The typical Historic Peculiarities exam question would be along the lines of: ‘The Spanish Armada – The Fire of London. Connect.’ There was no typical answer. The best way to answer a Historic Peculiarities question was to write as much as possible in the time allowed without ever committing yourself to a point of view.
I took the subject because I was interested in history and peculiar things, interests I shared with my best friend Jack. He didn’t go to university, he got a job in a printing company on the outskirts of Oldbury. While I was spending money I didn’t have on having a good time, he was spending his time earning money so he could spend it on his hobby, which was body piercing.
We’ll get to that later.
I did a three-year course in Historic Peculiarities. There was the option to do a fourth and perhaps continue as far as a doctorate, but the building society weren’t keen. I was still interested in history and peculiar things. The building society was still interested in regaining its money. So I gave up Historic Peculiarities and became, for several months, a digger of foundations.
IV
‘Got you,’ said Darren. ‘It was one of those complete bollocks courses. Thought I’d picked a bad one. Bloody hell. So, how much do you owe the bank then?’
‘Building society,’ I said. ‘A couple of hundred, now.’
‘Lucky sod,’ said Darren. ‘I still owe them me first born, and Spin’s had to sell one of his kidneys.’
They both smiled. Darren pocketed the grubby shilling that had sparked off the conversation.
‘Tell you something,’ said Darren. ‘You know the castle?’
Of course I knew the castle. Dudley Castle is hard to miss, in Dudley. It isn’t as though there’s a lot else to distract your attention.
‘There were some historic peculiarities up there,’ said Darren, ‘so Spin was saying. Witches, warlocks, comets, Templars and all sorts of stuff. You could have done a thesis on that. You might have got a first then, like Spin.’
Spin nodded, silently.
‘What sort of things?’ I asked. I’d lived there for twenty-five years, and it was the first I’d heard about it.
Before Darren could tell me, Mr Link turned up, a hard hat sitting uncomfortably on his head.
‘Darren, Spin,’ he said. He looked at me. ‘I can never remember your name,’ he told me.
‘Sam.’
‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘Historic Peculiarities. And these two are Archaeology and Anthropology. Once upon a time, we used to get actual workers. Now they’ve all done City and Guilds and set themselves up as limited companies and all I get is students paying back their overdrafts, drinking me out of teabags and chatting about social awareness. Which is all well and good in its place, but it doesn’t get trenches dug, does it?’
We shook our heads.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘and there it is. Now. How are you at heights?’
‘I’m okay with heights,’ said Darren. Spin made a gesture indicating the same. It was a complicated gesture, and it went on for a little while. He raised his hands above his head and looked up at them, and nodded. He drew his hands down past his face, looked left and right, and shrugged. He held out his arms and mimed balancing, while nodding. He looked down and held out both hands, thumbs up. He clapped. Mr Link nodded at several points during the gesture, and then the ending caught him by surprise and he forgot to nod in the right place.
‘I don’t like heights,’ I said.
‘Don’t like them, or won’t do them?’ asked Mr Link.
‘I don’t like them. I get dizzy and then I freeze.’
‘Vertigo. Fair enough. You can stick with trenches. You don’t have to go up, to do trenches. Down is preferable, I always think. But not too far down, because then it gets claustrophobic. A strange thing: all the students we hire want to do the digging. Never the walls or the scaffolding. Personally, I think it’s to do with Dudley. There’s old stuff all over the place. The castle, the mines, the railways. If you ask me, they should bulldoze the bloody lot of it and start again with a few decent roads and a car park and maybe a pub, but that’s just me.’
‘What will we be doing?’ asked Darren.
‘Scaffolding,’ said Mr Link, in a tone of voice that suggested he’d already told them once.
Spin went into another series of hand movements.
‘What?’ asked Mr Link.
‘He’s dubious as to scaffolding,’ explained Darren, acting as an interpreter.
‘Dubious?’
‘He believes that it acts as a receiver or transmitter of messages from elsewhere, being as it is a matrix of regular angles constructed in tubiform metal. That’s when it’s up, obviously. When it’s not, it’s just a pile of tubes in the back of the truck.’
‘Tubiform matrix?’ asked Mr Link. ‘What, and you got all of that from him waving his hand about?’
Darren nodded.
‘Hell’s bells,’ said Mr Link.
Darren and Spin stood patiently.
‘Well?’ asked Mr Link. He switched to jovial mode. ‘Either of you up to working on my tubiform matrix? Only it’d be nice if you’d get on with it, because we’re expecting a message from Arcturus and we need the scaffolding up before it gets dark. Besides, we might be able to make use of it when we put the top beams on this thing.’
He indicated the framework of red metal struts: six large ones to a side and a network of smaller ones connecting them. Trenches ran around the outer limit of the structure. I had helped to put them there.
‘What’s it going to be?’ Darren asked.
‘Factory,’ said Mr Link.
‘What sort?’
‘Finished, if we get the scaffolding up. Come on.’
Mr Link led Darren and Spin to the pile of metal tubes and hefty brackets. The brackets looked like something that might have come from a medieval dungeon, and that made me think about Jack, because Jack is a body piercing aficionado and he looks like the sort of thing medieval dungeons might have used in their adverts if they’d had newspapers to place them in.
‘While we’re erecting Luke Skywalker’s radio set, would it be okay if you carried on with the trenches? Only I seem to remember that we had this agreement where I paid you and you did work. You seem to be interpreting it slightly differently, in that I pay you and you stare vacantly into space.’ He sighed. ‘Students.’
‘Ex-students,’ I said.
‘Even worse,’ he said. ‘Feel like digging?’
‘Oh yes,’ I lied.
‘Good, because it would trouble my conscience greatly if I had to sack you because you were useless.’
He often gave us these pep talks. I think it was something to do with morale.
V
Other than Mr Link and the physical problems – blisters, aches, herpes – working on building sites was fun. It was like playtime. At school the only time you were allowed