Read Online Wreckage by Niall Griffiths - Free Book Online Page B

boosted by bases situated during war. After which with the heavy bombing this once muddy puddle that burned for years, like a microcosm of the wider country itself saw devastation and decline into a society divided deeply by unequal distribution of whatever wealth there was and the oppositional aims of Tory rulers and militant left-wing radicalism. And capitalist employers swollen with a hunger incomprehensible to the labour organisations they sought to exploit and if that could not be realised then destroy, smash. Which venture saw some success which led to decades of entrenched unemployment which led to parts of the city aflame in 1981 like the city’s buried memories of war, like a yearning to purge, the white-hot brewery of this once muddy puddle smouldering in the bitter pits of the footings that seared the feet of the leavers, the escapers, the anti-exodus of the endtimes. The trudge of the longing retracing the forefathers’ footsteps away from this, this place which has never neglected its genesis in sludge and which found itself the focus for the wrath of obsessed rulers. Which made itself the paw-thorn for a system built on and devoted to the maintenance of privilege and positional power. Which found itself the target for odder bombs, softer but still endowed with massacre.
    So if it could be said that the city has a soul. Built on and sunk in sumps of blood if this city
has
a soul …
    Then maybe the spirit of here roosts in its tunnels, the Williamson tunnels branching beneath the streets and buildings, vessels for wind and darkness as if they are the blood of this place. As if they power it, as if it is sustained by wailing air and shadow. The mystery of these tracts, these hidden capillaries built to the orders of Joseph Williamson, Mole of Edge Hill, work for the veterans of Napoleon’s wars and the simple philanthropy of that or something to do with an eschatological conviction, a hole to outwait Aramageddon? Or maybe the need of a man of power not just to explore but also to create some black and secret recess? To reflect his own central nervous system? To drill into the soil the trace of his own arteries or purely to provide cover when he visited mistresses? The death of his wife in 1822 drove him down into his tunnels for longer periods and down there, with the city arumble over his head, maybe he met the red genesis of his works among the talcum dead, his wealth made from the traffic of lives and darker skins. His money made from the harrowing of hearts on this earth turned tarmac which too sheathes his bones now under a car park on the outskirts of this once shallow puddle of bubbling mud.
    So the city’s soul rises on vast and tattered wings from the flat rust-coloured sea. It rises and soars and hovers and casts shadow over street and square and gargoyle and cupola and a million different bloods. It pays witness to despair and design, purpose and futility and the shore warehouses now peopled only by pigeon or preened for the pampered. All the living skins quick in all their common squalor and it pilots the trains into Lime Street where junkies beg and whores prop and others of their species will embark or alight and the heat of their commerce will rise and stifle the pub in the station concourse where one soul lost in this city on this earth Darren is beginning to melt into his seat and a type of excitement is beginning to flutter within another soul adrift Alastair on wings he has never until now seen or even thought could exist.
    —See these fuckers, Alastair? None of em fuckin know, lar, thee ant gorrer fuckin clue … could buy n sell
aaaallll
these cunts, me …
    —Is right, Da. You
know
it, my man.
    —Course I fuckin do … all these fuckin no-mark blerts …
    —Want another bevvy, mate? Yer runnin low.
    Darren drains the dregs. Whacks the glass down on the table top where the many empties there shudder. —Same again, lar.
    —Alright.
    Alastair goes to the bar, orders a strong lager for