Andrew J. Kingston

1973

Past Present Future

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If I close my eyes, I’m back. The Arndale smells stuffy but feels like an ocean liner, rocking ever so slightly. A little juddery - up and down though, rather than side to side. The old streets may have been raised to the ground, but they’re still down there, jittering the foundations.

 

I take a deep breath. Hold in, slow release. Then another. And another. And then I’m back, in the pitch yellow-grey streetlight.

 

Darlene’s fifteen minutes late.

 

We’ve been meeting here for years, on these ghost streets directly below where I’m standing with my eyes closed. Every Friday, after work, round the back of the George Hotel, in the rat runs and side alleys behind the fancier, busier George Street.

 

When people ask about home, these vanished streets come to mind. Of course, there’s my real home. The well-ordered brick and garden newbuild on the estate at the top of Farley Hill. But there’s also the wet hoardings and derelicts of Waller Street, Cheapside and Bute Street, dominated by the Grand Theatre - five storeys of sooty Luton Grey and Red bricks, and St Aldhelm box ground stone - forever boarded up.

 

The Grand has its own ghosts. I can feel them. The spirits of Lilly Langtry, the members of the orchestra and every one of those fifteen hundred seats, stalled and pitched, waiting for something to happen.

 

Most people were glad when the buildings were bulldozed.

 

I can feel Charlie Irons approaching, muttering to himself in his close to illegible patois.

 

“You alright Rob?”

 

The Grand and the streets around it start slipping away, then vanish. I open my eyes, slowly, trying to keep the magic.

 

“I’m good Charlie. You?”

 

“Here, take this.”

 

Charlie shoves a leaflet into my hand.

 

“Discover Islam,” I read.

 

“Good people Rob. They run the food bank up near the town hall.”

 

I wait. Charlie is always in a hurry. Always on a mission.

 

“They say there’s some kind of trouble brewing. Here, in the Arndale,” Charlie says.

 

I wait, though details aren’t forthcoming. Instead, he changes the subject.

 

“You still waiting on that phone call?”

 

I gaze at the phone booth.

 

“Oh. Darlene. You know. She calls if she’s going to be more than fifteen minutes late.”

 

“Ok,” Charlie replies.

 

Charlie leaves and I close my eyes again. The heavy smell of lifts blends into the background with the dust and delivery bays before it all starts to dissolve.

 

It was such a thrill to see Darlene back in those days, before she got ill.

 

There’s something going on at the key cutters, but I block it out. I’d been half watching this family when I’d been talking to Charlie. Parents, tired out, trying to keep their sticky kids off the decorating table and the pull up banners, smiling at the starchy cash and carry people plying for trade.

 

They’re all too young, by my reckoning, to remember the fountain that used to be here.

 

The family moves on and their noise becomes less distinct.

 

Then I’m back again. I can taste lead exhaust, then smell fried food and marrowfat. The up and down foundation rocking’s still there, but now it’s the prep work on some of the older buildings being made ready for demolition.

 

I look at my watch. I always try and see Darlene before she sees me. For no real reason; this seeing her first gives me a thrill. It’s important, somehow, but not at all that important. It’s just what we do, before she admonishes me for some trifle, and I see if she’s game for a quick pint in The Granville or The Panama Lounge before we head to the pictures or the new theatre upstairs at the library.

 

Nearly twenty minutes late. It never occurs to me to be angry or worried; perhaps I should be. I’ll sometimes comment and sometimes rue lost time, but waiting for Darlene has been one of my pleasures over the years.

 

Something’s going on. From far off, the noise of people running. Is this the trouble Charlie mentioned? Whatever it is, it’s a stark reminder of where I am. My old home, the streets between George Street and the old railway station at Bute Street, has long since been obliterated by the Arndale. By this concrete monolith to consumerism. No amount of prettying up; no amount of recalling the optimism surrounding its opening will take away the fact that it’s sat on and choking the streets I regard as ‘home’.

 

The phone’s ringing. I pick it up.

 

‘Darlene? Where are you?’

 

No reply.

 

As the noise gets louder, the energy is intimidating. It’s indoors and sounds like it’s moving quickly. I want to get out, quickly, until I hear sounds of joy and celebration. Shoppers are stopping, frozen and perplexed, until they, too, realise that whatever’s going on isn’t something – necessarily – that’s there to hurt them.

 

The ocean movements are more ocean-like now, and I look down, towards Smith’s Square where people are parting, pushing themselves as close as they can, away from the main thoroughfare.

 

I’m suddenly aware of light and the rush of outdoors. Then the procession itself, a burst of paints, confetti, whistles and streamers. At the back, an otherworldly beat piped and blasted by the most outlandish looking marching band. And at the front, Darlene, limbs flying and ecstatic.

 

So that’s why she’s late.

 

And then, a flash. A silent explosion. I wait for the shock wave and the blast and all the other devastating effects from those old nuclear documentaries. Instead, I feel soft and damp underneath me and something tickling my ear. And the noise of a fountain. A living, breathing, burbling thing. Not the relentless, echoing concrete noise of the old fountain in the Arndale.

 

I wake up. Properly wake up. Into the space where Waller Street and The Grand Theatre and the Arndale Centre should be. I wake and get up, off the damp earth.

 

I head towards what appears to an information point, but before I can get there, I’m cut off.

 

Charlie Irons.

 

“Alright Rob, how’s it going?”

 

I blink.

 

“Enjoying the park?”

 

Charlie smiles, then looks around. He shoves me a leaflet and disappears.

 

I take a lungful of air and look around me. Then I fold out the leaflet, and realise where I am. Home. Slap bang in the town centre, in the newly opened ‘Luton Grand Theatre Central Park and Gardens.’

This story was included in Idit Elia Nathan's Phone Home exhibition at The Storefront (2020, Departure Lounge/Luton Culture). You can hear a recording of me reading this story on Idit's Soundcloud.