The Year of the Ladybird

by Graham Joyce

  The talent show always seemed to feature a tiny five-year-old performing some cute but charmingly inept dance routine that they would forget halfway through. The idea of one of them out on stage while Colin beat the crap out of me in the auditorium had me sick with anxiety. But the talent show was scheduled to start within five minutes.

  I made my way to the front of house where Nikki presided behind a desk, doing my job of listing a schedule from the queue of would-be performers. Mike, the organist with the Beatle-haircut I’d met on my first day, was sitting next to her making his own running order.

  Nikki was cross. ‘Where have you been?’ She jabbed a pen in the direction of the folk in the queue. ‘Find out what music they want Mike to play for them.’

  I did exactly as I was told. I shuffled down the line asking what compositions they wanted. Most of them didn’t know. One man was doing a song from the musical Fiddler On The Roof but he couldn’t remember what the song was called. When it was hummed for me I recognised ‘If I Were a Rich Man’. Another man said he wanted to do an American country song called ‘Rosa’s Cantina’ but when he sang a few bars for me I knew he meant ‘El Paso’.

  I didn’t even look up for Colin. I was running on auto-pilot. I could see myself from an astral point twelve feet above my head, and I could hear my own muffled voice from a short distance saying, ‘That’ll be fine, just tell Mike you want “El Paso” and Nikki over there will give you a number, okay, good, thank you, who’s next then?’ An elderly and very large lady said she was going to perform ‘The Laughing Policeman’. Seven-year-old twins wanted to do ‘The Good Ship Lollipop’.

  I somehow got to the end of the line but then I came unglued.

  ‘You look really pale,’ Nikki said.

  I hurried to the toilets and I managed to reach the porcelain in time. I rinsed my mouth from the taps and threw up again. Sweat rolled from my face in great beads and yet my face in the mirror was white like the moon. I splashed water on my cheeks and on my neck and rinsed my mouth a second time. I looked in the mirror and gave myself a stiff talking-to, cut short when someone else came in.

  It was another friendly camper, not one I knew. A burly man with a red face and ringlets of blond hair. ‘So this is where all the big knobs hang out then is it, heh heh heh.’It was a mirthless laugh. A spoken laugh. Heh-heh-heh. That was what my life as a Greencoat had become. One weak joke after another. One forced smile beyond that. I grinned back at him, but I knew it was the smile of a skull. I felt too weak to speak.

  By the time I returned to the front of house, everyone had gone into the theatre. I heard the muffled report of Sammy, in his bad toupée, patting the stage microphone, not to see if it was working but to advertise his authority over the event.

  ‘Grab one of the campers,’ Nikki said, ‘cos we need a third judge.’

  I patrolled the front row looking for a likely suspect to agree to do it and finally I found a heavily made-up lady who was delighted to be steered into the limelight. The houselights came down, the stage lights went up and at last the show got underway. Sammy made a lot of himself. He told a couple of weak jokes that just made me want to shit. With his spittle darting in the limelight he introduced the first turn, which was ‘If I Were a Rich Man’.

  At this point I was visited by a curious calm. I wish I could say that it was the performance of the singer on stage, but it wasn’t. In fact the singer was hopeless. The pop-eyed, rotund figure on stage swaying slightly in a minor concession to the theatrical demands of the song did, for just a moment, make everything seem all right. He was up there faking it. He must have known he was a poor singer. The audience certainly knew he was a poor singer but they were all generously prepared to forgive. The only thing they didn’t know was the drama that had taken place backstage and up on the roof a short while ago. I knew those details only too well, but I could almost fool myself into believing it had all been a piece of theatre. Inept and ill-managed, yes: but still theatre. It was all right. It was all going to be all right. Colin and Terri would have a furious row; but strong girl that she was, she wouldn’t identify me.

  It was all going to be all right.

  I don’t know where my thoughts had been but when I looked up onstage the next turn was already in progress. It was the seven-year-old twins shouting out ‘The Good Ship Lollipop’ and Mike on the organ was whipping up a nice noisy storm in support. Mike went early for the big finish on the organ and the audience showed wild appreciation for the children. Sammy took the microphone and advised the audience that they should keep an eye on those two young ladies because they were destined to go far.

  My mind wandered again because the next time I blinked up at the stage an elderly gentleman was playing ‘Ave Maria’ on the musical saw; eerie and unaccompanied. I knew I was losing small sequences of time. My mind was like a bingo ticket, with only certain numbers belonging to the full set. I’d come back to consciousness to find another act in progress. After a few bars of ethereal saw-music Mike started to come in with his organ.

  After the musical saw came the gentleman who wanted to sing ‘El Paso’. He’d chosen to appear on stage wearing a massive straw Mexican sombrero. The song was a ridiculous, warbling gunfighter ballad, but at least the singer had a reasonable voice. Something about a challenge for the love of a maiden and a handsome young stranger lying dead on the floor.

  Life, in a sombrero, was mocking me square in the face. The elderly woman I’d pulled from the audience to be a judge put her hand on my knee. ‘Looks like we have a winner,’ she said.

  After the talent show was over, I had to work the bingo in the Slowboat. Nobby did the calling and all I had to do was check the winning tickets. I scanned the rows of tables of people with their heads down, ostensibly scrutinising the players but really I was hunting for any sign of Colin or Terri. There were two doorways into the Slowboat and I planted my back against the wall so that I could scope both entrances.

  Up there on the microphone Nobby was an enthusiastic proponent of bingo-lingo. ‘Five and nine the Brighton Line.’ I had no idea what some of these things even meant, though I started to ascribe my own meanings. Nobby’s microphone had a bad echo to it and everything he said sounded sinister, like he was in on a joke. ‘Was-she-worth-it, 56.’ My paranoia made me ‘see’ Colin come into the Slowboat a couple of times; but it was just someone with the same stocky frame.

  I didn’t know what he would do to me. I didn’t know whether his style was to make a public, fist-and-toecaps full-frontal assault; or whether he was more likely to wait for me in the dark, with a blade at the ready. Either way I was no street-fighter and I hadn’t much idea of how I might defend myself if and when the attack came. My mouth was dry, I was in an advanced state of fear, but I was super-alert.

  I got through the bingo session and I was supposed to do the lights again at the Golden Wheel. I cried off sick. George agreed to cover the lights. I couldn’t face walking back from the Wheel through the dark to the staff quarters. Instead I stayed with the crowds and, checking over my shoulder every yard, made my way back to my room. Even before I got there I had an idea that maybe Colin had already let himself in. I unlocked the door and checked through the crack at the hinge that Colin wasn’t standing behind it with his back to the wall. I stooped down to make sure he wasn’t under the bed. I gave the flimsy wardrobe a push to test its weight before opening it. Then I closed my room door, turned the key in the lock, checked the window was bolted and drew the curtains.

  It was going to be a long night.

  13

  The Ladybird Patrol: tooled, equipped and ready to burn

  I lay awake, listening. Footsteps in the corridor, doors opening and closing. Each individual returning from the bars was going to be Colin. I heard someone outside my window and I thought Colin might be planning to break his way through the glass; but it was one of the waiters trying to get a kiss and a cuddle in the dark from a girl who kept protesting that she would but she was afraid her father w
ould find out.

  When I finally did drift off to sleep I had dreams. I was on the pier standing before the mechanised fortuneteller. The glass case had been smashed and the manikin leaned forward out of the broken face. Her tongue lolled from her painted mouth. It was an absurdly long, fat, moist and lascivious tongue and she seemed to produce from her throat one of the prediction cards. In the dream I took the card but I couldn’t read what was on it because the printed letters changed before my eyes, now Greek, now Chinese. It was a matter of great torment to me that I couldn’t read what was written on the card.

  I felt so anxious about not being able to read the card that I woke up. In the dark someone was sitting on the end of my bed. But I couldn’t sit up. My chest was

  compressed. It was like I had a claw wrapped round my lungs. I could hear myself trying to breath. I was so frightened I tried to shout out but I couldn’t get my breath. It was the man in the blue suit. He was sitting on the end of my bed regarding me steadily.

  But his eyes were pure glass. Clear glass, no pupil. They reflected the light and shadow of the room; and even though his eyes were clear glass I could see he was looking down at me. But because his eyes were clear glass I couldn’t see if he wanted to hurt me. I tried to sit up but couldn’t because of the weight on my lungs. I thought he must have a hand pressing on my chest.

  With a superhuman effort I forced myself upright, and as I did I woke up. I’d had a dream within a dream. I’d woken up only to wake a second time. I got up to put the light on. The man on the edge of my bed had gone. I prowled my tiny room, lifting things and setting them down again: my clock, a newspaper, a shoe. I was scared of waking up again.

  Finally I went back to bed. I left the light on. I lay awake for a long time, blinking at the ceiling. I must have fallen asleep again because I overslept. I was already a few minutes late when I threw on my Greencoat outfit and hurried over to the theatre. There was a smell of burning accelerant in the air. The ladybird patrol was up and about, fuel tanks strapped to their backs, sweeping dead ladybirds into piles and incinerating them. You would hear the spit and brief dull roar of the incinerator and a little black puff of smoke would ball in the air.

  Pinky’s morning briefing was already well underway when I got to the theatre. Nikki gave me a look of maternal disapproval. Nobby, slumped in a chair, winked at me as if I’d done something good. I looked for signs of Terri performing her cleaning duties but there was no sign of her. I sat through the briefing, rubbing my eyes and trying not to yawn.

  ‘Are you with us then, son?’ It was Pinky.

  I realised he had just asked me a question. ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I had a night from hell.’

  ‘Not letting that Nobby have a bad influence on you, are you? Not going to turn out like him?’

  ‘That’s fucking nice, that is,’ Nobby spluttered. ‘Charming. Fucking nice, that.’

  Pinky ignored him. ‘Sandcastles with Nikki then?’

  Nikki had one eyebrow raised, waiting for an answer.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Go easy on the sticks of rock,’ Pinky said as we got up to leave. ‘It has to last all season.’ I looked up at the stage again, expecting Terri to emerge from behind the flats and wiping her mop this way and that as on so many other occasions during our briefing. Normally, the hoover and other equipment would be around as she worked. Not this morning.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Nikki asked me when we got outside.

  ‘Yes. Why do you I ask?’

  ‘Nothing. I thought you looked a bit . . .’

  ‘A bit what?’

  ‘I worry about you, for some reason. God knows why. But I wondered if Nobby had been up to his tricks. Getting you involved.’

  ‘You’re speaking in riddles, Nikki.’

  Nikki brought her hand to her mouth and made a quick back-and-forth smoking gesture. ‘He’s a doper,’ she said. Then, as an afterthought, she said, ‘And a dope.’

  Gosh, I wanted to say to her, I wish it was as innocent as smoking pot. Instead I said, ‘No. Nothing like that. I don’t even like the stuff. I tried it once at college but it made me throw up.’

  ‘Me neither,’ she said as we passed through the beach wall tunnel and emerged onto the sand. ‘I prefer fresh air and sex for entertainment.’ She looked at me pointedly. ‘Right, let’s get cracking. You do the over-sevens and I’ll do the tiddly-pots.’

  My only salvation was to fling myself into the work. It was a way of shoving aside all thoughts of either Terri or Colin, even though they were like demons barking at either ear. I got down on my knees with the children and exhorted them to dig. I helped them to make models of horses and of boats, trains and planes. One little girl even complained that I’d snatched away her blue plastic spade in my fervour. I was manic.

  I’d already decided that Colin would just have to come and do his worst. I would fight him. I would go down fighting. As I worked the sand and flipped shiny plastic buckets amongst them, the innocence of the children almost made me want to cry. I very nearly did.

  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 Saturday 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 passed 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 fashion

  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 astonishing 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.