Ironopolis Read online

  IRONOPOLIS

  GLEN JAMES BROWN

  Parthian, Cardigan SA43 1ED

  www.parthianbooks.com

  First published in 2018

  © Glen James Brown

  ISBN 978-1-912109-14-2

  Edited by Edward Matthews

  Cover design by Syncopated Pandemonium

  Section Title Page Icons made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com

  Glasses icon on Midnight title page by Allison Love @friendfriend.net

  Printed in EU by Pulsio SARL

  Published with the financial support of the Welsh Books Council

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  A cataloguing record for this book is available from the British Library.

  For you, Sue

  CONTENTS

  DAY OF THE DARK

  (Una Cruickshank of Loom Street)

  THIS ACID LIFE

  (Jim Clarke of Hessle Rise)

  MIDNIGHT

  (Frank and Scott Hulme of Second Avenue)

  HEART OF CHROME

  (Corina Clarke of Peelaw Bank)

  UXO

  (Douglas Ward of Campbell Road)

  THE FINAL LEFT

  (Henry Szarka of Sober Hall)

  I believe that if we have a few more years at our disposal,

  we shall have the best housing record of any nation in the world.

  Aneurin Bevan, 1948

  DAY

  OF THE

  DARK

  Una Cruickshank of Loom Street

  25/2/1991

  Dear Stephan,

  Once, as a girl on holiday in Blackpool, I went on the Wild Mouse, this ride where you squashed into a fibreglass mouse that went screaming round a rickety wooden track. Never, ever again. Afterwards, I had to clamp head between knees to keep my candyfloss down, then spent the rest of the day holding the coats. You’ve probably never heard of the Wild Mouse, so maybe this wasn’t the best way to start, but that was what reading your letter felt like.

  In answer to your first question: yes, your ‘detective work’ was good. I still can’t believe you went through the marriage records and wrote to everyone in the country with my old name. God knows what the ten other Jean Healys will make of this! I’m also struggling to wrap my head around the fact that Una named a painting after me. After what happened between us, I always wondered if she still thought of me. I suppose that answers that. I’ll answer your questions about her as best I can, though I don’t know how useful I’ll be or how long it’ll take. I’m not well you see, but I won’t bore you with the details. The only thing drearier than illness is having to listen as others describe theirs.

  You asked about when me and Una first met. Well, from the very beginning she was always around. Like I remember watching ants chew the legs off a woodlice (louse? I never know which) in the back yard, a line of ants carrying them away still twitching down a crack. Another time, I’m standing in the kitchen door with warm piddle running down my legs as Mam, her mouth full of wooden pegs, hangs the washing. I remember drowning my dolly Pree in a rain-filled pothole. I’ve got many raggedy shreds of sight and sound like that deep inside me, and in all of them Una is there somewhere, just out of frame.

  Later, things get clearer: me and Una on the kerb tearing one of Mam’s jam tarts apart with four hands. I see her twisting and popping her elbows to make the other Loom Street kids squeal (she was the most double-jointed person I’ve ever met). I remember sitting behind her in the bath as Mam tips soapy water over her head. Greasy black hair unkinking. Suds slipping down her spine. Back then you could still bathe another woman’s child.

  Una had no siblings but I had a sister, Agnes, five years older than me and pretty and popular and everything I wasn’t. Plump, I suppose you would have called me (Agnes’ name for me was ‘suet’). I was shy, got picked on, and was convinced Mam loved me less because of it. Una would say, ‘Sod Agnes, I’m your kin,’ and at nights as I lay in bed listening through the wall while Mam did Agnes’ hair, or pinned her a new dress, the two of them giggling away, I told myself it was true.

  Then as now, kids like us didn’t get an easy time at school. To give you an example I want to tell you about a specific P.E. class. Mr Thirsk was our teacher then, so we must have been eight or nine. I hated P.E. Whenever I think of those lessons now I see rain-filled skies, dead leaves skittering round my ankles. Nitheringly cold, too, our flimsy P.E. kits no match for the wind shrieking off the North Sea. School was split into houses based on history: The Stewarts were green, Hanover was red, Windsor blue, and yellow was The Tudors. I was a Tudor, Una a Stewart, and we were playing against each other in a netball match. Netball terrified me because I thought if I caught the ball wrong I’d break my fingers. But Una was fearless: tall, stick-thin, lightning quick, spinning on her heel as she threaded the ball through waving Tudor arms. Elsie Stanger hated Una especially. Elsie was my team captain and worst bully, who had once squirted ink into my jam roly-poly and made me eat it. All through the game she’d been rolling her eyes and sniggering whenever I made a mistake (which was often) and as for Una, she stood on her heels and jabbed her in the back whenever Mr Thirsk wasn’t looking. I heard Elsie hiss ‘your mam’s a crazy gypsy’ as she and Una tussled for the ball, and as the game went on, Una’s pale face darkened in a way that had nothing to do with exertion.

  Near the end of the game, Una got the ball in the centre circle and Elsie saw her chance. She charged full tilt at Una with no intention of trying to win possession. No, Elsie wanted to flatten her. Una ignored her Stewart teammates as they yelled for her to pass, to save herself. Instead, she wound up and whipped the ball directly at Elsie’s face. At almost the same second, a black streak shot across the playground and the ball exploded in a burst of feathers and an ear-splitting screech. Elsie, too, screeched as she tripped, skinning her hands and knees on the rough tarmac.

  Stillness. Mr Thirsk blew his whistle. The rest of us blinked at each other.

  The sparrowhawk lay smashed on the playground, one wing twisted under itself, the other unfurled and twitching. Its head was bent awfully to the side and a single golden eye stared up at us. The poor thing wasn’t dead. Dappled brown feathers blew away in the cold wind. A few feet away, Elsie held her bloody knees with her bloody hands and whimpered. I didn’t envy her. Her mam would be digging stones out of her with a hot pin for weeks.

  ‘Take her to the nurse,’ Mr Thirsk said. You could tell he wasn’t sure what had just happened either.

  Two girls hoisted Elsie up under her armpits and limped her away. Una stood in the centre circle alone, staring at the dying bird. Mr Thirsk blew his whistle again, and it sounded so thin and stupid against the wind. Lesson was over, he said, so we all headed back to the stinky cloakroom to change. The others in the class were whispering about Una and throwing suspicious glances over their shoulders at her. I turned back when I got to the door. Una was still on the playground, kneeling over the hawk. It looked like she was speaking to it. Then she wrung its neck. When she came over she had two feathers in her fist. She handed me one.

  ‘Keep this,’ she said.

  Her eyes were pink, but dry. That was another thing: I never saw her cry. Actually, that’s a fib. I did once, but many years later.

  That sparrowhawk set the tone for Una at school. It was the beginning of the myth that grew darker and stranger the older she became. A myth which made girls like Elsie think twice before they messed with her. Because of this, I stayed as close to Una as I could. I included myself in her protective bubble, and while I may have succeeded, it meant the few other friends
I did have soon drifted away. Until all me and Una had were each other.

  So those are my earliest memories. My hand is cramping now. Can’t write anymore. I’ll post this tomorrow. I’m aiming to answer the rest of your questions as soon as I can, because I feel there’s a lot more to come. You’ve jarred something loose, though whether that’s good or bad, I can’t say.

  Sincerely,

  Jean Barr

  P.S. You said you’re the boss of Ananke Acquisitions? Please send me the address, so I can direct future letters there. I’d prefer my husband not to wonder why I spend my days writing to another man. Things around here are tense enough as it is.

  6/3/1991

  Dear Stephan,

  You also wanted to know about her parents? Well, I’ve been sitting here all morning attempting to do just that but it’s beyond me. Instead, I’ll tell you about New Year’s Eve 1958, and let it stand for all.

  Even though you didn’t get presents, I loved New Year’s Eve better than my birthday or Christmas or anything. I think it was because everybody was the best version of themselves. People wore their best clobber and nicest perfumes. They had a drink, cracked a joke, and dropped their guards. It was wonderful to see. Teesside was a metal town back then, Ironopolis folk called it: over 40,000 people worked at the forges in their heyday, and the night skies burned red. But graft could be brutal. It could – and frequently did – swallow people whole, but for that one night everybody was changed. Our neighbours, but not.

  We always threw a big party at our house for anyone who wanted to come. No invitation necessary. It was the only night of the year where we extended the dining table and Mam’s special red and gold tablecloth came out. Seeing that cloth was like seeing an old friend. I was eleven, and I’d spent the whole day helping to make the food: sausage rolls, ham and pease pudding stotties, brandy snaps (bear in mind this was only four years after rationing and food like that was still the height of sophistication). I can still smell the Yardley’s English Lavender and Old Spice and cigarette smoke as I walked through the party with trays. I loved how people sneaked looks at their watches, as if midnight was a big secret only they were in on.

  I was also on coat duty, which I took seriously. I’d say, ‘Good evening Mr and Mrs So-and-So,’ trying to do my best radio voice, ‘do come in.’ There was a knock at the door but it was only Una. Her hair a violent charcoal scribble around her ghost face, those dark, taciturn eyes. I let her in without launching into my welcome-spiel.

  ‘They’re coming,’ she said as she passed me.

  I peered up Loom Street at the rapidly approaching figure of Talitha Cruickshank – Una’s mother – clip-clopping towards me in a black dress and shawl that hung like a dead thing off her collarbones, her cleavage spilling out when she bent down to me on the front step. Her eyelashes were clumped together with mascara and her red painted mouth was a stab wound pressed hard to my cheek until I felt teeth. No perfume either, not like the other ladies. She reeked of sweat and her breath smelled like fruit turning black.

  She raised her left hand, which was missing the ring finger, to the ceiling. ‘The end is nigh,’ she whispered. Never forgotten that. Then she said George would be along in two ticks, and with that she went into the party.

  I shivered in the open doorway, straining my eyes up the street, but I couldn’t see him. Maybe he’d forgotten something and gone home? Maybe he’d already come in through the back door? Like I said, I took my guest-welcoming seriously, but the December air was breadknives. I decided to keep the door open a crack just in case, and was in the process of wedging a shoe in the jamb when I saw him.

  George Cruickshank came down the walk like a man in syrup. Shoe heels scraping the frosty path, arms loose at his sides. Minutes passed before he reached the house and my teeth rattled the whole time.

  ‘Good evening, Mr Cruickshank,’ I said when he finally arrived.

  It took him a moment to realise where the voice was coming from. He looked down at me with watery eyes, and if you’d never met him before you’d think it was booze. But not me, I knew better.

  ‘Hello, lass.’ George pulled the words out like toffee.

  ‘Your tie’s untied, Mr Cruickshank.’

  He put an unsteady hand on my head, but the tie remained loose around his throat.

  When the party got off the ground I was allowed to play my favourite records. They’re still in the loft somewhere: ‘Tom Hark’ by Elias and his Zigzag Jive flutes, and ‘Endless Sleep’ by Marty Wilde. (I still shiver when Marty sings: ‘I heard her voice crying in the deep / come join me baby in my endless sleep’.) Dad and Uncle Neville had humped the settee onto the upstairs landing that morning, so there was space to cut a rug, and everybody was having fun. (I’ve got a diamond-edged memory of walking in on Mam and Dad kissing over the kitchen sink. When she saw me, Mam giggled and threw a tea-towel over Dad’s head.)

  Meanwhile, Talitha worked the room. She touched men’s arms and laughed too-loudly at the things they said, while the wives of those men shot dark looks at each other. George sat on a stool against the wall with an untouched drink in his hand, lost in a spot on the carpet. I found Una upstairs on the settee with what looked like a glass of bitter lemon, but when I had a sip my mouth filled with spit.

  ‘Gin in it,’ she said, and popped her elbows.

  Agnes shouted up the stairs that it was nearly midnight, so I pulled Una off the settee and we went down.

  The last moments of the year are always the most exciting, don’t you think? Someone lifted the needle off the record and snapped on the wireless, swizzling through the flying-saucer noise to the BBC announcer telling us we only had thirty seconds left. The adults bustled happily into a rough circle and crossed their arms, while the kids still on their feet at that hour formed another, smaller, circle inside theirs. I found myself across from Una, who was, I think, sozzled.

  ‘Ten,’ the announcer said.

  TEN! – Everyone roared – NINE! – I mumbled – EIGHT! – Una didn’t say anything – SEVEN! – The woman next to Talitha held her hand like you would a stranger’s used hanky – SIX! – I looked around for George – FIVE! – he wasn’t there – FOUR! – I caught a glimpse of him through the bodies, still on his stool, watching as his spilled drink soaked into the carpet – THREE! – TWO! – ONE! – HAPPY NEW YEAR!

  The adults shook limbs to ‘Auld Lang Syne’, while we bairns substituted the words for ‘daaaah daaaah dah dahs’ while trying to yank each other’s arms out of their sockets. Una put up no resistance. Her arms jerked painfully, her head bounced loose on her long neck. The adults broke apart, hugged and kissed and shook hands, and everything was perfect until an off-kilter wail silenced the room. Talitha had turned off the wireless. She clasped her hands between her breasts and stared with wild eyes. People instinctively gave her space, as you would a dog you don’t trust. Someone tutted loudly.

  Then Talitha smiled a wide, smoke-wrecked smile, closed her eyes and began to sing.

  To this day I’ve never heard the like. How can I, with only this notebook and pen, begin to describe it? It was treacly and curdled and jagged all at once, and not in English. Smirking men elbowed each other while others (women, mostly) just glowered. Una slinked back upstairs with a freshly pilfered drink.

  Talitha herself noticed nothing. She sang and swayed in the centre of the room like an animal caged so long its mind’s gone, and only after the final trembling note faded did she open her eyes. Her mascara had run into mad black blurs like the ink-splot pictures they have at the loony bin.

  The room was deadly silent until Mam led a half-hearted smattering of applause. Someone put a record on and the tension lifted a little. George’s stool was empty. I went to the hall and the door was wide open, letting in the now-January bitterness. George himself was some way off up the street, shuffling away like an iron-booted diver across the seabed.

 
Back in the living room, Talitha was involved with some neighbours. I was out of earshot, but I could tell backs were up. Mary Eastbourne from Number 8 jabbed a finger at Talitha, who was grinning a grin laced with chaos. Mary lunged at her, but was held back. Mam stepped in and said something to Mary, who shook herself free and stormed into the kitchen. Then she spoke directly into Talitha’s ear. I watched as Talitha’s grin faded to an eerie Elvis lip hitch. Una’s mother elbowed through the party towards me. I ran into the hall and opened the front door for her.

  Talitha tugged her thin shawl across her shoulders. ‘Everyone’s a critic,’ she said as she left.

  Upstairs, Una’s new drink was almost sunk. I said Happy New Year and she slurred it back. She smelled like unwashed bedsheets when I hugged her, and had to close one eye to focus on me.

  ‘There’s a kiss on your cheek,’ she said as she passed out.

  *

  So those were her folks, Stephan. Make of them what you will. Next time I’ll tell you about the riverbank. I know you are eager for me to get to that.

  Sincerely,

  Jean Barr.

  29/3/1991

  Dear Stephan,

  There’s a racket downstairs. Vincent is shouting at Alan for not putting the washhouse key back on the hook. Alan is my son, Vincent my husband. Now I can hear Alan limping upstairs and shutting his bedroom door. Chopin – that’s our dog – howls outside. Vincent stomps around. Now he’s gone out and it’s quiet.

  I apologise. I didn’t mean to tell you any of this, it’s just it happens a lot. Alan is twenty-two and sensitive, something which Vincent finds difficult to accept. But then, you know about art, Stephan. I don’t need to explain sensitivity to you.

  Una was a born artist. Even as a bairn, she’d find some way to leave her mark – even just with her finger on a steamy bus window. Here’s a story for you: one rainy weekend when we were about ten and mooching around the house – always my house – we saw Nana had nodded off in her chair. Una clocked her first, and went to the battered old sea chest my Dad still had from the war, where I kept my toys. She creaked the lid, got pencils and paper and stretched herself out on the hearth rug. Turning her head this way and that, sucking on the end of her pencil, she studied Nana. Then she started to draw. Her pencil scratched like mice in the walls, her eyes shining in their inkwell sockets.