Chapter 26 #2
Home, Celyn said home. The flat above the barber’s that smells of setting lotion and a bed that’s too small and Celyn called it home.
yeah, home in five.
I walk, the barber’s, the stairs, the door.
The thing in between that’s enough for a Friday night in February when the Estrella’s shit and the world’s different now and different’s better.
Different’s better.
Monday. Site smells like rain and fresh aggregate.
The south wall pour went in Friday afternoon and the concrete’s doing what concrete does: setting, curing, becoming load-bearing in its own time.
Nobody rushes it. You can rush a schedule, you can rush a bloke with a sandwich, you can’t rush a chemical reaction.
I check the ties on the rebar cage for the second pour, the wire twister in my right hand, the pliers in the left. Twist, snip, move. Twist, snip, move. The rhythm of it. The cold in the fingers, February, the gloves off because you can’t feel the tie wire through gloves and feeling it matters.
Gaz is singing. Something from the radio, the chorus only, wrong key. Dean tells him to shut up. Gaz sings louder. Dave walks past with a clipboard, doesn’t look up, doesn’t need to. The site runs.
Half ten, the tea break thermos, the portacabin, the radiator. My phone buzzes.
Here in 5, where do I go.
Right, the article, the newspaper piece.
The Manchester restoration project. Celyn pitched it three weeks ago.
Dave said yes because Dave doesn’t care about anything except getting the steel straight and if a newspaper article means the council stops sending inspectors every other Tuesday then fine.
I told Dave my partner’s a writer. Dave said ‘right.’ I told Dave Celyn uses ‘they.’ Dave said ‘right’ again. Same ‘right.’ The man doesn’t have two versions of the word.
I didn’t tell Dave what Celyn looks like, didn’t know what Celyn would look like, don’t know until Celyn walks through the gate.
The gate. The gap in the hoarding where the chipboard’s propped open and the hi-vis sign says AUTHORISED PERSONNEL ONLY and the hard hat sign says the same thing with a picture.
Celyn walks through the gap.
The skirt, dark, mid-thigh, moves when the wind catches it. Dr Martens, the leather scuffed at the toe. The notebook in one hand, the phone in the other.
The stubble, light, a day. The jaw darker than the chin. No makeup. The lips bare, the hair pushed back behind one ear with the silver earring and the other ear covered.
The nails. Violet. The edges clean. The colour against the denim jacket.
And then Celyn passes me and the smell comes off them. Different. Woody and sharp, a cologne, the kind you’d find at Boots in a dark bottle, and it doesn’t go with the skirt and it goes with everything.
‘All right?’ I say. Because I’m at work. Because there’s rebar behind me and Gaz twenty metres to my left and this is the site. My site.
‘All right.’ Celyn looks around. The eyes going up. The structure, the steel, the temporary roof. Taking it in. Like there’s a page being written behind the eyes. ‘It’s massive, Ron.’
‘Yeah.’
‘No, I mean. I’ve seen buildings. I haven’t seen the inside of one while it’s becoming a building.’
The Welsh pulling the vowels long on ‘becoming.’ The low voice today. No lightness, no lift. The voice that matches the cologne and not the skirt.
Gaz, coming across the site. Hard hat, hi-vis, the walk that says I’m-not-in-a-hurry-but-I’m-coming.
‘Alright?’ Gaz puts his hand out. ‘Back for more, then.’
Celyn takes it, ‘Cheers for letting me poke around again.’
‘No bother.’ Flat. Normal. No weight. Gaz.
Dean, by the mixer, looks up, the nod, the Dean nod. Chin up, half an inch, back down. Goes back to the mixer.
Jay on the scaffolding, the head turns. Not at me, at Celyn, the skirt and the stubble and the violet nails, the combination that doesn’t file for Jay the same way it didn’t file for me.
Jay looks, then looks away, goes back to the ties.
Thomas’s not here today. The timing is, I don’t know what the timing is.
Dave comes out of the portacabin, hard hat under his arm, the clipboard, the Dave walk. Purpose without performance.
‘You’re the writer,’ Dave says. Fact, same as concrete grade or pour schedule. Puts his hand out. Celyn takes it.
‘Celyn Beynon. Thanks for this. I know it’s not exactly standard, having someone wandering around.’
‘Long as you wear the hat and don’t touch the steel, you can wander where you like.’ Dave reaches back into the portacabin. Comes out with a spare hard hat. Yellow. ‘This’ll fit.’
Celyn puts the hard hat on, the yellow plastic over the hair. The skirt, the Dr Martens planted on the concrete like they were made for it.
‘So the original structure,’ Celyn says. ‘Victorian?’
‘1887,’ Dave says. ‘Cotton warehouse. The Victorians over-engineered everything, the walls are a metre thick in places. Means we can strip back to the shell and the shell holds.’
‘They built for a hundred years and got a hundred and forty.’
‘More than that. Steel frame’s modern but the brickwork underneath, you could drive a truck through the ground floor and the first floor wouldn’t know.’ Dave points at the south wall. ‘See the arches? Load-bearing. Every one. They didn’t know how to build anything that wasn’t.’
Celyn’s writing, the notebook open. The pen, not biro, the fountain pen, the one with the green ink that stains the side of the hand, the pen against the page.
Celyn writes in my building.
The two lives are in the same room.
Celyn’s shoes on my concrete. Celyn’s pen writing words about my steel. Celyn asking Dave about arches and Dave answering like Dave answers anyone who asks an intelligent question which is, completely, and without noticing anything except the question.
Jay comes down the scaffolding, passes Celyn on the way to the mixer. Doesn’t stop, doesn’t speak, the gap. The same gap as the pub.
Celyn doesn’t notice. Or notices and doesn’t show it. Same thing, with Celyn.
Gaz brings tea, three mugs, one each for him and me and Celyn. The site mugs, the ones with the brown stain that doesn’t wash out and the handle that burns your thumb.
‘Milk, one sugar, yeah?’ Gaz says to Celyn.