The Wall in the Head

by Christopher Beanland

  This is listed – but the renovation work is only really keeping the shape of the building. Everything else will change. Council tenants kicked out. New facades. But at least it’s not being knocked down, and at least it shows that brutalist buildings can be places that people want to live.

  10. Mids TV HQ

  Birmingham, England

  1969

  The HQ of the local television station for the Midlands of England (hence why the station is called Mids TV). There’s a skinny concrete tower of offices, a fat squatting studio complex, and a bar with a long glazed run of windows. The bar overlooks a plaza, which is a teeming public space. Because it’s television and it’s glamorous, the whole complex feels alive and sprinkled with extra stardust. If you ever get a chance to get up to the top of the tower, you’ll be rewarded with the most magnificent views of my adopted home town. You can make out all of Birmingham’s best buildings from up here. You can look down on the Central Library, across at the BT Tower, over towards the Rotunda. And you can see all the roundabouts, roads and car parks working together in harmony. Cars gliding from place to place, people wandering through the busy streets.

  *

  ‘Cheese, that… Spanish ham, olives, breadsticks, crisps – salt ’n’ vinegar, sour cream ’n’ chive – sausage rolls, dips with vegetables.’ Bob proudly read out the inventory of snacks. ‘What a fucking wrap party this is going to be.’ The last bit sounded sarcastic. It was so quiet. The Mids Bar had never felt like this for a wrap party. In years gone by the atmosphere was always, at the very least, rowdy.

  People arrived in dribs and drabs, milling around in almost total silence. They looked scared of the sausage rolls. ‘They won’t bite!’ said Bob, noticing the same thing I did. I saw my neighbour Mrs Henderson gingerly go in for a try, and I waved at her. She waved back with the sausage roll held aloft like a pastry-coated trophy.

  Bob, now back from his sojourn in the land of the sleeping giants, sighed and vanished, returning after five minutes with four bottles of red wine, adding them to the twelve already on the table.

  ‘Where are they from?’

  ‘Never you mind.’ He tapped his nose. I wondered if he’d been secreting nicked bottles of wine from decades of previous wrap parties in a cupboard somewhere. He probably had something approaching a cellar now, and clearly there was no point in keeping them all anymore. I squinted at the bottles and saw that each had a different label, a different year. Each nicked, clearly, from a different event, a different bash to celebrate the completion of a different useless Mids TV production.

  ‘Don’t mind if I do,’ said Kate, leaning over and casually filling a plastic pint cup almost to the brim with wine. She took a gulp. ‘Jesus… is this from the 1970s?’

  ‘You look nice,’ I said.

  ‘Thanks. Big occasion, isn’t it? Though the vibe’s a little bit…’

  ‘Flat.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s the word I was looking for. Do you know all these people?’ She looked around like a meerkat. ‘There’s some wedding crashers?’

  ‘There’s some security guards, I think, and the techie guys, cameraman and stuff. The cook from upstairs is somewhere as well, a couple of cleaners who asked what was going on and I told them to join us… oh, and few people from the university. And my neighbour. I don’t know where everyone else is. I invited Marija the artist; that writer I met at the Barbican, Aliana; Djende the architect…’

  ‘Really? Well that’s a fucking A-list party right there, isn’t it? It’s like Oscars night in here tonight.’

  ‘Exactly like that. Give me some of that wine.’

  ‘I wouldn’t. Let’s open another.’

  ‘Is there even a bottle opener?’

  ‘No, they’re all screw-top.’

  ‘Bob treats us too well.’

  Kate smiled. ‘Ooh, I forgot to say. Apparently someone just jumped off the tower. Suicide.’

  I feigned surprise. ‘Really?’

  Kate munched on a crisp. ‘Yeah, all I know is…’

  Bob yelled, ‘Kate, my love, can you come over here for a sec?’ Kate made an exasperated face at me and went over to where Bob was fiddling with a shrink-wrapped pack of about a hundred napkins.

  Janusz came over carrying a plate of Manchego slices. ‘This cheese is good. Would you like some?’

  ‘Thanks, mate,’ I said, genuinely touched by his generosity. ‘Top-up?’ I picked up one of the bottles and blew the dust off it.

  ‘It all tastes like shit, but yes, I will.’

  ‘Donald, our waiter!’ Shazia said, surprising me from the other direction. ‘I’ll have some of that wine if you’re offering. And who’s that guy in the leather jacket over there? The one who’s in his fifties? The one who’s looking at me.’

  I span round. ‘Oh, that’s Charlie Sullivan from The Rationalists. They were Bel’s favourite band. Brummie legends. Charlie! Come over here.’

  ‘Got any smokes?’ said Charlie when he arrived. ‘I’m dying for one.’

  We went out onto the plaza in front of the building and sparked up.

  I caught sight of a woman in a summer dress approaching. She seemed to be looking straight into my eyes. At a distance of about thirty feet she shouted, ‘Donald!’

  ‘Who’s this?’ said Charlie.

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘Donald. You look just the same.’

  ‘I’m sorry…’

  ‘Sally. Remember me? From work experience.’ She blushed. ‘And, er…’

  It took a while to register. ‘Oh my God, yes!’

  ‘I heard about your screening and…’

  Charlie was smirking.

  ‘Oh, this is Charlie.’

  ‘I know. I love your band.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Still smirking.

  ‘What a nice surprise for you to come and join us, Sally.’

  ‘Well I wanted to. It sounds fab.’

  ‘Can I ask how you heard about it?’

  ‘On the TV grapevine.’

  ‘Oh great, you’re working in TV?’

  ‘Yep, running my own production company in London. Just came up on the train. Thought I’d surprise you. Remember my work experience days here… student days in Brum! Crikey.’

  ‘Amazing you run your own company now.’

  ‘Hard work, let me tell you. Always looking for hires. We’re very much in need of writers for a new topical weekly comedy show we’re pitching to a couple of channels.’ She winked at me.

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘Maybe you can email me if you… hear of anyone good?’ She handed me a business card.

  ‘Come on in and have a drink with us.’

  ‘Won’t say no to that.’

  ‘See you inside.’

  Sally went through the doors. Charlie made a gesture with his hands as if he wanted me to explain more.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Someone I’ve not seen for… a few years.’

  *

  We went back inside and Charlie disappeared to go and chat up Shazia. I turned and saw a Chinese woman in her seventies holding a white cardboard box.

  ‘Mrs Chu!’

  ‘Mr Donald. I brought these.’

  ‘Thanks for coming.’ I couldn’t remember inviting her. ‘It’s very kind of you to bring these…’

  ‘Fortune cookies, Mr Donald.’ She opened the box.

  ‘Wow. I’ll take one of these for later.’

  After our little reception down in the bar we all filed up to the canteen. Bob sorted out the screen in the corner and turned down the lights.

  I heard the door creak and turned to see Aliana Wills, Djende Mariosco and Marija Trajkovski tiptoeing in. Aliana glanced quizzically around the room and waved when she saw me, before making her mouth into one of those big ‘O’ shapes that represents the most distinctive part of the word ‘sorry’. The three of them pulled up chairs at the back and sat down.

  Bob rose to his feet and coughed. ‘Than
ks for coming. I’m not going to say very much today because… if I do, I think I might get a bit emotional, to be honest. I just wanted to say that you’ve all done a bloody incredible job on this film and that I think Belinda would be dead proud of us all for this. We’ve tried to capture the essence of what she wanted to do – to show some love to these fucking great pieces of concrete. I still don’t think I can see it myself, but I’d do anything for Bel. She knew best. Right, Don?’ I nodded. ‘We’ve created a piece of film here that no bloody idiot at the council or in our boss’s offices can ever delete. This is a record, a memory, a tribute. To Bel and to her buildings. My biggest regret is that she couldn’t be the one presenting this film, because she’d have been fucking great at it. And I think you’ll agree that she was a lot better-looking than Baxter. Actually, on the subject of Baxter – where the hell is he? Has anyone seen him? The lazy sod could’ve at least turned up to see his own programme, for his own wrap party.’ Cue some absent-minded glancing around and mumbling from audience members, as if Baxter was a set of lost keys hiding behind the sofa. I swallowed. My Adam’s apple felt as big as a boulder. ‘So enjoy it. And remember Bel.’ As he hit the play button I glanced out of a window and noticed a police car pull up outside and two fresh-faced coppers jump out. ‘Lights please, Shazia.’

  We sat in silence to watch the final edit of Ten Brutalist Buildings. Fifty-seven minutes’ worth. It was wonderful. Tender, poised, beautiful to look at, exactly what Bel would have made if she was able to. When it finished, Bob announced, coughing a little more, that this was to be the last programme that Mids TV would ever make. There were a few gasps, but to most of us it was no surprise at all. From now on, all content was to be bought in from London or the United States. The studios and the offices were to be knocked down. Kate corrected him and pointed out that 50 Years of Mids TV was actually going to be the last official programme made, and he deferred to her. I asked if we could rewind and watch the closing montage sequence again. Bob nodded and rewound four minutes from the end.

  The titles rolled up:

  Written by Donald Fraser

  From an idea by Belinda Schneider. Based on the book Ten Brutalist Buildings by Belinda Schneider

  Presented by Baxter Turncastle

  Production Manager Kate Crostley

  Make-up Shazia Baqri

  Transport logistics Janusz Wozniak

  Camera James Ballard

  Sound Bryan Johnson

  Music by Charlie Sullivan & The Rationalists

  Producer Bob Thorpe

  And then the most incredible montage began again. Abstract shots of Belinda’s most beloved buildings, moving images which showed spaces that were quite unexpected. I don’t know how they did it, but the cameramen had captured everything without a single person spoiling the scenes. It was truly haunting. Low-angle shots, close-ups, pans, even some shots from above. Everything looked dreamy and dead. But then everything was dreamy and dead. An ending. Everyone wants beginnings, but endings are the parts that really get you in the gut. The inevitable, sad, inconclusive, messy, disappointing, lonely, overworked ending. I swallowed hard. The familiar sound of ‘Elizabeth Anderson’ began to soundtrack the images; the sadness of the pictures and the sadness of the song was too much. I looked at Kate. Tears streamed down her cheeks. I looked at everyone – most of them were upset too. There was only one shot with a person in it, and the one person in the shot was Belinda. It was a still from Welcome To The Masshouse, of her outside the Central Library, smiling. I pressed my fingers hard into my eyebrows and felt the life gushing out of me. Bob leaned over and hugged me. Underneath Belinda’s youthful face, it simply said (C) Mids TV MMVIII. The tape ran out. The room remained completely still and completely quiet apart from some sobbing and sniffling coming from behind me.

  Bob ruffled my hair, stood up, and said in a deep bellow, ‘My round. Who’s coming to the pub then?’ And every single person got up.

  Bob turned to me and whispered, ‘Where the fuck’s Baxter gone?’

  I thought about Belinda and Baxter. It wasn’t so much pain I felt as emptiness. It was too confusing to process. I shook my head and shrugged. ‘Let’s just go and get a pint.’

  I felt hungry. I patted myself down and discovered a hard protuberance in my jeans pocket. ‘The fortune cookie.’ I snapped it open and wolfed it down in one. I unfurled the piece of paper. The message read, We luv your TV shows!

  I must have looked puzzled. I heard some cackling and looked up to see Mrs Chu right in front of me. ‘Turn it over, Mr Donald.’

  On the other side, the piece of paper read, Not really!

  ‘It’s funny!’ cried Mrs Chu, her eyes watering, happiness spreading across every wrinkle of her face. ‘We take the piss out of you… but in a nice way.’

  ‘You certainly did, Mrs Chu.’

  39

  2015

  ‘I haven’t seen you for a while.’

  ‘I know, mate, I know.’ I hugged Pete.

  ‘Where’ve you been?’ I asked.

  ‘All around. You know. But I’m back here now. Back in Brum. It always drags you back. Somehow.’

  ‘I know the feeling.’

  The BT Tower loomed over us.

  ‘Walk down the canal?’ Pete offered. I nodded.

  ‘So that TV programme you were making, the one about buildings. I watched it. Really enjoyed it actually. So did the wife.’

  ‘Thanks for saying.’

  ‘Your Belinda would have been very proud. I read on the Internet afterwards all about it. All about her book and stuff. I’ll have to buy it.’

  ‘She wasn’t really my Belinda. She wasn’t anyone’s.’ I felt sick. ‘I’ll lend you mine.’

  ‘Oh, don’t you worry about that. I’ll order one online. Kids’ll show me how. So I get the feeling you’re after another favour.’

  ‘I sort of am, actually. I had this feeling… you might be able to help me with something. Something a bit… well… I don’t know quite how to put it.’

  ‘Oh, you don’t know how to put it? This sounds like it’s gonna be interesting. Shall we go to the pub?’

  ‘I think we should talk about this bit while we’re walking, mate, but I promise I’ll buy you a pint straight after for your efforts.’

  Pete turned and beamed at me. ‘You bloody better.’

  I hesitated, bemused, unsure if I should continue. ‘So I was thinking the other day – the times I’ve tried to get hold of you, when there was something like… a war on or something. You know. You weren’t really around, were you?’

  ‘Wasn’t I?’ Dramatically said.

  ‘No. And it just occurred to me as well that I read some stuff, silly stuff really, about the BT Tower having all these tunnels, stores underneath. All kinds of top-secret stuff, high security. And also Bob once mentioned to me that if you wanted to go unnoticed then a uniform and a trade like the one you’ve got would be pretty much just the ticket. I mean, you’ve got a cover there, haven’t you?’

  Pete smirked as we walked. Silent.

  ‘I knew I was on the right lines last night when I was thinking about it. And don’t worry, I haven’t told a soul about this. I wouldn’t ever tell anyone. It’s just, I feel like there’s a job I need to finish, I guess. Something really important that Bel would have wanted me to do.’ I paused. ‘Us to do. Pete. Mate?’

  Pete inhaled. He looked both ways. There was no one around. He got out a cigarette and lit one up, then looked me straight in the eyes. ‘What do you want blowing up?’

  A smile spread over my face slowly, sheepishly. ‘I fucking knew it. I fucking knew it! You’re in the Special Forces… right?’

  ‘Give yourself a pat on the back.’ Pete paused and then made a cycling gesture with his right hand. I got the hint.

  ‘Yeah, so, I hadn’t thought this far ahead. But really… yeah, I want your help. I think I do. They’re going to tear down Bel’s favourite buildings. The Central Library. Priory Square. And the place where I
used to work – the Mids TV HQ. All three.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because they’ve got no fucking taste. They’re monsters. And they wanna make money.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Our esteemed city fathers. In their infinite wisdom, they reckon Brum needs rid of the past, of anything from the 1960s, from the ’70s. Idiots.’

  Pete chuckled.

  ‘It’s ridiculous really. Reading Bel’s book, making this film as a homage to her. We’ve been to London, Leeds, Sheffield, Berlin – of course. They’re knocking down some of the buildings Bel liked in those cities. It’s just this stupid virus of destruction everywhere. But Brum is undoubtedly the worst of all these cities – destroying all its brutalist buildings, all of its links to the “Age of Progress”, as Bel called it – the 1960s and ’70s, I mean, she meant. And they’re replacing those buildings she loved with a load of shite. It’s a big corporation in charge – Aspiration Urban Existence Cocoons. They’re going to build these boring, soulless blocks of yuppie flats on top of the ashes of Bel’s top-three buildings. It’s sacrilege. And the names they’re going to give these apartment blocks are beyond belief: No. 1 The Books to replace the library, No. 1 The Studios where Mids TV is, and No. 1 The Priories at Priory Square. Just three glass towers, cheap and nasty, full of tiny little flats that’ll fleece young professionals who, quite understandably, want to live in the city centre. But it’ll be a city centre without any bloody reason to visit. Mate, does that sound like the kind of Brum you want to live in?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Do you wanna do something about it?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘That’s not the right answer.’

  ‘Why is Brum demolishing all this stuff if other cities aren’t then?’

  ‘Fuck knows. But I think you can take a guess from the city motto above the council HQ.’

  ‘Forward.’

  ‘Exactly. Forward.’

  ‘So you want to stop them knocking all these brutalist buildings down?’