P.J. Murphy

‘It’s a disgrace!’ Councillor Maynard declared. ‘Seventy-five per cent of Ramstead’s residents are unemployed. Fifteen per cent are registered homeless. I wouldn’t be surprised if we pay out more there in benefits than the rest of the district put together!’

William Maynard’s words met with concerned grunts from the assembled elected members. It had been years since the last time Tralford District's council chamber played witness to such drama. Everyone was still reeling from the previous decade’s “debate” about bulldozing thirty acres of ancient woodland to make way for a bypass (less of a “debate”, really, than a security incident, involving eco-warriors handcuffed to the chamber’s crescent table; even setting that aside, it was a debate in only the loosest sense, because in principle go-ahead had been granted long before any formal application was submitted, secured through clandestine machinations and hospitality dinners).

‘Obesity levels have reached an all-time high,’ Maynard continued, jabbing a finger at the offending report (printed, coincidentally, on paper originating from the aforementioned now-ex-ancient-woodland). ‘Nobody lives beyond the age of sixty-nine. How can we sit by while there’s a village on our doorstep where nobody makes it to seventy?’

Maynard’s face was blotchy with outrage. He barked his words with military authority, his entire body rigid. This was his moment. Finally, an opportunity to deliver the Churchillian oratory he had been building up to throughout his fifteen years of public service. In his heart of hearts, he knew he was some distance from “We shall fight them on the beaches…” but there was little he could do about that. Even the greatest of orators requires decent subject matter. World wars have an annoying habit of not being there when you need them.

Still, as Maynard continued his tirade against a small seaside village in Eastshire, Christine Hope could have sworn she saw the Queen, surveying proceedings from high on the wall, set aside her Mona Lisa smile for a frown. Hope concurred with Her Majesty’s sentiments. Together, they had endured countless speeches from Maynard, each more pompous than the last. As Leader of the Council, Hope wasn’t permitted to zone out. She had to listen to every last over-dramatised word.

It came as somewhat of a relief when Cllr Kane interrupted Maynard’s recital of Ramstead’s teenage pregnancy statistics:

‘Point of clarification if I may, Madame Chair?’ he said. ‘My esteemed friend must recognise that anyone over sixteen is of legal age.’

Cllr Hope smoothed down her brightly coloured Kenyan dress (her trademark garb and a reminder to herself that there was life outside of Tralford). Something about Kane made her brush herself off whenever he spoke. It wasn’t that he looked or sounded creepy – some would even have branded him handsome in a closest-you’re-likely-to-get-in-real-life-to-Mr-Darcy-ish way. This man had the profile of a sociopath: single, mid-thirties, harmless-looking enough to get voted in, ego-centric enough to want to get voted in. Hope was all too aware of the ruthless edge he concealed from the public. She had witnessed it in the intense interest he took in reviewing the latest set of staff redundancies; people he would later shake by the hand, look square in the eye and tell them he wished there was something he could do to help. She had decided long ago to accept his interventions at face value. The less she questioned his motives, the better she slept at night.

‘Be that as it may,’ she said, ‘we all agree that teenage pregnancy is not a good thing, whether they’re thirteen or nineteen. These are girls at a crossroads in their lives. Think of all the possibilities denied them with a baby in tow.’

Not, she reflected, that girls from Tralford tended to display much ambition. Those that weren’t trying desperately to get pregnant had their hearts set on becoming reality TV stars. The local college was seriously contemplating running a course on celebrity. That battle Hope would fight on another day.

Maynard cast Kane a contemptuous glance. ‘I accept my esteemed colleague’s well-timed interjection. Perhaps he would feel more comfortable if I moved on? It matters little to me: the other statistics are just as shocking. The crime rate tripled last year. Reports of household burglary, vandalism and motor theft. The place is a blot on the landscape.’

Hope coughed pointedly. ‘That’s not an expression we use.’

She eyed the press booth. This meeting may have been open to the public, but these chairs were empty. These days, the papers rarely sent journalists, not unless budget cuts were being considered or a scandal was about to force someone out. But one could not be too careful. Hope didn’t want her councillors getting into the habit of speaking unguardedly. If they started there, it was anyone’s guess whether a quote would have to appear in the local, regional or national media before they paused to consider that maybe it was conceivable that they could possibly have said too much.

Those plastic seats, inherited from a local school, were the epitome of the double standards in that place. Their dulled colour and the hardened chewing gum pressed under the lip of each seat set them quite in contrast with the plush leather of the councillors’ chairs. The justification: this was necessary to maintain a sense of order and stop the press getting above themselves. Everything about local government was about elevating tedious affairs above the mundane. The councillors themselves were only too willing to play their part in this. When there, they were not William and Simon from the neighbourhood, but Cllr Maynard and Cllr Kane. They assumed the mantle of something greater. The effect was spoilt a little by the calibre of some councillors, plus the fact that council chamber had seen many long years since its latest refurbishment. Decades of tedium had taken their toll on laminated surfaces, peeled away by restless fingers. The carpet was straight from the 1970s. It hadn’t been cleaned in years, for fear that this might bring out the garish colours, which everyone hoped had been consigned to history.

Hope stepped in as soon as Maynard sat down, before any other of the dozen assembled elected members could take the opportunity to agree at length on how awful the situation in Ramstead really was.

‘Thank you, Councillor Maynard for that articulate summary.’ She dug her fingernails into her palms as she said that. ‘Clearly, we cannot allow the situation in Ramstead to continue. Truly, it reflects poorly on all of us, and pulls the stats down for the whole district. Now is the time for action.”

‘Drastic action,’ Cllr Maynard agreed, for if action is not to be drastic, what is the point in doing it at all?

All around the table, heads nodded.

‘If I may...?’ Marvin Benson, Head of Community Services, had been attempting to get heard for some time now. ‘I think we need to look deeper at some of these figures. I wouldn’t want us to get alarmist.”

‘Benson doesn’t think there’s anything here to concern us!’ Maynard deployed the classic jeer, a device that had proven highly effective in boarding school and had served him pretty well in politics too.

Benson backed down, chastising himself for speaking out at all. He could recognise a bandwagon when he saw one, and he hadn’t succeeded in rising through the ranks of the civil service without knowing when to jump out of the way. He knew perfectly well that he had only survived recent staffing culls because his three decades of service dictated a severance package way above that which the council was prepared to pay. Still, there was little point in antagonising the elected members. They already detested him for doing annoying things like reading beyond the executive summary of reports.

Cllr Norman Jenner, leader of the opposition, could also see where this was headed. In rural Eastshire, the opposing party comprised one sole councillor, so technically he was a leader only of himself, and some would question whether he managed even that. Even so, he too could recognise a bandwagon, a hill and the brick wall at the bottom. Let them have their way, that was his strategy. Encourage them. Steer subtly if necessary. Be around to take maximum advantage of the resulting mess.

‘Madame Chair,’ he said, rubbing his beer-belly like a man that had already feasted but was still looking forward to an after-dinner mint. ‘Perhaps we might move on to discuss what action we might take to put an end to this abhorrent situation?’

This suggestion met with an awkward silence. The elected members were unused to talking about action at any more detailed a level than agreeing it should happen. They employed people for that, didn't they? Papers were shuffled and throats were cleared, to no meaningful effect.

Until:

‘Let’s form a partnership!’

It was Maynard’s idea. Hope would remember that.

This end to the deadlock was met with delirious enthusiasm, manifesting itself as rigorous head shaking.

‘Yes,’ said Cllr Jenner, remembering a memo from Whitehall in the late 1990s. ‘We should be working together with the community.’

‘Helping them… to help themselves!’ said Cllr Maynard, whose source was a little more recent but his comprehension no more nuanced.

The hall erupted with applause.

*****

Eric was motionless, staring across the Ramstead marshes. The low winter sun glinted off the middle-aged man's scalp. Gerald reached out but stopped just short of touching his arm. It was anyone’s guess the last time Eric had taken a bath.

‘See something interesting?’ he said.

Eric twitched to life and cast Gerald a wide smile. ‘I’m waiting for the guy the council’s parachuting in. Given the wind direction, I reckon his safest landing spot is the meadow right there.’

Gerald took in a breath. One had to make allowances for Eric. Of all the guests he had seen pass through the Royal Ramstead hotel over the years, Eric was the sole person to have displayed any interest in community meetings. That wouldn’t have been surprising forty years ago, when the hotel had its heyday, but these days the council leased most of the rooms, using it as a staging post for those people they had a statutory obligation to house, while waiting for an opening in the depleted housing stock. As Chairman of the Ramstead Residents Association, Gerald had been trying for years to engage with this semi-permanent population.

‘He’s already here,’ said Gerald, ‘Inside.’

Eric shrugged. ‘Must have got in before the wind changed.’

The pair scrambled down from the sea wall to re-join the other members of the Ramstead Residents Association in the village’s scout hut. Mavis, as overly ambitious about numbers as ever, had set out a circle of twenty chairs. In fact, only five of Ramstead’s finest had turned out that afternoon, and this was only because Mavis had brought her mother and grandmother with her, on the way back from lunch break to the newsagent they ran.

Trent Argent, the man tasked by the council with dragging Ramstead from the mud, was sitting there chatting with three generations of floral-clad Mavises (for Mavis was the youngest in a proud line of women whose names were distinguishable only by subtle differences in intonation, discernible only to the well-trained ear). He was wearing a pressed suit and Italian shoes, pointed at the toes. It was a wonder that either had fit beneath his parachuting overalls.

The image of Trent as a paratrooper was further challenged by his slight built. Nervous energy had burnt away all extraneous flesh, ageing him badly. Thirty, going on fifty, he had never skydived in his life. The last time he jumped down a few steps (a moment’s thoughtless exuberance that he vowed he would never repeat), he broke a leg.

Whatever Trent lacked in stature didn’t seem to have dented his confidence. This man had been sent there to deliver messages such as “get a job” and “stop getting your teenagers pregnant”, yet he looked everyone right in the eyes and greeted them with a practiced smile. The Mavis trio were doting on him already, after he had conjectured that the plural of their name was not “Mavises” but “Mavi”.

‘A man what knows his grammar,’ said Mavis the younger. ‘My heart’s gone all aflutter!’

Grandmother Mavis’ laugh was identical to her ex-smoker’s cough. ‘Your heart goes aflutter every time someone rings the doorbell, dear.’

Gerald and Eric took their seats, and after a very brief round of introductions, Trent began:

‘Let me give you a bit of background about myself. I’m what they call a Community Troubleshooter.’

He must have hoped to get a little further before the first interruption.

‘Like a bounty hunter?’ said Eric.

‘More like a policeman,’ said Trent. ‘A nice village bobby that knows everybody and helps them out with their problems.’

‘Never met one of those.’

‘Let me tell you about Dogshon. A pretty sounding place, I’m sure you’ll agree. Dogshon’s a Liverpool suburb. Look beyond the obvious geographic differences and you’ll see plenty of similarities with Ramstead. Ramstead’s on a peninsula; Dogshon’s in this no-man’s-land between two forks in the railway. One road in and out, and one bus a day that nobody uses. It’s a community that traditionally keeps itself to itself. Sound familiar? They like to think of themselves as self-sufficient, and in truth those that don’t mind living on UHT milk and tinned steak and kidney pudding probably are.’

Trent paused to check that his audience was still with him, allowing just enough time to confirm that nobody was snoring or had gone into cardiac arrest. He had dealt with some tough crowds in his time.

‘Or I should say “were”,’ he continued. ‘It can’t carry on that way. You can’t shut out the local authority, not forever. Once the council decides it has a problem, that’s the beginning of the end. For Dogshon, the problem was that it was known locally as Dogshit. Now, you might ask why the council would get fired up over a teenage joke. The thing was, it wasn’t just a joke. The whole place was built from wattle and daub. Know what that is? It’s a medieval building material made up of straw and manure. Some might say “Traditional building methods, that’s great”. Not these methods. It came to light that the building firm taking care of all the repairs and renovations was substituting horse manure with human excrement. I don’t know if it was a sick joke or a cost-saving measure but either way, people were literally living in their own filth. Their houses were built from it.’

Trent made the mistake of pausing for effect.

‘So, it’s not accurate, then,’ Eric said.

Trent gulped down on his next words.

‘What’s not accurate, Eric?’ said Gerald, feeling compelled to step in.

‘The name. They shouldn’t call it Dogshit if it’s really made of human shit.’

‘A valid point.’ Trent was too experienced to be wrong-footed for long. ‘I’ll be sure to mention it the next time I visit. Anyway, the council wanted to nuke the place, literally raze it to the ground, and obviously the community wasn’t too keen on that idea, even if they’d had enough of the smell. That’s where I came in. I acted as a broker between them and the people. I looked for the best in things. I sold a new narrative. I made sure everyone got what they wanted. Now, Dogshon’s a tourist attraction.’

On any other day, Trent would have waited for his audience to gasp in awe, but he wasn’t about to allow Eric another inch of dead airspace.

‘On the flip-side,’ he said, ‘take a look at what happens to communities that insist on forging their own way.’

Trent handed around a binder of newspaper clippings. Gerald glanced at it only superficially but was struck by one particular photograph. A block of flats, captured at the point of destruction. The explosives had detonated at its base and the tower was hanging in the air, waiting for gravity to catch up. This place was called Glomden and, a couple of pages later, it was the site of the grand opening of a set of luxury apartments. There were dignitaries everywhere, looking very pleased with themselves, shaking hands with real-estate developers.

‘This need not be Ramstead’s fate,’ said Trent. ‘Stick with me. Do exactly what I say and Ramstead might just come out of this in one piece.’

Gerald looked around at his fellow residents. Trent’s stunt had made its intended impact. Eric’s brow glistened, Grandmother Mavis was scowling and Mother Mavis was knitting (the opium of the Mavi) frantically. A pale Mavis (the younger) whimpered:

‘What do you want us to do?’

Trent grinned. ‘For now, just sit tight, shut up and let me work my magic. And, for heaven’s sake, try to look empowered.’