Ironopolis

by Glen James Brown

  Would you happen to know where he is now? I’d like to speak to him if I could.

  He’s dead.

  Excuse me? When? How?

  When that bomb went off, he was there.

  The New Year bomb from 1993?

  Aye. There’s still thousands of them right under our feet. All sorts just waiting to be dug up.

  You’re saying Doug was responsible?

  That’s what I heard. I saw him the night it happened. Some lads were knocking him about. Horrible lads. Round here’s always been bad for that. When they went, that’s when me and Claudette went over. He was blotto, and I couldn’t understand owt he was saying. I think he was afraid of her.

  Claudette? What kind of dog was she?

  A greyhound. She was beautiful. I was on the river one day, and there was a black bag on the bank. It was making a noise and when I opened it, it was full of dead pups. Claudette was the only one still alive. She was such a beautiful dog, and soft as shite. That’s what I tried to tell him, Doug, but he wasn’t making any sense.

  Did you stay with him? Where did he go?

  I got him on his feet and let him get on. He went off in the direction of the building site, and I don’t know what else he done after, before he blew himself up.

  Did he have friends? Anyone he went around with?

  There was one bloke. This stocky lad. Shifty.

  Do you have a name? Anything?

  [Shakes head].

  OK, well, thank you very much Mr Coombes, it’s been lovely speaking to you.

  You know, people used to call Claudette the Street Sweeper. If there was a plastic bottle on the floor, she’d carry it miles in her gob until we found a bin. Then she’d see another one and she’d have that too. Sometimes she’d have four or five bottles at once. Have you ever seen a dog do that?

  She sounds nice. I lost my dog recently.41

  41 Ludwig, by the way, was the only dog I ever felt anything for. His instant-coffee eyes peered out at a world in which he never seemed to quite know his place. He was also the only one of Dad’s dogs not to have had that choke-chain streak of combustible violence, the prerequisite of all his earlier beasts, though Dad still span yarns about Ludwig’s savagery. The castrated would-be burglar being a tale he was particularly fond of telling. Appearances had to be upheld, I suppose.

  Because of this, I’d worried Ludwig wouldn’t cut mustard in the Barr household but, surprisingly, Dad took to his lumbering placidity. It was a new development. My entire life, the house had shook with the boom of huge dogs. In fact, Chopin’s (see FN.11) machine-like barks had probably been the last thing my mother heard as she departed this world. So in that respect, perhaps Dad’s love for Ludwig stemmed from the fact that he was the first dog to ever give him silence enough to grieve. To just close his eyes and wrestle his loss.

  Aye, she was the best dog ever. Another thing she used to do was…42

  42 Numerous Claudette-related anecdotes followed. Before I left the Labour Club I emptied my bladder. It was in the urinal that I met the gentleman who put me on the trail of Ian Pavel (see FN.1).

  Doug Cont.

  2/3/1987

  Not written in this for while coz I’m back at Mams. Old room. She’s given all my stuff to “poor African babbies what needed it.” I want to ask her why Jesus allows these poor African babbies to die shrivelling in the sun with flies in their eyes, while she can watch it happen on her colour telly, sitting in her nice comfy armchair with a tin of Quality Street.

  First thing I did was get pissed & it was fucking glorious. Have been wrecked ever since. Mam doesn’t like it, but I’ll be gone soon. Council given me a flat on estate. I told those cunts I didn’t want to go back coz there’s people I don’t want to see but do they give a fuck?

  12/4/1987

  Burn Estate’s gone downhill. Whole streets boarded up. Nasty scunners on BMXs. This wind blowing through the place what makes you feel like Last Cunt on Earth. What happened? Here’s my flat, 7B Campbell Road: cig-burned settee with foam puking out. Single bed, jizz-stained mattress. Wardrobe with no hangers & half-picked-off Gary Mabbutt footy sticker on inside of door.

  This must be what Karen meant by My Future.

  I made it Karen. I made it.

  20/5/87

  Had to get out today. Can’t take flat anymore. Took my drink up field. I like how the streets fall away & tarmac crumbles & the knotweed rolls back the world. Crickets sing but you never see them. Dragonflies cut up the air. Close my eyes & I’m not even on estate. I’m nowhere.

  There’s a hole. A well. Don’t know what’s down it or how deep it goes but I talk into it & listen for echoes that never come. Only a silence filled with ghosts of other sounds & a fear that any second the silence will break. I piss down hole. Chuck my empties down.

  Last night I waited in alley opposite Sarah’s house. Her mam closed the curtains at 9 but I stayed there all night [unintelligible scrawl] can’t stop imagining her with Pierre. Fucking him, holding herself open like the magazines. Other times they’re just holding hands & that’s worse.

  So was lying next to hole thinking about this when I heard a voice. Opened my eyes & sun was down. Orange across rooftops. One or two stars. Cold. I’d nodded off. Must have dreamed it. I got up slow like an old man. My cider was on rim & was about to pick it up when someone said my name. Coming from the hole. From in the hole. A voice from far away: Come. Down. Here.

  Other me did what it said. Leaned over into nothing.

  Come. Down. Here. With. Me.

  I can’t, I whispered. I’m Scared.

  Shhh…

  I put a foot on rim. But the thought of falling…

  No, I said. You come up.

  The hole said nowt. I looked down. Heard metal thuds from below, getting louder. Something climbing up to me & then I woke up & it was early morning. My hand down my keks. Rolled over & puked. Cider bottle still on rim where I left it. Downed last bit & looked down well.

  Nowt there.

  Checked my pockets. Nobody had been through them. £17 of giro. Enough to keep me going as long as I didn’t eat much. I don’t eat much.

  17/11/88

  I watch films when I’m not stripping houses. I’ll watch anything, not fussy. Watched one recently about [unintelligible] chased round desert by bondage blokes in monster trucks. Another where two dickheads make a robot woman what won’t shag them. Tonight I watched Frankenstein. Flat head. Trapped under beam in burning windmill. Credits roll. Got no sympathy for him. That’s what you get if you expect love.

  In my viewing I’ve noticed one kind of scene in particular popping up again & again. Always starts with something weird. Like hero realising he’s got mind powers in alley & floats up through lines of washing on brainwaves. Or speccy kid fucks up flick-knife punks with secret ninja moves learned off old Jap fella. Or cartoon where mouse chases cats down street.

  In all these scenes there’s a pisshead. Wrapped in rags, fingerless gloves, slumped by bins with brown bag bottle. From the shadows he sees what happens & in every film he does the same thing: looks slantways at bottle then tips it into the gutter.

  Two things wrong with this.

  1: No serious drinker would EVER pour out booze. EVER. Whatever awful shite’s going on around you, you never let go of the bottle coz it’s the only thing floating you on the sea of your nightmare.

  2: Drinkers never doubt their eyes. What you see is REAL. Shadow men in corners of your eye: REAL. Wriggly things under the wallpaper: REAL. The booze gives you the right kind of eyes to see what’s always been there.

  & what’s there is the truth. I know, coz Emily showed me.

  *

  Saw the family moving out of the first house on Loom Street when I was coming back from Fat Gary’s with the Scotch blend. Had to act fast. Once word gets round a house is empty it’s
a race to strip it before new people move in or council puts shutters up.

  But I needed Ian’s help. At first he held out, like usual. Like it was beneath him. But things have changed in his world & [scribble] He thinks I don’t know, but I do. The cunt’s brought it on himself. The way he treated her, I’m surprised she took as long as she did.

  We waited till it got dark & broke in round back. Nobody hanging around. Good sign. Sent Ian into kitchen to get at pipework under sink. I went upstairs. Boiler duty, bathroom fittings, taps & that. Only had torch to see with. Beam spazzing up walls. Floorboards creaking. Place empty just a few hours & already dead. Mildew stink of the Dead. Went into bedroom that must’ve belonged to a little lass coz the walls pink. Found a dolly in there, face down. People always leave things when they leave. Small things what have a power I don’t understand. Scrunched up sock. Hairpin. Old shopping list. Things what make me go tight inside. I left dolly where it was & went in bathroom.

  Shone torch on two eyes looking back at me.

  My muscles went to glass. The eyes were just above toilet rim, the closed lid resting on top of her head. Sharp fingernails clicking porcelain. Then she started coming out & I saw her. Thin nose. Liquorice-shred lips. Shatterteeth. Green skin. She opened her mouth wide & that’s when I knew it was Emily. I wanted to sink with her into total dark. Just the two of us forever. I caressed torch on/off button like I would the skin of a lover. If I had a lover.

  Emily smiled. Her tongue a black thing rolling over teeth to lick lips & I knew she was dead. I’d seen her dead in car, mouth hanging with blood & then Ian screaming downstairs & I dropped the [torch and it (?)] bounced & I was on knees scrambling for it & pointed it back at toilet but Emily gone. Shut lid black against white. My dick harder than in years. Reached out to open lid but stopped. No guts. Weak. Vincent was right.

  Ian came up with hand wrapped in shirt. The thing in wall he wanted was caught on something else in wall so when he’d yanked it with no gloves he sliced palm open like a muppet mouth. Mouth hanging with blood. Said he was going to A&E, left me alone again. Water trickling down toilet bowl. Soft plink of water on tiles. That just happened. Repeat: that just happened. I downed last of Scotch Blend. Tasted like shite. But then, everything I drink tastes like shite.

  [undated]43

  43 The final entry is almost certainly written in run up to N.Y.E. 1993, thus putting several years between the penultimate entry and this. It is written in a colouring book across a picture of a pig-tailed girl frolicking in a swimming pool. Someone (Doug?) has haphazardly coloured the girl green.

  Saw her tonight. Sarah. [In town(?)] with husband. Two bairns. Young girls. Bobble hats. Duffle coats. Holding hands. He said something in her ear. She laughed [clouds of white(?)]. Only two people on earth who’ll ever know what’s funny [scribble] Shop windows lit up with Christmas & she walked right past me. Why not? I’m invisible now. Watched them melt into crowd & that’s when tooth started up.

  Ian got caught in Brit[ish] Hea[r]t [Foundation(?)]. Took to police. Fuck him. I got drink [and] got home.

  Tooth screaming. Never been this bad. That prison dentist said it could go in 10 years [or could go(?)] tomorrow. Ticking timebomb. His words.

  Interview with Paula Yardley. 10th December, 201644

  44 Many tortured months into the creation of this very document, I received a package of letters (see F.N 3), the contents of which I’ve still not entirely digested therefore won’t – not even sure if could – get into here. Sufficed to say, they compelled me to pay a visit to Sober Hall, a residential home in High Leven, to see a man by the name of Henry Szarka. I knew this to be Henry’s whereabouts as on more than one occasion the ladies in Corina’s salon had discussed him fondly. Henry was a well-known figure on the estate. For many years he drove the mobile library of which I, as a child, had been a frequent patron.

  I made no appointment at Sober Hall and when I got there I was told by the lady at reception that Mr Szarka was currently recuperating in hospital after a flare up of emphysema. However, he would, she was sure, be back in a week or so and be up to receiving visitors. Apparently, he didn’t get many of those.

  As I was leaving, I passed the manager’s office just as a woman was emerging. She was tall, early fifties, with striking green eyes and a port-wine boomerang (or torn-off fingernail) on her left temple. I took a closer look at the sign on the door: PAULA YARDLY, DIRECTOR. I thought, no it couldn’t be...could it? A week later I called her. Posing as a family friend, I arranged a meeting to discuss Henry’s health ahead of paying a visit to the man himself. I decided to secretly record the conversation.

  I’ve since struggled to find ethical justification for doing so, ultimately concluding there to be none. What I am doing is selfish, pure and simple: the digging into of other people’s scar tissue in order to account for my own. In fact, this entire document is a monument to that impulse. Thus, like all self-servers, I’ve had to resort to a kind of ‘moral squinting’ in order to substantiate my actions. In my case, I sense that out there, beyond my meagre ken, the answers I seek are actually threads of the Total Understanding which we all, to varying degrees, feel the tug of not possessing in its entirety. Without meaning to, I keep coming back to the imagery of threads: threads that are woven, threads that guide. Perhaps our only hope of personal comprehension is to follow our own thread as it entwines with others, to persist in such entanglements until such time we are able, with luck, to step back and see our contribution to the tapestry as a whole.

  Didn’t my own situation bear out this theory? To wit: I receive a letter mentioning a Henry Szarka, resident of the care home managed by Paula Yardly, the wife of Ian, the man who knew Doug, Doug who had perhaps come closer to the truth of my father than anyone; the self-same Doug whose broken thread I was already hard at work trying to follow! Coincidental? I let myself be seduced

  by Ian’s idea that maybe the world had set things in motion, and that it was my job to be open to it. My reasoning, then, followed that the secret recording of my conversation with Paula – and, by extension, the writing of this very document – was defensible on the grounds that not only would it afford me my own personal piece of mind, but might, in some wild way I couldn’t possibly fathom, also one day afford others theirs. Who was to say this document would not guide someone else to a vantage point from which they, too, could see the pattern they weaved on the loom? In short, wasn’t I just doing my bit?

  But alas, being engaged in such highfalutin metaphysics meant that I forgot to charge the MP3 recorder that morning before leaving the house...

  So, Paula, how is he?

  Well, he’s on oxygen and a steroid nebulizer. His dementia’s being managed with medication, but his condition has deteriorated extremely rapidly of late. He’s convinced there’s someone in his toilet, for example. You’d be best off speaking to his doctor. Still, he’s a character. Still very popular with the other residents, the ladies especially. It must be the hair.

  I don’t want to impose too much today. I really only want to say hello.

  I’m sure he’ll appreciate a visitor.

  May I ask you something else?

  Yes?

  This is a little odd, but I think I know your husband.

  Really?

  From the Burn Estate, years ago.

  Burn Estate? My husband’s from Edinburgh.

  I’m talking about…your husband’s Ian, right?

  My husband’s Caleb. Who did you say you were again?

  Alan Barr. I was speaking to Ian – Ian Pavel – earlier this year, and he led me to believe that the two of you…were married?

  Ian? Haven’t seen or heard from him these past 25 years.

  Why would he tell me that?

  You tell me [laughs]. So how was he?

  He seemed…I thought he seemed alright. We mostly talked about his friend Doug.

 
Oh God. Him.

  You knew him?

  I wanted nothing to do with him, or the dirty little schemes they cooked up.

  I got the impression Ian was doing fine. He said he was running a business.

  Let me guess, the trainers?

  The rare trainers, yes. He sold his collection so the two of you could make a fresh start.

  Ah, the collection! Hundreds of pairs in a lock up somewhere, right? He tried that guff on me as well, but I only ever saw the same three or four pairs, and those he’d pinched off his brother Richie. I remember him – Richie – ringing up my house, demanding I get him to give them back. I thought he was talking about cigarettes but –

  Tobacco?

  Right, the stupid names. [Sighs]. Ian lied about everything, even the littlest things. I don’t know if he even realised he was doing it. He had this feeling like he should be someone – some version of himself – only he never knew what it was. He was so insecure. None of his family were speaking to him. He didn’t have any friends, except Doug.

  If it’s not too personal, may I ask how long you were together?

  [Doing mental calculations] God, two years nearly. I finally woke up once he got sacked and started pestering me for money. Banging on my door at three in the morning drunk. I can’t believe I was ever with him at all…Excuse me, Mr Barr, fun as this trip down memory lane has been, I have work to do.

  Yes, of course. Thank you for speaking to me and I’m sorry for the mix up.

  If you see him again, tell him to stop saying we’re married, will you?

  I will.

  Also, before you visit Henry, I should ask, how do you feel about birds of prey? Owls, hawks, that kind of thing?

  I, ah…why?

  Because th–

  [mp3 battery dies].

  Ian. Cont.

  Well, I think I’ve got everything I need for now. Thanks for speaking with me.

  I’ve got plenty more stories for you. Some really good ones.

  I should get back before dark. Perhaps another time? Give my regards to Paula.

  Yep. Are you sure you won’t stay for one more?