My Life as a Man Read Online Free Page A

wee park round the side. Not the big one at the front.’
    ‘What about it?’
    ‘There’s a girl sits in a car there in the morning.’
    ‘All day,’ she said then. ‘The girl,’ the other one said. You could tell they thought they were funny. They laughed at their own jokes. They stood on either side of a
press, and my job for that part of the day was to take away the full bin of castings and slot in an empty one. Hearing them wasn’t easy. The big space echoed with the fart and whine of
machines that dribbled oil to make rainbows on the pools of scummy water under where the corrugated-iron roof leaked.
    ‘All day, every day.’
    ‘Until he leaves.’
    ‘Who?’ I wanted to know.
    They ignored me, talking to each other.
    ‘He’s away before us.’
    ‘Put it that way.’
    ‘That’ll be why you might think she was just there in the morning.’
    ‘Instead of the whole bloody day.’
    ‘Morning till night.’
    ‘Right enough, you can’t see, not from here.’
    ‘But he can. Out of his window, he can see. He can see, all right.’
    All through this, they never stopped working. Their hands made the same movements over and over again. Hands and tongues, they never stopped.
    ‘Catch me putting up with it.’
    ‘Catch you getting the chance.’
    ‘Maybe it’s worth it.’
    ‘More ways than one, maybe.’ She had a dirty laugh.
    ‘Not for money, not for the other, not in a million years. It gives me the creeps.’
    ‘He likes to keep an eye on her.’
    The one who said that laughed again, but this time her face didn’t laugh.
    Something about the joke wasn’t funny. All day I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
    What kind of man made a girl sit outside all day? And the question that really bothered me: a girl who would do that, what kind of girl would she be? I was so distracted, I went the wrong way
when the foreman switched jobs on me, and pushed the bin through two sets of doors without giving it a thought. It was the brightness that stopped me in my tracks. The sound of the machinery in
here was different, and everything was clean and new-looking. I hardly had time to take in the size of the place, when I was punched on the shoulder.
    ‘What are you playing at?’
    I followed the foreman along the corridor between the doors.
    Without looking round, he said, ‘Keep out of there.’
    ‘Is that a different firm?’
    ‘Don’t be stupid,’ he said.
    ‘What are they making?’
    ‘A special truncheon that works as a whip one way and club the other – that one’s export only.’ He grinned. ‘It’s used on Death Row in the States.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Forget it, I’m joking,’ and marching off he let the doors swing back on me as I followed.
    The women weren’t much more helpful.
    ‘They make all kinds of different stuff,’ one of them assured me.
    ‘And the money’s good. See, if you get through there? You’re on a different rate.’
    ‘I don’t like it,’ I said.
    ‘Don’t bother your head about it, son. A job’s a job. You need a job, there’s plenty worse than this one. Anyways, most of it goes abroad. It’s no for
here.’
    ‘Who cares where it’s for?’ the other one said, frowning. It was the first time I’d seen parts slipping past her on the belt, like a stutter, her quick hands missing a
beat.
    That night I dreamed I was riding across a bridge, in armour. In the water I saw myself mirrored, metal gloves on my hands, a plume of feathers on my helmet. I was going to rescue the girl in
the castle and if I had to kill to do it, that was all right. I had a sword.
    My first thought on Wednesday morning was for the girl. I was as tired as if I hadn’t slept, but I went the long way round the building to check if her car was there.
    Seeing it, I couldn’t bring myself to walk on. After a minute looking, I took a step towards it, then another. Just then, a face round and white as a plate appeared at the first-floor
window. That was all it took to spin me round and set