Prendergast - Septembers

Septembers

Annabel was a black and white figure in the distance, going in through the front doors. She worked behind the reception. I was a history teacher.

As we meet Matt, lying across the backseat of his on/off girlfriends car, he begins a long confession. It starts with wrestling moves and continues past statue fires, reaching bomb threats and assault via episodes in the life of Franz von Papen, the Chancellor of interwar Germany. Piece by piece, Matt presents us with a map of his failures. Or is he part of some grander, universal fuck-up? Septembers , Christopher Prendergasts debut novel, is a simmering tale of upheaval, revolt and loss.

Praise for Christopher Prendergast

Prendergast reanimates the ailing spaces of the City: with vision, tenderness and terrific writing. JAMES SHEARD

The pleasure of Septembers lies in its wisdom, honesty and warmth. It isnt a eulogy for lost worlds or ideas, or an attack on the world were confronted with. Prendergasts England, hollowed by peak-capitalism, feels fraught with possibility. Life baffles his antiheroes, yet theyre stalked by hopeful conspiracies. Septembers is the smartest, freshest novel Ive read in some time. Prendergast is a new and important voice. JOE STRETCH

CHRISTOPHER PRENDERGAST was born in Birmingham in 1987. He has an MA in Creative Writing from Keele University. In 2009 he won the Charles Swann award for his dissertation on David Bermans Actual Air . He has taught creative writing at various levels and is currently writing his doctoral thesis on the post-industrial status of Birmingham.

By the same author

ESSAYS

Build & Destroy (with Steve Camden)

Published by Salt Publishing Ltd

12 Norwich Road, Cromer, Norfolk NR27 0AX

All rights reserved

Copyright Christopher Prendergast, 2014

The right of Christopher Prendergast to be identied as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Salt Publishing.

Salt Publishing 2014

This book is sold subject to the conditions that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

ISBN 978-1-907773-78-5 electronic

For Mum, Dad and Rich

The Vindications exist...

The Library of Babel, JORGE LUIS BORGES

THIS ISNT WHAT I expected. White office blocks pass over my head. We plunge into the Queensway tunnel. Strip lights cast a weak sodium glare over the tunnel walls. Annabel has been driving us in silence for the last twenty minutes. I dont want to ask her where we are going. The car emerges into white sky and I sit up a little. I see a domed roof of Portland stone and other familiar buildings. We are in the city centre during rush hour, next to Centenary Square.

About five years ago a fibreglass statue burnt to the ground here. People were walking past as it happened. There was talk that a teen fumbled some matches he was playing with, dropping a small flame onto the resin which quickly set alight. When I was young I often climbed up on that statue and used it as a play area. It was a crowd scene, a march from industry into the citys future. Kids used to sit in the occasional gaps between the marching figures and dangle their legs down the side of the plinth. In the middle of the crowd no-one could see you. I had my first kiss on that statue.

The car slows. I look for the spot where the statue used to be. Theres nothing except a lamppost over a black bench.

The sculptor came back to Birmingham about a week after the fire. He picked through the wreckage but there was nothing to restore. He grew up in the city but he hadnt lived here for a number of years. A charge of arson was raised against a sixteen-year-old but was subsequently dropped. Fibreglass, polyester resin, paint these alone were enough. The sculptor scratched his head and tried to work out what it all meant. He got on a plane and went back to Paris.

Goodbye, Raymond.

One of the figures on the plinth faced backwards, unlike all the others. She held a palette and brush and turned to the past to kiss it goodbye. I was away from the city, living somewhere else, when it burned down. I didnt even notice it was gone when I came back. My friend pointed it out. He told me about the fire, the sculptor and the girl who was kissing goodbye to everything behind her. She was doing it because the motto of the city is Forward.

Centenary Square keeps changing. I can see the blank white fencing around a construction site. Theyve started building a new library next to the REP theatre. When they haul up that fencing and unveil the new building I have the sense it will be as if a tiny wound has healed. A little nick, made in passing, will blend into the citys skin. The fibreglass statue will be a passing accident. I wonder what really happened, who even remembers.

Eventually we join the traffic on Broad Street. I look around the edge of the seat. Annabel lets go of the steering wheel, wipes her face and grabs the wheel again. Shes concentrating. She takes the next turn off, weaves down side-streets and takes us out into a housing estate. We pass blocks of medium-rise flats in grim brick tones. She goes up a couple of gears. She doesnt make a sound except for the creaking of the wheel and the clunking of the gear shifts. I wonder if she is driving back to Sheffield. Is this the way? I stop myself from asking.

The statue fire would be referred to in passing by local journalists. People seemed to shrug. It quickly slipped off local news reports. When you look at it, there was a broad consensus This was OK. Well let it pass. This leaves a sense of blamelessness. No-one really saw what happened. Nothing really burned and no-one really burned it. Not intentionally anyway. But I feel differently. I have always taken exception to the event.

I think Annabel may be crying. I feel the back of her seat with my hand. The upholstery is dry and cold but it hints at her familiar outline. I hear her sit forward and breathe out. Its an even breath but a forced one. The car creaks and moans. Shes had it for years now. Im surprised its still roadworthy. It was her first car, a present from her mom and dad. I bring my hand back and place it on my chest. I dont speak.

My other hand is in my pocket. Im clutching a small plastic bottle which makes a hard outline in my trouser pocket. I feel the grooves of the lid. My fingertips slide down, over the slightly rough texture of the label which has slipped with the bottles grease. It has been used recently. A little bit of waste, a little excess went over someones hands and onto the bottle itself. It wasnt all applied as intended. Its not my lube but the bottle has a perfect, rounded form. I keep turning it around.

At some point Annabel joins the motorway.

Its not worth it, she says. I dont think I can do it again.

Her voice is wavering.

Its your choice I say. My voice is in the footwell.

I cant do it.

Her nails clack on the wheel.

Why dont you ever choose? she says, angry.

I have never intentionally hurt anyone in my life. I have fumbled the matches once or twice though. I sit up as she indicates. She slows down. I untangle myself from the limp seatbelt. I move to the middle of the seat but she wont turn around. I can see her wet cheeks. She pulls onto the hard shoulder. A thicket of bare trees lean over the grey boundary. Streaks of oil mark the roadside. She unlocks the door, takes off her seat belt and clatters out of the car all at once. She walks towards the end of the layby.