Zero Hours E-Book

Neil Campbell

• Herausgeber: Salt
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Serie: Manchester Trilogy
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 191

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

In this, the second volume of a projected Manchester trilogy, the young writer takes a zero-hours job in a mail-sorting depot but struggles to cope with the demands of menial work and the attitudes of his colleagues. Only after rescuing and acquiring a pet tortoise does he realise what is most lacking in his life: intimacy. Embarking on a handful of sexual misadventures, he continues to struggle as a writer. He sees the city in which he was born and brought up changing all around him and, when he gets sacked from the sorting office, some hard choices lie ahead. A powerful indictment of austerity politics and Brexit Britain, the novel never loses sight of its working-class characters' dignity and humanity, and Campbell's mordantly witty dialogue ensures that the next laugh is never far away. Gripping in its fascination with the everyday, Zero Hours is keenly observed, blackly funny and ultimately uplifting.

Leseprobe

ZERO HOURS

by 

NEIL CAMPBELL

SYNOPSIS

In this, the second volume of a projected Manchester trilogy, the young writer takes a zero-hours job in a mail-sorting depot but struggles to cope with the demands of menial work and the attitudes of his colleagues. Only after rescuing and acquiring a pet tortoise does he realise what is most lacking in his life: intimacy. Embarking on a handful of sexual misadventures, he continues to struggle as a writer. He sees the city in which he was born and brought up changing all around him and, when he gets sacked from the sorting office, some hard choices lie ahead.

A powerful indictment of austerity politics and Brexit Britain, the novel never loses sight of its working-class characters’ dignity and humanity, and Campbell’s mordantly witty dialogue ensures that the next laugh is never far away. Gripping in its fascination with the everyday, Zero Hours is keenly observed, blackly funny and ultimately uplifting.

PRAISE FOR THIS BOOK

‘An iconoclast of the first order. Searing prose and caustic humour from a tramping Mancunian flâneur.’ —Peter Kalu

‘Neil Campbell’s Zero Hours is a poetic, emotionally-charged reflection of what it means to live and work in the city today. Its Mancunian voice is so distinct it’s not like reading a novel at all but like having a conversation with modernity itself. Zero Hours is sharp, funny and moving – a wonderful evocation of Manchester life.’ —Lee Rourke

REVIEWS OF THIS BOOK

‘A 21st century Mancunian take on Post Office by Charles Bukowski. If you liked Post Office then you’ll almost certainly like this.’ —Scott Pack

‘Campbell’s narrator is a young working-class man from Manchester. Throughout the novel he works a number of zero hours jobs, first at a mail-sorting depot, later at a number of libraries. There is nearly always something to dishearten our man, be it his duties, colleagues, managers, or just the constant uncertainty that comes with this kind of employment. Besides work, the narrator has a number of unsuccessful attempts at relationships, and sees the face of his city change, losing its character to gentrification. There’s a stop-start feel to reading the novel itself: as with zero hours work, the present moment is all, and even the immediate future uncertain.’ —David Hebblethwaite, David’s Book World

‘Campbell is a realist writer, and Zero Hours is probably even more true to life and purposefully undramatic than its predecessor. And this is no bad thing, because he is a poet with a knack for describing ordinary episodes that strike an expectedly emotional chord. He is also deeply concerned with place and the indelible imprint left on a person by the sites that represent lodestones of their past.’ —Ronnie McCluskey, Storgy

‘Zero Hours is the second volume of Neil Campbell’s Manchester trilogy. Honestly, if ever a novel deserved literary accolades and bouquets it’s this one. Zero Hours possesses more energy, grind and determination than a decade of Bookers. If there was any justice it should be jumping off the bookshelves.’ —Joe Phelan, Bookmunch

PRAISE FOR PREVIOUS WORK

‘Surely already a regional classic of some sort … This book has its nearest equivalent in Mark Hodkinson’s northern writing. It is unpretentious and powerful, cuttingly honest … It tightens its grip on you by loosening its hold. It achieves high results by not trying … It silently slides its tentacles around you, showing you how life in structural poverty feels … All of this is achieved through very workaday description, interior monologue and dialogue … The author has mastered the art of tiny details that do massive amounts of work. It should be given to creative writing undergraduates for exactly that reason.’ —Manchester Review of Books

Zero Hours 

Neil Campbell is from Manchester. He has appeared three times in Best British Short Stories, and his debut novel Sky Hooks was published in 2016. He has four collections of short stories published, and two poetry chapbooks. Recent stories have appeared in The Lonely Crowd and Fictive Dream.

Also by Neil Campbell

NOVELS

Sky Hooks (Salt 2017)

SHORT STORIES

Broken Doll (Salt 2007)

Pictures from Hopper (Salt 2011)

Published by Salt Publishing Ltd

12 Norwich Road, Cromer, Norfolk NR27 0AX

All rights reserved

Copyright © Neil Campbell, 2018

The right of Neil Campbell to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Salt Publishing.

Salt Publishing 2018

Created by Salt Publishing Ltd

This book is sold subject to the conditions that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

ISBN 978-1-78463-149-9 electronic

For John G Hall, Manchester poet

PART ONE

Iwalked in on my first shift and was met by the manager, Hakan. He was a little prick. I could see it from the start.

‘What time do you call this?’

‘Eh?’

‘You should be here, ready to start at the beginning of your shift. Don’t come late. Where are your gloves?’

‘Oh, I forgot.’

‘You forgot? Are you dense or something?’

‘I’m not dense. I forgot.’

‘Go and get the gloves and then come and find me.’

I went for the gloves as he walked the other new starters to the conveyor belt. All around me there were men pushing metal trolleys. The ceiling lights were dull and left faint shadows. There was red movement all around: the Royal Mail uniform for permanent staff. When I came back I was put on tipping, which meant I wheeled a trolley full of sacks to the end of a conveyor belt and tipped each sack of post out onto it. After about an hour I could feel my dodgy knee beginning to ache. My back was aching too. Every time I looked up from sacks or the conveyor I could see Hakan’s eyes peering back at me. A bit later he brought a load of people over to watch me working.

‘You see? This is what I’m talking about. You have to work more quickly.’

He walked over, brushing me out of the way, and then picked up two sacks at once, tipping them all onto the conveyor.

‘You see how much quicker that was?’ he said, to the new starters, who nodded.

I’d seen this kind of shit before. Yes, he could do that once, but try doing it hour after hour. I knew I had to pace myself. I was on minimum wage. When Hakan went I carried on as I was. He looked back at me later in the shift and kept shaking his head. I threw an A4 Jiffy bag onto the conveyor. It felt like it had a hardback book in it. I would have liked to have rammed that Jiffy bag in his face. I carried on dropping parcels onto the conveyor. There was an Asian woman on there, throwing the mail into the baskets. She was about five foot tall.

Hakan came over and told me to go onto the conveyor. I did, and stood there throwing first class mail, second class mail and airmail into the right baskets. When those baskets were filled, someone came and wheeled them to the other side of the warehouse.

At the end of the night we walked in processions, pushing the trolleys out onto the loading bay where other workers wheeled them up ramps and onto the back of the lorries. Round and round we went, one following the other, shoving the full trolleys then wheeling back the empty ones.

Zlata was pushing an empty trolley back. She wore a bright yellow T-shirt and was tall and slim and blonde.

‘All right?’ I said.

‘All right,’ she said, mocking my Mancunian accent.

‘Are you the only woman working here?’

‘YES!’

‘I’m a writer.’

‘Writer? Woo hoo!’ she said, and with that she was gone, pushing the empty trolley through the depot.

For the rest of that shift I saw her in flashes of yellow. She flung parcels into baskets, worked hard.

There were two breaks of seven and a half minutes each. On the second break, I wandered into one of the brightly lit canteens that dotted the perimeter of the depot. Zlata was there, leaning back, glugging from a big bottle of water.

‘Can I sit here?’

‘Okay.’

‘Thirsty?’

‘Don’t be an idiot. So . . . you are a writer? Very good, Mr Writer. So, Mr Writer, what do you write?’

‘Poems and short stories mainly. I’ve got a novel.’

‘A novel? Fantastic. What is it about?’

‘Being a writer.’

‘Ha! That sounds so boring.’

‘It is what it is. So . . . is this your dream then . . . working here?’

‘I have a postgraduate diploma in international relations, from Salford University.’

‘I used to work there. You know the Clifford Whitworth Library?’

‘Oh, I was in there my whole life!’

‘So, are you finding that qualification useful?’

‘What?’

‘International Relations?’

‘Of course! All nationalities here.’

‘How long have you been here?’

‘Almost one year.’

‘So, you’re permanent?’

‘Yes. After three months, they give you more money.’

‘Not sure I want to be permanent.’

‘It is good job.’

‘I’ve done worse.’

‘In this economy it is not easy to get jobs.’

‘I know.’

‘Anyway break time is over,’ she said, standing up and pulling her T-shirt down over her midriff.

‘Shall we go for a drink after work?’ I asked.

‘Okay, why not? I give you chance. Wait for me outside, Mr Writer.’

Hakan told me to go on skips. Skips was an area of waist-high baskets filled with mail. Standing there I got talking to this fat bloke. I could smell beer on him.

‘That Hakan’s a tosser,’ I said.

‘Tell me about it.’

‘Every time I looked up he was there, staring over.’

‘They’re all cunts in here, mate, all the management. Bunch of cunts.’

As he spoke, he kept flinging post from the waist-high basket into any one of a semi-circle of bigger baskets, labelled with postal codes. Half of them were tiny yellow Jiffy bags. He threw them with a flick of the wrist and they floated into the baskets every time. Mine were going all over the place.

‘Cunts in this place, I tell you. Watch your back with that Hakan. Can’t say anything to him. Say anything to him and everyone will know about it. Little blokes are always like that. Like Yorkshire terriers, vicious little bastards. The way he talks to me . . . sometimes I’d like to rip his head off . . .’

‘Yeah.’

‘He’s a total fuckface.’

‘I get the picture. So . . . you local then?’

‘Just round the corner, just up there,’ he said, pointing. ‘Collyhurst.’

‘I’m in Didsbury.’

‘Didsbury eh? The leafy suburbs.’

‘Yep.’

‘That’s the posh part of Manchester.’

‘I’m not from there though. I’m from Audenshaw.’

‘Oh yeah? I know it there. Used to have a mate in Denton.’

‘Oh, right?’

‘Yeah, he was an arsehole.’

‘Cheers.’

‘No, I don’t mean that, I mean Hakan. Tosser he is. I tell you, one of these days I’m going to ask him what his postcode is and then I’m going to throw the little bastard into a basket.’

‘I’ll watch my back.’

‘I would.’

‘Anyway, it’s nearly ten. Are you doing the night shift?’

‘Nah.’

‘They’ll come round in a minute asking if you want to do nightshift.’

‘Fuck that.’

‘Don’t blame you. But I need the dough. My bird has got the dolly blue and she’s been off.’

At the end of the shift I stood outside, waiting for Zlata. A car sped down Oldham Road, headlights tracing the tarmac. Two lads in T-shirts and caps stood outside the takeaway, across the road, smoking. There was a queue at the bus stop, several guys still in their high-vis vests or red Royal Mail shirts. I watched through the glass doors as Zlata chatted to several lads. Eventually she came out.

‘Everyone wants to take me for a drink!’

‘Doesn’t surprise me.’

She started swinging her bag around in the air.

‘Where are you taking me?’

‘You know Gulliver’s?’

‘No.’

‘They’ve done it up. Used to be a dump.’

‘A dump?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I don’t come out for drinks with people from work. Hardly ever. Okay, well, sometimes. Maybe once per week. Twice per week sometimes. Ha ha!’

In the pub, we sat opposite each other on high seats. There was a table between us that meant I couldn’t see her body. Behind the bar, the mirrors sparkled.

‘So where are you from?’

‘Sarajevo.’

‘Oh right.’

‘Bosnia. You know in Bosnia I was a reporter there. Quite famous.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. Political reporter in Sarajevo.’

‘So why are you working in the mail centre?’

‘It is complicated. I’m not English.’

‘You must miss it.’

‘I miss my mum. And my sister. I miss them so much.’

‘I can imagine.’

‘We never forget the siege of Sarajevo. You remember?’

‘I’m shit on politics.’

‘You don’t know? Oh, my god.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Siege was for years. I was a teenager. Coming here, work in mail centre, you think is hard work? That is ridiculous. Nothing is hard for me now. We come here and your people say go back to your own country, don’t take our jobs. English people don’t do the jobs we do. Have you tried to live in a war? And what is your problem here? Brexit? You vote Brexit? You are stupid in this country.’

‘I didn’t vote for Brexit.’

‘The snipers were the worst. They were in tower blocks, they killed women and children. How is that for conscience? They even shot at us in the cemeteries.’

‘I don’t know anything about politics, like I said. Look, there is a poetry night on across the road, why don’t we go there? It will be a laugh.’

‘That is your attitude? I give you my heart and that is your attitude? Drink your beer and watch your football because that is all you English know.’

‘We are going to poetry, aren’t we? I’m listening to you, aren’t I?’

‘You don’t listen. How can you understand? Here is no problem. You think England is so special? The weather here is so awful, and the food, oh my god. And the people are not kind.’

‘Well, why did you come here then?’

‘That is all you can say? You are not sensitive. How can you be writer when you have no political conscience?’

‘More to life than politics.’

‘You are so stupid.’

‘No I’m not. I just don’t know about Bosnia, sorry.’

‘You don’t know anything. You are not writer.’

I walked her back to the bus stop. She got on the 81 and didn’t look from the window as I waited. I stood in the shadow of a Ferris wheel, the so-called ‘Wheel of Manchester’. There was some dispute about the rent and it wasn’t going around.

I wrote in the morning and had a kip in the afternoon before getting on the bus for the long trip back across town. It seemed like everyone else was heading home. Bright sunlight glinted from windows. The CIS Insurance building rose high into the sky and shimmered in the haze. A group of men on Oldham Road stood topless, washing cars in the heat.

Temporary staff didn’t get lockers at the mail centre. So I went to the cloak room. There was a broken tumble dryer covered in dust. A single table with chairs around it. There were no coat hangers or hooks and the chairs had layers of coats on them. Rucksacks and bags littered the floor around the table. I kept my valuables in the pockets of my jeans. I went out to the conveyor, remembering my gloves. Hakan was holding some high-vis bibs.

‘I see any of you without the high-vis on you will be fucked off out of the door.’

He pointed towards the trolleys and I went back on tipping. I could see Zlata. Every time she threw a letter into a trolley she bent forward across the table. I wrote a poem about it that would eventually find a home in a short-lived journal produced by undergraduates at a university in the middle of nowhere.

The writing was going okay. I had a short story in a prominent anthology. It was reviewed by a critic, famous in academic circles. I had two of his books. He didn’t understand Sherwood Anderson either. This critic was now reviewing stories on his own blog and hadn’t had anything in print for a while.

I’d stopped going to readings. At the last one I’d been to, the friends of the writer who made up the audience laughed uproariously at his sly irony and clapped and whooped at the end. If they didn’t already know him the jokes wouldn’t have been funny.

I also went to an experimental poetry night at the Castle, across the road from Gulliver’s. The first act was a bloke with a beard sat at a desk, typing into an Apple Mac while orchestral music played. He was typing the notes to the music. After that, someone else came on and passed bits of paper around to the audience. To great amusement, we were all asked to write a line of poetry. After that, the poet collected the bits of paper together, smiled to herself and walked off. There was tumultuous applause. Then it was time for a richly deserved break. I got out of there.

I went to another reading at the Burgess Centre where this writer had just read from a new book. It was a collection of short stories made to look like a novel. He was so smug, talking with his editor. There was a Q&A. The prose in the book, for all its attention to minute detail, was utterly boring. The detail said nothing except that the writer was a good observer of banality. But he had the last laugh. I fell for it and bought one.

Back in the mail centre, I got talking to this bloke from Bolton. He had a heavy beer gut and wore glasses.

‘How long you been here then?’

‘Thirty-five years,’ he said, pushing one of the trolleys into place and almost barging past me to get another one.

‘I bet you pay more in tax than I’m getting paid,’ I said, as a joke.

‘Get hold of one of them,’ he said, pointing to a trolley. ‘Wheel it over there.’

I wheeled one of the full trolleys of post over to where all the other ones were, waiting to be taken out to the lorries at the end of the shift. I repeated this over and over. I paced myself and thought of other things. Poems, potential stories, stories I was already working on.

The bloke from Bolton had sweat pouring from his head as he marched with one trolley after another to the loading bay. I kept strolling, even when he stared.

‘Have you been ticking them off?’

‘Eh?’

‘You’re supposed to tick them off every time.’

I followed him over to a little desk at the side of the conveyor belt. There was a white board on it and little lines written in marker pen, counting off the trolleys taken to the loading bay.

‘Tick that every time. Fuck’s sake.’

I’d seen him going to the desk but nobody had told me to tick anything. I looked over and he was talking to Hakan and pointing at me.

Hakan came over. ‘Are you ticking them off? Make sure you tick them off. You should be doing six of them every thirty minutes. I will be watching. Six.’

I didn’t speed up. Fuck that. The Bolton bloke chipped in again.

‘You’re a bit slow you, aren’t you?’

‘Not piece work, is it?’

‘No, I mean, you’re a bit stupid, aren’t you?’

‘Don’t call me stupid.’

‘Well you are, aren’t you?’

‘Are you winding me up?’

‘Ha ha! Got you there, you dick!’

We carried on, the sounds of the depot all around: strangulated shouting, trolleys being wheeled, engines, occasional forced laughter. There was a radio on somewhere. Sixties melodies drowned out by noise. A rising high note. The Bee Gees. A middle-aged woman came around with a plastic bag of sweets. I took one of them. She did it every night. The Bolton bloke watched me as I unwrapped a Werther’s Original.

As I worked I saw two men staring at Zlata’s tight jeans. One man said something to the other, and they both laughed.

‘You know, I have written a poem about you,’ I said to Zlata, at break time.

‘Oh yes?’

‘It is about your arse.’

‘Ha. What a surprise.’

‘I know. I’m going to stop doing that.’

‘What?’

‘Objectifying women.’

‘Good!’

‘Can we go for another drink?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I’ll wait for you outside.’

After break the bloke from Bolton was back again. ‘You ticking them off?’

‘Yes, I’m ticking them off.’

‘Sure you’re a bit dense.’

I pushed my trolley into his, knocking him back. His eyes widened. ‘Don’t talk to me like that, dickhead,’ I said.

I kept my eye on him for the rest of the shift, but he didn’t do anything except work his bollocks off. It was a pride thing. The old con. I’d seen it so often. Poor man had been doing it for thirty-five years and he couldn’t see the lie any more. I come along, stroll around. I could see it would wind him up.

I waited for Zlata at the end of the shift, watching as she fended off her admirers. She came through the glass doors, smiled when she saw me there, swung her bag around in the air, began dancing.

‘We are free! We are free!’

‘Yep. So, where we going?’

‘We go to the pub! The English pub!’

We went in The Castle this time. Like Gulliver’s across the road, it had been done up. We went and sat in one of the back rooms, on comfy leather seats.

‘You drive those men crazy in there. I see them all looking at your arse.’

‘I know.’

‘How does it make you feel?’

‘How do you think? I hate it. People don’t understand.’

‘I don’t think I did before.’

‘Anyway, I have permanent contract now.’

‘I know.’

‘You can get one. Maybe after twelve weeks.’

‘Twelve weeks.’

‘Will be better then. Very busy. Lots of shifts.’

‘Great. Are you coming back to mine?’

‘Oh come on.’

‘What?’

‘You can wait with me at the bus stop.’

We kissed in the doorway of the old Nobles amusements arcade on the corner of Oldham Street and Market Street. She stopped suddenly and stared at me. Her bus arrived and she ran for it.