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‘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.
‘What’s this?’ he asked. Spin handed over the parcel and gestured at length.
‘By the kettle?’ asked Mr Link. ‘I don’t think so. Post comes to the office, not out here. Let’s have a look at it then.’
He opened the parcel and inspected the contents. His face grew bleaker. He was never exactly a bundle of joy, but this was as grim as I’d seen him.
‘I think we’ll be having a word with our student friend. Mr Haines, could I trouble you to pop out of that deep pit you’ve dug for yourself?’
I considered hiding.
‘There’s no point hiding down there, the foundations are square and we can find you. Come on.’
I dragged myself up to ground level and squished over to them. Mr Link raised the Grecian 2000 and looked at it.
‘Getting old isn’t funny,’ he said. ‘You’ll find that out one day.’
He looked at Spin. Spin gestured at length, and then held his sides.
‘Ah,’ said Mr Link. ‘I see. So this was a prank, then? This waste of company time? Bit of a laugh? I have nothing against a bit of a laugh.’
Spin raised his eyebrows.
‘Is this your idea of a joke?’ Mr Link asked me. I nodded.
‘Fair enough. Jokes happen on building sites. But I think we’ll have no more. And we’ll say no more about it,’ he said, surprising me. I’d expected to get the sack. Perhaps I really was the best temp they’d had. Anyway, it did the trick. It must have done. They only played one more joke on me.
VI
To cut things short, I used to work on the building sites. After we finished that factory, we moved to the other side of town and put up a warehouse and then we did some office buildings in the classical warehouse style. My overdraft became smaller despite the best efforts of Mr Fallow and his staff. I worked on sites as far away as Wolverhampton and Tipton, despite the language barrier.
The buildings were always the same. I mean, they had different functions – this one was a hospital, this one an office, this one a luxury hotel with many and varied facilities – but they all looked like warehouses.
‘That,’ Mr Link would say, surveying whatever we had just finished bundling together, ‘is what a building is meant to look like. Square, straight, flat on the top and no fancy business.’
Darren and I had decided that Mr Link genuinely believed this. Strange beliefs and superstitions were common on building sites. Spin believed that scaffolding formed matrices that could tune in to otherworldly broadcasts. Darren believed that if he dug far enough down, his trench would connect with the mines that ran under Dudley and he’d be able to tunnel under the off-licence and get all his drinks for free. Mr Link believed that all buildings should be cuboid and without decoration or, ideally, doors and windows. I believed that I was at the beginning of my life and things would turn out okay without me putting much effort into it.
‘Square and straight,’ Mr Link would say. The rest of us would look at each other and try to get away. ‘Nothing fancy. Gargoyles and curlicues and all of that are all well and good for cathedrals, but the modern building is regular. Solid. No weaknesses in the structure.’
This was clearly untrue. In high winds the warehouses we put up fell apart, great sheets of prefab spinning off into the night like a giant conjuror’s playing cards. The structures were riddled with weaknesses, apart from the foundations. Those were solid.
‘Some of them fall down,’ Darren said.
Mr Link gave him a poisonous look. ‘That,’ he said slowly, ‘is because there are weak spots. Windows! Doors! How can we make a solid structure when there are parts of it that open?’
