Chapter 6 #2
The washing machine clicks on. The sheets turning in the drum. Five in the morning. A goodnight from a person who writes about houses that won’t hold a shape.
The site, seven, Block C, the formwork for the east section. Checking the levels, the plumb lines, how the boards sit against the temporary supports. The hands know this, a level, a pencil. The body stops remembering what other hands feel like on a belt buckle.
For about twenty minutes.
The east section needs the pump dialled back. Pressure too high, the concrete’s getting air in the joints where it shouldn’t be. I adjust the settings, and Gaz watches me do it like he’s trying to understand the maths instead of just trusting the hands.
‘You sure about that?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Dave didn’t say nothing about the pump.’
‘Dave doesn’t tell you to breathe either, but you manage it.’
Gaz shuts up. Dean is already on the far side of the formwork, level in one hand, the other arm holding the guide straight. He’s got a smudge of concrete across his jacket, doesn’t care. Dean cares about the work. Everything else is noise.
The phone buzzes. I feel it before I hear it. The back pocket. Text. I don’t look. If I look, Gaz will know. Gaz knows everything, the girl in Stockport, his cat photo, the shape of his own lack of sense. If he clocks I’m not thinking about the pour, he’ll talk for an hour.
Instead I check the level. Good, the line’s plumb, everything’s holding.
Dave walks past. ‘Pump looking good?’
‘Sorted.’
‘East section’s next. I need this one smooth.’
I nod. Dave walks on. That’s a conversation, Dave-style: no extra words, no questions.
If he asked what’s wrong, I’d have to say: nothing. Dream about a person, person’s real. Been working with hands for years and suddenly they don’t know what to do with the person. Works fine with concrete, breaks with words.
The pump hums, the concrete flows.
‘You alright, boss?’ Gaz again. ‘Not grinning today.’
‘I’m thinking.’
‘Gaz, work,’ Dave says, passing, and Gaz goes.
I check the levels. The plumb line hangs straight. The formwork’s clean, everything measured, everything holding.
The dream sits in me like something in my pocket. Can’t be bothered taking it out. Can’t stop feeling it.
Lunch, the portacabin, sandwich, tea. Gaz is on about the Stockport girl, who’s texted him a photo of her cat. Apparently a big deal. Jay shakes his head, Dean eats his sandwich.
I close my eyes, the portacabin’s warm, the chair’s the same plastic chair.
Behind my eyes: the dream. The bit before. The bit where Celyn’s voice said something in Welsh and I didn’t understand and the not-understanding was. Fine.
I open my eyes, finish the tea.
The bar at six fifteen. I’ve timed it: five minutes walk, shower and change done in twenty.
Celyn’s already there, the hoodie, tired. The shift does that. Takes the energy, leaves just the bones and the eyes. No makeup today. I prefer it.
‘You’re early,’ Celyn says.
‘No I’m not.’
I’m not early, I’m exactly on time, for my own chair, at my own table, this table, ours. It’s become ours how Celyn’s voice saying my name in Welsh became the thing I play back when I can’t sleep.
Celyn reads me like the concrete. The palm flat, the fingers spread, the thing underneath the surface telling you what’s real. ‘You’re thinking.’
‘I’m always thinking.’
‘Different thinking.’
I look at the foam on the pint, the level’s gone down. I’ve been drinking without noticing. That’s what happens when the brain goes somewhere else, the body just keeps going, automatic, how you pour concrete without thinking about the pour.
‘I like that you’re here early,’ Celyn says. Closes the laptop.
And that’s the thing about Celyn’s world. Words for things. Post-its and paragraphs and metaphors. I don’t have words. I just have: your hand in mine. Your face. The Welsh pulling the vowels. The yes.
‘You look like you didn’t sleep.’
‘Slept fine.’
Didn’t. Came in a dream about you and stood in my kitchen at five in the morning drinking tea and thinking about Welsh vowels. Fine.
Celyn reads. The laptop screen glowing, the novel.
Elin’s in the house and the house is showing her rooms that weren’t there an hour ago.
She touches the wallpaper and it peels back wet, like a scab lifting, and underneath there’s a door, and behind the door another room, and in the room a bed, and in the bed something that has arranged itself to look like sleep and is waiting for her to come close enough that it won’t have to pretend any more.
‘Two people,’ Celyn reads. Voice low. The Welsh pulling. ‘“Two people sleeping. Or the shapes of two people. One lies perfectly still, because the thing beside her is not quite breathing in time with anything alive, and moving would break something she doesn’t have a word for.”’
Celyn stops. Looks at me over the screen.
‘That bit,’ I say. My voice comes out rough. Clear my throat. ‘That bit where she doesn’t move.’
‘What about it.’
‘How did you write that?’
The tired eyes with nothing around them. No liner, no shadow, just the grey-green on me.
‘I watched someone,’ Celyn says.
The bar’s got noise in it. Music, glasses, someone laughing near the door. All of it far away.
I know who.
‘I watched someone.’
Celyn doesn’t move.
‘You.’
Celyn closes the laptop. Puts it in the bag. Finishes the tea, stands.
‘Let’s go?’
‘Yeah.’
We walk.
NQ streets, puddles, closed shops. Celyn’s hand finds mine, the fingers threading through, the ring cold against my knuckle. Mine slightly bigger. They close and the fit is —
We walk.
No direction said out loud. Not yet. My place is seven minutes if we cut through the side streets. Celyn’s is ten the other way. We don’t talk. The trainers and the boots on the wet pavement. Their hand in mine.
At the corner Celyn slows.
Not home. Not goodbye.
The face, no makeup, no colour, just the person.
‘Ronan.’
The soft R. My name in that mouth.
‘Yeah.’
Celyn looks at our hands. Then at me.
‘Yours?’
My flat, my bed. The sheets are clean. The machine finished hours ago; I hung them before the shift. The thought hits me stupidly hard, ordinary and not ordinary at all.
‘Yeah,’ I say.
Celyn’s fingers close tighter around mine.
We keep walking.
Don’t think about the dream. Don’t think about the person who stays still. Don’t think about any of it.
Think about all of it.