“You mean you actually believe people might be saying it?”
“I’m a scientist, Gabriel. There’s a difference between being a scientist and being a cynic.”
“You said you had a tentative theory.”
“I do, but can I ask you a question first?
“Sure.”
“Was there any change in your symptoms when you were in the MRI?”
“There was, the songs were changing every few seconds and they were really loud. Before I went to sleep, anyway. What does it mean?”
“It means my theory might just hold water. It relates to electro-magnetic fields and an MRI scanner produces one of some magnitude. EM fields are everywhere, everything alive is generating one and so is everything that needs electricity to function. There are bound to be people who are more sensitive to them than others, just like there are people more sensitive to pollen than others. It’s possible your brain’s interpreting electro-magnetic fields as music. When you drove up here today, did the songs thin out once you got into the wilds?”
“They did. I get what you’re saying; there are fewer electro-magnetic fields up here. And I get the connection, that’s what you’re working on, isn’t it? Sort of.”
“Sort of. We created the lab here because there’s so little EM interference. Would you like to see it?”
We wandered to a converted outbuilding of similar age to the house. There was a sign on the door that said ‘Strictly Primate.’ Once inside, the space proved to be much like the scan suite I’d recently visited at the hospital, with its smooth, white walls and a counter that ran the length of the room, peppered with screens and technical paraphernalia. It was the opposite of the house; uncluttered, impersonal, nothing even slightly out of place. The test booth seemed a friendly spot, though with its mellow ruby light. The only object in it was a recliner chair.
She showed me how the experiments I’d overheard worked. They were quite simple, just a weak magnetic pulse that came from a headset, originally created with a modified motorcycle helmet and a couple of solenoids. The light, woven headdress that comprised the current model advertised how far Gizmo had advanced matters.
“They call it The God Spot.” She said. “The main part of the brain that produces the sensed presence experience.”
“The God Spot, very appealing. Why would we have one, though?”
“That’s a good question.” She said. “And one I’d love to answer. The thing is, the glitch on your MRI is in precisely the same place.”
“What? Think I’ve got a hotline to the big man, do you? I’m not really the religious type.”
“Well that’s not why you’re here is it? In any case, that would be an advantage. People tend to filter the experience through their own spiritual preferences, as you heard.”
“Ever been tempted?”
She picked up the headset and cradled it. “After the accident, I had fits that gave me the sensed presence experience. I stopped having them after a while, though – the fits, I mean – and the experience, obviously.”
“What’s it like?”
“The best feeling ever.”
“What – better than…”
“Different. I’ve tried the headset, but it doesn’t work on me.” Her eyes filled a little.
“Do you miss it?”
“Oh yes, but it’s probably for the best. This way I get to keep my scientific distance.”
I was tempted myself until ‘The Fool on the Hill’ by The Beatles played in my head.
“Are you okay, Gabriel?”
“Oh, you’re good, Doctor Shore, a positive master class in how to soften me up. I’m curious, why were you hanging around at the hospital? How do you even get permission to do that? Do all those neurological miracles you’ve performed for them give you special dispensation?”
She was adept at the whole silence speaks volumes thing.
“You weren’t hanging around, you were waiting for me, wanted to give me the once over. You’re after unusual brains, or at least brains that behave in an unusual way, because they might provide you with clues for your little experiments.” Okay, the ‘little’ was cruel, but I was on a roll. “All your Christmases come at once when I rocked up all needy and confused, eh?”
She sighed. “You’ve had a difficult day, Gabriel…”
“Day, bloody day, try year.”
Her tone flipped to match my own. “Now, just a minute there, lad – you can be as pissed off as you like, but don’t ever accuse me of not putting a client’s needs first. If you think that’s what I’m about, you can get out, now.”
The ‘lad’ enthralled me back to a childhood of warm, feisty women. It was the first time I’d seen anything of the iron and fire she must have employed to get where she was.
“I’m no stranger to difficult years, Gabriel.”
Guilt infused me with instant forgiveness. I put a hand on her arm.
“I’m sorry, you’re right, it’s just been a hell of a day. If there was half a chance to make a difference, I’d probably do anything.” The trouble with prophetic words is that you don’t know they’re prophetic until much later. “You’ve been the perfect host, hardly grounds for legal action, is it? Come on, smile for me. Tell me what you want from me.”
“I want you to stop calling me Dr Shore. Next time you come – if there is a next time, we’ll map what’s happening in your brain and see if we can start to make sense of it.”
“There will be a next time.”
On the way home, my car headlights illuminated a dead sheep by the side of the road. I got out to see if it was the same sheep I ran into, like I’d have recognised it, but logic dictated it probably was. I didn’t know how much a sheep was worth and only had fifty quid in my wallet, which I tucked under its head, better than nothing. I had sympathy for the sheep, which was hypocritical as roast lamb was one of my favourite Sunday lunches. I got all spooked in that hinterland, a pitchy no place spitefully dangling the promise of distant lights and twenty-four hour amenities. Without distraction, I was left only with the curdling beneath. When I got back to the car, I was awash with relief.
Seven
The next day, a chalk-lipped Arlo met me outside the office entrance.
“What’s up, kid?” I said.
“Cheetham. He’s inside and he’s not a happy man.”
So, what’s new?
He paced back and forth, wringing his hands. “For God’s sake, Gabriel, I thought we were friends, never mind business partners.”
“You’re referring to?”
He shrugged as the razor wind blew his salt and pepper hair back to unveil pure grey temples. The Brand Strategist who advised us when we first set up the practice encouraged us to use our youth, height and looks to our advantage. It wouldn’t be long before only the height was left, but then we’d have reputation on our side – as long nothing shattered it.
“I’m sorry, Arlo. It wasn’t personal, I just… didn’t want to talk about it.”
“Is it a brain tumour?”
“No, of course not.” I put my hand on his shoulder, mainly to halt the pacing. “No. It’s just a… glitch. It won’t affect my work in any way.”
He batted my hand away and re-paced. “Your work? It’s you I’m worried about, dick-brain.”
“Arlo, I’m fine, there’s nothing to worry about.”
“Well, I wouldn’t go that far. It’s all over town, Chinese Whispers; they’ve probably got you down as having three days to live. I just wanted to let you know before you dealt with Hurricane Cheetham.”
Bentley. Who else?
There was a time we’d have nipped around the corner, sniggering and sneaked a fag before we dealt with the likes of Cheetham. How did everything get so life threatening? The recession, probably, years of trying to keep everything afloat had imprisoned u
s in a state of hyper-vigilance.
“You’ll have to go to the junket, Gabriel, show them everything’s okay.”
Every year, the Manchester Architect’s Network held a summer dinner dance. When I first became a student, I had fantasies about donning my tux and back-slapping with the great and the good. Now it was just another chore. Why are things only glamorous when you’re on the outside of them? Nothing’s glamorous when you’re in it, particularly when you’ve experienced a life of cash flow problems and sweaty all-nighters.
“Have you got one on you, Arlo?”
He nodded.
“Come on then, for old times’ sake, eh?”
We scooted around the corner. The alley between our row and the warehouse beyond had always been a favourite spot, first because we both relished the sight of pipes and vents spilling out from the shadowy flipside of buildings, the secret underbelly of design, repulsive to many, delightful to us. Second, it outfoxed the wind, whichever way it was blowing. Third, it offered a hanging around quality we were rarely permitted. He lit the cigarette and passed it to me after taking a couple of drags.
“Do you ever think,” he said, “that we were so desperate to get where we are that we never thought about whether it was a place worth going?”
“Sprinkle a bit of mid-life ennui on your cornflakes, did you?” I bit my lip; things had been hard for Arlo of late, the death of both his parents then a hostile divorce with kids in the middle. “A lot, actually, Arlo. Most of the time, in fact.” I passed the cigarette back to him. He pulled hard on it.
“I interviewed the new prospects today. Not one of them was from a background like ours.”
Arlo and I sprang from the end of a short, but golden age of education for people like us. Since then, the burgeoning middle-class had bred and its offspring expanded into an impenetrable mushroom cloud over the higher echelons and upward mobility was under threat of extinction. I understood Arlo’s grief, it could so easily have been us. We’d first connected at Uni because of the mismatch between our names and our accents; his mother had been a youthful fan of Arlo Guthrie – a name, like Gabriel, bound to draw fire from the tall poppy police of a working-class childhood. These days, our names would pass without notice amongst all the little Zacharys and Tylers. Anyway, it had a happy ending because it turned out that Arlo and Gabriel was a cracking name for an architect’s practice.
“What do we do, Gabriel?”
“I don’t know, Arlo, but we need to do something. I’m going to sort soft lad out, now. This subject will be resumed.”
I took a moment as I swaggered into our award-laden reception area. When Arlo and I first ripped the window boards off and got inside the building, we walked, awe-struck into another age, musty, neglected, but nevertheless magnificent. Wood panelling and ancient metal signs still adorned the walls, richly decorated plaster cornices hugged the ceiling and the crowning glory in the back room, a functioning black-lead range surrounded by Victorian brick tiles. We kept the lot, even the long, oak counter, anything else would have been sacrilege. We found an old Sunlight soapbox that we kept on one of the shelves. When anyone had to address the whole office, it became a tradition that they stood on it. We’d been standing on it for seven years and it was still holding fast. I was about to haul it into the office to use with Cheetham, but he’d only seem even smaller and probably wouldn’t get the joke. Familiar with my current demeanour, no one made eye contact as I walked through the library hush.
He seemed different without a reflector jacket and hardhat, smaller and baby-faced. As he sat at my desk, he turned a shark’s teeth paperweight over in his hands ignorant of the reason Arlo bought it for me.
“What’s wrong with you, Meredith?”
“You’ll have to give me a clue, Dave.”
He slammed the paperweight down on the desk.
“Don’t get smart with me. You know what I’m talking about.”
I leaned over the desk. “Who do you think you’re talking to, mate? Don’t waltz into my office, sit on my chair and start laying the law down to me when I don’t even know what you’re on about.”
He froze like a startled rabbit. Beneath the bravado, he was wary; I came from the streets and he could smell it on me. It was a useful quality on building sites as I came over as one of the lads.
“You’ve been seen at the hospital having check-ups and suchlike. I need to know if you’re going to fuck up my project. If it hasn’t already been fucked up by those snooty twats with their brushes and trowels.”
“You know what pisses me off about people like you, Dave? Your compulsion to subdue. You know when you’re going to subdue me, Dave? When hell freezes over, mate.”
“Don’t change the subject. And I’m not your mate.”
“Really, then I’m surprised you’d take such an interest in my love life, Dave.”
“What are you on about?”
“I’m seeing a woman called Cairo Shore. Doctor Shore, as it happens, she’s a neuroscientist who works at the hospital. When I go to pick her up, I end up hanging around if she’s busy. Not that it’s any of your business seeing as I’m not your mate.”
The words ‘tangled’ and ‘web’ were prominent in my mind as he deflated. There was no way back now, I’d have to take her to the Architect’s Dinner.
As much as the guy irritated me, I didn’t like to take the wind out of him. The wind was probably all he had. I was always too soft. I might have been rich if I wasn’t, not that I cared much about being rich. If you care about being rich don’t be an architect, you’d probably earn more as a plumber.
“It’s been tough, Dave. I’ll spend more time at the site, how about that? See if I can chivvy them along, eh?”
He probably had money problems; the recession had given Manchester a royal pasting and the recovery had been slow. We’d been lucky, but firms had been going down like ninepins.
“It’ll be okay, Dave.”
Sliding out from the desk, he headed towards the door, looking back before he went through it. The expression in his eyes unsettled me.
“When I’m there I get this feeling.” He said.
“The site?”
“Yeah. I get this feeling like it’s going to swallow everything up, like it knows something we don’t.”
That would be all I needed, the top coming off his madness bottle. Maybe he was thinking the same about me.
“Tough times, Dave, everyone’s spooked one way or another.”
Embarrassed by his own words, he waved his hand back to dismiss them. I knew I’d pay for the vulnerability he’d just displayed. It seemed like mid-life ennui was going around like a winter cold.
Eight
How does your life end up being a list?
On first becoming an architect I imagined spending my days swaddled in a perfect, ethereal space while I designed beautiful structures. Maybe everyone did. At least I hadn’t been sentenced to a lifetime of suburban house extensions, a fate that befell some. There were still golden moments when I summoned the perfect sketch and embraced the magic but, ever more in these testing times, it was relinquished to become computer induced Lego. If I’d stopped to think about it, I might seek out my heart and discover it had been sliced in two with sorrow oozing from a neat wound. As it was, life sped between business and finance minutiae, pitches, personnel problems and planning officer nit-picking, schmoozing and boozing prospective clients, site visits and networking, plus lecturing and posing as visiting critic at a variety of universities.
The welcome distraction of a trip to Cairo’s lab led to a familiar fantasy about sailing off to Bali with a backpack before I caught a glimpse in the wing mirror that slapped me back to reality. I swayed into the roadside, escaped from the car and crossed over, relishing the shift from unforgiving tarmac to yielding green.
The air reflected mossy peat that cov
ered the rise and fall of the moors like blankets of snooker table baize interrupted by snaking dry-stone walls. To the right, the phallus of Oldham Civic Centre hinted at the conurbation disguised from view by the ever-descending humps. And then, dead centre from where I stood, the jewel in the Cheshire Plain crown. It was Manchester. Seen from the hills, the city burst through the earth like crystals, an exalted testament to the power of the architect. Submerged by a wave of narcissism, I assessed my contribution to the swathe of buildings. Disappointment; how paltry it was when glimpsed from afar.
“It’s like the Emerald City.”
“Well, we are certainly not in Kansas anymore, Mr Gabriel.”
I clung to the spot, but shifted my eyes from side to side. Nothing. I rounded quickly, almost tipping over the brow of the hill. A short, plump man hovered before me, Indian-looking, which would account for the accent. He was in traditional dress.
“How do you know my name?”
His head nodded as he beamed. “I belong to Mrs Cairo, sir.”
“You belong to Mrs Cairo?”
“Yes, Mr Gabriel. She stole me from the hospital.”
“She stole you from the hospital?”
“Do you always repeat things people say, sir?”
“Do I always repeat things people say? No, no I don’t.”
He offered his hand, which I shook. “I am Vikram, Vikram Joshi, at your service. Everyone calls me Vik, apart from Gizmo, who has many other colourful names for me. A funny thing, isn’t it, Mr Gabriel? – You can see the city from the hills, but you can’t see the hills from the city. I think we peek at the world through a spyglass.”
In my younger days, I’d imagine drifting upwards until Manchester became a distant speck and further still, beyond blue atmosphere into black space, compelled past my own familiar planets as infinite celestial events called and had me floating ever outwards until the earth was lost in a billion stars. It was a habit I’d developed as a student, a way of finding perspective when faced with an impossible deadline or insoluble design problem. I’d completely forgotten about it; perhaps when all those years of training had come to fruition and they finally let me loose on the streets of Manchester. I enjoyed feasting on the buildings I’d forged pleasure in creating, surging with the pride of knowing I’d stamped at least a little of myself on the city, but from such a distant vantage point I felt like a Jack Russell that had trotted around lifting its leg on the occasional street corner.
The Cairo Pulse Page 4