The Folded Man (16 page)

Mud and mortar turns to
concrete slabs – dripping, damp owing to the cold. There's
a spare dinghy, scuffed on account of how they have
to drag it through the hole.

The funnel opens out
.

Jan lays Brian out on a mattress in the dull
. These are boiled clean sheets – meticulously, surprisingly clean sheets. Brian
catches himself staring into the cotton weave. A spider runs
over the corner.

He turns over and props up his
head. Big strong Jan has made a nest.

The nest
, it's a corner of an underground car park, sectioned
off by cars on their sides, the cars criss-crossed
with rope for wet clothes, the wet clothes dripping on
to reclaimed carpets, rugs, offcuts of underlay. Heavy fabrics swing
from shop-style racks, and Jan's put boards up
, too – cork and MDF and that useless two-ply stuff
you find in forgotten skips. Strikes Brian as a project
, doesn't it. The kind of room you add to
, pile on top of. Hide things in. It looks like
a carboot sale. All soft lines and busy space.

Jan
's family sits across the way – across a dozen mismatched
rugs at odds through pattern. Two kids in duffel coats
with hoods up. A young but withdrawn woman between them
. They're huddled round something Brian can't see.

Jan
's hip-flask bounces to Brian's side without a
word.

More, says Jan. Take. Jan points at himself. How
you say it. How you say. Puts eyes on chest
.

Brian slowly unscrews the cap.

Jan turns and speaks to
his family. He doesn't say anything Brian can understand
, but his arms are flying about.

The family turn together
, looking down, coming closer. Brian, he gets the trepidation, but
he doesn't have time for it. The box by
his feet and the pain in his back – the pigeon
bites are sore, the fear has its taste. His cracked
lips and croaked words –

Hello, he says. He manages.

My
family, Jan tells him. Welcome. Here you see all of
what we have. He points to brown sacks in a
corner. There, potatoes. My mushrooms. He points to a bucket
in another. There, toilet. Of course I help. He points
to a cabinet. Television, VCR. He points to the ceiling
. The old hotel Premier Inn. We are in her. Safer
. You will have gun.

And fish man, Jan says. My
wife will look your back now.

She looks on, vexed
by this fish man in wet wool and tarp.

Then you rest, Jan tells Brian. Rest until we find you chair.

 

Jan's wife seems torn between submission and fright. Her husband's will is her way – but more than that, it's the gentleness of her touch; the lightness of the sponge across Brian's back. His broad back, sagging at the flanks, with a little definition and lots of bad skin.

His jumper to his side. His heart through his ears.

She draws the sponge from shoulder to spine, and out. Drawing wide V-shapes, chevrons, down his back. Into a bucket and on to his skin.

Down to the pain – the stripe in the centre, right along the spine, equidistant from the lumbar bones and the nape.

She teases wool fibres from the wound, and the wound is a welt. The six-inch line is weeping plasma. It's raised at least a half-centimetre.

She pulls lint from the wound, sticky and sore. It feels good, and Brian feels the tingle, lost in it, not questioning a thing. A pressure sore, maybe. From the chair or the floor. The effort or the strain. He's rocked over on himself, the meat of him covered in plastic. His arms drawn over his nipples. The tingle down there, in his private parts, some feeling coming back.

It feels like a bruise, not that he'd know.

He winces, then. The edge of the sponge pulled over the last inch, and sore. He hisses. She pulls the sponge away. He cocks his head, waiting for prognosis, diagnosis, some sort of bleak news.

But she's crying –

What's the matter?

Sobbing her heart out –

What is it? What's the matter?

Backing away –

Tell me! Where's a bloody mirror in this hole?

He turns, side to side, side to side. The room spinning.

She comes round to his front –

Jan!

She traces a cross over her bosom –

Jan
!

She places her hands on his shoulders –

You are possessed, she tells Brian. You do not touch my children.

 

The sounds of Paris '69, of Manchester 2012, ring through the car park, ring off the wet walls. The damp night and the cold breeze, the wind with teeth. Outside, vehicles are overturned; the chants are loud as the bottles find their marks.

All night, the whole way through, and into tomorrow, today, a full twelve hours of dissolving order and demolition. A lot of hate and a lot more fear. Blood and pavements. Twelve hours. Time rewound and left to play. A long player, this one – the city caught by its short and curlies.

A long player.

Brian sleeps on and off, on and off, and his dead weight never seemed heavier. His aches and pains, aches and groans.

Jan's kids don't sleep. Jan's kids have questions.

Daddy says the brown people hate our country, the littlest says. The littlest in his duffel, who keeps fingering his nose. Do they?

That's not true, goes Brian. Everybody hates this country. But you must love this country in spite –

Daddy says we had a bus.

The kids have their dropped vowels, their strange hodge-podge accents. Local accents with Polish flecks. Dropping the vowels, changing thee to dee. Probably educated at one of the few schools worth trying. Where you pay or pull in favours to get your name on the register. That or one of them tunnel schools you hear about. Jan mentioned the tunnels – you have to put two and two together.

Did you see his bands?

Bands?

Jan's littlest pushes his duffel coat sleeve up his arm. There are eight black rubber bracelets. The kid waves it under Brian's nose.

How many lines you got? he whispers.

Lines? Brian shrugs. Brian only knows white lines on flat hard surfaces. I don't know –

I can't wait for my first real lines, Jan's littlest says. My father's got forty-two. Says he'll get a full-sleeve before he's dead.

You'll regret a tattoo, Brian tells him.

Do you want to play a game?

I don't know any games.

We have a talker. We talk to our friends on it. You can play –

Brian shrugs.

It's over there. You press the button and say hello and sometimes they say hello as well.

Walkie-talkies?

Jan's littlest shakes his head. The hair mats and sticks across his forehead.

A radio? Is that it?

A talker, Jan's littlest says. Come see.

I can't move, Brian tells him. All this dead weight and weighty dread.

Oh.

Where's your father now?

On a mission, the child tells Brian.

Brian shakes his head. He can't be out there, in that, in and among that.

And your mother?

Jan's littlest shrugs. Sleeping I think.

Okay, Brian says. I'm going to sleep now, too.

But you said you'd play a game.

No, lad – I said I don't know any.

Jan's littlest pulls a face.

I have another one here, he says. He pulls out a roll of Sellotape. What you do is find the end, stick a sheet to the wall, tighten the end up, close your eyes and spin it on the floor, and then you find the end again. If you are fast, you win! My mother's record was two seconds because she kept her fingernails long. That's what she told me.

Brian eyebrows go up.

I don't have any nails, he says.

Jan's littlest furrows his brow.

Is that because you are the devil?

 

Over the carpets, the patterns and fabric tigers, the vibrant bushes and the fraying edges, the room's edges – the edges of hospitality, where warm feet would land on cold grit – comes a jangling, jarring rattle.

Brian has learnt a new reflex. His hand goes to the handle. The box moves towards him.

The rattle's nuances, the sounds at top frequency, the spat-out grit, reach the far drape. The drape shifts. The rattle appears. A varnished wooden chair, set on hard rubber wheels, big foot plates on it, and backed with pale straps, being pushed by a sweating man.

Jan comes off the concrete and over the smooth. The chair runs silent, its bearings in decent shape, to the mattress. To Brian's pit.

The man with antiques like my potato, Jan says.

Brian has heard of these collectors; these finders and keepers. Like him, his archives, they try and guard what happened before.

I take sack of potato and tell him mother has broke back, Jan continues.

Dead flash that, Brian says, looking it up and down. It's a beautiful thing.

It come with slope for entry and escaping, Jan tells him. It good solid wood.

You're decent, you are, Brian says.

You want try? I ask for big one.

I'll have a go, aye. Help me up.

Those hands go under those pits. Up he goes. Up and in. From unfolded to folded up.

On first impressions, the back of the chair is hard. The kind of hard that gives you decent posture or breaks your pelvis first. He finds that the back of the chair puts an even pressure on his welt; his worsening wound.

Brian's mashed feet sag into the foot plates. It fits real nice. It fits pretty good. It fits, and no less.

Fish man can breathe once again, Jan tells Brian, and points to his back. Do you want squashing behind here?

Brian shakes his head.

Pressure's good, ta.

Because the pressure spreads the pain thin.

Good, says Jan. Now you stay and have time for practise. I go again.

 

The old CB unit has a lot of character, if that's what you call dents. The children handle it with that enthusiasm you lose at puberty. They point out the dials, the needles, the receiver cord and the sprouting wires. Brian pretends to care. Nods when he thinks he's meant to. But his ears prick when the static flares; when the first few voices cut across.

Jesus, Brian says – just as he realises Jan must have tapped the city mains. This works?

In a huddle, they're sweeping for decent signals, chatty channels. Usually settling on the city's unofficial channel twelve. The crackle and the waves as the bands swap seats with static.

Ears on? What's that handle, big boy?

Brian swallows.

Anybody?

I'm . . . I'm Meredith.

Roger that, Meredith. Call me what you like, though others get away with Merc, but said Merk, like merkin but chopped in half. You come over noisy that way, pal.

War outside, isn't it.

Got eyeballs on my own war, the man says. My war at home. Where are you?

Long since left. I'm staying with friends.

Oh aye?

Yes.

Quiet mouse are we? I'm in this dusky husk they called Tameside once upon a time. Bunker life's easy in't it, when you know how. Got me telly, got me auto-feeder, got me united re-runs. You there, big boy?

Yes.

Mint. So whereabouts you hiding now? Don't we all ask that on first dates? Sense of place in't it.

Brian swallows.

Bloody atmosphere's blue up here.

Pure bear patrols, is why pal? Caught the arse-end of news before. All kicking off again.

Sounds like they've got the pigs out, aye.

All the same, these bleedin' protesters. How I see it is they don't know what they want or why they're 'aving it in the first place. Browns on whites on whites on browns. Tellin' you mate. Weird. If it in't the government it's their mates in job queue. They don't bomb shit. It's the councils. Same old fear, divide and conquer and all that, in't it?

Maybe –

Trust, mate. Trust me. You think they're, even arsed about us lot down 'ere, in these shitholes with twenty quid for a month or whatever?

I don't know.

Civil war's good for 'em innit? S'what they want. Get all these bad scrotes off the streets, they're thinking. Dunno what they fuckin' expect turning off our footy anyways. No porn, no footy, no fuckin' wife to speak of. No wonder all these mad-head white-boys start making bombs and fightin' pakis all over. And the pakis themselves. You aren't a paki are you Meredith?

Brian doesn't say much. Doesn't say anything to that.

Where was you again, mate?

Near Victoria station.

No way, Merc says. Speak to kids that way on some nights, me.

Brian looks at Jan's firstborn.

Yeah?

Aye, precocious buggers an' all. Pair of 'em, till their mam gets on the mic as well.

Brian is staring at Jan's children.

Their dad's some assassin, mind. Won't be fuckin' with that.

Assassin?

Oh aye. These kids of his got their own gun stash for when he's out. They've had it rattling about when I've been on before. Mental –

Brian has stopped listening. Brian has basically stopped breathing –

And he freelances for these Wilbers, Merc says. Nob-'eads them mate; another bunch you don't see pulling weight for new lands and glory.

Thought you said you were in a bunker, says Brian.

Bunker with a fuckin' massive aerial on it, aye. Anyway mate. Just keep your head down in there. Won't be like 2012 till army turns in, so you've got a couple of days holding on yet. Got a mate broadcasting out of some squat in the Ferguson if you need more local news. Better view than many he's got up there. Want the frequency?