CORNERED

to judge, that’s what keeps going round and round with me well I suppose you could say I believe that everyone should have the benefit of what’s the phrase, I worry sometimes when I can’t remember things, benefit of the doubt, there, everyone should have it well not everybody obviously not some of them round here, with them what they should have it’s more doubt of the benefit in my opinion you take her, the one with stripy hair Bath Street St. Peter’s House I think she lives you see her on Crane Hill up from the Super Sausage black girl well not black mixed race, from what I hear she’s on the lot the benefits the crack the game part of the pond-life the Monk’s Pond-life I should say I mean it’s not her fault up to a point and if you’re from a disadvantaged background then statistically it’s like predestination how you end up but I still think and perhaps I’m just old fashioned but I still think everybody has to take responsibility for their behavior obviously sometimes there’s extenuating circumstances we’ve all done things that we didn’t want to when there wasn’t any other choice although some people I’m not saying it’s their fault but they don’t try to help themselves they just biodegrade until they end up like old bubblegum that’s on the pavement year in year out in the end you barely notice it’s another social residue part of a natural process people like that and I don’t mean ordinary decent working people, people like the Super Sausage girl are unavoidable bacteria and if you like the street’s a gut it cleans itself, the lifestyle, it gets rid of them eventually where was I

oh benefit of the doubt yes I remember it should be extended, I think, to those of a certain I don’t want to say class that’s not me and anyway that’s been made into such a loaded term, but of a certain standing in the town let’s say a kind of public figure I suppose you’d call it, getting things done nearly forty years and always always on the people’s side it comes with being from a Labor background and I’ve never been a champagne socialist a Mateus Rosé socialist at one time possibly, that I’ll admit to, though I’ve always had a common touch at least that’s what the wife says no I’m only joking what I’m saying is, I’m part of this community been living down here all these years bit of a local landmark you might say close to his roots and I think people most people respect that when I’m seen out and about like now they smile and nod and recognize me from the paper and I think I’m generally appreciated but of course there’s always one or two

it’s quite a nice night not what you’d call summery but better than it has been Mandy’s out walking the thin blue line with her police friends what with one thing and another it’s not often these days that we’re home at the same time I often say we’re like those couples that you used to get in weather houses those old novelty barometers we had one up in Scotland when I was a scruffy little muppet although no doubt there’d be those among the worthy opposition or in my own party for that matter who’d say that was still the case, no with her being out I didn’t fancy rattling round the place as if I was a dried pea in a cocoa-tin and since I stood down from the council what three years ago to as I put it spend more time at home with Mandy there’s not been so much to do I thought I might as well go for a turn around the block perhaps call in and have a swift half somewhere before wending my way back it’s been a few years since I did that on a Friday night although at one point it was every week we change as we get older in what we can stomach and of course a Friday night in town these days is asking for it really with the way it’s gone these sixteen-year-old numpties, half a dozen theme pubs every street it’s like that Enoch Powell speech only rivers full of vomit and not blood although you get a fair amount of that as well down at the A&E it’s definitely a decline I blame bad government and yes to some extent people themselves they have to take responsibility for what they’ve done but it’s too easy I think saying everything’s the council’s fault what people fail to understand is that our hands are often tied but anyway

in Chalk Lane there’s a moderate breeze but not so as you’d notice really left or right here should I go uphill or down a left will take me up into the Boroughs and that can be well not dangerous but on a Friday night and all of the remaining pubs are either dead or full of people that you wouldn’t want to spend a lot of time with, right it is then and so into Marefair, going downhill, following the path of least resistance

just across the road there the Black Lion looks like it’s on the way out I can remember when it was all bikers not what you’d call threatening but things could be unpleasant around chucking-out time with the noise and everything it’s not fair on the residents a load of half-baked pissheads revving up shouting the odds but anyway they’re gone now long gone and we’re rid of one more obstacle stood in the way of Castle Ward getting the new development and I suppose you could say the new people that it needs to be a different place a decent neighborhood to move up in the world not that we’d ever sell that’s not what it’s about it’s an attachment to the district, not for how it is but how it could be living down here all these years of course it’s not our only property but it’s the one that we’re identified with part of our brand if you like I mean the oldest most historic part of town we’d lived here years before I’d heard more than the barest outline, to be honest I was never all that interested but when you find out about some of it well it’s fascinating you take Peter’s Church across the road there put up in the first place by King Offa as a chapel for his sons at their baronial hall in Marefair then it’s rebuilt by the Normans in eleven something and hold on what’s that

a teenage boy it looks like floppy brown hair jeans and trainers with an FCUK shirt on that’s too big for him a lanky streak of piss he’s in St. Peter’s doorway underneath the portico and shoveling something up into his arms as if he’s in a hurry it’s a sleeping bag, he’s dossing at the church the mangy little twat I’ll have a word with Mandy when I see her next oh hey up here he comes stumbling along the path between the flowerbeds out the church gate with his bag like an enormous boneless baby clutched against his scrawny chest and scuttling across the street he’s in a rush alright although I can’t imagine where he’s got to go

“Good evening.”

not a word straight past me and away up Pike Lane Pikey Lane somebody’s changed it to and frankly you can see why though I’ve never liked the term myself well it’s derogatory isn’t it, you know something about the way he ran at me across Marefair like that I felt a bit weird for a second not quite déjà vu but it reminded me of something though I don’t know what it can have been did someone run at me like that across a street before or oh wait I know what it was it was that dream I had I put it down to dodgy seafood at the time when was it eighteen months, two years ago, I was in Marefair in the dream as well but it was night I couldn’t find my shirt or trousers and had I gone outside in my pants and vest to look for them I can’t remember but I know the street looked different in the moonlight was there any moon the dreamlight anyway there were all buildings from the present jumbled up with places that were knocked down years ago and there was that damp creepy atmosphere the Boroughs seemed to have when we were first moved in and in the dream I was just starting to feel a bit anxious and self-conscious about being out in just my underwear when I saw somebody across the street this old chap with a trilby covering his bald head and he ran, he ran at me across the road exactly like that boy just now but he’d got it was horrible he’d got dozens of arms and where his face was it was just a lot of eyes and mouths all screaming at me screaming like he hated me I don’t know what I’d done to make him hate me like that but I woke up in a sweat with my heart going and there wasn’t anybody there it’s just this place with nightmares in its timbers like old farts trapped under bedsheets in my bones I’m still a Marxist to the core I don’t believe in ghosts

and anyway that’s just the sort of fright you give yourself when it’s the middle of the night but you look at the place now on a nice Spring evening you see what it could be, there’s St. Peter’s with the long light on its limestone and then here just up the road Hazelrigg House where Cromwell bunked down before his demanding day at Naseby when you think about it frankly it’s a marvel, Doddridge Church just up Pike Lane back there across the years people have said it must be awful living in a tiny neighborhood like that but honestly it’s not it does us anyway a bit of smartening up we could be happy here and if the district’s small well then so what I’m not a big chap in the height department so it’s big enough for me it’s like the Bard said what was it I could be bounded in a nutshell and yet count myself king of infinite space were it not that I

something like that anyway no it’s a lovely night I’m glad I came out for a walk I’m glad that I’m not in my vest and underpants there’s no denying that it’s changed, the neighborhood, changed since we first moved in was it in ’sixty-eight around that time I mean the south side of Marefair well that’s still pretty much the same at least the upstairs but with different businesses moved in below kebab shops takeaways what have you and the rooftops are all largely how they’ve always been across the street though on the north side it’s a different story there’s the ibis obviously Sol Central the whole complex when they put it up it looked like something out of the first Batman film but now I don’t know on a Saturday or Friday night you tend to see a lot of couples checking in who don’t look like they’ve known each other long drunk blokes with hard-faced younger women or sometimes with spotty lads of course it’s not my business I think everyone should have the benefit of the old doubt but when you think about it yobbos fornicating right where a Saxon baronial hall one stood and after that the Barclaycard headquarters it still doesn’t seem right almost sacrilegious, here we are, the crossroads up the hill directly opposite there’s Gold Street and already I can see where further on towards town center there’s the usual muppets wandering in the middle of the road girls with their ass-cracks showing and it’s only just gone seven

on the other hand there’s hardly anyone about in Horseshoe Street downhill one of those random lulls in foot or vehicle traffic where all of a sudden it goes silent like a Western main-street just before a shoot-out there was once a time I might have wandered down that way and had a pleasant evening out, all of the pubs there used to be the Shakespeare at the top here and the Harbor Lights another biker hangout in the ’Seventies I always used to wonder why they’d called it that when we’re the furthest point inland but I suppose it’s just another wistful evocation of the sea the way that Terry Wogan called the Express Lift tower the Northampton lighthouse anyway the Harbor Lights the building’s still there but they’ve changed the name the Jolly Wanker, well there’s a big letter W and then an anchor but it’s obvious what it’s saying now I’m all for free speech but I don’t agree with that I don’t see any need you wouldn’t catch me drinking in there anyway I’ve too much self respect besides the whole street looks like it’s unraveling

I wonder how much longer the Victorian gas-holder’s going to be there it was talked about a few times when I was still on the council, council leader a good many years and in the end you have to balance practicality against nostalgia well that’s all it is when it comes down to it nostalgia for a place or thing that no one really gave a fuck about to start with but because they happened to grow up in such and such a street they don’t want anything to change which is to my mind unrealistic nothing stays the same forever everything is going downhill places people we all make adjustments we all start out as idealists or at any rate as something passing for idealists but that’s not the real world in the real world everything and everybody ends up as a Jolly Wanker and that’s their fault it’s not wait a minute there’s somebody do I know him someone standing halfway down the hill on this side of the dual carriageway I’m sure I’ve seen his face just standing there and staring at the billiard hall across the street black leather jacket on he looks like a real villain oh he’s turned his head he’s looking up the hill towards me better look away

perhaps if I went uphill up Horsemarket I could stop in at the Bird in Hand whatever it’s called now the place on Regent Square up Sheep Street just to say I’d had one just to say I’ve got a social life even when I’m the only one at home that man though I won’t turn around in case he’s looking I know him from somewhere I’m convinced of it a face like that you don’t forget it in a hurry with that big hook nose his eyes at different levels different angles to each other honestly his face, it looked like a collage it looked like that old ghost’s face when it runs across the road towards me in my nightmare every other week perhaps he lives round these parts one of the menagerie like that chap that you see walking his ferrets although now I come to think was it on telly that I saw him in a film an advert something of that nature horror story I should think from how he looks but on the other hand how likely is it somebody from telly being in the Boroughs it’s more probable I know his face from Mandy’s work with the police you know the evening sun, Horsemarket on these lower slopes, it looks quite nice

a restaurant an Italian place across the street don’t like the lettering

black movement on the paving not a heart attack the shadow of a bird that’s a relief

some girl young woman she’s quite pretty lovely eyes a hajib she’s Somali

it’s frustrating even two years later the Iraq war I opposed it obviously made a few statements to the paper and yes I suppose that stepping down from council that same year to some it might have looked as if I’d made a stand on principle although I never said that in as many words no to be honest it was more a legal technicality so that I could pursue my business interests without a breach of regulations and I don’t see that there’s any contradiction in a staunch opponent of the war planning a trip to Basra Anglicom we called the company anyway that’s neither here nor there, as I said at the time that’s history what’s done is done yes I opposed the war but when it’s happened then that’s the reality that’s what you’ve got to work with and I think that settling deals to help the restoration of Iraq it’s part of a humanitarian effort when you stop to think about it and I don’t see, I don’t see when there’s a pie that big to be divided up why it should be your Halliburtons getting all the contracts where’s the harm in standing up for British companies me and Colin he’s my partner business partner I should say you have to be so careful with your language these days don’t want anyone to get the wrong impression me and Colin were all set to fly to Basra, 2004, I mean they said the airstrip was secured it was all over or at least up in the north, there was that bloke the source of all the WMD reports what was his name and they were going to parachute him into government all done and dusted so they said, we’d booked the flights announced it in the Chronicle & Echo everything and then it all kicked off contractors taken hostage every other day a car bomb there’s beheading footage posted on the internet we called it off well we announced that we’d postponed it thinking I don’t know there’d be a drop-off in the violence something like that but it’s never going to happen is it look at it the Middle East it’s hopeless it’s all fucked it’s

bloody hell I’m making hard work of this slope I should sign up down at the gym but

Mary’s Street back of the ibis rear delivery yards the fire came down here once

the sunset on the windows of the flats our business in Iraq it wasn’t meant to be

sometimes, sometimes I wonder if the things in life aren’t all laid out from the beginning like town planning, there’s a good example, if there’s only one way things are going to go for say a district or a neighborhood it’s all already been decided but the people living there don’t have a clue what’s going to happen in their future there’s been public consultation only none of them have heard about it they all think they’ve got a say in how life’s going to go for them they think that their decisions matter but they don’t it’s all a done deal from the start whether they have a job or not and where they end up living where their kids are sent to school and how they’re likely to grow up as a result I mean I’m talking now about the worse off obviously but what if that was true for everything that everything was planned out from the kickoff and although we all think we’re the masters of our lives and free to make our own decisions that’s just an illusion in reality we only make the choices we’re allowed to make already set out for us in the planning documents there’s no effective consultation process how much of a choice have any of us really got it’s like I made a conscious choice to not go left and up Chalk Lane not go up Gold Street into the town center but it sometimes feels like I’ve arrived at my decision only after I’ve already started doing what I’m going to do, as if making a choice is all after the fact is all justification for things that were always going to happen when you look back at your life some of the things you’ve done that you well not regret exactly let’s say errors that you’ve made errors of judgment where you genuinely tried to do the right thing but when you look back it’s as though circumstance conspired against you where temptations were so huge that nobody would stand a chance where literally you’d have to be a saint an angel it feels like there’s something nudging you, making you go the way it wants and when you look at it like that then who’s to blame for anything

although

although there’s obviously there’s pedophiles serial murderers war criminals there’s obviously exceptions you can take all this predestination business too far and if nothing’s anybody’s fault if everybody’s only doing what the world is forcing them to do all just obeying orders then what are we meant to think about morality I mean you’d have to say that Myra Hindley Adolf Hitler Ferd West there’s the 7/7 bombers everybody’s innocent you’d have to let them go you’d have to throw away the whole idea of sin of punishment it’s not that I’m religious not especially but you’d be saying in effect there was no right or wrong and that’s just wrong it stands to reason otherwise there’d be no basis for the law all Mandy’s work with the police it would be stood on nothing how would you judge anybody there’d be no one to condemn for anything and, and, and there’s another side

if no one’s evil how can anyone be good how is there such a thing as virtue or a virtuous act if everything we do is preordained just as you couldn’t judge the guilty there’d be no way you could even recognize a saint a decent person no way that we could reward somebody for outstanding work by giving them a medal, say, or making them an alderman I’m only using that as an example but I mean you’d have to throw away Mother Theresa Jesus Ghandi Princess Di not that I ever thought that much of her to be quite honest, clearly there were those who did, there’d be no heroes heroines no villains and what kind of story would that leave us with we’d have no way of shaping a society I can’t imagine one how could we impose any sort of pattern any sort of meaning on our lives how could we tell ourselves we were good people no, no it’s ridiculous there has to be free will or all of this is just a story just a pantomime with all the world a stage and all the men and women merely players it’s free will or free Will Shakespeare that’s quite good that I’ll perhaps remember it and put it in the column no it’s like I’ve always said how everyone’s responsible for what they do and how they act although in certain circumstances, I’m not saying mine, there might be strong extenuating reasons why they feel they should do one thing rather than another free will it’s a complicated issue

Katherine’s Gardens just across the dual carriageway Garden of Rest they used to call it when the Miter was still standing up in King Street just across the road from the Criterion there used to be that statue there the Lady and the Fish she had these hard stone tits it was like an erotic idol standing at the garden entrance I think later someone knocked the head off so they moved it out to Delapré and all the girls the prostitutes they’d either have the cab firm next door to the Miter run them to their flats in Bath Street or they’d have a quick knee-trembler in the bushes the police would turn a blind eye for a hand job mind you all the trade’s moved down to the St. Andrew’s Road these days between the station and the Super Sausage Quorn Way all up that end where I saw the stripy-haired girl that time otherwise the Boroughs is just how it always was I mean we put the concrete bollards up blocking the streets from Marefair all the way to Semilong we thought it might discourage the curb-crawlers but it’s not made any difference all it’s done is make it harder for the ambulances or the engines to get in if there’s a fire say in St. Katherine’s House where all the dregs all of these kids straight out of care get placed the tower block well the fire services condemned it and yet there’s still people being put there so God help whoever’s council leader if it all goes up in flames you know I miss it sometimes but I’m well off out of all of that the stress it puts upon you knowing things like that the worrying in case somebody finds out, all that on your mind and obviously the people in the flats you worry for them too and it would be a dreadful thing if that should happen right there where the Great Fire broke out in the 1670s whenever but then on the other hand a lot of the planned changes to the area could go ahead so it’s an ill wind and all that although of course no one wants that to happen I’m just saying if it did

of course this thing about there being no free will then just because we might not like it or we might have to surrender things that we regard as moral certainties that doesn’t mean it isn’t true

the gardens at the back of Peter’s House in Bath Street on my left now everything looks gray and threadbare litter all the usual it’s depressing and across the street you’ve got the Saxon the hotel the Moat House sticking up down at the foot of Silver Street with all the scalloped frills the pastel colors it reminds me of an ornament you might stick in a fish tank though I don’t know why, at least it’s better looking than St. Peter’s House I think I can remember when they put the Saxon up in 1970 I think it was whereas the Bath Street flats they’re 1920s 1930s and they show their age the fancy brickwork that’s got cracks and fissures sprouting tufts of yellow grass of course when they went up same as a number of the flats around the Boroughs they weren’t meant to last this long they were intended as a temporary measure but with nowhere else to put the people I imagine that they’ll be there either till they die or till their homes just crumble down to dust around them what was here in Horsemarket before the flats I wonder I suppose the clue’s most likely in the name horse-traders wasn’t it or did I hear it was horse-butchers there was once a knacker’s yard I think down near Foot Meadow so perhaps oh God that’s broke my dream my other dream I had it just last night oh God

I was where was I, I was in my vest and underpants again and I was I know where I was it was a cellar a Northampton cellar in the dream for some reason I think of it as being Watkin Terrace Colwyn Road one of them up there by the Racecourse but the atmosphere it had it felt like somewhere from the Boroughs somewhere really old and I remember now, before that in the dream I’d been just walking in those big grass wastelands with the flooded earthworks giant disused railway bridges and just single red brick buildings sticking up, middle of nowhere under heavy skies a bit like that one house still standing at the bottom end of Scarletwell Street but it’s weirder it’s a place I’m sure I’ve dreamed about before perhaps since I was little but it’s hard to tell I’d somehow got inside this house at first there might have been somebody with me but I lost them and the only way that I could get to where I thought they might be it was through this sort of granite shower-block where the lights were out and there were all these toilets without proper cubicles around them and they all had their seats missing or were overflowing all over the floor and I went on and down these stairs, stone stairs and then I went the wrong way and I found myself in these they were like cellars and they were all lit up as if by electric light although I don’t remember seeing any bulbs or lamps and on the floor the rough stone floor it was like straw and sawdust horrible mixed in with it there was a lot of blood and shit you didn’t know if it was animal or human and there was it looked like fish innards and skins and strings of meat all rotten in the corners and I must have gone from one part of the cellar to another trying to find my way out and suddenly there’s the mad poet bloke the one who’s always pissed Benedict Perrit he’s lived down the Boroughs years everyone knows him though I’ve never had a lot to do with him myself he’s standing waiting for me in this cellar smells of frightened animals like in a slaughterhouse I’m getting nervous I explain I’m lost and ask him how I can get out and he does this peculiar high-pitched laugh and says he’s trying to get further in and I wake up with the old heart going at nineteen to the dozen I know that it doesn’t sound much but the atmosphere it was that atmosphere that hangs around the Boroughs and it always puts the shits up me it’s I don’t know it’s ancient, stinks, it isn’t civilized older than that with its collapsing buildings people its collapsing past it’s like a Frankenstein thing stitched together from dead bits of social engineering it’s a monster from another century resentful in its ominous reproachful silence I can tell that I’ve done something to offend it that it doesn’t like me but I don’t know why time and again I wake up sweating here we are the Mayorhold Merruld the old dears down here pronounce it, makes them sound half-sharp

glancing down Bath Street and across the train-tracked valley as the light goes

up the other way a widened Silver Street unrecognizable the thuggish multistory car park that’s got Bearward Street and Bullhead Lane God only knows what else beneath it somewhere looking out across the grim sprawl of the traffic junction with its lights and colors brighter in the falling twilight almost magical it’s funny when you think that this where it started the whole civic process in Northampton when the Boroughs was the whole town and this was the town square so I’m told with the first guildhall the Gilhalda wasn’t it up at the top of Tower Street here it used to be the top of Scarletwell before Beaumont and Claremont Courts went up in the late ’sixties and there

there they are

the high-rise flats the two giant fingers raised as if to say fuck off

who to though is it them to us or us to them I don’t know what I even mean by that

a window lit up here and there light through cheap curtains colored squares on the dark blocks darker against the last remains of day over the railway yards the dimming west the tops of higher buildings last to catch the sun and you can still make out the sideways metal N in NEWLIFE with the lettering running down the side I thought that looked quite smart, no, what it was when I was council leader someone made out they were eyesores two monstrosities that shouldn’t have been put up in the first place and proposed we pull them down but I said no that’s not the way to go for one thing social housing in the Boroughs people haven’t got a clue just how precarious it is those towers they house a lot of people and don’t think that when they’re pulled down there’ll be anywhere to put the tenants or there’ll be new housing built dream on that isn’t how it works those towers are all you’re going to get and when they’re gone they’re gone, no, what I said, we ought to do them up refurbish them so that they’re fit to live in and okay you may say where’s the money going to come from but what I suggested was we sell the flats for next to nothing a housing association that I knew was interested at least that way the council’s spared the costs of demolition not to mention all the headache of rehousing so it went ahead and Bedford Housing picked them up at fifty pee apiece I know that there were people at the time and since who questioned that but they don’t understand how much the people here have benefited when you think of the alternative have genuinely benefited and alright that was in 2003 when I stood down from council after speaking out against the situation in Iraq not that the two things were connected it was more that being on the council stopped me from pursuing other ventures shall we say I mean how many companies is it where I’m secretary or director ten something like that so it was proper I should stand down otherwise it might have looked as if I’d got a vested interest and you know how cynical it is these days the view the public have of anyone in politics, no, I stood down so that I could take care of Anglicom in Basra me and Colin though that didn’t work out obviously but also after stepping down that left me free to take up my position on the board of Bedford Housing well if someone’s going to make a profit from it then you tell me why it shouldn’t be a Boroughs resident that’s better surely than it going to someone outside the area and anyway it’s done, it’s history, the other options were much worse I talked it through with Mandy and I don’t see why I need to justify myself

along the walkway on the west side of the Mayorhold making for the crossings that will get me over to the Roadmender in two or three hops when the lights are right it’s like a game of Frogger and down on the left there’s Tower Street and the NEWLIFE buildings and past that you can still just about make out the school Spring Lane those years I was a teacher there back when you couldn’t live on what you made as councilor I mean some of the kids some of the families they were beyond help some of them it was horrific sometimes frankly and that’s really I suppose where I first got a peep into the way these people’s lives work if they work at all and thinking back that’s probably when I first got the horrors just a shudder every now and then about the area and what was going on behind all the net curtains honestly you should have heard some of the stories although by and large the kids were nice I liked them they respected me I think I had a reputation as a decent bloke a decent teacher that was who I was that’s how I saw myself and I was happier then I think I don’t know, can I say that, there’s a lot of benefits to being who I am today but even so perhaps you could say I was happier in myself I think I thought more of myself and everything was more straightforward everything was simpler then not such a moral maze I think that was a program on the television or the radio they asked Cat Stevens Yusuf Islam or whatever he’s called now if he would personally carry out the fatwa against Salman Rushdie and I think he said he wouldn’t but he’d phone the Ayatollah what’s his name Khomeini anyway when you’re a teacher there’s the satisfaction when you feel you’ve made a difference how can I describe it it’s like when you feel as if you’re a good person deep inside beneath it all, it’s not like politics it’s the reverse it’s the exact reverse of that nobody trusts you they’re prepared to think the worst of you they hate you everybody hates your guts and the abuse the personal abuse you get is it a wonder if it gets to you affects your self esteem I don’t mean me specifically just public figures, political types in general what it is it’s hurtful and it makes your blood boil you find that you’re muttering to yourself settling imaginary scores it wears you out and it

crossing St. Andrew’s Street so that I can cross Broad Street makes me think of Roman Thompson who I think lived round here until recently I would see quite a bit of him back in his union days when we were both on the same side well nominally anyway and even more of him when I was on the council his Tenant’s Association bollix he called me a wanker once right to my face he said I’d always been a wanker and that didn’t make me very jolly I can tell you fucking militants the fucking pickax-handle tendency with their more-socialist-than-thou they don’t see that the kind of socialism they believe in they’re anachronisms all that’s dead that was the ’70s and Margaret Thatcher smash the National Front and we were out of office the best part of twenty years it was demoralizing all the splits and schisms in the party it was cunts like Thompson radicals to blame for all of that stuck in the ’60s and refusing to accept that times change and the Labor Party if it wants to be electable it changes with them now I’m not the biggest fan of Tony Blair I think that I can safely say that now but what he did whichever way you look at it he got us back in government he modernized the party he’d learned lessons from what Thatcher did and it was necessary redefining Labor values and the Tories had a winning formula you have to deal with the reality it’s no good being off in some idealist never-never land after the revolution no you have to work with what you’ve got adjust to different ways of thinking different ways of doing things and Roman Thompson calling me a wanker Roman Thompson, people like that, Marxist throwbacks they don’t understand real politics the compromises and negotiations that you have to make they’re not prepared to give you it, benefit of the doubt, they’re ready to believe the worst of you a wanker he’s the fucking wanker and it’s that it’s the abuse you get I shouldn’t think about it, more stress on the heart, what does he matter anyway he’s

toddling over Broad Street with the green light and the Roadmender there on the corner white in the descending gloom the front part rounded tall smoked windows up behind its railing ten or fifteen feet above the street it’s like a prow it’s like a ship a liner beached here at the furthest inland point lured by the false beam of the Express Lifts tower and the empty promise of the Harbor Lights they had high hopes for the place once all the well-meaning Christian types who founded it as a youth center said that it was going to “mend the road” the road through life that disadvantaged youngsters faced I mean as an idea it’s well intentioned like I say but it’s not aged well these days you’re not going to mend the road you’ve very little chance of even finding it and in the meantime well it’s left us with a building to maintain and no way that the space will ever turn a profit we’ve tried everything they’ve put some bands on big names some comedians but with that sort of audience they’re students mostly they’re not going to spend much even if you pack the place out every night it isn’t going to work from what I hear it’s got six months left possibly a year oh fuck another hill

at this age you don’t know you never know you never hear the one that hits you

was it here perhaps where Bullhead Lane was, the steep climb to Sheep Street

just across the road the multistory with dead socket-spaces staring from between its pillars there’s a scrap of mitigating vegetation here and there half-hearted verges as inadequate respite from all that concrete but it’s all half-dead it covers nothing up and only makes the rest of it look worse a diamante G-string on an ugly stripper

when you’re closer to the top you see the bus station most gruesome building in the country so they reckon with its empty upper spaces gazing menacingly at the car park’s brutal bulk across the intervening grassy waste where that Salvation Army fort once stood as if it sees it as a rival in some fuck-faced competition although when you think about it with the flats the car park the bus station and the rest of the unsightly hulks that seem to congregate down here it isn’t any wonder that the people feel so singled out for punishment you have to ask yourself if Roman Thompson and the awkward squad might not be right at least on that one, on that single issue obviously and not on everything not after what he called me what he said to me and Lady’s Lane it yawns away towards the Mounts the ass-end of the bus station on one side with the law courts on the other there’s that sort of gibbet-shape that’s echoed in the architecture and you get the feeling that the whole place is condemned whichever way you look at it the swathes of empty grass up this end if you ask me it’s not the old creepy houses it’s the patches of bare ground that seem most haunted

turn left into Sheep Street and it’s not a haunting like you see in films or when you read a ghost story in many ways it’s like the opposite of that it’s not about mysterious presences it’s more about the absences not how the past endures but how it doesn’t

back at Spring Lane school sometimes at Christmas I remember how I’d read a ghostly tale or two you know something traditional they used to love it nothing really frightening I’d read A Christmas Carol not The Signalman, Canterville Ghost perhaps but not Lost Hearts, the English ghost story it’s marvelous one of the things that can make teaching English such a pleasure just the way the masters of the form can set the scene and structure things they mostly seem to take a lot of time establishing a situation that’s believable and quite a lot of them like M.R. James they base the stories solidly upon a real location so you get the what’s the word I hate it when I can’t remember things it worries me verisimilitude and there’s the moral aspect of a ghost yarn that’s quite interesting the way that sometimes like with Scrooge the ghosts are actually a moral force and he’s done something to deserve a visit from them whereas to my mind the other type of story, that’s more frightening, where ghosts descend on somebody because they’re in the wrong place at the wrong time where the victim is somebody innocent someone who doesn’t know what he’s done to deserve it I suppose that the abiding fear in all these stories is the world we live in comfy and predictable it might all of a sudden change and let in things that we can’t understand or handle that’s the underlying terror, that things might not be the way we think they are it’s almost dark now all the streetlamps have come on

the absences tend to accumulate up this end, Sheep Street, there’s the yard that beech tree stood in eight hundred years old I think they said it was before it passed away of natural causes that’s a euphemism we all know perfectly well who poisoned it somebody highly placed at one of the adjacent businesses who wanted to extend the parking area but obviously there’s nothing can be done you’d have a hard time proving it for one thing and when you consider all the upset it would cause I mean it wouldn’t bring the tree back would it no what’s done is done it’s better to accept it and move on that’s the mature the practical approach that’s politics like it or lump it no use crying over spilled milk when the horse has bolted just across the road the Chinese restaurant, been there years changed hands of course and names I think that me and Mandy went there once or twice before we were in a position to go further and have better no the food was very nice as I remember it lobster I think I had

and there’s the Holy Sepulcher the round church bulging out into the dusk pregnant with guilty secrets fat with memory I shouldn’t wonder

the knights Templar used to worship in it don’t they say we had a lot of them round these parts after the Crusades somebody ought to write a novel a Da Vinci Code or something I suppose Northampton’s seen a fair bit of religious stuff across the years extremism you’d have to call it there were all the weirdo groups in Cromwell’s time the Levelers and Ranters and what have you the town draws them like a magnet Philip Doddridge he’s another one Thomas á Becket running for it in the middle of the night it’s like I say there’s plenty of religious history but none of it’s exactly what you might call normal it’s fanatical or else it’s having visions and it’s seeing things didn’t they burn the witches just a little further up, on Regent Square I think I can remember someone telling me

cross to the church side of the street there’s nothing coming at the moment although up the end there on the square itself the traffic’s bunching at the lights as always

and it’s funny

you look from the round church to the junction up ahead and there’s a sort of wholeness a simplicity about the past and then on Regent Square the present all the cars the signals changing color it’s more like a jigsaw that’s been flung across the room

and set on fire

the present smashed and set on fire I think about Iraq I’m bloody glad that we called off that trip I mean Iraq’s an obvious example but it’s everywhere the fragmentation and the fabric, watching while it comes to bits, it’s everywhere oh God imagine that imagine being made to kneel and have your head cut off on camera it’s hang on this is where the north gate was up this end of Sheep Street this is where we put the heads on spikes the Danish raiders that we’d captured there weren’t cameras then but heads on spikes it’s the same thing it’s the dark age equivalent it’s a display meant to deter the enemy not that if I’d have gone to Basra I’d have been an enemy I said it was an opportunity to help a war-torn nation and its people and if Anglicom got something out of it well where’s the harm in that I’m not an enemy but then you could say that’s naive that’s not the way it works it’s how they see us isn’t it not how we see ourselves I mean they say you should be careful how you choose your enemies but you don’t get a say in how your enemies choose you like fucking Roman fucking Thompson calling me a wanker making out that I’m the villain when I’m not I’m one of the last heroes standing up against the villains and of course sometimes there’s compromises but there’s worse than me a lot worse I deserve some credit some respect and if there’s any doubt then I should have the benefit of it and Sheep Street opens up into the smeary paintbox of the square and here we are the Bird in Hand

on Regent Square the glare the Friday atmosphere as if it’s waiting for some I don’t know some ugly business to kick off perhaps it’s me, my age, you hear so many stories is it any wonder that downtown at night well it’s enough to make anyone nervous well not nervous let’s say wary and I’m not a big man but you’ve got to do it got to go out now and then perhaps stop at the pub and have a drink prove to yourself that you still can that you’re not frightened, when you start to think like that you’re beaten, that there’s not this sense of it all catching up with you the door is brass and glass, net curtains on the other side I get the sense it might have looked just like this in the 1950s gives an elderly and wheedling squeal more of a wheeze the hinges as I push it open into

human body heat a wall of it the smell of fags and lager breath not the warm beer smell I remember there’s a fuzzy background carpeting of clatter mumble giggling girls squelchy glissandos from the fruit machine BWOIP BWOIP BWOIP BWOIP low ceiling keeping all the scent and sound pressed down there’s not that many people in it just seems like it after coming from an empty street but then the night’s still young I don’t think that there’s anybody here I know quick pint, then, pint of bitter standing up against the bar and trying to catch the barman’s eye oh fuck I’ve put my elbow in the spillage never mind I’ll sponge it down when I get home is he deliberately ignoring me he’s, no, no he’s just serving someone further down the bar and wait a minute that bloke sitting at the table in the corner there I’m sure I know his face from somewhere it’s oh shit he’s seen me looking at him mimed hello he obviously knows me I’m more or less forced, obliged, to give a big smile in response still can’t remember who it is I’ve seen him recently I’m sure but if he turns out to be someone I should pay attention to somebody who knows Mandy possibly but how he’s dressed I can’t imagine that it would be what’s he oh he’s holding up his empty glass he wants a drink and before I can stop myself I’m nodding but that means I’ll have to sit with him pretend that I remember who he is and oh God it’s Benedict Perrit but that’s no it’s too weird it’s

it’s a coincidence it’s nothing strange not if you understand mathematics properly it’s not as if

BWOIP BWOIP BWOIP BWOIP

it’s not as if it’s that remarkable we dream about all sorts of people and then see them but I mean I’m more annoyed than anything I’m more or less obliged to have a drink with him if only I’d not looked at him as if he was a long-lost friend, it’s just a habit from the job all of those years, if I’d just recognized him sooner but oh here’s the barman

“Can I have two pints of bitter, mate?”

why did I call him mate he’s not my mate oh well it’s just a pint I’ll have it down me in a quarter of an hour at most then tell him I’ve got business somewhere else a quarter of an hour how hard can that be but hang on what’s that he’s doing is he it looks like some sort of pantomime he’s pointing at me and then turning round towards the empty stool beside him and then lifting up his hand to shield his mouth as if he’s saying something now he’s laughing what’s the matter with him it’s as if he’s acting out some sort of joke or something that he thinks I’m in on I can hear him laughing right across the room he’s like a horse BWOIP BWOIP “Ahahaha!” BWOIP BWOIP is he taking the piss what’s going on oh here’s the barman with the pints

“Cheers, mate.”

arrrrh Christ let me stop saying that pay him, a fiver, take the change there’s not much and then navigating pint in each hand I can’t stand this bit it makes me tense you can’t see your own feet or where you’re putting them and all these people they’re like bumpers on a pinball table and you know you’re going to end up spilling it all down yourself or worse all down somebody else and then they punch your lights out it’s like trying to steer a ship to dock or well with me it’s more a tugboat nosing in among a load of hulking cargo vessels and just look at him just hark at him mugging and laughing and pretending that he’s whispering about me like an aside to an audience that isn’t there is he like this with everybody for fuck’s sake what have I got myself hooked up in now oh well it’s too late

“Hello, Benedict. How are you keeping? I got you a pint of bitter, hope that’s alright.”

of course it’s alright there’s no need to sound so apologetic it’s him cadging drinks off you it’s him who should apologize if anybody you don’t need to always make a good impression well not with just anybody not with somebody like him he’s

“Councilor, you must be a clairvoyant. Ahaha. You read me mind.”

oh bloody hell I hope not if I read your mind then I’ll bet M.R. James he wouldn’t be a patch on you I shouldn’t sleep for weeks I shouldn’t even

“Oh, no. No, I’m no clairvoyant. This last three year I’ve not even been a councilor since I stepped down. 2003 that was. That’s when bloody Tony Blair involved us in Iraq.”

now technically that’s true I haven’t said the two facts were connected so in fact I haven’t

“Ahahaha! Yiss you are, you’re a clairvoyant! Freddy made out as you hadn’t got the gift, but I had faith in your psychic abilities. I’m a believer, councilor. Ahahaha. Cheers!”

“But I’m not a …”

fucking hell look at that pint go down that Adam’s apple working like he’s got a piston arm in there who’s Freddy and that accent “Yiss” you used to hear it all the time down here old ladies mostly the real strong Northampton accent I’d forgotten when we first moved in we used to laugh about it me and Mandy do impressions then it gets that you don’t notice it and then next thing you know it’s all but gone when was the last time I

“So, did you get out of that cellar in the end? Ahahaha.”

what cellar what’s he talking about what

“What cellar’s that? I’m sorry, but you’ve lost me.”

there, again, apologizing what should you be sorry for it’s him who’s talking rubbish he’s

“The cellar in the dream. Ahahaha! You didn’t like it much.”

the

but

what what is he oh no oh God no that’s no that’s BWOIP BWOIP BWOIP BWOIP no

“What do you m … how do you know about …”

is this a dream, this now, is this the same dream have I not yet woken up or

“Ahaha! It was just like our granddad’s shop in Horsemarket. It was … yiss. Yiss, that’s right. The Sheriff. Ahaha. Sat in ’is wheelbarrer up on the Merruld.”

but how can he know about hang on I’m missing something here the last half of that sentence he’s just turned his head and looked away from me is he deliberately snubbing me or I don’t know but what he said the dream how can he know about my dream or how can I know his whichever way around it is that isn’t how it works that’s wrong it has to be some I don’t know some fluke of probability, mathematics, a coincidence I mean two people having the exact same dream on the same night then meeting the next day I’ll grant you it must be fantastic odds against it but it’s not impossible it doesn’t mean hold on he’s turning back to face me

“Freddy was just saying that you ought to change yer underpants. I’d told ’im earlier what you’d got on and ’e said you was wearing the same thing the time ’e seen yer. Ahaha.”

he’s

he’s oh fuck he’s talking to the empty seat the other side of him somebody told me I remember now somebody said they’d seen him doing that, some other pub, the Fish I think, it must be all the drink sent him like that although then there’s the poetry as well wasn’t it him forever going on about John Clare and everybody knows where John Clare finished up how did he know about my dream the underpants and I’m not liking this how did I end up walking into this I don’t deserve this and

“Who’s Freddy? I don’t …”

laughing throwing back his head I can see every pore in his big nose there’s nothing funny about this, this is that thing the atmosphere around the Boroughs BWOIP BWOIP BWOIP BWOIP are they all mad are they all these people are they all inbred and mad or

“Freddy Allen! Ahaha! Old Freddy Allen! ’E says as ’e saw yer wanderin’ up Marefair in the middle o’ the night wi’ just yer vest and pants on. Ahaha. ’E says ’e run across the road to see if ’e could put the wind up yer. From what ’e’s tellin’ me, you looked as though you’d done it in yer pants. That’s why ’e thought you oughter change ’um. Ahahahaha!”

gulping my pint now trying to shut him out this isn’t happening I’m mishearing him all of this what with the background noise he isn’t saying what I think he’s saying should I just get up and leave say I’m not feeling well it’s true enough oh Christ I want to bolt but I’m stuck up the corner of the bar here with him there’s so many stools and tables between me and the pub door and all these people Friday night it’s filling up I don’t know what to do I don’t know what to say there’s too much going on BWOIP BWOIP BWOIP BWOIP and from the corner of my eye oh God what’s that it’s no it’s nothing cigarette smoke hanging in a wobbly flying carpet made of gray wool just above the picture-rail I thought that it was I don’t know a rush of something dust-balls big as sheep stampeding at our table but it’s only smoke I’m just that rattled oh please stop him laughing it’s

“Ahahaha! Did you see that? ’E just stood up like ’e’d got piles. ’E’s cross because a load o’ little blighters just come in.”

what now oh Jesus get me out of here he’s got me stuck here up this corner and he’s what’s he doing now he isn’t looking at the stool beside him and he’s not looking at me he’s giggling into the smoke oh fuck how many aren’t there here that I don’t know about it’s not

“You can’t come in! Yer under age! What if the landlord asks to see yer death certificates? Ahahaha!”

laughing his head off shouting at thick air nobody paying him the least bit of attention can’t they hear what’s going on they must be used to him a regular or they can’t hear above the BWOIP BWOIP BWOIP BWOIP I don’t know what’s going on myself and for a moment I look off in the direction that he’s staring but there’s nothing there’s just some bloke’s ass and all the smoke and I look back at him and everything about the Boroughs that can make your skin crawl it’s there in his voice his laugh his eyes you can’t tell if he’s sad or happy I’m just gaping at him I’m just

“I don’t understand this. I don’t understand you people.”

listen to yourself “you people” there’s nobody here but him you sound as cracked as he does oh God when he said that bit, running across Marefair to put the wind up me he can’t have meant no that’s just bollix no people don’t have each other’s dreams I’m not I can’t I just can’t think about it now Benedict Perrit look at him craning his neck and laughing holding one hand to his ear like he’s pretending that he’s eavesdropping on someone or perhaps he’s

“I can’t ’ear ’um. Even when they’re right up next to yer they sound faint, ’ave yer noticed? Ahaha.”

it’s

it’s only this moment just occurred to me that this is just what it would be like this is what ghost stories look like in real life BWOIP BWOIP BWOIP BWOIP in real life there aren’t any ghosts and it’s just somebody who’s mad, and I mean that’s upsetting in itself, it’s somebody who’s mad and otherwise there’s nothing no one there and there’s no ghosts there’s nobody there’s nothing but an

absence

an accusing absence, as if

let me out oh Jesus let me out of here this pub this corner this pissed lunatic tonight how has it gone so wrong so horrible so fast I’m swallowing my pint down necking it and next to me he’s laughing fit to bust his throat’s a lift-cage going up and down stuck between floors why did I come in here it’s like I didn’t have a choice I didn’t have a chance and next to me, what now, he’s pointing through the hanging smoke towards the door he’s

“There they goo! Ahahaha! All ayt the door like ashes up the chimney.”

but the door’s not moved the door’s not open what’s he seeing what’s he seeing in his schizophrenic seizure that I’m not finish my pint and clink the empty glass down on the table

“Benedict, I’m …”

“Ahaha! I know! Yer lookin’ fer a way out, but there’s not one. We’re all stuck ’ere wi’ no end in sight. Blood on the straw and fish guts up the corner. I’m still tryin’ t’get further in. Ahahaha!”

stand up I can’t say anything can’t even say goodbye what can you say, a situation like this, as if there was such a thing as if there was a situation like this struggling around the table with its hard edge juddering against my thighs there isn’t any space to move there isn’t any wiggle-room and all these people packing out the place I didn’t notice them come in “Excuse me … can I just come through, yeah, cheers … excuse me … sorry mate” stop saying that stop calling people mate they’re not your mates there’s no one down here who’s your mate and BWOIP BWOIP BWOIP BWOIP and behind me I can hear him laughing whinnying like a carthorse with the barn on fire I stumble over someone’s feet and hear the word cunt bubbling from the acoustic blur but then I’m finally I’m by the door and pushing at the hard glass through its useless little skirt of lace and then the air outside it’s cold and clean and big the air outside in Regent Square the night slams into me and there I’m free I got away from him I got away from it I got

what

what was that, that

stuff, that atmosphere it’s gone it isn’t here now and that’s how I know it was here like a noise that you don’t notice till it stops the sudden silence what just happened what just happened to me nothing nothing happened you just it’s just mental illness you just had a run in with it obviously it’s disturbing but there wasn’t any need to panic not to run out of the pub like that I must have looked a proper wally nothing happened calm down nothing happened everything’s alright everything’s normal for a minute the old heart was banging like a dustbin lid but I can see now I was being stupid letting it all get to me like that I don’t know I don’t know what I was thinking, that the world, reality, it had just I don’t know just broken and I felt like I was falling down the cracks but look at it I mean it’s fine its Regent Square its Friday everything’s okay there’s

traffic lights like freshly sucked fruit pastilles and

an ice mosquito biting on my neck the threat of rain with

couples young chaps striding and not staggering it’s early yet I’m

walking in a daze towards the crossing that will take me over to the top of Grafton Street the dark sluice running down into the valley there that’s what I mean it’s not like I made a decision or at least not consciously yet here I am I’m toddling across the road the pelican tweets chivying with its emerald wink as if I’ve chosen to go home this way and not up Sheep Street back the way I came I don’t remember choosing anything it’s just my feet I’m at the other side now and they’re taking me along what’s left of Broad Street one brown shoe and then the other and it’s not of my oh fuck me what’s the word volition not of my volition it’s like every step’s already set in stone and nothing I can do about it like it’s all predestined but then there’d be no such thing as oh watch out I nearly swerved and fell into the road casino lights up on my right I’m walking like I’m drunk but how can that be when I only had a pint a pint up at the Bird in Hand there with

Benedict Perrit

fuck that must be it I must be still in shock but that’s ridiculous it isn’t like he

raining a bit harder now and I’m not really dressed for it you know it was so nice when I came out I’m going to get soaked through if I’m not careful for that matter I’ll get soaked through if I am, another bloody stupid saying all that business in the pub no, no I’m better off not dwelling on it one brown shoe and then the other slapping on the shiny pavement wet now puddles gathering where the reflections of the sodium lamps perform a yellow shimmy one brown shoe and then the other not of my volition but then there’d be no such thing as free will there’d hold on what was it I thought earlier it was quite funny I was going to put it in the column it was oh yeah I remember it’s free will or free Will Shakespeare no on second thoughts it doesn’t sound as funny now too difficult explaining it the point still stands though, if this was all scripted in advance and for all that I know it might be then we’d all be actors no one would be innocent or guilty and well I suppose that if that was the way that things turned out to be we’d all get used to it in many ways it might be a much nicer world with no one questioning your ethics all the time no reason to feel rotten over anything you might have done some bad decisions that you might have made some time ago a while back a long while back I’m not talking about me now obviously but there’s people who are sensitive who are in torment over things they’ve done and if there’s no free will well you can see how some of us, people like that, it would be like the slate wiped clean and no more bad dreams no more sleepless nights over the other side of Broad Street the dual carriageway there’s just the top bit of the old Salvation Army fort the other one the one that hasn’t been pulled down yet actually I think it’s listed just the top bit of it you can see where it pokes up above the fencing upper windows like it’s looking at you trees and undergrowth around it looking at you from across the fence as if it’s an old dog penned up and left to die it doesn’t understand it doesn’t know what’s happening here’s the Mayorhold coming up it’s

pissing down literally spattering on the carriageway the paving slabs on me “I’m gunna catch me death” that’s what they used to say down here that accent like

Benedict Perrit

talking to thin air laughing at nothing nothing’s the last thing you want to laugh at nothing’s the most dreadful thing of all after you’ve gone I’m in my sixties now I don’t believe in hell or all the rest of it I mean it’s just the end death isn’t it that’s how a grown-up looks at it but then Benedict Perrit in the Bird in Hand the cackling and his painful eyes and all the people that were only there to him and yet

and yet I mean the ghosts even if only he could see them in a way they’re still there aren’t they even if he’s mad then they’re ghosts that are in his mind all of his memories of the neighborhood dead people all of it ghosts that are running through his mind and if you’re sitting there up the pub corner next to him you can’t help almost seeing what he’s seeing well not seeing ghosts but seeing how he sees the world so that it almost makes it real to you as well just for a moment I think that’s his house below me on the right one of the ones in Tower Street I don’t know which one it almost makes it real to you as well, the ghosts and everything, so that you feel as if it’s you as if it’s me who’s being haunted and not him as if the district and the dead were talking through him to me passing on a message why do I keep feeling as though this place hates me after all I’ve done for it how did he know my dreams that awful cellar and with no way out up on my left the Mayorhold’s knotted guts are growling with nocturnal traffic, with strangled monoxide farts ahead of me down Horsemarket there’s noise one of those howler monkey conversations young blokes who don’t know don’t care how loud they’re talking like they’ve got their headphones lager headphones on I think I’ll take a right down Bath Street cut up through the flats and that way it looks quiet enough no one about how did he know my dreams

and that’s another thing isn’t it if there’s no free will then why has this place got it in for me giving me nightmares giving me Benedict for fuck’s sake Perrit I’ve done nothing wrong you name me one thing I’ve done wrong and if there’s no free will then there’s no wrong no right no sin no virtue nothing everybody’s off the hook away and on the right that place it used to be the drill hall for the Boy’s Brigade I wonder Bath Street’s dead tonight I wonder if there’s still a Boy’s Brigade no but the free will business if nobody’s done anything wrong then why should anyone feel guilty when nobody had a choice and if there’s no free will then we’re all really free and by that I mean free of feeling bad and free of dreams and drunks and madmen you could smell ghosts on his breath we’ve none of us done any wrong and that’s objective fact objective scientific fact except

for it to be objective fact there’d have to be some sort of outside some sort of observer and

there isn’t one there’s only us just us seeing it all subjectively and

so

to us

to us there’s wrong we think we’ve got free will we think we’re doing wrong so the morality I mean that’s just the same free will or not we think we’re doing wrong and we can’t get away from that but that’s worse isn’t it the worst of both worlds no free will but there’s still sin there’s sin to us and we’re the only ones it matters to what’s that the Muslims say it’s something like “a saint may slay a million enemies and be without sin unless he regret but one” it’s that it’s the regret free will or not that doesn’t go away we’re trapped then aren’t we all of us trapped in our lives trapped in all this in Bath Street in the world the Boroughs everything it isn’t fair it’s

someone guns his engine takes off with a screech down in the dark ahead of me sounds like he’s in a hurry and the rain’s not letting up across the street off along Simons Walk somebody playing well I wouldn’t say that it was music playing something anyway how did he know my dreams and then you’ve got the little pocket park there lonely and deserted in the night and hulking over it the towers and like I say at least that’s space for social housing I was able to preserve if someone makes a profit that’s just business that’s how business works duh, what, would it be better if nobody made a profit and they’d pulled them down and we’d had that many more homeless on the streets oh I don’t think so I’d like to see Roman Thompson justify that argument who’d be the wanker then it’s like Iraq somebody has to be prepared to shrug off all the liberal bleating and do something proftical no practical to help all these poor people someone has to be prepared to get stuck in someone who isn’t fussy about getting their hands

dirty

turn left up the walkway of St. Peter’s House the Bath Street flats there’s nobody about tonight but sometimes well you have to watch yourself it’s lit up with the lights under the balconies so you can see what’s what somebody told me that the kids the rap kids come down here and do the hip-hop all of that to tell the truth I’m not much bothered one way or the other I mean all the dregs that have been stuck down here over the years I don’t see how some fucking kids who talk too fast to understand are going to make much difference frankly crackheads mental cases prossies that one with the stripy hair I’m sure she lives down here what would it be not that I ever would what would it be like I bet they’d do anything, it be like doing it with somebody like, anyway, the rain feels like it’s letting up a bit now that I’m nearly home wouldn’t you know it and the gravel path’s all shiny like the shingle at the seaside and what’s that it’s ugh it’s dogshit people shouldn’t have dogs if they can’t clear up behind them look at that fucking disgusting it looks like somebody’s stepped in it already glad it wasn’t me look there’s the grid of someone’s trainer-sole pressed into it it’s like a little model of New York made out of shit and in the rain and the electric light it’s wet and glistening it looks fresh oh God that turns my stomach shit I hate it I suppose I’ve got a thing about it if I hadn’t spotted it in time if I’d just put my foot in it you track it everywhere you go and it stays with you, everywhere you go you’re thinking what’s that smell and there’s your shitty footprints over everything you bring it home with you you get it everywhere all over everything I’m

laboring up the ramp to lamp-lit Castle Street there’s sirens somewhere I expect town center’s kicking off it’s probably a good job I’m home early before any trouble starts but what was that then in the Bird in Hand what was it if it wasn’t trouble I don’t know I don’t know what it was it was a fluke a meaningless fluke incident forget about it put it from your mind think about something else look at the brickwork on these walls they put these flats up nearly eighty years ago said they were temporary housing when they built them I mean technically a word like temporary just means “for a period of time” but I’d have thought that eighty years was pushing it I mean considered up against the lifespan of the universe the sun is temporary everything’s temporary St. Katherine’s House across the road there that’s as temporary as fuck one kitchen fire one B&H dropped down the back of the settee the fire services condemned it but we, they, they still stick people there and if there was a fire I mean they built tower blocks like this all up and down the country in the ’60s and if there’s a fire the central stairwell all these flats these type of flats it’s like a chimney people trying to get down while all the smoke and flames are going up I shouldn’t say this but I hope that Labor’s out of office if well more like when there is a fire the people that they stick down here I mean they’re at risk even if the place they live in isn’t burning down teenagers fresh from care homes mental difficulties everything you name it there were those two old dears that I saw a week or two ago, well, I presume they live there they were standing in the forecourt of St. Katherine’s just looking up at it rubbing their hands and cackling most likely they were care in the community you get them all down here all the abnormals and from what I hear it’s always been like that Benedict Perrit all of them how does this district turn them out it must be something in the water something in the soil and downhill to Chalk Lane the rain’s stopped

on the corner there the little nursery something in the window poster of some sort oh I remember Alma Warren someone said that she was going to have an exhibition down here just a one day thing a Saturday I think they said I’d thought it would be in a week or two but who knows it might even be tomorrow Alma Warren there’s another one another freak show boiled up from the Boroughs wasn’t she in the same class as him at school Benedict Perrit I’ve made overtures tried to be friendly but I just get the cold shoulder I don’t think she likes me acts like she’s a law unto herself as if she’s not on the same world as everybody else I think she’s vain thinks she’s superior morally superior to everybody else she’s got some sort of complex you can see it in her eyes and when she’s talking then she’s smiling and she’s saying funny things and being likable it’s all an act she’s smiling and her spidery eyes are twinkling but it’s like she’s trying to disguise the fact she wants to eat you it’s an act it’s a performance if she’s so fond of the Boroughs well then why doesn’t she live down here like I do I hate people like that people who pretend to be straightforward when you know you know that everyone’s got secrets everyone’s pretending something it’s an act not like with me with me it’s what you see is what you get I’m sorry but that’s how I am why don’t these people like me why don’t why the fuck should you care why the fuck should you care if a load of chavs and dead-end cases like you or not you’re the alderman the one with the accomplishments the one with the CV why do you always come back to these same things these same thoughts you’re like a hamster in a wheel just round and round for fuck’s sake just get over it what everybody else thinks doesn’t matter but

it’s still mean-spirited the way they always think the worst of someone or at least they seem to think the worst of me it’s hurtful sometimes and across the way there Doddridge Church I’ve often wondered what that little door’s for halfway up the wall I’ll bet they used to spread their nasty little rumors about Philip Doddridge calling him a wanker calling him a cunt when he was practically a saint a man who really cared about the neighborhood not that I’m trying to make comparisons but I mean you can see the similarities I feel good I feel good about myself and if there’s people who just want to think the worst who won’t give anyone the old benefit of the doubt then that’s their problem rolling downhill nearly home now car park on the right I think they put plague victims there and on the left another car park the old Doddridge burial ground dead people everywhere we’re temporary we’re not forever I suppose that it’s a blessing in a way free will or not whatever we’ve done wrong whatever we’ve supposedly done wrong time wipes it all away eventually and nobody remembers and the little things don’t matter everything’s forgiven when it’s gone the debts are canceled and there’s no permanent record because nothing’s permanent the whole world’s temporary and that’s our what’s it called statute of limitations our get out of jail card ah now here we are Black Lion just over the other side of Marefair at the bottom it looks dead be lucky if it’s still here come next year when we moved in we had a little newsagents down at the bottom corner of Chalk Lane just opposite there was a balding bloke who ran it Pete Pete something and veer to the right around the corner on our little walkway you can

see the valley floor the station and the traffic junction at the crossroads all the lights I

didn’t have a choice in being who I am over Far Cotton Jimmy’s End there’s

no ghosts nothing there and nothing’s haunted three doors down I find my key and there safe sanctuary home at last and none of it the Boroughs it can’t get you now I flick the light on in the hall and peel my jacket off it’s wringing wet it’s glistening looks like a dead seal hung there dripping from the coat-hook do you know I’m suddenly exhausted I’m completely knackered I suppose I’ve just done nearly a full circuit of the district and it’s not like I’m a walker in the general run of things of course there was that business at the Bird in Hand I can’t believe it now stood here at home I can’t believe I ran out of the pub literally ran and that, all the adrenaline, that’s probably another reason why you feel worn out through in the living room I flump down in the armchair and ugh fuck my trousers cold and soaking wet against my legs my ass where they’ve been rained on this is fucking horrible it’s not much after nine but I don’t know I might as well just go to bed it’s left me in a funny mood this evening has I might as well just go to bed and sleep it off feel better in the morning I know one thing for a certainty if I don’t get these trousers off then it’s pneumonia and I suppose I’m feeling a bit lonely I wish Mandy was at home but even then

stand up and even that’s an effort put the lights off downstairs and creak up to bed the bathroom’s a bit dazzling I take my shirt and trousers off my shoes and socks the shirt is absolutely sopping its gone all transparent there’s a wet, pink-tinted oval where it’s sticking to my stomach for a second I thought I was bleeding leave the wet things draped over the bath’s rim till the morning I suppose my underpants and vest feel a bit damp but no they’ll just dry naturally I take my pills three of them every night it’s a palaver you don’t think about it when you’re young squint through the condensation on the mirror while I brush my teeth look at the state of me I’m like a garden gnome a stepped-on David Bellamy a hobbit stuck in quarantine with spearmint rabies dripping off my chin I’m sick of looking at myself pad over to the toilet bare feet on the chilly tiles lift up the seat so that it isn’t splashed and after a few moments’ waiting while my knob decides on what it wants to do there’s a pale golden rope of piss unraveling into the tinkling bowl it’s funny standing looking down we’ve got two rolls of toilet paper standing on the cistern lid and looking down beneath that there’s the lifted seat and lid and then the gaping bowl it looks like a white cartoon frog like an albino Kermit from the Muppets staring at me boggle-eyed with an indignant and betrayed look while I stand here pissing down his throat even the toilet blaming me for something there’s a thing you have to do you have to press the lever down two or three times before it flushes while its gargling I yank the string to kill the bathroom light and I’m along the landing and in bed before the cistern noise has died away to hisses drips and piddles it’s a sort of private superstition I suppose I don’t know what I think would happen if I didn’t make it into bed before the noises stopped it’s more a sort of game a sort of habit I’ve got no idea why I do it oh that’s

nice the mattress creaks I can feel all the ache and tension soaking out of me I rub my feet together and they’re dry and cold but warming with the friction and that’s good hopefully I’ll sleep through tonight no dreams no cellars nothing running at me with its face unfolding safe now safe here in our little house our little corner of the Boroughs opposite the station ten years and I’m hoping that this place will be unrecognizable a big development exploding up from where the station is and most of this, this place, most of it cleaned up move the social stragglers out most of it swept away that’s if the money lasts the boom the money that they need to do it no the land down here the property it could be really nice it could be really valuable not that we’d ever sell part of the neighborhood that’s us part of the furniture roll over on my side and drag a tuck of duvet up between my knees to stop them knobbling against each other ahh that’s nice that’s

I suppose the people down here in the main they’re not that bad it’s really in the pubs you see them at their worst and let them take the piss out of me if they’ve got a mind to I’ll still be on top of things when they’re all gone so let them have their bit of fun it’s not their fault they’re hopeless, living in a hopeless place, they’re and I’m speaking as a Marxist now modified Marxist they’re just victims they’re the end result inevitably of historical and economic processes but then I mean you look at them drunk all day it’s the kids who bear the brunt of it a lot of them the parents they don’t want jobs not prepared to work they’re not

it’s like a flooded earthworks did I come here as a boy what what where was I

not prepared to work that’s right blame everybody else for their own problems blame the council blame the system blame me we’re all doing what we have to do and some of them down here I mean they knock their wives about they say it’s the frustration it’s the poverty but then why do they have so many kids with kids to hold you back how are you ever going to make it, get to where you want to be in life take me and Mandy children would have just got in the way of our careers and look at us we’re happy very happy but some people they’re just human rubbish they’re just

scalloped cliffs of mud a long way off across the grass and distant red brick railway arches I’ve been here before look there’s a toy a plastic elephant dropped in a puddle it’s I’m sure it once belonged to me the last time I was here and isn’t somewhere near a house an old what what did I

all of the roughs the scruffs the tough and rumble of them all their kids all violent doing drugs I used to read them ghost stories at Christmas mothers wearing short skirts fishnet tights effing and blinding you should hear them not brought up they’re dragged up it’s a shithole full of shits there’s pedophiles down here there’s sex offenders well they’ve got to put them somewhere crackheads and it’s all their own fault it’s not ours not mine they ought to pull their socks up but then

there’s that old well scarlet house that stands up from the wasteland on its own the gray sky overhead and in my pants in my gray pants and vest I walk towards it through the weeds I need the toilet weren’t there lavatories down in the cellar of that building if I can remember how to find them if they’re not all cracked and full of backed up

but then who am I