A Relevant Party.

I BURNT THE FLAG that held your name in blood red letters and silver stripes, burned it in the garden where some mutual friend might find it. A quiet hope of mine, I admit that now with irony of hindsight. A bludgeoned town, a wind swept pit, all industry’s great gravestones – they towered above our two story semis, our window boxes. Our patios.

“A steady hand – vote Richmond for Council Chair!”

I leaned in close to read the line, but my mind was in two places. Outside: dismal grey. Plastic bags in the wind, flecks of bitter rain, a stray mongrel. The kind of weather that made Caroline weep. I enjoyed it, revelled in the concrete apocalypse. I used to ask to her to come and join me, run and run through Beltton Morgan, it’s tired streets, chain link fences, oily puddles, struggling weeds.

“Fucking hell, that feels good!” I stretched over backwards in the narrow kitchen, the door still open, dripping the pissing grey atmosphere upon the cold tiles.

“What’s wrong with you?” She said, crouching with her knees to her chest in the window sill. A silhouette in the unlit room. At that moment, (I remember it distinctly) I almost told her. I stood straight, topless and toned, greasy from the atmosphere’s discharge.

“Is there anything you don’t know about me?”

“No,” she said.

* * *

The booth smelled of spilt vinegar, smattered stains on mock leather. The waitress hovered between empty tables, giving the surfaces a rhythmic double hiss of citrus disinfectant. I was waiting for you – I was always waiting for you – at the back, near the pool tables. You liked to keep a low profile these days. You came in raising the collar of your mac, hunching your shoulders as if stepping through the other way. Into the cold.

“Well?”

“You’re late,” I said automatically. “How’s the campaign?”

“Slow,” you said, sprawling an elbow across the stained surface, chin on palm. “Maggie misjudged our chances with Richmond. Running with the cultural development angle might’ve been a bad idea. Now I’m thinking infrastructure. Did you order?”

Caroline had been right for so long – long enough for all Beltton’s meteorological states to keep her in my mind. My parietal lobe. My memory of her is a persistent, earnest sadness. An energy that pushes me forward. A nihilist’s wry determination. She was right about you. I refused to see it then. You leaned in conspiratorially.

“The man’s a swine, he’s holding on to his seat with cheap stunts. He practically wears that hard hat in the ward meetings, but I know he’s planning to cut the transport quota – he wants money in stage one education.” You snatched my hand from the table and hid it between your folded arms, as if perhaps neither of us would notice.

“I mean, what’s the point in nursery school if no one can get there in the morning?”

Smiling a callous, victorious smile, you squeezed my wrist under your mac.

Was it on this occasion? Perhaps it was another time later in the year, as your running for Council Chair began in earnest, that I elected to call in on Caroline. Leaving the room you always booked under your opponent’s name, I cycled west toward the park, past the still smoking ashes of the townhouse, (you said you knew who did it), under the seaward overpass and down the old pedestrian shopping strip toward the southern terraces. Caroline moved out here to stay with a friend after the last time she found out about Us. Nailed to a tree was the latest campaign poster; “What is change?” In caps, above your stern portrait.

Caroline’s room faced the yard, shards of broken glass lined the walls that bordered the service alley.

What was I here for?

“What are you here for?” She said, arms folded, leaning on her drawing desk. “This must be a busy time.”

“For some,” I said. “Is it for you?”

“It is, I’m leaving soon”

“Leaving town?”

“Yes”

“For how long?”

She turned to the window. There are glorious sunsets here, the tourism board doesn’t like to mention why.

“I’m going to Barthyscliffe, staying with my parents”

“Do they know about us?”

“Of course”

“What did you tell them?”

“I told them I was alone again”.

For two years Caroline and I lived out of a house just like this one, grazed and picked across the squalor, slept on the kitchen’s tarmac roof. At first we took our sleeping bags out of the window for a joke, a romantic urban gesture during the summer months. When September came around, you had nightmares sleeping indoors so we stayed there. From where I stood, I could see the ropes of a one man tent pitched on the garage roof.

“You’re in a tent now?”

“Privacy,” you said.

“You’re out there on your own? I thought you hated this weather”

“I’ve changed my mind”.

* * *

Scissors, ash trays, house dust, the driving rain. You roped me into catching the coastal line to Warwick-Seaton, said you needed help putting a new pamphlet together. There were several of us there, some of them competing admirers of yours, I guessed. Wind battered the heaving walls, a draft sent pages fluttering across the large, cluttered table. Somewhere in the house you paced about, heels echoing, speaking to committee heads on the phone. “Nor would I, Jackie, nor would I! Only these are the concerns voiced to me by my constituents, and if you–”

We worked mainly in silence through the afternoon. You weren’t around much. At seven I opened the bottle of cheap red I hadn’t planned on sharing. Sheila methodically poured a dismal splash into plastic cups emblazoned with your name.

“It will be close,” Adrian said.

“Richmond is gaining in the suburbs,” said Aileen, the campaign manager.

I found you upstairs, sitting on the edge of the double bed, your back to the door. The tide was in. Death coloured salt water exploded against the breakwater, running in icy sheets across the car park. I stepped across the creaking wood and leant against the dresser. You turned a razor blade between your fingers.

“What’s that for?”

“Protection”

“I haven’t seen you all day,” I said.

When we were children, my parents sent me to visit on long holidays to this house, your father’s house. He was a petulant man, directionless, often cold. Marv was a fisherman, he squandered the long months between lobster seasons bawling obscenities at the sea. Something I could see you doing in summers to come. This was his room, before the family moved south. Always south. You stayed out of spite, out of duty. The romance of it struck me then as you hunched, legs apart, grinding a heel into the woodwork.

“The committee isn’t taking my calls. What does Richmond have, Ron? That I don’t?”

“The pamphlet looks good,” I heard myself saying. “The new mantra is a winner.”

One of the prints must have been sucked out of the window from downstairs, or else one of the volunteers had thrown it. The scarlet pamphlet spiralled in the wind, towards the sea. The campaign line was stamped across the front page, ‘Rise Above Pot Holes’. You were studying the razor blade and thankfully, didn’t see the sum total of your passions laid waste by the elements; enough to make anyone spin something sharp between their fingers.

* * *

What would there be to weave and dodge between, through the electric rain and snow crash hurricane if not for the legendary pot holes of Beltton Morgan? Your town! Your constituency. Cycling through the sharp sleet I asked you this, my day-glow waistcoat flapping against the violent weather. What character would there be left to our beloved, ruinous waste? Out of furious patriotism, I cut a right angle across the A road, before low visibility traffic, the coal trucks and ‘crete turners, following a neon sign that caught my eye. “Richmond Campaign HQ”.

Tinsel flailed helplessly about the gilded garage door, this was the loading bay of a one-time supermarket. Finley’s, bless him. I heard you were conceived in this alley. Several rusting hatchbacks were parked along the curb, one of them I recognised.

Sure enough, inside, under the sad purple lights of an office disco, Caroline stood chatting to someone I did not recognise. An older man, silver, refined. He leaned on a cubicle wall, paper party hat balancing jauntily on his iron DA.

She crossed her arms. She was wearing a grey polar neck we used to share – military – a hand-me-down from my uncle in the Caucasus.

“What’s the occasion?” I asked, interrupting.

“We’re celebrating Richmond’s win.” Caroline said, speaking to the wolf.

“A little premature,” I hazarded.

“I think not,” said Richmond. “We are gaining in the suburbs”.

“The real votes are down Shop Street,”

“Sorry, who are you?”

“I am A Relevant Party”

“A relevant party!” Caroline laughed, not meeting my eyes.

“I’m not here to take sides,” I said, turning to Richmond. “How do you feel about Beltton’s potholes?”

“They’re part of our heritage,” he said in a councillor’s voice. “To move our city into the 21^st, we’ll have to address issues deeper that potholes,” he laughed forcefully.

Feeling in the mood, I caught up with some familiar faces on the dance floor, leaning close to shout simple phrases over the blaring music. Joe the newspaperman predicted a resurgence in print media.

“I hope you’re right Joe!”

“What was that, Ron?”

“I said, ‘we’ll speak later!’”

As I’d hoped, I ran into Caroline on the stairs.

“Ron,” she said, leaning on the rail, “what are you doing here? Really?”

I thought about it.

“Do you still see her?”

“No,” I said, it was basically true. I had barely thought about you since leaving the coast. She looked at me, hand slipping slowly down the banister.

“I still want to get out of here,” She said.

“Where would we go?”

“South”.

* * *

The ballot was a week away. You haunted Caroline and me as best you could. Campaign posters, canvassers, solemn pledges over Shop Street’s crackling PA. A public appearance on the hill didn’t boost your approval ratings – when the storm hit you tried to shout it down. Wringing hands, spiritual howls. A disquieting sight to your straggling base. I couldn’t help but smile; your father would have done the same.

* * *

Thursday. I woke late to a vision of permanent, porous green. My head throbbed: another Richmond pre-election victory party. I unzipped the tent and crawled out on to the garage roof. Grey, flecks of rain. The window was open, Caroline was painting in her room. Strains of shrieking voices came from somewhere across the service alley. A cool breeze blew, sulphur tinged. A pleasant afternoon.

“What are you working on?”

“Richmond’s victory poster,” she unfastened the board from the easel and held it up. “Do you like it? We’re going to print it big and roll it from the roof of the old Inglewood’s factory, remember where Epicurean Cleaning Products used to be?”

Richmond’s wolfish face grinned at me as Caroline tilted the canvas left and right, catching the light. Something about the rainbow skyline and luscious pastures put me on edge.

“Belttown doesn’t look like that, the only agriculture around here are the fish farms”

“It’ll be different when Richmond wins”

“He’s been in power for six years already, Caro’”

“Well, who cares? I’ll be gone”.

* * *

The election day was a chemical heat. Fluttering ribbons adorned the police cordons of provincial murder scenes and damaged kids sounded the horns of stolen cars. Caroline had left early. I stood on the corner of Shop Street taking in the buzz. I planned to meet her there, by Richmond’s local – the station where he would ceremoniously register his vote.

Romany immigrants sold plastic Richmond figurines and flammable voodoo dolls, your name on the forehead. A white family squatted by a camping stove, roasting something synthetic. The electorate can be cruel.

Before you entered the campaign trail, I had never once hit the polls. A stalwart of Beltton Morgan as it was, I didn’t wish to see it fall to the Thatcherite forward march you contended in your pamphlets, in your disturbing public addresses, even in your love making. I liked the potholes, but I had never liked Richmond. No one had before you came along. Now a gathering crowd were awaiting his entourage, flailing flags in his name and colour. Mauve.

My phone vibrated in my pocket, I checked the caller. My stomach writhed, it was you. I let it ring. The vibrating continued as the steady breeze changed direction. This new wind carried a shift in temperament. Suddenly, shrill sirens echoed through Shop Street, the victorious shouts outside the polling station became silent.

People were running.

Out of the pedestrian zone and on to the A road, people ran. Traffic had disappeared. A kilometre down we saw why – across the dual carriage way police had laid a road block. The wind had become a gale, our coats blew about us. Police men and women silently warding us from the road ahead, leaned backwards against the elements.

Over bobbing heads I saw the wreckage. A family SUV decorated in council chair regalia, Richmond’s car. The vehicle had plunged into the notorious Shop Street pothole. A limp, silver-haired body was hurriedly dragged from the backseat. Paramedics wheeled the figure towards an ambulance. On the other side, two policemen were prising open the back door. With their help, a woman in a military polo neck hobbled onto the pavement. Was that-?

My phone still rang.

“Hello?”

“Ron,” you said in a quiet, electric voice, “I’ve won”.

* * *

You were inaugurated in a private ceremony, the public event abandoned for security reasons. With Caroline still in hospital, I did as she asked and attended the flag burning on the square. A night of looting and hatred. I sensed that many of us in Beltton were taking the opportunity to fall in with the terrible, fascinating fiction of it all. The Council Chair was dead, the throne was yours. They broke shop windows and threw rocks at police. What were people protesting?

“Life’s delicious irony, I suppose” said Caroline from her hospital bed.

A protest then, or a celebration?

Later, at hers, I burnt the flag that held your name in blood red letters and silver stripes, alone, and in memory.