The Folded Man (17 page)

Brian nods as if it's obvious. Brian distant. Brian speaks: Go on.

But those bad words are ringing.

Wilber. Freelancer.

The boat rolling past their camp.

The wife and her fear.

The children and their dirty, filthy fingernails.

So Brian drops the mic. Backs away. The kids take note and get on with their games. Their chats and their check-ins.

The whole world
is too good to be true.

 

The run is a roll and his way to the light.

The concrete and the stairs and out for the night –

The chair is weighty, Colin's box doubly so, and the ramp of the car park is hard.

The kids are unconscious. Bruises at worst. Not a proud moment. Not a bloody proud moment from any angle.

His shaking hands beneath the still-wet wool, scrabbling about in the only pockets that count. The pockets for spare fifties and the two vital business cards. Wet, they're wet, but not all gone. He squints, doesn't he. Squints to see a pair of names, the streaking numbers.

Tariq.

Ian.

 

Brian stole matches, too. He has matches. He stole fruit; he has apples. He has the box –

Jan's wife was sleeping. Drugged, maybe, the more you think on it.

Jan on his errands; bombing about in these unsociable hours. And Brian keeps running, rolling. Not knowing the day. The days gone, his house gone, Diane –

The dirty pavement, these filthy roads, the markings rubbed off and the grids filled and emptying themselves. Manchester, his Manchester — as sharp on the eyes as any broken bottle.

Brian hangs some corners and rattles along, the box in his lap like some anchor. He's got everything wrong.

He stops by the river, facing the cathedral. The city's Godhead. And from so many spire tips, God looks back down on everything. If he's real, he won't miss a trick. The coke in the towers; the lives of His flowers.

BUT HE ISN'T LISTENING.

Brian, he says sorry just in case. He lights a match and tosses it over the bridge. He can't see the water, but hopes the rainbow-oil will set alight.

He moves along, then. When nothing happens. When he doesn't even hear the fizz. He moves on towards town, and smoke. Towards orange-bottomed clouds and the screams and the firebombs.

And it's funny, you know. He's not used to the wheelchair's rattles. The hardness of the wheels themselves. But he likes it. The pain of his back spread out flat.

From balconies and roads round corners, he can hear shouting. A black hole pulling their city back in. And ­Brian has the box, the chair, but no plans.

All around, rubber smoke, that barricade cologne, hangs over everything. Something hotter, nastier, tickles his septum. Tear gas already.

It takes just a moment longer to notice:

The Beetham Memorial Column is off.

 

Brian whispers his mother's tongue:

I beheld the earth. And, lo, it was waste and void. And the heavens, they had no light.

And morning has broken with rubber bullets.

Brian has a pair of business cards. Cards where the ink ran but the numbers held. Salvation is a bunch of fifties he keeps for emergencies. Fifties for payphones and cig papers. Fifties he's found. This is it. This is the phone box. He fights the door open. And his hands are on the back panel of the phone box, fully out of his seat now. The cards of the Cat Flap in every frigging call box in this city. His back lighting up, sharp and hot, and all this sweat in his eyes.

So the coins go in. He pecks out the first set of digits. The heat and sweat, the stinging cheeks and blood-shot eyes.

Tariq dials out.

Tariq dials out twice.

He pecks out Ian's number.

Ian dials out.

Brian pecks out his home number – holding his breath.

50p in. Ring ring.

Ring ring.

Ring ring.

Ring ring.

Hello, Brian.

Are you Jesus? Brian says.

No, Ian says. Why? Are you?

I'm Neptune, Brian says. And soon as I get chance I'm coming to rip your head off.

 

This was the wrong street. It was the worst street. It was the street between –

One lad lumps Brian in the face. Another wraps Saint George's flag round his head and twists the ends, squashing his nose. More punches fall in. The heel of a boot in the groin.

The fuck is your legs about man, one of them says. Through all of it, Brian holds that box for dear life.

Pigs! shouts this other. Down there!

Brian can't see much for the cut on his eyebrow. He can hear the pig, though. Everyone can hear the tracks, the whistling. It's a tank, after all. A tank for coppers.

Fucking do one boys! this lad says. Their footsteps cobble the road. They try tipping Brian's chair for good measure –

Brian pulls away with the flag. He half-sees the pig roll up. It's Tiananmen Square all over. The brakes peal. The top hatch pops. Some council goon has his head out, his war-face on. A camera hanging off his helmet.

You escaped a care home have you?

Enjoying the fresh air, Brian says, his hand turned a shiny red. He mops his eyes with the flag. Leave me be.

Curfew's extended, smart-arse. You're meant to be inside. We can haul you in if needs be.

I'm on my way, Brian tells him. Just passing through.

You're advised to listen to Council radio for the time being. Get yourself out of harm's way.

No need to shout at me –

The council goon shakes his head and gets on with his work. Brian sits in the exhaust fumes as the pig trundles past.

Brian in his chair in the centre of his dying city.

Brian pets his forehead, his lump. He wipes his eyes clear again. He gets his bearings. Looks this way and that.

He spots something. He starts to laugh.

On the wall, to his right, on dented shutters, in baby-pink paint-spray –

THE DEVIL MAKES WORK FOR IDLE HANDS.

 

Past a bathroom shop, its shutters only half down; a chippy with its windows done in, a hollowed out, drained-flat bookies; an empty chapel-booth; all these places closed for a bad sort of national holiday. The curfew like some tide that pulls away and leaves the courageous or the stupid outside.

On down the road through the ash and embers.

Bathroom
shop.

And back. The guilt – the excitement – the buzz – the single-mindedness of a special kind of bastard –

The window goes in, just like that. Big plate glass bugger as well, floor to ceiling. Brian curses the day they glazed it; makes a pig's ear of the shards and splinters. Still: your man goes in. Nowt comes out. Your man just rolls in.

The alarm fires up the second he's all through. Roars into his lugs. It stops all thought except the critical ones. Thoughts going: Water. Salt. Bath.

He gets it sorted. A good old rummager for all his faults. Getting used to the chair, now, too – the chair and how far you can lean out of it. And the back door's lock is bust. So he's out and in the yard. There's a bin of it, water, very tepid and kind of brown. Out in the yard, the loading area, with the empty cages and polystyrene; the plastic wrap and the cardboard piles.

It takes about three weeks to drag it through at any rate. These legs of his, aren't they a pain. But he does it, our Brian. Somehow he drags the bin of water inside. He has to on account of it's worth it. Because it usually is.

There's salt in the kitchen, as well. All this with the alarm still going. It's too high to reach when he clocks it; rifling the cupboards and smashing pots and mugs and plates around him. Bloody mayhem all things considered. And there – top shelf. Sundries and that. The lo-salt in the red pot. So he goes at that with a mop, swiping like some blind swordsman. He brings the lot down. Oh aye, there's the salt.

Salt for a bath.

 

He lies on his own in that dark showroom, the salted water lapping over his toes, his penis afloat, the water turned pink, and the world buzzes on, turns on its axis, swings heavy round the sun. Nobody can see him, because the shutters are up and the glass is broken, same as anywhere else – and come on, why would you want to loot a frigging bathroom shop besides – but he can see out; see the pavements picked out in bad light; the police and protesters running and stopping, closing and brawling, falling and screaming. Nightsticks in, blood out, boots in, teeth out.

And God, were He real and listening, God looks down from His perch, His cathedral seat, His temple suite.

And God sighs. His sons and servants warring.

16.

On his way to nowhere, down these bloodied roads, Brian sees this patrol lev come in low. It arcs in from a good hundred yards on the diagonal, planing through riot smoke. It skates on its air-brakes, and stops, hissing exhaust fumes. Brian can hear the motors crackling static. Brian tucks himself into a shop front, moving pretty quick all told. The pigs in the lev have words with their walkie-talkies – Brian can hear whatever control's barking back. Then one throws his legs out the door and drops the earthing cord.

They aren't arsed about Brian, don't notice – there's a mashed body a little farther down the street. Its legs are bent up the wrong way, and the chunks –

They pick up the body. Leastways it comes off whole. They roll it into a bag, a sack, and drag that sack back to the lev, still purring away. The council pigs hook up the sack to lev.

Into walkie-talkies goes some mention of RTAs.

A large, heavy vehicle seems to have collided with a civilian, they say. They're smirking. They're getting the giggles –

When they notice Brian watching.

The walkie-talkies go away. Council boys become the heavy-set thugs in big bad boots.

Past everyone's bed time now, the biggest says. You won't want to mention this, will you mate?

Brian shakes his head.

There's a good boy.

And next time, says the other, you just tell your grubby comrades to look both ways before our boys roll through.

Pig, Brian says.

What's that now?

 

A new question: how do you detain a man in a wheelchair? The answer is you don't. The answer is tie him to the chair with a bloodied Saint George's flag and hope nobody sees.

Nobody sees.

 

Not often you get a decent view of a place on fire. Not often at all. Brian gets his served with a motor block under his arse; the rear bench diamond-hard, his new wheelchair banging off his fused knees every time the lev banks to turn. And it banks a lot.

From above, Manchester's council
building is a lumpen thing of Yorkshire stone; a fat
triangle only yards from the blackened husk of central library.
You miss the details and the flourishes – the statues and
the carving. They pass barricades and smoke plumes, a kilometre
of sharpline from pillar to post. Like Normandy's beaches,
it is.

A fence of pigs has closed the roads, the entrances, on either side, and there's a half-circle of half-tracks on Albert Square in front. Nobody's getting in, but burning tyres says they've tried. Brian spots sentries – mainly on the pillar-tops; between the goth-y decorations; and one up the bell tower. They carry big rifles for their civic duties; civic duties in trying times. They're taking pot-shots at pigeons down on the square.

Brian's heard stories about this place.

 

You can't strong-arm a man in a wheelchair,
but these boys make an admirable go of it. He'
s in a narrow lift downways, given short thrift. A
network of corridors in the glass-fronted hive. The colony
in white shirts, in ties. From the view, Brian guesses
at a third floor, maybe the fourth. Too high for
heroics. The gentlemen from the council don't say much
at all. To a desk with a scratched wooden top;
a counter, with sheet-steel slats. Their budgets go here –

Brian's nose is bleeding. Airbrakes, they'll get you like that.

Some hard face comes over. PC Plod in a riot visor – these men in funny hats.

This bloody spazz in for?

Curfew section ten. Abusing a council member.

PC Plod shakes his head.

Very grave, he says. Name?

Brian tells him.

I said, Name.

Brian tells him louder.

Address.

Brian lies while PC Plod takes notes.

Bought my last trainers back there, me –

Brian says nothing.

Do you smoke, Brian?

What?

Do you?

Yeah.

Drugs?

No.

PC Plod smiles. PC Plod takes a sheet of A4 from the office printer. He looks at his officers.

And clean this bugger's mush, will you? Just polished us floors.

The men listen and obey –

So what we putting you down as? Mujahid? Nationalist? Wilber?

Brian's turn to laugh.

Slap-head of yours says the middle one.

Brian and his shaved head –

You understand that you've been detained, Mr Meredith. I mean men your age should know better.

Brian doesn't know where to start.

You'll be processed in the morning, PC Plod says, pulling out a plastic tray. Put your possessions in this.

Look, I were just out and about –

In curfew hours? When we're out trying to stop world war bleeding three?

I need to keep this box, Brian says. I'm an unwell man.

With what?

With life.

Well, you're keeping nothing, sunshine. Put your things in here – won't ask you again.

I have to keep the box.

Why, what's up with you?

It doesn't have a name, what I've got.

PC Plod looks at his colleagues again. His
eyebrows up.

Put this fucking idiot to sleep, he says. To Brian: Box on here. Now.

The box doesn't fit in the tray.

You don't want to look in there, says Brian.

They don't listen. Nobody listens. They start to wheel Brian along. To the bank of cells in the guts of this castle. Brian starts to laugh again –

Then have a good bloody gander inside, you bastard! Brian shouts back. A good bloody look at yourself!

 

PC Plod, the voice in Brian's ear, he says, Got a special cell for you, lad.

Past others, crying through their bars, holy books and tissue on the floor in bits in the spaces between. Blood on walls. Halfway down, there's a T-junction. Dark corridors and men – and they are mostly men – with bad hearts. Down they go, right to the end, another right. No crumbs, no, but that minotaur is waiting –

Here, the pig says. Right special cell, is yours. No windows or bars, but plenty of cushioning.

The bolts, the joints, the reinforced hinge and –

The black.

PC Plod says, Sleep tight, sweetheart.