Big Shout to Malmy Hatchman

I was intrigued by the old duffer, by his almost disassociated presence, and took to making excuses to talk to him. That is, I’d talk foolishness and he would gaze at the floor and murmur. They paid him little enough. It got him a room in a lodging house with others who were only one step away from the gutter; somewhere in Hulme, I think. Fag and beer money came from his ‘errands’; some kosher, some decidedly hooky. But one flash of his campaign medals, always worn under his waistcoat, and the most hard-bitten copper would turn a gruff blind eye.

I asked him once how he imagined his life would have turned out if the Great War hadn’t intervened and he smiled.

‘Building… building a city.’

‘Oh, was your father a bricklayer then?’

‘Naw. What father? I mean dreaming cities up, drawing them. Seeing them rise out of me and out of the earth and then touching the skies.’

I checked my guffaw just in time. ‘You wanted to be an architect – good God!’

‘What do you think I do of an evening? I’ve no schooling so I have to use my eyes and ears: careless talk and that, papers left around. I listen to them in their offices and look at their drawings. I’m the sad dog in the corner that gets in their scran and dirty magazines so they take no notice of me. The city is my university. Every building I see is the conceit of man-made flesh – the wrong ‘uns, good ‘uns, tombs for the living and palaces to go to the devil in; gables, domes, turrets, chimneys, proscenium arches and flying buttresses; gargoyles, goddesses, saints and heroes…’

The words were spewing out of this silent, austere man; a litany of architectural ephemera, the detritus of Manchester’s aspirations, the measurements, the styles, the quirks, the failures, the triumphs. He trailed off and sagged as though exhausted.

I must have looked both astonished and a little vexed as, with a mixture of shiftiness, defiance and some underlying neediness, he said ‘I can show you if you like.’

‘What – you still draw?’

‘Nah. Cartimandua.’

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