The Black Triangle.

The zone had changed. Damn, the whole city had changed. The geography, the shape was roughly the same, enough to convince me I was in the right place, but the texture was wrong. The feeling. It was slick now, frictionless. The brick walls had once been black, the stone flags cracked, the cobbles broken and pocked with tarmac infills. This go-to place was no-go, once. Thirty years ago it was shadow and probable sin and I loved it. Now it was glassed-over, brightly lit and branded.

I found the entrance and waited beneath the cameras to be buzzed in. No sign or suggestion from the outside of what might happen within. Across the street I recognised an archway that once led to an alley that took you to a stairwell and a door where you’d knock and wait until a little hatch leaked candlelight and if they liked what they saw, you’d be welcome to drink red wine til sunrise with friends and actors and actors’ friends and other excitables. BB’s. Oh, Beeby. She sold out long ago but you can still get an approximation of her welcome in the food courts and airports of this country and a dozen others, for a price.

The reception area was vast, poured-concrete cool with aluminium ducting and wall-mounted videos posing as artworks. An enthusiastic young man with a digital tablet approached. He ticked me off on his screen. Alison was so looking forward to meeting me! Alison would be down shortly! I’d never met Alison but I’d done my homework and was looking forward to seeing if the real Alison Parker matched the version she presented in the virtual realm.

I chose from a curated assembly of mid-century modern armchairs and sat down to wait. From this low angle I could see an upside-down version of the street outside bounced back through the glass frontage. It was like a silent surreal movie. By accident or design, inverted passers-by walked the wrong way past the window. It was three in the afternoon but the street looked refrigerated in the glow of digital advertising panels. All those ghosts. Where are you going?

“Where do you think they’re going?”
“Ooh, shopping I should think!” said The Enthusiast. “Alison will just be a tick!”.

I wondered what sort of person shopped in this revamped zone, and what it was they were looking to buy. Probably not sex or drugs any more, but you never knew.

The sleek digi-verts out on the street were of the sort that showed malnourished impossibles adopting unlikely stances. It wasn’t clear what they wanted. The clothes they modelled looked difficult. Perhaps, I thought, this was now the sort of area for the sort of people with the sort of money than could buy the sort of clothing that nobody ever seemed to wear.

Alison Parker was, predictably, ten years older than her digital self but a good deal nicer than I’d pictured. Her online image gave off a breathless hurrah vibe, and her company had a reputation for being bloodless, so I’d expected the worst. But the woman who welcomed me had a steady no-nonsense stance that I warmed to straight away. I liked her eyes. I found myself immediately hoping she’d turn out to be my producer. It wasn’t her company of course, she was one of the Execs, but as we ascended in the lift she talked with pride about the setup, and excitement about their recent move to this - what was it? a converted grain silo? - on the mucky side of town. These were high times, she said, and the relocation symbolised a new phase in Big Shout’s history, a phase that would - she hinted - potentially include me.

Ah, but the problem was I didn’t know if I wanted to be included. I didn’t know anything any more. I was worn down by past ambitions, all those terribly important films about products and services that nobody ever seemed to know about, let alone need. All the bullshit. And as bullshit artists went, Big Shout were right up there. Bull Shite, we called them. I’d avoided them for twenty of my freelance years, but I had bills to pay, and anyway they’d called me. You make all these provisos, rules and such about what you will and will not do, but when push comes to shove it all goes out the window, right? But hey, it wasn’t as if I was begging for work or anything. They’d called me. Couldn’t hurt to see what they wanted.

The call had come out of the blue. Jason had seen ‘Homeless’ and wanted to talk. Jason was on the judging panel of the fantsy-pantsy premier awards committee (of course he was) and had seen my film in the early rounds. I didn’t even know it had been entered. I didn’t enter stuff; those awards nights were just too awful, all those penguins losing their minds like any of it meant anything. Big Shout were the worst, they killed for awards, and Jason Goodrich - Jag to his friends - was their owner and creative director. Big Shout were Big League in the industry groupmind. It was all so grubby. All that lobbying, all that trophy-hunting and arse-kissing. Didn’t they know we were artists?

However. Big Shout did big fantsy-pantsy jobs with big budgets. Big budgets meant fun toys and foreign travel with nice hotels. And big budgets clearly meant snazzy new offices in a refurbished industrial building in a gentrified zone of the old city. Jason’s lair was a minimalist glass box plonked onto a factory rooftop with a view towards the river and the rusting wharf cranes. As Alison and I approached from the lift I watched him look up from his desk and sit back in his chair. I’ll admit I was nervous. How many times in how many headquarters had I done versions of this routine? The wait in the reception, the dance to get passes, the dry chat in the elevator, the cold rise between floors, the final death march to the boss’s office. Will I always be out of my zone?

I’d seen pictures of Jag of course, heard the stories, but we’d never met. I’d imagined him as Napolean - he had a petulant look in all the photos, with small cold eyes and a widow’s peak - but as he stood up to greet me I was shocked by how tall he was. And - nobody warned me - he moved in a startling fashion, as if his limbs were wooden and jointed with nails, like he was being operated by strings. His handshake was spidery.

“Congratulations, K. Best thing Drone has ever done, by a country mile”. He scissored out from his desk, scuttled across the floor and lowered himself spectacularly into a black Corbusier by the coffee table, gesturing for me to do the same. Alison was grinning as she joined us.
“I loved it” she said, “The sensibility. Would you like a drink?”

Drone. Nothing had been sensible about that gig. I’d gone in to see them on the understanding they were going to sign me up to direct pop videos - it’s what they were famous for - but I ended up making a corporate film about people dying of hypothermia on the streets of the capital. I used choreography mainly out of spite. Drone had fought me all the way, but for some unfathomable reason the commissioning charity let me do my thing. To be honest, slow motion reverse-dancing street sleepers had never been my thing, at least not until then.

“Ah, cheers,” I mumbled. “It was... humbling”. Impoverishing, more like. Drone hadn’t paid me and were ignoring my calls - but to be fair I wasn’t as destitute as the dancers.
“So. K. You know I see a lot of films. I make a lot of films. ‘Homeless’ is going to do well, very well. Can’t say any more”. Jag tapped his nose. I’d never seen anyone actually tap their nose conspiratorially in real life. “We should celebrate. Alison?”
I detected just the slightest stiffening as Alison acknowledged this instruction and turned to wave through the glass at Jag’s secretary, making a champagne gesticulation.

“Do you know how many directors we have on our books here at Big Shout?”
Yes, Jag, I do.
“A lot. We don’t call directors: they call us. So, I’m intrigued, K, why we’ve never heard from you? Why have you never called us? No, no, don’t answer that. I like an enigma”.

Hmm. Why had I never called Big Shout? They made corporate videos - banks, motors, pharmaceuticals, all that jazz - and that’s what I did. I’d fallen into it. And I suppose because I was so reluctant, I did it differently. And it paid. So you’d think it would have made sense for me to call them up, gift horse that they were, but for some forgotten reason I’d decided they were ghastly. We all thought that, back in the day. At least I thought we did, but one-by-one I’d watched my freelance friends drift over and get sucked into Big Shout’s sticky vortex. And now here I was, sitting in the throne room of the self-appointed King of Corporates.

Jag was all knees and elbows. He exhibited the same peculiar articulation even when he was sitting down. “Tell me, K, are you... difficult?” Straight to the point.
It’s not that I do it on purpose, you know. Let’s just say I’m passionate.
“Well, yeah. I suppose. It’s been said.”
“Indeed. And it’s my understanding that you have a certain, um, propensity to be...”
“Critical.”
“No, no, don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with having opinions, god knows what would a director be without opinions? Ha ha. But you can, let’s say, tangle with clients who are, after all is said and done, The Clients. Yes? And that you have been know to upset-”
“Producers,” interrupted Alison. Oddly, she was still beaming at me. “Jane Forthrite? Adam Lysetski? Lovely Sammy Wrath...”
I never meant to make Sammy cry. Instinctively I wanted to defend my interactions with each of those industry colleagues, but it was true, I’d pissed them off. I’d probably never work with any of them again. Or rather, and more to the point, they’d never work with me. I pissed everybody off. But the thing is, they didn’t see! No vision. They didn’t see, not like me! Will you, Alison? I was having trouble reading her smile. But Jason waved his arms in his weird way and carried on.

“K, K, K. We didn’t call you in to insult you. It’s just that we need to be frank. We have a job for you. A nice job. I think a very nice job. Government. Tough, I have no doubt, but then, with your background... definitely an award-winner. Grand Prix material. We suspect, Alison believes, you could be a perfect fit. It’s coal”.

My background?

Alison leaned forward. “You grew up in Northfield, right? Your dad-”
“-wasn’t a miner! We weren’t miners, we just lived there is all. I don’t know anything about coal. I was never going down the pit. I wanted to get out of there as fast as possible”.
“Your dad taught me. Hilldown Girls.”
Oh my god. Knickers Down Girls!
“Bloody hell. You’re from Northfield?”
“Woodcote, actually.”
I could see Alison was reading my mind, so she pulled a funny snooty face and said, “Yeah. Posh totty.”
“Never knew anyone from Woodcote went to Hilldown”.
“Don’t know much then do yuh, me owd duck?”
Ha ha, I hadn’t heard our accent in ages. Mine didn’t come on unless I was drunk or in a fight, or both. How did I not know there was a corporate producer called Alison Parker who came from the next village to mine?

“Your dad was- different. He was so funny!”
“My dad was…” forget it.
“Sorry. Look, you’re right for this, K, I know it. You’ve got the, the right sort of... perspective. We don’t know an awful lot just yet, but they want it to be - they made a point of it - they want it to be unusual. Not like normal. Not like, you know, not like a corporate. More like... well, more like ‘Homeless’”.

I hadn’t been back to Northcote for thirty years. They’d probably turned the pit into a theme park. Jag waved in his secretary carrying a tray of glasses and bottle of fancy fizz. “You’ll need to sign an NDA. But never mind that. Here-” He attacked the foil of the champagne with alarming fingers, popped the cork and filled three glasses with unlikely dexterity. “To Homeless! And, may I say, to Northcote!”

Hurrah. I took a sip and looked out over the grey rooftops to where the redundant river cranes were garlanded with fairy lights. A huge electric scaffold on the wharf said YOU DESERVE A HARBOUR LIFESTYLE. I wondered when the scabby docks had become desirable. And, whatever did happen to Beeby?

I turned back to see Jag proffering a pen and a sheaf of papers; Alison at his side with her unfathomable but not unattractive smile. Ah well, I’d signed a million NDAs, another one wouldn’t hurt. But coal, what did I know about coal? I could learn, I suppose, always did. It was my job. I imagined a mining museum or an ‘immersive experience’ or something. Maybe a ‘dark ride’, ha ha.

“So come on then,” I said, “Give us a clue. A piece on ‘The Dignity of Labour’ is it?” I clawed the air to emphasise ironic inverted commas. Alison flashed a look at Jag and then back at me. She paused briefly, then said-
“They’re reopening the mine”.

They’re - doing - what?

I misheard. I thought she said: They’re reopening the mine.
“They’re reopening Northcote, Waverley and Beddington”.
Holy shit. The Black Triangle.
But coal was dead.
They said.
Coal was dead.
“And she’s already told you too much” said Jag.

They’re opening the pit? I could feel my blood rising. After everything that happened. Heads got smashed in trying to stop it being shut in the first place. Miners were villified. Our town was decimated, never came back. Blood. Blood rising, that was the thing.

I realised I was standing, getting dizzy, so I sat back down.

I had to breathe. Blood. This rush had done for me so many times in the past. I’d seen someone about it but we ended up having a fight (she must have had anger issues). Ah, but blood rising: it was an electric switch. One moment Jag was a decent bloke and now I wanted to chuck him off the rooftop, snap his stupid limbs to bits. I raised my glass, toasted the two of them, downed my champagne, got up and walked out.

To the lift. Fast walk. I raise my glass to K! Here’s to not losing your rag! Love you all and have a nice day! My mind and heart were racing. Alison came running after me. I didn’t want a confrontation. Come on lift! Why are lifts so slow? It came, the doors opened, I stepped inside and Alison jumped in beside me. Bloody hell. I punched the G button. Go away, Alison. She touched my shoulder. Bloody hell, leave me alone. I’m not doing it. She spoke urgently-
“K,” she said, “listen: you’re it. I need you. We have a chance to bring them down. You and me. Do you understand? We can bring them down!” I did not understand. Bring who down? Big Shout? The Government? The lift doors opened. I’d had my back to Alison until now but I turned and faced her, held her gaze with my fury.
“Whatever it is you think I am, you’re wrong! I don’t want it. I don’t want it any more!”

Mr Enthusiasm was waiting with his digital tablet as I entered the reception area. Behind him, out on the street, refrigerated ghosts floated by.
“Ooh, can I take your pass? Doing anything nice with rest of your afternoon?”
“Yeah”, I said, “I’m shopping for sex and drugs”.

That would have been the end of it, but I stomped down some steps and couldn’t find the way out. After banging and smearing the big windows with my sweaty hands I had to turn back, climb the steps and ask to be released. And there she was. Alison Parker. Standing at the end of the ground floor corridor, framed by the door of the lift. She gave a little wave, and- was that a smile?

Enthusiasto made a dramatic little flourish with the buttons on his touchpad. “Doors to manual! There you go. Will we see you again soon?”

I didn’t know. I honestly didn’t know.

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