Read Online The Northern Clemency by Philip Hensher - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Philip Hensher
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and that terrible motion of the belt and wheels. Puking out, or forcing down the throat, an endless motion of forced ingestion or rejection, stone and gullet. It would carry on all night, all day. You could see that. The only thing human about it was the retching smell.
It was vivid and complicated, and it went by so fast that in a moment Francis was closing his eyes and trying to see it again, a moment after that, wondering if he had seen it at all. But there was that smell. And it seemed there were people, too, who lived in this smell, because there was a town, an estate, of matching red-brick houses. Just below the motorway. But they had somehow left the motorway now. A sign came up: City Centre.
“What city?” Francis said. His voice croaked a little.
“This is Sheffield,” Bernie said. “We’re almost there. New home. Did you see that factory—the works—some kind of, I don’t knew, coking plant? Is that right?”
“How on earth do you expect me to know?” Alice said, smiling.
“You know everything,” Bernie said.
“I hate this,” Sandra said. “I don’t want to come here.”
Francis was shocked at her bad manners: she shouldn’t say what he was thinking.
After they had returned from Sheffield the first time, when they had found the house, Francis had written to the magazine Sandra liked to read. He liked to read it, too, though it was less use to him. Jackie , it was called, with the kindly fashion advice that coloured girls could get away with wearing lovely bright shades, and the page of brisk nice answers from Cathy and Claire to girls who worried about what they should let their boyfriends do to their faces, mouths, breasts, vaginas. (Francis was horrified, not about to need the information.) He wrote, not to decent Cathy and Claire, but to the page before the appeals for foreign pen-pals, the place where readers described their home towns. He was egging himself on, he acknowledged that now, sitting in the back of the Simca with the choking smell of the coking plant in his throat. “When my friends first heard that we were moving to Sheffield …” he began, then ran through the events of their week in the Hallam Towers Hotel, blithely equating them with what might be judged the principal attractions of the town. “Don’t forget to spend a morning browsing in Broomhill,” Francis advised. He had read similar sentiments in his father’s Sunday Express .
He had not posted what he had written. And now he was glad of it. It seemed as if the Sheffield he had experienced had been created at the tip of a blue biro and had never truly existed. That city of hotels and attentive waiters, of dense Victorian villas dispersed through a verdant forest, breaking out like the frilled edges of amateur maternal pancakes into lavender moorland. It had been replaced by this stinking black city of vast boxes and artificial black hills and unattended vast machinery.
They went on. And poor Francis’s selfish focus and fear stopped him seeing the city he was entering, in 1974, its greatness, its sweep, the reason for those black hills and the stink. It was entering on the last phase of its industrial greatness, and Francis, in his little selfish fear, did not see it.
There it was: Sheffield, 1974. Francis saw the artificial black hills, the slag heaps piled up by the side of the motorway. But there were seven red hills in Sheffield too. The city was founded on them. The six rivers, too, the black-running Don, the Sheaf, naming the city, the Porter, the Rivelin, the Meersbrook, the Loxley. Each had its valley, some green and lovely, some lined with grimy warehouses, but all rantogether, and they were the reason for the city. The waters, long before, had been harnessed to power forges, small hammering enclaves in dells; the steel masters had built their works, outgrowing the forces of the rivers, and the city had locked its blaze and fire inside those huge blank buildings, rising up on either side of those
It was vivid and complicated, and it went by so fast that in a moment Francis was closing his eyes and trying to see it again, a moment after that, wondering if he had seen it at all. But there was that smell. And it seemed there were people, too, who lived in this smell, because there was a town, an estate, of matching red-brick houses. Just below the motorway. But they had somehow left the motorway now. A sign came up: City Centre.
“What city?” Francis said. His voice croaked a little.
“This is Sheffield,” Bernie said. “We’re almost there. New home. Did you see that factory—the works—some kind of, I don’t knew, coking plant? Is that right?”
“How on earth do you expect me to know?” Alice said, smiling.
“You know everything,” Bernie said.
“I hate this,” Sandra said. “I don’t want to come here.”
Francis was shocked at her bad manners: she shouldn’t say what he was thinking.
After they had returned from Sheffield the first time, when they had found the house, Francis had written to the magazine Sandra liked to read. He liked to read it, too, though it was less use to him. Jackie , it was called, with the kindly fashion advice that coloured girls could get away with wearing lovely bright shades, and the page of brisk nice answers from Cathy and Claire to girls who worried about what they should let their boyfriends do to their faces, mouths, breasts, vaginas. (Francis was horrified, not about to need the information.) He wrote, not to decent Cathy and Claire, but to the page before the appeals for foreign pen-pals, the place where readers described their home towns. He was egging himself on, he acknowledged that now, sitting in the back of the Simca with the choking smell of the coking plant in his throat. “When my friends first heard that we were moving to Sheffield …” he began, then ran through the events of their week in the Hallam Towers Hotel, blithely equating them with what might be judged the principal attractions of the town. “Don’t forget to spend a morning browsing in Broomhill,” Francis advised. He had read similar sentiments in his father’s Sunday Express .
He had not posted what he had written. And now he was glad of it. It seemed as if the Sheffield he had experienced had been created at the tip of a blue biro and had never truly existed. That city of hotels and attentive waiters, of dense Victorian villas dispersed through a verdant forest, breaking out like the frilled edges of amateur maternal pancakes into lavender moorland. It had been replaced by this stinking black city of vast boxes and artificial black hills and unattended vast machinery.
They went on. And poor Francis’s selfish focus and fear stopped him seeing the city he was entering, in 1974, its greatness, its sweep, the reason for those black hills and the stink. It was entering on the last phase of its industrial greatness, and Francis, in his little selfish fear, did not see it.
There it was: Sheffield, 1974. Francis saw the artificial black hills, the slag heaps piled up by the side of the motorway. But there were seven red hills in Sheffield too. The city was founded on them. The six rivers, too, the black-running Don, the Sheaf, naming the city, the Porter, the Rivelin, the Meersbrook, the Loxley. Each had its valley, some green and lovely, some lined with grimy warehouses, but all rantogether, and they were the reason for the city. The waters, long before, had been harnessed to power forges, small hammering enclaves in dells; the steel masters had built their works, outgrowing the forces of the rivers, and the city had locked its blaze and fire inside those huge blank buildings, rising up on either side of those
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