I wondered how long it would be till even this sound faded. It seemed inevitable. The whole world was grinding to a halt and dying; and the thick smell of dust, of heat on grey soil and broken concrete, of the foetid water below me, all this was the stench of its corruption. I looked around me and I perceived an incurable sore that was spreading forever outwards. One day it would consume the entire world.
In part my mood was due to my immediate position. I signed on at the local dole office again, I ran through the job adverts in the papers, I stood in the Job Centre and studied in minute detail the cards on the notice boards, but it was all to no avail. I could just about bear the disappointment of not finding a job, or finding a job only to discover it had been taken or I wasn’t suitably qualified. But it was more than dispiriting to stand in a silent queue of men (mostly men) who waited their turn to make their mark beside their name on the white cards at the dole office counter, to stare at the broad back of the man in front, who always seemed to be the same man in his soiled black coat with black, unkempt hair, with his smell of sweat and despair. Someone would sign, and then move silently away, and we’d all jerk forward a little, till someone else signed, and we’d jerk again. It was as if we were all chained together, prisoners of sorts, our legs moving almost in unison. Standing in the queue, I thought bleakly that one day I too would become yet another man in black in a long line of men in black. Forever shuffling. Forever signing. Forever queuing. Forever black. Forever forgotten.
“I don’t bloody care!” the man further down the counter shouted. “I don’t want to hear that! Look, I need my bloody giro. I need it today. I need it now. Can’t you get it through your bloody thick skulls, I need the bloody giro now!”
One or two heads glanced sideways at him. Most couldn’t care less, or they’d heard it all before, or they pretended not to care. I avoided looking at him. I stared at the man in front and shuffled when my turn came to shuffle. I just wanted to scribble against my name and get out of there into the fresh air. I was learning to turn off from the desperation of others. It was thick in this man’s voice. It wasn’t anger; he was screaming a plea for help. I thought it cruel that some of these men brought their children in with them to see them having to stand in line like this; and so the children stood beside their fathers and would shuffle alongside them, their eyes wide in wonder at the plastic plants, the high, glass-fronted counters with the pretty women behind, the paper-covered notice boards, the angry, red-faced man demanding his giro.
“Do you really think I want to be here?” he bellowed. “Do you think I bloody enjoy this?” He left the Job Centre grumbling to himself, his face red, the breeze of his passage lifting the corner of a green-coloured piece of paper on the notice board notifying all claimants about the Christmas holidays. Someone had drawn a jolly, fat Father Christmas on it in felt-tip pen, his sack bulging with presents that most of the people lining up to sign would never be able to afford to give to their kids.
And when I did get out I caught the bus and went to the old Chronicle building. Maybe I just couldn’t face going home again, or bother to look in the papers, or stay behind to scour the notice boards. So I sat on the canal bank and tossed slate into the water and waited for an answer to emerge from the scum, the crazy notion circulating in my head that maybe I should sit there until the decade ran itself out and we could all get to work on the next one. There was always something uplifting in contemplation of the new.
But it began to get cold, the winter Sun having burnt itself out before eleven o’clock in the morning. I hoisted myself to my feet and walked the four miles back home to save the bus fare. It was a bleak journey. I passed through the usual austere landscape, where even the grass was covered and weighed down by a grey, muddy film; along pavements that had been sprinkled over the years in a layer of black grit and coal dust that crunched underfoot, mountainous slag heaps on either side my only company. I passed a coking plant, whose futuristic grey structures of piping, chimneys and tanks had once gushed steam to the accompaniment of curious grinding noises and the great clanking of metal, but which now stood idle, with long tears of rust having dribbled down the massive structures in brown, shitty stripes. Above all was a sombre sky, clouds the colour of an aged grey skin. I felt the weight of futility pressing down on me, and I wished I’d paid the money and taken the bus.
Not wanting to go home, I wandered around my hometown for a few hours, visiting the haunts of my childhood, staving off my hunger by nibbling at a Mars Bar. The memories of those lost, endless days of bountiful sunshine helped fend off the chill of December. Why I did this I don’t know. I think, at the back of my mind, I was saying goodbye, for I was determined that I didn’t want to remain here in Overthorpe forever. I retraced my childhood steps, past the brooding edifice of The Mount, to the place where I threw bricks into a brackish pond and used to search out the tadpoles and water boatmen; to the tree and grass dens, and the secret place where I’d store my weapons of stones and rocks with which to defend my territory; to the street where we’d play football and I was always Alan Clarke or Billy Bremner. Every pavement, every gutter, every grimy brick wall, each of them had a memory seared into it, and though I appreciated those memories, I knew they were just that, and I had to move on. There was no room here for the generation of fresh memories. I’d used this place up a long time ago. It was like a huge piece of well-thumbed paper that was crammed with scribbles from ragged edge to ragged edge. It was right to leave it now. I had to leave it and find a fresh piece upon which to write. And it all looked faintly sordid. Tarnished. Not quite what I remembered.
In keeping with this pilgrimage of remembrance, I decided a visit to Connie Stone would be in order. She greeted me in her usual affable manner, all but dragging me over the doorstep and into the house. I think she needed someone to talk to as much as I did.
She had the radio on, and the coal fire was stoked up and hurling out waves of heat like a blast furnace. I sat in one of her new leatherette armchairs, sipping at a hot mug of tea that she brought me, and munching on a piece of Madeira cake she’d bought from the supermarket. I don’t think Connie was in the habit of baking, or even if she could for that matter. Everything came in tins, packets or plastic bags. I didn’t mind, the taste of artificial cream made a change to the fare my mother baked. Anyhow, I thought it rather radical of her; she delighted in telling everyone she was hopeless at cooking, especially the older women, who read it as a sort of sin. I relaxed in the warmth, as much at home in Connie’s house as anywhere.
We chatted aimlessly about the weather, the rubbish on TV, the man who’d died down the road, the sorry state of the country and having a woman prime minister that Connie said might bring the compassion of her sex to the post. But I detected something amiss in her voice. I pondered whether she’d changed over the years, or whether I was the one who’d changed, because there was a dull edge to her that hadn’t been there in the early days. Or was I only now mature and able enough to detect what had always been present? I was a little disappointed. It had been a disappointing day.
“You’re not working, I hear,” she said.
“The newspaper closed down,” I explained, needlessly, because she already knew that.
“No work around?”
I shook my head and hid my face behind my mug of tea. “I signed on at the dole today,” I said.
She sighed, nodding sympathetically. “I miss work.” Her eyes were focussed on the coals in the fireplace.
“Why’d you leave?”
She shrugged, folding her arms. “Bernard doesn’t like me working,” she explained. Then she corrected herself. “Well, it’s not as if he doesn’t like me working, it’s that he says he earns enough for the both of us, which he does, and that it was pointless me working too. I do miss it, though.”
It was my turn to nod sympathetically. I thought that some of the fire had gone out of her. She looked tired. A butterfly in a crystal jar. “Get another job,” I said, “if you miss it so
much.”
“I think I miss my friends more than anything,” she said, riding over my comment. “We had such bleedin’ fun!” Her eyes brightened momentarily. “I hate being cooped up here. I can go out and shop, of course. I do a lot of that. Bernard likes me shopping, likes his food, likes his home comforts. I get to do a lot of shopping. But it just don’t do anything for me, you know what I mean, Collie?” She searched my face to see if I really did understand. I hadn’t shopped in months; I didn’t have the money. I’d relish the opportunity, and she perhaps saw this in my vacant expression. “All my cupboards are crammed full of stuff. We’ve got more than we could ever need, Bernard and me. But he likes me to shop, so I go out and buy something else. Well I’m sick of shopping, Collie. I don’t care if I ever see another bleedin’ supermarket. I’ve got twelve pairs of shoes! I love shoes, but twelve pairs!” She shook her head. “That’s almost obscene when a lot of people are out of work these days and don’t have money.”
I finished my cake and she urged another massive piece on me, and I was forced to eat it for fear of offending her. “How is Max?” I asked, more for the conversation than anything.
Her countenance lit up like a firework. “Oh, he’s doing really well. Really good. You know he’s at university now, don’t you?” I nodded. “My Max at university, who’d have thought it…”
Exactly, I reflected darkly. Who’d have thought it? I still remembered him as the one struggling with his maths before Mr Walton’s sadistic blackboard. And yet there he was, A-Levels under his belt and studying for a degree or something. And here was I…
“He wants for nothing, does Max. All the books he needs he can have. And we send him his spending money so that he doesn’t have to worry about getting a part-time job if he doesn’t want to; and enough to cover his rent for the little flat he’s got himself. Lovely, it is. It’s got a telly and a fridge. He even had a bowl of fruit out on the table when I last visited. It looked ever so cosy.”
“It must cost an awful lot,” I said.
She waved her slim hand in the air. “Oh, Bernard sees to all that. He’s a devil for working. He’d work all the hours God gave and some more. He does all the overtime he can.” She took a long swig out of her cup and then appeared to address the coals. “He’ll do anything for me will Bernard. Anything.” A smile graced her still-beautiful lips. “I do think sometimes that all he’s really bothered about is that factory and bloody tractor machine parts. He couldn’t give a damn about me.”
She wasn’t serious. No man could possibly put machine parts before someone as striking as Connie. We sat in silence, the coals sighing and collapsing in on themselves in a puff of sparks. I felt my cheeks burning with the heat and the hot cup of tea. I came over quite drowsy with it all.
“Did I tell you my Max is a DJ for a hospital radio station in Newcastle?” she burst upon my reverie. “It helps him with his media studies, he says. A DJ, eh? Like Tony Blackburn! My Max!” She clapped her hands together in a joy only a mother might experience. I, of course, was experiencing none of it; in fact I admit to feeling more than a little envious. The sort of envy that is tainted with the malicious. I’d already toyed with the idea that I might have made a mistake in not going to college. But to admit that fully would be admitting that my parents and close relatives, in whom I put a great deal of trust, were also dreadfully wrong in steering me away from that particular path. It was something I found difficult to comprehend or accept at that stage. So I put my energy into hating Max. Not a lot, but enough to satisfy the need to lay blame. “I’m glad,” I mumbled.
“And Ruby?” she said, reigning in my attention like a galloping steed. “What’s she doing now?”
I was beginning to wish I hadn’t come here now. My personal demons were rising up one by one to take fleshy chunks out of me. “She’s a sort-of trainee personnel officer or something,” I replied quietly. Truth was I saw too little of her. And it used to eat away at my unoccupied and suspicious mind as to what exactly she did there at the mysterious company of Chudrow and Mason’s of whom I’d heard so much from Ruby. More to the point, with whom was she doing what? When we did meet of an evening, all too infrequently I add, she was invariably tired, and I’d go and spoil this precious time by my intimidating interrogation as to her movements from nine in the morning onwards – and especially during lunchtime. I was particularly hung up with which male friends she occupied these hours of idleness. It must have been pretty wearing for her. I was a swine. All in all I confess she put up with me very stoically. I even think she must have loved me quite a lot. Or was just a very understanding person, which is why, I suppose, she was going to be a personnel officer at Chudrow and Mason’s. And no doubt a good one at that.
“She’s a lovely young woman, Collie. Don’t let her slip away from you.”
This is precisely what I didn’t want to hear. “What did you do before you came up here, to the North?” I asked, quite out of the blue. I hadn’t meant to ask the question; it was just one of those thoughts that zips to your tongue like an electric current down a copper wire. It had been hovering around my skull ever since I first met Connie and Max. I guess it saw its opportunity to escape in an unguarded moment. She blinked at me, sucked at her lower lip. “Who was Max’s real dad?” I continued. Then I realised how insensitive it sounded and blurted out my apology. “I’m sorry, Connie, I didn’t mean to pry. I was only…”
She smiled sweetly, reached out and touched my arm softly. “It’s all right, Collie. You’d like to know about Max’s real dad, is that it?”
It had always intrigued me, I couldn’t deny that. I shrugged, neither a yes or a no, so she didn’t think I was being pushy. I waited expectantly, but she fidgeted uncertainty.
“How old are you now, Collie? Nineteen?” she asked seriously. I nodded. “Like Max,” she said, softness in her tone, a faint smile playing over her mouth. “I was only young, like you, you understand,” she said. “I was married at eighteen, and I was already pregnant with Max. It was a silly thing to do.” I didn’t know whether she meant getting pregnant or getting married. Or both. “But, you play with fire and you’re likely to get burnt. He seemed a nice enough bloke, did Kevin, and I was young and light-headed, thought I knew what I was doing, thought I was so grown up. We saw each other for a year or so, then I found out I was pregnant and so we decided it was only right to get married. Things were OK for a while; then he started to get jealous of Max, and he began staying out late and drinking with his mates, or whoever.” I saw her features harden. “I knew there were other women. You could smell them on his clothes – the same damn clothes I used to wash for him week in and week out.” When she lifted her cup to take a drink I noticed her hand shook a little.
“It’s OK, Connie. You don’t have to tell me. I get the picture…”
She waved it away. “I know it sounds like the same old story, but that’s how it was. He couldn’t hold his drink either. And if there was any trouble at work he’d come home and take it out on me. On both of us.” She wagged a finger at me with a steely expression I’d never before encountered in Connie. “Never – never – hit a woman or your kid, Collie,” she said, and I could tell from the venom in her words there was great deal of hurt lurking behind them. She bit down savagely on a piece of cake and chewed quickly, swallowing almost straight away. “Sure I’ve hit Max for doing wrong. Remember when he did that to your poor head, all those stitches?” I nodded. I remembered all too vividly. “He got it then, the little bugger. But that’s different. Kevin was a brute of a man with big arms like gateposts. When he threw his weight behind one of his punches it was murder, Collie, murder. He broke bones, Collie. He broke both mine and Max’s bones…”
Her fingers stroked her arm absently but meaningfully. I felt she was on the verge of crying and at any moment her voice would crack and she’d collapse, and I became afraid, because I didn’t quite know how to handle the situation. I didn’t know what words to use. I was helpless. “Connie…” I be
gan uncertainly.
“I met another man, then,” she resumed. “Gavin, they called him. Gavin Miller.” And her countenance changed as if someone had taken a rag and wiped away the tortured image of her beating in one quick swipe. “A lovely man, he was. You remind me ever so much of Gavin, Collie. He had your eyes.” I was unnerved by the way she gazed at me. Unnerved and yet excited, for the look was laced with the ghost of desire. I looked at the smooth bare flesh of her hand, and had the urge to touch it, to stroke it. “It was like finding a lovely red apple in a bag of sour green cooking apples.” She shrugged. “He was sweet, anyway,” she said. “There was nothing physical between us; it wasn’t that kind of thing. He promised me he’d look after Max and me if I left my husband, and I was tempted. But Kevin found out and Gavin was beaten up badly. They could never prove it was Kevin and his mates, but it was him. I know it was. They nearly killed the poor lad.”
Again her lip trembled. But she fought back the urge to cry. I thought she was very brave.
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