 for 500mms. Now he was telling the assistant to count it again.

  You’re over 50 pence short, the girl explained. Do you want a miniature instead?

  Can’t be, the man explained. Added it up this morning. Spot on.

  But conscious of the queue for newspapers and lottery tickets behind, he decided to abandon the purchase.

  Back in the street, Parry caught him up. The mist was raw, the morning black. And as Parry was pocketing his own change, a figure pushed past, a man who loomed suddenly out of the junction with Cato Street. Out of and into the fog.

  Look, have that, said Parry. He proffered a pound coin. It’s only a quid.

  It was all there if that idiot kid had been able to count, the man said. I added it up this morning. It was perfect. Counted it twice.

  Don’t teach them anything these days, do they? laughed Parry. Look, go back and get it.

  And he pressed the coin into the man’s hand and walked past. A cold coin on a cold morning, the man with no jacket or hood but jewels already in his hair. A man dealing with the day’s first shame, a first ignominious encounter and dawn not broken. Something not even Krazy Kremlin would put right.

  Not made for this, were we? the man said. I said we’re not made for this.

  You’re not wrong about that, said Parry, turning for home. He had bought milk, in case anyone called round. And both Glan and Serene needed it in their tea. Their coffee. Parry had also bought three bottles of red wine, on special offer.

  Not such a giveaway as Krazy Kremlin, he considered. Nor had the girl in the kiosk blinked at his purchase. She was too young to serve him but experienced enough not to worry.

  In the kitchenette at 33, Caib Street he made himself black coffee. Then set to thrashing the porridge.

  VI

  Eventually Richard Parry had found employment in The Works. The job was offered for the August holidays, with the chance of more hours any time he wanted.

  More hours, he soon discovered, might last for weeks. Maybe months. There were workers on the payroll still considered temporary or casual after serving years. Some of them preferred it like that.

  Indeed, it occurred to Parry, that whole working lifetimes spent at The Works might be passed that way. His father outlined certain practices he would encounter.

  You’ll see, said Jack Parry. And laughed. And shrugged.

  No matter how weird you think it’s going to be, it will always be much stranger still.

  Listen, to understand The Works, you need to learn to think like everybody else. But by the time you’ve learned to think like everybody else, it’ll be too late to get out. Too late to save your skin, my son. You’ll be paralysed. All par
t of the great myth.

  What great myth?

  The myth of work. By the time you understand that, they’ve got you.

  But it’s good money, said Richard Parry.

  Oh yes. Good money. That’s the trap.

  What trap?

  The trap of life.

  Myth of work? Trap of life? There’s no trap.

  Beware, laughed Jack Parry. There were pastry flakes on his tie.

  But it is good money. Everybody says so.

  See. It’s started already.

  What has?

  Indoctrination. Mind control. Hallucination. I’m not joking.

  I’ll be earning almost as much as you, Dad.

  Probably more, the way my sales are going.

  Well then?

  What if it was twice as much money? asked Jack Parry. Or, or … what about ten times as much? You’ll see. You’ll see.

  You’re a really poor role model, Dad. In fact, I believe you’re a bad influence all round.

  Thanks. So now it’s only me. Only me who’s holding out.

  Holding out?

  Only me not working. In that place.

  You’re pathetic, Dad, said the younger Parry, laughing too. You know that?

  VII

  Severin also told Parry about The Works.

  My brother surfs up there. Round the outfall.

  Why up there?

  He surfs everywhere. But some good sets, he says. Like today. I’m going in now.

  Sets?

  Series of waves.

  Dangerous, isn’t it?

  Nah. Well, depends. He’s got conjunctivitis.

  What’s that?

  Going blind, isn’t he?

  What?

  Says he doesn’t care. Says he’ll be the only blind surfer.

  Blind?

  Kind of. All the surfers get it.

  Dirty water?

  Yeah. You don’t surf but you swim. You could get the rash.

  What rash?

  What the surfers get.

  Dai as well?

  Dai and Fflinty. All the boys. Maybe Branwen. She surfs. She’s good. Rashes and runs. My brother’s got it on his legs.

  He goes round the outfall?

  Yeah. Says it’s incredible, what comes out of the pipe. After dark, mostly. But my father tells him. When to go. When not.

  Your father works there?

  Yeah. Says when the best times are. The times to avoid.

  Blind?

  Fucking crazy, my brother. I’m going with him.

  Parry paused.

  I’ve seen you with that thing on your leg, he said.

  You what?

  That rope.

  You mean the leash?

  Suppose.

  You attach the leash to the board.

  Why?

  So the board doesn’t drift off. You are thick. Look, got to go.

  Yes, hot, isn’t it?

  High pressure. Forecast all week.

  And Severin continued down Cato Street in his American shorts. Parry remembered seeing surfers like him on TV. Sev’s freckles were prominent and there were darker blotches on his shoulders. His hair was blonder than Parry had ever seen it. On his feet ruined canvas shoes. The boy was already deeply tanned. Even his toes.

  Parry was left gazing at Sev’s slender back. He realised it tapered like a candleflame. The image came to him like a thunderflash.

  SIX

  I

  Six in the morning, Richard Parry caught a bus in Cato Street. He felt ill. Maybe that was how everyone felt at The Works.

  But the swifts were screaming through the town, twenty, fifty, two hundred swifts. Black boomerangs over the terraces and gwlis of The Caib.

  Here ragwort already stood in braziers. Bindweed hung its mattresses over walls and hedges.

  After thirty minutes, the bus dropped its passengers at one of the canteens.

  Hundred and Seventeen duty?

  Think so, said Parry. But…

  Fucking know so, said an older man in blue overalls.

  Ignore him, said a young voice. You’re with me, butt. Stick close.

  Parry attached himself to this young man in ragged jeans. Whose enormous boots were bleached the colour of driftwood.

  With others, they piled into a minibus. Familiar as he thought The Works was, this would be the first time he had travelled into its remoter fastnesses.

  He already knew the plant was seven miles in extent. That was part of its legend. Also legendary was that it constituted a bigger town than The Caib.

  The minibus sped off, crossing loco tracks. Somehow it missed what Parry thought certain collision with a small train, hauling fiery slag.

  II

  When his mother asked him that night what he had done to get so dirty, Parry said simply, ‘carbon paper’.

  This he discovered, was what constituted duty One Hundred and Seventeen. But he never again heard his job referred to like that.

  One Hundred and Seventeen, he gradually learned, was part of The Works’ mythology. One Hundred and Seventeen might have been One Million and Seventeen for all it mattered.

  But work itself was divided into thousands of specialised separate activities. All were protected by demarcation.

  You must have done something, his mother smiled.

  What Richard Parry had done was to pull miles of carbon paper from green-lined computer print-outs used by The Works accounts department.

  This paper was to be salvaged as a waste product. The carbon paper had to be incinerated.

  There’s miles of it, he told his mother. We’re as black as this. Like coalminers, because of it. Miles and miles of carbon paper that we have to squash into something called the incinerator.

  And no water for washing. Or drinking when you’re parched. There’s no tap anywhere. My throat’s raw.

  The carbon paper gang worked in a breezeblock garage. Maintenance might have once been done on Works vehicles there. Yet no one in the gang of six labourers remembered the premises ever being used.

  Two of Parry’s colleagues were, like him, starting their careers that day. The first was the same age. Parry recognised him from primary school. The second, he learned, was called Bran, a mute young giant.

  Blocks of print-outs were delivered from the computer department, located next door to accounts, three miles distant.

  This occurred at ten every morning and at one in the afternoon. Otherwise, there were no visitors for the team. The carbon paper shift was supposed to commence at 7am.

  Parry gradually realised they were in a part of The Works best described as abandoned.

  Welcome to Hell, said Daf who had spoken to him first. Smoke?

  There were three cavernous sheds. Each was divided into a honeycomb of workshops. Once devoted to vehicle repair, these were constructed on an area of subsiding tarmacadam, bigger than a football pitch.

  Each shed was fifty yards long. They held vats of waste oil, carboys of acid in straw paliasses, and inspection pits. Some of these were flooded with filthy rainwater.

  The work benches bristled with frozen vices, seized lathes and grease guns, oxy acetylene lances and spraypaint cartridges and nozzles. All were sheathed in rust.

  Watch out for them, mumbled Daf. He had nodded towards a corner where glass bottles were stored.

  The vitriols, he explained. Watch them vitriols.

  Parry had never heard the word used before.

  Daf saw he was looking puzzled, and explained.

  Watch this, then, he said. If it teaches you something.

  He wrapped a rag around his hand and took one of the vials. Then he unscrewed its milled glass stopper. It held an oily brown liquid. On to a heap of swarf in the corner Daf poured a thin stream. The mixture started to smoulder.

  See! he said triumphantly. No one told me about this stuff. No one. Had to work it out for myself.

  Yeah, myself. He looked toward Parry but his gaze was wide.

  But I say, Daf continue
d, I say, that could burn straight through you. Could burn right through a man. If he didn’t know, like. If he didn’t know.

  He cleared his throat, as if the liquid was releasing fumes.

  Aqua Fortis, they call it. Aqua’s water. Just water. But water of death, I call it.

  Parry looked at the smoke. Why? he asked. Why are they here? These … vitriols?

  Daf shrugged. It was as if years ago, a full shift had departed for lunch and not returned. Some of their sodden magazines still lay on the benches. Hung on a wall, Parry noted a cap, an overcoat felted in green mould.

  In another of the workshops, there were the torn remnants of glossy photographs. Parry stared, but could make no sense. Who were those people?

  Girls? Possibly. But hardly men. Rather, monstrous, inarticulate shapes. He doubted they could be human.

  Parry thought of an angling journal he had once seen. These had displayed conger eels, fanged, muscular. Immense torsos, wrenched from ancient wrecks. Now, when he touched one of the pages, it crumbled to dust.

  There was no glass in the windows. Some were blocked with ivy trunks and purple buddleia.

  Entrance to the sheds was permitted by sliding doors. Each of these had been deliberately run off its castors. A van had been driven into one of the entrances and set alight. Its four tyres were quivers of wreathwire.

  The whole tarmac expanse was covered in tyres, engine parts, and pools of scummy petrol. There were gear wheels and flywheels on every surface, like iron-gilled fungi. Flanges and brackets. Unnameable parts.

  On that first day, it seemed to Parry that he spent most of his time coughing. It was scorching weather but a breeze blew in from the sea, disturbing dust from the sinter heaps. These had been spread over the beach and dunes.

  The sinter had been flattened by the enormous tyres of the vehicles. When he looked around, Parry saw only a basalt-coloured desert.

  In the weeks to come he found there were people who lived amongst the waste. Yet he never came close enough to learn about them. Parry was convinced some of the desert’s inhabitants were foreigners. He had no idea from where.

  What is this place? he asked Daf, the only person who had spoken to him on his first day.

  This place? asked the boy in driftwood boots. He looked around with genuine surprise. As if he had never noticed it before. As if he was slowly realising where he was.