The Folded Man (13 page)

12.

A skinny pigeon follows Brian down the long road townways. Mainly it bobbles out in front, but whenever Brian stops to get his puff, which is often, and sometimes for a few minutes at a time, it finds a fence. And when Brian turns off his line to find a lowered kerb, it sits on a post. Sits there and stares at this man in bits.

Brian doesn't feel anything. He's found that new shade of numb. You'd say he had his head up his arse. Pushing himself over the endless cracks and weeds. Caught outside with nothing to live off – just petty cash and the timetable in his pocket. Colin's box in the too-heavy container on his lap. There's a lot of glass, and his wheels crunch on every rotation. Crisp sounds, scuffing sounds. The raised ironworks of these churned roads.

Another corner, and this time Brian sees the pigeon. Brian looks at its feet. Notices how the pigeon's feet are burnt and curled – the feet those silly birds get from standing in their own crap too long.

Shoo, Brian tells it – half convinced he's seeing things. Go on. Get out of it.

The pigeon hops to the floor as Brian stares it down. Staring it out. But he knows these city birds have balls. That they'll make you step over them before they sling their hook. That's why Brian is half minded to squash it.

The pigeon's playing chicken. Playing chicken and winning.

Brian bimbles on, wondering if the traffic lights will still work at the end of the world.

 

The question being: will he make it by dark.

Brian gets to the tram station and heads up the ramps. At the top, he stops and spits a big white blob. Very dehydrated, now. To have a cold beer, or time in beer gardens. And he wouldn't remember the journey if it weren't for that daft bird.

Through a corridor of smokers, a few Wilbers half-ready to press-gang the vulnerable. Past the kids hanging off the railings. Past the whiteboard and today's delays in red marker. Sweating and counting the floor tiles to keep his mind off death.

Surprise surprise, the ticket man can't see Brian over the plexiglass counter. He almost serves some pushy old wretch instead. The ticket man huffs when he realises, too – that favourite trait of the self-defensive.

Don't get all PC on me, he says to Brian, passing back a penny in change, a card for the train. And he sneers for having to stretch.

Brian says, Thank you. Brian says, See you. Brian over the tiled floor and up gentle inclines.

Brian hits the busy platform, pulls up the blanket and towels his face. The air's close. Heavy weather for heavy times. Pathetic fallacy, your English teachers call that.

The platform, it's a shower of bastards from
end to end. It'll be rammed like this all
day on account of people and their part-time jobs
in town. The closest thing to a commute you'll
find. One tram an hour, three days a week, with
the newest version of an economy built to match. That'
s how come it's not worth the walk.

To his right, people in tatty suits buy veg from the ­kiosks; trading their Argos tat and their Tesco vouchers for tobacco.

Sometimes, you get people hanging off the trams. Real third-world stuff like that. And even though the Council says they're acting on it, there are bad rumours. Rumours and apathy. Apathy about it all. Of course, the worst rumour, like all rumours, caught hold fast – spreading now and on its way to urban legend. Something about extra voltage through the live wires. A deterrent, they call it.

Brian takes the platform's median and keeps his chin tucked into his chest. His eyes pulled down the barrel of a six-sided cannon. He doesn't want to catch the eyes of others; nobody does. So he opens Ian's envelope. Sees the diazepam and a bleak future beyond. Pulls out a sheet of A4 and the pop-foil pack.

Brian thinks balls to it. Brian bombs the diazepam. ­Brian hopes for the best – an hour or two of rest.

And Brian starts to read.

The instructions are concise. The paper says:

Bench. Memorial column between four and
five. A man will throw money at your feet. You
will give your thanks. He will bend down to chat.
You will allow him to take the box, which you
will have left at your feet. No gimmicks. Nothing else.
Try anything on, you'll be destroyed. Remember me with
kindness. Ian
.

Brian folds the paper and stuffs it back in the envelope. Closes his eyes and thinks of Ian's England –

England and some things he can't unsee. Diane sitting still on the insides of his eyelids –

Somebody on the platform screams.

Jolted, Brian sees a scuffle; people falling over themselves, more screaming and shouting. Hot orange splashed up and across. A man has set fire to a kiosk, and now he's throwing punches at people.

God is great! he shouts – plain and flat in a thick Blackburn accent. God is great!

The disenfranchised are making a scene.

Brian boards the train with a ramp and all kinds of fuss. He finds his space and tries to look like he likes a good time. He doesn't do too well.

People are talking about the man on the platform. The usual safe comments about foreigners going home. Don't like our country, don't bleed our country. Goddamn leeches.

These are the normal things you hear.

And whispers on the tram reveal worries about Birmingham. They're coming here, here to Manchester, a woman says. And down there they've gotten into a nuclear plant with bricks and bombs . . . They'll recommission the health trust half-tracks.

And Brian remembers the bulldozers. The smell of burnt stuff.

He remembers the crowds in their masks, the skinheads and their sticks, the policemen and their vans. The radicals at his door. The spit from angry mouths. The lads on buses and trams with chains and bats. Coming paki-bashing? They said. And after weeks – maybe months and more – the soldiers. Soldiers brought home to massacre their own. Six years ago. When war came home and the world went bananas.

Brian remembers this one lad from the telly. He stood against the army with his arms out and his mouth wide. Only a young fella, he was. How, after the bang, he fell to his knees and then backwards, a rock star pose, his heart turned into a bloody rose. And how the shouting grew loud around the cameras, and people took pictures with their phones.

When the city burned from Ancoats to Castlefield, ­Brian didn't have as good a view. Never did, being half the height of others.

The end of that came with the bullets. The start of this came with harsh words and drafted ships.

Time to become us, or leave us, the Government said.

And more riots and radicals and revolutionaries were made.

Still, Brian doesn't flinch. He's used to these memories. He's reconciled with them. And while he's unfeeling, he definitely isn't deaf. You don't want to be the victim in the crowd.

The tram crosses a bridge over a road. Below, a column of police support vans and half-tracks are filing into the centre.

We were all liberals once, he hears someone else whispering. A young bloke with blonde shagpile hair and a scar running from forehead to chin. And now look at us, he says. Look what fear's done to us all.

13.

Into Manchester Piccadilly. The place they never did bomb. Still shiny in places, too – one of the few refurbishments to last this long.

The concourse, it's not the place to hang around. It's a petri-dish for Wilbers now, and their colonies stand all beady-eyed every few metres. You won't see the captured, of course, because Wilbers do their capturing of people out of sight. But it happens, and everybody knows it. In toilets or taxis. Snatch squads that follow you home. They're always patient, see. Pack-dogs with lengthy stares.

People walk in ruler-straight lines for the exit. Only fools don't bother. You have to keep your eyes down and ignore the taunts. The Wilbers have ways to get your attention – the girls especially. They know the twitches that come with adrenaline. They know when you're glancing, or when you're moving too fast. They know the victims. And they'll pull you up. They'll ask about your day. They'll peel you, expose your cogs, your belts and your gears. They think up places they'll put you to work.

So Brian moves on. Brian keeps a nice face on. The diazepam nowhere near working. Out towards the breeze.

And breathe. Manchester smells of gone-off meat, upturned bins, rotten feet.

A sweeper works the station approach. He's brightly dressed but very small, so while he's hard to miss, nobody pays him any attention. It's windy out here, so half the crap he's trying to bin actually just moves around in circles. He kind of stabs at the floor with his brush, chasing lost papers and crisp packets and dimps. Seems to Brian he's undeterred: there's no way he can let any of it go. And when another bunch of people stamp their fags dead, and go on down the ramp to their jobs, he starts a new circuit. Starts over again. Nothing better to do, no promises round the corner.

I would prefer it, Brian thinks, as he free-wheels downhill towards the sharp edges of town. I would prefer that.

 

Manchester's like this before dusk. Quiet, or tense, depending on the size of your arms. You expect knives, usually see a scrap, and always feel queasy. Squint, though, and you see the city as it was. Grand old buildings with grand old names. Trees before the neon, and plants before the weeds. It's a safari after dark, course – but . . .

But it's changing, isn't it. It's in a state of flux. Growing wider, eating the suburbs. Bloating hard like a body in a lake. And you talk to this city like mothers talk to naughty sons: I love you, but I don't like you.

On Market Street, a bunch of kids are playing footy against a low-bolted shutter. The ball – bang – is stripped of leather, orange innards poking through a Stanley-knife slit. Bang – the ball off the boarded shopfronts. Kids just having a kickabout on Market Street, ignoring the triple-X on all these signs. White kids, brown kids, black kids besides.

Brian stops a while. Watches their volleys and miss-timed headers. He shouts, Hey! Give an old man a kick!

But the kids ignore him. Everybody does. And twenty yards later, the journey gets boring fast.

Grey fast food and market stalls churning out manky grey produce. Grey walls and wooden panels. Churned up roads and broken bollards –

Outside a pub, a group of squaddies stand with half-pints in a circle, their camo trousers and black t-shirts fading. White faces, brown faces, scabs and scarred knuckles that tell their own stories. Maybe Brits and Afghans who've seen past the politics of older wars. Brown faces, white faces, just big lads goading each other to drink faster, and a load more of it. For friends, they're calling each other some squalid things. Their shoulders still big, but their bellies given over to a welcome lapse in discipline. And Brian has to look down again, thinking of what he and Noah did up in those hills. Who he pretended to be. The lies he told and the fortunes they've sown.

And as he rolls past, the shame stabs harder. Because they somehow mistake him for that person. They clap him solemnly. One of them even salutes.

It's a free country.

 

He's round towards Deansgate and the ghosts of old bomb attacks. It still feels weird you can't see the Beetham – so long the axle around which this decaying city span. Without the light on, it's a conspicuous absence.

Brian finds a bench and settles next to it. He smiles. Funny how you gravitate to the spaces where the town-planners want you.

Brian checks his baccy tin. Enough for a jay; maybe two thin ones.

And Brian waits for the diazepam cloud. A good little boy doing as he's told.

 

The memorial column, it's their bright way to say sorry.

It throws a clean wide beam. Keen and clean. From its base, standing there on Deansgate, by the iron benches and the engraved plaques; the stone wreaths and the fresh flowers, it goes on up for always. Just on and up. Painting cloud, poking stars. That sunset on its side.

But in most ways
it doesn't really go with their city. This side
of town, the look is red-brick, Victorian, and next
to these old mills and arches – the green steel and
rust-orange waters of Deansgate Locks – the dish of the
light seems too shiny; too obvious. They've set the
lamp body and generators into the big oblong of concrete
they buried the past with. Steps lead down to the
lamp for maintenance, and the circle around it covers at
least ten yards. At that size, that circumference, it takes
a lot of power to send their thank yous skywards
. And that's why it doesn't go. The memorial
's a new, enduring thing in a city of entropy
.

Every coin has a reverse, though. Stands to reason that from some places – some other views – the memorial glows like another bloody advert for another bloody name. Specially when you can't see how tall it goes. And that's when it makes a perfect fit for this grave new world.

Anniversary or not, survivors or bereaved, tourist – ha! – or traveller, they all come here to look at something. To remember or find a better way to forget.

Brian is half-asleep by his bench. Half-asleep with his box to bear. No energy to scout roofs for snipers, or to wonder how the Beetham, as it fell, missed the railway bridge that runs the outside edge of the memorial site. How it didn't even clip it.

It's dark and growing darker, and the column puts everything into deep contrast, it's so bright. The red viaduct's a muddy brown. The concrete's turned a slick black. It's imprinted when you blink, throws shutters across your vision when you turn away.

He sees the night in, sitting there. Sees low clouds lit up and speared by the beam. Hears the city coming to life around him – the homeguard soldiers getting out and about, and after so much fanny. Their own war at home.

He hears sirens. A procession of police spreading themselves into a net.

In silhouette, a figure comes towards Brian. He can't be sure if it's aiming his way. Jealously, he grips the box and prepares for the moment he must let go. He feels disconnected; dreamy.

Closer, he sees it's too small to be anyone he knows. Some kid – probably working pockets like every other opportunist under these stars. Until he hears a little voice.

Hello Mr Brian, she says. A little girl, seven or eight, no more. She's sitting on the bench now, swinging her legs. She's in dungarees and jelly sandals. Nineties clothes; the type of clothes kids wear without a worry.

She smiles at him, missing teeth and all.

You're Brian, she says.

Brian doesn't react. Maybe the diazepam, maybe something else. But he's seen her before –

My mummy says you're sad.

The little girl from Inner Sole.

Brian's tummy starts to turn. He feels the temperature in his cheeks. He doesn't want to be seen alone with a young girl. The way people think in this day and age –

You're not on your own, are you? he whispers.

The little girl shakes her head.

Mummy says you're special.

The bad feeling pulled across in two black curtains. The bad, bad feeling –

Does she now?

Constance nods tersely.

Yep. That you're a fish out of water, she says. You want to walk, she said –

Now come on, little one –

Mummy says you have to come.

Come where? What's your name?

The little girl stands up and curtseys.

I'm Constance, she says.

That's an unusual name, says Brian. Let's find your mam shall we?

Constance shakes her head from her hips upwards. Swaying left and right.

No.

No?

No.

Well, we'll have to call the council, won't we? And they'll come and take you and put you in a home.

Constance laughs. Constance runs circuits round the bench. Constance says, You're mean, Mr Brian. Pleee-ee-ase come. Mummy wants to help you. My daddy wanted to help but you didn't listen to him. And when you come we can play Top Trumps and Playstation and Tiddly-Winks –

Brian chokes as he tries to swallow. Brian looks round for a call box.

I'll ask you one more time, Brian says. I'll count to three.

But Constance has started to cry. Dark clouds are rolling over the sunshine. Her wet face lit up wet and white by the column.

Now don't make a scene. Just tell me where your mam is.

A figure flickers on the bench besides Constance. A person in strobe – flickering on and off. Sitting perfectly still on the bench, looking right at Brian.

Mummy's here, the figure says.

All at once: the girl who knocked on for money; the girl from Inner Sole –

Gone again.

Constance grins and cuddles up to thin air. And before Brian's eyes, thin air pulls Constance closer.

Brian forgets to breathe.
You
.

Put it down and we'll get you out of this.

Who are you?

I'm Juliet. Don't look so frightened – the suit's just protection. If they see me, they'll kill us both.

The edges are fuzzy. The buildings are tilting. Brian goes, Did you –

Brian, it's no cliché to say there isn't time. Ian's contact will be here in forty-three seconds. You will be dead in forty-six. You're going to have to listen.

Brian's stomach on a lift platform north. The blanket around him letting in the cold. The wool getting heavier.

You can't see it, Juliet tells him, and nor can the shooter on the viaduct, but there's a vehicle in front of you. Cloaked the same way you know, just bigger. On three, we'll push you on board. It's a van; more than big enough.

Tick.

The buildings tilting further, the earth spinning faster. Nothing ever simple.

Tock.

And no, you don't have much choice, I'm afraid.

Bloody right I don't, says Brian. Not when you put it like that.

It's this or you're the proud owner of three new holes. Constance?

Yes?

Off you go.

The girl takes four steps and disappears. Brian can't wrap his head round it.

No time like the present, this woman called Juliet says, behind him now.

And Brian moves, moves, moves.

As the first shot comes.

As the second hits something loud; sends a bouquet of sparks through the black.

As he moves through a pane of Manchester and into a tin.