The library looked like a spaceship, exactly how I imagined a spaceship would seem. I drank the pop and pushed through the crowd. I was just in time to hear a round of applause and see men in suits clapping and shaking hands. One of them cut a ribbon and – as the crowd cheered – held up the pipe he’d been smoking. I found a step in front of the building in Chamberlain Square and sat, facing the town hall, my back to the library. I just sat there quietly for an hour or so, shivering in the cold as the adrenaline inevitably dissipated. I wondered if it was going to snow soon. I opened my crisps and ate them, then started on the sweets. Then something strange happened. My stomach felt like it would burst. I sensed the building was talking to me. I imagined it had its left arm round me like my dad did when we sat on the sofa watching TV, and it – like him – wanted to say something important. I turned and stared at the building behind me. Its arm was curled. That’s exactly what it looked like.
‘What did you say, Mister?’
I heard the words: ‘You need to get home for your tea, Don. Don’t forget.’
I looked at my watch. ‘Oh God! You’re right.’
‘I’m a library. I know a lot of things because of all the books inside me. You can trust me, Don. Go home to your mum and dad, but be careful on the big roads. Don’t rush.’
I said thanks. I retraced my tracks and made it home by 4:20 p.m. Easy. Mum wondered why I was so red-faced. I said, ‘It’s been a hard day’s cycling around Moseley!’ I ate my chicken pie and mash so quickly I felt like I was going to be sick. Over tea, Dad muttered something odd about ‘those tanks at Heathrow last week… It’s a set-up. They’re up to something – they’re after Wilson,’ but I didn’t know who Wilson was or who the tanks belonged to. Dad said Wilson had opened the new library today, and I froze, thinking the game was up, but he didn’t talk any more about the library. He just kept using the word ‘conspiracy’ and looking glum. He said he was worried about the IRA too and that I should tell him if I saw anything dodgy going on in Moseley. I nodded and promised I would, but I wasn’t sure how dodgy the thing I saw would have to be for me to tell Dad about it. I ran upstairs after tea and immediately scanned the A–Z, tracing my route into town with my finger. I couldn’t believe I’d made it. I really couldn’t believe it. Neither could my stuffed dog, who I insisted we call Moseley. He was a Labrador. Just like Ringo. But not real. Moseley stared at the A–Z too, so in awe of my achievement that he could neither move nor speak a single word. But I could tell he was impressed – it was written all over his face.
11
2008
I haven’t ever really challenged myself. Belinda always set the bar high, always aspired, was confident, believed. Once she ran down Leighton Road and back, naked, when we were playing some stupid drinking game. I remember how her laughter filled the air, how the lights in the houses went on as she sprinted back up towards our house. How she couldn’t stop giggling when I’d bolted the front door and refused to let her in, and Kate pleaded with me to open it. Belinda said I could write a novel. I probably could. But why don’t I? Why haven’t I? Can I bring characters on a page to life using only words? Only if it’s a script. If I know they’re going to end up on a TV screen it’s child’s play. But fleshing out real people on a page? It never seemed possible. It’s so two-dimensional. People exist in three dimensions; they need to jump up and start living. But perhaps I should have tried anyway. I sat on the sofa and thought about Ten Brutalist Buildings. It was the book that made Belinda’s name. It was one of the first attempts to reassess the style of architecture Belinda adored, the type of architecture she thought everyone should adore. She wrote it as a love letter, she felt that she was sticking up for the bullied kids at school, she felt like she was sticking up for ordinary people because she felt these were buildings for everybody. She wanted to change your way of seeing things in a fundamental way. She always challenged herself; she wanted to challenge everyone else too. The book had been intended as a small thing really, a toe dipped in the ocean. She was over the moon just to get published. She anticipated that a few lay readers would pick it up, but mostly it would be read by her peers in academia, in architecture, in planning and publishing.
I picked up the book and opened it. The printed dedication read:
For Donald
Underneath, in biro, she had added:
I fucking love you forever, D
Bxx
I had read the book when Bel had first written it. Now I read it again. It took two days. I went flat out.
Then I got my computer out and I started typing. And I didn’t stop obsessing over the script until it was perfect. It took two weeks. I didn’t leave the house. I lived on salsa. And crisps. And the odd vegetable thali delivered by a guy called Nikesh, who rode a moped whose waspish engine signalled the arrival of my daal, aloo saag, pilau rice, and chutneys. I had to get my vitamins somewhere. Bob came over once with one of those cardboard carriers that held ten small bottles of supermarket French beer in each hand. He got so drunk he had to call a taxi, and the neighbours complained the next day that he’d blocked them in with his beaten-up old car, which I knew for a fact he had deliberately parked in a peculiar way to be obstinate. Every day I wrote. My mind was always on that damn script. I rewarded myself for the number of words done – 250 for a cig, 500 for a cup of tea, 1,000 for some food. It wasn’t always easy to steam through it. There were a lot of complicated portions of the book I didn’t get, still don’t get – Bel was trained in architecture whereas I’m a hobbyist with a vague interest in cities. Maybe that was for the best though – I was trying to make her words – her world – accessible. In fairness, her words were fairly accessible to start with. That was one reason why the book was so good. But I wanted the average TV viewer at home to really listen and think. There couldn’t be too many words in the final film, just little snippets – like picture captions in a book. The images would do the talking as well as the words. Snippets. Like life. Just little pieces. I wrote these little pieces of talking that would bring the buildings alive, and I imagined the pictures running over the top of the words. I had to cut down loads of Bel’s stuff and I had to write a few new lines of my own in other places. It was honestly more of an editing job than a creative writing one. I imagined Bel reading it all out; I imagined her standing in front of that camera, pushing her hair to the side of her face and behind her ear and smiling and explaining why concrete buildings were the most important things in the world. I did it all because I loved my wife. I’d always love my wife. I’ll always love my wife.
12
Kate had arranged to meet me at the Bride of Bescot to pick up the script. I locked the house and walked straight down Tudor Road before turning left into Alcester Road, following it south, to the top of the hill. Then the hill fell away, and at the bottom, just before Moseley shaded into Kings Heath, was the Bride in all her dubious glory. Clouds bloomed like brooding cancer cells in the sky. I wanted to get away from them and was happy to heave open the maroon door that led to the saloon. It was late afternoon; there weren’t many punters in. Most of the ones who were drank alone. I bought a pint and thudded the script down onto a small round table. The fireplace looked so homely, so welcoming. I wanted to throw a log on it and flame it up. I exhaled.
‘You silly bastard,’ I heard from across the room. Kate walking over. She wore tight black jeans and a Breton-striped top. ‘What have you been up to? Why haven’t you called me back?’ I could smell her hair now. She threw her arms around me unflinchingly. I flinched, unused to touch for so long. ‘Are you OK?’
‘Well… I’m here, aren’t I?’
‘You silly bastard.’ She grabbed my cheeks and looked straight into my eyes, then combed my hair using her right hand. ‘What the fuck are we going to do with you, Donald?’
We sat and drank and talked until closing time. I told her I was sorry for not ringing, that I had looked for her that day I went back to the Mids offices to meet Bob. Kate listened with her heart,
not her ears. Why hadn’t I thought about calling her before? She was humane, a human antidepressant. I gave her the script as we staggered back up the hill towards Moseley, sheltering under a shared umbrella as the rain pelted down.
‘What are you doing for dinner?’
‘I haven’t been eating much.’
‘I can see. Why don’t I buy you a balti? I want to tell you about a programme I’m doing – 50 years of Mids TV. Been looking through the archive like nobody’s business. I think there’s some stuff you’ll like in there, some stuff you’ve written!’
I scoffed. ‘Really? Ah, I’d love to, but I need to sleep.’
‘Fine, well I tried.’
‘I want to see some of your archive finds soon though. Are you OK getting the bus back?’
‘Of course I am. But I’m walking you home first. All sorts of nasty men round Moseley at this time of night, isn’t there?’
At my door, Kate kissed me goodbye and walked off down Tudor Road, looking like Mary Poppins beneath the brolly. ‘See you tomorrow. Bright and early. Baxter loves mornings!’
I thought I could hear a distant rumble of thunder. I fell on the sofa and passed out.
An hour later I was woken by a roar like a tramp clearing his throat. The storm was right over me. A crack of thunder. Black sky burned white in pulses, like paparazzi flashbulbs going crazy. Blinking, lights, bright, blinking, lights, bright. I went to the window and stared out at the garden. A huge explosion rocked the house. Thunder like mortars. I peered at the rain bucketing down, thrumming polluted water on the cold pane. The garden looked miserable. Another huge crack. Lightning flared up, illuminated the scene. For a split second I thought I saw the outline of a person in the garden. Startled, I pressed my nose against the glass. Another flash. Closer now, a blonde woman stood in the garden, motionless, staring at me. Flash. I swore, ran into the hallway to grab a coat and went out into the garden. No one there. Rain cascaded down on me from the broken gutter above the bathroom. The garden was dark between lightning flashes, overgrown and full of menace. Nevertheless I stood there for ten minutes looking at the spot where I’d seen her. She didn’t return. My bike seemed to wink at me, goading me almost. I bent down, heaved up one of the loose paving slabs we’d been storing up in a heavy pile next to the point where the gutter outflow ran into the drain. I lifted the slab up to chest height, walked a few steps, and smashed it down onto the frame of the bike with a great guttural grunt of disgust. The paving slab bounced off the bike’s metal. Angered now, I picked up the scratched bike, put it over my head and lobbed it towards the fence at the far end of the garden. It ricocheted off the wooden panels, which quivered and moaned. I paced to the carcass of the bike and stamped down hard on top of it. Thunder rumbled, but more quietly now, creeping away slowly, edging into the distance, ashamed and repentant.
I fell down on the ground without really wanting to. Who wants to lie on a wet patio in a storm? My body just gave up. I lay there, flat on my back, watching the fading flashes half-heartedly duel with the cloudy sky. My chest rose and fell with my breathing. I turned my head to the right and saw a friendly frog staring right into my eyes. I picked it up, and it bravely allowed me to hold it in my hand. Its slick skin meant it was as hard to grab as a bar of soap. I went upstairs and put the frog in a bath in case the neighbour’s cat, Humphrey, was out with a thirst for blood and a psychopathic attitude whipped up by the thunderstorm. The frog kept trying to escape from the bath by climbing up the sides, but each time he tried, his efforts were totally frustrated and he slid back down to where he’d begun.
‘I’ll take you back out there in the morning, little man,’ I whispered to him as I stroked the top of his head. ‘Once that lazy fucking cat has gone to sleep. Then you can pop off back down to the railway line and find Mrs Frog. She’s not going to be impressed about you staying out all night – take it from a man who knows.’
The frog replied with a single ‘Rebbit’, which amused me because I didn’t realise frogs made that noise in real life, let alone that they could also understand English.
I went back outside to examine the remains of my bike. A frail voice fired over the fence. ‘Is everything OK? I heard a commotion.’ An old person. Busybodying. My neighbour.
‘Yes, Mrs Henderson. Sorry about the noise. Just… fixing my bike.’
‘Right you are.’
Up in my study, all seemed calm. There was nothing left to write; it’d been done. All I had to do now was keep an eye on the shoot and check that Baxter wasn’t fucking up the words I’d penned. I’d written the Ten Brutalist Buildings script as a tribute to Bel. Thinking about her was the only way I could summon the wherewithal to put finger to keyboard. I had no more energy left for writing. It was all expended. What would I do when the film was finished? What then? I’d always fancied living in Berlin, but Bel wouldn’t even countenance the concept of going back to her home town. I knew it was cheap. Maybe I could go and live in Berlin for a few months and just escape everything. Bel’s mum, Frau Schneider, would cook me food with ridiculous names like Knieperkohl and HoppelPoppel; she’d give me big bottles of beer to drink and super-strong fags to smoke. It’d be simple, charming. I could look after her and she could look after me. Germany was relaxing. I always felt calm when I was there, though Bel found this impossible to understand – for her, Berlin had been a place of stresses and strains. Maybe I’d find some inspiration, inspiration to write something else, if I went there for a while – rented an apartment in Kreuzberg on the cheap, lived simply. Maybe I could write a sitcom set in East Berlin in the 1970s.
13
1990
‘So this is where you work?’ Bel’s hair was permed. Her lips were provocatively slicked cherry; she kept licking them. She opened her mouth wide. She had a yellow jumpsuit on. She looked like she was a pop star who’d come to be interviewed on the daily lunchtime chat show Mids produced, the one which – inexplicably – always seemed to feature helicopters and parachutists. The lunchtime show’s bookers would have to either hoodwink or blatantly bribe the ‘showbiz’ guests to come north up the M1, out of their comfort zones. They knew Birmingham smelled of shame in the capital’s celebrity circles. And I think, sometimes, so did we.
Bel might have looked like a pop star today, but unlike one of them, one of those flash-in-the-pan beasts, she wasn’t spilling fripperies about celebrities or herself or the cracked, quasi-glossy world of showbiz I knew to be a complete fucking sham of the highest order. She talked about architecture, about space, about ideas, about creating a world around us, about art, about making beautiful things.
‘You know these studios shouldn’t even be here? This was a second choice – you’re a second choice, I’m afraid.’ She stared at me then burst out laughing. We walked across carpets coloured chocolate, cream swirling patterns at irregular intervals. The carpets gave you static electrical shocks when you pressed the lift buttons.
‘What should be here?’
‘The plan was for an entire new district of the city. You know where the library is, right?’
‘Of course.’
‘And what it looks like?’
‘How could I forget?’
‘Well imagine that spread over the whole area, this whole area; strung out along Broad Street like a behemoth.’ She looked dreamy. ‘It would have been wonderful. The architect proposed so many exciting shapes and buildings. It would have looked like… a space station almost. The architect wanted to create a new civic centre for Birmingham, an expression of the pride of a city. Using buildings to say that Birmingham was heading to the future. Of course it was also to make the bigwigs feel more powerful, but that’s men for you. And speaking of that, on this very spot, that’s where there would have been a stupid priapic tower that would have shot up into the sky. That was a shit idea, obviously, but the rest would have looked great. They even wanted to build a monorail, but then didn’t everyone?’
‘Wow. They had some serious plans.’
&n
bsp; Bel framed a face of agreement, eyes widened, a little half smile, turning away very slightly, nodding very slightly, to look clever and nonchalant all at once.
‘So if they’d built that, no Mids TV HQ here?’
‘Exactly. A convention centre, council offices, water gardens, maybe some flats for people to live in, a pointy tower, a monorail track above the roofs, big buildings and bridges, multiple levels. Lots of stuff, all going on together. Lots of people. Lots of life.’
‘Instead, Brummies got an office block and some hefty studios where we make programmes that workers can wind down with after a day at the car plant.’
She giggled at this, lit a cigarette.
The Wall in the Head Page 7
