Septembers

by Christopher Prendergast

  Septembers

  ‘Annabel was a black and white figure in the distance, going in through the front doors. She worked behind the reception. I was a history teacher.’

  As we meet Matt, lying across the backseat of his on/off girlfriend’s car, he begins a long confession. It starts with wrestling moves and continues past statue fires, reaching bomb threats and assault via episodes in the life of Franz von Papen, the Chancellor of interwar Germany. Piece by piece, Matt presents us with a map of his failures. Or is he part of some grander, universal fuck-up? Septembers, Christopher Prendergast’s debut novel, is a simmering tale of upheaval, revolt and loss.

  Praise for Christopher Prendergast

  “Prendergast reanimates the ailing spaces of the City: with vision, tenderness and terrific writing.” —JAMES SHEARD

  “The pleasure of Septembers lies in its wisdom, honesty and warmth. It isn’t a eulogy for lost worlds or ideas, or an attack on the world we’re confronted with. Prendergast’s England, hollowed by peak-capitalism, feels fraught with possibility. Life baffles his antiheroes, yet they’re stalked by hopeful conspiracies. Septembers is the smartest, freshest novel I’ve read in some time. Prendergast is a new and important voice.” —JOE STRETCH

  CHRISTOPHER PRENDERGAST was born in Birmingham in 1987. He has an MA in Creative Writing from Keele University. In 2009 he won the Charles Swann award for his dissertation on David Berman’s Actual Air. He has taught creative writing at various levels and is currently writing his doctoral thesis on the post-industrial status of Birmingham.

  By the same author

  ESSAYS

  Build & Destroy (with Steve Camden)

  Published by Salt Publishing Ltd

  12 Norwich Road, Cromer, Norfolk NR27 0AX

  All rights reserved

  Copyright © Christopher Prendergast, 2014

  The right of Christopher Prendergast to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Salt Publishing.

  Salt Publishing 2014

  This book is sold subject to the conditions that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  ISBN 978-1-907773-78-5 electronic

  For Mum, Dad and Rich

  ‘The Vindications exist . . .’

  –‘The Library of Babel’, JORGE LUIS BORGES

  THIS ISN’T WHAT I expected. White office blocks pass over my head. We plunge into the Queensway tunnel. Strip lights cast a weak sodium glare over the tunnel walls. Annabel has been driving us in silence for the last twenty minutes. I don’t want to ask her where we are going. The car emerges into white sky and I sit up a little. I see a domed roof of Portland stone and other familiar buildings. We are in the city centre during rush hour, next to Centenary Square.

  About five years ago a fibreglass statue burnt to the ground here. People were walking past as it happened. There was talk that a teen fumbled some matches he was playing with, dropping a small flame onto the resin which quickly set alight. When I was young I often climbed up on that statue and used it as a play area. It was a crowd scene, a march from industry into the city’s future. Kids used to sit in the occasional gaps between the marching figures and dangle their legs down the side of the plinth. In the middle of the crowd no-one could see you. I had my first kiss on that statue.

  The car slows. I look for the spot where the statue used to be. There’s nothing except a lamppost over a black bench.

  The sculptor came back to Birmingham about a week after the fire. He picked through the wreckage but there was nothing to restore. He grew up in the city but he hadn’t lived here for a number of years. A charge of arson was raised against a sixteen-year-old but was subsequently dropped. Fibreglass, polyester resin, paint – these alone were enough. The sculptor scratched his head and tried to work out what it all meant. He got on a plane and went back to Paris.

  Goodbye, Raymond.

  One of the figures on the plinth faced backwards, unlike all the others. She held a palette and brush and turned to the past to kiss it goodbye. I was away from the city, living somewhere else, when it burned down. I didn’t even notice it was gone when I came back. My friend pointed it out. He told me about the fire, the sculptor and the girl who was kissing goodbye to everything behind her. She was doing it because the motto of the city is Forward.

  Centenary Square keeps changing. I can see the blank white fencing around a construction site. They’ve started building a new library next to the REP theatre. When they haul up that fencing and unveil the new building I have the sense it will be as if a tiny wound has healed. A little nick, made in passing, will blend into the city’s skin. The fibreglass statue will be a passing accident. I wonder what really happened, who even remembers.

  Eventually we join the traffic on Broad Street. I look around the edge of the seat. Annabel lets go of the steering wheel, wipes her face and grabs the wheel again. She’s concentrating. She takes the next turn off, weaves down side-streets and takes us out into a housing estate. We pass blocks of medium-rise flats in grim brick tones. She goes up a couple of gears. She doesn’t make a sound except for the creaking of the wheel and the clunking of the gear shifts. I wonder if she is driving back to Sheffield. Is this the way? I stop myself from asking.

  The statue fire would be referred to in passing by local journalists. People seemed to shrug. It quickly slipped off local news reports. When you look at it, there was a broad consensus – This was OK. We’ll let it pass. This leaves a sense of blamelessness. No-one really saw what happened. Nothing really burned and no-one really burned it. Not intentionally anyway. But I feel differently. I have always taken exception to the event.

  I think Annabel may be crying. I feel the back of her seat with my hand. The upholstery is dry and cold but it hints at her familiar outline. I hear her sit forward and breathe out. It’s an even breath but a forced one. The car creaks and moans. She’s had it for years now. I’m surprised it’s still roadworthy. It was her first car, a present from her mom and dad. I bring my hand back and place it on my chest. I don’t speak.

  My other hand is in my pocket. I’m clutching a small plastic bottle which makes a hard outline in my trouser pocket. I feel the grooves of the lid. My fingertips slide down, over the slightly rough texture of the label which has slipped with the bottle’s grease. It has been used recently. A little bit of waste, a little excess went over someone’s hands and onto the bottle itself. It wasn’t all applied as intended. It’s not my lube but the bottle has a perfect, rounded form. I keep turning it around.

  At some point Annabel joins the motorway.

  ‘It’s not worth it,’ she says. ‘I don’t think I can do it again.’

  Her voice is wavering.

  ‘It’s your choice’ I say. My voice is in the footwell.

  ‘I can’t do it.’

  Her nails clack on the wheel.

  ‘Why don’t you ever choose?’ she says, angry.

  I have never intentionally hurt anyone in my life. I have fumbled the matches once or twice though. I sit up as she indicates. She slows down. I untangle myself from the limp seatbelt. I move to the middle of the seat but she won’t tur
n around. I can see her wet cheeks. She pulls onto the hard shoulder. A thicket of bare trees lean over the grey boundary. Streaks of oil mark the roadside. She unlocks the door, takes off her seat belt and clatters out of the car all at once. She walks towards the end of the layby.

  She thinks about hopping the barrier but the bracken looks too thick. Instead she walks on with her back to the car, towards the point where the layby tapers into the motorway’s outside lane. She walks towards this point as if it is a place. As if it has public squares and its own vernacular. As if there are councillors and St Patrick’s Day parades. I watch her getting closer and I can hear horns.

  JUST DIRECTIONS

  1

  TWO YEARS AGO, in September, Annabel asked me to move in. She quickly hid her mouth with a cup of coffee.

  ‘You want me to move in now?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry. It’s OK if you don’t want to.’

  ‘Is it?’

  It was Saturday and we were in her flat. We were almost elbow to elbow around her kitchen table and a slab of sunshine shone from the small window, over our heads, missing both of us and falling on the chequered pattern of the lino. She looked over her mug at me and asked when we were leaving. She moved the whole thing on as swiftly as that. The sunshine ran over our heads and if we breached it, either of us, there was a chance we’d be vaporised. She knew that. She was testing to see if I’d stand up first.

  We sat still for a few seconds. Then she said we should leave. That afternoon, early in autumn, I was happy to think of Annabel’s Peugeot 206 bleeding across a weathered old map. Her red line was set to move South, down the M1. She went to stand up and I grabbed her pale arm and told her, with hushed desperation, to wait. I eyed the slab of light above us.

  ‘Don’t cross the light,’ I said. ‘Don’t cross it.’

  She breathed heavily and waited for something, her chest moving slow and steady in the white vest. This is how I like to remember Annabel, bent towards me, a little naive and waiting, looking for something imperceptible in the light and wielding an impressive cleavage.

  It did not take long for me to get the essentials, although it involved us crossing the city centre to my place. I threw my stuff into a black holdall. When I came into the living room Annabel’s legs were stretched out across the sofa and she was watching God TV. I don’t know which of the four horsemen were forecast to arrive but she looked up at me over a pair of sunglasses and said, ‘We better go.’

  On the motorway we passed two or three retail parks. The steel skeleton of a distribution centre dominated the skyline for a few seconds then disappeared behind a low hill. After an hour or two we stopped at some services near Leicester to pick up a paper and enough drink for a stash at the hotel. We queued up with the bottles clinking in our basket. Whilst we stood waiting, an argument brewed behind us. A young girl, about sixteen or seventeen and heavily bronzed, started to raise her voice at her clearly older boyfriend. Apparently, he had once referred to her as ‘hard work’ to his friends.

  Annabel was smiling at me. She began playing with one of the twenty or so bracelets that decorated her arm.

  ‘Tell me you’re not going to be boring this weekend. Try not to talk about work.’

  We moved along. The checkout worker directed me to enter my card into the machine. She sighed and asked me to enter my pin.

  ‘Even if we pass something with a Grade II listing,’ Annabel continued, ‘try not to go on about it.’

  I shook my head and grinned back at her. The couple behind us went silent. They were each standing with their arms folded. We left the building through an amusement arcade. As Annabel checked the map with her feet sticking out of the driver’s side, I stretched my legs in the scarcely inhabited car park.

  September sunshine lit the concrete to a stunning level. It was as reflective as snow and I tried to shield my eyes as two people approached one of the few other cars. It was the bronze girl who had been standing behind us. She was arguing with the guy again. I watched them both get in the car. At that point the boyfriend – I assumed he was her boyfriend – made a sudden movement so his elbow flashed into view. I could hear him shouting now. I walked over to the car and as I came up to the half-raised window I saw she was cradling her face in her hands. One solitary line of blood was trickling out of her nostril, red as paint. I asked the only thing I could think to say.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  The man leaned forward and interrupted.

  ‘We’re fine, mate.’ He leaned back so I could see her nod pathetically. Then he looked up at me with grey eyes and clenched his teeth. Three lines were cut into his head and one of them ran on through his eyebrow. I couldn’t tell which were scars and which were accessories.

  ‘If I were you I’d walk away and go back to your missus,’ he said.

  I looked at her once again. She was cradling her nose. She tried to rest her elbow on the opposite window. There was more embarrassment in her nervy shaking than anything else. It was like I was her dad. I may as well have caught them copping off in her bedroom. She sighed impatiently.

  ‘You’re blocking my sunlight, mate,’ he said.

  I walked back across the few empty spaces, crossed the painted yellow lines and got back in the Peugeot. Annabel was humming and thinking out loud.

  ‘Everything all right?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes. Fine,’ I said.

  ‘What did they want?’

  I pulled at the neckline of my T-shirt. Annabel stopped fiddling with the ventilator.

  ‘Matt,’ she said, ‘what did they want?’

  ‘Just directions,’ I said.

  When we were a good twenty miles down the motorway I turned and grabbed a beer from the backseat. Anna flicked the indicator and, as the car straightened up, she started talking again. Despite her earlier warnings about outlawing shop-talk, she kept teasing me, asking whether I’d gotten used to Mrs Yeoman. I knew what she was getting at. Annabel thought our professional differences were based on some latent sexual tension.

  ‘She’s got a thing for you, definitely,’ Annabel said, with relish.

  I took a few sips. The beer was still cool from the service station fridges.

  ‘We’ll have to postpone that fantasy for another week,’ I said.

  When we changed lanes I spilt a few drops on the car seat. I rubbed them into the upholstery. Signs counted down to names, then names changed and the numbers shot up again. Annabel and I talked about some travelling we could do in the summer. She wanted to visit most of Europe. Annabel talked on and on, like she wanted to go everywhere. I couldn’t keep up.

  In the evening we arrived in High Wycombe. It was strange. There were plenty of willing, low-flying executives around. There were also plenty of angry young men cruising around the antiquated cobbled roads, leaning out of their windows. All of them looked eager for contact with strangers.

  I took over directing Annabel to the hotel. I had taken a call on her phone from Corinne and they were running late but wanted to meet us in Lakota. Instead of hooking up with them we went to check in and Annabel cracked open a bottle of wine to make up for lost time.

  I answered our room door. It was one of the maids bringing extra towels. There was some shame in the amount of alcohol already piled on the table. Annabel eyed me as the maid crossed between us. She asked about the checkout time.

  ‘It’s 11am, but we can give you longer if you need it.’ The maid sheepishly went to lay the towels on the table, then, seeing there was no room, turned to Annabel who held her hands out.

  ‘There you go. If you need anything else, dial 9 to go straight through to reception.’

  The door shut behind her.

  ‘You can invite her out if you want, Matt,’ Annabel said.

  She poured herself a glass of wine before throwing off her vest top. We were on the second or thir
d floor. Looking out of the window, I saw a maze of extensions to the main building, other roofs and a small courtyard, a smoking area or garden.

  ‘I need a cigarette,’ I said.

  ‘I need some fresh air. Could you open the window?’

  She unclipped her bra behind me. Annabel wasn’t a jealous girl – she had no need to be. She was competitive though, so the presence of another woman in our bedroom, albeit our hotel bedroom, was enough for her to mark her territory. She stripped entirely and sorted through her clothes. She strolled in and out of the bathroom. I decided to smoke out of the open window.

  We were meeting Corinne and Seb, two of Annabel’s friends. They were not from High Wycombe, but they came up from London frequently. They had emailed Annabel the directions. It was not apparent to me why they often came. All I could think was that we weren’t far from Legoland. I pulled at the window ledge wondering if it might come away and reattach somewhere else.

  I offered Annabel a cigarette. She covered herself up in a towel and stood next to me at the window. I kissed her on the neck. Her phone rang. She answered, listened for a minute and smiled. She threw the phone onto the bed and wrapped an arm around my neck. She said we had to make a move. Corinne wanted to tell us something. That was why we were here.

  We sat waiting in Lakota. All the coasters strewn about the bar and tables, some at chest and some at waist height, struck me as little parts of something bigger. I wanted to unite them and allow the big thing to make a case for itself. I spun my coaster around, between my forefinger and the dark wooden table. Annabel suddenly stood up like an agent breaking cover and pointed out her friends. The two of them were busy ordering drinks so she quickly sat back down.