ill at ease 2

by Stephen Bacon

  But the man has seen him anyway and he looks up.

  Mark’s eyes snap open. The only face before him was his own — a reflection in the coach window. He could hear the old man still talking and tried to make some sense of the words.

  “Of course Warrington has never had any respect for its own past. Always too eager to show how important, how relevant it is, so it’s never given a thought to what made the town what it is.”

  Mark had slipped in his seat slightly, the left side of his face resting against the window. The glass felt cold, but not unpleasantly so. The coolness on his cheek was a welcome relief to the general stuffiness of the coach. Rain droplets sparkled like diamonds as the headlights of the waiting traffic caught them as they swept past. Mark was momentarily disorientated. He squinted into the fragmented illumination of the night, attempting to garner some clues as to where they were. He must have drifted into sleep. The last thing he remembered was the monotony of the motorway, but they weren’t on it now. Beside him the voice of the old man continued to expound on the changes Warrington had undergone in recent years. The coach turned sharply one way then the other as it swung around yet another roundabout. As it exited Mark caught sight of the sign.

  WELCOME TO WARRINGTON

  HOME OF WARRINGTON WOLVES

  “You probably won’t even recognise the place now,” said the old man with a mournful tone.

  “Oh, I’m sure I will,” replied Mark. The face of the old man turned towards him and he saw its reflection beside his in the window. As the old man moved his face became distorted, a grotesque visage expanding across the curvature of the glass as if it were a funhouse mirror. With the motion of the coach it was alternately pinched and bloated, as if unseen forces kneaded it. The face resembled a formless lump of dough, something pliable waiting to be made anew. Mark shut his eyes again. When he opened them for a second time the man had turned away again.

  “Maybe so. The old place is still in there somewhere, you just have to know where to look. But years of development have robbed the town of any real identity. The past cannot be so carelessly destroyed. It should be celebrated, not ignored — push it back into the darkness and it’ll fester. It may look all shiny and new on the surface but beneath that it’s rotten. We need our history, the mystery and wonder of it all. Building anew shouldn’t mean that we sweep away all that’s gone before. We need our stories, our songs and even our ghosts. This is what powers the beating heart at the centre of it all. Most places realise this but not Warrington. There should be more to the place than just being the home of Warrington Wolves. What does this town have to offer in the way of history now?”

  Mark assumed the question was rhetorical and chose not to answer. He was still thinking that the old man was one of a dwindling brigade who still referred to the local rugby team as ‘The Wire’.

  “Town hall gates so hideous that even Queen Victoria declined them as a gift.”

  “I would have thought that any town could only prosper through constant renewal,” Mark found himself playing devil’s advocate. He felt it might have been more prudent just to keep quiet and let the old fool rant on but he couldn’t help feel that in some indirect way he was being accused of something. He couldn’t disagree about the town hall gates, though.

  “Yes, renewal is good and change is inevitable. But I think you misunderstand my meaning, this is about how our history is…” he struggled for the right word, “…curated. Warrington is a town that refuses to honour its past. It seems to me that it’s embarrassed by its heritage and has cut itself off at the roots. This is an attitude that existed long before the fucking IRA made it their target, not that you would know it now.”

  Mark felt slightly shocked by the fellow’s use of language, but made no reply. He’d been in town on the morning of the bombing, although he was on a bus on his way back home when the bombs had detonated. He remembered hearing a sound, a slightly muffled crump. By the time he’d got home the news of the attack had just been breaking. Had the bombs gone off several minutes earlier, he might have been right in the middle of it. It never really felt like that close a call, but he did still think about the event. It had indeed become something of a year zero for the town. Everything that had gone before was somehow trivial, the attack had become a point of reference for everything the town was and should aspire to. He tried to picture how it had been on that Saturday in March. He remembered it had been dry and bright that morning. The only image he could conjure up of the location was of him squinting into low sunlight and a figure watching him from the shadows of the old church. He shook the vision from his head and returned his attention to the view from the coach window, relieved to see that it was nearing its destination.

  It swept past the old cinema. It would always remain as such in his memory, though for the past thirty years it had been a nightclub. It had had numerous name changes and reinventions to keep up with changing fashions, but now it stood dark and abandoned. He was tempted to ask the old man his views on the passing of such a venerable institution, but thought better of it. As it turned out he didn’t need to.

  A gnarled finger intruded into his peripheral vision. “Do you want to know where Warrington’s history resides now? It’s locked away in places such as that.”

  “Really? And what would it be doing in there? Dancing?” he couldn’t keep the sarcasm at bay any longer, perhaps being emboldened by the fact that he would be free of his unwelcome companion in a matter of minutes.

  “You can ignore it or hide it away, but it can never be unmade. The past has to reside somewhere.”

  Mark felt the coach bank as it swept past the taxi rank leading down to Bank Quay station. He pressed his face close to the glass so he could see the station platform above and the factory beyond where smoke belched into the sodium light-stained sky.

  “I imagine no one even notices it’s there.”

  Mark was all for ignoring him this time, but he couldn’t help but take the bait.

  “Notice what?”

  “There,” he gestured to a collection of large refuse bins against the side wall of the station entrance. “Right through there used to run a road. Once part of Slutchers Lane as was, it carries on some way back there.” He pointed back in the direction they had just come. “But it used to continue on right under the station and well beyond. On the other side were a row of cottages. All gone now, swallowed up by Crosfields, I don’t doubt.”

  Despite changes in name the factory would forever remain Crosfields.

  “So what’s left then?” The entrance to the tunnel had been crudely boarded up and all trace that there had ever been a road had been obliterated in the station’s recent refurbishment.

  “Just that stretch of tunnel.”

  “And inside it?”

  “It houses the dead, the discarded and the forgotten. Those unwanted parts of the town that cannot be unmade.”

  Mark tried to picture what the old man was getting at. He imagined abandoned buildings scattered throughout the town stuffed with decaying packing cases. But containing what, he couldn’t imagine. The tunnel beneath the station appeared almost bunker-like, as though the vestiges of the old town had been placed in there like they were some form of toxic waste. Now the images turned to rows of rusting barrels. Did history, like radiation, have a half-life? And how many years must it remain buried before the town, or even an individual, would be free of it?

  The coach pulled up sharply outside the station entrance, Mark was pitched forwards and placed a hand on the seat in front of him to steady himself. He turned from the window and found that the seat next to his was already empty. He looked up at the thin figure of the man who in turn smiled down at Mark.

  “Warrington can deny its history no longer, anymore than you can yours.” He placed the hat on his head tipping in slightly towards the seated passenger by way of a goodbye. Before Mark could respond or even stand, the man was gone, swept away by the other complaining passengers all eager to disembark.<
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  Mark grabbed his bag and pushed into the weary line. He raised himself onto the tips of his toes and saw the hat descend out of view. He tried to look for the man through the window, but was met with little more than his own shabby reflection caught amidst the shuffling procession. By the time Mark had touched down on the pavement he could see no sign of the hat or its owner.

  Mark watched as his fellow passengers dissipated. Some headed for the taxi rank while others sought shelter from the drizzle in the station entrance. Mark took in his surroundings and felt a pang of disappointment at not being able to step down onto the platform above. Here felt like second best; it wasn’t how he’d imagined his return would be at all. Not for him the chance to make his entrance on that illuminated stage, but steal quietly in under its shadow like a thief in the night.

  He regarded the bright lights of the platforms with some envy. Beyond them the factory rose up, its chimneys stabbing at the sickly orange-stained clouds. He gave a sour smile and turned back towards the road as the coach door hissed shut. The driver gunned the engine and the vehicle moved off. Even the choking exhalation of the diesel fumes as it passed couldn’t hide that heavy tang of soap still infecting the town’s air.

  “Wouldn’t recognise the place, indeed,” he said, stepping out into the road and following the coach’s wake.

  ***

  The Patton Arms Hotel had only one virtue in Mark’s eyes: it was situated directly across the road from the station. He’d only set foot in the place once before and that had been a long time ago. He couldn’t have been more than ten or eleven, and his memory of the place amounted to little more than a jumble of odd details but practically nothing of the bigger picture. That had been a relative’s wedding reception, whose he couldn’t recall now. What he did remember of it was an uncle buying him a pint of beer, the glass so large his small hand could barely hold it. It was his first taste of alcohol and he didn’t like it one bit, but he drank it all the same. Later he and his equally squiffy cousins were to be found in the television room on the second floor giggling nervously before the glow of an old horror film. All the while, the sounds of the disco downstairs reverberated up through the floor. Even now, so many years later, he couldn’t hear an ABBA song without picturing spurts of technicolor scarlet and Oliver Reed sprouting hair and fangs.

  His hotel room was pleasant enough. Though everything was clean and modern the room, and the hotel in general, still retained that timeworn air that no old building ever seemed to be able to shake off. He threw his bag onto the bed and paced the room. It had a television, tea and coffee making facilities, but no mini bar. Probably just as well, given the journey he’d just had. He rummaged through his carryall and fished out the half bottle of scotch he’d stowed in there. He shook the remaining amber dregs; not enough to get pissed, but it would take the edge off things and help him relax. He’d planned to save it for the funeral, but he could always pick up another bottle first thing. He emptied the liquid into a coffee cup and knocked it straight back.

  Mark wandered over to the window and parted the floral curtains. He closed his eyes and leaned forward, resting his forehead against the rain-speckled pane. It felt cool and cleansing, keeping at bay the fire now burning in his throat and belly, and which would ultimately spread into all his limbs. He opened his eyes and stared out at the scene below. The station opposite became an abstraction of light and dark as his breath misted the glass. He straightened up slightly and saw through the blossoming condensation his own face reflected there. He was a formless blur, unrecognisable even to himself — like one of those pixelated images of people on TV when they wished for anonymity. After a moment’s hesitation he brought up a finger and traced a crude cartoon smiley face over his own. It was as he let his arm drop and shifted his focus to the world beyond that a detail in one of the eyeholes caught his attention.

  At that distance through the dark and drizzle it might have been anyone, but the hat was the clincher. Across the street and away from the main entrance of the station but near to a couple of taxi drivers huddled conspiratorially together, Mark saw the old man. He stood a little way back from the cab rank but it was unmistakably him. The drivers, too, could not help but notice him there, but they paid him no heed. Perhaps they had already approached him and had been rebutted. Perhaps he was waiting for someone else.

  Mark turned and walked briskly to the door, scooping up his discarded coat on the way out.

  ***

  If the remaining taxi driver showed any curiosity in Mark’s activities he hid it well. He’d felt the man’s gaze follow him as he ascended the metal steps. But once at the top Mark looked down to find the driver engrossed in the sports section of a newspaper. He’d probably taken him for another drunken fool. Mark imagined he had to contend with far worse most nights and if he wasn’t going to be a problem for him then the driver wasn’t interested.

  The steps led up onto a pedestrian bridge that spanned the tracks running beneath the station, seemingly parallel to the path of the old man’s lost road. Mark knew these lines had once been used solely to transport fuel to the power station dominating the landscape towards the industrial sprawl of Merseyside. Whether the tracks still fulfilled this task he couldn’t say, though all was quiet now. The bridge itself had high railings augmented with a chain link fence. He peered along its length. A natural curiosity pulled at him but his interests did not lie in that direction.

  It was clear to Mark, even from ground level, that the boarded-up entrance stood slightly proud of the iron bridge spanning the tunnel. The handrail up the steps ended with a section of chain link fencing and beyond this Mark could clearly see a gap of some two feet or so that would allow him to look down into what remained of this lost thoroughfare. He took hold of the fence and tested its strength. A lower corner peeled effortlessly away from its supporting post, creating just enough of a gap for a man to squeeze through without having to resort to crawling on hands and knees. Before proceeding Mark considered his situation. On the steps he’d felt vulnerable, exposed. But here, if he kept low, he was unlikely to be noticed by anyone unless they actively sought him out. This was even more the case on the other side of the fence, where the top of the protruding section of wall was a rectangular bed of weeds with a large shrub growing profusely on the most exposed corner. Even though it looked as though someone had deliberately planted a garden on the small outcrop of masonry, it was simple proof that nature, if left unchecked, was ubiquitous.

  Mark pulled himself through the gap. Even though he was able to keep on his feet the long grass brushed against his clothes and made them feel damp and uncomfortable. Once on top of the wall he pressed himself against the rivet-pocked bridge. He felt safer with the solid structure at his back. The wildness of the foliage and lack of light made it difficult to determine where the wall ended and any sharp unexpected drop began. He shuffled along the edge of the bridge, occasionally peering down into the tantalising strip of blackness. Even with his eyes now accustomed to the dark he could see very little. There was a glint far below that might have been a puddle. If only he had a torch.

  Suddenly an idea hit him and he fished his mobile out of his pocket. He jabbed at a key and the screen turned an incandescent blue. Mark stared into it for a second. In the top right hand corner a tiny envelope symbol danced as if desperate for attention.

  There were three unanswered text messages.

  He ignored them and turned the phone away, pointing it down into the dark.

  It wasn’t a brilliant substitute for a torch but when presented with such an absence of light it proved far more effective than he might have imagined. He leaned closer to the edge, steadying himself with his free hand on a narrow pipe running parallel to the bridge which then turned abruptly, crossing the top of the wall before disappearing amidst the foliage. It proved a useful handrail.

  He tested its integrity cautiously before placing too much faith in or weight on it, however it appeared sturdy enough. So he slowly lo
wered the phone into the opening, wincing at the contact with the wet grass as he knelt down. He continued to bend over as far as he dared. His head followed where his arm led, until he was able to peer along the full length of the tunnel — albeit from an inverted point of view. He felt like Howard Carter, lantern in hand, getting his first peek into that newly discovered tomb.

  But what could he see? There were certainly no ‘wonderful things’. At a distance he could see nothing at all. If he’d imagined that the tunnel would be open at the other end he was mistaken. The dark seemed tangible and the feeble light, only going a few feet into the tunnel, broke against the intractable black. He turned his attention to what he could see. The roof of the tunnel comprised a series of heavy iron girders supported on brick walls. These bricks appeared in the bluish glow of the light to be pure black, the only exception being a line of white ones, four rows deep, about a foot from the top of the wall, which disappeared into the unknown parts further on. Hanging against the opposite wall was a length of cable that looked as if it terminated at a large box that might have been a switch. Were there lights installed? The place suddenly didn’t appear quite as abandoned as he’d been led to believe. Beneath the switch a stack of tubular temporary barriers glinted as he swung his phone about. The cobbled floor was littered with debris, fragments of sodden cardboard boxes, empty discarded paint-tins. So. This is what Warrington’s history amounted to. He realised he’d been taken for a fool. Was the old man still out there in the shadows somewhere, watching him as he’d left the hotel and returned to the station? Mark felt a surge of anger that he could have been so easily taken in, that anyone could be so callous, especially on a day such as this. Much of the anger was directed at his own gullibility, however.