The Year of the Ladybird (7 page)

‘All right then,’ I asked her, ‘what’s your angle?’

‘My angle is figuring out everyone else’s angle.’

I do believe that Nikki was good at that. I studied her as she stared moodily over at the No. 6 girls moving through the tables.

I felt a stir amongst the people around me. It was Tony – or was it Abdul-Shazam – making his way between the tables, cracking jokes, shaking hands. Before my conversation with Nikki
I would have said he was just doing his job, being a fun guy, giving everyone a laugh; but now I could see how he seemed to swell and feed and fatten on the attention until he seemed taller and
broader and shinier than everyone else in the room. I thought that it might be possible to do both things effectively at the same time.

He took a chair at our table. ‘All sorted?’ he asked me, loudly enough for everyone around us to hear. ‘Signed all those boys up for the Foreign Legion? And did you get a date
with the winner of the Bathing Belle?’

Nikki saved me from having to think of a smart answer. ‘He done brilliant.’

Tony smiled. ‘Well, you must be good because Nikki hands out compliments like a Yorkshireman parts with his money. But don’t let it go to your head because she’s impervious to
all offers.’ Nikki was about to object but Tony threw his arms wide and burst into song, some old music hall thing about waiting forever for the girl of your dreams. He got a ripple of
applause for it.

Nikki looked like she’d heard it all before too many times. She drained her coffee and picked up her clipboard. ‘Okay I’ll see you lovely boys later this afternoon.’

Tony watched her go. ‘Pretty girl isn’t she, that Nikki?’

‘I’ll say.’

‘You will say. If she could just relax and whiten up a bit she’d be the perfect woman.’ I wasn’t sure if he’d said ‘whiten’ or ‘lighten’.
Tony ordered a coffee and another for me from a passing waitress. ‘Mind you, I can’t blame her.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘You know something, David? The boys and girls here have taken to you.’

I felt my cheeks flame.

‘They like your easy way with things,’ he went on. He was over-focused on me, not breaking eye contact for a second and I felt uncomfortable. ‘They like your style.
You’re also smart and they like that.’

‘But Nikki is smart, and so are some of the others.’

‘
Some
,’ he said. He gave me a huge smile. I noticed again that an element of the near-orange suntan was actually residual stage make-up. ‘You represent what the smart
ones aspire to. College and all that. But there’s no side on you. They expect you to be stuck up but you’re not and they like that.’

Partly to deflect Tony’s embarrassing focus on me, I launched into a notion that I had about ordinary people who didn’t get a chance to go to college. I said that I met lots of folk
who should get the chance but never did; and that at college I had met a lot of posh types who didn’t deserve the chance at all; and that the awful British class system was at the root of a
lot of injustice in our society. While I banged on Tony stared at me with shining eyes, as if no one had ever said this before, even though he must have heard it a million times.

He waited until I finished and looked at me seriously. ‘You see, David, the people in this country don’t know what’s coming. There’s a recession deepening and things are
going to get ugly. But they don’t see it. They’re like the drunk who doesn’t want to leave a party. Well, it’s time they sobered up and realised that we’ve had the
party and it’s time to pay the cabbie and go home.’

I didn’t know which cabbie he meant, exactly, but I nodded anyway. ‘What we want,’ he continued, ‘is more ordinary boys like you going to college. This is the future. Not
a gang of toffs quaffing champagne from a lady’s slipper while they formulate government policy.’ He dropped his voice to a stage whisper. ‘They’re rearranging the
deckchairs on the
Titanic
, you understand that, don’t you, son?’

I said I did.

‘I knew you were a good ’un as soon as I clapped eyes on you. You can tell. Only you have to be careful who you’re talking to. They don’t want to talk politics, most of
this lot. They’d rather suck on the titty and leave it all to others. I knew you were different.’ He got to his feet and picked up our empty coffee cups, even though there was a
waitress to collect them. ‘I’ll pay for these.’ He went over to the counter and made a joke with the girl working the till. I didn’t see any money change hands.

When he came back he said, ‘You’re not doing anything tomorrow, are you?’

The next day was Saturday, changeover day. It was my day off and I had no one with whom to spend it. I shrugged.

‘There’s some interesting people we want you to meet.’

‘We?’

‘Midday, outside the main gates. We’ll pick you up in the car.’

‘To do what?’

‘Midday. Tomorrow.’ Then he turned and walked away from me, breaking into some old crooning song. There was a very old white-haired lady at a table near the door. He dropped into a
crouch, grasped her hand and gazed soulfully into her eyes as he sang. Then he released her and was gone.

The Friday farewell show came and went. It was led expertly by Abdul-Shazam in his red fez. He was good. He had the audience feeding from his hand. He expertly set up his gags
(jokes were called gags by showbiz people) with terrific timing. He improvised around the names of the prize-winners and nothing fell flat. I got to help with some of his magic act, around which
the prize-giving was structured. It was exciting to see the simple mechanisms at large, the false bottoms, the fake linings of the magic act. Rather than stealing away the enchantment, this insight
only made it more fascinating. With light and shadow everything worked. Kids and adults alike were drawn up on stage and induced to stick their hand in a velvet bag or under a steel blade. Their
trust was uncanny. They abdicated all responsibility. They let the authority of the stage take over them.

The power wielded under the arc lamps by Tony-Abdul-Shazam was a little bit disturbing. Only I and his other stage assistants were close enough to see the perspiration that went into his act.
Everyone who came on stage was given a baton of candy rock they could carry away with them, a multi-coloured magic wand. Yes, when they got back to their seats it would be nothing more than a stick
of sugar in a cellophane wrapper, but by then it was someone else’s turn to be up on stage, blinking, dazzled by the limelight.

The farewell show was eventually followed by the Friday Revue and I noticed that Luca’s attitude had changed. He breezed in before the show and he was polite, he greeted everyone; but he
was professional and distant, flinty even. Then he shut himself in his changing room. As soon as the last dancer had high kicked the finale into touch and the show was done he bid a cheery
buona
notte
and was out and off the premises sharpish. He showed no more interest in staying behind for a drink. I was disappointed. I was a young man looking to learn about the world and I wanted to
hear more of his wisdom. He was an artist: not like Picasso, but still a true artist, living by his talent. His path was different to that of other men, and I was disposed to learn something from
him. Colin had put a stop to all of that with a single burst of hair-trigger violence and brutality.

When the curtain went down on the Revue I was scheduled to work the evening cash bingo session, and after that I was free. I had a couple of beers in the giant Slowboat Bar, so called for
reasons I never did discover. I laughed and joked with a couple of the scary kitchen girls, but after my conversation with Nikki I had started watched the working staff, too. I saw one of the
barmen under challenge from a holidaymaker who claimed to have been short-changed. I wondered how often that happened.

I’d completed my first week. I crashed into my bed and for the first time since I’d arrived I slept soundly.

I’d been wearing whites and a candy-striped blazer for a week solid and it was good to get back into civilian gear, which in my case was a pair of bell-bottom blue jeans
and a white T-shirt. I rose early to have a lardy breakfast in the canteen and as I crossed the camp all I could see were suitcases lined up outside the wooden chalets as cleaners tried to get in
and campers and their families tried to get out. It was the ritual of the Saturday changeover.

The only thing I could do to find a little breathing space was to go for a walk on the beach. With everyone occupied in the changeover the beach was deserted. It was going to be another hot day.
A tunnel gave access from the camp to the beach wall and when I got down to the water I took off my sandals and carried them between my fingers, feeling the warm sand and shingle between my
toes.

I still didn’t like it. I’d heard all those people talk about how they loved to walk barefoot on the beach. The fact is it gave me the creeps; or even worse, it triggered a
mysterious anxiety. I brushed the sand off my feet and put my sandals back on, and then I wiped my hands on my denims. I moved back up the beach so that I could walk on the reassuring pebbles.

I started walking north, towards Ingoldmells. The sand settles out in banks at angles to the shore and when you get past the housing and developments there are impressive dunes. I’d read
that the Vikings found natural harbours behind these now-dry dunes and I thought I might take a look. Way up the beach I saw two figures sitting, huddled together on a railway sleeper that had been
deposited on the beach by a high tide. The sun at my left hand was a bright yellow blister over the water and the bright sunlight sparkled electric blue on one of the figures.

It was the man in the blue suit I’d seen on the day of the sandcastle competition. He was hugging a child – presumably the boy I’d seen. Maybe the blue suit was made of some
synthetic material because its threads caught the sun’s rays and darted light. He had a rope coiled over his shoulder.

But then the sun darkened and I felt dizzy. My breath came short. I head a groan from way off – way out to sea and I felt an unaccountable panic, triggered by something very old shifting
deep inside me. I looked up. The man and the boy had turned to look at me, perhaps because I was acting oddly. But their faces were in shadow. It made no sense. They were turned full on to the sun,
but their faces were grey and flat and smooth like beach pebbles, almost in silhouette. Even though their faces were indistinct, they peered back at me with suspicion, as if I somehow meant to harm
them. I felt a wave of revulsion. My teeth chattered.

The sun appeared to come out again, and I had to blink, because I wasn’t looking at a man and a boy at all. All I could see was the railway sleeper they’d sat on. I’d somehow
hallucinated them in the morning light. I recovered and paced up the beach to the sea-blasted railway sleeper. It was festooned with the usual debris of the beach: a bit of rope, a plastic bottle,
some dried bladderwrack, an old coat hugging the sleeper. But of the man and the boy there was no sign.

I cast around, still looking for them. The empty beach was now a hostile, echoing place. A sudden stench came off the water and turned my guts. I told myself what I’d seen was all a trick
of the light. But I didn’t believe that. Not for one second.

I recovered and moved on. I glanced back a few times to see if I could see anything until finally I had to challenge myself not to keep looking back over my shoulder. Now I didn’t feel at
all like going to explore the lonely dunes. Instead I walked on for about two miles. There was a very faint breeze coming off the water, and the bad odour went away. I’d been holding my
breath against it. Instead, salt air and the mild electrical charge of the gentle waves was something I could inhale again. I walked on, starting to feel better, with the sun rising steadily over
the water.

At midday I stood outside the main gates of the camp, waiting for Tony. I knew he drove a smart Wolseley saloon. Instead a two-tone Hillman Minx pulled up, with a cheerful pip
on the horn that was clearly directed at me. I noticed two figures in the back but I couldn’t see the driver. The passenger door opened.

I was astonished to see Colin behind the wheel. He was wearing a dark suit and a blue tie. I hesitated.

He leaned across the seat. He tilted his head sideways and closed one eye. ‘Get in, son.’

I climbed into the passenger seat. Colin set off without a word and when I turned to check out the passengers in the back I recognised a lad from the kitchen. I didn’t know his name. He
had buck-teeth shaping his mouth into a permanent sneer. The other passenger I didn’t know at all. He had his head back on the seat upholstery and, with his eyes closed and his mouth open,
appeared to be dozing.

Pretty soon we were heading away from the coast into the flat, open countryside of Lincolnshire. I didn’t want to stare at Colin, but he looked very different in a suit and tie. I
wouldn’t say he looked neat: he was one of those men for whom even a close shave can never quite get rid of a blue shadow. He caught me looking.

‘Nice car,’ I said, wanting to break the uncomfortable silence.

‘That’s cos it’s British,’ the lad from the kitchen said.

‘Where are we going anyway?’ I said.

‘Fifteen minutes, twenty at tops,’ Colin said. ‘Most traffic west will be goin’ another route.’ It wasn’t an answer to my question but I gathered that it was
the only answer I was going to get.

Colin had scrubbed up and I could smell something like carbolic soap on him. That and a metalwork smell. He switched on the car radio. A local news reporter was banging on about the unusual
drought conditions. A hosepipe ban had been introduced and several grass fires and woodland fires had scorched areas of land in Southern England. Colin cursed the government, as if they had
engineered the drought conditions to blight the country.