Blue Collar

by Danny King

  ‘He certainly is.’

  Then Simone and Lis, who’d be at the same dinner party (Hugo’s dead or in prison for downloading kiddy porn at this point – hey, it’s my fantasy!), would lay a comforting hand on each of Charley’s shoulders and admit that they’d been wrong about me all along.

  ‘He was actually a great bloke, wasn’t he?’

  ‘And a great catch too.’

  ‘Why did we all think he wasn’t as good as us?’

  ‘I don’t know, because he was.’

  ‘Yes, he was.’

  ‘I feel really bad about it now.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘Do you think there’s still time?’

  ‘To get him back, you mean?’

  ‘Yeah, to get him back.’

  ‘If that’s what you want in your heart of hearts, poppet, then you have to go for it.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really. You can’t go on crying yourself to sleep in that big old empty bed of yours every night and living a life of celibacy.’

  ‘I know, but what if he’s not interested?’

  ‘He will be. If he really is as great as he sounds – and from what CT tells us, he certainly seems like it, what with the fruit and wholemeal bread and bowels and everything – then he’ll take you back in a shot. He’d be a fool not to.’

  ‘Then goddammit, I’m going to do it.’

  ‘Good for you.’

  ‘That’s fantastic.’

  ‘We’re all right behind you.’

  ‘It’s the right thing to do.’

  ‘Absolutely. Also, we were wrong about these lentil things.

  They’re actually really horrible, aren’t they?’

  ‘Well, I didn’t want to say anything before but…’

  Then, just before Christmas, CT and his crew packed away their equipment, thanked us for making them feel most welcome and said their goodbyes. They’d got all the footage they needed, so that all there was left to do was knock the programme into some sort of shape in a nice warm cutting room somewhere in the BBC. Well, I couldn’t blame them for that; January on the site’s not the funkiest time of year.

  CT would still swing by from time to time, just to double-check a few facts for the voiceover or to get some linking footage. They had Dirty Den off EastEnders doing the commentary on the programme, which was pretty smart, though all the lads were gutted that we wouldn’t actually get to meet him in person, not least of all because we knew we’d spend the next five years having our ear’oles bent by blokes in pubs all wanting to know what Dirty Den off EastEnders was like.

  ‘Actually really posh. And really short,’ were a couple of the lesser career-finishing rumours we’d start for chuckles.

  I always made a point of saying hello to CT whenever he was in. I’d have a bit of a chat with him, help him with anything he needed help with and share my flask with him if he fancied a cuppa. I even showed him how to lay bricks one quiet Friday afternoon and there are probably still two or three hundred bricks on the estate that were laid by him, Barrie, Neil and Elaine when they put down their cameras, booms and clipboards and became brickies for a day. But by and large it was a pretty uneventful six months. All I really did for most of it was lay bricks, go home, have my dinner and have a few pints at the weekend. Usually with Jason. And usually in the Lamb.

  Jason reckoned I needed to get myself back out there. ‘Get back on the horse, chat up a few birds, have a few laughs and get some shags under your belt,’ he advised, which, well-intentioned nonsense though it was, was still nonsense, even by Jason’s standards. I was in no fit shape to be chatting up or shagging anyone, especially some of the Michelin women who got in the Lamb on a Friday night and whose arrival would elicit a flurry of elbows to the ribs. No, what I really needed was time. Time to forget. Time to move forward. Time to heal.

  So time’s what I got.

  Unfortunately, the thing about time is that it takes time. Days, weeks and months can drift by with no discernible effect. All you really notice is time itself. The dates in the calendar and anniversaries that come along. It’s a hard thing to tell if you’re missing the person you’re trying to get over less and less with each passing day because, as a rule, you’re not. You care about them just as much as you did when you last saw them, only you’re not able to express any of this emotion as you don’t ever see them, so it stays where it is, hanging over your head like a big cloud and pissing in your beer whenever it’s Miller Time for everyone else.

  And the regrets?

  Jesus, don’t get me started. That fucking eggs Benedict incident haunted me for weeks on end after we first split up. I would lie awake at night cringing over memories of me turning my nose up at what is essentially eggs on toast, kicking up an enormous hoohah and making myself look like a right Prince Charles. I mean, what was I thinking?

  And as for going straight home in a big boo after the demo instead of meeting them in the Workers’ Social, how could I have thrown away a night with Charley so easily? It almost made me want to weep.

  But you know the thing I regretted the most? Or at least, the thing I regretted most often. It was that final kiss we never had in the Whispering Gallery when we came to say our goodbyes. It killed me that I hadn’t just bundled her up into my arms, held her tightly and pressed my lips to hers one last time. Why hadn’t I done that, for God’s sake? Why had I dithered while Rome had burned? There had been nothing more to say, nothing more to do; a kiss, a cuddle and an embrace? It would’ve been the most natural thing in the world to do. God, how many nights had I lain awake beating myself up over that lost kiss? Almost feeling it. Almost tasting it. I would’ve given anything to have had the chance for that one last kiss again. Anything. But the kiss was gone. I’d bottled it. Just as I’d bottled everything. What was wrong with me?

  You know, thinking back on it, I’d almost bottled our whole relationship that first morning after the night before, playing it cool on the doorstep like Mr D’Arcy with the horn for his lordship’s wife instead of simply asking Charley out, so I guess it was fitting that I’d bottled something at the last too. How d’you like that for symmetry?

  Only that first time I’d received a reprieve in the shape of a second chance when I’d walked off with her mobile phone. I’m generally better the second time around. I rarely make the same mistakes twice and I know I wouldn’t if I got another chance with Charley. Because I’ve seen what life’s like without her and I have to say it’s not a patch on what it’s like with her.

  There was only one problem.

  There was no reprieve.

  There was no second chance.

  What was done was done.

  The bricks were laid. The muck had dried. And Charley was on the other side of the wall.

  She was gone.

  27 At the keyhole

  Well, the day finally arrived and a very exciting day it promised to be too. No, this had nothing to do with Charley, though I managed to shoehorn thoughts of her in there anyway. I’m talking about the day our programme came on the telly.

  CT had given us a call a couple of months earlier to let us know that the show had been scheduled and the good news didn’t stop there. For reasons I found difficult to follow and a bit tedious trying to, our programme had been switched from BBC3 to BBC1, which meant that a few people might even get to see it now, including Robbie, who’s telly still didn’t even get Channel Five.

  Personally speaking, I was quite surprised we had to wait until it actually came on the telly as I thought CT and his bosses might’ve invited us into their offices for a sneaky preview, though I guess they decided against that on the grounds that they didn’t want cement dust walked all through the BBC.

  Still, it was exciting nevertheless, and there wasn’t a bloke on the site who didn’t buy a copy of the Radio Times the moment it came out to see what it said about us.

  And here it is, here’s what their big write-up said about our show:

  7.00. NEW Building
Site Docu-soap following the fortunes of a gang of brickies. 9947 Txt.

  * * *

  Now I’ll admit right off the bat that I hadn’t expected us to be on the front cover or nothing but by that same token I had thought our write-up might’ve given a bit more away than the unknown soldier’s epitaph. It also annoyed all the hoddies, chippies, spreads, roofers, plumbers, sparkies, groundworkers, painters, scaffolders, sales staff, surveyors and everyone else who’d contributed to the programme over the last six months something rotten as it made the classic assumption that the only people who mattered on any given building site were the brickies. I guess it’s a bit like when Americans appear on Parkinson and refer to our country as a whole as England, prompting Jocks, Taffs, Micks and weird little islanders up and down the length and breadth of the United Kingdom to put their boots through the telly.

  Still, I was one of the brickies, and an English one at that, so what did I care?

  One of the lads suggested we all got together to watch it when it came on and this suggestion was enthusiastically received for about thirty seconds until Jason pointed out that as hardly any of us lived near each other, nine out of ten of us would have to drive and therefore be unable to drink, spelling a death knell to that particular idea.

  In the end, me, Jason and Robbie agreed to get together to watch it up at the Lamb when it came on, so that’s where we found ourselves at seven o’clock the following Wednesday evening, with the pints lined up on the bar behind us, watching the end of the regional news with increasing palpitations.

  Hardly anyone else was in the pub this early, and those that were – old Stan, Paul, Peggy, Tony the landlord, of course, and a few others – knew the occasion and marked it with a cheer when the programme started.

  I’m sure I don’t even need to tell you that my thoughts flickered to Charley in those first few seconds.

  I wondered if she’d be watching. And I wondered what she would think when she saw me. Or indeed, if she’d see me, seeing as I’d kicked up such a strop six months earlier that CT had more or less promised to stop pointing the camera my way. This was something I kind of regretted now, but what could I do about it? Moan my guts out about not being on the telly when I’d already moaned my guts out about not wanting to be on the telly? And perhaps while I was at it I could tell Jason he was my best friend, Robbie he was my second-best friend, old Stan he was my third-best friend, and then sit on the steps crying my eyes out until everyone had agreed to make me their best friend. If I wanted to be childish about this sort of thing.

  These thoughts were thankfully banished with a roar when Robbie came on screen throwing sand and water into a mixer only to suffer an almighty great splashback for his troubles. Dirty Den introduced us to Robbie and told us how old he was, how long he’d been a hoddy and a bit about his daily duties and I fought the urge to turn to him and ask him for his autograph.

  Robbie’s slapstick moment was followed by a procession of familiar faces from all corners of the site, including a shot of Jason nodding at the camera nonchalantly as he walked past, his tools slung over his shoulder and his face chiselled into that haunted thousand-yard stare that only the most battle-hardened of brickies wore on their way back from the front line.

  ‘Twat,’ Robbie observed for both of us, and Jason looked dour and admitted there was a lot more Vietnam-vetting from him to come.

  ‘I thought it looked cool,’ he muttered, the colour drained from his face.

  Gordon distracted us further, taking the camera on a quick tour of an oversite the lads were working on before snatching up his trowel and slashing into the muck and bricks with such a vigour that it pretty much guaranteed that particular section of wall would’ve had to have been rebuilt the moment the cameras were off him.

  As for me, I was nowhere to be seen, and I was just starting to think that I’d snubbed my fifteen minutes of fame as well as the love of my life when the camera pointed to the horizon and zoomed in on me working on one of the countless chimneys I’d built over the last twelve months. I recognised the house straight away and remembered roughly when I’d been up there, but I wasn’t allowed to dwell on these thoughts for too long as Jason was talking about me directly to the camera.

  ‘Had a bit of a rough weekend on the love front did old Tel, so we like to bundle him off away from us on a Monday morning and let the poor kitten get on with it,’ Rambo laughed, prompting half a dozen similar remarks from the lads, a couple of which came dangerously close to mentioning Charley by name.

  I turned to Jason in disbelief and he was suddenly even more ashen faced than before.

  ‘What was all that about?’ I demanded.

  ‘I don’t know. I can’t remember. I may have said a couple of things about you, but I didn’t think they’d put them in the programme,’ Jason simultaneously confessed next to me and laughed like a drain about on-screen.

  ‘Never let a woman get the better of you because that’s what happens,’ on-screen Jason reckoned. ‘I’ve always said I’d rather live my life on my own terms and alone rather than dance to someone else’s tune.’

  ‘When did you ever say that?’ I challenged him.

  ‘On the telly. Just then. When you were working on that chimney,’ he told me, before adding: ‘Sandra’s going to kill me.

  Can I stay at yours tonight?’

  ‘No you fucking can’t.’

  Dirty Den then cut in to take us across the site and for five minutes we followed Dan the chippy around a joist lift while he looked for a pencil that was actually perched behind his ear.

  Then we went off and watched the plumbers putting rads into a half-finished home, then the site agent knocked on the door and came in for a cameo, before once again we headed off to a different location to watch a couple of spreads flinging plaster up and down the walls like a pair of H-Block lifers with a tune on their lips. All in all, it was a bit like being at work, only I actually got to hear what the wankers said about me behind my back.

  ‘I’m sorry, mate, honestly, I know I said some things I shouldn’t have but you know how it is; we were just taking the mick. Didn’t mean nothing by it,’ Jason apologised again, quickly waving Tony over to top up my pint, but I told him not to sweat on it, it was fine. After all, no one had been a better mate to me over the last year than Jason, and part and parcel of being mates with someone is the joy of ripping the piss out of them in times of need.

  It really is ‘just what you do’.

  With the best intentions in the world, no one can offer an unlimited supply of tea and sympathy without cracking a few gags along the way for their troubles, otherwise we’d all go mad or grow tits. So no, I wasn’t angry or annoyed at the lads for putting the boot in behind my back, as I’m sure I’ve probably done the same to others in my time.

  It was just weird seeing something that I’d so clearly never been meant to see. It was the ultimate ‘listening at keyholes’ experience and a little unsettling, to be honest.

  Before we knew it, half an hour was up and the on-screen lads were packing away their tools for the evening and making for their motors behind a scroll of rolling credits. They even included a little scene of me waving goodnight to the roofers and climbing down from my chimney as Dirty Den told us to tune in next week for more ‘high drama from the boys from the building site’.

  And then it was over. As quickly as it had come, it was gone.

  ‘That was wicked, wasn’t it?’ Robbie reckoned, as Tony, Paul and Peggy came over to slap us all on the back and agree. Only old Stan sat his ground, perhaps a little intimidated to be in the company of three such enormous celebrities.

  Almost immediately our phones started popping with beeps as everyone we knew sent us texts or tried to call us to say they’d been watching and as much fun as it was for about an hour, eventually we had to turn them off just to get a little peace.

  Ha, famous at last and already sick of it.

  Still, we toasted ourselves long into the night, which was pretty s
tupid considering it was a work night, and inevitably pulled a trio of gorgeous kebabs on the stagger home.

  When I got in, I turned my mobile back on to see who else had left a message and it beeped away like R2D2 making a dirty phone call. After thirty or so seconds, R2 blew himself out and I checked the enormous list of text and voicemail messages for a specific name. But it wasn’t there.

  I had enough messages on my phone for it to qualify as heavy reading but the one text I’d spent the last couple of months kidding myself into believing I would receive never came.

  Perhaps not everyone had been watching after all.

  Naturally, the entire site showed up for work the next day with an almighty hangover. I’m not sure how much actual work got done that day but I reckon if we’d all pooled our efforts, we wouldn’t have housed a divorced ant.

  Tommy seemed to have taken his new-found celebrity status most to heart and spent the best part of the day asking us if his face really looked as fat as it did on the telly.

  ‘The camera adds ten pounds, don’t you know?’ Big John told him.

  ‘Yeah, and those sausage-and-egg sandwiches you’ve been living off all year have probably contributed a couple of ounces too, you fat fuck,’ Jason suggested.

  As you’d expect, most of the day’s chit-chat was taken up with the obvious and we jabbered on about almost nothing else until the conversation finally burned itself out the following morning. CT chose that particular afternoon to drop by to see how the show had been received, briefly reigniting the whole tedious topic again, but that flying visit aside most of us were done with the conversation until the following Wednesday.

  Naturally, we all tuned in again, but this time around there wasn’t the same level of excitement or anticipation that had heralded in the first episode. Don’t get me wrong, it was still exciting and there was still a buzz about the place that day, but it didn’t quite feel like the life-changing, seismic event that the previous week’s episode had. We were still here. We were still working. And we were still able to walk up to the corner shop for a Scotch egg without being mobbed by crazed and adoring teeny fans.