Weirdo

by Cathi Unsworth

  Edna thought that her face would crack with the effort of keeping her smile in place.

  “Wayne,” she nodded curtly.

  Wayne dragged his gaze up from the crazy paving to grunt a greeting, then dropped it down again. No one made a move to shake hands. The three of them were trapped, suspended until the car’s rear door slammed loudly behind them.

  Sammy stood with her arms folded, head cocked to one side. Since the last time Edna had seen her, she’d had a fringe cut which sloped over her eyes, hiding their expression. The hair wasn’t the only thing that had changed. Sammy’s body had started to develop swells and curves, the way her mother’s had at that age. And though she wasn’t flaunting it – the pink-and-grey-striped T-shirt top, matching ra-ra skirt and pink plimsolls were exactly the sort of thing Shirl’s girls wore – there was something about the sullen tilt of her posture that sent a tremor through Edna’s heart. A voice whispering through her mind: History is starting to repeat …

  Then Sammy raised her hand to push the thick wedge of blonde hair out of her eyes, revealing fingernails with chipped pink polish that were bitten to the quick. With that one gesture, she suddenly became a child again, Edna’s little Sammy.

  “Nana,” Sammy whispered.

  “Come here, my darling,” Edna opened her arms, “give Nana a hug.”

  With a sideways glance at Amanda that Edna didn’t catch, Sammy ran to her grandma, burying her head on Edna’s shoulder, her arms around her waist.

  “Nana,” she repeated. “Oh, Nana, I’m so pleased to see you.”

  Edna brushed the fringe out of Sammy’s eyes as a fat teardrop fell from her lashes. A snakebite of love and rage bit deep within the grandmaternal gut. “There, there, Sammy,” she whispered. “Nana’s here now. Nana’s here.”

  Amanda pushed her sunglasses up to the top of her head, eyeing the spectacle with pursed lips. Noodles, still growling and with every hair on his body standing on end, started to retreat backwards down the hallway, until his hind leg made contact with an advancing leather shoe. Noodles and Amanda looked up at the same time. The dog gave a yelp and ran to the sanctuary of his basket in the kitchen.

  “What’s all this then?” Eric’s voice was gentle as he placed a hand on Edna’s shoulder, but the eyes that stared over at Amanda were anything but. “How’s my little girl?” he said.

  For one second, Amanda thought he was talking to her.

  “Granddad!” Sammy’s head came up and her tear-streaked face broke into a tentative smile, exposing the wonky front tooth that she refused to have put in a brace.

  “She’s had a long journey, haven’t you, love, feeling a bit tired out?” Edna suggested.

  “Well, that’s a shame,” said Eric, “because I was just about to ask if she fancied coming in to work with me.”

  “I don’t really think …” Amanda began. But the rest of the sentence stuck in her throat.

  “Can I really, Granddad?” Sammy’s face was radiant now, while the eyes of Eric and Edna had fallen upon their daughter like a Siberian wind coming up off the North Sea.

  “Of course you can,” Eric took hold of Sammy’s hand, a smile twitching at his mouth.

  “Dad,” Amanda tried to start again. She waved her hand feebly towards Wayne, but his expression remained on the crack in the path it had been glued to since he’d got out of the car. “She’s got to unpack and have her tea …” she tried to appeal to Edna instead.

  “She can do all that later,” said Eric, smiling broadly. “Now she’s here, she’ll want to enjoy herself, won’t you, Sammy?”

  Sammy nodded, flashing her mother a triumphant smirk.

  “Don’t worry,” Eric went on. “I’ll make sure she get her tea,” the words dripped like acid from his lips. “That in’t me who want to short-change her now, is it?”

  * * *

  “Debs!” Corrine’s voice, more insistent now it had asked the same question three times, finally cut through her friend’s reverie. The music that had been playing in Debbie’s head, the record that Alex had brought home for her from his wanderings, a man with a low baritone intoning mysterious words about asking crystals, spreading tarots … “I said, what d’you reckon?” Corrine was holding up a folded page of Smash Hits, a photograph of a woman with mounds of eyeliner and a curly perm.

  “She look ace, don’t she?”

  Debbie frowned. She thought the woman looked a mess, a beer girl trying to look weird but forgetting she still had a haircut like one of The Dooleys.

  “I’m gonna get mine done like that,” Corrine went on. “Soon as we get paid.” Her hands reached for the packet of ten JPS on the tabletop between them and Debbie realised the magnitude of what her friend had just told her.

  “What’ll your mum say?” she asked.

  Corrine scraped at a book of matches for a light.

  “Don’t care,” she replied, fag in mouth. “I’ve been saving up for this all summer. It in’t too much to ask, is it – one haircut and a pair of shoes what are already knackered?”

  “Course not,” Debbie felt guilty now. Thanked God she hadn’t spoken aloud about The Dooleys. She took another look at the woman in the magazine.

  “NYC’s latest disco darling Madonna …” was as far as she read before there was a tapping on the window. Outside in the Victoria Arcade, Darren Moorcock and Julian Dean were waving at her.

  “Cor,” Corrine noted. “They look different.”

  Darren had grown his hair down to his shoulders and dyed it jet-black. Julian, whose skin as well as hair had been black to begin with, sported a tightly curled pompadour, fixed with glistening wet-look gel. Both of them were wearing black shirts, waistcoats, skin-tight jeans and pointed shoes with rows of silver buckles on them.

  Debbie’s face cracked into a grin, and she motioned for them to come in.

  “They look great,” she said as the bell jangled above the door. “Budge over, Reenie.”

  “Are you all right?” Darren sat straight down next to Debbie. It wasn’t that long since he was the same size as her, but now he seemed to have shot to nearly Alex’s height. He had black eyeliner on too. It really suited him.

  Darren glanced with approval at Debbie. “I see Alex in the pub last night. In Swing’s,” he added, with a certain measure of pride.

  Debbie’s eyes widened. She and Darren had always got on all right, thanks to their mutual propensity for spending lunchtimes in the art room. But last term, he had been just a short, squeaky-voiced kid with freckles. Now he seemed to have bloomed into something vastly more interesting.

  “Can you get served in there then?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” Darren nodded. Even his voice had changed, dropped into a lower register. “You should come down with us sometime.” He tried not to blush as she looked through the corrugated strands of her fringe at him.

  “When you next going?” she asked, trying not to sound too eager. Tonight was the last Friday before they started school again and she really didn’t want to spend it trailing up and down the Front.

  “Tonight, I reckon,” said Darren, looking over at Julian. “In’t we, Jules?”

  “What you say?” Julian put down the magazine Corrine had thrust at him.

  “I say we’re gonna go up Swing’s tonight, in’t we?”

  Julian nodded his head. “I reckon,” he said.

  “What time?” asked Debbie, noting the way Corrine was gazing at Julian and feeling that, for once, things were going to go her way.

  “About seven,” Darren said. “D’you want us to meet you somewhere?”

  “Well, we get off about six from work,” Debbie spoke quickly, “so we’d have to get changed and walk down from there …” She rapidly calculated how long this might take. “What about we meet you at the bus stop outside the town hall, about ten to seven?”

  Darren was nodding, but Corrine had started to frown. “What’s that, Debs?” she asked.

  “Tonight,” it suddenly came to Debbie how to play
this, “I’m just saying we could go out with these two in town,” she was careful not to say anywhere specific, “after work.”

  “Oh,” Corrine’s frown deepened as she tried to process this unfamiliar idea.

  But Julian came to the rescue. “I can do you a tape,” he said, “of that Madonna 12-inch. I’ve got it at home. Well, it’s my sister’s really, but she won’t mind.”

  “Really?” Corrine’s head snapped round. “You sure?”

  “Ten to seven at the bus stop, then,” said Darren.

  “You’re on,” said Debbie, light shining in her eyes.

  * * *

  Once the gaffer had seen Eric arrive, word got around the stallholders fast: the Princess was coming. This meant there would have to be some slight readjustments to the darts that could win you a cuddly toy, the hoops that went over the goldfish bowls and the wooden targets that you shot with a pellet gun. Normally, the odds in all these games were just slightly tilted, so that it was a fortunate punter indeed who could win a prize through skill or strength alone.

  But the shelves above the bed she still hadn’t seen were testament to how lucky the Princess had been at securing the trophies of the Leisure Beach.

  “Hold you hard,” Ted Smollet nudged his young nephew Dale in the ribs, “here she come.” The fag that perpetually hung from the corner of his lips seemed to tremble, along with the salt-and-pepper eyebrows that grew in clumps above his beady, brown eyes. He grunted and said to himself: “She’s filled out a bit.”

  Dale, who had been forced by his mother to work the summer if he wanted a new Norwich City FC season ticket this year, reluctantly followed his gaze. Dale didn’t much like Uncle Ted, a wiry, skinny old man, whose inkily tattooed arms were a testament to a life working the fairgrounds. But he had to admit, working on the Leisure Beach had its compensations. Ten different holidaymakers he’d managed to lure into moonlight trysts in the sand dunes so far this year, none of them all that bad looking neither. Even his best mate, Shane Rowlands, who worked in the holiday camp up North Denes, had not had near that level of success. There was something special in the air here.

  Like what was walking towards him now.

  Her clothes were more suited to a kid, really, but what they were hiding wasn’t. Shapely calves, tanned like honey, narrow hips and above that, bulges that the loose T-shirt wasn’t doing anything to hide. A blonde head with a sloping fringe that covered half her face, a tilt to her neck, a little air of mystery about her.

  Ted dug him in the ribs again. “Put your tongue away, boy,” he said. Then began his customary chant: “Magic darts, let’s play magic darts! Bullseye bags the Teddy, double tops will get you Nelly, lions and tigers by the score, you only got to hit the board!”

  Dale could feel his cheeks flush as she stopped in front of the stall, not even looking at him, just running her gaze over the racks of bears, elephants, lions, tigers and the rest of the glass-eyed menagerie, with a bored expression, the twitch of a sneer on her upper lip.

  Dale’s palms went sweaty around the clean pair of arrows in his right hand.

  “Yes please, young lady?” Uncle Ted squawked, flipping a toy parrot round in his hand, making out that it was doing the speaking. “See something you like?”

  Dale could have killed him. The Princess’s visible eye fluttered down and her top lip arched even higher, revealing a wonky tooth that only seemed to make her sexier, only made Dale shift his weight from foot to foot more uncomfortably.

  “Nah,” she said. “It’s all kids’ stuff, ain’t it?” She tossed her head, ducking under her fringe again and moved off, not having given Dale a first glance, let alone a second.

  “Sweatin’?” asked Uncle Ted.

  * * *

  Due west as the seagull flies, on the opposite side of town, was an Ernemouth built on a different kind of commerce, the docks of the River Erne. Though the heyday of the herring fleet was long gone, the stock fished out some thirty years since, the port was still full of ships; container boats, tankers and ferries replaced the old smacks and wherries.

  It was less likely to find a tourist around here, but along the South Quay were the remains of the Town Wall built on the orders of Henry III, elegant eighteenth-century merchants’ houses and the ruins of a Franciscan monastery. South Quay turned into Hall Quay as it passed the ornate Victorian town hall.

  Making for the bus stop next to it, Debbie could hardly believe her luck. She hadn’t even minded that Corrine had borrowed her crimpers and half her make-up either – it had got her this far.

  She didn’t have to hold her breath for the boys to turn up either. As they rounded the corner she could see that they were already waiting, sitting on the bench sharing a wrapper of chips, swinging their long, skinny legs.

  “Cor, let’s have some!” Corrine dived into their meal before they could even say hello.

  “All right?” Darren looked amused. He also looked as if he had gone home and done his hair again since they’d met at the café. Debbie had attempted a little backcombing of her own and was pleased with the results – it added a couple of inches to her height, at least.

  Debbie nodded, noticing how blue his eyes looked in the golden glow of the last daylight hour. For a moment they stared at each other.

  Then Corrine’s squeals filled the air. “Oh my God!” She was clutching a cassette in fingers sticky with salt and vinegar. “He give me the tape, Debs, he did! I’ve got Madonna, I don’t believe it.”

  Julian winced as she slapped him heartily across the shoulders.

  “So where we now going?” she asked.

  “You’ll see,” said Darren, inclining his head to the right.

  He made sure he was walking next to Debbie as they crossed the road in front of The Ship Hotel, made their way down the narrow passage beside the Midland Bank. He knew Julian wasn’t really interested in Corrine, but he was too good a mate not to play along.

  “What, we goin’ back up town?” Corrine’s bewildered voice came from behind them.

  “No,” said Darren, smiling at Debbie as they reached the side of an old, white-painted pub, where a sign hung over the alleyway above the door – a man in a tricorn hat and a velvet cloak, hanging from the scaffold, flames rising up around him, the silhouettes of people holding pitchforks aloft. In medieval-style lettering, the words Captain Swing’s.

  Darren pushed the door open and they followed him in.

  5

  Eastworld

  March 2003

  By the time he had pulled into the parking bay in front of The Ship Hotel, Sean had almost lost the feeling in his legs. The insulation of his flesh and the car heater combined didn’t make any difference; the metal plates and pins that held him together now reacted directly to the elements, so that on a dank evening like this, he knew the true meaning of being chilled to the bone.

  He got stiffly out of his seat, leaning for a moment against the car roof as he took in his surroundings. The smell of the river filled his nostrils. Traffic streamed past the dockside and over the bridge opposite the hotel, the dark bulk of container ships lined the sides of the quay. To his right rose the clock tower he had seen from five miles away, from the front of the gothic town hall.

  The hotel had a black-and-white mock Tudor façade and red-tiled roof. Sean locked the car, gathered up his bags and went up the steps to check in. The front door opened into a red-carpeted corridor with a lounge bar to the left and the frosted door of the dining room on the right. The smell of meat and gravy hung more heavily on the air than the piped muzak coming from the bar.

  Sean glanced in, saw a copper range over a gas-powered log fire, horse-brasses dripping from the beams around it and pots of aspidistras each side of the hearth. A sparse collection of middle-aged drinkers sat nursing half-pints over the crossword pages of newspapers with all the seriousness of those who had nothing more to fill their days with. One stout woman with a wiry, salt-and-pepper bob and a tweedy coat, looked up and gave him a lingering asse
ssment.

  “Reception’s that way,” she said in a loud, plummy voice, pointing down the hallway and causing a few of her companions to raise their grizzled heads.

  “Thanks,” said Sean, feeling strangely embarrassed as he moved along the red carpet.

  The receptionist greeted him with a cheery hello, in a voice that twanged hay bales and tractors. A nose with a diamante stud in it and hair streaked black, white and red, she wore a smart black skirt suit and crisp white blouse. A badge with the hotel’s logo of an old fishing boat was pinned to her lapel, above an enamel plate that told him her name was Julie Boone, Hotel Manager.

  She didn’t look much older than twenty. Funny how the fashions that had seemed so threatening when she was a baby were now so commonplace as to not even elicit comment. Unless Julie was part of a satanic cult too.

  “Thank you, sir,” she took his form and credit card. “Oh, I see you’re up from London, Mr Ward. Can I ask how you found out about us? We like to know how word get about.”

  “You came recommended,” said Sean, “from the Ernemouth tourist board.”

  Julie looked delighted. “We’ve put you in room 4, that’s on the second floor with a nice view over the harbour for you. Lift’s just to the right here,” she waved her hand and then caught herself, “or do you want a hand with your bags?”

  All he had was a hold-all, a briefcase and his laptop, but of course, she would have noticed his slow-shuffling gait as he approached the desk. Again, he felt a twinge of embarrassment, the way that his body had changed so that he no longer passed as normal.

  “No,” he told her, “I’m fine.”

  The room looked like it had been freshly plastered, repainted in the obligatory magnolia and then decorated by someone determined to make up for all that lack of colour. Sean took in the bright counterpane and curtains, all geometric turquoise, coral and yellow. A brief flash of memory: his mother doing the house up with fabrics like this when he was a child, a big squashy sofa with buttons on it. He moved towards the window, dropping his cases beside the bed. Julie was right, the view was pretty, the harbour and bridge lit up with mock gas-lamps, the pilot lights of the ships reflected in glittering streaks on the dark water of the Erne.