The Year of the Ladybird

by Graham Joyce

  The song stopped. ‘Nearly done, darlin’.

  ‘Get a move on. I wanna be out of here before those fuckers come.’

  Her bucket clanked and I heard a few more swishes of the mop before she crossed the stage and took the steps down to the auditorium. Only when I let go a big sigh did I realise I’d been holding my breath. From the shadows I watched her sway up the aisle carrying the heavy bucket. She disappeared through the swing doors. I moved onto the stage and peered out at the rows of dark seats, thinking about the voice I’d just heard.

  When my co-workers came in I could hardly wait to mention it. Pinky arrived first. He always had that cigar wedged between his fingers but he was too professional ever to light up in the theatre. When I enthused about what I’d just heard he waved his cigar at the stage. ‘I offered to put her on there. But it wasn’t allowed.’

  ‘Who stopped it?’ I knew the answer before I’d asked the question.

  ‘Who? Vlad the Impaler.’

  In the gaps between events that evening I took to drinking the odd pint of Federation Ale, frothy amber stuff, mainly just to try to fit in with all the other male staff who quite casually sank copious quantities. I watched them downing seven or eight pints of the stuff without it seeming to touch the sides or affect their performance. So much of it was consumed by the staff and the campers alike that the slightly vinegary after-tang permeated the entire site. The odour of barley and hops was in the carpets; it was in the plaster and lathe; it was in the timber joints.

  As a college boy I was fair game for teasing. Luckily the Federation Ale loosened my tongue a little and I was able to match the raucous banter of the girls who worked in the kitchens. They weren’t bad girls, but they could scare the juice out of a man. Strapping figures, most of them, with self-administered bent-nail tattoos, they would grab your bottom as you walked by. It was popular amongst the girls to have the word LOVE written on one bicep and LUST on the other. I seemed to spend a lot of time dodging the goose neck.

  After that, when feeding times came around I could identify faces I knew well enough to squeeze next to at the table. At every meal I saw scary Colin and his pretty wife installed at the same table at the distant end of the canteen, eating in complete silence. They cut a lonely sight.

  One lunch time after clearing my plate into the slops I passed their spot and I saw him flicker a glance at me. It wasn’t an acknowledgement exactly, just a darted look from the corner of his eye. I thought I should speak.

  ‘Thanks for your advice on my first day,’ I said.

  Terri looked up at me and again the palm of her hand fluttered to her cheek. Colin, though, kept his head down.

  He wasn’t going to answer me. I felt embarrassed and stupid for having opened my mouth. My cheeks flamed. He lifted his head, but instead of making eye contact with me he looked at his wife. At last he said, ‘Nuffing.’

  Wanting to get out of the situation with at least a shred of dignity I said, ‘Well, I appreciate it.’

  At last he turned his gaze on me. There was contempt scribbled in the lines of his face, and I knew I’d made a mistake in trying to engage with the man. His features twisted into a bit of a sneer. But there was something else written into his expression. I knew what it was. It was puzzlement. What I’d just said had somehow perplexed him.

  I clattered my empty tray in the clearing area, trying not to look back. But I couldn’t help stealing a glance. Colin had his head down and was digging into his food again from the far side of his plate. But his wife, Terri, was looking at me. She wound a single finger corkscrew fashion into her auburn hair.

  After lunch we had to run something called the Donkey Derby. This was a major item in the programme, so the full regiment of Greencoats – five out of the six, anyway – plus Tony, alias Abdul-Shazam– were gathered on the sweltering and bone-dry football field for the event. Tony had two modes of operation. Abdul-Shazam, complete with red fez and tassel, was the resident stage entertainer, mostly for the children’s programme, but also for a theatre Magic Act supposedly aimed at adults, using some of the same tricks with a different patter. When he wasn’t Abdul-Shazam he was just Tony, sans-fez, the camper’s friend, the noisy, funny, friendly exhibitionist with a stage tan and an all-weather smile.

  Tony took over the PA system for the Donkey Derby, only occasionally surrendering it to the nominally-head-Greencoat-with-the-wig, Sammy from Stockport. Sammy had bucket loads of enthusiasm for broadcasting but little talent and less wit. He would liberally spray spittle onto the hand-held microphone as he chortled and blethered away. Tony winced as the mike was handed back to him; I noted how Tony’s ready smile could manifest as a form of violence.

  The donkeys arrived with a fairy-tale figure called Johnny, who looked like he lived in the stables with his animals. The crotch of his trousers hung down near his knees and his thin leather belt, having lost its buckle, was tied off in a double knot. He had a bit of straw in his hair and one ear that stood perpendicular to his head whereas the other did not. His team of donkeys smelled less of donkey than he did.

  ‘He spends hours perfecting that look,’ Pinky told me, deadpan. ‘Just so he can make a case for a better fee next time.’ I didn’t know if he was joking or not.

  I don’t know whether donkeys can ever be said to look ‘happy’ but Johnny’s herd seemed totally pissed off with life. Flea-bitten moulting things, they made me nervous. One tried to bite me before I snatched my hand away just in time. I also saw one kick out. I worried that they might try to take a chunk out of one of the children so I kept a close watch.

  The jockeys were those children brave enough to scramble on a donkey’s back. I was told to grade the children by age so that we could run off five races over the course of the afternoon. Each event had a name like The Seahorse Stakes and the Jellyfish Handicap. While I tied high-coloured silks to the children, Nikki or one of the other girls grabbed the donkey’s halter so that Sammy could hoist the child onto the donkey, hopefully without incident. A genuine bookie appeared from nowhere with a blackboard, chalking odds on the board at 3-1 the field. The parents waved shocking amounts of cash at him as they backed their own kid to win the race. I made a quick calculation. Identical odds. For every race if he took sixty pounds he knew he’d only have to pay out thirty; if he took a hundred he’d pay out sixty. For the bookie it was like scooping money up off the beach.

  While I was making my calculation I saw Pinky squeeze by the bookie and give him a pat on the behind. It was odd because the crowd wasn’t so tight that he needed to squeeze by, but in that moment I saw a brown envelope change hands in Pinky’s direction. It was such a rapid sleight-of-hand it could have happened on the Abdul-Shazam! Magic Show.

  But it was a gala afternoon for the campers, and the sunlight rippled off the dazzling silks while the parents roared as if they were at Ascot. Tony ratcheted up the excitement with a commentary that echoed from the Tannoy around the playing field. As for the race it was impossible to predict a winner because all the beasts did the same thing, which was to bolt five yards and then stop dead, until Johnny, running behind them in his flapping, baggy pants laid his crop over their loins. Then they’d advance another five yards. It reminded me of the mechanical horse race I’d seen in the slot machine arcade.

  After five races I was hot, fly-bitten and reeking of donkey but there was still one more race to go. Tony took up the PA microphone and announced The Thoroughbred Fillies Half-Dash Triple Crown, in which mothers – exclusively – were invited to mount the donkeys. For some reason this attracted the most overweight women. It was a struggle for me to get the ladies mounted. The crowd thought I was playing it for comedy. I wasn’t. It was hard work to hoist these large ladies onto donkeys that knew what was coming. The canny beasts side-stepped, backed-up, dipped forward or even bucked to avoid their fate. After a lot of sweating, grunting, endless hilarity and reckless betting from the spectators we managed to get them all Under Starters Orders.

  From the off
the women screamed, the donkeys brayed and Johnny’s whip lashed through the burning afternoon air. Instead of five yards, the poor beasts advanced two or three. Tony kept up an excitable commentary but I doubted whether all the animals would complete the course. They seemed to know it all too well and every time they stopped they tried to munch the parched grass. One of the ladies was in danger of falling, to the wicked merriment of the crowd. I stood aside, watching with a mixture of humour and disbelief, when I felt something tickling the little finger of my left hand.

  A ladybird had alighted there.

  Bright red with black spots, a seven-spot variety as we called them as children. I don’t know why but of all the bugs in creation the ladybird is the only one that doesn’t make most people want to shudder or to swat it. Maybe it’s because it’s known as the gardener’s friend. I don’t know. I lifted it towards the blue sky to look at it in relief. It was like a bead, a jewel, a drop of blood on my tanned finger. I pursed my lips and was just about to blow it away when someone gently touched the back of my hand to stop me.

  It was Terri. Terri the cleaner, the mop-and-bucket singer, the wife of Vlad the Impaler. ‘No,’ she said. ‘You have to say the rhyme. Ladybird, ladybird fly away home, Your house is on fire and your children are gone.’ And then she blew gently on my finger and the ladybird took flight.

  ‘Flown,’ I said. ‘We say flown where I come from. Not gone.’

  ‘Well, you’re wrong where you come from.’

  ‘No, we’re not.’

  ‘Argumentative, aincha? Did you make a wish?’

  It was the first time I’d seen a smile on her lips. Her eyes swam at me; she made them squeeze slightly. I hadn’t made a wish at first, but I did now. ‘I heard you singing.’

  She made a little snort. Not even a snort, just a little release of air beneath her nostrils, as if in dismissal.

  ‘You’re a great singer.’

  She narrowed her eyes at me again, as if to see if I was mocking her. There were very tiny trace wrinkles at the corners of those eyes, whether from laughing or crying too much, I didn’t know. I had a sudden impulse and I couldn’t stop myself looking round, scanning the crowd of people laughing at the slow progress of this last race.

  ‘He’s not here. He’s gone into town.’

  ‘Who?’ I knew perfectly well who she meant.

  ‘My husband.’

  ‘Oh, I wasn’t,’ I lied.

  ‘No, you weren’t,’ she said. She blinked at me and I felt as though she could see right through me, and I felt stupid and young and naive beyond belief. Then she said, ‘Next time a ladybird lands on you, you’ll know what to say, won’t you?’

  She turned and went without looking back. And I thought, dumbly, is she talking about ladybirds?

  I was pulled out of my reveries by a sharp tug on my blazer.

  ‘Hey,’ said Nikki, and I knew she’d seen me talking to Terri. She gave me the look.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Just hey,’ she said.

  3

  Of course one had heard speak of Dante

  That evening I met the top of the bill, but not before I was accosted on my way over to the Golden Wheel nightclub. It was some time after last orders had been called in the bars. I knew that I should have phoned home to let the folks know things were okay but it was too late and it was as I was passing through the alley leading to the nightclub that a hand reached out of the darkness and roughly grabbed my wrist, whisking me round the corner.

  I gasped. The hand released me and I was face to face with Colin the cleaner. He blinked at me, took a pack of cigarettes from the breast pocket of his neat short-sleeved shirt, opened the pack and offered me one. The next bit is ridiculous because even though I didn’t smoke I found myself taking one. I mean, I’d smoked a few cigarettes here and there, but it was as if the invitation to take one of his cigarettes – they were the short, unfiltered kind – was irresistible. I put it between my lips and he flicked a smart lighter. I dipped the tip of the cigarette into the flame, knowing that he was still peering hard at me.

  ‘Seen anything?’ he said.

  ‘About what?’

  Without taking his eyes off mine he lit up a cigarette for himself. He inhaled deeply and then blew out a long thin blue plume of smoke. ‘Anythin’.’

  I hadn’t the faintest idea what he was talking about. ‘No.’

  He held his cigarette in his left hand and I noticed that his right fist was bunched. He nodded slowly. The he held a single finger up to his face and gave a slight tug on the skin under his eye. ‘Keep these open for me, will ya?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘How you fixed?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘They paid you yet?’

  ‘No.’ He knew that we all worked a week in hand and I wouldn’t get paid until the end of the second week. It discouraged quitting without notice.

  ‘Here.’He put a ten pound note in my top pocket.

  ‘What’s that for?’

  ‘Help you out, son. Tide you over.’

  A tenner was a lot of money. After deductions for food and palatial lodgings I was only being paid £25 per week. I wasn’t sure I wanted to keep it. ‘I can’t take that off you.’

  ‘Leave it out,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll pay you back when I get my wages,’ I said.

  He turned very slowly and fixed me with a glare. ‘It ain’t a loan.’

  After that he melted into the darkness. I was left alone with a cigarette I didn’t want burning between my fingers and wondering what, exactly, I’d agreed to keep a look out for. I tossed my cigarette to the floor and stamped on it. Then I made my way to the Golden Wheel.

  The Entertainments Business is hierarchical. As Greencoats we were at the bottom of the well. Then there were the dancers and the Assistant Stage Manager and the DJ. Moving on up came the stage acts and their place in the pecking order was measured strictly by the font size of their name on the billboards. Near the crest were the musicians who accompanied the acts, and Abdul-Shazam. But topping the bill, highest paid and commanding the best dressing room facilities was the Italian Tenor.

  I’d never even seen an Italian Tenor before I worked at the holiday camp. Mine was an era of rock music, with Punk just around the corner and within spitting distance. Yet in the holiday camp theatre they were still serving up the old-style Variety formula: comedy duos, dancing girls, lady singers in glamorous gowns, magic acts. Beyond that, and somehow connecting low music-hall traditions and operatic high culture, stood the Italian Tenor. Tony told me that every holiday camp theatre had one at the time. Not all of them were from Italy, even though they might have Italian names. Quite often they were from Italy-next-Blackburn.

  Our Italian Tenor was the real deal. His name was Luca Valletti. I did the lights for him in The Golden Wheel that evening. Before the show, while I was still shaking off my strange encounter with Colin, he introduced himself to me, very politely, and asked if I would do something different.

  ‘Doesn’t Perry do the lights?’ Perry was the ASM.

  ‘I would like you to do it.’

  Luca wanted to finish on a song called ‘Autumn Leaves’. He showed me how to mix the gels on the lighting so that we could get green and gold at the outset, move through some appropriate variations and finish on red and gold. It didn’t involve much more than gently moving a lever, but Luca wanted it done sensitively and at certain places in the song. Perry was a bit grumpy but cheered up when Luca bought him a drink and explained that it also meant that Perry could quit early. I was impressed with Luca Valletti. I mean with how he managed people.

  Luca came out on stage in an immaculate pressed tuxedo with bow-tie. His dark hair was slicked back with hair-oil and he’d accentuated the sharp line of his pencil-moustache. The brilliant white light of the spots flashed along his high cheekbones and quickened the sheen in his eyes. A previously quite boisterous audience dropped into complete silence as the first few chords struck up.

&
nbsp; Luca used a microphone but I sensed he didn’t need one in that small space. He performed a set of crooner type numbers all of which might have been dismissed by anyone of my generation. Sinatra. Como. Nat ‘King’ Cole. But to hear this live performance, even I had to concede that some of these old tunes were pretty good.

  He wound up his act and went into ‘Autumn Leaves’. I did my best with the light gels, as instructed. At the climax of the song he hit a superb, soaring note and as it faded I brought the coloured lights down through a narrowing circle. Luca finished to rapturous applause. When I killed the stage spots and bought the house lights up I noticed that amid the applause one or two women were dabbing their eyes with a handkerchief. I wanted to laugh: not at them, but at myself. It was moving. Transforming, even.

  There was a small dance floor in the nightclub and the show was followed by a disco, mostly of golden oldies. The fact is that in the 1970s only kids like me listened to 70s music. The music most people listened to in the 1970s – that is everyone over the age of twenty-five– was their preferred 60s and 50s and 40s music.

  After a while, Luca came out his dressing room, clutching a make-up case, ready to make a brisk exit. I intercepted him. I wanted to ask him if I’d done okay with the lights.

  ‘Beautiful, my boy!’ He had a strong Italian accent. He was a tiny, dapper figure who somehow managed to project himself as much larger on stage. ‘Thank you! I appreciate. Very much.’

  I said I was glad and all that because I’d been a bit nervous. I was burbling at him. He smiled at me. ‘Come. I buy you drink.’

  ‘That’s not necessary!’

  ‘I insist.’

  We went to the bar and sat on high stools. He ordered a glass of wine for himself – which in 1976 in that place, and had he been an Englishman, was dangerously close to a declaration of homosexuality. I opted for a manly pint of Federation Ale.

  ‘You are studenta? What you study?’

  ‘English Literature.’

  ‘Ah! Shakespeare! But you know in reply I can offer you the divine Alighieri!’