The Wall in the Head

by Christopher Beanland

  ‘I just told him we’re going to Yorkshire.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He doesn’t like Yorkshire.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘A woman.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Bob walked over to the window. Kate gave him a cigarette. He lit it, and the pair of them puffed away in silence, neither flinching nor even apparently noticing as the disconcerting clattering and crashing continued from inside Bob’s bailey.

  *

  My mind wandered on the journey north. When I was a teenager I scanned through all the different frequencies late at night on the TV my parents had given me as a birthday present. This was before digital transmission, when you could search around manually to tune in and sometimes discover oddities – little fragments of programmes being broadcast by transmitters far away; tiny presents, miniature clues about what life was like in a different part of Britain. The delight I felt at finding a channel beamed out by a neighbouring regional TV station has stayed with me. One night I discovered the Northern TV region’s signal. It was an interloper with no right to be on Midlands screens. It was fuzzy; the picture dipped in and out. You just got little portions of programming – if you were lucky. I was delighted by this find, obsessed, and went back time and again to find this ghost channel. The weather affected what I could see. I learned that when it was sunny and the sky was empty, the high pressure meant signals could travel further and I could see even more of this strange northern world. If it was cloudy and rainy, it wasn’t worth bothering. Sometimes the picture was relatively clean and you could eat up the exotic opening titles of dramas, the baffling intro music for a different late-night local news bulletin, and Yorkshire accents. Thick, milky brogues with a mellifluousness and pride that seemed at odds with the rather more circumspect and comical Brummie twang – a twang I nevertheless secretly loved. At other times you couldn’t pick the channel up at all. I was impressed with the mighty transmitter that sent the pictures our way too. I found out it was the Emley Moor transmitter, which looked like a concrete rocket in the photos I found of it in a book in the school library. It sat on top of a bleak Yorkshire moor and injected these flat-cap-and-whippet accents up into the sky. I was obsessed with how that channel came and went, a narrative you just dipped in and out of, pictures that were sometimes full and sometimes fuzzy. Life is just like that – action comes in pieces, not totalities. A buffet of experiences. Everything is ephemeral, everything is a canape. You think everything is solid but it isn’t. Earthquakes can shake up even the firmest-feeling ground. The foundations shift all the time, the rules change all the time, the things you thought were so hard and permanent as rock can crumble to dust in the blink of an eye.

  Kate and the others went for a coffee. I walked. I started by surveying the depressing liminal sprawl of petrol stations, warehouses and crass bungalows on Kirkstall Road. Bel and I had come for a weekend in Leeds a few years ago. I took her past my appalling old student digs in Hyde Park. We wandered down Cardigan Road, and at the bottom were presented with a view of the Aire Valley. My eye had to be trained, she said. Why not here? She weighed up the scene. She was especially taken by Kirkstall Viaduct, a railway bridge straddling the valley and curving towards Leeds city centre on the other side. It works like an arm, she told me, embracing the scene. Back here again, and sure enough I suddenly felt lifted looking at the viaduct’s weight, bulk and embracing shape. The arches of the viaduct marched across the valley bottom like bored soldiers with broad shoulders. It trailed round to the left, pointing me towards the Yorkshire Gazette Building, leading me there like a clue to a treasure hunt. I followed where I was told, down Kirkstall Road, passing Northern TV – whose HQ didn’t seem half as big or flashy as ours. This was where those weird programmes I found when I was a kid had originated. On a Leeds industrial estate, not even in the city centre.

  Further. The Yorkshire Gazette Building, by the same architect as Birmingham Central Library. And my word, it reminded me of home. What a hulk. We’d film here tomorrow afternoon – after we’d done a shoot at Leeds University in the morning. I sat on a roundabout, under the huge flyover, and I stared. This newspaper office, Bel had told me, was a statement of provincial pride. It was a building as a boast, deliberately sited right next to the motorway that brought you into Yorkshire’s swaggering metropolis, a city which didn’t care about York and wanted to rival Manchester. Leeds dubbed itself the Motorway City of the Seventies. As well as bashing Manchester, it was also trying to outdo Brum, which was the real Motorway City of the Seventies – and the Sixties, and all the other ’ties. I watched the office workers, and the odd student, funnel past the great concrete ark of the YGB, but not one person looked up at it. It was invisible. But how could that be? It looked more striking than any other building in Leeds (apart from the campus of my alma mater, up the road). It was a supersized ark, a series of voids filled with concrete, a rockery surrounded by fractals, a growth, a sculpture. Bel encouraged me not to see what something was in plain terms – i.e. ‘square’ or ‘tall’ – but concentrate instead on what your mind thought it could be, what your heart felt it must be. I wondered whether, if everyone else could also start to see Bel’s beloved brutalism like this, they might suddenly grow to like it rather more.

  We were billeted that night in a place called Brutotel. It had only just opened. A great concrete slab that towered over City Square. It was kitsch, 1970s-themed, arty and full of people in their late twenties. It seemed beyond belief. But it looked completely familiar. Bel would have loved it. Maybe we passed by and she did love it? I couldn’t remember. The lift doors popped open and I stepped out. The landing was totally devoid of natural light. The corridor stretched out in front of me. Regimented and regulated. I walked along the icy pathway, over clementine carpet and past scarlet walls, until I came to my room. A heavy door. The malevolent punch of air conditioning. A glass bottle of mineral water on a side table. A freshly made bed with all its components set at right angles. A vintage map of Leeds from the 1970s nailed to the wall above the bed. The outermost ring road preventing the city from escaping upwards and giving Leeds the unmistakeable shape of a brain. My eye was drawn towards the desk. Next to the Campari-coloured telephone and typewriter, a hardback book. It looked like it was for children, and featured retro fonts, crisp design, simple text and lavish hand-drawn pictures seemingly from days gone by. Except that it was a trick.

  *

  Welcome to Brutotel Leeds. This building used to be called Utopia Point. It was a block of council flats designed in the brutalist style. Brutalism comes from the French ‘béton brut’, meaning ‘raw concrete’. The term was popularised by avant-garde architects in the 1960s and ’70s to connote a stark, aggressive style of modern architecture and an honesty of materials – you could see the building was held up by the exposed concrete; you could see the marks showing where that concrete was poured. This tower block was home to 120 poor people, and was a tough place to live. In 2006, Brutotel Ltd bought it and refurbished it, opening it for a new generation of nomad aesthetes in 2008. Brutalism is back – and now it’s COOL. Today, the building’s funky, edgy glamour strikes a chord with our hip global guests, who value a well-designed hotel and want to make the most of the shopping, dining and hedonistic nocturnal options on offer in today’s regenerated Leeds.

  Brutotel prides itself on having recreated original 1970s touches throughout – so please feel free to smoke cigarillos and consume as much hard liquor as you wish in your room. Your fridge is stocked with sweet sherry, whisky, Advocaat and cigarettes. And if you need help operating the dial telephone, plug-in shaver, Teasmade, or soda fountain, just dial 1.

  Downstairs in the John Madin Bar we offer retro cocktails, cheesy nibbles and sexual harassment from suited and booted bastards. Steak Diane is served nightly in our Rodney Gordon Restaurant.

  *

  After a brief shower and a change of clothes, I ventured downstairs, feeling refreshed and more relaxed. Photos in the hotel’s
lobby depicted the centre of Leeds 35 years ago. In the pictures, pedestrians scurried over walkways slung between office towers and over roads; walls looked grimy, fags were smoked. And really, even when I was studying here in the ’80s it looked like that. If anything, it had deteriorated more. The whole of central Leeds’ life seemed to be elevated – even if the way people were living wasn’t. No one walked at street level in the photos, but I knew this was a fallacy. Obviously the pics were staged. People always found ways to avoid the steps or subways in Brum; they made like sprinters across busy roads and hurdled crash barriers. I’d done this myself on numerous occasions, often not even really knowing why. It was as much for the thrill of dicing with death as it was to save a couple of minutes. The roads in the photos were chocka with the smoky, boxy, British-made rust heaps of the era.

  I met Kate in the bar on the first floor. The walls were bare concrete, the lighting very low, the carpets apricot, the furniture auburn. A photo of a man smoking a pipe behind a model that looked very much like Birmingham Central Library hung on one far wall.

  ‘What are you having?’

  ‘Another G&T. Double.’

  I pointed at the barmaid; she nodded acknowledgement. ‘And a pint of lager please.’

  Kate had her hair up, some kind of make-up which made her eyes appear smoky and alluring. She’d ditched the glasses for contacts instead. She had a black dress on and looked more polished than usual.

  ‘What’s it like being back here then? Your old uni town.’

  ‘That seems like a bloody age ago.’ I paused. ‘You have such a sense of being able to do anything you want when you’re at that age, don’t you? You just believe that you can do stuff, that we all can, that everything will be better somehow…’ I paid for the drinks. ‘You look great, by the way.’

  ‘Thanks. Hot date with not one but two men? I’ve got to make an effort, right?’

  ‘Got to.’

  Kate snorted. ‘I don’t think I was ever like that, by the way.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘That thing you said about believing you can do stuff, feeling invincible. Not truly. I was always a cynic, even when I was younger. A happy cynic, but nevertheless…’

  ‘A happy cynic. I like that. You’re a happy cynic, and I am too.’

  ‘Belinda wasn’t a cynic though.’

  ‘Nope. Bel could be grumpy – she was German! – but she was an optimist. She believed in people, in things, in ideas. Naively so, perhaps, but it was one of the traits I loved most about her.’

  ‘I loved that about her too. I wished I felt that way sometimes.’

  ‘Don’t compare. You’re you; that’s incredible in itself.’

  Kate giggled as she drank. ‘I wish my ex-husband had agreed with that.’

  ‘Now he is a dark sod. Jesus. I remember the first time we all got pissed together, I just thought, “This guy is trouble.”’

  ‘Well, he was.’

  ‘When did you realise it wasn’t right between you?’

  ‘I sometimes wondered if I’d married the right person, I guess… all the time. Even the day I married the fucker. That “wondering” just kept growing. I don’t think we had what you and Bel had. I was disgusted by him half the time. I made the wrong choice. What can you do? It was all completely pointless, a waste of time. When I divorced him I just thought, “This is it?”’

  ‘I remember when you found out about him shagging that girl from the office. I hope you threw a chair at him.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘What’s he up to now? You never talk about him.’

  ‘Oh he’s still in Brum. I think he had a girlfriend on the go last time anyone mentioned him. Heard it was some Brummie barmaid from the Bride of Bescot, but that could have been – and probably was – a wind up. Who knows? I used to fret so much about it, about him.’ Kate took a long slug of the gin and rattled the ice around in the glass. ‘I couldn’t give a toss now. I just wish I hadn’t screwed everything up, you know…? For myself. For the future. By leaving everything so late.’

  ‘Is it too late?’

  She looked up at me but didn’t address that one directly. There was no need. ‘Ciggie?’

  I nodded. We went outside and smoked on the corner of City Square. There was less traffic here than I remembered; the council seemed to have partially pedestrianised some of the square. A lavishly clad hen-party group emerged from City Station, giggling, swigging pink liquid from plastic cups. They crossed over towards the hotel. One of the women, wearing some kind of sparkly minidress and a sash round her shoulder shouted, ‘Oi oi, love! Bet you’ve got a massive dick, yeah?’ at me, then blew me a kiss. Her friends were hysterical. She cackled and yelled, ‘See you later, love!’ as they wobbled down Boar Lane.

  Kate guffawed.

  ‘Unbelievable,’ I offered, smirking.

  Kate stared over towards the Old Post Office but didn’t seem to really be looking at it. ‘I want to talk to you about something that’s been preying on my mind for ages.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Well. I expect an expert viewpoint here. Isn’t everything just… so fucking fake?’

  I scoffed, surprised at her candour.

  ‘I’m serious. How we experience the world – how you and I experience the world, or how anyone experiences the world – is unique to us. It’s also so… potent and immediate; it’s full of sensation and emotion. It’s also messy and… I don’t know… it doesn’t always make sense, doesn’t fit into holes and plans. There’s a lot of stuff going on, everywhere, so much stuff, all at the same time, and it’s a big mess, basically. But every representation of life tries to make it all seem so polished – the way people speak and the things they do. The way people are presented, it’s just not authentic. Life’s not like that, you know that.’

  I pondered what Kate was saying, looked into her eyes.

  She was getting into her stride. ‘It’s a farce, a facade. The media isn’t true to anything or anyone, and probably neither is architecture. Our TV programmes… I mean, it’s just this formal way of presenting things and of behaving. It’s a sort of a sham, right? It’s not real, that’s not how we behave. We don’t speak like they do on soaps to each other – any more than we live how people want us to live in little boxes on council estates or wherever. People are unique and they just do things in their own awkward way. But no one ever shows that. The choppiness of it all, the half-heartedness of it all. People don’t believe in big things anymore, we take the piss out of them – we rightly take the piss out of them. You and Bob took the piss out of everything and I loved that. I still love that. In programmes and in life. I hope this brutalist… monstrosities programme will have a bit of piss-taking in it too. Though Baxter will fuck up any joke you give him to read, of course.’ She paused for breath. ‘Don’t believe any of the buggers that are in charge. Don’t listen to them. Even the people you’re fucking married to. There’s no… anything. You’ve just got to feel around in the dark for yourself, just manage, just try.’ Kate paused. ‘There’s a huge disconnect between the formal front people put on and what people actually think and say. Do you know what I mean, Don?’

  ‘That we’re all liars?’

  Kate chuckled. ‘Fucking hell, all men, you mean! Then yes. You bastards. We believe the shit you come out with. Women lie to themselves. They think, “Oh, this one’s not like the others”, but you’re always like the fucking others.’ She paused to smoke. ‘But the one thing you can do well is to take the piss, to not listen to the lies, to show the grubby realities. That’s what I mean about this fucking doc we’re making. Seriously… oh God, maybe? No.’

  ‘Go on, it’s fine.’

  ‘No… I… Oh, fuck it. I know it’s for Bel and, God, I miss her, she was brilliant, but it’s another bloody documentary. Baxter flounces around, using his long words…’

  ‘Long words I wrote.’

  ‘Yeah, OK.’ Kate snorted. ‘Pratting about here and there, and making everyt
hing seem like it’s some kind of accepted order, some kind of mystical truth, something that’s better and more clever than the viewers. And it’s celebrating these bloody behemoths… I don’t really see why Bel liked them so much. They look fucking oppressive to me, like they were built by a bloody dictator or something, and that’s surely the last thing she wanted to be reminded of. And of course I respect her opinion – she knew more about it than me, and her passion was infectious. But ultimately we’re celebrating yet another thing that was done to the people by… by these idiot men in suits, aren’t we? The fuckers in charge, always the fuckers in charge. Seriously, aren’t we? It’s always men in suits that fuck you the most, the hardest. The same bastards who blacklisted the poor sods working on those buildings if they were in a union or something, the same bastards who wanted their monuments and their careers and their fees, the same bastards who wanted power and influence. That’s why I liked Big Plans, because you were taking the piss out of those bastards. And that’s why I loved Hail To The Brummies, because you were celebrating the ordinary people – it was their words, their lives.’ Kate’s eyes suddenly looked pleading. ‘Don, you’re not angry with me for saying this, are you? I don’t know, it’s just hard sometimes. Maybe I don’t see it the same way you lot do. I’m just so sick of being on the receiving end of things, of everything.’ She smoked. ‘I’ve said too much, haven’t I?’

  ‘Of course you haven’t said too much.’ I put my arms round her and could feel her trembling. Maybe Kate was right. ‘I know what you mean. You have to… ask questions. I think, anyway. Bel was just such an optimist, wasn’t she? Beyond the normal boundaries of optimism. She believed that everything was being done for the right reasons, that everything was possible, that everyone was on the right track. That beauty was everywhere, even if no one else could see it. She trusted herself. Do we trust ourselves? Us two? Do we feel like that?’