by Robert Lock
‘The whole pier’s going to be Victorian, Bella, and this booth wasn’t a fortune-teller’s back then.’
‘What was it, then?’
‘Well, it was… er, well, I’m not sure, but it wasn’t a fortune-teller’s. I know that much.’
‘What about the theatre? That wasn’t there back then either. Not as it is now, anyway. Are you going to close that?’
‘Of course not. That isn’t the same thing at all.’
‘What about the arcade? Was that there at the opening? And the electric lights? And the deckchairs? And the sun lounge? Are you going to close all of them for historical accuracy?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Bella.’
‘If you think I’m going to miss out on the busiest weekend this pier’s had for years then you’ve got another think coming, Harvey Birdsall. I tell you what, I’ll wear a Victorian dress. I’ll even pay for it myself. You should get yourself an outfit too. I can just see you in a top hat and tails.’
The pier manager had flounced off at this point, leaving Bella to dispense particularly favourable fortunes for the rest of the day and, between customers, doodle dress designs in the margin of her crossword puzzle.
Reminded of this triumphant exchange, and in truth slightly disarmed by the deckchair attendant’s childlike excitement, Bella raised her eyebrows and opened her mouth slightly in an exaggerated gesture of surprise that anyone less ingenuous than Mickey would probably have interpreted as sarcastic. “Ooh, how exciting! What are you going to be doing?”
“I’m going to be in charge of the deckchairs!”
“But sweetheart,” the fortune-teller pointed out, “that’s what you do normally.”
“For the show. The deckchairs for the show.”
Bella nodded. “Ah. The show. Well that’ll be a change for you, won’t it?” A temporary stage was being erected in the sun lounge, on which a theatrical history of the pier was to be performed, along with dancers and several ‘turns’ yet to be announced. The day’s entertainment would end with a firework display, thus providing a suitable climax to the weekend’s celebrations.
“A hundred years,” she said, a note of incredulity in her voice.
“That’s a long time to be around, isn’t it?”
Mickey tapped one foot on the silver-grey planking. “As old as my tongue and a little older than my teeth.”
Bella presumed that he had learned the phrase from a parent or grandparent, who had doubtless thought of it as a simple, humorous response to a question regarding their age, but as quoted by Mickey Braithwaite, with his brittle, singsong delivery, the phrase took on a more enigmatic quality. Not for the first time she wondered whether there was more going on behind the deckchair attendant’s shimmering, empty eyes than he let on.
“I wonder if it’ll still be here in another hundred years,” she speculated.
Mickey shook his head sadly. “No,” he stated unequivocally, before looking up, distracted by a piercing whistle from birds flying overhead. “Oystercatchers! See?”
Bella seized the moment. Grasping Mickey’s shoulders with both hands she moved him to one side, opening up an escape route back into her booth. “That’s lovely, sweetheart. I’ll see you later,” she assured him, and with a simultaneous pat on both his arms, she swept past, pulling the door to behind her before he had a chance to reply. Only later did Bella marvel at how insubstantial the deckchair attendant had felt; moving him had taken no more effort than it would have done with a cardboard cut-out, and there had been the same lack of resistance, as though he had anticipated her manoeuvre and complied, or even assisted, with it. She sensed something inescapably fey about Mickey Braithwaite. To the casual observer he would doubtless appear, as he pottered amongst his deckchairs, occasionally making a small adjustment to bring one of them back into perfect alignment, as nothing more than a simple-minded figure, maintaining strict order amongst the deckchairs as compensation for the turbulence and disarray in his head. Bella, however, was not a casual observer. Her livelihood depended on her ability to assess and categorise people, to deduce motivations and desires from a word, a gesture, an object. With Mickey she got the feeling that he had access to something not available to most, though what exactly that was she struggled to define. It was not wisdom, at least not in the normal definition of the word, but he did seem to derive a certain profound understanding from it. There was also no obviously religious perspective, but she believed the deckchair attendant to be content, sometimes to the point of him appearing to be in a state of grace. He possessed a kind of quiet harmony with whatever fraction of the world interested him at that moment, whether that was birds flying overhead, the positioning of a deckchair, or snatching his mother from under a bomb that had yet to be dropped. Paradoxically, behind Mickey’s simple acts, Bella caught the occasional glimpse of what closely resembled a quite breathtaking complexity at work. This troubled her, because any evidence of underlying order went against her belief in a random universe, but despite repeated attempts to dismiss these glimpses as either fanciful or simply a misinterpretation of something essentially haphazard, there was a part of her which responded to the possibility of this intangible structure. Bella likened it to an infinitely long pier, carrying all of life on a framework of fate. Whether it had been fabricated, or had formed quite naturally, was a question that Bella preferred to avoid. It was only because of Mickey’s purest transparency that this design could be discerned at all, and Bella was not sure that it was meant to be seen. She felt like a voyeur, peeking through a window at something whose intimacy might be irretrievably compromised by her spying on it, even though she had not intended any harm. It opened itself up to Mickey, allowed him access to its weathered planking, only because he interacted with it on an intuitive rather than an intellectual level. But the pier’s deckchair attendant could only walk out so far over the sea of time, and even this admission was not without its consequences. He had saved his mother from the bomb, from a quick death, only to condemn her to a slow one. Which was worse?
Centenary
The pier had been primped and renovated for its birthday, like some declining dowager who, called upon to attend a ball in her honour, allows herself to be made up into some semblance of youth, even if both she and her guests must then exercise a degree of willful disregard for how the powder has settled in the lines of her face, how the rouge tends to emphasise the pallor of her skin. Similarly, those who walked along the scrubbed decking commented on how lightly the pier wore its century, whereas the maintenance workers who clambered amongst the struts and supports saw at close hand what seventy thousand tides could do to iron.
Union Jacks flew on top of every cupola, and the freshly painted livery of dark green and white shone brightly in the sun, a bold contrast to the unbroken blue of the sky. Bunting, strung along the length of the pier, danced in the breeze, generating a constant whispering sound, as though disclosing the wind’s secrets to any who cared to listen. The crowds thronging the pier, however, concerned themselves with nothing more than that the wind was light, and warm, and carried to their noses the smell of hot dogs and fried onions. Nothing the wind knew could compete with the smell of fried onions.
From within the crimson confines of her booth, Madame Kaminska gawped into the capsized lands of her crystal ball, or laid out her Tarot cards, or pointed sagely at creases in a palm, and mentally rubbed her hands with glee at the conversation and laughter which filtered in from outside. She could even feel the thousands of footfalls passing by as the pier’s planking transmitted them into her chair, the seismic tremor of potential profit. The bodice of her costume was uncomfortably tight under her bosom and around her stomach, but the expression on Harvey Birdsall’s face when she had waved cheerily at him that morning was worth any amount of inconvenience. Never magnanimous in any victory, Bella had pinched the folds of her dress, hoisted them slightly and performed a neat curtsy to the pier manager, who was discussing something with two of his joiners. The men in overalls had laughed and
responded with an exaggerated bow, but Harvey merely shook his head and continued with his instructions, studiously ignoring Bella’s inflammatory gesture. She had seen the defeat in his eyes, however, and that was enough.
By the middle of the afternoon business was tailing off as visitors headed to either the cafe, bar or sun lounge for the show, so Bella hung up her CLOSED sign and clicked down the latch.
“We don’t want another one bursting in like that funny bugger last month, do we?” She enquired of her cat, who had, as all cats are able to do, found the one patch of sunshine available and curled up in it. “I’m sure I don’t know what he was after, do you, Tom? What an odd-bod.”
Bella had been plagued with nightmares for a fortnight after the young man’s visit. Always the same threatening advance, always the same coal-black, distorted figure; the only variation was the time it woke her from her fitful sleep, but whatever the hour, the hideous dream never offered any form of explanation or resolution, just another reminder of that inexorable menace. And then, as suddenly as the nightmares had started, they ended, as though their course was run, leaving an imprint in Bella’s mind rather like a footprint in the sand, its impression gradually washed away by the tides of her forgetfulness and pragmatism. Already, only four weeks after his melodramatic arrival during the summer storm, she could think of the pale young man and smile at the farcical nature of their encounter.
The fortune-teller hooked one forefinger into the collar of her dress and pulled it away from her neck as far as the stiff material would allow. “It’s no wonder everyone looked so miserable on those old black-and-white photos,” she said, puffing out her cheeks, “if they had to wear clobber like this all the time. Trussed up like a chicken, I am, Tom. Still, I made sure that Gypsy Rose Lee got a good look on my way here. Gave her a wave and shouted out how I’d got to get here good and early as I was expecting so many customers, and how everybody who was anybody was going to be on the pier.” Bella laughed out loud. “Ooh, Tom, if looks could kill! I’d be six feet under by now. Well, it’s her own fault. If she wants to play little miss high-and-mighty with me she’ll find I can give as good as I get. She must be desperate for business, I saw her lad handing out vouchers on the prom the other day. And I know for a fact she’s been talking to Harvey about getting a place on the pier. Over my dead body is that happening.”
Bella, having delivered her ultimatum to a largely unresponsive audience, set about making herself a cup of tea. While she filled the kettle and measured out the tea leaves she thought again, rather more reflectively as this was an internal monologue rather than one of her spoken diatribes, about the possibility of a rival fortune-teller based on the pier. Would Gypsy Rose Lee’s presence be so devastating for business? The resort was booming. During the summer months families, young couples and pensioners flocked to the seaside in such numbers that she was turning away would-be customers. There were probably enough people who were either dissatisfied, greedy, frightened, confused or just plain stupid to support half a dozen fortune-tellers in the town. And what was it about being by the sea, Bella wondered, that seemed to cause folk to happily abandon all of their critical faculties? Would they hand over half a crown to a middle-aged woman who set up a stall on the high street of their hometown? Maybe they would. Or perhaps, even though their longing for purpose had nothing in itself to do with the resort, it did provide a suitably fantastical location in which seeking answers from a sphere of glass or a pack of cards would seem less than ridiculous, or even normal.
Once her tea had stewed to the mahogany colour she favoured, Bella poured herself a large mug and settled in her chair to tot up the day’s takings. As soon as the cat heard the rattle of his owner’s money tin he roused himself sufficiently to amble across the booth, hop up into her lap, circle round several times until he found precisely the right position, and finally curl up in preparation for yet another discourse on the financial vagaries of fortune telling.
“Right then, let’s see how we’ve done,” Bella announced. She opened the tin lid and tipped its contents onto the table, creating a clatter to which the cat reacted by digging in its claws. “Ooh… ah,” she whimpered, carefully extricating his claws from the material.
“Don’t you pull a thread in this bloody dress, my lad, it’s got to go back tomorrow. I don’t see why we’ve all had to pay for our own outfits, in any case. I’d have thought for the centenary they might have found a few quid for the workers rather than spending it all on flags. Hey, look at all these ten-bob notes, Tom. I reckon the pier ought to have a birthday party every year.”
The fortune-teller neatly piled the coins with one hand whilst twiddling the cat’s ears with the other, occasionally breaking off to slurp noisily at her tea. Only one further component was needed to make her happiness complete, but she had been unable to locate Mickey Braithwaite in order to send him for a cream bun. “Typical man,” was her response to the deckchair attendant’s absence.
“Under your feet when you don’t want them and nowhere to be found when you do.”
It did not take Bella long to separate the coins, stack them in piles of a pound each, and tot up the total. “Eleven pounds seven and six,” she declared with satisfaction. “Flipping ‘eck, if every day was like that we’d be in clover. Champagne for me and cream for you. I suppose we’d better let Vince have something too, hadn’t we? Ten Woodbines should do it, eh Tom?” She laughed at her own joke. “Still, I don’t suppose we’re going to get another day like today for a while, are we? I think a little celebration is in order.” Bella gulped down the rest of her tea and banged the mug back down on the table, as though bringing down the gavel on an auction of possible gratifications.
With the dress’ deposit foremost in her mind, Bella carefully lifted the cat from her lap, set him down on the floor, stood up and brushed off any accumulated hairs. “Are you moulting, you mangy mutt?” She ran her hand down Tom’s back, to which the cat responded by raising and stiffening its tail. “Your coat’s not as shiny as it should be, my lad. I’ll get you a tin of salmon on the way home, but we’re not going anywhere until I’ve seen Val for a G and T. You can stay here and stand guard.”
The fortune-teller gathered up the takings and placed them back in the tin, keeping one of the ten shilling notes for herself. “I think I deserve a little treat, don’t you?” she said, waving the note at Tom. The cat’s amber eyes narrowed slightly, perhaps because it had heard its owner’s justifications regarding one indulgence or another that many times it had come to doubt whether any significant degree of creditworthiness was involved in coming to these conclusions.
In the tiny kitchen and store area there was a loose section of skirting board, behind which was a void big enough to take the money tin. Bella knelt with difficulty in the dress, moved the board and manoeuvred the tin into its hiding place, before replacing the board and straightening with a grunt. “I’ll be glad to get this flipping straightjacket off,” she said, wriggling within the bodice to try and find a more comfortable position. “Now you look after that money, Tom, I won’t be long.”
Using the bulk of her dress to stop the cat from slipping past, Bella quickly exited the booth, and was about to set off down the pier, a cold and sparkling glass of gin and tonic practically in her hand already, when Eddie hailed her from the other booth.
“Hey, Bella!”
She took a deep breath. Turning, she saw the rock seller, dressed in a straw boater, dark blue striped blazer and cream trousers, re-filling the boxes outside his booth. “Eddie,” she replied, pronouncing the word with a plainly false bonhomie.
He brandished the pink sticks as though guiding an aeroplane into its parking position. “I’m running out! What a day!”
Bella smiled politely. She had nothing in particular against the rock seller, apart from his interminable cheerfulness and a tendency to scratch absentmindedly at his crotch, but that gin and tonic was waiting impatiently for her, and she had no intention of letting it down. “Busy,�
�� she concurred.
“How have you done?”
The fortune-teller shrugged noncommittally. “Oh, not bad,” she replied, already turning in the direction of the bar.
Ignoring this indication that their exchange was at an end, Eddie trotted across the pier, still clutching the sticks of rock, and waved the ones in his right hand at Bella’s outfit. “I like the dress. Is it yours?”
“Mine? Of course it is, Eddie, I always wear hundred-year-old dresses. Hadn’t you noticed?”
“Er… ”
“Of course it isn’t mine you narna! I hired it from the fancy dress shop on George Street, though why we should have to fork out for our own clobber I don’t know. I’ve a good mind to send Harvey the bill.” Bella made a swift appraisal of Eddie’s blazer and trousers. “What about yours?”
“Oh, I had it anyway,” he replied. “I sing in a barbershop quartet. I bought it ages ago for concerts.”
“Do you? I didn’t know that.”
“Oh yes. You know…” Eddie struck a pose, one arm raised and bent, the other lowered and straight. “Bye Bye Blackbird… I’ll Take You Home Again Kathleen… You Must Have Been A Beautiful Baby.”
“Very nice,” Bella said.
“You should come and see us sometime. We often provide the star turn at St Luke’s church hall do’s.”
“I’d love to,” Bella said, and even she was appalled at the lack of sincerity in her voice.
Eddie dropped one of his sticks of rock, which rolled away towards the edge of the pier, coming to rest against the foot of a chubby young man with sandy-coloured hair who was slumped on the wrought-iron seating. He picked up the rock and offered it back to Eddie, who smiled and shook his head. “No, no, that’s alright. You keep it. Finders keepers and all that!”
“Well,” the young man murmured shyly, “it wasn’t really lost.”
“As good as. No, I insist. It’s the pier’s centenary, you know.”