The Folded Man (6 page)

6.

Bob on six, the room grows quiet. Filled, still filling; hushed and hushing. And he walks on then, their man. Flash suit, no tie. Sharp shiny shoes, no stubble. A good six feet longways, taller by the angle.

Noah nudges Brian. Noah has a notepad and a pencil. Noah angles the notepad so Brian can see. He's written a single word. A short, nasty summary.

Brian fidgets, still too warm.

Their host taps his microphone, feeding back a little. He gestures upstairs, taps again. Thumbs up. A better volume. He looks into the crowd. He has hand on his brow, smiling at all he sees – this room already feeling like his kingdom and his glory.

They clap and whistle.

Gentlemen, their host says. Or one hopes at least most of you are. A warm welcome to my home. To this evening.

Clapping.

It is my privilege – it's always a privilege – to collect you and your colleagues in this room. To your left, and to your right, you see the ambitious. The ruthless. The arrogant, be as that may. But not the wrong. Never the wrong.

Clapping.

It is my privilege to provide an alternative, up in these hills, their host says.

Of course, we have the watchtowers outside, our watchtowers and our armed friends from all over the North. And there is sharpline, yes. Strong barriers against the great unwashed beyond our view.

But here, in these hills, I have created a clearing; a clearing in which the tendrils of their councils will cast no shadow. And I'm honoured because we – we, in this room – represent a new private sector, my friends.

Their host puts his hands together. Flexes his fingers against fingers. Listens to the clapping.

We are the entrepreneurs, now. Entrepreneurs in a time where contracts are secured only by traitors and the hive-mind that runs our city. Entrepreneurs in a stagnant state – a state in stasis. A state that has wilfully starved our companies' development and stolen some of our finest to shore up their own.

Their host pauses. He frowns. He raises his voice.

We are here because the city does not want us. Because the council has found its own way – through martial law and through terror. Through lying and through spying. Taking our intellect and with it our property.

But my friends, no longer. My friends, there are people who
do
want us. Those who'll give us the means to create a better way. Because now, we have donors and benefactors from all over this globe – men from here and abroad who recognise that to save our country, we need strength. Technological strength. Moral strength.

It will not be a coup we create. It will be a true and righteous progression. Progression from an economy we none of us benefit from. From a society that stumbled during the riots. Stumbled in the decades before them. And is still down and out.

Their host paces. Paces along and around his stage, the audience in his hands. Him in their hearts.

Their host continues. He says, The things we showcase here, we will sell. We will outsell our competition – perhaps even each other. And in selling, we will arm a financial struggle against our state. This state that has allowed the enemy in, and the enemy to flourish.

This state built on corruption and filthy backhanders. A state built on intervention and wars we've no need to fight. A state that has burnt international bridges, turned off our internet. A state that has left our infrastructure to entropy, our satellites to fall.

A state not built on honour, nor Britishness.

Clapping –

Roaring, in fact –

Their host smiles to his crowd.

Their host traces a circle round the auditorium with a single fingertip.

You may have noticed the cameras around
this room. These cameras are sending images of this stage
to those friends of ours elsewhere. Sending a message by
the satellite we've hijacked to our friends upstairs. That
is why I ask that you do not see any
of the men that follow me up here as a
keynote speaker. Don't listen to the words of any
one man and mistake them as part of some keynote
address.

This is your forum. Our forum. This is where we show the country how we can take back the industries we helped to build.

This venue is where you, representing the companies our state will no longer buy from, have your chance. This venue is one of many in this country where similar words are resonant.

Do they know we're here? Undoubtedly. I would ­wager we have their agents amongst us this evening. That's fine by me. They say we are a democracy, so let them listen. Trust me when I say they will not act for fear of looking weak. They are weak, and that is why they will not act.

I know there's a feeling among you that time is against us. That without our old communications and without free motorways, we are short on resources, too. Tonight, however, I will introduce a series of men who say differently. Men who will say that both time and resources are yours; yours alone. We can be patient in this decaying city, this dying country. Patient because your ideas will brighten it all.

Their host stops. Their host looks down at Brian on the front row. Brian with his shaved head, in his chair. His chair at the centre of this world.

Brian sweats. Wants to throw up. Brian shrinks into his seat. Into himself. Wants to pull his blanket over his head. Wants nobody behind to see.

His lies. Their lies. A road too far.

Their host points at Brian from the stage –

Noah grins. Noah smiles. Noah laughs. Noah getting what he wants and more.

Look at this man. We're doing all of this for the men our state has betrayed. Like this brave gentleman here. Because God himself smiles on our war.

The room claps violently for Brian.

Their host looks on, eyes glassy. Their host is smiling.

Please enjoy your evening.

 

From the PA comes a circus of bluster. On the stage, a ­cycle of tall men with agendas written on the back of their hands.

Never again, Brian's whispering to Noah. Seething. Too far by half this, he's saying.

Noah is making notes. Noah's listening to the men on rotation on a platform three feet above.

Shush up you mopey bastard, he says. You're doing just fine. Kidded him, didn't you.

Only Brian wants the bar. Beers and chasers. Cigarettes. Joints. The end of bloody days.

And the men, they keep coming. Coming out to the handsome wood podium, photocards on ribbon round their necks, to talk about problems and solutions. Strategies, profit margins, expansion. Engineering by Great British engineers. Words that don't mean much, but words that still raise applause.

They've built robots for agriculture. Stainless robots for rich, free farmers. They've built new machines to manufacture better field guns. Bomb disposal units. Bombs altogether. Panic rooms. Micro IR cameras for God-knows-what and God-knows-where.

These entrepreneurs. These captains of industry.

Brian watches them all while Noah sits next to him, scribbling in his notepad.

Brian falling on some kind of savage comedown. On some kind of comedown already – the coke bad, the headache worse. The walls bending and buckling and closing.

Brian, who's yet to hear how they'll help him walk.

War has always been good for state business, the men say on stage. War drives medicine, civil engineering, weapon technology. War drives exploration.

War is a business, other men say. And it's time we shared the spoils again.

Why would you attack the Beetham? other men ask. What's the philosophy of civic attacks, and where's the causality? They're exploring the point; the purpose.

Beetham Tower was not an economic target, other men say. Bringing it down didn't disrupt national interests. Manchester Piccadilly would have been a better target.

And the acolytes simply go on clapping. Noah and Brian both thinking of the advert Noah put at the top of that tower.

Luddites bombed our museum of science and industry, other men say. They bombed what the Beetham tower could not touch as it fell. They bombed heritage to free themselves. They bombed it because they're not proud of the cotton mills. Not proud of the chimneys, of Lowry or the waterwheels. The canals and the pigeons –

We have technologies to stop these atrocities, the men on stage say. And they're getting better all the time.

Noah nudges Brian. Noah yawns. Noah passes Brian his notepad.

Need a slash, the page says. Don't be swanning off.

Brian's neck won't stop itching from all the eyes.

And Noah does one. Brian hears him jog up the central aisle. Out through the double-doors already.

On the stage, a man says, Terrorism is changing. Civil war is coming.

Brian doesn't know about that –

Brian takes the pad from Noah's empty seat. Reads that page. Reads other pages. Notes and notes, bulleted lists with bits underlined twice. Sort of methodical, despite the messy writing. Like Noah's bunker. Like Noah's plans.

The words from the stage blur. The men on stage turn featureless. The words fade out and away. Brian reads on, the notes screaming in figures and projections. And Brian wonders what they're for. Why they're needed when this tape's turning slowly under his seat.

Brian takes the biro. Brian writes –

Boredom bores boring bores bored.

He looks up once, gathering thoughts, a man on the stage babbling on, the pen moving to his mouth –

Then:

A touch. Burning synapses.

Somebody tapping Brian's shoulder.

Brian jumps. Wonders just what the hell's going on.

A piece of folded paper comes over his collar. He hears the whispers, quiet whispers in these shadows at the foot of the stage.

A quiet voice. Slightly effeminate.

Don't turn round –

I said,
don'
t.
Don't turn around, Brian. Don't look at me. Don't act like I'm talking to you –

What?

Somebody wants to see you.

  What? says Brian. What?

Read the note.

Brian and this sick feeling. That same sick feeling.

Interval, the note says. Thick ink, a marker pen or something. Go for your piss and your cigarette and we'll find you.

Brian folds the paper back up. Stuffs his pocket with it. Says, What's going on?

See you in a bit, says the voice. Just wait for the bell.

On the stage, the voices singing those old executive songs. Solutions for problems the world doesn't even have.

 

The bell doesn't come. Brian's already left the conference. He struggled up the auditorium central aisle while so many eyes turned, saw him, and looked away. The atrium, lobby, foyer, however you want to spin it, it's cooler than back in there. There's a breeze from twin air-con units – the strong and silent types.

Brian wheels through, his chair squeaking a bit. Nobody really about. Pair of bouncers by the entrance doors, running their mouths. They quieten on seeing him, like most do. They ask where he's off to.

Brian holds up his baccy tin. Ears still roaring. Wishing he were home, thinking of straws and white lines on glass. Wondering where Noah got to, actually.

The bouncers smile and hold the doors for him. These gentlemen and this gentleman. Duty-bound by sympathy – some kind of pity for the sort of man who can't open doors for himself. Or at least bound by Noah's bribe.

His cig break, in truth a cig with a bit of weed, feels like a reward for his efforts. There's a funny sort of near-silence outside, the quiet with the bright stars. The floodlights are off, see, so he can look to bright constellations you won't see back home. To stars you miss in the city. And all about him, in the car park, are the vans and cars, the vans with family names up their flanks. Names with the dates local businesses were born. The bastards who own them back inside; all these bastards in one room. Over to the west, he can see the glow of Beetham Memorial.

And all this out here, with this cig with a little bit of weed in it, as wind runs over distant cars, distant wheels ploughing gravel. Wondering what the hell anybody would want with him, anyway.

Fag on. Fag off. Burning red to grey to dead. An about-turn. Funny to watch, if anybody could.

Brian says, Thank you, as the gatekeepers with their fat necks hold the doors again.

 

Of all the pissers in all the world, Brian just had to roll into this one. Right into the man from the lobby. The staring man from the atrium who's drying his hands, ­adjusting his tie.

Another thing with Brian, in his wheelchair, is that he's hard to miss. Hard to miss and harder to ignore. So the man doesn't ignore him. And Brian thinks, All these things colliding, these people in this place. The coincidences – the way you bump into everybody you least want to. Like he's the pivot of the whole thing.

Coincidences. These walls tighten and buckle and close. Brian's mouth has turned all cotton-woolly.

The man doesn't speak, as it goes. The man just walks around Brian without even looking at him – makes him think he's lost the plot besides. Which probably he has, in fairness. A long while back.

But the man has second thoughts. The man turns back, like he's forgotten his keys or something.

He says to Brian, Wish me luck, won't you?

And he's gone again.

And Brian can't piss at a urinal, can he. Has to use a cubicle. Picks the third one down. Farthest away. Wondering just what the hell's going on. Dizzy thinking where Noah is. Wondering what anybody wants with Our Brian, here, pretending to be a goddamn soldier who fought in these wars he knows absolutely sod-all about.

Brian has to park his chair at the door, prop the door with it. The door is very loud as it slams the wall. Brian has to stand up and sort of wedge himself diagonally ­between the plywood – shoulders on one side, his meat for legs on the other. His jacket flaps open and his ­medals jingle.