Read by Lee Peck
"Bollocks," said Trogg.
"Sorry," said Kevin.
Mr Roberts sighed. "Come on lad, one more go then we'll give it a rest."
"Blue is water, yellow is … gas, black is telephone – NO – black is electricity, all the others are telecommunications."
Mr Roberts looked at him expectantly. Trogg was about to swear again: the pressure was on.
"… APART from red! Yes, red is – high voltage. Sorry. Sorry."
"It's important, lad. You've got to know which ones spoil the alignment."
The two older men sat in the shade of their striped tent, surrounded with green plastic railings like a Wendy house. Most people walking past glanced in, until Trogg glared back at them.
Kevin stood in the afternoon sun, bored and boiling. This was everything he expected from work experience – a seismic interruption, taking him from his plans, his guitar and his friends and dumping him here, far too visible and in a stupid jacket. He hated his gawky skinniness, on show and reflected back at him in every passing car window. This was supposed to be good for him, somehow?
Since he started on Monday, Kevin had helped fence off a section of road and watched Trogg dig a big hole. It blocked half the street so Kevin had to operate a STOP/GO lollipop sign, whilst trying to remember the colour coding for utility pipes. This generated a lot of impatience in Neil, his counterpart at the other end of the mini-contraflow and the senior sign rotator. He scowled all the time and signalled for them to synchronise their lollipops with over-emphatic hand movements, as though he was beating away an invisible shark.
Kevin assumed Neil had got the colours right a while ago as Mr Roberts never tested him. Mr Roberts seemed very drawn to the codes of the utility pipes. Now he was sat in the tent with his chart on his knee. Kevin summoned his courage and peered in.
"Mr Roberts – what exactly have we dug this hole for? And what’s alignment?"
The older man looked around conspiratorially. "Alignment,” he said, “is all-important. It's the lines. They need resetting after all the cable they put in for the telly. The whole street was done, see, and they ran it right along here."
"Was that when they cut all the tree roots?"
"They did more than that, lad: they damaged the ley lines – channels of natural power. Bugger them about and it all starts going wrong. What we do is keep them aligned. And I'm here telling you now, it's not an easy job. Grey – quick!"
"Grey … Telecommunications!” returned Kevin. “Why do these leys run along the main roads, then?"
“NOW!” shouted Neil from down the street. Kevin jumped, turned the sign and returned to his mentor.
"More a case of the main roads following them," said Mr Roberts. "The lines were here first, you see, and they connect important places. What used to happen was that the leys go straight, and where they hit water, like a stream or something, or another line, that's an Important Place: somewhere it feels right to congregate. That was fine for thousands of years, until they started putting gas and electricity along the roads. They knacker the force, specially electricity. And now we've got telephones and broadband …"
"Bastards," said Trogg.
"The problem with broadband, you see, is it does exactly the opposite. On the one hand you've got leys trying to funnel all the natural energy in one direction, then you've got broadband talking to everybody at once all over the world. It’s useful, I suppose, but it’s a cluster not a line and it stands to reason the two shapes aren't going to get on very well."
"But who cares about them any more?" asked Kevin, fearful he might be being set up again. He'd already been sent to the shops to get Mr Roberts and Trogg a bag of two-holed doughnuts and some strawberry crisps. He wished he could be smart and know cool stuff, but in truth they, along with pretty much everything else in the world, impressed – no, frightened – him.
A waiting car revved ominously. Kevin looked, caught Neil’s frantic wave, and turned his sign round. The traffic was blasting out heat and the sun bounced off everything.
He felt sticky and dirty under his luminous jacket, and he knew the girls would be walking past from school any minute now. He wished, really wished he could either stop perspiring or use it to wash the spots away.
"No-one, son,” replied Mr Roberts. “No-one cares. The council keeps quiet about them because they come out of the Council Tax. We come under Environment and Planning so no-one has to explain and they don’t look like a bunch of hippies. But they need us. Look at this road. It's a ley, so it's supposed to be a straight line of power and harmony. So what's it got on it? Traffic lights, Pelican crossings, speed cameras, roundabouts: they all stop the flow. And everyone feels it. How many people have you seen shouting at each other driving along here? Why do they speed up when they've only got ten yards of space ahead? Why don’t they want to let people overtake? It’s not just when it’s hot. They feel the power but they don’t understand the size and significance of it: they only know they need to follow it."
"So what do we do? Whatever it is, it doesn't stop all that happening. And what’s the point of keeping these lines?"
"Containment, that's all. We keep it manageable. And as for the point – well, you’ll just have to wait and see.” Mr Roberts and Trogg exchanged sly glances, and Kevin felt lonely again. What were they going to do to him? He didn’t like it when Mr Roberts sided with Trogg – he needed the older man to be being the boss, keeping all this adult-ness under control, and not buddying up to a huge man with a shovel.
To pile on the misery, he heard approaching giggles and really needed to hide in the tent. He felt the anguish redoubling. Mr Roberts was his guardian and guide in so much of this job, but to ask him for protection from a bunch of schoolgirls would be unthinkable. He just needed an excuse – would it work?
“Can I come in and look at your map?”
"Bollocks."
"You'll get your break at four," said Mr Roberts.
STOP/GO, went Kevin, fixing his eyes on Neil’s outstretched arm – sure he was being taken for a ride by the other two and simmering with resentment.
"Eurgh, he's all hot and sweaty!"
They were here, and Kevin's seventeen years on the planet had left him completely unprepared for this situation. He tried to look at them, but it was physically impossible. His face felt hotter than the bullying sun, and the frustration was bringing tears to his eyes.
"Where’s your muscles then?"
"Shona fancies you!"
"Do NOT! God Kelly, you’re such a bitch!"
“Give us a lick of your lollipop!”
"Aww, he's gone all red – quite sweet …"
He turned his sign, but he was panicking and hadn’t checked first. One car was still passing as another approached from the other side. Neil’s arm had dropped and he was staring in disbelief, too outraged to function. So now Kevin was stood there with two motorists calling him variations on wanker and five schoolgirls laughing at him. Eventually the one who said she thought he was quite sweet told the motorists to leave him alone. Shamed, they negotiated their way past each other, tutting and rolling their eyes.
"Thanks," he mumbled, and they screeched with laughter again. Then they were gone, but it was hardly a victory. His heart was pounding and the heat was making him feel sick. He hated his fear of those girls, he missed his bedroom, that cool haven where he clamped on the headphones and imagined the chords shooting out of his guitar, as he stood aloof on stage and the women were adoring faces looking up, primed and ready to love him.
Trogg and Mr Roberts went over to the van and brought back a small but obviously heavy stone, which they placed carefully between a grey cable and the black electricity mains.
"These things used to be a lot bigger, of course," said Mr Roberts, "Stonehenge sized. Nowadays they make these portable ones with tungsten chips. You sink them under the road to mark out the ley, but they have to be …”
“Aligned?”
“… and that, young Kevin, is why-it's-important-to …"
"… know-the-utility-codes."
After about ten minutes of what looked like pointless adjustments, accompanied by much grunting and swearing, the two older men beckoned him over. Nervously, he stood over the stone as directed, straddling it. He felt extremely vulnerable but knew he couldn’t refuse. One more turn of the sign – Neil’s arm and scowl were back – and then a jolt ran through the ground – a profound elemental shock that punched his weariness away and left him buoyant with delight. Trogg and Mr Roberts were smiling to each other as they climbed up towards him. "That's the bollocks," said Trogg with a smirk. Mr Roberts gently took the sign from Kevin’s hand.
Kevin barely noticed them – or rather, he noticed them as part of the hurricane of sensations blasting through him. Suddenly he was weightless with ecstasy: a breeze could have picked him up and wafted him away. He knew everything he had ever heard, seen, felt or imagined was part of one great idea – that a physical light was growing in him and giving him wisdom way beyond his dreams or experience – that for one nanosecond he could understand everything there was to know. He wanted to retain each moment but the one that came next was even better, again and again. It was indeed a line, he saw, linking everything. The hot, impatient traffic became a string of glass beads in gorgeous colours, wondrous shapes, and he felt he was racing through them, a shaft of light refracted again and again as it passed through their windows like prism after prism. The mouthy girls were somewhere along there too, about to burst out of their giggly cocoon and emerge as beautiful young women. Maybe they would love him, and he them, in the future. Neil’s sign glowed like a star which shrivelled the man’s anger to a petty sulk. Mr Roberts and Trogg had picked Kevin as the one who could appreciate this power, the one who could be – he laughed – “aligned”.
The job, Mr Roberts and Trogg, the cars, the girls, his spots, the shouting motorists and his dreams – they were all part of a huge, wonderful span. His life vaulted over the heat, the embarrassment, the worries, and he saw it was a rocket shooting over time, lighting everything with its inescapable energy. His face lifted into an unstoppable smile, and he could hear himself shout for joy, as if from a long way away. It all became too much and his rushing body merged into all-embracing whiteness.
"I knew he’d be good for the buzz," said Mr Roberts as he caught Kevin in his arms. "Come on, lad, you need a cup of tea and a lie down. You’d better work the sign for a while, Trogg."
"Bollocks," said Trogg.
---
Roadworks by Simon Jones was read by Lee Peck at the Liars’ League Shock & Awe event on Tuesday September 13th, 2011 at The Phoenix, Cavendish Square, London.
Simon Jones honed his craft as a writer of obscure fiction in his many years as a Civil Servant. Since resigning, he frequents the British Library and glares at people who wander round it with their squalling brats – and writes stuff like what you've just read.
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