by Matt Hill
The taxi stops at the house. Tariq looks out at the sharpline fence, the cameras, the floodlamps, the wrought-iron gates.
Tariq passes him a business card. I’m around and about. Could do with some more regulars.
Brian takes the card. Grunts. Looks out at the purple Transit, parked on his side of the road.
The house where Brian rots.
3.
Saturday. First light is a fresh yolk dashed across the Pennines – an orange line that turns the edges of morning pink. But there’s always fragility to sunshine over the moors – a pregnancy. Because for everyone here, everyone nearby, warm weather on these hills is just weather waiting to relapse.
Brian is falling through the morning – falling and burning through. He’s been drinking and smoking since four. By seven, he’s still numb but somehow focused, scratching hard from toe to hip, trying harder to roll a thin joint for later. At eight, he calls for a cab and waits in his porch, locking and unlocking and relocking the deadbolts.
Brian smells of burnt hair and yesterday’s clothes. He hasn’t noticed the sick on his coat sleeves, and definitely hasn’t clocked the bent spokes on the left wheel.
The taxi runs hot, running reds. You don’t stop on this road. Not for porn shops or bookies; the gold exchange or the social clubs. Not by the boarded-up terraces with their lights still on inside. Not for the fresh flowers on railings; not for the wet red sand beneath them. Not even for some kid’s body in a shattered bus stop, head spread over a metre in long red ribbons. The party from the night before.
By Noah’s shop, Ancoats, bordering town, Brian pays for the cab. Another ten pounds to cross about ten minutes of hell. The driver says nothing; he just gets out, opens the boot, and unfolds the wheelchair.
Brian shuffles himself across the backseat.
A shoe shop was never the most imaginative front, but Noah’s drugs factory is getting so close to legit he’s taken to handing out business cards with his bribes. There’s isn’t a bastard missing on his books – pigs through pimps, councils through ex-cons. He’s the go-to man. The shop’s just there so he isn’t rubbing important noses in his success. A kind of upright hobby to hide the plants and the pills.
Brian rolls through puddles and up kerbs. He clips the doorframe, clatters the entry bell.
In one aisle, Noah’s holding a pair of school shoes to a little girl’s feet. Her mother is thumbing some catalogue, licking fingers, pulling corners. Brian recognises her. It’s the young woman who knocked on about donations and animals.
Very early, pal, Noah says, not looking up. Having a bad do this morning – mind waiting?
The little girl stares at Brian, at the hat and the beard, the clothes, the blanket. The woman turns, smiles thinly, not really noticing, not really listening.
Brian shakes his head, holds up his baccy tin. I’ll be outside.
Don’t be a bloody hero, says Noah. He winks and points downstairs.
In the service lift with concertina doors, the whole thing wobbling and scraping down the shaft. At the bunker’s edge next – inches of concrete-reinforced steel with an old bank vault door. Keying in the password – the codes, the capital letters. Eighteen characters plus the eye-scan. All that trust.
Hissing doors. Spinning locks. Hydraulics or pneumatics or something else besides.
Into the paradise factory. Into Noah’s war room, the dark engine beneath his shop. A hole where fat walls make hiding places for powerful men.
Rolling in, his eyes adjusting, Brian hears the burbling hydroponics, scans the tools put down on busy work benches by the projects and the prototypes. In one corner, a bank of manual pill presses. Another, a rack of antique swords. In the centre, two bookshelves, each filled with car manuals and engineering theory. A shelf for pseudo-science. A shelf for UFO literature, truther literature. A shelf for battle tactics. A shelf for DIY transistor radios.
The switchbox hums. The lights flicker.
Brian rolls around the room, a slow pinball buzzing between Noah’s interests and inventions. There are blueprints here – blueprints and plans. There are home-made grenades, too. Fertiliser drums and jam jars filled with industrial fasteners. A bin of clothes – all camo – some urban, some not. A weights’ bench. A climbing wall. Gas masks. Space on the wall for reclaimed flags and symbols turned out by relatives after wars they never talked about. Something bad, pointy, under a lot of old bedsheets.
All of that in this world, this lair, where Noah plans some kind of new Manchester.
So I get this call, Noah says, giving Brian a start. Shit, pal. Make you jump there?
Don’t sneak up like that, Brian says.
Noah walks over, smile as big as garage doors, a proud man in his dark bunker.
Brian, he goes, almost too close. I won’t take long. Just let me tell you about this call.
Brian says, Okay.
Noah lights up and grabs a seat. So an old client of mine – did some big campaigns for him before the riots. A few afterwards. Garland he’s called. Biggest name I’ve handled, come to that. Guns, chems, ‘lectrics – he’s in all the main sectors, or anyway the main sectors left. Heard of him, right?
Brian nods.
Big boys then and big boys now, and no bastard mistake. One of the few private contractors the state even touches, actually. More call farms than a suit’s got stitches. More capital than sensible places to put it.
Right, Brian says. And what’s he want?
Well he calls me up first thing. Just before you, come to that. He says, Noah. Noah, my man. You may remember me. Done us a good spread way back when, a full-colour holo-vinyl on the Arndale tower. Piddler now, isn’t it, he says – a tiny pecker next to the Ferguson – but you got us results.
So I say to him, Hello Mr Garland, all polite – polite since it’s not often you speak to clients so direct. A nice change from Harry taking a cut anyway. So yes, I say, I say, I do remember that job Mr Garland. I say, I was younger then, of course; more balls than brains. But I recall the cash was decent, the fanny was mint and the rep from a Garland job was priceless.
So Garland goes, Well, son. I’m interested in using your services again.
Noah winks at Brian, smiling again –
And I mean I’m thinking, Bingo! I’m thinking last time I worked for this guy, I could go to ground for a while. Another job like that, I’m living like a king again. Spending cash like some tower-level dick.
Brian nods.
So what did he want you to do?
Say again?
What’s it all about?
Well, cut a short story shorter, fella wants me to attend a tech convention on his behalf. Take a few notes on his up and coming competitors while I’m at it. It’s up in the hills, up our way. Exclusive as owt you’ve heard of. And no, I know – normally you call on me to climb things fast, put adverts on buildings faster. But then again, I’m thinking, what the fuck. I’m that go-to guy. It’s cash. I’m out of retirement. This guy Garland trusts me to keep quiet. Thinks I’m a requirement.
So you’re doing it? says Brian.
Lad’s paying me to get over to a tradeshow, Brian. To spy for him. Course I’m bloody doing it.
And you brought me here to tell me that?
No, says Noah. He stands up and kneels by Brian’s chair.
Brought you here because when a man takes a short cut, a man gets muddy feet. Because I reckon I’m taking you with me. ‘Cause if I take you, I won’t have to climb walls, look through top windows. No short cuts. No muddy feet. Noah taps his head. Got brains, see. Better brains than that. I can walk straight in there with my pal Brian in his wheelchair; my pal Brian who I care about deeply. My pal Brian, a local war vet – Brian who lost a leg doing heroic things in far-away lands. My pal Brian, who’s filthy rich on charity profits and wants to walk again. They deal in mobile war tech, son. They’ll have walkers, robotics, platforms there. And you’ll be there in your Sunday best. You’ll be there with your medals. You’ll be inter
ested in their products – and they just might be interested in you. PR opportunities. Photo opportunities. Development opportunities. And me, I’ll be taking notes for our man behind the curtain.
Brian doesn’t know. Brian feels angry. Lost in Noah’s bunker.
These are places and meetings where real men go to sort out futures, says Noah. Not these hippy bastards working on AIDS drugs for people we won’t ever meet. Cancer pills for old bags we’ll never see or sleep with. These are the men who design real aid for real people. For me and you. For our country. Aid for heartbreak. Aid for the lost or losing. You hear whispers – good whispers –
Suffocated, sobering, shaking.
Men like Garland are men who want our country back, says Noah. These are the men to bring long wars home. No more Beetham towers. No more lads with exploding backpacks in our museums and post offices. Competition’s good. Healthy. He wants new ideas from the best in his sector. From a couple of blokes in particular.
So why isn’t he going himself? Brian says. If they’re after the same and all?
Noah shrugs. Noah sniffs.
I don’t know, he says. Complex thing, this military-industrial complex. Can’t ever say for definite, can you. But they don’t like our Government much, these lads – doubt they’re keen on Garland’s connections. Think Garland sold out or something. Purists aren’t they. Sometimes you forget how business is business.
Won’t folk there recognise you?
Noah scratches his neck. Fingers his palms. Stretches a bit.
Don’t know, he says. Maybe. Probably. What’s to say nobody there bloody invited me?
Brian shakes his head.
It’s just you’ve gone from scaling windows to rolling in with me.
Noah strokes his chin.
I’ll have a shave or something. Don’t fret the details.
And what do I get for helping? Brian asks, scanning the bunker. What if I don’t want to come?
You will. It’s something to do, says Noah. And after, well. Goes well you’ll get as much minge as you want paying for. Classy types – European types. I can arrange that –
Trapped between walls and under ceilings.
Noah stands and sits on his weights bench. Noah spreads his legs and leans back.
So what thinks our Brian? he asks.
Brian looks on. Brian has a dry mouth.
I don’t know either, he says.
On the weights bench, Noah starts pulling twenties.
Brian watches the brackets of vein expand down Noah’s skinny biceps. The tendons on his neck pop out and in. Brian thinks of a sky gone pewter, with drizzle falling to dampen their day. He listens to Noah breathing through sets, twenty reps, twenty-five reps. Watches him plant hands on the floor, sixty incline push-ups, another round, then up into handstands and a short hop to his climbing wall. No chalk, just up and across, around and about.
Just think of all that fanny you could enjoy, Noah says, breathless.
When is it? goes Brian, following Noah across the wall.
Tomorrow night, says Noah, panting now, a crescent of sweat under each armpit. Best keeping your kind on their toes.
Brian says nothing, thinking, shite, and so soon. He waits, rushing, hating himself and Noah’s presumption, wanting a line –
Wanting out of a world he’s running the edge of.
Later. Still Saturday. Under blankets, in his chair, Brian the night-owl sits and thinks. Brian is smoking and drinking and scratching hard in bursts. The same three things he’s done since twelve-noon. Same three things for five long years. His day measured in the scabs and skin he keeps for the archives.
Brian is scared to sleep. Frightened of the dreams –
He looks out at the Beetham memorial; the centre of Manchester’s gravity. A lustrous sunset, only turned on its side.
Brian thinks to run a bath; to dig out the salt and a pan scourer besides. To eat something. To trim the hairs of a quadrant on his head; reapply his Vaseline and his elastic bands.
Brian, he’s thinking hard. Long and hard – about what-ifs and consequences. About slag and pavements. Torn between blackmail and bribery; between duty and finances and morals. Between chances and lies. Torn because he might not even care. Because it’s about using Noah. Using Noah or feeling used.
Brian, he’s weighing addictions – addictions, vices, sins. Easy money. Dirty money. Smoking and drinking, watching and waiting. Trusting and breathing. A decision to make. A favour to call in later. A promise to keep. A stooge. A vet. A liar. A bastard. Always that bastard. And now this chance for hips fused to steel.
Maybe he’s thinking too much. Might even be fun, he tells himself. Leastways of interest.
And all that war tech. Mobile war tech, maybe.
PR opportunities and more.
Opportunities like making a half-man whole.
4.
Sunday, early doors, Noah takes Brian to see a man about a suit.
They travel fast from east Manchester to south – to Didsbury, a fortress suburb hanging a few miles beneath the city centre. There are barricades to cross and papers to show. Old-guard gents waving shotguns at checkpoints – waving them through with two-hour permits and winks that double as warnings. They’re given a transponder. They’re told to leave it on the dash – a box with eyes to watch, ears to listen. There’ll be no riff-raff here – not in Didsbury.
Brian and Noah pass handsome gardens and clean pavements. Round this way, there aren’t potholes or exposed mains to slalom. The people of Didsbury power their own land with generators; their cars with fuel they make from used cooking oil. They recycle the way the whole city used to. Their kids still play outside – wash working cars for neighbours, run the community paper-rounds. People walk dogs. Men work. Men wake to alarm clocks and warm, willing wives.
Didsbury is a time-capsule. Didsbury, strung at the edges with sharpline, is a suburb running on tradition.
Brian and Noah don’t talk. Brian and Noah drive slowly.
They pull up on double-yellows outside a Victorian semi. Noah says, Alight here for quality tailoring by Manchester’s finest. Next, that reseating routine, the last three minutes of any journey forever the same. Noah gets out and opens the boot, unfolds the wheelchair. Brian shuffles. Opens the door. From seated to sitting. To rattling and rolling.
Noah rings the bell since Brian can’t reach. They look thick as thieves, the pair of them. Lumps spooned from the same gravy.
The door swings. Inside, inside, says a small, white-haired man, the look of a jeweller about him. A busy-body. A small man with big pockets.
The suit maker’s house is foppish, regency in style. It’s almost a parody of things that used to matter – pointless; a way to speak of class when nobody’s left to care. Boots and brothel-creepers all over the place. Dozens of nude mannequins: totems of strange alabaster muscle staring ahead. Two or three wearing ties.
They enter the lounge. Smell pipe smoke and see old paintings – paintings of hunts and gentry.
The suit maker, he bumbles and bimbles; flits between the furniture. It’s obvious he works in measurements and time. It’s true what Noah said, too – true that the suit maker asks his visitors few questions for good reason. When the needy visit Didsbury, their hours here are tallied, their movements carefully logged. The needy can be dangerous, and too many answers from dangerous people can fill your brain; can make you an asset.
How long do you have? is one question the suit maker asks.
Hour and a half tops, Noah says, checking his watch.
Not long enough, the suit maker says. Your friend is rather substantial.
Long enough to get something off the shelf, Noah says.
It’s a rare thing in Didsbury, is rudeness, says the suit maker. A rare thing.
Brian looks down at his blanket; at the tube of meat he calls a tail. He says, I’ll only need a jacket. Extra large or whatever. A white, ironed shirt to fit.
Well, we may have something in stora
ge, says the suit maker. But as I say. It may be difficult. Arms up, please.
Brian raises his arms, feels the tape measure tighten; the tape measure wrapping his chest.
Very good, says the suit maker. He disappears down a narrow corridor.
Noah turns to Brian. You’ll look a bobby-dazzler, kid.
But Brian feels trapped between this handsome wallpaper and his duty.
The suit maker returns with two jackets. He walks like a sad pigeon, his belt tight and scaffolding his belly.
A suit jacket to broaden the shadow, the suit maker says, holding up a pin-stripe navy jacket. Or this smart number: a jacket to sharpen the shoulders.
They help Brian put the first jacket on, shuffling the collar. It crushes his chest. The suit maker and Noah are smiling thinly. Brian looks back at himself, all sharp lines and deep creases. A crushed flower.
A suit to broaden the shadow. A suit to sharpen the shoulders.
They help Brian try the second jacket. It’s a convenient fit.
Expect we’ll need to taper these parts, says the suit maker, pulling at the material on Brian’s flanks.
Brian doesn’t feel himself at all.
No time for that, says Noah. We’ll pay up and move on.
Move on where? says Brian.
Noah looks at Brian’s hat. See a man about a haircut.
In the car, leaving Didsbury with the suit jacket over the back seat, Brian’s eyes are wet and watering. Brian doesn’t want to see any man about any kind of haircut. Brian can’t look at Noah. Can’t really see for tears. Cannot speak for these deepening fears.
Noah is shouting. Noah’s taken Brian’s hat and pulled a sun visor down. Noah’s saying, Look at yourself, man. Just bloody look at yourself. You think that’s credible? Think that’s what an old soldier looks like?
Brian is sobbing, Brian can’t look in mirrors, can’t understand. Don’t do this to me, he’s saying.
But Noah is shouting and swearing, isn’t he. Driving faster. You fuck this up for me I’ll swing for you, he shouts, hurling them at sixty towards this hair appointment in the centre of town. Balls this up and we’ll have ourselves a big fall out.
