Seeing the Wires

Chapter One

I

When I was a student, I used to have a job on the building sites. Nowadays, I steer clear of building sites. It was a different story then, though, because of this loan that the country had been good enough to arrange for me. I had known for some time that at some point the country or, to be more specific, the Bastard And Shitwit Building Society (I’ve changed the names, for legal reasons) would want their money back.

I’d spent it. I’d spent some of it on useful work-related things like books and pens and paper and all of that. I’d spent far more of it on having a nice time, and from the way the professionally unemotional creatures at the B&S Building Society behaved, I wasn’t sure they’d understand about having a nice time. They certainly wouldn’t understand about me paying for it with their money. I suppose it was their money, really. Technically. Then again, they’d given it to me, and anyone could have told them I was unreliable. If they’d asked Jack – my best friend, who we’ll get to presently – he’d have told them flat out: do not lend this man any money. Jack never did. Jack knew me well. Until I went to university, we got on tremendously. After that, I didn’t see much of him until I stopped being a student. He didn’t like students. He preferred groups like Psychic TV, and filling himself with metal odds and ends. He’d been spending a lot of time with Eddie Finch, who worked on one of the local papers. I’ll tell you about them later on.

To be honest, I didn’t go to university because I had a great career planned. I went because things were uncomfortable at home. There were family troubles.

I’ll tell you about those later on, too.

The building society and I exchanged letters – theirs frank and to the point, mine circumspect. They agreed that I could pay back all of the money I owed them at thirty pounds a week for the rest of my life, with the clear hint that if I didn’t keep up, they’d find a far worse arrangement.

‘You’ve had a lucky escape,’ the manager, Mr Fallow, advised me.

I had, I thought. I might have been forced to work there until the debt was cleared. I told him how grateful I was, shook his hand, and left him straightening his tie.

I had a degree – a second in Historic Peculiarities, which we’ll get to presently – and I was more or less able-bodied. How difficult would it be to get the sort of job where I wouldn’t even notice the loss of thirty pounds a week?

As it turned out, very difficult indeed. The only office jobs going were for people inputting data, and they paid low wages. I was not qualified to be a team leader or supervisor. I knew this, because during the course of what felt like several hundred interviews several hundred people told me so. The building society became concerned, and started writing to me with helpful suggestions. To give me that extra bit of impetus, they charged me for each letter. When I asked why, they explained that it was to cover their administrative costs. They charged me for that letter too. I doubted this. I had seen their adverts in the job pages and they paid around three pounds a day. They were charging me fifteen pounds a letter. It surely didn’t take one person five days (or five people a day each) to write a letter three lines long with my name misspelt at the top of it.

I wrote to them, including these calculations, and asked them to take into consideration the administrative costs incurred in the writing of my own letter. If they would pay thirty pounds into my account, that should cover it.

They paid the money in. Mr Fallow was nothing if not fair. Then they sent me fifteen letters explaining that they had done so, charging me fifteen pounds per letter. I could no longer afford food or rent. I explained this to my landlord, Mr Jellicoe, who said, ‘Don’t have food then.’

At least he didn’t charge me for the advice.

I spread my job-searching net a little wider. I ruled in some areas I had ruled out. I considered more physical jobs. Eventually, I got a job on a building site on the bleak outskirts of Dudley, helping to dig the foundations of what turned out to be the ugliest factory in existence.

It was easy enough work.

I would rise at seven, get washed and dressed, and be at the bus stop by eight. Some time later, a white Bedford van would pull up, and I’d hop in. I had to use the van. I could have walked to the site – I live in Dudley, and it was less than a mile away – but collection by van was a condition of the job.

‘That’s what it’s there for,’ the foreman – Mr Link, who we’ll get to presently – told me.

I would get into the back of the van and spend a short, uncomfortable journey bouncing about on a stack of shovels, picks, and hefty sacks of gravel and sand. The van was driven by Darren, a short youth with a good-sized collection of foul language and a full head of very black hair, which looked dyed. The van was co-piloted by Spin, a black man who never spoke at all. They would pull into the bus stop and I would clamber into the back and settle myself in among the implements, and as I closed the rear doors someone at the bus stop would say something disparaging.

I don’t know what it’s like in the rest of the world, but in Dudley the bus stops are where old people gather when they aren’t gathered at the post office. They like bus stops. They don’t like people jumping the queue. I wasn’t in the queue, strictly speaking, but they didn’t like me getting into a van at the bus stop before they had a chance to get on a bus and go to town and complain about how much everything cost and how many worrying new vegetables there were nowadays. I wouldn’t have minded one or two of the less obviously incontinent ones getting in the van and having a lift but we only went to the building site and there were no queues there for them to stand in.

There were trenches. I helped to dig them. I thought that building sites used mechanical diggers for the foundations. I asked Mr Link about it.

‘Well, we could,’ he said. ‘But you cost a lot less and the last JCB we had got stolen.’

‘Stolen?’

‘Joyriders. I can’t see what joy there is in a JCB, myself. I’d rather have a Jag.’

He did. It was part of being a foreman, Darren explained. The foreman had a Jag and everyone else shared a van and did all the work. That was the building trade according to Darren. It seemed simple enough.

Mr Link had – as well as the Jag – thinning black hair containing thick black grease, presumably placed there deliberately. He had sideburns several years after they were last fashionable and several years before they were next fashionable. He had watery eyes and looked uncomfortable in the hard hat he had to wear because of regulations. The main purpose of hard hats, Darren told me, was not to protect the heads of workmen. The main purpose of hard hats was to make visiting dignitaries look twats.

‘Office people,’ said Darren, ‘never get the hang of hats.’

Spin nodded, silently.

‘There you go, Spin agrees.’

Spin nodded again.

‘Thing is,’ said Darren, dragging on his cigarette, ‘the thing is, some people are hat people and others are foremen and managers. That’s what it is.’

He smoked on. Working on a building site apparently consisted of a lot of smoke breaks interrupted by short periods of digging. I was able to keep up with this and the wages were higher than I would have expected. I saw a light at the end of the overdraft. I paid Mr Jellicoe some of the rent he thought he was due and began to reimburse the building society. Things were, I thought, on an even keel.

II

One day – it was summer, and the sky was clear and blue, but because we were in Dudley the temperature was cheerlessly low – I was digging foundations when I turned up an old coin. It was nothing special – a shilling, slightly dented and much corroded – but Darren had a look.

‘We find things sometimes,’ he said. ‘Digging. You turn things up.’

Spin nodded, silently.

‘Once found a bone,’ said Darren, ‘off of a dog we reckon. Well, Spin thought it was a dog, anyway. He knows his bones, does Spin. Used to do archaeology at the Poly.’

‘What, Spin was a student?’

Spin nodded, silently.

‘We all were,’ said Darren. Looking at him, I doubted it. He must have caught my expression.

‘I done Social Anthropology,’ he explained, ‘at Cambridge. Bloody freezing and flat, Cambridge. Course, I finish the course and get ready for one of those graduate jobs, thirty grand a year and more holiday than workdays. That’s when I realized Social Anthropology might not have been the course to go for. Same with Spin. There’s no call for archaeologists. At least he gets to do digging, keeps his hand in. Only person on the site hasn’t got a degree is Mr Link.’

‘What?’

‘Left school at fifteen, self-made man, blah blah. Don’t get him started on it. What did you do then?’

‘When?’

‘When you was a student. I mean, the rest of us was students but don’t look it. You look like a student. Only poorer.’

‘I did Historic Peculiarities.’

‘You did what?’ Darren dropped his shovel. It seemed like a strong reaction. Most people just said it was a waste of taxpayers’ money.

‘Historic Peculiarities.’

Darren and Spin exchanged a look.

‘Is that one of those new courses?’

‘It was. There were only three of us doing it. I don’t think they run it any more.’

‘Well,’ said Darren, picking up his shovel so he’d have something to lean on. ‘Well. So, what was that all about then? Historic Peculiarities?’

III

Historic Peculiarities, explained Janet Blake – senior lecturer in Historic Peculiarities – was the study of missing bits of history. We knew what had happened at time x, and time y, but did not know what had happened between them. Historic Peculiarities attempted to find the links between apparently disparate events. In practise, this involved a lot of creative writing and very little analysis.

The typical Historic Peculiarities exam question would be along the lines of: ‘The Spanish Armada – The Fire of London. Connect.’ There was no typical answer. The best way to answer a Historic Peculiarities question was to write as much as possible in the time allowed without ever committing yourself to a point of view.

I took the subject because I was interested in history and peculiar things, interests I shared with my best friend Jack. He didn’t go to university, he got a job in a printing company on the outskirts of Oldbury. While I was spending money I didn’t have on having a good time, he was spending his time earning money so he could spend it on his hobby, which was body piercing.

We’ll get to that later.

I did a three-year course in Historic Peculiarities. There was the option to do a fourth and perhaps continue as far as a doctorate, but the building society weren’t keen. I was still interested in history and peculiar things. The building society was still interested in regaining its money. So I gave up Historic Peculiarities and became, for several months, a digger of foundations.

IV

‘Got you,’ said Darren. ‘It was one of those complete bollocks courses. Thought I’d picked a bad one. Bloody hell. So, how much do you owe the bank then?’

‘Building society,’ I said. ‘A couple of hundred, now.’

‘Lucky sod,’ said Darren. ‘I still owe them me first born, and Spin’s had to sell one of his kidneys.’

They both smiled. Darren pocketed the grubby shilling that had sparked off the conversation.

‘Tell you something,’ said Darren. ‘You know the castle?’

Of course I knew the castle. Dudley Castle is hard to miss, in Dudley. It isn’t as though there’s a lot else to distract your attention.

‘There were some historic peculiarities up there,’ said Darren, ‘so Spin was saying. Witches, warlocks, comets, Templars and all sorts of stuff. You could have done a thesis on that. You might have got a first then, like Spin.’

Spin nodded, silently.

‘What sort of things?’ I asked. I’d lived there for twenty-five years, and it was the first I’d heard about it.

Before Darren could tell me, Mr Link turned up, a hard hat sitting uncomfortably on his head.

‘Darren, Spin,’ he said. He looked at me. ‘I can never remember your name,’ he told me.

‘Sam.’

‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘Historic Peculiarities. And these two are Archaeology and Anthropology. Once upon a time, we used to get actual workers. Now they’ve all done City and Guilds and set themselves up as limited companies and all I get is students paying back their overdrafts, drinking me out of teabags and chatting about social awareness. Which is all well and good in its place, but it doesn’t get trenches dug, does it?’

We shook our heads.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘and there it is. Now. How are you at heights?’

‘I’m okay with heights,’ said Darren. Spin made a gesture indicating the same. It was a complicated gesture, and it went on for a little while. He raised his hands above his head and looked up at them, and nodded. He drew his hands down past his face, looked left and right, and shrugged. He held out his arms and mimed balancing, while nodding. He looked down and held out both hands, thumbs up. He clapped. Mr Link nodded at several points during the gesture, and then the ending caught him by surprise and he forgot to nod in the right place.

‘I don’t like heights,’ I said.

‘Don’t like them, or won’t do them?’ asked Mr Link.

‘I don’t like them. I get dizzy and then I freeze.’

‘Vertigo. Fair enough. You can stick with trenches. You don’t have to go up, to do trenches. Down is preferable, I always think. But not too far down, because then it gets claustrophobic. A strange thing: all the students we hire want to do the digging. Never the walls or the scaffolding. Personally, I think it’s to do with Dudley. There’s old stuff all over the place. The castle, the mines, the railways. If you ask me, they should bulldoze the bloody lot of it and start again with a few decent roads and a car park and maybe a pub, but that’s just me.’

‘What will we be doing?’ asked Darren.

‘Scaffolding,’ said Mr Link, in a tone of voice that suggested he’d already told them once.

Spin went into another series of hand movements.

‘What?’ asked Mr Link.

‘He’s dubious as to scaffolding,’ explained Darren, acting as an interpreter.

‘Dubious?’

‘He believes that it acts as a receiver or transmitter of messages from elsewhere, being as it is a matrix of regular angles constructed in tubiform metal. That’s when it’s up, obviously. When it’s not, it’s just a pile of tubes in the back of the truck.’

‘Tubiform matrix?’ asked Mr Link. ‘What, and you got all of that from him waving his hand about?’

Darren nodded.

‘Hell’s bells,’ said Mr Link.

Darren and Spin stood patiently.

‘Well?’ asked Mr Link. He switched to jovial mode. ‘Either of you up to working on my tubiform matrix? Only it’d be nice if you’d get on with it, because we’re expecting a message from Arcturus and we need the scaffolding up before it gets dark. Besides, we might be able to make use of it when we put the top beams on this thing.’

He indicated the framework of red metal struts: six large ones to a side and a network of smaller ones connecting them. Trenches ran around the outer limit of the structure. I had helped to put them there.

‘What’s it going to be?’ Darren asked.

‘Factory,’ said Mr Link.

‘What sort?’

‘Finished, if we get the scaffolding up. Come on.’

Mr Link led Darren and Spin to the pile of metal tubes and hefty brackets. The brackets looked like something that might have come from a medieval dungeon, and that made me think about Jack, because Jack is a body piercing aficionado and he looks like the sort of thing medieval dungeons might have used in their adverts if they’d had newspapers to place them in.

‘While we’re erecting Luke Skywalker’s radio set, would it be okay if you carried on with the trenches? Only I seem to remember that we had this agreement where I paid you and you did work. You seem to be interpreting it slightly differently, in that I pay you and you stare vacantly into space.’ He sighed. ‘Students.’

‘Ex-students,’ I said.

‘Even worse,’ he said. ‘Feel like digging?’

‘Oh yes,’ I lied.

‘Good, because it would trouble my conscience greatly if I had to sack you because you were useless.’

He often gave us these pep talks. I think it was something to do with morale.

V

Other than Mr Link and the physical problems – blisters, aches, herpes – working on building sites was fun. It was like playtime. At school the only time you were allowed to mess around in mud was at lunch break, unless you were in remedial class. You weren’t allowed to handle tools.

On building sites mud and tools were only the beginning. After that there were mechanical things, scaffolding, swearing, and tea.

There were pranks, too. I had to go to Supplies and get a left-handed screwdriver. Darren sent me to get a spirit level with a slower bubble. Spin asked me to get something but I didn’t know what he meant. It was something that rotated, but I wasn’t tuned in to his gestures and Darren was out getting some dents knocked out of the scaffolding. I was the new boy, so I was the stooge for all of the pranks. I didn’t mind, as it passed the time and I wasn’t often injured.

After a while I noticed that I was still the new boy.

‘We’re a good team,’ explained Darren. ‘Mr Link likes to stick with people he knows.’

Spin nodded.

‘It saves training people up. You’re the best we’ve had, so far.’

I was pleased. I hadn’t been told I was the best at anything by anyone before. Except for Jack, who said I was the world’s best wanker.

‘Well, you’re the only one, really,’ said Darren. ‘No one wants to do trenches these days. Most of them go into burgers until they get something in an office.’

Spin mimed frying burgers with one hand, and picked his nose with the other. I hoped that was part of the gesture.

‘I don’t mind trenches,’ I said. ‘I like digging.’

‘You’re still the new boy, though. Can’t be much fun. Get all the jokes played on you. Haven’t you had any offers yet? Office jobs?’

‘Not yet,’ I admitted. I hadn’t applied for many. I worried about that, but not enough to do anything about it.

‘We’ll have to do better jokes then, won’t we? Can’t keep sending you to Supplies for things that don’t exist. Don’t worry, me and Spin’ll think of something new while we do the roof.’

They went up the scaffolding. All that afternoon I watched them, wondering what they were up to. I couldn’t hear anything Darren was saying, and Spin’s gestures were difficult to follow. I was a bit worried, to tell the truth. They buried one of my boots once, filled the replacement with hot tar and I scalded my toe. They were boisterous, as my mother used to say of schoolyard psychopaths.

So I had an idea. I would strike first. I couldn’t get them to fetch something from Supplies, because they always made me do that. I couldn’t fill their boots with anything. It had to be something mild, just enough to make them think twice. And it would have to be Darren. I had no idea what Spin would find funny, other than me with hot toes.

I thought about Darren’s hair. It had looked dyed the first time I saw it. After working with him for a few weeks I was sure that it was dyed. From time to time it would start to look less black, and thinner, and then he’d go off to fetch something and come back with a head of glossy jet hair and inky fingers. I was suspicious.

A weak spot, I decided. That night I popped into a pharmacist’s and bought a quantity of Grecian 2000. I took it home, wrapped it in brown paper and addressed the parcel to Darren. I wrote on the back:

‘If not delivered, return to Building Standards Office.’

The next day I left it next to the kettle in the Portakabin that was our headquarters, after Darren and Spin had made their way up the scaffolding. I left it leaning against a packet of Hobnobs and then got on with digging. The foundations were widespread, and it was difficult to keep close to the Portakabin. I didn’t want to miss anything. Darren and Spin didn’t seem to want to come down. Most days they were down every few minutes, for tea or cigarettes. That day they were happy in the scaffolding, thirty feet up, basking in the drizzle. I tried not to look as though I was hanging around. I noticed I’d dug the foundations much deeper than usual that day. If I wasn’t careful we’d end up with a leaning warehouse. I didn’t think Mr Link would like that. I kept going off and digging, trying to leave myself with a clear view of the Portakabin at all times. I angled around, turned back on myself, dug where I’d already dug. I thought about putting the kettle on and attracting them down with tea, but then they’d know I was up to something. I never made the tea. I knew how, but it didn’t interest me.

It was lunchtime before they came down. Darren made for the Portakabin, patting his pockets and frowning.

‘No fags,’ he said. ‘Here Spin, do us a tea. I’ll pop down the shops and get some. Want anything?’

Spin indicated his preference and Darren made his way off the site. Spin entered the Portakabin. A moment later he emerged and looked about. He held the parcel. He shook it. Hearing an engine, I thought that it would be Darren returning with his cigarettes and whatever it was that Spin wanted. A tongue, perhaps. Then I remembered that Darren had walked to the shops. It was Mr Link. He pulled up close to Spin and got out.