The Year Of The Ladybird Part 12

Nikki stooped beside me and whispered in my ear, 'You're putting me to shame.'

I looked at her. The sun was up hot and I was sweating. I must have been wild-eyed.

'It's okay,' she said sweetly. She lifted my hair out of my eyes and parked it behind my ear. Then she went back and lay down.

I thought some of the parents were looking at me oddly so I left the kids to their sand designs and went to sit next to Nikki. She was stretched back on the sand with her hands behind her head and her eyes closed. I tried to copy her, but as soon as I put my head back and closed my eyes I saw Colin standing over me. I sat up. There was no Colin. 'I'm really sorry about that thing,' I said.

'Without opening her eyes she said, 'What thing?

'That meeting. They're not my kind of people.'

'Oh forget it.'

'I didn't know what I was getting into. I just went along for the ride. Literally. I mean I was invited to get into a car without knowing where it was taking me. Next thing I know I'm up to my jaw in flags and regalia and spearheads and all this about the commies and the unions and the Jews and the blacks and-'

'Look, we've been through all this. I've forgotten it. Why don't you?'

'I would never have gone if I'd realised.'

'Realised what?'

'Who they were. How it would offend you. All that.' Now she opened her eyes and sat up.

'I mean to say, what if those people ever got into power?'

'They won't,' she said.

'How do you know?'

'They're a hate club. Most people are decent, you know.'

'You say that. But it has happened. In history.'

'What do you think we should do?'

'Well. Organise.'

'Organise? Right! This afternoon. We'll go after them with an iron bar and a cricket bat. You and me.' She closed her eyes again.

I vented a deep sigh. I know I sat there for a while pinching a loose bit of skin above the bridge of my nose. At least it was better than forcing small children into making over-complicated sandcastles.

Eventually Nikki got to her feet. 'Come on. Put on a happy face. I'll pick the winners while you give everyone a stick of rock. Sod it, give them two sticks apiece.'

14.

The reward of a cigar while Sat.u.r.day comes More than ever I needed to find Terri, to re-establish terra firma, to stop my world from spinning out of control. But I couldn't locate her anywhere. A sweet-natured grey-haired woman called Elsie supervised all the cleaning staff. I tracked her down and asked where I could find Terri.

Elsie wore a pair of plastic-framed spectacles patched together with clear Sellotape. Metal hairgrips pinned back her hair and she was weighed down by an enormous silver ring of keys dangling from a leather belt looped round her thin waist. She seemed too frail to be carrying such a bunch of keys. 'What do you want her for, duck?'

'She left some stuff in the theatre. I want to take it to her.'

'Give it here. I'll see she gets it.'

'No problem. I'll return it to her myself.'

'Please yourself, duck. Only she hasn't been in today.'

'Oh?'

'Happen she'll be back tomorrow, eh?'

'Happen,' I said. I don't know why. I never say hap- pen.

I thought briefly of home. I don't know if these are the sort of things young men discuss with their fathers or their stepfathers or not at all, but I was in serious need of someone to talk to. Though the idea of me telling all this to Ken seemed ridiculous. I'd always kept him at arm's length as if, through no fault of his own, he wasn't to be trusted with intimacies. As I pa.s.sed by the palmist's little white caravan I couldn't help glancing through the door. Tony was in there, laughing and sipping tea from a china tea-cup, his feet crossed at the ankles. I couldn't actually see Madame Rosa, but I could hear her talking in animated fas.h.i.+on No, I didn't think that she could see my future, or that she could see into my past. But a kind of desperation made me look towards the caravan. Not that I was ever going to give her the chance: I'd found out that Madame Rosa charged four pounds fifty for a reading. That seemed to me to be an astonis.h.i.+ng amount of money: the equivalent of about fifteen pints of beer. I didn't need a palmist to tell me that I was serious danger of getting my head kicked in, and that it was all of my own doing.

Nikki had a direct way of speaking. 'You don't look happy and you don't look well,' she said.

'I'm not sleeping well.'

Nikki sighed. 'This place. It can really get to you. That's why your predecessor left. He just couldn't stand it. Long hours of the happy face. It's dangerous. Doing a happy face when you really want to scream. Is anything else bothering you?' She looked at me with dark eyes full of intuition.

I was close to telling her everything. I wasn't in love with Terri but I felt responsible for her. I couldn't see how I could spill the beans on any of this without seeming like I'd made it all happen. 'I'm just not sleeping. That rabbit hutch doesn't help.'

Of Colin or Terri there was neither sight nor sound. A new cleaner had been drafted in to take care of the theatre. I got her to switch off her noisy hoover so that I could ask her about Terri. She didn't know anything. She said that all she knew was that she'd been taken off Block B where she was happy and put on the theatre where she didn't know a soul.

In blistering heat we judged the compet.i.tions around the swimming pool. The heat and the lack of sleep exhausted me. Nikki wanted me to go to the canteen with her for lunch but my need to sleep was overwhelming. Images from the previous evening's escape were was.h.i.+ng over me and the dreaming part of my brain was flooding my waking mind. I went back to my room and was relieved to find no sign of n.o.bby. I locked the door, flung myself on my cot and instantly fell into a deep sleep.

Though it seemed like only seconds, it was maybe a couple of hours later when I was roused by a hammering on the door and a woman's voice calling my name. It was Nikki.

I got to my feet and opened the door.

'You're supposed to be preparing for the farewell show,' she said. She peered round me into my room, as if to see if I'd got anyone with me.

I felt drugged. I was like a zombie. 'Need a shower,' I slurred.

'You haven't got time. They're all there. Only you missing.'

I ignored her and in a stupor I shuffled to the shower room, stepped out of my clothes and ran the shower cold over my head. I stood under the icy water for a moment and began to revive. When I opened my eyes Nikki was there, shamelessly watching me. Her arms were folded. She was holding one of my towels. She flapped it at me. 'You'll need this.'

We hurried over to the theatre where the preparation for the farewell performance and prize-giving ahead of the Friday Review was already underway. Tony and the others were already onstage, setting up. As I came in he asked me to go backstage to wheel out the sword casket and his fez in readiness for his Abdul-Shazam routine.

It was the first time I'd been alone backstage since it had all kicked off. Before then I'd made sure there were others around, people I could talk to, just so that I didn't have to confront the loaded silence of the place. Backstage in the theatre is awash with ghosts. It is a memory bank for every cue missed by an actor; every gag that died; each m.u.f.fed line and dance routine gone awry; each dropped catch, muddle, mix-up and mistake: the tragic moment that turns to farce. For all of this there is a dark audience perched and waiting.

The sword casket was covered with props and stage junk. I was thinking about Nikki, who would be called upon to get into the box as I took all the junk off the box and unlatched the lid. When I opened the lid and looked inside I let the lid slam down and I toppled backwards.

There was a woman in the casket.

I sat back on the bare boards, paralysed, staring at the glittering box. The truth is I was waiting for the lid to open.

It didn't.

I knew it must be a trick of the light. But even in the dimly lit recess of the props chamber the image of a woman stuck in that coffin of a magic box had been vivid. Slowly, and on my hands and knees, I crawled over to the casket and lifted the lid again.

It was Terri. She was jammed in the casket, her feet drawn up beneath her and wedged into the dividers. She wore just her bra and pants. I could only see one side of her face, and that was in darkness. Her skin looked grey. Her nose and mouth were squashed up against the padded sides of the box. Her eyes were closed. A trickle of liquid had dribbled from her mouth and across her chin, leaving a snail-trail. A rope was tangled around her legs.

Her eye opened. In the light and shadow of the back stage her eye glimmered briefly in a way that made me think of the phosph.o.r.escence of the waves. She was trying look back at me, but her head was trapped, firmly lodged, and she couldn't move it. She stuck her tongue out of the side of her mouth and licked her parched lips. 'Get me out,' she said in a faint rasp. 'There's a good lad.'

I grabbed at the plastic dividers, trying to give her some room to move. One of the dividers broke in my hands but it wasn't enough to give Terri any relief. She was still horribly compressed. So grey were her features in the shadows I honestly thought she was near to death. Her breathing was shallow. Still trying to break her free I grabbed another of the dividers and it cracked noisily in my fingers, cutting the side of my hand.

The sound of the plastic splitting in my hands seemed to have shattered a spell. I was left with a shard of broken plastic in my hand, staring down at an empty box. There was no Terri inside it, compressed or otherwise.

The casket was empty.

I clawed at the velvet padding at the base of the box, just to see if I was the victim of some illusion. There was nothing. Just the hollow casket with its now cracked and broken dividers.

I let the lid fall and stared at the casket for some time. The hallucination had been so strong that I couldn't figure out what had happened. I'd seen Terri in the casket. I'd smelled her yeasty sweat. I'd heard her raspy voice.

I went back out front. Tony was laughing about something with Nikki and Gail, the dancer with whom I'd run the Treasure Hunt. 'Where's the kit?' he said to me when I got to the ballroom.

I had no time to compose myself. 'It's been damaged,' I said. 'You'd better come and look.'

Tony knitted his eyebrows. He spun on his heels and marched ahead of me to where I'd just come from. I'd already decided that I would be there when he opened the casket. I followed Tony backstage and into the props chamber.

'What a f.u.c.king state, this place,' he said, pulling the casket out of its corner. He flipped open the lid and then he stepped back, just as I had done. His eyes bulged. 'Jesus Christ!' he said. 'What the f.u.c.k?'

I advanced up to his elbow and peered into the casket.

'Who's done that?' Tony shouted. 'It's smashed to f.u.c.k!'

He turned to me with an accusing look. I shook my head.

'It's that f.u.c.king n.o.bby,' he said. 'He brings women down here.'

'What?' I said. I was still reeling from what I'd seen what I thought I'd seen in the box.

'f.u.c.king gets 'em playing around in the box, shows 'em how it's done to impress 'em. I'll swing for the little b.a.s.t.a.r.d.'

'How do you know it's him?' I said reasonably.

'How do I know? How do I know anything?' He kicked the casket, as if he wanted to break it some more. 'We can't use that now. That's f.u.c.ked that for this afternoon.'

He was furious. I pressed past him and peered into the casket. I stooped down and ran my hands over the broken trammels, not for any other reason than to check for warmth, or blood or any other evidence that the box had contained a body less than three minutes ago.

'Leave it,' Tony said. 'You can't fix it. We'll do the plate-spinning, for f.u.c.k's sake. Sort it, will you?'

He stormed away. I was left standing over the empty sword casket. There in that place of shabby conjuring tricks, it occurred to me for the first time that someone might be messing with me. It was impossible that there could be someone in the casket one moment and then not the next; but then it was also impossible to get a woman to climb into a casket and to stick swords into her only to have her pop out of the casket unharmed moments later.

My heart hammered and my brain was like a nest of spitting snakes. I was in a kind of fever and my head was boiling with notions. I needed to see Terri, to speak to her, to see if she was all right, to find out what was happening.

I practised deep breathing and my heart-rate started to come back to normal. I collected the gear for the plate-spinning routine. The set of plates spinning on poles have deep dimples under them so that they can easily be set spinning; meanwhile you invite an idiot from the audience to try his hand and you give him a fragile, similar-looking plate with no dimple that, of course, crashes to the floor and splinters, all to the cruel merriment of the audience. It began to seem like all the conjuring was a cheap deception rather than the n.o.ble art I'd first taken it to be.

I hauled the plate-spinning gear over to the ballroom. Nikki and Gail were still there. Tony had gone.

'He's not best pleased,' Nikki said.

'Wouldn't like to be in n.o.bby's shoes,' Gail said.

'No,' I said.

Nikki took some of the plates from me. 'Come on, let's set up.'

The farewell show pa.s.sed without event. I say without event: plates crashed to the floor but that's what they were supposed to do. Winners were announced and prizes were given. After the show, a little girl, who had a habit of following me around, tapped me on the hand and gave me a cigar in a tube. No doubt her parents thought this a nice gesture, and I did, too, even though I don't smoke. In fact, when I looked into the sparkly innocence of the child's eyes it almost made my own eyes water.

In the Golden Wheel nightclub I operated the lights for Luca. The show was the same and the song was the same. Amid the lyrical references to summer kisses and sunburned hands I improvised a few touches with rotating gels for 'Autumn Leaves'. After his performance, Luca didn't hang round to talk. He made a little salute in my direction before leaving.

With Luca's song playing in a nightmarish loop in my head I made a point of finding some company with whom to walk back to my quarters in the dark. I was a bag of nerves, scanning the shadows. Once again I locked the door behind me and closed the curtains. I lay down on my pallet bed and eventually fell into a bewildering sleep.

I was back on the pier again, standing before the smashed gla.s.s case of the mechanical fortune-teller. I put a coin in the box and instead of Zora the manikin, there was the boy, screaming. His head was shaved to the skullbone. He covered his head with hands as he screamed and his forearms were tattooed. The tattoos were all red and black ladybirds. The boy's mouth was wide open and his ear-splitting cry faded slowly, as did the boy, leaving sc.r.a.ps of himself hovering in the air. Eventually I reached out a hand to where the afterimages floated. The sc.r.a.ps stirred as if I'd put my hand in water to disturb them, and finally faded altogether.

In the dream a card was spat from the machine. It read, Wait for the card.

15.

Will no-one fix the malfunctioning strip light Some movement awoke me in the early hours. I opened my eyes and in the darkness I could see n.o.bby sitting on his bed. There wasn't enough light to see his face but he sat with his hands on his knees, staring at me.

'You all right, n.o.bby?' I said.

'Tain't n.o.bby. It's me.'

The gravel voice was unmistakable and it did two things. It iced my blood and it sent me scuttling up from my bed and against the window, to the nearest point of escape.

'Calm your nerves, son. It's Colin.'

I knew perfectly well who it was.

As I forced my back up against the window the curtain rucked to admit a thin ray of moonlight to fall on Colin's angular face. In that light his eyes shone like the carapaces of s.h.i.+ny black beetles. If I tried to speak, my mouth was too dry. I was paralysed with fright. I couldn't move again if I wanted to.