Project part-funded by the European Union
Liverpool One
They all smoke down this street. I start work at seven so I’m normally walking up about quarter to. They stand outside. The lads shammying the shop fronts. The woman from the baker’s: fag in hand, flour up to her armpits. The pub cleaner has a cigarette dead on ten to, cos she mops herself out and then stands in the doorway waiting for the floor to dry.
It’s the last road I turn down before I get to work. I turn opposite the bombed-out church. My nan and granddad got married in that church, before it was bombed. In the picture my mam’s got they’re stood outside it. All the family and my nan in a dark white dress stood up on the stone steps. You can see the moss in between the stonework. You can tell it’s moss because green makes a funny colour in black and white photos.
The church is full of green now. It’s like a garden inside. I went and had a look one morning when I was early. They’ve got lights up and a little pond in the middle. You can see how everything was. It still feels like a church even though the insides have gone. The steps the picture was taken on are still there. They go all the way round the outside of the church so people can still get in. My mam and dad got married in the Registry Office but if I get married I want to do it in the bombed-out church. Like my nan and granddad. My mam says I’m a soft lad.
I work in the sandwich shop in the train station at the end of this road. We catch the commuters in the morning and visitors for the rest of the day. People don’t really make connections here cos it’s the end of the line. We don’t do cappuccinos. There’s a cafe on the other side of the forecourt for that.
There is a big clock inside the station. It’s like a feature. It’s massive. It arcs under the roof opposite the ticket gate. It’s annoying though, because people are always asking us the time.
There’s a girl who does the early shift in the café on the other side of the station. She’s called Kathy. I know because she has to wear a name badge. I’ve said hello to her before. We have the same break times usually. She smokes on her break. Round the back of the station with the taxi drivers cos you’re not allowed to smoke inside. The taxi drivers have their engines running to make them look busy and available. The smoke and all the building dust and concrete makes the taxi rank look cloudy.
I say hello to her on the way back over the forecourt. She smiles at me. I really like it when she smiles. She smiles when I say hello like smiling is her way of saying hello. I try to take my break when I see her going.
Kathy has bright red hair, a tattoo on her ankle and a piercing in her cheek.
One morning I stole a packet of cigarettes off my mam and at half past eleven I went round the back of the station where I knew she’d be having her fag break. She was leaning against a wall, blowing smoke and watching cars. She looked lovely.
I asked her for a light which she held out for me but it took a while to get it lit because it was windy and I kept forgetting to suck. Once I’d got it lit the wind kept blowing the smoke out of my mouth and into my eyes. Kathy had gone back to watching cars so I don’t think she noticed.
‘You work in that café don’t you?’ I asked her.
‘Yeah.’
‘What’s it like?’
‘It’s alright.’ She shrugged. I looked away, stuck for what to say. She had that lovely soft accent that girls have. She turned around.
‘It’s boring though, isn’t it. Work’s always boring. And it’s just a little café in a train station. Do you know what I mean?’
I didn’t really. I quite liked my job. I got to go home at three every day apart from Saturdays and was due a pay rise next month. They’re a good bunch of lads that I work with and we have a laugh, which is the most important thing I think. Even the manager’s alright. I was thinking about applying for the supervisor’s job when it comes up in a couple of months.
‘Yeah.’ I said, and tried to take a drag of my cigarette though I wasn’t sure it was lit anymore.
‘I’m just working here for the summer,’ she went on.
‘What you doing after that?’ I asked.
‘Going to university. I’m going to study fashion. London, hopefully. If I get good enough marks. Get out of Liverpool. There’s nothing here for me. And you don’t want to work in a café for the rest of your life, do you.’ She finished her cigarette and threw it under her foot. She stayed where she was though. ‘What about you?’ She looked at me.
I thought about telling her how I was thinking about asking her to the cinema this weekend. We could go down the docks for a walk after. And then if that went alright she could come out to the pub one Friday night, meet a few of the lads, just till closing time. We could even go shopping one Saturday when we both weren’t working if she liked.
I wanted to tell her how I wanted to get married in the bombed-out church that my grandparents got married in before the war, and how it’d be really nice with the garden and pond and everything all lit up. How I’d be managing my own café in a few years time and I’d be able to afford a mortgage and I’d like to have kids eventually and take them on Goodison.
Two Japanese tourists were getting into a taxi. They took photos of the train station before they got in. She looked at them and laughed.
‘Why would you take a picture of a train station? Especially this train station. It looks like it’s falling down.’ She pointed to all the scaffolding. ‘You going to university this time?’ she asked without looking away from the scaffolding.
‘I might go next year.’ I lied. ‘I’ve not decided.’