The Folded Man (15 page)

But God or good fortune listens. Brian feels hands under his pits, in his pits. An outboard motor he hears churning the black; the loud wind a torment over wet skin.
Keep hold of the box
–

A hard line crosses his back as he rises free; a hard line smashed across every notch of his spine – a bar across his seared back, screaming. He is scraped out of Quays by a man in a boat. The box in the bottom. His body collapses then. He is racked over the ribs of the hull.

Lucky, the man says.

The Pole says.

The Pole throws tarpaulin over his catch.

I am Jan, he says. He says it
yan
. You must become warm, Englishman.

Brian holds up a hand he can't feel, winces vaguely as it flops back to his belly. He nods. He closes his eyes to a purple starfield. Feels the shivers that rattle the boat.

 

In and out of it. Eyes open and closed. His back throbbing, his hands and toes sparkling with pins and needles.

Jan cuts the outboard. It purrs as the boat stops. We paddle, he says.

Brian thinks of a tune. Hums the tune.
Row, row, row the boat, gently into hell
–

And they skim along the waterway, the pair of them. Brian can barely see for the pain, but Jan has a head torch he turns on for a second, every twenty seconds or so. It's to make sure he's on course – about all he can do to minimise the risk of tramps on the banks taking their shots or worse. The bushes and the naked branches jump out in the white. The oily water shines and birds take flight.

On the water, it's black and gets blacker, as though the boat is travelling across a thin film of glass up in outer space. With the outboard off, only Jan's paddles make a delicate noise, the rowlocks creaking, and more often than that, silent. The sky lightening for another dawn.

Life is but a dream
–

A dream you leave and slip back into – a dream cut through with the harsh light from Jan's head torch.

The light on. The light off. Breathe. The light on. The light off. Breathe. The light on. The light off. Breathe. The light on –

This time, Jan swears – something blunt in Polish. He doesn't waste a moment – hammers the light off, dives down alongside Brian, pulling the excess tarp over his body. He stays there – the pair of them lying parallel, peas in a pod, with their legs out under the rowing bench. The rowlocks judder and ring.

Brian is in a lot of pain, murmuring to himself, humming his rowing boat song.

Jan tells him to button it. He says, You must become silent. Towpath.

Brian didn't know what he means. You wouldn't, a pain like the one in his back.

Silent or I brain you, Jan says.

His face is close now. He's serious. He really means it.

Hands to his sides, Brian tries his hardest.

Good, Jan says, still whispering. Good.

And they drift, the pair of them. Both lying there on the wet wood, running through the veins of Manchester.

 

Jan's torch picks out the distance in longer intervals now. Can never be too cautious; the unknown dangers on these canal paths getting dodgier the farther along they travel.

It's light enough to see, now, nudging five AM or roundabouts, but the details are given to shifting. A man becomes a tree; a bush becomes a Wilber tent. The kind of tricks your brain plays when adrenaline takes over.

Next time round, Jan flashes his torch over Brian. He gets himself a decent look at the man shivering below him in the hull.

Where are you from, fish man?

Brian struggles to say, exhaling hard to get the words out. His back is screaming. He needs more rest. The wool is heavy with water.

You want medicine?

Brian nods pathetically.

What've you got?

Jan pulls a hip flask from his padded jacket.

A lot of times this work. Do not smell first.

Brian takes the hip flask and makes a big deal out of opening it.

Go, says Jan.

Brian takes a slug. It chokes him, and it burns him, and it's everything apart from nice.

Burn hole in mountains! Jan says, chuckling. He takes the flask back.

Brian coughs and splutters.

The hell's that filthy stuff? he says, his eyes streaming.

Moonshine, you call.

Run bloody cars on that –

You feel better, yes.

Worse, you lunatic bastard.

You like.

I don't like anything.

You like it. And now you tell me where you from.

Brian tells him.

And where does fish man go.

To hide.

Jan chuckles some more.

We all run from something.

Brian's grip tightens round the box handle. He sees Diane for a second – Diane in the ribs of the boat; her swollen feet; the whine of the stairlift motor –

What is this box, fish man? Nearly take you to bottom.

It's – it's empty.

Why do you keep?

Sentimental value, Brian tells him. Listen, you got a got a fag I can ponce?

Mm?

A cigarette.

Nie.

You have to help me find somewhere.

You will be safe with me. We find you chair. I know men from the hospital. My wife –

I need a phone, Brian says.

Phone, yes. We try –

You don't understand. They will kill me. I have nothing –

No, no. Nobody kill you. You can trust me of this.

 

Brian trusts Jan till about when the grappling hook comes over the bush line. By hook or by luck, it catches the nose of the boat, rolling them slightly, the hull smacking the water top like an open palm over wood. The wrong place at the wrong time, they'd say in the old news – till every street was the wrong place, that was.

Next news this filthy man comes out from the scrub – the kind of man you call wild-eyed – with a crossbow at forty-five degrees and the rope's end looped round his ankle. He's calling some friends to see.

Oi! Little and large out ‘ere, he's shouting, his little white eyes open wide, kicking his foot.

Jan stays very still and leans back on the rowing bench.

Brian, he's paralysed. Muffling himself on account of the fright.

What you doing on here this time of day? the man on the towpath says. What's your game, white-boy? Can't be doing no fishing down here.

I am lost, Jan says. I want go south.

I bet. What's this dirty accent? Polish?

I am taking injured man for help.

English, cunt, or you're having it.

I am take this man home.

The man on the towpath points down the waterway.

Wouldn't sail down there. Bare Wilbers on marches. Lost two lads down that way only yesterday. Heads on poles. Bad news, bad times.

Two new faces bob out behind the shabby man.

Turns out it's the big cue for Polish Jan.

Jan throws himself backwards and hammers the outboard off its tilt, a fluid motion that betrays practise making perfect – the only way anybody pulls order out of trauma. And by now he's throttled in and yanking the engine cord out and over his stomach. Just like that. The engine starts, he kicks the hook free, and they're away.

Do widzenia –

Two bolts miss.

 

Jan guns the boat up the waters between Salford and Castlefield. On past the ghosts of old manufacturing, industries rusting in the north's harrowing rain, the scrapyards taken back by weeds. Sure enough, there's a Wilber camp in one clearing, barricaded on three sides by tipped lorries, and a group in there round a bonfire, laughing. The smoke smells rotten – smells wrong. But there aren't patrols, despite the warnings, and the early sun sluicing through the tall, tall buildings somehow catches them in better moods.

Brian catches himself halfway to praying.
You know what, God
–

Ahead, their cityscape crests into view – a throat of concrete
arches to pass under before you're in the belly
of it.

I were dreaming, weren't I? And it
never felt like this
–

Jan turns off the motor and taps Brian around.

Psst. Psst.
Do you hurt, fish man? On your behind? Do not worry much. My wife helps.

My back, yes, Brian tells him, reaching round, his leg wounds long since clotted. Something bad's going off. I don't . . . how far can you take this boat?

Excuse? I do not understand.

I mean – I mean if I pay you. If I can pay you, somehow, how far will you take me?

Oh. Our engine small, friend. But with more fuel, Bury, to maybe Rochdale. Through city and many miles past. How long do you want to run?

Forever, Brian tells him.

There are tunnels under city, Jan tells him. Lot of men hide there.

Not without big bloody guns they don't, Brian says. Low enough as we are, pal. Water rats here, aren't we. Six feet bloody under as we are. Why'd you want to go lower? With all them whores and pushers?

Jan scratches his cheek. His stubble.

Sorry, he says. The police?

Brian shakes his head. It's the hopelessness of everything
cutting harder. The sheer bloody scale of everything.

Just need a phone, Brian says. I have a man –

Around them, the water has turned to rainbow. The sun's coming out with his hat on. The oil lit from the side; the low light chopping shadows from the walls.

Just can't be doing with the wait, Brian says.

Jan looks ahead, down at Brian. Pathetic Brian wrapped in tarp.

 

Their rainy city is a grey area in more ways than one. The extra bit of cash, the extra lack of dignity, means the person you'd call decent in the old days you might call a bad egg now. And yet without trust or time, people tell their stories easy. They take a few to justify new jobs in the world gone bad. Fast words make quick bonds.

We
're all thieves and beggars now.

Jan has his sob-story. It plays well as they row through the centre of the planet's first industrial city. As they hear the shouts and the bird-cries of an early morning in the old man's land of cotton smog and deaf workers.

I was farmer in Kent before problems, Jan
says. I collect vegetables. They poisoned crop and took one
of my childs through tunnel in Channel. I work here
as taxi-man for two years. Now I don't
have job, but I speak your English.

You get on pretty well, Brian says. You get on just right.

I learn English from your newspapers. I am resourceful. My wife cleans clothes in Didsbury. I am working for a man in the city. It is not as bad.

Friends in the city. Only way anybody gets on, Brian says. So you . . . so you sail down here with gear?

Jan shakes his head. Banana. Eggs. Meat.

Brian laughs.

The city rolls around them. Like an old film – the city on a reel.

And Jan's sob-story plays on as Brian sees the first marcher. The first marcher on a foot bridge, and his big dirty flag – the marcher peering over the railings that cage the canal. Brian on his back, hands on his belly, just looking up at this handsome kid. A joint on his lips; a bunch of big empty words over his shoulder.

And behind them, Brian sees more of the early-morning marchers and their shiny new flags and painted banners, still wet. And realises –

Birmingham got here by morning.

 

They pull close to the stonework of a canal bridge. The reflected arches make a pair of wobbling circles in the oily water. Brian sees impossible graffiti in the curve above. Thinks about the protestor and his joint; thoughts plunging him into years they thought they'd done with. The rhetoric and the retching.

We stop here, says Jan. Can you sit, fish man?

Brian tries. No. Jan. It's all going to kick off –

Jan pulls out his hip flask.

I know. I hear radio. But try to sit! Or you want more of this?

Brian tries. Brian's back sears in spider-lines from his arse to his neck. He winces, blinks the purple edges away. He steadies himself and looks down the river. All washed up.

Back the other way, the view makes his mouth fall wide. The spiked clock tower of Manchester cathedral peers down over railings and roadway fences – its face leaning forward as if to judge.

Brian lurches round, the panic in his voice.

What road is this?

Jan points up.

This? Victoria Bridge. You see cathedral. It is beautiful place. Is a safe place, here, fish man. Do not worry.

Brian hisses.

Why have we stopped?

Do not worry! Jan says.

At the water's edge, there's a plank of rotten timber maybe half a foot wide. Jan ties the boat off on a rusty-red pole. He caps the knot with a rubber washer.

Jan catches Brian's baffled look. He says, No step here. We make a tunnel.

It strikes Brian as a lot of work. An odd thing to find, to plan. A joke –

But you
cannot see from road on our head, Jan says. He
points at the bushes. These tree is camouflage.

Jan hops
on to the timber – the narrowest jetty you'll ever
see. He starts pulling stones from the bridge, and lays
them two by two on their sides. Soon, in just
minutes, Brian is gawping into a black hole. Jan passes
him a Maglite; an old weighty thing – a reassurance. He
motions to shine the torch down the hole. Brian does
. Brian makes out the rubble of hasty digging. Then, something
glints outways – a light moving across their faces and in
their eyes.

A mirror –

Good, says Jan, beaming, the cat
with all the cream. Wilbers have not found my family
.

And big strong Jan carries our Brian inside.

 

Big strong
Jan carries Brian in backwards.