by Graham Joyce
‘What happened to the last monkey?’
‘What?’
‘The one I replaced.’
Tony looked up and waved wildly at a family passing by our table. His face was like soft leather and it fell easily into a wreath of smiles, like it knew the lines into which it should flow. His skin was super-smoothed by remnants of stage make-up. ‘Howdy kids!’
‘Shazam Shazam!’ the entire family shouted back at him. He looked pleased.
When they’d gone I reminded him of my question.
‘Look, don’t worry about a thing.’ I don’t know why he said that because I wasn’t worried. ‘Any problems, see me, except when there’s a problem, see someone else.’ Then he burst into song, crooner style, throwing his arms wide and turning to the campers seated at other tables. The answer, my friend-a, is a-blowing in the wind-a, the answer is a-blowing in the wind. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose very loudly. Everyone laughed and I did, too, for reasons I didn’t quite understand.
He drained his cup and stood up. ‘You’re back on duty in one hour. Bingo in the main hall. After that, theatre, front of house.’
Then he was gone.
2
And the white knight is talking backwards
I was an Alice in Wonderland. It was a world I knew nothing of, hyper-real, inflated, one where the colours seemed brighter, vivid, intense. I was excited to be working there, being a part of it, but the truth is I felt anxious, too. It wasn’t just about being an outsider, it was the strangeness of it all. Many of the staff I met were odd fish. I had a crazy idea that they all had large heads and small bodies, like caricature figures on an old-style cigarette card.
Back in my tiny room on my first night I lay awake for hours. Of my room-mate there was still no sign and I was wondering what I’d done in signing up to this place. I was over-stimulated by the day’s events and sleep didn’t come. I lay in the darkness with my eyes wide open.
At some point I put the light on and got out of bed. The toilets and showers were at the end of the staff block. It was about 3 a.m. and I decided to take a shower to try to relax. When I got back to my room I dried myself off and decided to take my clothes – still in my backpack – and hang them in the slim wardrobe.
When I’d done that I sat down on the bed and took the photo from my leather wallet. It was a small black and white photo, maybe three inches square with a thin white margin. The photo-chemicals were either unfixing or the picture was over-exposed. Either way the shot was of a seaside scene. The subject was slightly blurred but a muscular man, maybe in his twenties, wore dark bathing trunks and smiled back at the camera. The wind whipped his hair across his eyes so you couldn’t fully see his face. He stood with arms akimbo and behind him the sea frothed and foamed at the sand.
The man in the picture was my biological father. I turned the photo over in my hand. On the back of it someone had written one word in pencil. The pencil had faded just like the photo, but it was still easy to read what was written there: Skegness.
One word. It was a word I’d peered at many times, as if it were code or a mantra or a key of some kind. My father had taken me to Skegness when I was three years old – I don’t know where my mother was at the time – and I was told he’d suffered a heart attack on the beach. I was with him at the time, though of course I had no memory of these events. Later my mother married my stepfather. This was the only photograph I had of my father. I’d stolen it. I don’t even know whether Mum knew I had it, though she might have guessed.
I’d found the photograph when I was old enough to snoop. It was in a tin box kept at the foot of my mother’s wardrobe. In the box were various documents like birth certificates and some old costume jewellery plus a series of postcards. There were photograph albums in the house so I knew instantly this one was rogue. I quickly figured out this was my natural father. At some point in my teens I took and kept the photograph for myself.
It was not as if we had never discussed my biological father. Any time I asked I would get some basic biographical details and the same account of a tragedy that took place on a beach. The account was always consistent and unvarying.
‘Why on earth would you want to go there?’ This was my stepfather, Ken, when I announced I was going to Skegness to look for seasonal work.
It’s an extraordinary thing. If my mother had dropped the dishes on the floor or they had turned to gaze at each other meaningfully, I could have understood it. But when I said that I was going to Skegness they instantly announced their serious displeasure by not doing anything. Ken was eating his fried breakfast and Mum was at the sink. I’d been back from college for just two days. The fact that they made no movement – made no eye contact either with each other or with me – tipped me off to the fact that I’d just lobbed a grenade.
Ken gazed down at his breakfast, carefully sawing through his bacon and sausage with his knife. His blond eyebrows seemed to bristle over his red, weathered face. Mum rinsed a plate and shook the droplets from the plate as if they had to be counted.
Finally she spoke, but still without turning to face me. ‘But Ken’s got you good work with him.’
Ken was a builder. He usually had a number of projects going on different sites. I’d worked for him before, mostly as a ladder-monkey and errand boy. It was okay but unless you like running up and down a ladder and whistling at passing girls once every four hours it was dull. ‘I know that, Dad,’ I said. Sometimes I called him Ken and sometimes Dad, without particular intention. ‘But I want to do something different.’
‘How much are they paying you?’ he wanted to know. ‘It won’t be much.’
‘I haven’t even got a job yet,’ I said.
‘Why there?’ Mother said.
‘I’ve got a friend who is working there.’ This was a lie.
‘I’d got it all set up for you,’ said Ken. ‘It doesn’t make any sense.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
My mother turned off the running tap and with agonising delicacy she set the plate on the draining rack, as if it were a fragile and rare piece of china.
The next day at the morning briefing I got to meet some of my fellow Greencoats. One was a rather sad and overweight sixty-year-old with a pale face and a rotten wig. The three girl Greencoats were professional dancers in the evening theatre, doubling on the entertainments programme in the day-time. They were all sweet-natured, leggy, tanned and beautiful, and seemed as unattainable as the planets in the night sky. The other male Greencoat was absent to no one’s great surprise or concern.
Offered the choice between organising a Whist Drive or a kids’ Sandcastle competition on the beach I plumped for the latter. I preferred the idea of outdoor work. I had little desire for the beer-and-smoke taverns in which I now knew a lot of the activities took place. One of the dancers, Nikki, felt the same and because her pirouetting colleagues preferred the indoor work, she was the one who showed me the ropes.
Which meant showing me the store-room where the gun-metal bins of pink candy-rock were kept under lock and key. I carried the bin to the beach. It felt ceremonial. Nikki meanwhile took with her an official-looking clipboard and pen.
Down on the beach about thirty tousle-haired kids had assembled. The sea in Skegness ebbs a long way out, exposing miles and miles of light golden sand backed by a dune system. The tide that morning had pulled the sea out and the waves were only a distant murmur, visible through a rippling heat haze. Nikki kicked off her sandals and, barefoot, she marked out a big square on the hot sand, telling the wide-eyed kids she was timing them and that they had exactly one hour, not a minute more, not a minute less. She told them they could start when she blew her whistle.
From her pocket she pulled a whistle on a string, exactly like the one I’d been given to referee the football game. She looked at me pointedly. ‘Are we ready?’ I guessed we were ready, so I nodded. Nikki produced a short blast on the whistle and the kids set to it.
‘What do
we do now?’ I said, still cradling my tin of rock.
‘We sit down ont’ sand,’ she said. ‘Then after an hour you give everyone a big smile and a stick of rock.’
She rewarded me with a smile of her own. Nikki had jet-black hair and flashing dark eyes. With her skin like dark honey I suspected Mediterranean blood but her accent was as Mediterranean as the Ilkley Moor. She stripped off her candy-stripe blazer and sat back on the golden sand. I did the same. She hitched up her white skirt to let the sun to her lovely legs. I could see the white cotton of her knickers.
Nikki made a visor with the flat of her hand and looked at me. ‘Student then, are you?’ She made the word roll out on her tongue. Stooooodunt. Is it possible to fall in love with someone because of their accent? I think so.
‘Yes.’
‘I’d love to be a student, me.’
‘Why don’t you then?’
‘Too thick.’
‘I’m sure that’s not true.’
‘What do you study?’
‘English literature.’
‘Lots of books.’ Boooooks.
‘I’ll say.’
‘That’s just it. I can’t read a book to save my life. Can’t settle to it. Too thick.’
I tried to tell her that she wasn’t thick. I explained that only 50 per cent of any population anywhere read books, regardless of their occupation. It doesn’t matter if you’re a doctor or a lawyer or a factory worker, I told her, only half of them will read books. But in my earnestness I’d lost her attention already. Her eyes fluttered half closed and she gazed out to sea. She was away on some flight of imagination, or other life path, or dancing in a world with no books, only theatre lights. She lay back on the sand, folded her hands behind her head and closed her eyes.
After a while I got up: I had to do something to fight the temptation to look at Nikki’s white cotton underwear. I don’t like sand. I’ve never much liked the gritty feel of it between my fingers and toes but I knew I should just get on with it. So I moved among the sandcastles, making encouraging noises. I praised the good efforts and where I saw the kids were struggling, I got down on my hands and knees and helped them along a bit. With the very little ones I asked them their names and when they told me I pretended to mishear, saying, ‘Fish and chips?’ and they would say their name louder and I would say, ‘Oh, I thought you said fish and chips: well, my name is David.’
You do that and kids turn their heads back and forth, trying to puzzle you out. Is he funny? Is he silly? Maybe he’s both.
I looked up from this game and I saw a man and a boy standing by the water’s edge. They were some way off and the sun was right behind them so I couldn’t make out their faces, though I knew they were both staring at me intently. The man wore a blue suit and a tie.
There was something wrong. The man’s suit was wholly inappropriate for the beach in such hot weather. I could tell the little boy was aching to come and join the sandcastle fun. Then the boy lifted his hand and gently waggled his fingers, waving at me. I felt a shiver of loneliness for them.
I figured that the man and the boy were not staying on the holiday camp, and were therefore not permitted to join in the organised programme. But I thought what the hell, so I beckoned the boy and his father to come and join us. What did it matter if the boy sat at the edge and joined in? They showed no sign of coming over so I smiled and beckoned them again. I couldn’t tell for sure but I thought the man was carrying a rope looped over his shoulder. Then I felt a sharp tug at my sleeve and a little girl with white blond ringlets and a freckled face said, quite indignantly, ‘My name isn’t fish and chips.’
‘Oh, so what is it?’
‘Sally Laws.’
‘Sausage Legs?’
‘No! Sally Laws!’
Sally Laws wanted me to go and look at her sandcastle so I forgot about the little boy and the man in the blue suit. When I looked up they were already moving away. I felt sad for them so I stood up to go after them, but some sudden jolt, some squeeze in my gut prevented me. Instead I watched them go.
After a while I went back and sat down next to Nikki. I thought she’d fallen asleep, but with her eyes still closed, she said, ‘You’re good at working the parents.’
‘The parents?’
‘They love it, that. When you pay attention to their kids.’
I looked hard at her. She kept her eyes closed now but she must have been watching me as I’d made a circuit of the sandcastles. I guess I was a bit shocked at her cynicism. I just wanted to make sure these children were having a nice time. I hadn’t done it to impress the parents. Then I remembered that Nikki was a professional dancer, and that entertainment was her trade. It was showbiz. We were being paid to be nice. Like Abdul-Shazam in the cafe, serenading the punters. You were paid to smile.
The hot sun climbed a little in the sky and when the hour-point was reached Nikki gave an impressive blast on her whistle. The children were beautifully behaved, sitting in stiff attention, as together Nikki and I judged the results. We awarded first, second and third prize positions and, like a scribe in the temples of Egypt, Nikki with great ceremony wrote down the names of the winners on her clipboard. They were to be awarded prizes at a theatre gala event on the final day of their holidays. Meanwhile I saw to it that every child who had taken part got a stick of rock.
We were then left with a free hour before lunch at the canteen. Once again we resorted to a coffee bar to fill the gap, but this time the one with sky-blue parasols alongside the swimming pool. On the way there we passed, scurrying by in her white cleaning overalls, the woman whose table I had shared with her husband only the day before.
‘Hello!’ I called cheerily.
She dealt me the quickest of smiles I’d ever seen. She compressed her lips and seemed to scuttle on by even faster.
‘Friendly,’ I said to Nikki after the woman was out of earshot.
‘I heard about that,’ Nikki said, donning a pair of sunglasses. With her raven hair radiating an almost blue halo in the sun I thought she looked impossibly glamorous. Like a movie star. ‘Didn’t you sit at their table in the canteen?’
‘News travels fast.’
‘You were lucky.’
‘Oh?’
We got coffees and took them to our table by the pool. She stirred a packet of sugar into her cup and as she spoke I noticed that she had two babyish fang-shaped canines either side of her front teeth. No, they didn’t make her look like a vampire. They made her look girlish, cute, kissable. ‘Last time someone tried to sit down at his table he grabbed their soup and flung it across the room, followed by their dinner, followed by their tray. He shouted this is my fucking table and no one sits at my fucking table unless I fucking ask them to fucking sit at my fucking table. Not for the first time either.’
‘They don’t fire him?’
‘Easier to let sleeping dogs lie.’
There was a huge splash as someone belly-flopped into the deep end. She told me that the man’s name was Colin and that his wife was called Terri. Nikki said Colin wouldn’t allow her to talk with anyone. I made some remark about Terri being very pretty.
‘Well, don’t let Colin catch you even so much as glancing in her direction.’
‘I won’t,’ I said. ‘I never look at women I fancy.’
‘So how would they know you fancy them?’
‘I just don’t let them see me looking.’
‘What?’ Nikki took off her sunglasses and stared at me hard. ‘You’re a strange boy.’
‘Well, yes.’
That night through the thin plasterboard walls I heard someone snoring heartily on one side and someone grinding their teeth on the other side. From across the corridor came the sound of athletic coital grunting, even though I’d been told that we were not allowed to ‘entertain’ people in our rooms. Whoever was in there was getting a good entertainment. In the fitful snatches of sleep I did get, I dreamed unpleasant dreams. I woke in the night feeling that I should wash the san
d off my hands.
So I was awake on my second full day at six in the morning. I got dressed in my whites and went for a walk along the beach. The sun was already up and throbbing as I crunched the pebbles underfoot. I got breakfast in the staff canteen as soon as it opened and, still way too early, I went into the theatre with a paperback book in my pocket, planning to relax on one of the plush velvet seats while waiting for the others to roll in for work.
I went round the back of the theatre, through the stage-door. It was a place where smokers went outside for a tab between stage calls and it led into the wings. You could squeeze between the scenery boards – theatre people call them ‘flats’ – on the stage and from there get down into the auditorium. But before I went into the wings I stopped dead.
I stopped because I heard a songbird.
It was a woman singing from the stage itself. Her voice was soaring in the empty auditorium above an audience of empty seats. I recognised the piece. It was an old Dusty Springfield number and it seemed to me this voice could even outshine ol’ Dusters. No, it wasn’t my cup of tea; I was listening to The Velvet Underground and Jimi Hendrix boldly going where no music had gone before, but I knew a good voice when I heard one. It filled the theatre, it swooped and fell and rose again, a thrilling ghost; it nestled in every crevice and it put a light between the shadows. I crept nearer, expecting to see one of the Variety acts, someone I was yet to meet.
The singer was moving across the stage with a mop and bucket. She wore white overalls. It was Terri.
I stayed hidden between the painted flats, not wanting to announce myself because I thought if I did she might stop. Then again, so absorbed was she in her singing that I was sure that even if I’d wandered onto the stage she wouldn’t have even noticed me.
I heard the swing doors open from the front-of-house. A voice that could only belong to Colin shouted, ‘You finished that yet?’
