Midland

REDEVELOPMENT

B3

In the littery shittiness of a construction site in the regrettably English mid-century Midlands, this is where it begins. Between two churning cement mixers, on a cusp of crunched bricks, is where our young woman now stands. She’s damp. Her head is a veritable skip. Bobbed, what old novels would describe as ‘plain’, she’s barely out of the grammar school for girls down the road from Lozells. Lozells is where the shopkeepers astroturf their tabletops and hang up skinny chickens by the chickens’ webbed feet. This young woman is as skinny as a skinny chicken herself. For such a whip of a thing, though, her biceps are remarkably pert: they pop out like Pop Eye’s from under her overalls’ blue sleeves. At night before sleeping she tenses her muscles, taps them, and then, satisfied, nods off, smiling. Her upper-body strength is the one solid thing she considers she has. The clouds make skid-marks in the sky above her. A whoosh of air flips back her fringe.

It’s not that she needs the money. That isn’t the reason why she’s here, now, stood between cement mixers. It’s not that she needs money. What would she need money for? She’s a young woman. She lives at home still, and home, down the other road from Lozells, so that Lozells was what she crossed on her way everyday to school — home for this young woman has until recently been totally homely, as squeaky as the wheels of a homemade tea trolley. She was good in school to boot. Had she wanted to, she could easily have gone on to university. Or being as she is a woman, she could have gone to the secretarial college, whose buildings she has just now seen being demolished.

Her brain is much brighter than the slump of sky she lives under.

This is why she is here. Two main things.

First, it turned out that she was not begotten by whom she thought: her parents were not her parents. Second, she became the unbeloved of a young man who called himself Zero. After these two things became cumulative, this young woman came to the point where the best she could do was think of herself as an empty crisp packet adrift in a puddle. Or as a beer can’s snapped and abandoned ring-pull. That at least was how she put her situation to herself in the pages of her inevitable diary. To begin with she cried a bit. Tears sat fatly in her dimples. The tips of her fingers gave off precisely quantified shivers. But very quickly she realised that the only thing for it was to embrace the grimness, inhabit it, and so off she went to get herself some work on this construction site.

That is the short if not the long of it.

Sometimes this young woman forgets she is such a young woman.

Sometimes this young woman forgets she is a young woman.

Her muscles are becoming more muscly. Her palms have stopped shivering and are rapidly toughening. There is something about the neck of a crane and the hook that hangs from it that she finds compelling, calming yet portentous. The thrill that comes from being wolf-whistled whilst wearing oversized overalls and cooking concrete — that too has something to do with why she’s standing here, now, stamping rocks into gravel, her eyes stinging from the grit.

The dust rolls towards her in giant mothballs from the space where the secretarial college was. She coughs.

In all seriousness: this young woman here considers herself a teleported Trümmerfrau. She reckons herself a rubble woman transported from smashed Berlin, a city to which she’s never been, to this shoddy city here, a city which also happens to have a name that begins with a ‘b’, a name that in certain circles and industries means counterfeit, cheap, showy. Used as an adjective, the name of this city of hers turns something valuable into something bogus. Apart from bogusness, however, words such as cheap and showy don’t much match with what our young woman now sees before her, because what she sees now before her is many crumpled walls in her immediate vicinity, a wrecking ball in the middle of everything, and in the distance a bleary mess of disgusting Victorian buildings. Either side of her like nauseous stomachs the cement mixers churn. The sky lurches. Everything around her is literally rubbish. This city is not Berlin and this young woman here is only a Trümmerfrau in her crummy Traüme.

She breathes.

After grammar school was over, one of her classmates went to work in a village in southern Africa. To our young woman that option seemed more a cop-out than it was laudable. To remain amongst the crisp packets and puddles — to be a crisp packet in a puddle, watching as the wrecking balls wrought their pendulous damage on a place that’s a wreck already anyroad — staying put, to her way of thinking, was the better endeavour. To stay put was heroic in its foregoing of heroism. It was inconsequential. It was a thorough plunge into thoughtlessness, a word she and Zero had had many debates about. Legging it to Africa may have been what that French poet with a name pronounced ‘Rambo’ had done, but staying put as a misplaced Trümmerfrau was better.

So here she is, stood in a dump. Call her Stig.

Back when she herself was shoddily begotten, the wrecking balls were bombs, like they were in Berlin.

All before her lies an expanse of littered listlessness.Amongst the aghast and battered, amongst those who have never geträumt a crummy Traum, amongst those who can’t even boast of a German O-Level — in this city that begins with a ‘b’, is where she will be.

On her big toe rests the plate of a spade. Beneath the toe rests the skeleton of an old road, and the carcass of a new one.

But the thing is, there’s also this: there’s still a bit of this skinny strong smart stubborn young woman that wishes she wasn’t here. To that itch she has to admit. There’s a bit of her that would rather not be another pained fizzog traipsing home along acorned pavements, all be her a pained fizzog who spends her days decked out in overalls, poised between cement mixers, eclipsed by great cranes. The tiny but shiny difference between remaining here in this shoddy city out of laziness or wastedness and staying here in a state of blessedness because of a decision — that difference can be difficult to see. Zero, in his way, did his best to point out this out to her. He tried. It’s true. And what Zero said to this bold burly bobbed young woman when eventually he gave up on her, shrugged, and alone went away— what he said to her then is what now prods at her as she stands in the littery shittiness of a construction site in the regrettably English mid-century Midlands:

Yower out of time, bab.

PRECIPITATION

B3

In the cemetery, which is the heart of me, there is a bab, squat, pissing. It is dark, like. The piss fizzes. The bab hiccups. There is another throat hiccupping near her. This other throat gargles the dark, goes:

Urroy up!

The piss fizz foams. The bab’s petticoat tickles the turf. The cathedral’s stones slowly churn. The stained-glass windows have none of their colours now. In the glass eye of a horrified shepherd I could engineer a twinkle, but I don’t: no one would notice I if did, so I don’t. The deep soft stone hums. I too hum. I rattle, I whir. I, this grotty, carbuncular city, am dull because of the dead air, because all my facades are tarry with machine-sweat and the flatulence of foundries. I am filthy. I have been becoming filthier and filthier for over a century now. First it began as a gentle chug, a slow, industrious grunge. Then it became heavier. Then it never stopped.

If seen from above, e.g. by a pigeon, or else by a bomb, the cemetery the bab is pissing in takes the shape of a trapezoid. There are two main arteries that suck on it: Temple Road on the one side and on the other, Colmore Row. There is also a small, barely used passage. This wiggles its way down the hill to New Street and is called Needless Alley. No joke. Look it up.

The pissing bab absently laughs. Her urine rushes into the thinning grass. This bab here has removed her knickers: so as to avoid pissing on them, she has taken them all the way off. Through the holes in the knickers’ frills, pass ants.

The other throat chunters something, then groans:

"Aw, urroy oop, bab!"

The bab laughs again carelessly, carries on pissing. Her piss is perhaps the longest piss ever to grace the diminutive grave of

Margaretta Stocker, Pianist,

who departed this Life in [illeg.]

the smallest Woman ever in this Kingdom

possessed with every Accomplishment

only 33 inches high.

It’s too dark for the bab to see what she is pissing on, but I know it by heart. The grave the bab is pissing on is little more than a stony stub, I’ll give her that, plus its inscription has been eroded by the fart breath that daily circulates, the wheeze of me, the muck. The words have become smudges, hardly grazing the stone. There is also the fact that, for balance, the bab has her hand grabbed around the bit of the inscription that marks the midget musician’s

Memory

so that all

Memory of

the midget is more strangled and more obscured than it would be anyroad.

The moons in the bab’s fingernails are more beautiful than the moon itself.

From the direction of the other throat comes a rustling, then a thud, then another groan. The bab’s urine stream grows more powerful each time she laughs.

I would bet that this bab has never noticed poor dead Margaretta’s grave even in daylight, despite crossing this heart of mine regularly on her way to catch a tram home from the stop on Colmore Row. Home being, for this particular bab, the boarding house her parents run, a tall brick terrace on Armoury Road, Lozells.

I know much more than I let on. I know it all by heart.

The bab’s nail-polish gets chipped on the midget musician’s stone.

To the right of the bab, closer to the cathedral’s entrance porch, stands a statue of the Bishop Charles Gore. A vagabond is hugging him. The vagabond wears i) a pair of slacks, with the right leg longer than the left leg because the hem of the right leg has collapsed; and ii) his hair immaculately gelled. The bab has not noticed the vagabond. The vagabond has not noticed the bab.

The vagabond dreams of defecating, but then dreams better of it. Thanks be to the Bishop Charles Gore.

The bab has just inserted one wiggling digit into her nostril.

The vagabond’s dream presently features a tall, rotund tower and, at the top of it, people queuing up to have enemas.

The bab’s urine continues to surge.

The bab is the first person to touch the midget’s gravestone in months.

In the meantime the bab yawns.

Time — for the time being — is still alive in these parts. Time can still be categorised, countenanced, zoned. It ticks on through the mud and scum, the puff and trawl. It is one hundred years since the midget’s truncated yet expert body was buried here in this cemetery beneath the bumcheeks of this pissing bab and, according to all the banners they have hung across my roads, passages, and hoary canals, exactly

ONE HUNDRED YEARS!

since I, this city, was what they call incorporated, which is to say it is one hundred years since I, as a place, was combined, condensed and toasted by a table of paunched industrialists, their coat-tails all daubed with grunge, their pockets weighted with the metal they made from their ‘toys’, meaning small metal objects of various kinds, e.g. pincers and pen nibs. Except of course the industrialists did not actually make the metal themselves. Except also that some of them traded not in toys, but wire and guns.

It’s my birthday.

It’s a whole century since I became I, since I became a fully-fledged thing to be administered, visited, commented upon and lived in. My incorporation is what they’re celebrating in the ballroom of the Grand Hotel right now. The bab and this other of hers have raised many cups of punch to me, and now their bladders need to piss the punch out.

Get a jerk on, bab!

Incorporation is what gave me a voice, of a sort. There were those who said what it really meant was

REPRESENTATION

but it was only the men who were allowed to vote for my

REPRESENTATIVE

and then only men of the wealthier kind. The babs didn’t even get a peep in. It’s debatable as to whether I have ever been represented at all. I suppose some would call me a setting, though not much has ever been set in me. I have chimney-tops for nostrils and oil puddles for eyes.

The bab yawns again, then finishes pissing. For men who need to go there are iron urinals strategically located around town. For women, there are gravestones.

Yo all done?

It’s the other one, come nearer. The bab is stroking the grass, searching for her knickers. I could tilt myself and slip them within reach of her trim fingernails, but I don’t.

Ar.

I saw yo.

In the dark?

The bab’s knickers sneak into her hand.

No, I saw yo inside. Dancing.

Oh. Well

I saw yo dancing with Manzino.

There’s a sudden swell of sound. It comes from the party in the Grand, across the road from the cemetery. The bab and the other swing their heads towards the swelling. There’s a smear of light on the bab’s shoulder now, as well. It comes from I don’t know where — the watch of a waltzing alderman, perhaps. Along both Colmore Row and Temple Road, the electric streetlights are not turned on. The old gas lamps along Needless Alley are never lit now, anyroad. No one ever goes down Needless Alley, so there’s no point.

"Manzoni?"

Her pants back up about her pelvis and her petticoat straightened and smoothed, the bab starts stepping tentatively towards the cemetery gates. Her stiletto heels make my heart hurt. The other keeps close to her side. Her step is too slow for his height, so his body twists awkwardly as he walks. Then abruptly he stops, snuffs out a sneeze with a handkerchief yanked from a pocket, wags a finger at the bab’s back.

"It’s not Manzoni. It’s Manzino, yo dope."

Cemetery, centenary. In the darkness what’s the difference?

The bab turns, wobbles, rests her right hand on a bulky tomb.

"Oh, I did dance with him, didn’t I?"

Ar, yo did dance with him, didn’t yo? About ten minutes ago. He’s got a nerve.

A nerve?

...

The bab and the other are out of the cemetery now. There’s enough seepage from the Grand’s windows to paint them both a weary yellow.

‘Ar —’

The bab says this mockingly: she doesn’t speak the same as the other usually. Her intonation doesn’t gravitate down. Her sentences remain pert.

— and yo’ve got a fizzog as long as Livery Street!

It’s not a phrase that the bab uses often, obviously.

Then walk down it with me.

The bab’s eyebrow involuntarily flinches.

What?

The other, his fizzog as chiseled as the bab’s lovely back, stares at her soberly, strongly. Livery Street is very near to the cemetery. It sinks down from the segment of Colmore Row that overreaches the cemetery. Livery Street is as long as a sad fizzog, a sad face, if it’s really necessary to spell it out.

Or stand at the top of it with me. Come on. Yo can fit big distances between a thumb and a finger, yo know.

What?

The other smiles.

Come on.

Gently, ever so carefully, the other moves his hand to the shallow of the bab’s back. From there he can get a feel of her bumcheeks. I think of bringing the kerb up to deck the other, but don’t.

Come on.

Nah, can’t. I’m zonked.

Aw, come on. I’ll show yo what he wants to do, what he’s got planned, like.

What who wants to do, you daft young man?

Manzino, who else? But don’t say that.

Don’t say what?

That I’m daft and young. Don’t.

Into the dimness now hisses a blister of fire. The bab has lit up. She sucks on the cigarette steadily, and when she takes it out it goes pop.

Nah, it’s me that’s an old dreary fool. A dreary old deary at twenty!

Never.

This whisper wins the other a quick but fond glance from the bab. From the Grand now comes another swell of sound: this time a piano can be made out. The notes zigzag and crash. Voices zigzag and crash too. Outside, the bab and the other remain stupidly rooted to the ground. In front of them the Grand stands stupidly too, its gaudy Victorian ornamentation giving the impression of an oversized babba decked out in fancy clothes.

I’ve never really liked balls.

That’s the bab. But then why did she say to her mom that she so wanted to come?

I’ve never liked the Grand.

That’s the other. The bab turns to him, curious. Her ears, which are very small, wiggle.

But everybody likes the Grand.

Not me, bab. It’s prissy. Fussy. All over the place. Look at all those frills. And inside it’s like wading through a gobbed-up piece of marblecake.

The bab sucks deeply on the cigarette, holding onto it between two fingers. If the other were smoking a cigarette, it would be held between a finger and a thumb.

I suppose so. I’ve never much liked marblecake.

The other shakes his head at her.

Me neither, bab.

...

...

Can stone be frilly?

It can fret awfully, too.

The bab shoves the other playfully. The other grimaces.

And what about what Manzino’s going to do, whatever that is. Will you like that?

The other swallows. His Adam’s apple jolts in his throat. The rumble coming from the Grand softens, stills. The other curtly nods.

I hope they pull the Grand down.

The bab meanwhile pulls a fizzog of mock-horror.

But they won’t.

They won’t. I know they won’t. With its glittery ballrooms and gyratory staircases, the Grand is glamour, excitement and dances, civic parties and centenary balls. The Grand is ladies in gowns and well-dressed gentlemen gyrating up and down the gyratory staircases. The Grand is chandeliers prettily tinking and beneath them, elderly alderman unprettily twisting. The Grand is bunting and trumpets, pumping. Exhausted punchbowls. Froth. The awful boredom of being so amused. In spite of myself, I hope that the bab goes along with the other to Livery Street, or else that she returns to the midget’s gravestone and lies herself calmly down. In her very own pool. It would be beautiful, I know.

To the rear of the bab and the other, on the other side of the tall iron railings, the abandoned cemetery throbs. Inside it sinks my heart.

Go on then, crash the ash.

It means pass me the fag.

Nah!

Go on!

They grin at each other suddenly: he cheerfully, she grimly. From inside the Grand comes the nauseous sound of many chairlegs scraping the floor.

It’ll be the speeches soon.

Manzino’s. Yo won’t want to miss that!

The bab hasn’t passed the other the fag, but then the other’s not interested in that now. He’s off.

Ar, Humphrey B. Manzino will be wanting to tell everyone about Humphrey B. Manzino’s great plan. Humphrey B. Manzino’s bosting visions of our humble town!

‘We’re a city these days, you know. And you mean vision in the singular, I think. What’s the ‘b’ for?’

The bab taps the fag so that the fag ash gets on her clothes. She blinks quickly, mutters —

Gosh

— and at long last holds the fag out for the other to have. But the other is not after it now. The other, not customarily one for speeches himself, is uncharacteristically but irreparably off.

"Ar, Humphrey B. Manzino’s visions of buildings all surrounded by roads, but not nice neat straight thin roads, nope! Fat roads! Double roads! Triple roads! Roads that go in circles. This all here will be ringed by a ring road, bab. Manzino wants to build a road that whirls, a road that curves. Outer circle, middle circle, inner circle. The missing