The Year of the Ladybird (19 page)

I tore open the bag and sure enough I found raw meat. I had no way of knowing what kind of meat it was. It smelled worse now that I’d opened the bag. I thought about the other four bags. I
was trying to calculate how much meat there was in each bag. More than would comprise one human being, I was certain. More like two people, at least.

I put the toe of my trainer against the bag and tried to push it in but I couldn’t put enough force behind my foot. I was also afraid of getting too close to the edge, maybe losing my
footing and going down with it. I needed Colin to help me but there was no way I was going to invite him up there with me. I found a plank of wood and I managed to lever the bag of meat closer to
the edge. At last it went tumbling over the edge and into the gaping black hole. I didn’t hear it hit the bottom.

I stared after it. My shoulders were shaking. I looked down at the car. Colin had got out to see what was holding me up so I made my way back down to collect a second bag.

‘Whassup?’ he said.

‘Heavy.’

‘Pussy.’

I took the second bag up to the shaft. This time I dropped it on the end of the plank of wood, so that all I had to do was to lever the plank. The second bag dropped without a sound. I took a
deep breath and went back for the third bag. Colin saw me coming and got back into the car. I dumped the third bag and by the time I got the fourth up to the shaft I saw headlights coming towards
me along the unlit country lane. Colin moved off in the Hillman Minx. I left the bag next to the shaft, slipped through the mesh fence and ran to the edge of the field, keeping in amongst the
shadows. The car approached and cruised by. After it had gone I went back to the shaft.

Colin hadn’t yet returned. Something sharp was pressuring the black plastic of the fourth bin liner. I had a moment or two before Colin came back so I tried to see what it was. In the
darkness I was pretty certain it was the longish fingernails of a human hand. I tried to tear open the plastic, but it was very thick, durable stuff. Colin still hadn’t come back.

I found a rusty nail in a piece of scrap wood and with shaking hands I worked it out so that I could use the nail to tear at the black vinyl. I was hyperventilating trying to get it open. When
it did pop the sharp thing I’d taken to be human fingers popped through the plastic.

It was a pig’s trotter.

I was drenched in sweat. My breath started to come back. I staggered out through the mesh, went down to the gate and fetched the final bag. I dragged it along the dust, took it up to the shaft
and placed it on the end of my plank-lever. As I levered the bag down the shaft Colin cruised back into position by the gate and killed his lights. I tossed the plank down the shaft after the bags
and made my way back to the car.

‘All done and dusted?’ Colin said when I got in be- side him.

‘Done.’

He started up the engine and flicked his headlights on again. ‘Look at the state of you! Worked up a bit of a sweat, son.’

‘Yeah.’

He smiled. ‘Fuckin’ schtoodents.’

On the way back he told me ‘they’ – and he didn’t say who ‘they’ were – had been caught selling condemned meat. It was slaughterhouse waste they were
repackaging. When I asked him why he couldn’t dump it anywhere, like in the sea, he said that it was legal evidence. It had been confiscated by the authorities, stamped and frozen to be
exhibited in a court of law.

‘They’ had had to steal it back. Colin said he wanted to dump it where no one could find it. If there was no evidence there was no case.

I sat in the car feeling cold and with my sweat chilling on my skin, wondering whether to believe him. I tried to speak a few times and then finally got up the courage to say, ‘By the way,
I haven’t seen Terri for a while.’

His jaw set. He fixed his eyes on the road ahead.

‘You still want me to keep an eye on her, right?’

‘You know what?’ he said. ‘I was wrong about that fucking Italian geezer.’

‘Oh?’

‘It wasn’t him.’

‘Oh?’

‘Don’t you worry about Terri no more.’

‘Why is that?’

‘I told you: don’t you worry about Terri no more.’

That was his last word on the matter.

When we got back to the camp he shoved something in my breast pocket. ‘What’s that?’

‘I’m looking arter you ’ain’t I?’

It was about 3.30 a.m. when I got out of the car. He drove off. I pulled three ten-pound notes out of my breast pocket.

Next morning I was assigned to archery on the football field. Whereas I was hoping to work with Nikki again I was given Nobby instead. I understood that Nobby had the previous
week cocked up the whist drive, resulting in a silver-haired uprising, so Nikki had been drafted in to pacify the octogenarian rebels and run it instead. Nobby, along with me, was presumably
trusted not to cause too much upset with a bow and arrow.

We walked together from the theatre and he was in high spirits already, even though he’d been given a formal warning that if he didn’t buck up his ideas he’d be out of a job.
He claimed no one would tell him why.

‘But I know why,’ he said as we approached the white-painted shed where the straw clouts and archery equipment were locked away. ‘I know fuckin’ well why; someone busted
Sheik-Ben-Gaza’s sword cabinet, that’s fuckin’ why and then cleverly got the finger pointed at me.’

I unlocked the shed and I started the job of carrying out the target stands and the clouts. They were heavy and Nobby showed no signs of helping, though he did keep pace with me to keep up his
cheerful prattle. As I was setting the first clout in the middle of the field he told me, ‘They won’t say that’s what it is; but it
is
what it is; and I
know
what it
is. Do you know what it is? Do you know anything about it?’

I shook my head and pretended to look puzzled by the unfolding of the A-stands for the straw clouts. I’d got my own, other mysteries to figure out. My sleep-deprived brain was clacking
like beads back and forth on an abacus but without ever adding up to anything. I was running events over and over in my mind. Like the fact that Colin had worn a pair of gloves while we were
dumping the meat. Which of course meant that were there any fingerprints on those plastic bags, they would be all mine.

I was a bit short with him. ‘I’ve got my own problems, Nobby.’

Nobby wrinkled his brow at that, and followed me back to the shed in a unique silence. When we got to the shed he pushed me inside, and closed the door behind him.

‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘Go on, sit down.’ I sat on one of the straw clouts and so did he. He whisked a tobacco tin from his jacket pocket and from it he withdrew three
cigarettes papers. ‘Now listen to your Uncle Nobby, because he understands and he has what you need and what we all need and what everyone needs; and in fact he’s not here just to be a
figure of fun oh no he’s here to help and that’s Nobby’s mantra if you can be of help be of help, right, this is the answer which comes from the ting-ting!’ During the
course of this prattle he licked the gummed edge of the papers; rapidly skinned up a joint; took from his other pocket a bag of grass; crumbled it into the tobacco; rolled it; lit up; and blew a
big cloud of smoke into my face. It took him maybe seven seconds. Then he took another drag and passed the joint to me.

I looked at it. ‘I don’t,’ I said.

‘Ah, resistance! The mind is moving. But you must still the mind before the mind can move. This is the answer that comes to us from the ting-ting!’

When he said ting-ting he floated a finger towards heaven. ‘What?’ I said.

‘Just fuckin’ smoke it and your problem will be as smoke. Trust old Uncle Nobby, who is here to help.’

Well, I needed something. I accepted the joint, took a drag and inhaled. As a non-smoker I was determined not to let it make me cough. I held the smoke back in my lungs and immediately felt
light-headed, probably from the effects of the tobacco rather than from the grass.

He nodded encouragement for me to take another drag. ‘Which is a medicament of oriental persuasion, yes, a beneficial herb, derived from the many-splendoured alternatives to a
reality-check; now be a good chap and let Nobby have the joint back because what you’re doing is called bogarting the joint in hipster terminology otherwise known in Manchester as please pass
the fuckin’ Duchy.’

I took this to mean he wanted me to give the thing back to him, which I did and he received it magnanimously, as if I’d been the one to provide it in the first place. We shared the joint
until it was finished, then tumbled out of the shed, probably along with a great belch of smoke. Meanwhile, the children waited patiently, with their mums and dads, for us to finish setting up.

When the set-up was complete I ordered Nobby to stand at the side of the targets to make sure no one wandered behind. Still talking, he did as instructed, mainly because it required no effort.
Then I flung myself into advising and helping the campers, offering the bit of technique that had been shown to me. I even tossed in a joke about not aiming an arrow at Nobby unless they were
certain they could hit him. I got distracted for a moment when I was rather taken by the depth of hue of the brilliant red, white and blue targets; but largely the grass had done its job of
relaxing me. Meanwhile, a little girl decided she wanted to stand next to me and hold my hand throughout the event.

After a while I called a halt to collect arrows and Nobby used this opportunity to wander over and tell me how he planned to give Sheik-Ben-Gaza – which of course was his name for
Abdul-Shazam
aka
Tony – a piece of his mind if anything else was said. ‘You know why they don’t like me, don’t you? You know that? Eh? Eh?’

‘Cos you don’t do any work?’

‘No, you lout. It’s because I’m the only one who has called them on their evil politics, that’s why. It’s like history didn’t happen with this mob,
they’ve got collective amnesia; they all wanna get dressed up in buckles and boots and eagles and leather and the whole Nazi regalia and if you have anything to say about it you’re
stuffed. What if we were to tell all these holidaymakers their entertainment programme was being run by the Nazi party? Eh? Eh? What would they make of that? How about that? Ladies and gentlemen,
the Junior Bathing Belle is brought to you today courtesy of the Panzer Division of the Skegness Reich? Eh?’ Then he laughed. Quite seamlessly and with no pause for breath in the middle of
this tirade he said to me, ‘Are you tapping that Nikki?’

I nodded at the little girl who’d held my hand throughout most of the proceedings, indicating that Nobby might be a little more careful in what he had to say. It was a pointless
gesture.

‘You are, aren’t you?’

‘No, I’m not.’

‘Yes you are. That’s who was in your room, wasn’t it?’

‘No.’

‘Oh yes it was. Uncle Nobby knows. That time when you wouldn’t let me in. That’s who it was. You can tell me. I know the meaning of discretion.’

‘Do you?’

‘Oh yes. Oh yes.’

‘No, it wasn’t Nikki.’

‘Oh yes it was.’

‘I’m not arguing with you, Nobby.’

‘If it wasn’t Nikki it was that Terri, wasn’t it?’

That went through me like a sword.

‘It was, wa’n’t it? She’s a right blue blazer that one. Bing bang bong. Careful there my son, careful there. Remember Nigel? He who came before you? He had to leave in
his socks when her old man found out Nigel had been poaching in his pond, oh yes. Chased him down to the pier with a scalping razor ho ho ho. You be careful where you park your Zephyr, my son.
Uncle Nobby knows.’

I made a superhuman effort to ignore all of this by focusing on the happy little five-year-old girl holding my hand. She was a sweet thing with white-blond hair, tender cheeks and startling blue
eyes. ‘Are you going to have a go with the bow and arrow?’ I asked her.

She beamed at me and said, ‘My dad says bollocks to that.’

Nikki had managed to pacify the silver-haired revolution and the whist drive had been restored to full operational efficiency. From what she told me the grey-haired Whist
Liberation Front were ready to hang Nobby by the neck. It wasn’t clear what he’d done exactly. I was starting to feel sorry for him. It seemed he had enemies everywhere without knowing
how he attracted such odium.

‘He gets the blame for everything,’ Nikki admitted. ‘He seems to set himself up for it.’

‘He thinks you and I are an item,’ I blurted.

‘Chance would be a fine thing,’ she said. ‘Anyway you’re seeing someone else.’

We’d gone up to the beach to have half an hour’s peace before our afternoon duties resumed. We sat on the great concave wall with our legs dangling over the grey-white concrete. A
light breeze streamed in from seaward. It was a relief because, unless this light wind was a hint of a weather change to come, the heat still showed no sign of breaking. The breeze lifted at her
hair.

Nikki turned to me and made a sun-visor of her hand, to look at me. It was stupid because the sun was behind her, and I was the one who was squinting; but she did it anyway. ‘I
know,’ she said.

‘Know what?’

‘Your little secret.’

‘That being?’

‘Your little friend.’

I felt as though I had just been given poison to drink. My guts churned.

‘Who’s my little friend?’

‘Oh come on, David.’

‘No, you come on. Who’s my little friend?’

Nikki dropped her fake visor. She made a little shake of her head. Then she mouthed the name. Or just half the name. Or even just the last syllable. ‘Ri.’

‘How did you know?’

‘Have you ever seen people deliberately not looking at each other?’

She was smart, that Nikki. She was one of those women on whom nothing is lost. She was a much shrewder judge of human psychology than people gave her credit for. Though it was bad that she knew,
I had an odd sense, from somewhere nine feet above myself, of staying calm.