Blue Collar

by Danny King

  ‘Before they drag us from the van and murder us,’ I added. ‘Come on, I’ve seen these films. I know what happens next.’

  A ripple of excitement bristled over the crowd and suddenly the front row made a break towards us.

  I yelped with fear and Jason knocked a few hundred quid off the value of the van as he tried wrestling us into reverse before suddenly we were careening backwards at top lick. Robbie was already ripping through our tool buckets in the back looking for weapons in case we had to make a last stand as the mob outside were now howling up a storm.

  ‘Go go go!’ I urged Jason, but inexplicably he slammed on the brakes. ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ I demanded, but a horn blast and a rear window full of concrete lorry answered that question for me.

  I turned back just in time to see the first few ranks of our pursuers wrap themselves around the front of the van and start demanding me by name.

  ‘Terry!’

  ‘Terry!’

  ‘Terry!’

  ‘Terry, did she call?’

  ‘Terry, do you still love her?’

  ‘Terry, what message do you have for our readers?’

  The three of us stared at the melee in dismay and disbelief as more and more faces poured in from every angle to fill the windscreen.

  ‘Terry, when did you first start writing your messages?’

  ‘Terry, where else have you been writing them?’

  ‘Terry, did she call?’

  Eventually Jason succumbed to his need to continually point out the obvious.

  ‘I think they’re here for you, mate.’

  29 Lofty reactions

  I’ve never been the centre of attention before, which is fine by me, by the way. Don’t get me wrong, this ain’t a ‘no one ever loved me’ bid for sympathy. It’s just a fact. I’m more of a background sort of person. It’s where I’m most comfortable. I like to have my opinion heard as much as the next bloke. And I like to have friends. But I’m not one of these people who feels the need to hog every conversation or jump up on stage at the drop of a karaoke microphone. I’m just a normal fella, I reckon. Perhaps even normaller than most, if that makes sense or is an actual word. I’m certainly shyer. I don’t know.

  All I do know is that it freaked me out no end having every eye within a hundred yards of me boring into my skull. It made me feel very weird indeed, like I was naked or something.

  And if this wasn’t bad enough, you try having sixteen simultaneous conversations first thing in the morning and see how that starts off your day. They weren’t aggressive or nothing, the reporters. They weren’t like in the movies, all shouting, screaming and knocking my teeth out with tape recorders. They were all perfectly polite and patient. There was just sixteen of them and they all seemed to want to ask five different questions at once so that I couldn’t keep track of whether I was telling them I hadn’t heard from Charley, was looking to get back with her or ever sat outside her flat in my van at midnight crying.

  ‘No, I mean yes. What? No, it’s not my van. Er…’

  Lurking towards the back of the crowd were Gordon, Dennis, Big John and Nobby, all of which had already held their own press conferences and were now reaching in to pluck me from the limelight.

  Naturally, the cameramen and journalists tried to keep pace with us but we successfully lost them at the gates when Brian, the health and safety officer, pointed out that they needed Toe Tecs and hard hats in order to be admitted beyond this point.

  Incredibly, one enterprising young hack had foreseen this and dressed for the occasion, so Brian pointed out that they also needed to be builders and actually work here to get in, which somewhat pissed all over his brand-new shiny Toe Tecs.

  ‘Blimey, are all them journalists?’ I asked the lads, looking back at all the jostling faces at the gates.

  ‘No, not all of them. Some are just fans here to get a look at you, would you believe. Looks like you might get mobbed going up the shops for that Scotch egg after all,’ Big John chuckled.

  ‘Shit, and I didn’t bring any sandwiches either,’ I suddenly realised.

  Instead of going to work, Gordon led me straight to the site office for a sit-down with Pete, the site agent. I’d expected only hostility and humiliation when I got to work but what I actually found was generosity, humour and understanding. Though it took me a while to realise this.

  Pete’s secretary, Grace, smiled at me full beam when I stepped into the office and told me that her mum had even cried at the end of the programme.

  ‘I’m sorry, tell her I’ll repoint her chimney first, I promise I will,’ I replied, to universal amusement.

  Pete looked up from his phone call and told whoever he was talking to that I’d just arrived and that he’d call them back, before hanging up.

  ‘Morning, Terry. And how are you today?’ he asked in a weirdly over-familiar way that got my fur standing up on end before we’d even started.

  ‘I’m really sorry, Pete. Honest I am. It was a really stupid thing to do and I promise I never thought anyone would ever see any of them, I swear,’ I told him.

  ‘Well, what d’you do them for, then?’ came the question I’d been dreading and the one I still can’t answer today.

  ‘I don’t know. I was just… being stupid, I guess. I’ve never done anything like that before and, to be honest, I never realised I’d done so many. I seriously wasn’t thinking but I promise I’ll put ’em all right out of my own pocket,’ I volunteered, ignoring Jason’s latest advice. Well, why break the habit of a lifetime?

  ‘No you will not,’ Pete told me in no uncertain terms. ‘Do you have any idea just how many phone calls we’ve had this morning regarding your handiwork?’

  ‘That’s why I said I’d repair it all,’ I implored, desperate to head off the sort of legal action that would see me moving into an address that boasted cardboard furniture and trains running backwards and forwards across the roof. ‘Please,’ I implored.

  ‘Terry, these ain’t complaints,’ Pete then said. ‘These are people who want to buy.’

  ‘What?’ I replied, my pleas suddenly smacking face first into one of my own brick walls.

  ‘These are people who want to buy the houses. The phone’s been ringing off the hook in the sales office. We’ve got five appointments to see every house and we’ve even got interest in the houses that ain’t even going to be houses for another six months yet. The place has gone potty,’ he explained.

  ‘But why?’ I asked. ‘Didn’t they see the programme last night?’

  Pete stared at me like I’d just asked him where babies came from.

  ‘No, Terry, they didn’t. This is all one massive coincidence,’ he replied with deadpan sarcasm. Well, fair enough, but come on, I’m not exactly an Oxford don at the best of times and this morning I was feeling particularly fuzzy headed.

  ‘So, people saw the programme last night, saw what I’d done and still wanted to buy the houses?’ I talked through, for the benefit of myself and the Portakabin walls.

  ‘Not still wanted to buy, but wanted to buy because of what you’d done. They’re asking for specific houses by the specific chimneys, the most popular of which seem to be the two houses with Terry n Charley, 2008 on them. You should’ve done more of them, they’re shifting like fucking hot cakes, they are,’ Pete pointed out.

  ‘I don’t get it.’ I shrugged.

  ‘No, you really don’t, do you, you silly bastard?’ Pete shook his head. ‘Go on then, go and do some work. I’ve got Reuters to get back to.’

  I thanked Pete (for what I wasn’t quite sure) and was just leaving the office when he called after me:

  ‘Oh, just one other thing, don’t deface any more houses unless we tell you to, eh, there’s a good chap.’

  The lads and a lot of questions were waiting for me and Gordon outside and we chatterboxed like a Thursday morning post office queue until Pete appeared at the doorway and pointed out that he hadn’t been joking about us doing some work.

>   ‘Come on then, chaps, hi ho, hi ho,’ Gordon sang, leading the lads off to a band lift across the way while me, Jason and Robbie headed for the van. See, unfortunately, when all this madness had kicked off, we’d had to abandon the van where we’d been surrounded and all our tools were still inside.

  ‘Does either of you fancy getting mine for me?’ I suggested, pulling up twenty yards short of a fresh barrage of demands and camera clicks.

  ‘All right, I’ll get them for you this one time, but don’t you go thinking that, now you’re a big celeb, you don’t have to carry your own tools,’ Jason warned me, before being swallowed by the mob.

  ‘Terry! Terry! Terry!’ called the crowd, when they clocked me again.

  I didn’t fancy getting sucked back into it all over again and thought about moving away and waiting for Jason and Robbie by the bottom of the ladder, but I’d wandered too close to the journalists and was now within shouting range again. I could’ve just ignored them, of course, but I didn’t want to appear rude, like fame had gone to my head or something, and before I knew it I was answering a whole load of new questions, mainly about what Gordon and Pete had just talked to me about.

  ‘Did they tell you to stop writing your love messages?’

  ‘Will you still be building all the chimneys?’

  ‘Was there any talk of disciplinary action?’

  ‘Did the company know about them from the start?’

  And so on.

  Again I didn’t know which questions to answer first and tried to explain that it had all been one big, stupid mistake, and that I should’ve never done what I’d done, but I couldn’t tell if they were listening.

  ‘Please, I don’t want any of this. Seriously, you’ll just stir it up for me,’ I pleaded, setting three dozen pencils frantically scribbling.

  ‘But has Charley called, Terry?’ the mob continued to demand.

  ‘No,’ I reluctantly admitted, hoping this would quell their questions.

  ‘But you’re hoping she will, right?’ the hard-hatted journalist asked, trying to pin me down.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I parried.

  ‘You don’t know if you’d like her to call or you don’t know if she will call?’ he pressed.

  ‘No,’ I replied, before quickly changing this to ‘yes’ when it occurred to me that I wasn’t entirely sure what I was saying ‘no’ to.

  ‘So when she does call, where will you take her? What’s your ideal make-up date?’ the conversation moved on, even though I couldn’t remember confirming whether I wanted Charley to call or not.

  ‘No, wait, I didn’t say that. I think you’ve got it wrong,’ I insisted, but no one turned their pencils around to rub anything out. Quite the opposite in fact. ‘Please,’ I pleaded, ‘this is all getting mixed up.’

  But suddenly I knew none of it mattered. They’d just go off and write what they wanted to write and there was precious little I could do about it. They’d fit their stories together like crazy-paving slabs and twist the facts and half-truths to fit any story they wanted to sell until I looked like some bunny-boiling bricky from the back of beyond. And when everyone was done having a right good laugh at my expense, and Charley was hoarse from cursing my name, I’d be left to stew in my own stupidity for the rest of my days.

  There’s an expression that I believe’s particularly apt for times like these – when you’re in a hole, stop digging.

  I thanked everyone for their interest and was about to walk away when Jason and Robbie emerged from the crowd with my tools and something more besides.

  They had Charley.

  Charley was with them.

  There was Charley.

  The sight of her proved such a shock to the system that my brain simply froze up and for a good ten seconds I stood there gawping at her with my gob swinging open like a mixer winding down at tea break.

  There was Charley!

  I hadn’t seen her in eight months. I hadn’t even seen a picture of her in all that time, because I’d never been able to pluck up the courage to ask her for one in case she’d thought I was being uncool, so all I’d had to go on these last few lonely months was a dog-eared, rose-tinted memory of her.

  But suddenly, she was there.

  She turned her green eyes to mine and blinked. I would’ve blinked back, but I was suddenly far too busy drinking in the sight of her: the way she looked, the way she moved, the way she shook her head and frowned at me in disbelief. It was like I hadn’t seen her in a thousand years, yet she’d never been away.

  ‘Coming through. Mind your backs, chaps,’ Jason was saying, as he and Robbie led her through the scrimmage.

  Luckily, no one else seemed to notice Charley. Not the journalists, the fans of the show or any of the dozen or so other nosy parkers who’d taken the morning off to swing by and catch a glimpse of Britain’s biggest doughnut. I guess no one else knew what she looked like, so the lads were able to walk her through the crowd and right up to the gates before she was finally stopped by Brian.

  Intrusive questions continued to be hurled at me, but I could no longer hear them, Charley had taken possession of all of my senses and it took me the longest possible time before I was even able to breathe.

  A few of the assembled press finally started to twig that something was afoot and looked about their ranks for the source of my astonishment. I guess we might’ve still got away with it had Brian simply let Charley through, but he was being a stickler for H&S rules this morning and in no mood to make exceptions. With nothing else for it, Robbie made the supreme sacrifice and handed over his hard hat and Toe Tecs, and it was only when he started tying Charley’s laces that the press finally clocked her for who she was.

  ‘Come on, quick,’ Jason urged her, dropping the hard hat over her blonde locks and bundling her through the site gates.

  She barely had time to find her stride before the camera flashes started exploding behind her and for the briefest of moments she was lit up like an angel – though this could’ve just been me putting her on a pedestal again. I never learn, I don’t.

  ‘Come on,’ Charley shouted, grabbing me by the hand as she and Jason raced past.

  Jason realised he was probably surplus to requirements after about fifty yards or so and dropped out of the race, but me and Charley sprinted on until we reached the site’s brick drop and it was here, shielded by a few thousand flettons and a couple of hundred spiders, that she pushed me against the stacks and told me what a wanker I was.

  ‘I’m sorry…’ I started to say, but Charley cut right across me.

  ‘Shut up!’ she snapped. ‘Just shut up! Don’t say anything for two minutes and just listen to me for once, will you.’

  I went out on a limb and mumbled ‘OK’, but figured it was probably best to leave it at that. I guessed Charley was in more of a talking mood than a listening mood this morning.

  ‘You’re a wanker, Terry. A total bloody wanker,’ she told me, like this was news to me. ‘I don’t know what to make of you, I really don’t. My head’s all over the place. I mean, what the fuck, Terry? What the fuck?’

  I sensed this was a rhetorical question so I didn’t try to answer it.

  Finally, Charley calmed down long enough to collect her thoughts.

  ‘Do you have any idea how much you hurt me?’ she asked, screwing up her face and wiping her nose on the back of her sleeve. ‘You hurt me like you can’t believe, Terry. You really really hurt me. And for what?’

  ‘I didn’t mean to…’ I tried, but she just slapped me down again.

  ‘No, Terry, just button it. I’ve spent the last six weeks listening to your side of the story, so now you’re going to listen to mine,’ Charley told me in no uncertain terms, threatening me with a pre-sharpened wagging finger. I saw that there was nothing more for it but to assume the being-told-off position and let Charley vent her chest. Hang on, that wasn’t the expression, was it? I tried to remember what the expression was but stopped when I found myself looking at her tits
in an effort to jog my memory.

  ‘Terry, I liked you. I liked you ever such a lot, in fact. And I thought you liked me, too,’ she told me, in that ‘disappointed’ way women seemed to perfect when they met me.

  ‘I did,’ I told her.

  ‘For me, I mean, Terry. Not for my money, not for my lifestyle, not for my friends, or my job or my expensive dimmer switches. I thought you liked me for me,’ she underlined.

  ‘I did,’ I repeated, with a mope.

  Charley’s scowl melted a little.

  ‘I know you did. And I never doubted it. Not even for a second.

  So why did you think I thought otherwise?’

  I opened my mouth in an effort to explain but realised I couldn’t. I mean, how do you explain paranoia to the person you’ve been paranoid about without suggesting that all along you secretly suspected they were a fucking arsehole?

  ‘Er…’

  ‘And do you really think I only went out with you was because you were a bit of rough? I mean, how insulting is that?’ Charley asked me and the onlooking spiders.

  ‘What? No, I never said that…’ I tried once more, but Charley pointed out that I’d never said anything.

  ‘Not to me anyway. You saved all your talking for the boys on the bloody site.’

  ‘No, what I said was…’

  ‘And what’s all this shit about Domino?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You heard. My horse, Domino. You think I got rid of Domino because I just got bored of him?’

  ‘No, I never...’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No,’ I professed.

  ‘Then why did Jason say that on the programme last night?’

  Charley demanded.

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know why he said any of it,’ I tried to explain. ‘Oh God, everything’s just got exaggerated and blown out of all proportion. I don’t even know if I’m coming or going any more.’

  ‘So why do you think I got rid of Domino?’ Charley demanded.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I squirmed.

  ‘No, come on, tell me,’ she pressed.