The Electric Michelangelo

by Sarah Hall

After he had dressed his painted, taproot body and dismissed the customer, for he had already taken payment from him prior to starting, Riley claimed every piece on his body, either by design or executed by his own hand, and he made as if to cuff Cy’s head when the enquiry was made, more in earnest than jest, how and by what contortion exactly Riley had managed to tattoo the rose garden blooming down his back. And true to the brash assertion of being a three-dimensional master and genius that Riley had made on Strickland Street that afternoon in the rain, one or two pieces had tried to step outwards off his naked body, right off his body into life. Like magic, like an illusion, or a trick of light, or some other unspecified miracle, one or other of which, that night in late November, according to Cyril Parks there seemed to be.

  Reeda was not overly pleased to hear about the prospect of her son’s new apprenticeship. In fact she simmered hotly while she spoke like a pan of broth left on the hob too long, her words beginning to stick together. He was fifteen years old. There was his schooling to consider. And his after-study work at the print shop. Eliot Riley was definitely a drinker, she knew that to be true of him. Those partial to drink were hiding faults and dishonesty, they were sloppy souls, even the ones with pleasant manners and fine noses. Reeda Parks was an honest if occasionally private woman who did not appreciate those with untidy dispositions. That Reeda had noticed Riley’s nose, and that Riley had commented upon his mother’s ankles did not pass Cy by without first clipping him like a buggersome fingernail on the back of an earlobe. Her answer sounded dangerously like a no.

  – Is it because he’s a left-footer? Is it because he’s a Bolshevik?

  Catholics were generally less tolerated in the predominantly Methodist town than any other denomination. Jonty’s dad for one would not entertain them at his table. Nor humour them with conversation at the pub. It was assumed that there was something belligerent about stray papists in Morecambe, and though his mam had never seemed to judge one way or another when it came to matters of religion it did not mean she was without discrimination. Anybody remotely liberal in Morecambe was considered to be a Bolshevik, and about as remote to the affection of the town as Russia itself.

  – No, love, it’s because it’s a difficult trade.

  The curious part was that for all the bits and pieces of argument Cy had stored up in preparation, how his dad had had a tattoo as she herself had told him, how he just liked seeing the colours go in, how it gave him opportunity to use his best talent, how Mr Greene at the print shop was a boring old coot who left his hands too long on ladies elbows and made them uncomfortable, it was Reeda herself that changed her own mind during the course of the discussion the following Sunday morning. First she insisted it was not a good idea. Next she began to dwell on the profession of tattooing itself, in relation to her own, the difficulties, she wouldn’t wish them on anyone let alone her own, but for herself she could justify them. Cy suspected that his mother was alluding to her secondary profession undertaken with her silent partner Mrs Preston rather than hotel managing. Then she became defensive, and from that empathy, part pride, part fool’s pardon, she gradually spun a web that caught her.

  – It’s not that I don’t approve of the trade, for all its oddness. And goodness knows I should comprehend an odd profession. I cannot say I don’t. But sometimes what choice have we? Life conspires to plant us in the funniest of gardens where the trees need an especial form of tending. We are all here to serve one another, Cyril, after all, and some serve in stranger ways than others, but one without the other we are made the poorer. There’s room for all kinds of folk in this wide world. You’re old enough to see that now, that what I do is necessary. Mr Riley, well I’m sure he has his incentives too. It’s a most unusual calling, those who go to him are sent for very deep and mysterious reasons as best that I can see. And I suppose you’re old enough to make your judgments as you will of him also.

  – So, you’re saying I’m grand to do it.

  – I’m saying someone has probably got to do it.

  – Me as well as anyone?

  She came around to it like a person slowly developing a taste for bread and dripping because that’s all there is left to eat in the kitchen, or like a dog, finally defeated in a frenzied circle by its own tail and slowing and realizing then that the tail it was after all along was already in its possession. Until her decision was reversed.

  – Though I’ll be wanting a word with Mr Riley first, if you’ll pass that on to him. Yes, Cyril, I’ll be wanting a word with him. Oh, Pedder Street! I swear on all things true and holy if you put a foot inside Professor Johnson’s looking for the spirit of your father I’ll honest to goodness wring your scrawny neck. He’s where he should be, and not hanging around trying to … make contact … or whatever it is they say!

  Mesmerists were Reeda Parks’s least favourite type of people. She was very much in contempt of that kind of penny-stealing, preying on the weaker soul, charlatan’s act. Manipulating the bereaved and lonely was not only a shabby way to make a living, it was a moral disgrace, she said. Neither was her son to have anything to do with it. And with that Cy received the only condition to her endorsement of his new profession that his mother would issue.

  Eliot Riley was a blaggard but he knew when to trim the excessive fat off the edges of his raillery. Face to face with a steel-eyed, dyed-in-the-wool, straight-and-narrow-peddling Reeda Parks was one such occasion. Nor was Riley well suited to unwavering, tedious sincerity. Instead of bluff or sombre, he settled for a compromise of personality, nearer to streaky bacon than a flabby or lean cut of behaviour. He had called at the Bayview at Reeda’s behest and was being poured a cup of her strongest tea. Cy sat on a sofa next to his mam as she saw to the cups and saucers, her best rose-patterned china no less, and he distributed the buttery crumpets. She’d insisted he comb his hair and wear his school tie, which, given his new insight into the trade he was entering, seemed not unlike polishing a shovel to carry muck. She herself was rouged. There was a string of pearls about her neck, and a workwoman’s headscarf hid her thinning hair, suggesting she always went about the hotel’s upkeep bejewelled and made-up like a lady. Riley had on the usual combination of derelict smocking and turn of the century gentleman’s suiting, but the tips of his boots looked buffed. The woollen hat was firm about his ears. It was a most peculiar tea-party, as if several mismatched elements of fable had been stuffed into a magician’s box, thoroughly shaken, then evicted. There was something slapstick and pantomime and overly choreographed about it all, thought Cy, like one of the more farcical shows in the pavilions.

  – Eliot.

  – Reeda, my dove. It appears your boy wants to learn the annals of my craft.

  Eliot? Reeda? He wasn’t aware the two were on such informal terms. The town was small but locals were, in general, candid about their friendships and allegiances, yet here was possibly another of Reeda’s covert associations.

  – Yes. So it would seem. And what, in your opinion, is to become of his schooling?

  – He’ll finish it, I’ll not hear otherwise, and Reeda, pet, I would suggest you let him do so. I’ve no room for a simpleton at my shop, getting under my feet and fiddling with machinery, not to mention annoying the customers. He’s not exactly sharp as a brass tack now.

  – Be serious, Eliot. I won’t have him disadvantaged by this.

  – I think you’ll find him well advantaged if he comes to me. Not only will he learn himself a craft, a craft I say, Reeda, and a good one, he’ll learn a thing or two about the wider world.

  Cy began to feel rather like a platter of star-gazey pie, scooped into pieces and distributed around the table. His mother straightened her back.

  – Yes. That’s exactly my concern. You’re not to take him drinking. You’re not to … harden his edges either. And, I need to ask this of you Eliot and I’ll ask only once, this is an … independent offer, isn’t it?

  Riley’s eyes flickered briefly over Cy, who had lost the thread of the conversation. />
  – Reeda. You know what sort of man I am. Don’t you? Yes, love, you do. I wouldn’t be here in your pretty sitting room eating your delicious crumpets if you thought of me what your tone implies. He has the skills necessary. That’s all. Call it … a happy coincidence. What can I tell you that you don’t already know, love? He’ll be well looked after. Made as firm as any man must be, and not a hinge or bracket firmer. I’ll not say the wage will be anything to look forward to in the beginning mind. But that’s the nature of an apprenticeship, isn’t it? Which brings me on to my next consideration. He’s learning bugger-all at school. I quizzed the boy myself not a week ago and he’s sorely lacking in a nobler knowledge. Do you know the lad had never even heard of Leonardo da-bloody-Vinci? Eh? Eh? Hogarth, Rembrandt. Not a noddle. Michel-bloody-angelo! Masters, all of them. Passing their gifts down to the next generation through which honourable system, incidentally? The apprentice system. You can’t have a craftsman doesn’t ken these things. It’s like having a magistrate doesn’t know the law, then where would we be? The poor lad’s been disadvantaged already Reeda. Sorely disadvantaged.

  Here Cy’s mother appeared to be stumped, which was a rarity. Riley was winding himself up into a tame fury over the apparently criminal and substandard education at Morecambe Grammar School. His enormous pale eyes were in a cultivated temper, insulted and assaulting, and Reeda reached and tugged the hem down on her skirt. He was leaning towards her with one arm resting on his leg, his teacup tipping at a hazardous angle. She had pitifully little with which to counter his mock academics or his advancing eyes or his rhetoric. Cy wanted to pitch in that he did, in actual fact, know who Leonardo da Vinci was. Just not Bernini, who hadn’t got a look in to the conversation that afternoon either. But it did not seem to be a three-way conversation, if it had ever been intended as one.

  – Well, I’ll have a word with Colin Willacy … perhaps something can be done … and I’ll mention your concern …

  – No, Reeda, no! You’ll not! I plan to teach the lad myself, don’t I?

  Sanctity of the body, and of the mind which was housed within it, did not exist in Riley’s rooms, that is to say it existed only within the scope the man himself deemed suitable and sacred. Nor did respect for lackeys and flunkies exist. Nor was any former knowledge of anything much useful. Tattooing was a dreamscape type of world, where strange occurrences and dark-wrought ideas, if not normal, were almost commonplace. Within number eleven Pedder Street hideous, painful, often screaming regurgitations of human skin went on. A month in and it seemed to Cy that he was an explorer summiting only the foothills of a bizarre and primitive island. There was the grinding of sharp implements into dart-like points, which would be soldered to a drive shaft, the grinding of pigments to mix with alcohol, the grinding of both aspects into frail swathes of skin, and the grinding of the bossy expedition leader on his nerves. Because Cy was made to feel, almost every day, like a blundering idiot with all the handy skills of a caveman wielding a flat rock.

  – You ground the needle down too far, it’s bloody useless. This coil burnt out too fast, you didn’t fit it properly. There’s too much powder in my ink solution, mix it carefully, part by part like I showed you, we’re not running an artists’ retreat here lad. You’ll be going to Lancaster for more supplies docked out of your own wages if you keep this malarkey up. Come to think, I could fancy one of Donaldson’s oatcakes right about now. So, off you toddle.

  Wages? There had been no wages.

  – How will I get there?

  – Shanks’s bloody pony, sonny. You’ve got legs in working, haven’t you? Go on, lad.

  There was one aspect of the trade that Cy managed to conquer immediately. The odder, danker, gorier ends of physicality had been presented to him and reconciled at a tender age, so the actual tattooing process did not bother him, and if Riley was impressed with one thing it was the boy’s ability to stomach the bodily indelicacies of the profession. Not that he ever voiced it. Riley himself was utterly unperturbed and unaffected by blood, gore, and odour. If there was one similarity between Riley and Reeda, one thing they had in common at root, it was their indiscriminate ability to tolerate the organic human body.

  Customers were bullied into stripping, often half naked – Riley wanted to see a whole canvas before beginning a work, placement within borders was vital. Ladies were included, though if he was doing a titty-job, or hip work, requiring them to expose breasts or certain vulnerable areas below the waist, he’d instruct them to bring a friend along with them for the appointment, as witness to his proper conduct. All flesh was capable of blood and sweat, female flesh included. Riley found no reverence in it the way Cy still felt a little awe, and a little flex at the front of his trouser, if he was behind the curtain while a woman had her skirts gathered up about her while Riley manipulated a tight plane of skin on her inner thigh and punctured it. Women were an occasional distraction for Riley, each one resulted in another portrait somewhere on his own leg, if there was space, and if they were worthy – worth usually being defined by them terminating the relationship, not vice-versa – and he would produce a drunken little verse to wish them bon voyage when the affair ended. Helena Skeet, barmaid at the Dog and Partridge on nights when Paddy Broadbent was a little worse for wear, was one such muse.

  – Over the coun-ter, she might let you mount-her, but then in the morning, there’ll be no more whoring, and it’s off to the doc-ter for warts on your cock-ker …

  Riley enjoyed working on a woman’s form no more than a man’s, it seemed. It provided as difficult a landscape as any to pave with ink He enjoyed them in his bed only for as long as they did not truly know one another.

  His teaching methods and lectures started well but always seemed to descend into petty opinion, as if his top half was gentrified but below the belt-buckle he was all rogue, and couldn’t help spoiling his better part.

  – Now, while lacking the indulgence of manly hair, though you’re not always guaranteed that up north here lad, ha-ah-ha, there are often more internal fatty parts in women, I call them bitty-bags, you can call ‘em whatever you want. Like a little purse of water and you’ve got to take care around them ‘cause they can dilute pigment or throw off a line. Especially arses. One thing I will say, they often take it better than a man. Pain, that is. Probably the residue of tolerance left over from when they were all bloody witches and got stoned or burned or drowned for it, eh lad? Never tell your mother I said that, by the way.

  People were made up of shit and piss and phlegm and bits and pieces of experience. They were either in possession of the ability to tell a good joke or lacking it; he preferred the former. What Riley excelled at was his profession, his art. And art it was without question, Cy had seen that when he came initially into Riley’s tatty little room, twenty to eleven at night, with a mind to consider the strange employment proposal. Or at the very least ask the strange man to leave him alone and stop accosting him after work. There was something about the way Riley’s wrist broke no more than a fraction when holding the gun and his hand glided with authority, as if being pulled by a magnet in the elbow, not dictated to by the fingers, exerting more pressure over muscle, less over patches of loose skin, to produce an absolute uniform line, that left Cy unable to reconcile the skill with the man. It was remarkable that someone so flaccid and bawdy could then be so intricate and precise.

  Riley’s own arms were exquisite. Even the older fading ink remained tight in its rivers. Riley explained that he tended to them with lotion daily, the way others would shine silverware with polish or wax a car incessantly to keep that heirloom conditioned. It explained the strange out-of-place fragrance of the shop. It was lady’s Nivea lotion. Floral and sweet smelling and, what’s more, expensive. He had that good, smooth, olive skin, complementing his dark hair, at least that which protruded from under his permanently worn woollen hat and prickled his chin was dark. The skin provided a very good background for his luminous modern frescos, none of which showed below his wri
st cuff, or above his shirt collar, those were the borders of his craft. But under his hide it was another story, it was a soul half blackened with some kind of loathing and scorn. Eliot Riley was a drinker, Cy’s mother had been right. And he was a poor drinker. One that let the demons of the bottle into his head when he tipped it back, demons that went about unloosing all the trouble they could find stashed in the catacombs of his mind. Every tragic thing that had ever happened, every self-doubt, every delusion, freed itself from bondage and revisited him when he drank.

  Perhaps he had something of a Welshman or a Celt about him after all, some dual identity, a dispossession, a longing. Inside his rooms was his private, celebrating heart, outside a dislocation from his self-determined red and black and rich green legacy. He was a man split in half, as if he had been born in two, and the pieces appeared not ever to have been joined as a healthy whole, for they vied constantly with each other. At work he wore the expression of a man consumed, whose trade dealt with expression, and minutiae, the exploitation of details and colour perforation. And he loved the bi-tonal beauty he could give people. He was unconditional that way. His eyes sang in concentration when he went to this half of himself, ink was the natural language of his heart, he could not be more in the throne of a motherland when he took his equipment in hand. Then he was bard-like, king-like, god-like, waging accurate and beautiful war over the bodies of those willing to allow his definition and rendition of beauty.

  Oh, but it was a strange land to be ruler of, violent, sexual, bold, uncompromising, subversive, curious, and oftentimes tasteless to others – the middle-upper classes, the Tory councillors, the snobbish businesses, who all said it was not art. What he did was not art. Outside the antiseptic, illustrated room on Pedder Street there was the Eliot Riley who was frowned at in the street, challenged in bars, named by the press as disreputable, and of his own inebriated volition was morally redundant. A man of yellow-blue, ale-driven eyes, of vomit on a Saturday night and untimely, sour-spitting laughter that quickly spoiled the mood of those in his company. He was the product of a damaged religion. He was the devil-sick Catholic about town. Cy would be taken to the pub before or after work and treated to the man’s poor taste and his public indiscretion. Other men came and went as public house acquaintances with a passing interest in what he did for a living, or wishing to borrow his reputation for their inferior needs, but they were finally sickened by him, and abandoned his presence for good. He was wicked, he was pernicious, and he infected others like a noxious spill.