Like I said, that was the only time I’d ever helped him, but you know what a place like that’s like for gossip. It didn’t take long for word to get round.
I imagine people weren’t best pleased.
I mean, haway – you’re buying clothes out of bin bags in a Labour Club, and you expect what exactly? That was that estate all over – always looking for a hand out, always wanting something for nowt. Always ready to play the martyr. Small lives, you know?
Not that I cared, like. Still, I did think it wise to keep my head down for a bit because there was this one bloke, this local psycho.
What was his name, out of curiosity, this, ah, psycho?
Vincent.
Why was he…?
Why? There’s always one like him. Always.
Could you elaborate?
You want me to try and explain a man like that? I don’t know…It’s like in the nature programmes on telly – here’s one animal, but then along comes a bigger one and rips its throat out, just because that’s how it is. Then the bigger one’s off doing something else, and it’s already forgotten about the thing it’s just killed, even though there’s still blood all over its face.
[Silence].
That didn’t make sense. Tape over that bit or something.
Wait a minute. Why would Vincent be after you?
Fuck knows. Doug’d probably sold him gear in the past, but because I was with him the night he got found out, Vincent might think I’d been in on it all along.
What exactly did Doug sell Vincent?
Gear. I don’t know. Shirts, coats – gear. I told you, I wasn’t –
A dress?
Eh?
A black dress. Surely you must be able to remember selling a black dress to someone like Vincent?
I don’t know what you’re on about.
No, it makes sense now. It must have been you two. He let you both in through the back gate, into the kitchen, didn’t he? It was late, past midnight. I could hear you rustling through the bags. He picked out the black dress, gave you less than your asking price, and you left the way you came in.
How the fuck would you know that?
Well…well, because I was listening on the landing. Because, ah, I’m Vincent’s son.
[Ian stands up, startled].
He can’t do nowt to me. He’s in jail. I seen it in the paper.
He is yes, but he’s getting out soon. And, ah, I’ve been to see him. When I said I was coming to interview you he, ah, got quite het up. He still remembers how you swindled him.
I told you, that was Doug’s game, not mine.
He doesn’t see it like that, and he has been pumping, ah, pumping iron. If you help me today, I promise I’ll keep quiet about your whereabouts, about everything…or if you’d prefer, I could talk to my dad. I could tell him what you told me – it was all Doug’s idea. You had nothing to do with it. My father and I are really close. He, ah, listens to me.
I’m not scared of him.
Of course.
I’m not. And I don’t need nowt from you neither.
I know that too…It’s just, I’ve come all this way and…
You alright lad?
[Muffled sound of dropped mp3] Sorry, yes…just a little sweaty, that’s all. It’s, ah, stuffy in here, isn’t it?
[Sitting back down] I’m alright.
So the dress. He gave Mam it for her birthday. She loved it. She thought it was from Selfridges.
[Sigh]The tag was.
And the dress?
Spastic Society, I think.
We…she was buried in it.
I don’t know what to tell you.
Just tell me about New Year’s Eve.
Well, a couple of days later I went round Doug’s to make sure he was keeping his head down. His place was always a tip, full of bits from the houses. That was something else he did. When a house went empty, people stripped it for the lead, slate, the copper in the walls…timber was worth something, too. There was a lot of that going on. Another greasy business you wouldn’t catch me doing. When were you last there?
The estate? I’m still there.
Christ. What’s it like?
Like I said, it transferred to a housing association and they’re in the middle of knocking it down. Only about half the old estate’s left.
What about the precinct? Fat Gary’s?
Still there for now. Gary died though, not long ago. He had a heart attack behind the counter.
He was never out that shop, was he? His fat ghost’ll be haunting them new houses. What about the bakers?
Gone.
The Laundrette?
Gone.
Yvettes’? She did a lush fry-up.
Hanging on. She’s the only one left, now the hairdresser’s closed, though I think that was after your time. Anyway, so you went round Doug’s…
And he was shitfaced, as per. [Whistles through teeth]. I used to think I could rub off on him, like. Be a good influence. But it’s never simple with people like that. You try your best, but they resist.
You’re saying he didn’t want to be helped?
I’m saying part of him got off on it. I was his audience. He needed me to see what he was doing to himself. He was adamant he was going down Fat Gary’s to get more drink, but I was like, We need to keep our heads down ’til we figure out the lay of the land, you know, regarding what’d happened in the Labour Club.
You mean with Corina’s jumper?
Think about it. It was New Year’s Eve, and Fat Gary’s was the only off licence on the estate. Everyone would be down there at some point. Everyone we didn’t want to see. Plus it was right around the corner from your old house.
Still my house. I still live there.
I was like, Use your head. But he kept saying, I’m a man. Just that, I’m a man. I was like, Nobody’s disputing that. Just chill the fuck out. But that’s what it’s like with pissheads, isn’t it? Everything’s measured in how much drink they’ve got left. Balls to everything else. He wouldn’t shut up, so in the end we went down.
Please, ah, please don’t take this the wrong way, but why would you agree to that after everything you’ve just said about people being after you?
I told you why. Who else was going to look after him?
So what happened then?
There was a gang of lads on the precinct, rotten little scunners. They seen us, and you know what it’s like – once you’re seen, there’s nowt to be done but keep going. They were like, Go in the shop for us, and I was like, Jog on dickheads. They knew I meant business, so they started going on at Doug. He didn’t say owt, so one of them punched him in the back of the head. A quick jab – whack. I was like, If yous don’t do one right now, I’ll bray yous all into next fucking week. So they did one.
We got in Gary’s, and Doug was shaking. He was like, I did it again. I was like, Did what? Bottled it, he said. He could never stand up for himself. This ‘other him’ took over, he said.
Then he started crying.
What did you do?
What did I do? I just let him get on with it. That’s the last thing you need if you’re crying, another bloke seeing you do it. You must have gone in there all the time. He was sound, Gary, wasn’t he?
He was always nice to me, yes. He used to order me in magazines special.
I’ll bet. I’ve never seen that many jazz mags.
Not that kind of magazines.
You never looked at the top shelf?
[Silence].
Are you blushing? There’s no shame in it. Anyway, Fat Gary and his missus were watching the whole thing. Oh, what was her name again?
Something Irish. Sian? Sian.
Whatever it was, she was looking at us with that face she had [pulls face of pinched disdain]. Doug
got a big bottle of cider with his filthy pennies, and you could see her getting edgy. But Gary was sound as usual, chatting away, like [eerily accurate impersonation of Gary]: Oh, we’re not doing anything for New Years, oh, we used to go down her brother’s in wherever-it-is, ’til he became one of them Hari Krishnas, and they celebrate New Year in fucking August or something, so now we just watch Big Ben on the telly and dah-de-dah. You know how he was. And Doug just started necking his cider right there at the counter.
Them teenagers were still on the precinct. They were like, We’ll see yous again, and I was like, Whatever. But Doug couldn’t hack it. He made us go the other way, towards yours. He stopped outside your house, mumbling stuff. I had to drag him away. Was it your place that had Christmas lights all over the roof?
No, that was Mrs Zimmerman from further along. She got so old she started leaving them up all year round. After Mam died, we didn’t do any of that. We didn’t even have a tree.
I can’t remember when we saw old Bundy, if it was before or after what happened outside Doug’s place. Let’s say it was before. Bundy was coming up the road. He’d been on the building site.
He lived in a shed on the allotment, didn’t he? Dad used to give him tins of food.
He was a worse pisshead than Doug, so I didn’t believe him when he said about the bomb.
Exactly what did he say?
Just that they’d dug up a bomb. Like I said, I thought he was talking bollocks because he was blotto.
Perhaps I could talk to him.
Bundy? No chance. He can’t still be there. You can’t be a pisshead living in a fucking shed for thirty year and not be dead. I guarantee it.
Interview with Fredrick Bunden. Burn Estate Allotment. 4th May 20164
4 The allotment is located on the west edge of the estate and all but abandoned now, choked by Japanese knotweed – or ‘Parson’s Prick’ as my father used to call it. Sheds and shacks in various states of collapse; their boards warped and rotted, their caved roofs receiving the silent white sky. Forgotten trowels rust into the earth they once tended, while shreds of cassette tape flutter from listing
bamboo canes, tattered battle-flags from a war long since lost.
Fred Bunden’s shed is a casualty of this war. The entire exhausted edifice leans as if resting against an invisible lamppost. In the distant past, someone – perhaps Fred himself – had begun painting the shed’s outer walls, only to have seemingly given up after several Pollock-esque slashes. Immediately outside the threshold is a heavily stained deckchair and a perforated oil drum containing
dozens of charred beer cans.
Fred was not expecting me, but I couldn’t fault his hospitality. He readily agreed to be recorded. He was also hammered.
[Unintelligible noise] – say? OK, we’re recording.
I said there’s a tap outside, son.5
5 I was dirty and sweaty by the time I paid my visit to Fred because earlier that morning, I’d finally got around to taking Ludwig’s head down off the wall. I wrapped it in a blanket and carried it up to the allotment, to my father’s plot, in a sports holdall.
It was strange being at the allotment again after all these years. Dad had worked this patch of earth for as long as I could remember, having taken over from his own father, Trevor, after his death at the age of 48 – one of nine men killed in the Upton Hill blast furnace disaster of 1972. The allotment formed part of my earliest memories: Dad crouching down to me, snapping a peapod open under my nose – I can still smell the loam – before putting the sweet, cool pea on my tongue.
Now the plot had gone to seed. I tried to recall how Dad had arranged it. Over by the shed had been the potatoes, carrots, and turnips. Beetroots, too, though I never liked those. Down the middle had been sweet peas and strawberries? Cabbages along the far side? I wasn’t sure. One corner of the plot, though, had always been reserved for a special purpose. Down past the rhubarb barrels were the graves. Ten in total, with a different variety of rose growing on each. Dad’s dogs.
They were waiting for me, the graves, like graves always seem to be waiting for someone. At the end of the row was a relatively new mound, which I guessed contained the rest of Ludwig. The rose Dad had planted on it was not yet in bloom, and I didn’t want to disturb the plant itself, so I found a spade in the shed and dug a fresh hole. I lowered Ludwig’s head down in the blanket. It stared blindly up at me. I could see myself reflected in its glass-eyes, standing at the edge of the grave like a mournful apparition. On a whim, I slipped a 50p coin into Ludwig’s mouth, the way the Romans used to do. Then I filled in the hole.
Anyway, that was why I was dirty.
I’m fine. Thank you for agreeing to speak with me. I was told you might still be living here.
Cheers bonny lad. I’ve got everything I need here. You’ve got the bed…a table there. There’s the telly and a DVD. I get the ’leccy from that there [Fredrick motions to what appears to be a dozen or so car batteries nesting amid a tangle of dangerous-looking cables]. One of the lads rigged it. I don’t have it on all the time though, ’cause it’s a drain. Got a little fridge too. Are you hungry? [Opens fridge. A pungent smell emanates].
Oh, no thank you.
Got yoghurts.
I’m fine.
I’ve got corned beef. I’ve–
Honestly, no. How long have you been living here?
Before my brother married that heifer from the Isle of Man, I know that. He came in here and I said to him, I said, She’s a wrong ’un. Just look at her hands. Big as boiled hams. And I was right – she cleaned him out…she…I think she shacked up with an ombudsman after him. God help that poor bastard…
I’d like to ask you about the bomb you found. The one that went off where the Moorside houses are now.
[Cracks open a can of lager] Boom!
Boom, yes. What can you remember? How did you find it?
Weren’t me. It was what’s-his-name? Len Carmichael’s lad. Dean? Dan? Dean did.
On the building site? What were you doing there?
You see these shelves? Built with timber from them houses. Big companies don’t miss it.
You were stealing?
Haway. I was down Carlin thirty year, on the pig iron.6 The sand was so hot you had to wear wooden clogs lest your shoes caught fire. I’ve grafted my whole life. I’ve paid my stamp. [Opens fridge again], I think I’ve got some…no, I had that last night. There’s some haggis Harry’s wife did me, but that’s my tea. She’s a star, she is. She makes it from scratch, gets all the lungs and oats and that. She boils it in a proper sheep’s stomach. Beautiful.
6 Carlin How forge: once part of the Skinningrove Iron Company, one of the many Iron and Steel Works to the southeast of Middlesbrough, and not far from Upton Hill, where my grandfather Trevor Barr was killed. Carlin How shut down in 1971, just another victim of the Teesside steel industry, the corpse of which has been torn apart by companies with names reminiscent of ancient, vengeful Gods: Koninklijke Hoovogorens, Corus, Tata, and, most recently, Shaviriya. Eventually only one blast furnace – Redcar – remained ablaze.
But then, in October 2015, Shaviriya went into liquidation and Redcar was ‘mothballed’ indefinitely. 3,000 jobs gone. And so it came to be that the flame which had lit this corner of the world for over a century was extinguished for good, and Ironopolis – that once great citadel to which we had all been subjects – finally fell.
I’m fine, really. So what did Dean do?
She looks out for me. They both do. That’s not how people are anymore. That’s not–
You were telling me about Dean Carmichael? He found the bomb, you said?
Dean? Head in the clouds, that one. He must’ve gone off and started digging. Head in the clouds, Len’s lad. He must have went off.
The explosion happened next to the well. Is that where Dean found the bomb?
The well, aye. You’re from around there, then? You know the well?
I’ve had dealings with it, yes.
Len went to fetch him. Dean was digging it out and Len, he knew what it was straight off. Len was into all that. He watched the documentaries. All round here got bombed, you know. All the places like St. Esther got bombed. It was an UXO, Len said. A big bastard.
Pardon? UXO?
That’s just what Len said.7 You’ll have to ask him.8 It’s a daft word, but it got stuck in my head. UXOUXOUXO [laughs]. It’s canny saying it.
7 From Wikipedia: ‘Unexploded ordnance (or UXOs/UXBs, sometimes acronymized as UO) are explosive weapons (bombs, shells, grenades, land mines, naval mines, etc.) that did not explode when they were employed and still pose a risk of detonation, potentially many decades after they were used or discarded.’
8 Despite my best efforts, I could find no trace of Len or Dean Carmichael.
What did you do then?
Do you like cowboy films? I’ve got a DVD here where they string him up by his tits.
Westerns aren’t my cup of tea. If it’s not too much trouble, I’d like to keep talking about the bomb.
I can’t remember. It was yonks ago…I used to know all the lads, but it was yonks ago and they’ve all moved on. Or dead.
Dean’s father, Len, he said it was a big one…
Aye, and we were off like rockets!
Didn’t anyone call the police or the, ah, bomb squad?
Nowt to do with us, was it?
So after you left the building site, do you remember meeting two men called Douglas and Ian? Or Pav, as he’s known? They used to live around here.
Who’s that?
Douglas and Ian? Ian was short, dark. Doug was tall and blonde. They might have sold you some clothes?
Clothes? People give me what I need.
So you don’t remember talking to them? They said they saw you.
I used to know all the lads. Good lads, like Harry. There used to be good folk up here. What’s-her-name grew marrows this big. She’d give me them and I’d pack them with brown sugar for the marrow rum. But now there’s scunners causing trouble up here, kicking hell out of the raised beds. That’s why I come here in the first place, to keep away from that.
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