The Year of the Ladybird

by Graham Joyce

  She looked at me sideways. Then she settled back into her deckchair and closed her eyes.

  The concert came to an end. The elderly folk got up from their seats and shuffled away. We were the last to get out of our chairs.

  ‘Come on. Someone will see,’ she said, standing up.

  ‘What will they see? Two people sitting in deckchairs?’

  ‘Yes. And that will mean a lot more than two people sitting in deckchairs.’

  I made out I didn’t understand that, but I suppose I did. ‘Are you around this evening?’ I said.

  ‘No,’ she said sharply. ‘Madness.’

  Then she walked away from the bandstand, across the grass, in the direction of the sea wall.

  But she was around that evening. And how.

  I’d spent the early evening as a checker on the cash bingo in the Slowboat. Nobby called the bingo from an elevated chair, with a glass cabinet powering numbered ping-pong balls through a Perspex tube. When one of the punters – it had taken me about a week to graduate from calling people punters instead of campers – shouted for a line or a house it was my job to collect the winning ticket, take the ticket over to Nobby and run through the numbers. If all was correct – and it usually was – play could continue and the winners collected their cash at the end of the session. It was mind-numbing, oddly comforting and hugely popular with both the campers and the punters.

  When the bingo was over, most of the players drifted back to their chalets to get washed and changed for the evening, whereupon they would float back again to the very same venue. It was all a bit like the sea ebbing and flowing. During that time the Slowboat residential band – three amiable Brummies in silk shirts and sparkling waistcoats – would set up ready for the night’s steady stream of cover versions. One of the band – Eric the drummer – was telling me a joke, something about an adulterer who was in church when he remembered where he’d left his bicycle. I sensed but didn’t hear him getting past the punch-line.

  ‘You’re not listening,’ he said. Then he scoped where I was looking. ‘Don’t blame you, matie.’ Eric moved away and rippled his fingertips along the edge of his cymbal as if to underscore some point or other.

  Terri stood against the bar. Wearing that same dark, figure-hugging dress, this time she wore opaque black tights and a pair of shiny black high heels. Her eyelashes had been highlighted with mascara and she wore a thin trace of lip-gloss. I saw her in front of me and it was like I was speeding along a motorway with a car crash happening way up ahead, but instead of slowing down I was accelerating into it.

  ‘Are you back at work?’ I said.

  ‘Yes. But they’ve taken me out of the theatre. I’m cleaning the refurbished chalets in D block.’

  ‘You look amazing,’ I said.

  She smiled at me but then said, ‘Hush!’

  ‘What am I supposed to do?’

  She flicked her hair and glanced at me sideways. Then she looked away again.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I said.

  She let out a little moan. ‘I don’t know.’ Then she picked up her handbag from the bar and leaving her drink unfinished she said, ‘I’m going into town.’ Without a backward glance at me she walked out of the Slowboat bar.

  I stood frowning at the space she’d vacated. She was going into town? Dressed like that she was going into town? I had to fight myself to stop from running out after her and bringing her back. I turned away from the bar. Eric the drummer, perched on his stool behind his kit, was watching me. He blew on his hand and flapped his wrist, as if to cool burned fingers.

  8

  A sequined costume and a sword casket

  Monday I woke after a bad night. Every time I slipped into sleep I was tortured by images of Terri giving herself to men in town. It was ridiculous. I didn’t own her. But I was torturing myself with pictures played out on the back of my retina. Perhaps it was something of this that made Colin the way he was.

  Yet Terri wasn’t a flirt. She didn’t toy with people’s feelings, nor did she smile or flash her eyes or lick her lips or swing her hips. Just the opposite. Neither did she ever play the double-entendre game that gave the kitchen girls so much fun. With the exception of one impulsive, stolen, dry kiss, she’d held me at arm’s length. At almost every moment she’d avoided giving me any kind of signal. Either she was the most manipulative woman since Mata Hari or she was genuinely trying to stay true to her monster of a husband. Even so, as I tossed and turned, I couldn’t get rid of feverish pictures of her lavishing her favours on the men in the town.

  I didn’t see Terri all of that week. Since she’d been taken off the theatre duty she was deployed in various places. I didn’t see her in the daytime and she didn’t show up again in any of the evening bars. I felt as though I was always looking over my shoulder for her.

  On the Wednesday morning I went into the briefing and I caught Nikki glaring at me. I tried to catch her eye but she looked away. She’d been frosty with me for some days now and I had no idea what I’d done to upset her. I was determined to ask when I got the chance.

  It was the morning of the magic show. Tony asked me to ready the props and I started by wheeling the sword casket from the props cupboard, which was actually an alcove adjacent to the theatre. After a few moments Nikki appeared. She was Tony’s assistant in the show and as such she was required to wear a sequined costume and to climb into the sword casket. I made some lame remark to her about dodging the swords and she completely blanked me. Turning her back on me, she stripped off and wriggled into her fishnets and her sparkling costume. Then she started brushing her long, lustrous black hair.

  I’d had enough. ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Will you tell me what I’ve done?’

  She narrowed her dark eyes at me and brushed her hair with angry vigour. I wondered if she somehow knew about what was happening between me and Terri, and disapproved.

  At last she spoke. ‘Let’s just have a think, shall we? A think.’

  It didn’t seem to me possible that she could be jealous. It didn’t seem possible that she could even know. I shook my head. I had no idea.

  ‘Didn’t take you long to team up, did it?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Fun, was it?’

  ‘What fun, Nikki?’

  ‘Joined the gang, have we?’

  ‘The gang?’

  ‘You went to one of their meetings.’

  ‘Meetings?’

  ‘What do you think that says to me, David? You know what they want to do to people like me and my family? They want us sent off in cattle trucks, that’s what they want.’

  I felt embarrassed and stupid at the same time. I hadn’t realised that in Nikki’s lovely dark looks she carried the genes of a different race. Nor had I thought what others might think about my attendance at that meeting. I was horrified. ‘No! Wait! Nikki! I didn’t even know you were . . .’ I couldn’t find a word or phrase that wouldn’t compound the problem.

  She supplied one for me. ‘Half-caste? Mixed race? Oh fuck off, David.’

  ‘I swear! I didn’t know what I was getting into! Tony said come and meet some people and I thought it might be like a conjuring circle . . . or I don’t know what. Next thing I found myself up to my chest in flags and skinheads and . . . I had no idea.’

  ‘You came home with all their horrible literature though, didn’t you?’

  ‘Literature?’ I suddenly recalled the copy of Spearhead in my room. ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Nobby saw their papers in your room.’

  Nobby had reported to Nikki! My room-mate had grassed me up.

  ‘One. One paper. I was about to throw it out. That’s the truth!’

  ‘So why have you even got one? Why, David, why?’

  Her dark eyes were moist with anger and hurt and my protestations were getting me nowhere. ‘I swear to you, Nikki, I have nothing to do with those people.’

  She shook her head. ‘David. You’re like . . . like a little puppy. You’ll follow an
yone anywhere. You’ve got to be careful about where people will lead you.’

  ‘I’m sorry! I really am.’

  She gazed at me in silence before someone came blundering into the semi-darkness of the backstage. It was Tony, still wearing his fez. ‘Lover’s tiff, is it?’ he said cheerfully. Then he began singing loudly, something about the course of true love never running smooth. Nikki sighed and headed off towards the ballroom.

  Tony took off his fez and became serious. ‘You have to be precise about how all this stuff unpacks and gets put away afterwards, look here. Take hold of that box.’

  Later I asked Nikki how I could make things up to her.

  ‘You can buy me an ice-cream.’

  I agreed, as if to do so would solve the pressing problem of racism that was hawking the country.

  ‘On the pier. Saturday.’

  9

  Your future foretold with yellow underlighting

  When Saturday came I had breakfast in the canteen in my civvies. Every time someone came in I looked up, thinking it might be Terri but fearing it might be Colin. Neither appeared. I was eventually joined by one of the security guards who asked me if I was interested in Formula One car racing. I said I wasn’t and he proceeded to tell me about the history, business and current state of competition in the sport, just as if I’d said yes. When he finally paused for breath, I asked him if he’d seen Colin.

  ‘You don’t want to have anything to do with him,’ he said.

  ‘No. Have you seen him around?’

  He shook his head. ‘What’s he to you?’

  I gathered up my tray and said, ‘Look at the time. I’ve got to put my foot down.’

  Nikki sat on the sea wall just outside the camp. We were going to walk together into Skegness and spend some time there. She looked very pretty. She wore a simple pink dress that bared her shoulders and she had tied her dark hair back into a ponytail. She dipped her sunglasses as I approached, and squinted at me. ‘That ice-cream,’ she said. ‘It has to be a big one.’

  ‘I can do that.’

  She linked arms with me, as if we were a couple, and we walked along the promenade in the direction of town. Where the promenade ran out we crossed the dunes of the North Shore Golf Course and we walked a little way along the beach before going up onto the road called Roman Bank into the town. Nikki took off her flip-flops and carried the straps between her fingers as we crossed the dunes. Before we’d gone but a short distance she trod on something sharp and let out a little yelp. I made her sit down while I had a look at her foot. There was a bead of blood under her toe, a bead the size of a ladybird, already clotted with sand. I could see a thorn in her toe and I pulled it out. I put a bit of spit on my finger and cleaned her toe.

  She dipped her sunglasses again and looked at me strangely.

  ‘What?’ I asked.

  ‘Nothing.’

  I suggested she’d be better off wearing her flip-flops because there was quite a lot of thorny debris amongst the dunes. She did what I told her.

  ‘You’re funny,’ she said.

  I couldn’t think of anything I’d said that was funny.

  When we got into town I bought her the promised ice-cream. I wanted to sit somewhere up on the Grand Parade and look out to sea. But she studied her thin gold wristwatch and said, no, we had to go and find somewhere to sit on Castleton Boulevard. I said I didn’t think Castleton Boulevard offered much of a view.

  ‘Who’s in charge of this trip?’ she said.

  ‘You are.’

  So we went to Castleton Boulevard. There we found a bench and we ate our ice-creams. She glanced at her wristwatch again. ‘Are we waiting for someone?’ I said.

  ‘Be patient, will you?’

  I finished my ice-cream. The sun was already hot in the sky. You could feel it pulse. I felt a trickle of sweat run under my collar as we sat in silence. Then a lion came down the street.

  The lion was on a leash. It was a young lion but it was already the size of an Alsatian dog. Bigger even. It pulled at the leash, and only just managing to restrain it was a small man in a lightweight suit. His companion, a middle-aged woman in heavy-make-up and an extravagant, broad-brimmed hat, clutched a small handbag tight to her side and walked with a slightly theatrical swing.

  Nikki jumped up, almost as if to greet them. ‘Beautiful!’ Nikki said.

  The dapper little man stopped and the lion stopped pulling. It blinked patiently. ‘Good morning, my darling,’ the man said to Nikki. His companion smiled. She looked about her as if expecting more people.

  ‘Is that a lion? I said, quite stupidly.

  ‘None other,’ said the man.

  ‘We met before,’ Nikki said.

  ‘We did indeed,’ said the man. ‘Though I’m very poor at names.’

  ‘I’m Nikki. This is David.’

  The man turned to me. ‘Lion of the Serengeti. Born in captivity. Live ten to fourteen years in the wild though up to twenty in captivity. They prey mostly on large ungulates and can run the length of a football pitch in six seconds. This is Hector and Hector is eating twelve pounds of chunk meat fed five days per week.’ I had the feeling that this man regularly said the same thing through a microphone. He blinked at me.

  He seemed about to say more but Nikki spoke up. ‘You let me stroke him last time.’

  ‘As I said to you before, it’s at your own risk.’ He held a finger up to me and said, very pointedly, ‘Please witness that I said so.’

  I nodded.

  Nikki stepped forward and gently stroked the lion’s incipient mane on the top of its head. It reacted like any cat, narrowing its eyes in pleasure. Nikki was mesmerised. She ran her elegant fingers through its fur and stroked along its flank. Then she turned to me. ‘You going to have a go?’

  The man made an extravagant gesture of checking his wristwatch. ‘Go ahead, young man. But I do repeat the warning.’ His companion cocked her head at me and smiled.

  I stepped forward and gently brushed the lion’s mane. It opened its eyes wide and looked at me hard. I know it’s ridiculous but I felt like the beast had calibrated my soul. Then it closed its eyes again. I thought maybe his fur would be like that of a cat’s, but it wasn’t. It was much more brittle and coarse but it had extraordinary movement in it, and my playing with it seemed to trigger a smell of musk and dung.

  ‘He likes it,’ said the woman.

  ‘I do,’ I said.

  She giggled. ‘I meant Hector likes it.’

  The man checked his watch again. ‘We really must be on our way. Good morning to both of you!’

  We watched them amble down Castle Boulevard, the man with his lion and the woman swinging her buttocks and fixing her hat in place as she went.

  ‘How did you know he’d be here?’ I asked Nikki.

  ‘He has a route he walks every Saturday morning at the same time. Everyone around here knows him. He’s the man with the lion. It’s free advertising for his circus. The police wanted to stop him in case it’s dangerous; but they decided there’s no by-law against walking your lion.’

  ‘You know what I think?’

  ‘What do you think?’ she said.

  ‘I think you are a lioness.’

  She made a lovely cackle. ‘I’ll take that.’

  I think I smiled but the smile must have vanished on my lips because I suddenly thought about Terri. I wondered where she was. I wondered how she was. Nikki had succeeded in doing exactly what I’d wanted her to do, which was to take my mind away from Terri and Colin. But now that it had happened I felt guilty. I don’t know why. Nothing had happened between us, but I was dogged by the feeling that I’d already made Terri some kind of promise.

  It was insane. She was married to a violent attack-dog and here I was feeling responsible for her. Whereas I was spending my time in the company of a stunning and beautiful dancer with no complications. One gave me lions, the other, snakes.

  Nikki linked her arm in mine. ‘Come on. I’ve got other things to sh
ow you. What’s an ungulate.’

  ‘Dunno.’

  ‘Mr clever-clogs college boy doesn’t know what an ungulate is.’

  ‘No he doesn’t. Happy with that?’

  ‘Very happy with that. Shows you don’t know everything.’

  ‘Did I say I did?’

  ‘Not in so many words.’

  We had a wonderful day together. Nikki was fun company and made me laugh. She wanted to show me what she called the secrets of the town. After encountering the lion we went to the old esplanade with its formal gardens. After that she took me to an Art Deco theatre. It had been closed and turned into a hideous penny-arcade with a nasty plastic hoarding covering half the front of the building; but you could go inside and see some of the hidden glory of the old theatre. The same thing had happened to a cinema. She told me it was going to be washed away; all of it, and she didn’t feel sad.

  ‘It’s just had its day. The holiday camp is living on borrowed time, too. People don’t want all this any more.’

  By ‘all this’ I knew she meant Abdul-Shazam, Luca Valletti and dancing girls rehearsing jaded routines in clapped-out Variety clubs. She meant the holidaying habits of the industrialised working classes. She meant a way of life that had reached the end of its commercial utility. These were the last days of working culture ended not through earthquake or tidal wave or volcanic eruption, but through the obstinate ticking of the cash register.

  We went to a pub and had chicken-and-chips-in-a-basket. I asked Nikki about her future in dancing. I wanted to hear about her next career step, her plans, her dreams. She took off her dark glasses, folded them and put them on the table next to her chicken-in-a-basket. Then she took a sip of lager.

  ‘I don’t know. This sort of work is dying out, too. I’m going to have to do something else.’

  ‘But there must be better work.’

  ‘And the better you have to be. If you’re really good you could work in the big London shows.’

  ‘But you are really good.’

  The skin around her eyes crinkled when she smiled. I wondered how old she was. I figured she was about twenty-five but I didn’t want to ask. ‘You know nowt about it.’