‘Oh you’re still awake are you? Thought you’d gone to sleep like you did when you were on the locker,’ said Chris.
‘We better make a move, lads,’ said Baz.
‘Don’t worry, Baz, Alan’s up the dancers with Big Plums.’
‘Come on lads. I can hear the lift coming down,’ said Rennie.
We all walked back towards the wooden lockers.
‘Rennie, if you had your life over, what would you do different?’ I asked him.
‘Fucking hell, how long have you got?’
‘That bad, eh?’
‘Played for City. Nah, I should have done something with computers. So I could have got a job in an office and sat on my arse all day like all them lot in there.’
‘I was at City. We don’t get any mither out here though do we? I just wanted a job where I could just keep my head down and work hard.’
‘Mug’s game. Look, I’m too old. Nobody’s going to give me a job at my age.’
‘You are only in your fifties aren’t you?’
‘Doesn’t matter. It is too late for me.’
‘So you’ve given up already?’
‘We aren’t talking about me. Look, you’re obviously a bright lad. You went to college and all that.’
‘One fucking ‘A’ level. What use is that?’
‘Make something of yourself, lad. You don’t want to get stuck here.’
‘Yeah but the money you’re on. And you don’t do fuck all.’
‘Cheeky sod. I’ve put forty years in here, that’s why.’
‘I was on the dole for six months after college. This was the only job I could get. The thing is, by the time I get home I’m too fucked to do anything except sit in front of the telly.’
‘That’s it. That’s how the government keeps us all quiet. Makes us work all week. Lets us drink ourselves into a coma. At least when we’re all fucked and wandering about pissed there’s nobody going to bring down the government.’
‘They’re all the same anyway. Politicians.’
‘I agree with you. Liars, all of them. Anyway you better get counting again, I can hear Alan coming.’
There was the sound of more passing trains. Early morning shone in through barred windows, illuminating flights of dust and glinting on silver fittings.
‘What people don’t realize is that the hardest jobs are the worst paid ones. You want to get a job where you like going there. I mean, if you had a choice now, where would you be, here or at home?’
‘Well yeah but you don’t get paid at home.’
‘More to life than money, lad. You don’t get this time back.’
‘I never got that. Why do we work five days and have two days off? Should be the other way around.’
‘Just the way it is.’
After the stocktaking I went home to bed but couldn’t sleep in the daylight. I thought of how it was all so much easier when you were a kid. Before you realized you were nothing special. The best moments of my life had always been on holiday. I hadn’t been anywhere without my parents and I was too old to go with them now. But I had fond memories of my childhood holidays to Blackpool, and I dreamed about them, wished I could go back in time and stay there.
We went every year for a good few years on the trot, catching a bus to Piccadilly and then a train to Blackpool North. The last time we stayed at a hotel called the Sea View, near the South Pier, not far from a public park with pitch and putt and bowling greens and ice cream. The four of us stayed in a family room, and most nights I lay in fear of making any noise that might wake my light-sleeping dad. Going to the toilet was a nightmare, and thinking about it and getting nervous always ensured I had to go, so I’d climb off the top bunk (it was always a bunk bed) the bed all creaking and shaking, and tread onto the hard creaking wood of the ladder and go over to the bathroom, turning the handle gently, leaving the light off and slowly closing the door behind me, my hands all soft on the door handle, and then piss onto the porcelain insides of the bowl. I didn’t flush, just put the lid down and washed my hands in a trickle of water before going back through all the creaking to bed again.
I always had to go and get a paper for dad in the mornings, and on the first day, before we got to The Sea View, he pointed out the nearest shop. In the morning, after he gave me the money from a pile of change next to the already-full ashtray on his bedside table, I ran down the red carpet stairs, past the brass gong in reception and out down a couple of stone steps onto the street, where I was met with the wind off the water and the morning calls of seagulls. Zipping up my jacket I walked up the side street towards the promenade and went and had a look at the sea. The tide was going out and the dark grey water rolled one step forward and two steps back, frothing dirty white disappearing into different shades of sand. On the promenade, next to an ornate tram stop shelter painted blue and white and rising to a domed roof, an old man stood smoking a cigarette beside the deck chairs he’d rent out that day. I turned right and walked further down the promenade and first heard the rumble and then raised my head to look into the distance towards a roller coaster, all its red seats empty, twisting and turning in a maze of white wood. The first people of the day were going in through the just opened doors of The Sandcastle, an indoor swimming pool with water slides and wave machines. Across the road a row of taxis stretched out along the kerb, and beside them flowers of all colours lay in beds cut in oblongs of soil between borders of grass. Before I knew it the newsagent’s was beside me, on the corner of a side street leading off the main drag and into the labyrinth of terraced houses and hotels and B&B’s. I went in and got the Daily Mirror for my dad, as well as ten B&H for my mum, and then walked out of the shop and went back towards the hotel, the sea and the sand and the stretching expanse of blue sky all brightening. I was back before breakfast, and sat at the table with my mum and dad, and my brother, six years younger than me. The landlady of the hotel, a pink-faced, forthright woman who smelt like my grandmother, hovered around near the kitchen as a young girl brought a pot of tea to our table. I could see the lace trim of the girl’s bra through her white blouse, and was glad my lap was under the table as I started on the grapefruit segments. Each time she returned I couldn’t stop looking at the upraised little curves of her chest, and as she busied herself between the tables of holidaying Scots and Cockneys, her face began to go red and I could see her nipples through the blouse. I began looking at her legs too; they were a bit chubby but looked a treat in black tights. By the time we’d had the bacon and eggs and sausage and toast and tomatoes and fried bread and mushrooms, and finished with marmalade on toast washed down with a re-fill of breakfast orange, we trailed back up to the room where mum filled a bag with towels and sun cream and dad put the paper in his back pocket and the windbreaker over his shoulder, and I carried a bucket and spade for me and my brother. Dad wouldn’t pay to hire deckchairs so he put up the windbreaker and mum laid out four towels side by side on a drying stretch of sand. At first it started to drizzle, and we buttoned up our coats and just sat on the towels to stop them blowing away as dad mentioned how he’d ‘saved all year for this’. Then he said, ‘You will enjoy yourselves,’ and the rain held off and the sun fought through the cloud, and that few minutes really was the only time it rained. The sand became more golden with the warming day, and the beach filled up slowly and surely and people ran back and forth and in and out of the sea that was supposed to be dirty but never did you any harm. The men with the donkeys came and you could hear the donkeys’ bells jangle as they took toddlers or struggled with fat kids up and down the beach. Beach balls striped all colours bounced around and floated in the sea breeze up and above the sands, and you could smell sea salt and salt and vinegar and the coconut smell of sun cream, and candyfloss and ice cream, both the old vanilla kind and the Mr Whippy kind, and cigarette smoke and wet sand and dry sand and donkey shit on sand and chlorine through the air vents of Th
e Sandcastle, and you could hear laughter and bickering and children crying and roller coasters rolling and the accompanying muffled screaming, and traffic going by and trams rolling by and the different from home but still unmistakable siren songs of ice cream vans, and the asking they prompted and the running over sand up sandy steps to the promenade to queue and come back with cones and choc-ices and the raspberry sauce smell and the chocolate smell of the flakes in the 99s. We made sandcastles and buried dad in sand and had ice creams, and then dad bought a cricket set of bat, wickets and ball, and we walked off to find an empty space of sand as mum stayed with the stuff and put more sun cream on my brother. In the shadow of the South Pier, in front of the promenade wall, I stood with the bat as dad took a long run up and bowled at me as fast as he could. With the sun up all bright and hot and dazzling and broken apart on sea waves, I squinted and played my best until dad finally bowled a straight one and the little wickets were knocked askew like slats of a broken fence. I was always better at football. When he batted he thrashed the ball to all parts and I chased after it, barefoot on the warm sand or splashing into the tide, and I could feel the back of my neck burning with the sun as I ran up and bowled and dad thwacked the ball so high and hard that it hit the side of the South Pier and rebounded upwards before arching back down and landing among the waves that sloshed at the base of thin posts.
When dad was bored and tired and I still wanted to play he picked up the stumps with a clatter and we went back to my mum and brother. Mum helped me dry my feet, feeling like she might pull off my toes as she made sure to get the last of the sand from between them. My feet felt soothed by the return of socks and shoes, and then we tidied up our stuff, dropped it back at the hotel and went and looked for a place to have lunch, me holding my brother’s hand as we walked with mum and dad along the crowded promenade, past the souvenir shops of rock and fudge and kiss-me-quick hats and masks and shops full of cheap jewellery with chains that made your neck go green and cheap watches and sunglasses, past amusement arcades where the sounds of Formula One cars and automated voices jostled with the bluff smiles and tones of the men and women in and around the change booths, past newspaper and magazine stalls and then hotel after seafront hotel, until, sick of looking at menus on the walls outside of cafés we eventually went into a chippy just off the front, and sat at a shiny wooden table with red and brown plastic sauce bottles that farted when you squeezed them, and salt and vinegar in little glass containers with white plastic tops, and another little bowl with sachets of tartar sauce, and we all had fish and chips and mum made sure there were no bones in our fish, and by the time they’d drank their tea and we’d had our cokes it was already mid-afternoon, and time to go back out into the summer air and the salt smell from the sea, and the ever-present sound of seagulls and the arcades and the trams and the traffic and the hubbub of holiday makers and locals working. We walked back along the promenade and then down the Central Pier, past more chip shops and souvenir stalls and a Gypsy Rose Lee fortune-telling booth where you could look in and see her hands on a crystal ball and someone else all hunch-shouldered before her. We sat down on a bench, the ornate patterns of the pier side behind us, and me and dad went on the Waltzers and sat waiting with our hands on the barrier over our knees listening to the loud rock music and waiting as young lads pushed and pulled us into place ready to start and then got out of the way and got it going and we whirled around and around and up and down and I felt sick with the fish and chips but dad loved it. When we got off I couldn’t walk straight and felt as green as the peas I’d had with the fish and chips and my mum and brother seemed to find it funny until mum stopped laughing and put her arm around me. We got up and walked to the end of the pier where comedians and minor TV stars appearing in pantomime that summer season had their faces painted on the wooden façade.
The evening meal at The Sea View was at six, so we made our way back there in time to get changed, and while we did, dad had a kip, and I tried to copy him, lying on the top bunk all made up since the morning, the covers tucked back in tight and the pillow fresh and flat, but I just looked up at the ceiling as mum changed my brother and then told me to get changed too, and then the gong went downstairs, and dad got up and changed and we went to where we’d sat at breakfast, this time for the evening meal, and we sat through all the formalities again, the quiet manners of all but a fat noisy Cockney in the corner who seemed to be forever saying, ‘A couple of beers and a couple of coffees,’ and always called the young girl ‘sweetheart’ and again I couldn’t stop looking at her and again she slowly went red as the courses went by, until, eventually, with only dad among us eating cheese and biscuits - determined to get his money’s worth - and the rest of us full, she made her last trip back to the kitchen and away from my eyes for the day.
There was some form of family entertainment on every night at the hotel, but dad never liked it so we went out and walked down the promenade and saw it transformed by night, all the bright lights and shining shop fronts and arcades and the moon out on the black water that sloshed against the sea wall. That first night we went back to the hotel too early and on our way into the bar had to pass the entertainer who stood in a white suit on a polished wooden floor holding a multi-coloured tickling stick, and as we passed he said, ‘You’re late,’ and dad said, ‘No, we’re early, you’re still on,’ and some people in the bar laughed, and the entertainer looked more resigned than deflated, and afterwards, with the entertainer sat there in his white suit, dad bought him a drink and we watched as he put his tickling stick in his suitcase before wandering from the bar and out through the front door of the hotel.
Sitting there among the red velvet seats, with my coke on the gold leaf table next to my dad’s pint and my mum’s half, I ate a packet of cheese and onion crisps as mum and dad smoked away, flicking their ash into a Tetley Bitter ashtray. I put the empty crisp packet on the table and dad picked it up and rolled it up and put a knot into it before dropping it into the corner of the ashtray, and I could see mum getting more relaxed after her drink and talking and laughing more with dad who said it was time me and my brother went to bed, even though he was still wide awake and drawing something precocious on a scrap of paper.
Mum made me hold my brother’s hand and we went back upstairs and mum put us to bed and then went back down to the bar, closing the door behind her and leaving us in darkness; the only light coming in through the thin curtains that billowed slightly from the sea breeze through the open window that brought in all the salt smells of the sea and the sand. I pushed my knees up beneath the covers to loosen the tight sheets and thanks to the warm summer night and all the warmth of my skin from sunburn I couldn’t sleep until I realized my brother was asleep in the bunk below, and then as I thought I wasn’t going to sleep at all I thought about the girl for a while and then the tiredness hit me and I slept through mum and dad coming back and until the very early morning, when I had to go to the toilet and went as quietly as I could, still waking dad up as I left bubbles in the bowl.
I went back to sleep in the thin early morning light let in through the gently moving curtains until I woke again and realized that it was already Monday and we only had five days left. I got up and dressed, ready for the rest of the week: the beach and the sun and the sea and The Sandcastle and the arcades and the Pleasure Beach and the tower and the ice cream and the fish and chips and the sunburn and the salt sea and the chlorine smell and the pitch and putt and the cricket and the football and the girl with the budding hooters at breakfast.
One of the drivers who worked in the warehouse was called Billy and he had some spare tickets for a gig at the Apollo. We met in the Apsley Cottage for a pint and the woman he had brought with him wore tight jeans and knee length boots. She looked about 40 but you could tell how beautiful she must once have been. Standing beside her at the bar I was close enough to see strands of grey among the falling black tresses of her hair, but I could smell her perfume and it went straight to
my pants. Every bloke in the bar left his eyes on her, and she seemed self-conscious rather than big-headed. I liked that and spent what seemed like hours thinking through what I should say to her.
We left the gig during the encores and went back to a pub in Bury where everyone seemed to know Caroline. We played pool and everybody watched her as she bent over the table. They all frowned at me. I felt out of my depth and just got pissed. Billy dropped me off with Caroline at her house on Green Street and she made us both a cup of tea. As we sat drinking it, her on a large white armchair surrounded by her two purring cats and me on the other side of the room at one end of a white settee, I just sat there. We started talking about the cats, and I stroked them for what seemed an eternity. Caroline eventually got me a blanket and then went up to bed, leaving me there on the settee. I barely slept all night, and because of all the lager I’d had I was farting prodigiously. I opened a kitchen window and wafted the kitchen door and the puzzled cats ran upstairs to Caroline. Finally I fell asleep, and I woke in the morning with a boner. I went upstairs to her bedroom and opened the door and she was lying there on her back looking up at the ceiling. Only the cats turned to look. Caroline let out a massive sigh and told me to let myself out.
As I walked the Bury suburbs my head was pounding. Waiting by the bus stop I watched a man with a grey beard cycle down the road carrying bags from Lidl and Farmfoods. When the bus stopped I asked the driver if the bus went to Manchester and he shook his head sadly and told me to cross over. Every woman I saw made me horny. Caroline was the fittest bird I’d ever been close to and I couldn’t stop thinking about her knockers. Why didn’t I just shag her? She would have been experienced too. She could have taught me so much. I could have seen her for a while and become an expert in bed. I thought I just needed to get my end away and all my problems would be over.
By the time my hangover was gone it was Sunday night. The drinking of the night before now made me feel doubly depressed. The only thing in sight for me was manual labour. On Monday morning I thought Billy might ask me about Caroline and I was all ready to tell him that I’d shagged her. But he just walked straight past me.
Sky Hooks Page 3