The Year of the Ladybird

by Graham Joyce

  There were over a dozen metal drums near the shaft, all stamped with biohazard symbols. The shaft was no more than a shadow in the ground. It had been shored up with wooden planking on three sides and it had a rough derrick structure straddled across it. I dropped the bag on the dry earth and looked back at Colin in the car. He was some distance away and he had the courtesy light on and appeared to be studying the map. I was sure he couldn’t see me in the dark. While I could see his shape behind the wheel I knew that at least he wasn’t planning to shove me down the shaft. Not until I’d disposed of the bags, at least.

  I tore open the bag and sure enough I found raw meat. I had no way of knowing what kind of meat it was. It smelled worse now that I’d opened the bag. I thought about the other four bags. I was trying to calculate how much meat there was in each bag. More than would comprise one human being, I was certain. More like two people, at least.

  I put the toe of my trainer against the bag and tried to push it in but I couldn’t put enough force behind my foot. I was also afraid of getting too close to the edge, maybe losing my footing and going down with it. I needed Colin to help me but there was no way I was going to invite him up there with me. I found a plank of wood and I managed to lever the bag of meat closer to the edge. At last it went tumbling over the edge and into the gaping black hole. I didn’t hear it hit the bottom.

  I stared after it. My shoulders were shaking. I looked down at the car. Colin had got out to see what was holding me up so I made my way back down to collect a second bag.

  ‘Whassup?’ he said.

  ‘Heavy.’

  ‘Pussy.’

  I took the second bag up to the shaft. This time I dropped it on the end of the plank of wood, so that all I had to do was to lever the plank. The second bag dropped without a sound. I took a deep breath and went back for the third bag. Colin saw me coming and got back into the car. I dumped the third bag and by the time I got the fourth up to the shaft I saw headlights coming towards me along the unlit country lane. Colin moved off in the Hillman Minx. I left the bag next to the shaft, slipped through the mesh fence and ran to the edge of the field, keeping in amongst the shadows. The car approached and cruised by. After it had gone I went back to the shaft.

  Colin hadn’t yet returned. Something sharp was pressuring the black plastic of the fourth bin liner. I had a moment or two before Colin came back so I tried to see what it was. In the darkness I was pretty certain it was the longish fingernails of a human hand. I tried to tear open the plastic, but it was very thick, durable stuff. Colin still hadn’t come back.

  I found a rusty nail in a piece of scrap wood and with shaking hands I worked it out so that I could use the nail to tear at the black vinyl. I was hyperventilating trying to get it open. When it did pop the sharp thing I’d taken to be human fingers popped through the plastic.

  It was a pig’s trotter.

  I was drenched in sweat. My breath started to come back. I staggered out through the mesh, went down to the gate and fetched the final bag. I dragged it along the dust, took it up to the shaft and placed it on the end of my plank-lever. As I levered the bag down the shaft Colin cruised back into position by the gate and killed his lights. I tossed the plank down the shaft after the bags and made my way back to the car.

  ‘All done and dusted?’ Colin said when I got in be- side him.

  ‘Done.’

  He started up the engine and flicked his headlights on again. ‘Look at the state of you! Worked up a bit of a sweat, son.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  He smiled. ‘Fuckin’ schtoodents.’

  On the way back he told me ‘they’ – and he didn’t say who ‘they’ were – had been caught selling condemned meat. It was slaughterhouse waste they were repackaging. When I asked him why he couldn’t dump it anywhere, like in the sea, he said that it was legal evidence. It had been confiscated by the authorities, stamped and frozen to be exhibited in a court of law.

  ‘They’ had had to steal it back. Colin said he wanted to dump it where no one could find it. If there was no evidence there was no case.

  I sat in the car feeling cold and with my sweat chilling on my skin, wondering whether to believe him. I tried to speak a few times and then finally got up the courage to say, ‘By the way, I haven’t seen Terri for a while.’

  His jaw set. He fixed his eyes on the road ahead.

  ‘You still want me to keep an eye on her, right?’

  ‘You know what?’ he said. ‘I was wrong about that fucking Italian geezer.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘It wasn’t him.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Don’t you worry about Terri no more.’

  ‘Why is that?’

  ‘I told you: don’t you worry about Terri no more.’

  That was his last word on the matter.

  When we got back to the camp he shoved something in my breast pocket. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I’m looking arter you ’ain’t I?’

  It was about 3.30 a.m. when I got out of the car. He drove off. I pulled three ten-pound notes out of my breast pocket.

  16

  Zen and the art of ignoring archery

  Next morning I was assigned to archery on the football field. Whereas I was hoping to work with Nikki again I was given Nobby instead. I understood that Nobby had the previous week cocked up the whist drive, resulting in a silver-haired uprising, so Nikki had been drafted in to pacify the octogenarian rebels and run it instead. Nobby, along with me, was presumably trusted not to cause too much upset with a bow and arrow.

  We walked together from the theatre and he was in high spirits already, even though he’d been given a formal warning that if he didn’t buck up his ideas he’d be out of a job. He claimed no one would tell him why.

  ‘But I know why,’ he said as we approached the white-painted shed where the straw clouts and archery equipment were locked away. ‘I know fuckin’ well why; someone busted Sheik-Ben-Gaza’s sword cabinet, that’s fuckin’ why and then cleverly got the finger pointed at me.’

  I unlocked the shed and I started the job of carrying out the target stands and the clouts. They were heavy and Nobby showed no signs of helping, though he did keep pace with me to keep up his cheerful prattle. As I was setting the first clout in the middle of the field he told me, ‘They won’t say that’s what it is; but it is what it is; and I know what it is. Do you know what it is? Do you know anything about it?’

  I shook my head and pretended to look puzzled by the unfolding of the A-stands for the straw clouts. I’d got my own, other mysteries to figure out. My sleep-deprived brain was clacking like beads back and forth on an abacus but without ever adding up to anything. I was running events over and over in my mind. Like the fact that Colin had worn a pair of gloves while we were dumping the meat. Which of course meant that were there any fingerprints on those plastic bags, they would be all mine.

  I was a bit short with him. ‘I’ve got my own problems, Nobby.’

  Nobby wrinkled his brow at that, and followed me back to the shed in a unique silence. When we got to the shed he pushed me inside, and closed the door behind him.

  ‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘Go on, sit down.’ I sat on one of the straw clouts and so did he. He whisked a tobacco tin from his jacket pocket and from it he withdrew three cigarettes papers. ‘Now listen to your Uncle Nobby, because he understands and he has what you need and what we all need and what everyone needs; and in fact he’s not here just to be a figure of fun oh no he’s here to help and that’s Nobby’s mantra if you can be of help be of help, right, this is the answer which comes from the ting-ting!’ During the course of this prattle he licked the gummed edge of the papers; rapidly skinned up a joint; took from his other pocket a bag of grass; crumbled it into the tobacco; rolled it; lit up; and blew a big cloud of smoke into my face. It took him maybe seven seconds. Then he took another drag and passed the joint to me.

  I looked at it. ‘I don’t,’ I said.

  ‘Ah, resis
tance! The mind is moving. But you must still the mind before the mind can move. This is the answer that comes to us from the ting-ting!’

  When he said ting-ting he floated a finger towards heaven. ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘Just fuckin’ smoke it and your problem will be as smoke. Trust old Uncle Nobby, who is here to help.’

  Well, I needed something. I accepted the joint, took a drag and inhaled. As a non-smoker I was determined not to let it make me cough. I held the smoke back in my lungs and immediately felt light-headed, probably from the effects of the tobacco rather than from the grass.

  He nodded encouragement for me to take another drag. ‘Which is a medicament of oriental persuasion, yes, a beneficial herb, derived from the many-splendoured alternatives to a reality-check; now be a good chap and let Nobby have the joint back because what you’re doing is called bogarting the joint in hipster terminology otherwise known in Manchester as please pass the fuckin’ Duchy.’

  I took this to mean he wanted me to give the thing back to him, which I did and he received it magnanimously, as if I’d been the one to provide it in the first place. We shared the joint until it was finished, then tumbled out of the shed, probably along with a great belch of smoke. Meanwhile, the children waited patiently, with their mums and dads, for us to finish setting up.

  When the set-up was complete I ordered Nobby to stand at the side of the targets to make sure no one wandered behind. Still talking, he did as instructed, mainly because it required no effort. Then I flung myself into advising and helping the campers, offering the bit of technique that had been shown to me. I even tossed in a joke about not aiming an arrow at Nobby unless they were certain they could hit him. I got distracted for a moment when I was rather taken by the depth of hue of the brilliant red, white and blue targets; but largely the grass had done its job of relaxing me. Meanwhile, a little girl decided she wanted to stand next to me and hold my hand throughout the event.

  After a while I called a halt to collect arrows and Nobby used this opportunity to wander over and tell me how he planned to give Sheik-Ben-Gaza – which of course was his name for Abdul-Shazam aka Tony – a piece of his mind if anything else was said. ‘You know why they don’t like me, don’t you? You know that? Eh? Eh?’

  ‘Cos you don’t do any work?’

  ‘No, you lout. It’s because I’m the only one who has called them on their evil politics, that’s why. It’s like history didn’t happen with this mob, they’ve got collective amnesia; they all wanna get dressed up in buckles and boots and eagles and leather and the whole Nazi regalia and if you have anything to say about it you’re stuffed. What if we were to tell all these holidaymakers their entertainment programme was being run by the Nazi party? Eh? Eh? What would they make of that? How about that? Ladies and gentlemen, the Junior Bathing Belle is brought to you today courtesy of the Panzer Division of the Skegness Reich? Eh?’ Then he laughed. Quite seamlessly and with no pause for breath in the middle of this tirade he said to me, ‘Are you tapping that Nikki?’

  I nodded at the little girl who’d held my hand throughout most of the proceedings, indicating that Nobby might be a little more careful in what he had to say. It was a pointless gesture.

  ‘You are, aren’t you?’

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  ‘Yes you are. That’s who was in your room, wasn’t it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh yes it was. Uncle Nobby knows. That time when you wouldn’t let me in. That’s who it was. You can tell me. I know the meaning of discretion.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Oh yes. Oh yes.’

  ‘No, it wasn’t Nikki.’

  ‘Oh yes it was.’

  ‘I’m not arguing with you, Nobby.’

  ‘If it wasn’t Nikki it was that Terri, wasn’t it?’

  That went through me like a sword.

  ‘It was, wa’n’t it? She’s a right blue blazer that one. Bing bang bong. Careful there my son, careful there. Remember Nigel? He who came before you? He had to leave in his socks when her old man found out Nigel had been poaching in his pond, oh yes. Chased him down to the pier with a scalping razor ho ho ho. You be careful where you park your Zephyr, my son. Uncle Nobby knows.’

  I made a superhuman effort to ignore all of this by focusing on the happy little five-year-old girl holding my hand. She was a sweet thing with white-blond hair, tender cheeks and startling blue eyes. ‘Are you going to have a go with the bow and arrow?’ I asked her.

  She beamed at me and said, ‘My dad says bollocks to that.’

  Nikki had managed to pacify the silver-haired revolution and the whist drive had been restored to full operational efficiency. From what she told me the grey-haired Whist Liberation Front were ready to hang Nobby by the neck. It wasn’t clear what he’d done exactly. I was starting to feel sorry for him. It seemed he had enemies everywhere without knowing how he attracted such odium.

  ‘He gets the blame for everything,’ Nikki admitted. ‘He seems to set himself up for it.’

  ‘He thinks you and I are an item,’ I blurted.

  ‘Chance would be a fine thing,’ she said. ‘Anyway you’re seeing someone else.’

  We’d gone up to the beach to have half an hour’s peace before our afternoon duties resumed. We sat on the great concave wall with our legs dangling over the grey-white concrete. A light breeze streamed in from seaward. It was a relief because, unless this light wind was a hint of a weather change to come, the heat still showed no sign of breaking. The breeze lifted at her hair.

  Nikki turned to me and made a sun-visor of her hand, to look at me. It was stupid because the sun was behind her, and I was the one who was squinting; but she did it anyway. ‘I know,’ she said.

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘Your little secret.’

  ‘That being?’

  ‘Your little friend.’

  I felt as though I had just been given poison to drink. My guts churned.

  ‘Who’s my little friend?’

  ‘Oh come on, David.’

  ‘No, you come on. Who’s my little friend?’

  Nikki dropped her fake visor. She made a little shake of her head. Then she mouthed the name. Or just half the name. Or even just the last syllable. ‘Ri.’

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘Have you ever seen people deliberately not looking at each other?’

  She was smart, that Nikki. She was one of those women on whom nothing is lost. She was a much shrewder judge of human psychology than people gave her credit for. Though it was bad that she knew, I had an odd sense, from somewhere nine feet above myself, of staying calm.

  ‘Who else knows?’

  ‘What does it matter?’

  ‘It does matter. Who else knows? I mean who do you know for certain who knows?’

  ‘Calm down, David. If they do know they’re really not that interested. Not as interested as you seem to think anyway.’

  I nodded. I looked out to sea. I was thinking hard.

  ‘I was more surprised than interested, to be honest.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Well I didn’t think she would be your type. She’s quite hard-faced. When you get to know her. Oh, am I speaking out of turn now?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘No, you’re not.’

  ‘I was a bit taken aback. When I realised, I mean.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘She just didn’t seem to be the sort of woman I would have expected you to go for.’

  ‘What sort of woman would you have expected me to go for?’

  ‘More feminine. More sophisticated, I suppose.’

  ‘More like a dancer?’

  ‘That’s the word I was trying to think of,’ she said.

  ‘I’ve been an idiot,’ I said.

  Along with Gail I was responsible for organising the Glamorous Grandmother competition that afternoon. The previous week when I’d organised the Glamorous Grandmother I’d been an adulterer. Now I was wondering whether it was
possible that I was a murderer’s accomplice. It hadn’t escaped me that maybe Colin had stuck a pig’s trotter or two in those bags of meat just to disguise any dismembered human remains. Of course, he might not have done; but all things were possible. I was moving in a world where I didn’t know what people were capable of.

  I supposed that murderers’ accomplices did trivial and quotidian things like anyone else. I mean, murderers peel potatoes and watch quiz shows on the television. But I think it must be quite rare that a murderer’s accomplice has to organise a Glamorous Grandmother competition.

  And my mind was slipping from the job. I had command of the microphone and before a small audience in the ballroom I had to conduct, in turn, an ‘interview’ with each of about fifteen ladies of a certain age. I would ask them where they were from and a number of stock questions. One of these questions was to ask the lady what was the best piece of advice she had ever received. Halfway through the show I was about to ask this question to contestant number eight and my mind went blank.

  When I say blank, I don’t just mean I forgot my words. My mind drained. I stalled. My jaw became paralysed. I was aware of the audience waiting for me. Contestant number eight turned towards me with an expectant expression on her face. Everything went silent. Someone coughed. Then there was a nervous laugh from somewhere. I actually had the microphone held to my own lips, but it was as if time was passing for everyone except me. I couldn’t progress time in my own world, and therefore I couldn’t speak. A bead of sweat ran down the side of my face. Contestant number eight smiled awkwardly, turned away and gently patted the hair at the nape of her neck, then she looked back at me again. Someone in the audience made a comment.

  I saw Gail come towards me, her eyes huge. She gently took the microphone from my fingers. ‘There’s been a bit of a bug going round the staff,’ she said into the microphone, ‘and I think David’s got it.’ There was a murmur of sympathy from the audience. ‘He doesn’t like giving up but if we can get him to sit down for a minute then I’ll carry on.’

  I took the cue. I patted my stomach a little theatrically perhaps, but enough to confirm for the audience that what she said was true. I made my way out of the ballroom and went to the gents, where I stood at the sink throwing cold water on my face.