The Year of the Ladybird Page 12

  ‘What’s he want with you?’

  ‘I’m supposed to keep an eye on you.’

  She found that amusing. ‘Jeez!’

  ‘Maybe we should leave it. Are you sure he’s not following you?’

  ‘Not tonight. I know exactly where he is tonight. Cards club. Once a month to piss his money away. That’s why he’s back. He ain’t here to see me.’

  I looked back up the beach. ‘I don’t know about this.’

  ‘It’s all right. I’m sure. Look at you. You got the jitters now, haven’t you?’

  I felt trapped. After what had happened between us I was afraid she might think I was drawing back from her. We walked on a little way and then she spread the blanket on the sand and popped open a beer. The luminous ripples of the waves did nothing to calm my nerves.

  ‘Relax, will you?’

  The sea was blue-black, calm with a light, foamy tide. What had seemed like a beach in paradise a few nights ago now seemed to have a smoky edge. The phosphorescence in the waves was still at large, but now it had a wormy quality. But it wasn’t the beach that had changed.

  Terri would talk about other workers on the camp in quite brutal terms. Somehow she got onto the subject of Nikki. She called her a half-wog.

  ‘Stop,’ I said, ‘stop. You know what? Nikki is amazing.’

  ‘You think,’ she said dryly.

  ‘Yes, I do. She’s become a good friend. The only friend I do have here, not counting you.’ That last phrase came out like an afterthought.

  ‘How good a friend is she then?’

  I knew exactly what she was hinting at but I said, ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Never mind. What about Colin? Sounds like he’s your big buddy now.’

  I ignored that. Whatever relationship I had with Terri, I wasn’t going to allow her to slag off Nikki. Already the evening wasn’t playing out in the expected way so I tried to change the subject.

  I took my wallet out of my pocket and showed her the photograph of my biological father. I’ve no idea why. It wasn’t something I went around discussing freely with anyone. In fact it was a kind of secret. Perhaps I’d made the basic error of thinking that emotional intimacy automatically follows sexual intimacy. I told her I had this idea that my biological father was always close. That he was somehow here for me.

  It now sounds impossibly naive. It was a half-baked idea. I hadn’t worked it out, but if I’d hoped to develop the notion any further by talking with Terri, I was mistaken. I told her the little bit I knew. She examined the photo briefly and then slung it back at me. ‘You think you’ve had it rough?’ she said.

  ‘I’m not saying that at all.’

  ‘You’ve been brought up in cotton wool.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant. I was just telling you that—’

  She wasn’t going to let me finish. ‘I could tell you things about my own life that would make your hair fall out. At least you know who your dad is – or you think you do. I’ve no idea and you don’t see me crying about it.’

  ‘I’m not crying about it.’ Her hard-hearted posturing only made me smile.

  ‘I don’t see why you’re smirking.’

  Her irritation only made me smile more. Heaven knows, I thought she was faking being cross with me, but I misread her mood. ‘That’s it,’ she said with a nasty wheedle in her voice, ‘you can fuck off. You’re not getting it tonight.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You heard. I said you’re not getting it.’

  It, of course, being sex. I was taken aback. Firstly, I had never imagined sex as a bargaining token or a credit chip to be offered and withdrawn in this way. Secondly, I couldn’t imagine anyone who wasn’t in the mood being open to sex. Here I was facing the withdrawal of privileges I hadn’t even asked for. The evening had turned sour and I wasn’t entirely sure why. I felt the second argument had something to do with the first. Quite apart from the fact that I was worried about Colin prowling the beach, the episode stirred deeper doubts in mind about what I was doing. If I’d ever seen myself as Terri’s rescuer I’d been a fool. It now occurred to me that in her mind she might have thought she was the one doing the rescuing.

  She swallowed the last mouthful of beer and slung the bottle into the sea. I wanted to say something about children cutting their feet on broken glass but I let it go. She was already up and folding the blanket. Without a word she set off ahead of me, moving toward the lights of the promenade.

  I didn’t see Terri the next day, but the following morning we almost collided in front of the theatre. She behaved as if our spat hadn’t happened. She’d been re-assigned to clean in the theatre again and that meant she’d been obliged to return her keys for the refurbished chalets. Our love nest was taken away from us and we had nowhere private to meet.

  ‘What will we do?’ she asked.

  I said I didn’t know. The truth is it was almost a relief. Then she suggested we use my room.

  ‘That’s not a good idea,’ I said.

  She narrowed her eyes at me. I was afraid that she suspected I was withdrawing. I couldn’t tell whether what I saw in her eyes was contempt or hurt. She could seem vulnerable one moment and then cast-iron the next. I weakened and we arranged to meet in my room at lunch time.

  We’d been in my room for maybe ten minutes when we were brought to our senses by the sound of a key hitting the lock from the other side of the door. Fortunately I’d secured the door with my own key and left it hanging in the lock.

  There was a loud thumping. ‘Got someone in there, you maladjusted boy?’ It was Nobby, making one of his rare visits back to his room. ‘Wickedness. Fire and brimstone shall come to thee, young man. Plus I’m going to ’ave to report you to the Secret Masters who run this august lodge since you are in clear violation of rule number seventy-seven which expressly prohibits the wayward practice of afternoon nuptials etcetera etcetera etcetera can’t you open this fuckin’ door?’

  ‘Jesus!’ Terri whispered.

  I shouted through the door. ‘Nobby, can you come back later?’

  ‘Later is tomorrow is no good is surplus to tomorrow’s requirements. Did I leave my dicky in there?’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘Dicky! Dicky! Dicky bow! Formal neckpiece throat-butterfly fuckin’ bow-tie is it in there my friend I need it for tonight? It’ll only take me two seconds to ascertain presence of said couture oh for fuck’s sake!’

  ‘Where? Where is it? I’ll look.’

  ‘I dunno, in the drawer, stuck in my drawers in the wardrobe under the bed fallen behind the fuckin’ walrus secreted in a shoe stuffed under the mattress, come on chief, I don’t know, let me fuckin’ well look an’ I’ll find it!’

  ‘You can’t come in. I’ll have a good look for you and bring it to you later.’

  I resisted all his protests until finally he went away. We heard him go out of the building, blethering incomprehensibly. I lifted back the curtain to see him trotting across the yard away from us, still prattling to himself.

  ‘Is he on drugs?’ Terri asked me.

  ‘No, he’s from Manchester.’

  She was already getting dressed. ‘I don’t want to stay here.’

  I made a half-hearted effort to get her to stay. Before leaving she suggested we meet backstage in the theatre.

  ‘You’re joking!’

  She took a deep breath. ‘Now that I’m working there again we both have a reason to be there. It makes sense. We should only meet in places we are supposed to be.’ She cupped my face, kissed me, and gave me a precise time when I would find her backstage early that evening, while everyone else was eating.

  The ladybird storms were subsiding but the ground was littered with their carcasses. Workers were mobilised to sweep the bugs into neat pyramid-piles so that they could be disposed of. One man was shovelling the things into a paper sack. I had never seen so many insects. It reminded me of biblical stories about swarms of locusts.

  But the spectacle of all those bug carc
asses told me that the madness was over. I’d made a mistake and I knew it. I hated myself for having raised Terri’s expectations about me; but I hated myself more for having to pretend that I wanted to carry on. I decided that when I saw her in the theatre that evening I would tell her that it all had to stop.

  At tea-time I ate early and quickly and I went hurrying over to the theatre. I had to fight off the notion that I was transparent, that everyone knew where I was going and whom I was seeing. It seemed like I passed everyone who knew me. Nikki, Sammy, Gail. Even Luca Valletti, who wasn’t usually to be found outside his performance hours, was there outside the offices having a smoke with Pinky. They all looked up and gave me a knowing smile. Or so I feared.

  I went into the theatre through the front entrance, through the hushed and shadowy auditorium, skipped up the steps onto the stage and behind the thick red curtains. There was no one around. I found a stool to sit on between the upright wing-flats and waited in the dark.

  A darkened backstage is a place full of ghosts. You expect silence, but things creak. You feel the tension of hanging wires, and pendulum weights and flimsy flats. After a while a crack of light appeared briefly as the rear door was opened and closed again.

  She came in. ‘This is crazy,’ she said.

  ‘Yes.’

  But she flung herself at me and we kissed. All the time we were kissing I felt like a meteorite falling to the earth. I wanted to pull back but the taste of her mouth inflamed me all over again. Her kisses sparked memories of that phosphorescence on the dark beach as she invited me to go further. She put her hand inside my shirt and raked my back with her fingernails. I was weak. I had a sense of myself as a moral coward as I kissed her back.

  Just then I felt a draught, and one of the flats wobbled slightly. Someone was backstage with us.

  ‘Slutcha.’

  The gravel voice was unmistakable, coming from out of the darkness, somewhere between the unsteady flats.

  ‘No,’ Terri breathed. ‘No.’

  ‘And you, you cowson.’

  I still couldn’t see where the voice was coming from but I could almost scent the toxic breath on which it travelled. Colin knew we were there but it was plain that he could only see us in shadow. Perhaps he thought that I was Luca Valletti. My instincts were conflicted. I wanted to run but with Terri in my arms I felt emboldened. ‘Slip out the back way,’ I said to her. ‘I’ll face him.’

  I felt her peel away from me as I turned. I took a step towards the voice. Colin moved from behind a black-painted flat, making it quiver. His face was in darkness. I could see his teeth bared in the shadows. He powered forward at me but in his momentum he tripped over one of the iron weights holding down the stage-braces and he went sprawling, down onto his knees. One of the flats at the edge of the stage fell forward on to him.

  Terri grabbed me. She put her face right up to mine. ‘Get out,’ she hissed. ‘Get out or you’re dead.’

  I saw him throw off the fallen flat and my fight instincts liquidised and turned to flight. I squeezed between the back flat and let myself out of the back door, slamming it behind me. I ran quickly up the alley behind the theatre, sure of the route from when I’d played Captain Blood with the children. I took the steps three at a time and went out onto the theatre roof.

  Once on the roof it occurred to me that I’d trapped myself. I’d left myself no way out. There was a low wall on the east side of the roof and a space between a humming ventilator and it. I squeezed in between them and lay down. The ladybirds were still swarming. Though their numbers had diminished they seemed to target me as I lay behind the ducting.

  I was breathing hard. I lay there listening, trying to filter the sounds. I hadn’t heard anyone come from behind me or up the steps to the roof. There was nothing to be heard from inside the theatre. Above the hum from the ventilator I could hear snatches of conversations of holidaymakers. There was the occasional laugh or cry of mirth; and I could hear the low-level buzz of some familiar voices from below me. It was Luca and Pinky, having a smoke below. Though I identified their voices easily enough I couldn’t make out what they were saying.

  Colin might have seen Luca chatting with Pinky; in which case he would have realised that Luca was not his man. If he hadn’t seen them I feared that he would attack the Italian Tenor on leaving the theatre. I had no doubt of the violence of which Colin was capable. Terri had told me of previous convictions for grievous bodily harm and a whole number of assaults for which he’d never been brought to book. I lay in my cowardly hiding place praying that at least he’d spotted Luca outside the theatre before going inside.

  I stayed there for a long time, not daring to move. It occurred to me that he was waiting; that he had an almost supernatural instinct for knowing that I was still in the vicinity; that he could smell my fear. Eventually I started to hear more and more people draw up outside the theatre doors below. I was already late for my next duty. My heart had stopped hammering and I came to a decision that I should go.

  It was then that I heard tiny steps making their way up onto the roof. They were very slow steps, as if made by someone who was trying not to be heard. I had to strain my ears to listen to them over the hum of the ventilator. But my hearing was so focused that the steps were unmistakable. I had to still myself all over again.

  The steps reached the rooftop. And though they were still small steps, they were easier to distinguish now because of the gravel on the roof that crunched very lightly underfoot. I held my breath. The steps seemed to approach me and then moved away again, towards the edge from where I’d almost fallen. I tried calibrating the steps. Was it a tiny step, suggesting that Terri had come up onto the roof to look for me? Or did the step belong to Colin, rolling his foot like a hunter in the woods?

  I lay there in agony as the steps moved across the dusty, gravelled surface of the roof. I considered raising my head to see if I could look around or across or through the humming ventilator. But I was afraid any movement might alert the hunter. Then a ladybird flew directly into my mouth, into my throat. I reflex gagged and I managed to roll the bug out of my mouth on a tiny wave of saliva.

  The footsteps had stopped. I felt certain that I had alerted the hunter to my presence. Surely enough, the footsteps started to approach me. I quickly decided that if discovered I would spring to attack. It seemed better than lying down to be beaten. I coiled myself in readiness.

  The footsteps stopped again closer to the ventilator. I felt a scratching on the side of the humming metal. Then a slight tapping, like fingers drumming. Slowly a head appeared from around the side of the ventilator.

  I sprang to my feet. But it wasn’t Colin at all. Neither was it Terri. It was a child, a small boy. I had startled him and he put his hands to his face to protect himself though he made no noise. For a moment I thought it was one of the camper’s children who had wandered up onto the roof.

  When he took his hands from his face I saw that his eyes were clear glass. I saw through the glass. When I say clear glass I mean I could see through them to the cloudless blue sky behind him.

  Inconceivable. But that’s what I saw.

  Of the boy’s father this time there was no sign. Though his face was distorted with fear, the boy was no longer cast in grey shadow. I recognised him easily. I knew perfectly well who he was. And as soon as I recognised who he was he rose slowly into the air, like a helium-filled balloon. He went higher and higher into the warm summer air, rising steadily into the blue. At last, he waved at me; a tiny gesture, like the time he had waved at me on the beach during the sandcastle competition from which he was excluded. The pinkness of his sunburned face was the last thing I remember as he rose even higher in the early evening sky, until at last he was the tiniest dot in the blue, and then he was gone.

  I don’t know how long I stayed there. Ultimately I had to go and face whatever was down there waiting for me. I decided that if Colin attacked me I would do my best to defend myself and hope that there would be other people a
round to help me. I got up from my hiding place, dusted myself down and cautiously made my way down the steps from the roof.

  12

  Blacker than night were the eyes of Felina

  I stepped lightly as I made my way down from the roof but my head was broiling. I was short of breath. My anxiety had given everything an intensity of colour and sound and my senses seemed super-sharp. I made certain that no one was at the bottom or hanging around by the back door before I followed the wall of the back of the building. Of course I was expecting Colin to call me back at any moment. I kept walking and turned up the side of the building, eventually breaking free from the shadows into the sizeable crowd moving into the theatre. My heart hammered, though there was comfort to be had in the crowd.

  The ladybirds were even now dotting the early evening air but their numbers had dropped massively. The task force was still sweeping the carcasses into piles, and some of the workers had incinerators with fuel-tanks strapped to their backs. The insect piles crackled and sent up twists of black smoke as they burned.

  A friendly camper walking to the theatre with his wife and three children stopped on the way. He looked concerned. ‘You all right?’ he said to me.

  ‘Touch of migraine,’ I said.

  ‘Coffee,’ he said. ‘My mother used to swear by coffee. She got migraine. She always said—’

  ‘I’ll try it,’ I said, skipping away and forcing a laugh at the same time. I hurried into the theatre. I was late for my evening duty. My hands were quivering. I took a deep breath and I knew I was going to have to quiet myself.

  That evening we had the talent show. The campers were the stars: they made up the evening programme with singing and dancing routines and the winner walked away with a decent cash prize. Tony and all of the Revue performers had an evening off while the talent show was run by my fellow Greencoats. Sammy with the wig acted as the show’s compere. I was supposed to be there ahead of the others, taking names and forming a schedule.