The Folded Man Read online

  He opens the door. Some virtuous prick with a clipboard. Young, big teeth. A tight top groaning with promise.

  Morning, she goes. I’m not here to sell God.

  Bit of a shame, Brian says. I’m still after one of those.

  Just want to ask you a few questions, she says, scanning the peeling wallpaper, the stripy rubber marks running over lino from door to door. If you’ve a few moments spare.

  Not interested in sales, he says. On enough bastard databases aren’t I? No brass to buy owt with, anyway. He rubs his hands together, then points at the purple Transit. That your van by there?

  She shakes her head, glancing up and down and away, trying her hardest to ignore the shapes under his blanket.

  Anyway, sir, won’t keep you, she goes. I mean I suppose you, like all your other neighbours, love animals?

  Brian pauses. Bites the tip of his finger, as though he’s thinking. Then he says, Hate them. The neighbours too. Spies and liars, the lot of them.

  She wilts, edges back, her smile gone.

  He nods. That’s right. Now clear off.

  Daytime telly is soldiers and loansharks – soldiers and loansharks and heavy static since the reception gets worse every week. The soldiers are relentless, and getting younger with every tour. Fighting, surviving. Sleeping and waking and fighting some more. Out there, all together in the longest war.

  Brian, he looks on through the fuzz – squinting and slowly smoking his last eighth in four long joints he made to last the day. Squinting and watching life filtered through head-cams on His Majesty’s soldiers. Images of mortar tubes loaded, gunships landing, tracer fire lasering clouds. The waits through long government adverts about interest rates.

  An age of celebrity caved to these anonymous heroes, these faceless villains. But really, Brian watches his country’s endless war for love between the dead and dying. For hipflasks of hope passed round between the bombed.

  It’s funny: Brian doesn’t remember where he was for the big things. The death of so-and-so, the bombing of here and there. Not like you’re meant to. Not with dates and times. He can’t ever say, if anybody asks. And actually, he only remembers the events of his own life through ­association. The personal events; the icons that scaffold a person’s identity. Defining memories only remembered through the fixtures of everyday living.

  So for Brian, he remembers the pattern of the curtains he was looking at when he took the call about his mother. The song on the radio when the first satellite fell, burning a streak over the Atlantic. The bubblebath turned flat by soap when they announced the very first curfew.

  By nine evening there’s a textbook sky, that rare thing, the colour of a thousand happy endings. Manchester blinks into life in the distance, suddenly more than sagging towers held up by billboards, entire buildings wrapped in holo-vinyls, lighting rigs you can still see clearly from eight miles out. The lights you can see from every approach; from the hills around; from the moors; from the roads that all point inwards.

  Greater Manchester, he gets to thinking, looking out on his city. Fifty miles square, half a mile tall, five years dead.

  And Brian, with a beer to open and a joint on the bounce, looking at those towers, thinks about new chances and new contracts. The ideas made at the top of them; the strategies okayed in boardrooms higher up. He gets to thinking about coke, so much coke, and then the girls. The brass.

  How none of it comes down from those towers – just flits between.

  At ten they switch on the city pillar – the Beetham ­memorial light. Brian watches the light flung tall. Their way to spear the moon. Their way to say sorry –

  It’s hard to know what we’re remembering, Brian says, talking to the broken men on his telly.

  Brian’s out of weed and can’t find the phone, forgetting it bounced or that he threw it to start with. He cuts a trail through card and forks, through smashed glass and fag dimps, to the hall and the foot of his stairs.

  Brian hoists himself onto the stairlift platform, presses the right arrow for up. He looks at the stripes his tyres have left in the hall. The lift squeals. The chains grip, move. Brian climbs slowly over clean red carpets. Never used.

  At the top of the stairs, he unstraps himself. He eases into his second wheelchair and turns a sharp right. Up the landing and into his archives.

  His archives are the only thing he’s ever built. Collected and stored and arranged by theme, they take up the lower half of almost every wall upstairs – shelves and drawers, dressers and baskets. Books, papers, trinkets. Posters, propaganda, beer mats. Notes from the DHSS, old cheques from birthday cards he forgot to cash, council replies to complaint letters – complaints about the reduced Metrolink running times, the state of the pavements. Photos of departed icons: the Big Bang, the Hacienda, the Cornerhouse. Photocopies he’s made of receipts and of favourite pages from books at the library, before the library burnt. A pot of fifty-pence pieces he keeps for emergencies.

  Dead skin in tupperware boxes. Nail clippings and elastic bands in another.

  It’s Brian’s narrow, useless history of a time they lost – the golden years they never knew they had.

  And Brian stops by the Olympic banner – five faded rings pulling him six years back. Before the riots and the radicals. Before the sharpline walls and all those lost wages. Before things rusted and the machines went bust. Before these decrepit vehicles salvaged to barely work in this functioning hell.

  He picks up the phone by the bed he never sleeps in.N for Noah, he says into the mouthpiece – old buddy, old pal. He hears the click and the connection.

  He notes the hesitation.

  Hullo, comes a voice.

  Avon calling, says Brian.

  Meredith, you grubby old bastard! laughs Noah. How are you?

  You know me, Brian says. Squaring circles.

  And which service does Brian require? says Noah.

  Usual.

  Noah laughs again. I can be there in twenty. You’re coming for a drive.

  Noah talks the same old, same old, all the way up the hill to Werneth – old conquests and old wives, his terrible retirement and how he went about getting himself unretired. This rare, clear weather. How the rain will be home in the morning.

  How he hasn’t done too badly for some teenage graffiti artist turned freelance tagger by an ability to climb and aim a paint can. His old agent, Harry. All the fun they had.

  That cheeky bastard wanted to pay five grand, Noah’s telling Brian.

  Well, I says to him, I go, Harry, you cheeky frigging bastard, I don’t go south for less than fifteen. Not without a cannon and a cloak-suit. Send a man lone-wolf, past Brum – on the bastard plod no less – and you pay danger money for your troubles. Only he wasn’t having that, Bri, and I could swear he laughed at me. He says, My clients don’t pay danger money, our kid. So I says well you don’t get our kid then. Bald twat.

  Brian nods away. Owing to the weed, he’s content to listen.

  But every cloud, Brian, says Noah. This other time – and stop me if you’ve heard this – he’s got me doing radio paint for a Sheffield agency, right? Like a proper job, this – archways and walls you colour in and turn on later. So there I am, dangling from ropes and suckers and earning our dinner, stencilling big names in big letters like always, and this bird with perfect tits walks under me – doesn’t look up, doesn’t notice. And I mean, they are perfect. Perfect. So I think fast and drip some drops of this rad-paint on her hair and down her back, a perfect shot. And I’m thinking, when they turn on this artwork tonight, love, I’ll be seeing you around.

  At the top of the hill, the peak of Werneth Low, Noah stops his dying old car. They look through dirty windows – the neon-lit city scattered before them.

  So skin up, son, says Noah, rubbing his hands. Been too long.

  The pair of them look out to the bright concrete. The grey city burning up with lights. Getting noisy down there, no doubt. Soldiers in the streets – the home guard tipped from their b
arracks. Dancers and hookers, the pushers, the pills, the poppers.

  And in the centre, the brightest and whitest of all, the Deansgate memorial column goes up and up and up.

  Just look at that beautiful sodding torch, Noah says to Brian, who’s already rolling cardboard into a roach. Still gets me now to think of it falling. Funny how we hated it the first month it were up. And those tropical bastards who brought it down . . . Still. You remember that ad I pulled off, don’t you fella?

  Brian nods, concentrating on his build. This is what they always talk about on Werneth Low; this hill overlooking the slate basin.

  Of course Brian remembers that ad.

  The best, the best. Still the best, Noah says. The Beetham top panel, by me, your Noah – Captain Advertising, Captain Visibility. Mind you, I don’t even remember the client’s name now. Nobody would. But Brian, those tits! That big panel spread, those big tits and that grin; the tallest tits for miles! That were me, Brian – me and only me. Me on my tod with a vac-pack and no chalk. Me, gliding up them greasy window panels, looking in at all the call farms and laughing. Me, in the papers, me on the front page instead of our lads on the front.

  And them fucking bastards came and took it all from me, Brian. Took my dreams with their backpacks.

  Brian nods, lights the joint.

  Council ever starts poking the sky again, I’ll be up there, up there fast to say up yours to all of them, under black skies, hot sun, come rain or shine –

  Brian nods, knocks the burning paper off the joint.

  To say it were me and my lads who put this city in lights and large fonts and colours, hung its finest pictures, made Manchester proud –

  Brian nods, inhaling.

  To say it were me and my lads who did the dirty work and the deadly work besides –

  Brian nods, blowing smoke.

  Because you stand tall in this new world, young sparrow, even if this new world sits back and takes aim.

  Brian nods. Passes the joint. Says, Do us a favour and drop me at The Cat Flap on the way back.

  So Noah drops Brian in the old Asda car park round the corner. Less hassle that way. Plus it’s not strictly a supermarket anymore, more a derelict warehouse for riot tanks.

  Now don’t be getting mugged off in there, goes Noah to Brian. You know these girls like to giggle and they like to gang up.

  Been before, says Brian. Then he winks. Only the once or twice.

  Still not a white face in there I’ll expect, says Noah.

  Odds that make? Brian says.

  Not many, Noah replies. Some people have no trust for our darker sisters, is all. But still, if that Mel’s still on the door I’d put one in the bank for her pal. Kind of woman you take time with, kid. Peel her open. Model material, or could’ve been. Sticky pages at the very least.

  Brian grunts.

  But anyway, listen, goes Noah, stepping out to help Brian into his chair on the passenger side. Come round the shop tomorrow. Crack of sparrows if you can. Something I want to tell you about.

  Brian shrugs, yawns quietly. Nowt else to do, he says.

  No, really, goes Noah.

  Brian hops his wheels up the kerb, wheels his chair up on to the weed-split pavement, over dandelions poking tall through cracks. Over this redeveloped land that seems so given to nostalgia. Brian rolls forward, towards his fortunes.

  Behind, Noah shouts: And catch a donkey home later – a proper taxi like these council bastards used to run!

  Brian rolls into a dirty building with boarded windows; rolls into another kind of waiting room for another kind of medicine. A room where everything is wood panel and chipboard seats; where time has slipped and left its holes.

  This is Brian – stolen away between dirty walls on dirtier streets, in and among the filthy girls and the nervous, waiting men – the night-time hiding them all. This is The Cat Flap – a bad rumour lit in purple by blacklight UV bulbs, decorated with taxi firm numbers and take­away menus. A promise of a better night out. Where ­yogic young women pout and spread themselves open on every wall.

  Brian, nose full of beak, guts full with adrenaline, hands full of government cash. Brian, at the desk, where you pay with more than money.

  Mel looks at his head poking up over the counter. She looks battle-weary, a fringe greased over one eyebrow. Old mascara, fresh red lipstick.

  Cassie is it? she says.

  Cassie and another, Brian says.

  Would you like to see the menu?

  He shakes his head. He feels sick and excited and ashamed. I’m just watching, he says. Just want to watch.

  Well go and sit over there, Mel says.

  He nods and pulls backwards; turns and pivots. Parks himself by a big man with violent tattoos of dead flowers and smashed vases. Shot birds flail down his arms in spirals towards his elbows.

  Fuck you looking at, spacker? the tattooed man says.

  Eyes to the ground. To the sides. Everywhere but.

  Eyes to the videos.

  Brian sees a man with four girls on a screen above Mel’s desk. He watches skin pulled and spread and pinched. Watches girls slapped and spat on. Backsides spread and hairy hands spreading.

  A small bell rings – a corner shop’s door chime. Six girls walk out, begin to parade and twirl – a pageant inverted. In a line, they wiggle hips and push their breasts together. They push out their tongues and lick their bright white teeth.

  Pink bikinis, spotted knickers, undersized bra cups. Long fingernails over gussets. They are numbered with lipstick on their bellies. One, two, three, four, five, six.

  The tattooed man stands up and storms from The Cat Flap. Another fucking place filled with sand-niggers, he sneers, to Mel, to Brian, to the girls.

  Numb, nobody really bats an eyelid.

  Oi, goes Mel. Cassie’s waiting.

  Brian browses. Brian window-shops. Brian umms and ahhs.

  Brian decides he likes the girl with the tattoo – a set of paw-prints that run from hip to navel. He wonders how many fingers have walked that path across her stomach, and whether that was the point. She is number four. She’s just this side of five-foot-five. Tall enough for anyone by any standard.

  A perfect height for Brian.

  Number four has dark hair. Downy cheeks. Fuzz on her belly –

  This one, he points, the vomit crawling to his mouth, his eyes starting to water. Number four.

  She doesn’t smile. Doesn’t pout, doesn’t anything.

  He imagines trying to work out where he ends and she begins.

  Cassie! shouts Mel, their manager. His host for the evening.

  Cassie comes to the door, hair up. She has creamy skin and bruised shoulders.

  You and Celeste, Mel says. She nods to number four and then to Brian. And this gentleman.

  Brian knows they don’t even pretend here. No Jacuzzis, saunas or steam rooms. No lockers for work trousers; nice massages for hard workers.

  Cassie recognises him. She kind of pauses, then winks. She says to Celeste, you’ll do a good scene with me, won’t you love? Ninety for starters is it? Oh, he’ll pay more. She grins at the room. At her girls. Girls one to six.

  I think this one likes to watch. Don’t you love?

  And all the girls are looking at Brian. All the girls are giggling and ganging up.

  In the room, on the bed, Celeste and Cassie kiss awkwardly. Brian watches, a metre away, at the foot of the bed. They’ve wheeled him in and wobbled their hips. They took his hat and ignored his hair.

  The girls kiss some more. The girls undo each other’s bras. The girls remove each other’s stockings. The girls kiss each other’s nipples. The girls writhe and stroke and slap. The girls push fingers into each other. The girls pretend to come.

  The girls stop.

  The girls talk in their mothers’ language. In Urdu. The girls giggle and look sidelong at Brian.

  Celeste pushes her round brown breasts in Brian’s face. The fuzz against his chest. Cassie pulls at his blanket, exp
oses his hand, pulls at his joggers and his underpants. All that polyester and precome.

  Together, holding his arms back, they pull his hard penis loose. They spit on it. Cassie runs behind and pushes the chair to the bed, holding Brian’s hands tight behind his head.

  Celeste kneels forward onto all fours, her backside dangling from the edge of the bed, her hands pulling herself open. Cassie pushes Brian closer in his chair, howling with laughter. She bends and spits on him again. Bends and puts him in her mouth. A condom now, as if from nowhere, tight at the base, trapping hairs. But Brian’s gone limp.

  Brian goes weak.

  The girls giggle some more. The girls, they pull Brian’s joggers off.

  The girls scream to high bloody heaven, covering themselves.

  This is sex. Between grubby walls and dirty sheets. Between the bookies and the bus home.

  This is sex. That bad, bad rumour.

  The taxi driver’s called Tariq. He finds Brian sprawled on the road, wheelchair tipped on its side, blanket torn. He finds Brian half-conscious and muttering, sick down his face, his hat hanging off his head. Brian who looks surprised and shocked and angry and lost. Who’s all wet and tired and seems confused.

  Tariq heaves Brian up, rights the wrongs. Big lad, Tariq is. Thick round the top half. He says, Good night, was it pal?

  Brian murmurs.

  Get you home shall we?

  Tariq drives an old Vauxhall with a big boot and a heavy foot. Like most things in their city, it only works to a point. Inside, the windows steam up quickly. Brian feels baffled. Numb by the arse. He looks out to low cloud and back to worn seat fabric. Draws three stickmen, two legs apiece, on the windows. Then, he rubs them out.

  Fact is, there aren’t many Asians with curfew licences, so Brian’s surprised to meet Tariq. It’s rarer still that he’s gone unchecked by the local lads. They strung a guy from a lamp post the month before – called the police and said we don’t pay fares to their type. But he doesn’t ask. Doesn’t care. This is getting home. This is going to bed.