The Girl On The Factory Wall

"Cool as."
Stepping back out into the road for a moment, Marg Cornell surveyed her handiwork critically, then shook the silver spray can and moved back in to continue. The high wall surrounding the chemical plant was scarred and pitted, loose bricks and crumbling mortar struggling to support the weight of two decades worth of graffitti. Most of the earliest examples had long since been painted over but some were still visible, tucked into corners too difficult to reach, too small to be worth the extra effort for the average tagger. Others seemed to survive the years through sheer artistry; The word Lovecraft had filled the archway above the main gates for at least fifteen years, outlasting the band it commemorated by more than a decade. There was something perversely beautiful in the way the letters were slowly being torn apart by the grasping tentacles of a faceless, eldritch horror and no subsequent artist had felt confident enough in their own work to paint over it. Elsewhere, less successful tags were covered by fresh paint on an almost weekly basis, regardless of the longevity of the bands they paid tribute to. Floyd's prismatic beams were bisected by a scrawled Never Mind The Bollocks, a poor rendition of Jim Morrison had been partially covered by Marley's Lion and the current crop of Madchester bands were well represented in dayglo bubble-lettering, just waiting for the next big thing to come along and obliterate them. Like the strips of compressed Earth in a geological sample, the layers of paint could be tied to distinct time frames, with rocky spurs and outcroppings breaking the surface of the present.
The wall had become a living history book, with each generation making its own mark, wiping the past from sight, believing that all that mattered was now. Their music, their art, their time. But Marg knew that this was rarely true, that painting on the wall was like writing in the sand, that only the wall and the factory would remain. She was painting for a different reason.
For one thing, her painting had nothing to do with music, at least not on the surface. She loved the Stone Roses and the Happy Mondays and Northside, but she saw beyond them, back into the rich history her mother had taught her since before she could crawl. She could pick out any band in the scrawled mass of tags and sing their best known songs - Even Lovecraft - and could probably sing several lesser known ones too. She knew the meandering paths which lead from Hawkwind to Doctor And The Medics, from The Velvet Underground to Primal Scream. The warp and woof of the aural tapestry was all laid out before her as her mother struggled to make sense of the world in the only way she could.
Throughout her childhood, Marg's mother had slowly drifted further and further away from her, her illness dismantling the sweet young woman and leaving only a shell in her place, a worn out husk full of brittle glass and rusty nails that squealed and scraped as it fought to stay alive. But at those times when her moods stripped her of speech, when the slightest touch from her daughter would send her into spasms of rage or enfold her in icy fear, she could still find the tune to express her innermost thoughts. Locked out of her mother's room, Marg still found a way into her world through the muffled music playing on her battered old portable record player. At ten years old, when an elderly relative had brought her a cassette player of her own for Christmas, she had sat on the landing outside her mother's room and played the first track from an album of Christmas songs, the only tape she owned. She had hoped simply to involve her, to bring her within earshot of a normal family Christmas, but as the song ended, another started up from behind th locked door. As each carol ended, another would fill the silence, alternating back and forth between mother and daughter; In many ways, it was the first true conversation they ever held together.
In the six years since, their secret shared vocabulary had deepened and expanded to the point where the opening bars of a song could stand as shorthand for a feeling or sensation, and the overall mood of an album chosen over another could indicate the tone of an entire day. Even when the drugs were working and her mother resembled a mostly functioning human being, they still fell back into the musical dialect they were most comfortable with, neither one speaking but filling the silence with song after song. The advent of compact discs meant they could skip straight to any track that expressed their mood and miss out any that threatened to shatter it. With her weekend job in Woollies, Marg earned enough to bring home two or three new albums every week, and she often had to fight the urge to run all the way home, just to hear them a few minutes sooner. Sometimes, if her mother was still at the clinic when she got back, she would lie on the living room floor, her head between the stereo speakers, listening to each one from beginning to end. She was looking for the hook which would bring the whole album alive for her mother, the one song or phrase or note which would snare them both. Sometimes, it never appeared, and the disc was taken to the Simms Cross junk shop to be traded in for another half dozen scratchy old 45s. Other times, she would chance across a gleaming jewel in the heart of an album, a track which meant so many things to them both that they could use it to bridge a week of awkward silences. She wondered if that meant she was as bad as her mother, that a song which prevented them from speaking for days on end was seen as a good thing must be some measure of their shared psychosis. But mostly she just accepted that this was the way her life was going; this was her mother, this was her world, same as it ever was.
For now. Exhausting her spray can, she wiped a stray strand of hair from her eyes and stepped back to view her progress. The figure was well proportioned, clearly defined and highlighted by the silver haze which shimmered around it. The silhouette was a blank space on the wall where she had painstakingly painted over the accumulated graffitti with layer after layer of natural brick red until not even the barest trace bled through. With a fine brush she had drawn in the lines of soft grey mortar, until the final effect was achieved. In the midst of the chaotic jumble of tags and countertags stood a void. Shaped like a sixteen year old girl in baggy jeans and an Inspiral Carpets tee-shirt, it was an absence of artwork, as if she had stood there for forty years while several generations of artists had drawn around and across her. Now she had stepped away from the wall, revealing the bare brick beneath for the first time in decades. Lighting a cigarette, she took up a can of white paint and quickly gave it a title, the first thing to enter her mind. Pleased, she slipped the cans back into her satchel and checked her watch. Almost half past twelve; time to go.
As she turned the corner at the end of the street she passed a couple of guys she knew vaguely from school and nodded in greeting. They nodded back and continued on towards the factory.
"The horse in her bedroom was Shadowfax." said one, "I went back and read the description and it was spot on."
"I haven't got a clue what's going on," admitted his comrade, dripping tippex thinner onto the cuff of his jacket and taking a deep breath. "It's fucking great."
They paused for a moment, looking at the freshly painted words beside the figure of the missing girl, reading it aloud, giving voice to the question the whole town would soon be asking;
"Where is Marg?"
But neither they nor anyone else had an answer, and the girl on the factory wall was surrounded by music and saying nothing.

Notes

Loss

The house smells of stale smoke and strangers. The police left a little while ago, Bill shortly after. He asked if I needed him to stay, bless him. He looked so relieved when I said no. Now it's just me, sitting in the dark in the empty parlour.
I get up to make a drink, pick up his mug from the draining board, pour milk into it before I even realise what I'm doing. I can't seem to put it back on the shelf, but finishing the job, making his milky tea and leaving it to cool in the mug seems even worse. I can't go on and I can't go back.
Instead, I sit at the kitchen table, in his chair. Looking at the world from his point of view, seeing what he saw. The scarred table top looks like the surface of the moon; Old burn marks for craters, the criss cross marks of the bread knife, jagged teeth tearing deeply into the old teak. I lie my hands on the raw wood and stare at them for an hour. Maybe I fall asleep. Maybe not. The hour passes. My hands age. The skin tightens, the knuckles swell and thicken as the fingers lose their nimble dexterity. It doesn't show on the outside. I stare at them untill my eyes sting, but I don't see it. No-one could. But with every hour that passes - every minute and second - we get closer to the end. To the last walk into the night.
Mustn't dwell on it. Got to keep thinking positive thoughts. They don't know for certain. Think it through: They only found his jacket. The Legion is nowhere near the canal. There's no need for him to go anywhere near it. There was only a little blood. Dad was in the army. Old soldiers don't just fall into the canal.
I know; He was attacked on his way to The Legion. Someone attacked him, they fought and dad got a black eye and a bloody nose and lost his coat. His attacker ran away with it, went down to the canal to rifle through the pockets and throw anything incriminating into the water. Any moment now, dad will come staggering through the front door, singing his awful old songs, shivering in his shirtsleeves, wiping his nose on a scrap of bloody tissue and trying to roll a cigarette with one hand. He'll shout at me for sitting in his chair, and if he ever finds out that Bill sat in the parlour holding my hand then I'll really be for it, and it would all be worth it just to hear his voice. Even if he lapsed into German, which just makes him ever more angry because I don't understand it...
Except it's almost three O'clock and dad would never stay out later than midnight, even on a weekend. The Legion closes at half past eleven, and even in his worst states, it would never take him half an hour to make his way home. It's not like he's got any friends to visit. I don't think he ever did, even back in Germany.
I notice that a couple of my fingernails are starting to bleed. I've been scratching the table top; there are tiny splinters in my fingertips, under the nails. I can't feel them, but I can see them. Everything's numb. I bet I could take the bread knife and...
I see where the thought is heading and push my chair away from the table, legs scraping on the bare quarry tiles, screeching loudly in the silent night. I stand and head back into the parlour. The policeman smoked those terrible liquorice paper cheroots. The room reeks of them, the wet, twisted butts sitting in the ashtray look like miniature dog poops. I think of tiny poodles walking around the glass dish, doing their business, and I can't hold my laughter in any longer. After a good five minutes I realize that it wasn't laughter. I look up and find that I'm kneeling on the hearth rug, my face wet from tears which have soaked the seat of dad's armchair. I stood here, on this same spot, when I was a little girl, clinging to his trouser leg, listening to his stories. I didn't understand a fraction of what he was trying to tell me. Now I never will.
Back then, when I looked up at him, I saw a giant, his head in the clouds, with a booming voice and great rough hands that would scoop me up and lift me into the smoky nimbus which hung around his shoulders. We were in a different world up there. I can still smell the strange home mixed tobacco he bought from the old woman in Cooper Street. Sometimes there was a trace of cherrywood, sometimes something more like tar, sweet and rich or thick and black, all tangled up with the smell of his hair oil, the axle grease ground into his hands and the occasional nip of whiskey on his breath.
I crawl up onto the armchair, close my eyes and press my face against the worn material, breathing deeply. I can almost believe that he's still here. I can smell him, feel his warmth. I press myself into the indentation of his form on the cushions, trying not to think of the fact that it's a hollow, a negative space formed by his absence. For now it's enough to get me through the night.
I sleep, finally. The dreams respect my boundaries, for one night only. No silver stars, no burning fields, no steppenwolves or soldiers. Just oblivion. Peace. I sleep in the space carved out by my father's life, the echo of his arms around me, the ghost of his breath on my face. And then I wake to a new world.
The sun is rising and my father is dead.