She still only had partial use of the shoulder when we went on holiday that August. Her parents invited me back with open arms, of course, as double reassurance against future escapades with Mick Watson. The Matchless, by the way, survived, its few bent struts soon straightened by Mick’s elder brother and his hammers.
But it was on that first holiday to Benidorm that Suzie learned to cope with her scar. She discovered the poncho, a garment then unknown in Kiddington. She wore it all the time, knowing that, whatever she wore underneath, she could always surreptitiously droop it over her shoulder, thus hiding her embarrassment. From that day, she has been known in her home village as Poncho Suzie.
9 Arrogant whale - ed
Five
It’s interesting to reflect how far life takes us. Having been born... - Don and Suzie visit The Castle. They have a good time and then meet Mick. For Don this might spoil the evening. Mick offers an invitation.
It’s interesting to reflect how far life takes us. Having been born into a body which is not our own, we slowly find it coalescing around us, ready to change when we have only just grown used to its feel. And then, when we have only just accommodated its adulthood, it starts to answer back, to creak the complaints that eventually will conspire to complete rejection. This suggests that the body is selfish compared to the mind. But, perhaps our minds work the same way, the assumed presence of the present convincing us that our precious contemporary consciousness is the only ego we have ever had. While any photograph might recall a changed frame, it often takes a mental jolt to recreate the way you used to think, the only source of contrast with the overbearing, blindfold present. And yesterday Mick Watson provided me with such a jolt.
For obvious reasons, Suzie and I were reluctant to make immediate contact. Kiddington gossip suggested he was still around the town, but I think that neither of us knew exactly where his current repose might be. Personally, I can’t stand the perforated pismire, and Suzie - well Suzie has a history with the man, two distinct histories, historias, perhaps, now that we are in Spain. Since both have had tragic endings, betting on the final outcome of the trilogy seemed unwise. Thus I would rather have kept him firmly at barge-pole distance.
But Suzie and I probably went into shock when he reappeared by chance in our lives. Perhaps that’s why I did not immediately tell the stridulated sophomore to hop it. We were in The Castle waiting for the main act, Papa Tia, the Man From Auntie, as seen on TV’s The Very Best Of Everything You’ve Never Seen Before And Are Unlikely To Encounter Again. He’s a comic most of the time, and a tribute to Eden Kane when he sings. His big song is Forget Me Not, but I can never remember the tune. His best joke is the one about having a deprived childhood in Punslet. He was so bored he used to sit in his bedroom scattering birdseed on the inside of the window sill so he could watch pigeons outside bashing their brains out on the glass trying to get at it. Suzie and I were having a laugh, not at Papa Tia, who by then had come on stage and was half way through his opening number, the same routine we had heard since the mid-1980s. No, what tickled us last night was the pub’s drinks menu. We’d had a few, obviously, but the list did lend itself to the comic and we got the giggles big time.
The first one on the list was fairly innocuous. It was called Hot Flush, but after that the rest ran like a short story. I can remember doing L213, Plot Construction And Character Development In The Late Twentieth Century Espionage Novel (Pre-End Of Cold War). The drinks list ought to have been a learning stimulus for a course assignment. I told Suzie that it read like the story of a first night on holiday for a Kiddington girl suffering from a rush of blood. After Hot Flush, there was a Leg Over, and after that Sex On The Beach. The next was Orgasm and, probably some time later, Tequila Sunrise. The next one ought to have been called Surprise Pregnancy, Suzie said, and suggested it be made from tomato juice and milk to symbolise a cessation of the past alongside an anticipation of the future. Add a pint of vodka and, fifty years ago, it would have been called Back Street Abortion, or perhaps a Knitting Needle. By this stage she probably wouldn’t fancy a Screwdriver.
But then we got really silly. As part of M326, An Analytical Evaluation Of Hollywood Remakes, I wrote a lengthy essay about the next one on the menu, and Suzie and I couldn’t help almost deluging ourselves as we speculated what might happen if you ordered a Blue Lagoon.
Firstly, it’s only sold to very young couples. And it’s only served in areas of the pub where no-one else is sitting. The couple get one drink and two straws, but they are only allowed extremely small sips. They have to sit there for a week in near silence, during which time they take turns to read alternate chapters of the book they brought with them. Then, all at once, the girl announces that she is on page 326 and that she’s pregnant, at which point they get up and go home in a taxi that just happened to be passing.
We were making asses of ourselves, sorry Featherstone U Klondike, donkeys of ourselves. We were laughing at all the wrong cues. Papa Tia, whose real name is Gerry Hebblethwaite, by the way, actually shouted down the mike at us, saying, “Will the vaguely amused couple at the back kindly come on stage and share their material, because it seems to be superior to the heap of putrefaction I’ve got!” We calmed down a bit after that and I got a bit serious. I’d had a few more by then, after all.
The next one on the menu reminded me of H255, A Balanced Appraisal Of Imperialist Escapades In Post-Colonial Africa, because it was called Lumumba. I thought what I came up with was quite good, but by the time I had finished, I could sense that Suzie was not at all amused.
For me a Lumumba should be an ecstatic drink that everyone celebrates - at least while it is being ordered. The punter asks for one and the bar staff cheer as they mix it. You’re only allowed to hold the glass in your left hand and you must consume it conspicuously, while everyone watches.
Then, to everyone’s surprise, a black Cadillac pulls up outside and a half a dozen gangster types with dark glasses, pump-action shotguns and violin cases jump out, burst into the bar, corner the guy with the drink and beat the detritus out of him. At which point everyone gives a round of applause because it’s supposed to be good for you.
Well, you can imagine I was in pullulating paroxysms. But when I turned round to look at Suzie, there wasn’t even a smile. In fact, she looked like she’d seen a ghost. Personally, I wish he was one. Mick Watson was standing behind me, so I didn’t see him at first. When I swivelled round to face the other way, the first thing that crossed my mind was the sight of a bunch of fives flattening his megachiropterous nose.
“Well fancy that,” I said, standing up. “Look what the infarctious tide just washed up! I didn’t know you were still in these parts, Mick”, I lied.
He shook my hand, the mephitic baseborn[10]. Perhaps I should not have accepted the offer. “Still here? I own the noisome place!”
“Hello, Mick,” said Suzie, ponderously.
“Well if it’s not the Kiddington Kids, themselves, back in their old playground,” said Mick. Already he was in the middle, interposed between the two of us again, voluminously occupying the symbolic position he had gouged out of our lives. He had his arms across our backs in an over-stated, disingenuous expression of a friendship he knew no longer existed. Ironic, I thought, that his hand should be resting on Suzie’s left shoulder, just one of the bits of her that he destroyed.
“The show’s as good as ever,” I said, shouting over the audience’s sing-along to Viva España.
“As good?” he bellowed, stentorian above the now mumbled Spanish lines of the verse that the undirected vocalists couldn’t pronounce. “I hope it’s a bit better than it was. At least that’s what I aimed for when I took over. If I ruled the world...”
Now the reader who has been blissfully unfamiliar with the social mores of the Watson family, and those unacquainted with the feculent Mick Watson in particular, will no doubt be confused by both th
e non-sequitur and the typography. The Watson household, Kiddington folks in general always proffered, was probably collectively born with square eyes. Even in the 1950s, the television in their house went on at breakfast and went off well after the last programme finished. They would watch the test card whenever they found themselves perhaps by chance in the house rather than out nicking. At least they would do that collectively if, uncharacteristically, they were not all shouting at one another over what they might watch next. The Watsons were the only family I ever knew who not only used to watch the white spot fade until it disappeared when they switched off after the end of transmission, they would also argue about whether they could still see it for a good ten minutes after any right-thinking moron would have concluded it had gone.
As a result, the entire family took to communicating in code, via snippets of popular culture, either sung or, if applicable, delivered in the accent and intonation of the comic, crooner, variety act or soap opera character they mimicked. And so last night Mick was reverting to type. In order to communicate that he was now boss of The Ribthwaite Castle, Calle Ciudad Real, Benidorm, he became Harry Secombe playing Mr. Pickwick and intoned the start of the big number in his bibulous baritone. “If I ruled the world, every day would be the first day of spring...”
“I did it my way,” said Suzie, forlornly, wearily. “The old ones are the best, I suppose. If you can’t be good, be good at it.”
“Regrets, I’ve had a few...,” sang Mick, taking the cue instinctively without any need of pause.
“And congenitally deserved...” I mumbled inaudibly, before offering small talk at high volume. “So how’s business then? And how long have you had The Castle? We had no idea you had taken over the place.”
“It’s over three years now. I can’t complain about how things have gone, but it could have been better,” answered Mick in the birthright of his Yorkshire twang. It’s strange how the highest compliment the British can offer is, ‘Couldn’t fault it.’ It betrays not a predilection, but an obsession, a mission to complain, as if the assertion of existence relied on it. “I’ve had the place done out over the last year,” he continued, prompting me to assume that the designer cigarette burns in the seats and carpets had all been recently renewed. “I’ve booked new acts,” said Mick, nodding towards Papa Tia, the Man From Auntie, aka Gerry Hebblethwaite from Punslet, whom I first saw in a Benidorm club in 1981. “I’ve put in a new menu,” he said with a glance towards the laminated cards, slotted into the gravy-stained plywood carriers that adorned a reasonable percentage of the tables. One side listed the cocktails that Suzie and I had satirised. On the other there were various options with French fries - egg, beans, bacon, bacon bap, sausage, sausage bap, burger, bap included - amongst them. And, at the head, resplendent, surrounded with a pre-loaded starry border, free with Microsoft Office, The Castle proudly offered Sunday lunch with Y pud, all the trimmings and real Bisto gravy seven days a week, any time, freshly cooked at only twice the price a Spanish bar might deliver a three course menu del día. “And through it all, I stood tall, and did it my way,” sang Mick, cacophonously clashing with the remote-keyed version of Baby Love that Papa Tia was leading for the audience.
“Nice to see you, to see you, nice,” said Mick, stuffing out a peninsular chin and improvising his punctuation. And, before either of us could speak, from his wallet he extracted a business card, Vistaprint vintage, free via the internet plus 200 ipoints thrown in, into my hand. “Can’t stay now, old bean. Duty calls. People to see, bar staff to manage, sticky fingers to wipe clean, know what I mean, nudge, nudge, wink, wink. Drop by when it’s quiet tomorrow, around four o’clock and I’ll show you the ropes.”
“Hope the herbicidal lianas knot themselves round your neck and throttle you, you cartilaginous cockchafer,” I thought. “OK,” I said, “that’ll be just the job. I’ll look forward to that. See you tomorrow.”
And with that, Mick Watson left as abruptly as he had appeared, disappearing into a huddle of bodies that seemed permanently to support the bar. The Castle’s lighting is not even. In places, it’s not even lighting! The place is predominantly dark, with occasional violet bulbs that offer no illumination until their beams hit a polyester white shirt or false teeth, which then shout like fluorescent beacons. But behind the bar, where business is done, there are cones of yellowish tungsten filament glow mixed with multicoloured cash machine on-screen menu flashes. I kept thinking, as I looked across, now newly deflated, no longer at ease or amused, that I could detect regular evidence of Mick Watson’s shaved head bobbing here and there, the apparent lateral trough across the middle of his skull catching a permanent, ominous shadow. I must have been craning my neck for a better view because Suzie noticed.
“If you’re in a hole, stop digging. Come on, let’s go home,” she said, standing.
It took me a moment to respond.
“Donkey Cottee,” she shouted above the chorus of Like A Virgin, “you’re doing your dinosaur impersonation again. How long will it take for the aural input to travel those three centimetres into your brain? Wake up, you daft ha’peth! Procrastination is the thief of time!”
“But Suzie,” I pleaded at full shouted volume, “the next up is Randy Sandy’s ‘Music, Magic and More’. We came here tonight especially for her show. We could have caught it two hours ago at the Shangrila, but we didn’t because she always does the full act here. Suzie, it’s years since I saw Randy Sandy blow a candle out. I was looking forward to it...”
“Don, we live here now. Randy Sandy and her genital gale isn’t going to go away. We can come back any time, any night of the week. I want to go home to our Rosie.”
And so we left to stroll the half mile via the Rincon back to the site. But throughout, though our words commented on a new apartment block, a bar still open at this hour, a new Best Of British food shop, selling Mrs Patak’s pastes, Malaysian coconut milk, Thai green curry and nachos, my head was still full of that costard’s pretentious hamming, his encoded distance-making clichés, his ugly cleft head, his expensive-looking cheap suit, his oversized gold medallion resting on chest hair and, with it all, the threat of a long-quenched fire reigniting. The day was worthy of permanent record, because I knew, though I was reluctant to admit it, that Mick Watson’s reappearance in our lives might just change our idyll to a lament.
10 Almost certainly smelly peasant - ed
Six
Visiting the Watsons - Don relives early years in Kiddington and is kidnapped.
Visiting the Watsons was not something I did regularly, or even looked forward to. Mick’s brother, Geoff, was two years younger than him and a classmate of mine in Kiddington Junior. My mother always referred to the Watsons as “that mucky lot” and mucky they were. Geoff Watson and I regularly sat next to one another. It was when we were in Miss Hudson’s class that I first recall Geoff Watson’s smell. We would have been around eight years old and, for several hours a day our derrières shared the same screwed plank of scarred, patch-darkened wood that was the bench seat of our joined form. It had a pair of pot inkwells on its highest, horizontal extremity, just in front of a rounded furrow that stopped our pencils rolling down the sloping top, a surface that was sliced down the middle so that the pieces on either side could be lifted individually to allow access to the storage underneath. That’s where we kept our slates, our chalk, our felt block erasers, our crayons, our pencils and our sharpeners. There was also the odd book.
The surface, once smooth-planed and varnished, had evidence of bored years scratched into its surface. ‘Scruff’ said one deep, pen-knife incised, blackened-out scrawl, a word that had been repeatedly traced by pencils, crayons and compass points over the years since its incision so that its canyon meandered like a widening river gorge cutting across the plain. There was ‘Janet 1947’ carved into my desk top and ‘Bromaton For The Cup’ in several places, in different arrangements and hands. Elsewh
ere, the layers of picking had merged to roughened craters of fibre, depressions that needed a card covering whenever we were, albeit rarely, asked to write on paper.
Most days Geoff Watson would smell. It wasn’t the rancid, sickly smell of stale urine that used to emanate from Millie Teasdale from Wishing Street. You could catch a nose from her at a range of five yards if the wind was in your face. She was small, thin, and had straggly blond hair, odd shoes and permanent dirty streaks near her mouth. The teacher used to wipe them off after assembly each morning, but they would be back before the end of the day. The friends who walked home with her used to whisper that she ate muck from the roadside. She always wore the same thin dress, vaguely white with little pink flowers, and a brown cardigan on top. But the dress was always mucky, stained, even crisp with plates of dried snot here and there. She would regularly lift the hem to wipe her nose, which was always dribbling, and we boys would always turn and watch, because the family could rarely afford underwear. The cardigan was picked knobbly, indeterminately green, brown and grey depending on the weather and the family’s recent diet. It was gone at the elbows, pulled to threads at the lapel and frayed at both wrists. But close up, the smell of stale pee was overpowering. The poor grass-mounds[11] that pulled the short straw of sitting next to Millie used to spend most of their time off school, if only to get relief of fresh air. Millie, of course, never took a day off. My mother always used to say that she had to go to school because “her mother worked from home”.
Geoff Watson’s smell certainly wasn’t a Millie whiff. It wasn’t overpowering, but it was unmistakable. It was a yeastiness, a mould, reminiscent of overcooked cabbage, cauliflower leaves and potato peelings boiled up for the pigs, an acridity of open fire smoke, a mustiness of a moth-balled wardrobe all mixed with a hint of stale beer. When you sat next to him, the smell would be strong and noticeable at the start of the day, but it would wear off through the morning only to reassert itself after playtime’s fresh air when you again sat down next to it anew.
A Search for Donald Cottee Page 4
