17
Dead Space
Vince watched idly as a breeze toyed with a small cloud of dead leaves and stirred them into a disconsolate-looking pile in a corner of the Empire’s yard. Vince could appreciate how miserable they must feel. If leaves could feel, that is. Normally he’d view them as just another tiresome chore on his list, to be swept up, bagged and thrown away. How many times he wished they’d cut the trees down. They didn’t need them – there were trees everywhere in Somerset – and they just added to his labours. But today he saw them in a different light. He felt like them, like a leaf; tiny, crumpled-up, dried to a shrivelled husk and waiting till someone came along and tossed him in the trash without sparing a single thought for him.
Eating cheese and pickle sandwiches today wasn’t easy. His mouth still hurt. One of his teeth might have to be pulled but he was reluctant to go to see the dentist. Vince was sitting on the old stone steps at the back door, looking out to the world beyond the open gates. Cars passing, people filing by. Tiny snippets, there and gone in an instant, and all he could do was look at life from a distance, trapped here in the yard by some cold wind of fate and hoping another such breeze might waft him back out again.
He heard the door open behind him. The sound of leather soles on stone.
‘Hello, Vince,’ said Edith, smoothing her skirt under her legs and sitting down beside him. ‘Having your lunch?’
He scowled at the pointless question, put the sandwich back in the box and snapped the lid on. ‘You going home?’ he said shortly.
‘Yes, I’ve finished my cleaning shift for this morning. I’ll be back again tonight to stand the kiosk and do the intervals.’
They sat in silence for a minute or two. ‘Don’t you ever get bored, doing what you do?’ he asked.
She gave a chiming laugh. ‘Oh, no! I love it here. It’s so exciting!’
‘No it isn’t exciting, Edith,’ he countered dully. ‘It’s the Empire.’
She nudged him with her shoulder. ‘You misery, you! I thought you liked being here.’
‘What do you know what I like and what I don’t? You’re just a silly young girl with fancy notions in your head. Life’s not like that at all; it’s not exciting.’
Edith looked momentarily stung by the words. ‘I’m not a young girl, Vince. I’m a young woman. I’m seventeen, going on eighteen.’ She held up her chin. ‘And you, Vince, are a bad-mood-bear!’
Vince looked at her from the corner of his eye. He shook his head. ‘What do you want, Edith?’
‘Nothing. Just sitting here with you, is all.’ She turned to look at him. ‘How is your nose?’
His hand went up to the bruising automatically. ‘It’s OK,’ he said, the memory more painful to bear than the actual bruises.
‘At least it’s not broken,’ she said. ‘It could have been broken very easily and then you might have looked like one of those rugby players, or boxers or something, and I don’t think that would have suited you, because you don’t have the build for it. It would have spoilt your nice face.’
‘Yeah? Well who cares?’ he said, turning away. The pile of leaves shivered.
‘You were very brave to stand up to that nasty bully,’ she said.
‘Or very stupid,’ he returned. ‘I think it’s downright awful, that man seeing another woman at the same time he’s seeing Laura.’
Edith breathed heavily down her nose. It was almost a snort. ‘You ought to forget that woman, Vince. I told you she’d bring trouble and I was right.’
‘That’s none of your business, Edith,’ he snapped brusquely. ‘Haven’t you somewhere to go, like the toyshop?’
Her face became overcast, her lips quivering ever so slightly. ‘There is no need for that attitude towards someone who likes you, Vince Moody,’ she said, getting to her feet. ‘And I am most certainly not a little girl who needs to go to a toyshop, you tiresome, bad-mood-bear!’
He watched her stomp out of the yard, instantly regretting what he’d said, feeling the cold water of guilt douse him till he was soaked through with it. ‘Shit,’ he said, all appetite gone.
Two suited men entered the yard, looking very stiff and official. They greeted him without warmth.
‘We’re here to see Mr Caldwell,’ said the slimmer and younger of the two. He wore glasses and held a clipboard in his hand.
‘Who are you?’ Vince asked.
‘He’s expecting us. Just take us to him,’ said the other abruptly, as if he were batting away a troublesome fly.
Vince said OK. They didn’t look like policemen this time, he thought; more like stuffy little council officers. He led them through to Caldwell’s office, feeling the more he had to do this the more he felt like a bloody butler. Upstairs f*cking Downstairs, that’s what the Empire had become.
‘Make us a cup of tea, Vince,’ said Caldwell flatly without looking up.
‘Yes, milord,’ said Vince.
Caldwell frowned, but shook the two men’s hands as Vince clattered down the corridor.
‘This is Mr Cross, the architect’ said the man with glasses and clipboard. ‘I’m Mr Forster, your surveyor for the day.’ His smile revealed an uneven set of teeth.
‘Right,’ said Caldwell, ‘tell me what you’d like to see.’
‘Shall we start with the basement, like I mentioned on the phone, and work our way up?’
Caldwell unhooked a set of keys from a board on his office wall. ‘Follow me.’
They filed down the corridors, down flights of stairs, every now and again the two men pausing to look over something or exchange professional judgements that didn’t make any sense to Caldwell, nodding in unison before urging Caldwell to move on. Eventually they reached the door to the basement. Forster had come prepared. He produced a small torch and lit their way down the stone steps, his face serious as he looked around the damp walls, shining his torch beam over the stone flags of the floor and illuminating the metal grating that covered the old well. He went immediately over to it, and shone the torch into the black hole, but it didn’t penetrate all the way down.
‘My, that is a deep one,’ he said. ‘You can’t see the bottom. Is there water in there?’ he asked Caldwell.
‘Yes, as far as I know.’
Forster bent to his haunches, his finger touching one of the nuts that fastened one corner of the grating to the floor. It came away smeared with oil. He smelled it. ‘WD-40,’ he said. ‘Has this been taken off recently?’
Caldwell shook his head. ‘No, not at all. Why should it have?’
Forster got to his feet. ‘What are those?’ He pointed to a corner of the room.
Damn Vince, thought Caldwell; he was supposed to have gotten rid of those film cans. ‘Nothing. Just some old junk. They should have been removed.’
Forster nodded. ‘Not sure yet whether we can use this room to create another smaller auditorium,’ he mused. He looked speculatively at a far wall. ‘Might be able to knock that through. Whatever, you’d have to cap off that well and re-concrete this floor, putting some kind of damp-proofing in. I reckon the water table is quite high and there might be the risk of flooding if we don’t do something soon anyhow.’ He made a few scribbles on his clipboard and exchanged words with the architect. He glanced at Caldwell, who was sweating and looking decidedly pale. ‘Are you feeling alright, Mr Caldwell? You don’t look at all well.’
‘I’ve got a cold coming on,’ he admitted. He had to shove his hands into his pockets to stop them shaking. He needed a stiff drink, he thought.
‘Shall we move on up?’ urged Forster. ‘This one’s a maybe. Would take a bit of work and thought to incorporate it into the overall design, though.’
‘How many screens are they after creating?’ said Caldwell.
‘Five at least,’ he said. ‘To make it viable.’
‘And if it’s less?’
Forster smiled an ambiguous smile. ‘Shall we?’ he said, indicating the steps. ‘Let’s take a good look around first before we come to any definite conclusions. We’ve only just started. This is not going to be an easy job. The trouble with all these old places is that there’s only so much you can actually do with them. They were designed for what they were, not for what they might become.’ He looked back from the top of the steps into the dark basement below. ‘In my opinion – and it is only my opinion – this area is dead space,’ he said.
‘Meaning?’ asked Caldwell.
‘There’s no life in it,’ he explained.
* * * *