The Year of the Ladybird (3 page)

‘Yes.’

‘I’d love to be a student, me.’

‘Why don’t you then?’

‘Too thick.’

‘I’m sure that’s not true.’

‘What do you study?’

‘English literature.’

‘Lots of books.’
Boooooks.

‘I’ll say.’

‘That’s just it. I can’t read a book to save my life. Can’t settle to it. Too thick.’

I tried to tell her that she wasn’t thick. I explained that only 50 per cent of any population anywhere read books, regardless of their occupation. It doesn’t matter if you’re
a doctor or a lawyer or a factory worker, I told her, only half of them will read books. But in my earnestness I’d lost her attention already. Her eyes fluttered half closed and she gazed out
to sea. She was away on some flight of imagination, or other life path, or dancing in a world with no books, only theatre lights. She lay back on the sand, folded her hands behind her head and
closed her eyes.

After a while I got up: I had to do something to fight the temptation to look at Nikki’s white cotton underwear. I don’t like sand. I’ve never much liked the gritty feel of it
between my fingers and toes but I knew I should just get on with it. So I moved among the sandcastles, making encouraging noises. I praised the good efforts and where I saw the kids were
struggling, I got down on my hands and knees and helped them along a bit. With the very little ones I asked them their names and when they told me I pretended to mishear, saying, ‘Fish and
chips?’ and they would say their name louder and I would say, ‘Oh, I thought you said fish and chips: well, my name is David.’

You do that and kids turn their heads back and forth, trying to puzzle you out. Is he funny? Is he silly? Maybe he’s both.

I looked up from this game and I saw a man and a boy standing by the water’s edge. They were some way off and the sun was right behind them so I couldn’t make out their faces, though
I knew they were both staring at me intently. The man wore a blue suit and a tie.

There was something wrong. The man’s suit was wholly inappropriate for the beach in such hot weather. I could tell the little boy was aching to come and join the sandcastle fun. Then the
boy lifted his hand and gently waggled his fingers, waving at me. I felt a shiver of loneliness for them.

I figured that the man and the boy were not staying on the holiday camp, and were therefore not permitted to join in the organised programme. But I thought what the hell, so I beckoned the boy
and his father to come and join us. What did it matter if the boy sat at the edge and joined in? They showed no sign of coming over so I smiled and beckoned them again. I couldn’t tell for
sure but I thought the man was carrying a rope looped over his shoulder. Then I felt a sharp tug at my sleeve and a little girl with white blond ringlets and a freckled face said, quite
indignantly, ‘My name isn’t fish and chips.’

‘Oh, so what is it?’

‘Sally Laws.’

‘Sausage Legs?’

‘No! Sally Laws!’

Sally Laws wanted me to go and look at her sandcastle so I forgot about the little boy and the man in the blue suit. When I looked up they were already moving away. I felt sad for them so I
stood up to go after them, but some sudden jolt, some squeeze in my gut prevented me. Instead I watched them go.

After a while I went back and sat down next to Nikki. I thought she’d fallen asleep, but with her eyes still closed, she said, ‘You’re good at working the parents.’

‘The
parents
?’

‘They love it, that. When you pay attention to their kids.’

I looked hard at her. She kept her eyes closed now but she must have been watching me as I’d made a circuit of the sandcastles. I guess I was a bit shocked at her cynicism. I just wanted
to make sure these children were having a nice time. I hadn’t done it to impress the parents. Then I remembered that Nikki was a professional dancer, and that entertainment was her trade. It
was showbiz. We were being paid to be nice. Like Abdul-Shazam in the cafe, serenading the punters. You were paid to smile.

The hot sun climbed a little in the sky and when the hour-point was reached Nikki gave an impressive blast on her whistle. The children were beautifully behaved, sitting in stiff attention, as
together Nikki and I judged the results. We awarded first, second and third prize positions and, like a scribe in the temples of Egypt, Nikki with great ceremony wrote down the names of the winners
on her clipboard. They were to be awarded prizes at a theatre gala event on the final day of their holidays. Meanwhile I saw to it that every child who had taken part got a stick of rock.

We were then left with a free hour before lunch at the canteen. Once again we resorted to a coffee bar to fill the gap, but this time the one with sky-blue parasols alongside the swimming pool.
On the way there we passed, scurrying by in her white cleaning overalls, the woman whose table I had shared with her husband only the day before.

‘Hello!’ I called cheerily.

She dealt me the quickest of smiles I’d ever seen. She compressed her lips and seemed to scuttle on by even faster.

‘Friendly,’ I said to Nikki after the woman was out of earshot.

‘I heard about that,’ Nikki said, donning a pair of sunglasses. With her raven hair radiating an almost blue halo in the sun I thought she looked impossibly glamorous. Like a movie
star. ‘Didn’t you sit at their table in the canteen?’

‘News travels fast.’

‘You were lucky.’

‘Oh?’

We got coffees and took them to our table by the pool. She stirred a packet of sugar into her cup and as she spoke I noticed that she had two babyish fang-shaped canines either side of her front
teeth. No, they didn’t make her look like a vampire. They made her look girlish, cute, kissable. ‘Last time someone tried to sit down at his table he grabbed their soup and flung it
across the room, followed by their dinner, followed by their tray. He shouted
this is my fucking table and no one sits at my fucking table unless I fucking ask them to fucking sit at my fucking
table.
Not for the first time either.’

‘They don’t fire him?’

‘Easier to let sleeping dogs lie.’

There was a huge splash as someone belly-flopped into the deep end. She told me that the man’s name was Colin and that his wife was called Terri. Nikki said Colin wouldn’t allow her
to talk with anyone. I made some remark about Terri being very pretty.

‘Well, don’t let Colin catch you even so much as glancing in her direction.’

‘I won’t,’ I said. ‘I never look at women I fancy.’

‘So how would they know you fancy them?’

‘I just don’t let them see me looking.’

‘What?’ Nikki took off her sunglasses and stared at me hard. ‘You’re a strange boy.’

‘Well, yes.’

That night through the thin plasterboard walls I heard someone snoring heartily on one side and someone grinding their teeth on the other side. From across the corridor came
the sound of athletic coital grunting, even though I’d been told that we were not allowed to ‘entertain’ people in our rooms. Whoever was in there was getting a good
entertainment. In the fitful snatches of sleep I did get, I dreamed unpleasant dreams. I woke in the night feeling that I should wash the sand off my hands.

So I was awake on my second full day at six in the morning. I got dressed in my whites and went for a walk along the beach. The sun was already up and throbbing as I crunched the pebbles
underfoot. I got breakfast in the staff canteen as soon as it opened and, still way too early, I went into the theatre with a paperback book in my pocket, planning to relax on one of the plush
velvet seats while waiting for the others to roll in for work.

I went round the back of the theatre, through the stage-door. It was a place where smokers went outside for a tab between stage calls and it led into the wings. You could squeeze between the
scenery boards – theatre people call them ‘flats’ – on the stage and from there get down into the auditorium. But before I went into the wings I stopped dead.

I stopped because I heard a songbird.

It was a woman singing from the stage itself. Her voice was soaring in the empty auditorium above an audience of empty seats. I recognised the piece. It was an old Dusty Springfield number and
it seemed to me this voice could even outshine ol’ Dusters. No, it wasn’t my cup of tea; I was listening to The Velvet Underground and Jimi Hendrix boldly going where no music had gone
before, but I knew a good voice when I heard one. It filled the theatre, it swooped and fell and rose again, a thrilling ghost; it nestled in every crevice and it put a light between the shadows. I
crept nearer, expecting to see one of the Variety acts, someone I was yet to meet.

The singer was moving across the stage with a mop and bucket. She wore white overalls. It was Terri.

I stayed hidden between the painted flats, not wanting to announce myself because I thought if I did she might stop. Then again, so absorbed was she in her singing that I was sure that even if
I’d wandered onto the stage she wouldn’t have even noticed me.

I heard the swing doors open from the front-of-house. A voice that could only belong to Colin shouted, ‘You finished that yet?’

The song stopped. ‘Nearly done, darlin’.

‘Get a move on. I wanna be out of here before those fuckers come.’

Her bucket clanked and I heard a few more swishes of the mop before she crossed the stage and took the steps down to the auditorium. Only when I let go a big sigh did I realise I’d been
holding my breath. From the shadows I watched her sway up the aisle carrying the heavy bucket. She disappeared through the swing doors. I moved onto the stage and peered out at the rows of dark
seats, thinking about the voice I’d just heard.

When my co-workers came in I could hardly wait to mention it. Pinky arrived first. He always had that cigar wedged between his fingers but he was too professional ever to light up in the
theatre. When I enthused about what I’d just heard he waved his cigar at the stage. ‘I offered to put her on there. But it wasn’t allowed.’

‘Who stopped it?’ I knew the answer before I’d asked the question.

‘Who? Vlad the Impaler.’

In the gaps between events that evening I took to drinking the odd pint of Federation Ale, frothy amber stuff, mainly just to try to fit in with all the other male staff who
quite casually sank copious quantities. I watched them downing seven or eight pints of the stuff without it seeming to touch the sides or affect their performance. So much of it was consumed by the
staff and the campers alike that the slightly vinegary after-tang permeated the entire site. The odour of barley and hops was in the carpets; it was in the plaster and lathe; it was in the timber
joints.

As a college boy I was fair game for teasing. Luckily the Federation Ale loosened my tongue a little and I was able to match the raucous banter of the girls who worked in the kitchens. They
weren’t bad girls, but they could scare the juice out of a man. Strapping figures, most of them, with self-administered bent-nail tattoos, they would grab your bottom as you walked by. It was
popular amongst the girls to have the word LOVE written on one bicep and LUST on the other. I seemed to spend a lot of time dodging the goose neck.

After that, when feeding times came around I could identify faces I knew well enough to squeeze next to at the table. At every meal I saw scary Colin and his pretty wife installed at the same
table at the distant end of the canteen, eating in complete silence. They cut a lonely sight.

One lunch time after clearing my plate into the slops I passed their spot and I saw him flicker a glance at me. It wasn’t an acknowledgement exactly, just a darted look from the corner of
his eye. I thought I should speak.

‘Thanks for your advice on my first day,’ I said.

Terri looked up at me and again the palm of her hand fluttered to her cheek. Colin, though, kept his head down.

He wasn’t going to answer me. I felt embarrassed and stupid for having opened my mouth. My cheeks flamed. He lifted his head, but instead of making eye contact with me he looked at his
wife. At last he said, ‘Nuffing.’

Wanting to get out of the situation with at least a shred of dignity I said, ‘Well, I appreciate it.’

At last he turned his gaze on me. There was contempt scribbled in the lines of his face, and I knew I’d made a mistake in trying to engage with the man. His features twisted into a bit of
a sneer. But there was something else written into his expression. I knew what it was. It was puzzlement. What I’d just said had somehow perplexed him.

I clattered my empty tray in the clearing area, trying not to look back. But I couldn’t help stealing a glance. Colin had his head down and was digging into his food again from the far
side of his plate. But his wife, Terri, was looking at me. She wound a single finger corkscrew fashion into her auburn hair.

After lunch we had to run something called the Donkey Derby. This was a major item in the programme, so the full regiment of Greencoats – five out of the six, anyway
– plus Tony, alias Abdul-Shazam– were gathered on the sweltering and bone-dry football field for the event. Tony had two modes of operation. Abdul-Shazam, complete with red fez and
tassel, was the resident stage entertainer, mostly for the children’s programme, but also for a theatre Magic Act supposedly aimed at adults, using some of the same tricks with a different
patter. When he wasn’t Abdul-Shazam he was just Tony, sans-fez, the camper’s friend, the noisy, funny, friendly exhibitionist with a stage tan and an all-weather smile.

Tony took over the PA system for the Donkey Derby, only occasionally surrendering it to the nominally-head-Greencoat-with-the-wig, Sammy from Stockport. Sammy had bucket loads of enthusiasm for
broadcasting but little talent and less wit. He would liberally spray spittle onto the hand-held microphone as he chortled and blethered away. Tony winced as the mike was handed back to him; I
noted how Tony’s ready smile could manifest as a form of violence.

The donkeys arrived with a fairy-tale figure called Johnny, who looked like he lived in the stables with his animals. The crotch of his trousers hung down near his knees and his thin leather
belt, having lost its buckle, was tied off in a double knot. He had a bit of straw in his hair and one ear that stood perpendicular to his head whereas the other did not. His team of donkeys
smelled less of donkey than he did.