The Year of the Ladybird Read online

  This last bit of rhetoric not only got enormous applause but it got a standing ovation. It also pulled me to my feet. Not because I thought that what he was saying was either brilliant or even convincing but my sense of self-preservation was working overtime. Perhaps I’m a coward. It’s possible. But I’m not stupid. This wasn’t a rational position to be in. To have resisted the mob in this context would have been like standing in front a herd of stampeding cattle. As I joined in the hand-clapping, as lightly as I could, I noticed the way that Carter, lapping up the applause, darted his tongue rapidly between his lips, or shoved his tongue into his cheek to bubble out the side of his face. It was a tic I observed in him every time he paused in his oratory to take the applause from the floor.

  The Way Forward was very clear. Immigrants who were stealing our jobs would be repatriated. They would be deported. Incentives would be found to encourage them to leave the country and if that was not acceptable then secure methods would be found to make the deportation happen. When that was done legislation would be passed to disengage the Jewish monopoly of the financial institutions. After that the Reds would be systematically exposed and their stranglehold on all public national and local apparatus of the state would be broken.

  I give you only a summary of the Way Forward, but this speech went on for an hour, punctuated by regular outbreaks of wild applause. The audience got to its feet on numerous occasions, and I of course with it, even though nothing I heard made any kind of sense to me. Maybe I was too fixated on the man’s darting tongue.

  The speeches concluded and the platform group rose to disperse. As the audience stood up the skinhead foot-soldiers went around with plastic buckets encouraging donations. Norman Prosser and some others at the front made a show of putting large denomination notes into the buckets but I noticed most people dropped in a bit of loose change and when the bucket came my way I clattered in a few pennies.

  I felt a hand on my shoulder. ‘Couple o’ minutes an’ we’re out of here.’ It was Colin. He shoved a fiver into my hand. ‘Get another drink and a whisky for me.’

  I was grateful for the role. I dodged another bucket and an incoming Spearhead vendor and made my way to the bar. There was nothing I could do but wait out my time before getting a lift back to the camp. At the bar I bought myself another pint of bitter, a whisky for Colin and a whisky for myself. I didn’t want the latter but I felt like I needed it. I leaned against the bar sipping my drinks and watching buoyant party-members leave in small groups, some of them resting ceremonial flags on poles across their shoulder.

  Colin re-appeared. He had a way of ghosting to your side. ‘What you make of that then?’

  ‘Interesting,’ I said.

  His face was like a sea-washed stone. ‘Interesting, eh?’ Then for the first time ever I saw him laugh. It was a cynical laugh. ‘Listen, I’m not a cunt. I know it ain’t where you’re at. I told Tony but he thought you deserved a chance.’

  I’m not sure what chance it was that was being offered to me, but I nodded my appreciation.

  ‘Listen,’ he said again. ‘You’re honest. I like that. You come to me for anything. You got that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘You ’aven’t got it.’

  ‘Yes, I have.’

  ‘No, you don’t get it. You come to me for anything. Any reason.’

  I was embarrassed by the idea that Colin was telling me he’d taken a liking to me. I didn’t know what to say so I offered to buy him a beer, but we were interrupted by Tony. ‘Enjoy any of that, David?’

  Colin rescued me from having to think of an answer. He said to Tony, ‘Any word?’

  ‘Suspended without pay, old son, and banned from the camp for two weeks.’

  Colin swore. ‘Cowsons.’

  Tony put a forefinger under his own right eye and pulled down the fold of skin there. ‘You’re lucky that I put a word in for you,’ he said. ‘Be grateful. Could have been a lot worse.’He switched his gaze to me. His lower lip was moist. ‘A lot worse.’

  I recalled what Norman Prosser had said about them looking after their own. It seemed that Colin’s party membership had come in useful: Tony would have some sway with Pinky and the rest of the camp management team. In the next moment I heard someone call Colin by his name but he didn’t look up. Instead, while Tony was buying more drinks at the bar Colin drew me aside and tapped me with extreme delicacy on my breastbone. ‘While I’m away I want you to keep an eye open.’

  I shuffled. ‘Keep an eye open for what?’

  ‘If she talks to anyone, I want to know.’ He fixed me with an intense look. It was like having someone insert their thumbs into your eye sockets.

  Most of the party members were drifting away, with their flags and regalia, while we knocked back our drinks. Tony seemed upbeat, cheerful. He wanted us to stay but Colin was ready to leave. But not before Norman Prosser came bustling through.

  ‘Where’s my young student?’ he said loudly. The whisky had given him a red complexion and there was a glow of perspiration on his jowls. When he put a hand either side of my face and gently patted my right cheek I could smell his cologne. He was all smiles. ‘I saw you listening. I saw you listening. And that’s all I ask, that you students give us a fair hearing and then spread the word. That’s not unfair, is it? You want another drink?’

  ‘He doesn’t,’ Colin said. ‘We’re away.’

  ‘Now you’ve got Colin if you need anything from us,’ Prosser said.

  ‘Colin’s not going to be around for a bit,’ Tony said.

  Prosser tipped his head back to look at Tony. From that simple remark he seemed to gather all he needed to know. ‘Well, in that case he’s got you.’

  ‘Give the lad a breavin’ space,’ Colin said.

  Prosser brushed some imaginary lint from my shoulder. ‘Never mind these two. Colin’s a good spotter. We’re like family and you come to me for anything at all. Are you all right for a few quid?’

  ‘I’m fine thank you, Mr Prosser.’ I said.

  ‘Norman to you. And you come to us for anything at all.’

  Out in the car park the two back-seat passengers were waiting by the car. They stood in their high-laced Doc Martens with their arms folded, fists bunched behind their biceps. I hadn’t seen them in the meeting though I knew that’s where they’d been. They sized me up like I was the Prodigal Son. Or the fatted calf, ready for the knife.

  We climbed in and set off to return to the coast.

  ‘Ignore Norman,’ Colin said. ‘He can’t hold his drink.’

  ‘What’s Norman said then?’ asked one of the lads in the back.

  Colin ignored the question so I thought I should, too. There was no further discussion about the meeting and I certainly wasn’t going to bring up the topic. Meanwhile Colin drove in silence, utterly focused on the heat-shimmering road ahead.

  At one point in the journey Colin stopped the car and took out a cloth to wipe away the huge number of bugs that had splattered the windscreen. I studied his face as he worked. It was flat and emotionless; but it was full of history. Deep diagonals raged across his forehead and twisted over his brow. I wondered if there were people who could read faces, in the same way that a palmist looks at your hands.

  He caught me looking and I glanced away sharpish.

  Shortly after he started again, the buck-tooth passenger in the back said, completely out of the blue, ‘Is he a poof, then?’

  ‘Ask him yourself,’ Colin said.

  ‘Are you a poof, then?’

  I realised he was talking about me. I turned and looked him in the eye but said nothing.

  After a while the same boy piped up again. ‘He thinks we’re all cunts,’ he said.

  I turned around a second time. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t think Colin is a cunt. And I don’t think your mate is a cunt either.’

  ‘Ha!’ shouted Colin, and he hooted his horn. ‘That’s fucked you!’ Then he hit his horn again. ‘You’re out your league wi
’ this boy! Haha!’

  After that we drove back to the camp in complete silence.

  6

  The extraordinary seduction of marine phosphorescence

  I spent the rest of the afternoon sleeping. I wasn’t accustomed to drinking in the day-time – whisky or beer – and, what with the heat, when I got back I just crashed on my pallet bed. By the time I awoke I’d missed tea at the canteen. I remember sitting up on my bed in a semi-stupor, gazing down at the floor where my sandals lay alongside the copy of Spearhead magazine while a stupid newspaper shoutline Was Jesus A Fascist? looped around my head. It was half an hour before the paralysis left me and I was able to drag myself off to the shower.

  It had been my plan to wander into the town of Skegness that evening, to get away from the camp, but I still felt sluggish and I decided it was too late. I needed to eat. I trailed over to the Fish & Chip bar but even that failed to shake me from my stupor.

  Several drinking venues were available on the site. There was a licensed ballroom where older couples did the foxtrot and the cha-cha-cha but following my afternoon with the National Front I didn’t feel up for either. There was another watering hole known as the Tap Room featuring a stout and rather warty lady called Bertha who slapped the piano stride-style for a traditional singalong. ‘The Old Bull and Bush’ and all that. Then there was the strip-lit giant aircraft hangar of the Slowboat. If you didn’t like any of these, the last recourse was a tiny bar situated in a corner of the theatre foyer, a hideaway favoured by the professional acts if they wanted a drink after a performance, and that’s where I decided to go. But of course there was no Variety show on a Saturday evening, so the Review Bar as it was titled, was closed. I settled instead for the Slowboat.

  The residency three-piece band bashed away on stage at the far end of the hangar: drums, organ and bass artlessly covering standards and classics. Dozens of circular table-and-chair sets filled the space between the band and the bar, populated with new holidaymakers relaxed and drinking at a hearty pace that would last all week and quicken on Friday. I made for the bar and was surprised to see Luca Valletti sitting near the band and in his civvies. He was smoking a cigarette and he had a glass of wine in front of him. I wanted to go over but he seemed deep in conversation with a woman I knew to be the girlfriend of one of the band members. Anyway, I was immediately distracted when I was rounded on by a coven of kitchen girls.

  ‘Hey it’s him from the college of knowledge! Show us your IQ!’

  I was learning how to racquet back the banter but I still couldn’t stop myself from blushing. I said my IQ was too big for any of them. It got a big cheer which made a lot of people turn round to look at us. The girls took every thing as a double-entendre, even if there wasn’t one. They wanted everything to be a double-entendre. You could say I once knew a man who kept an aardvark in his garden shed and they would treat it as a sexual remark. They were always excitable, and always thirsty for lager.

  ‘Come and drink with us, college boy!’

  There was no way out.

  ‘He fancies you, Rachel,’ said Pauline, a girl with luscious lips and thick eye-liner. ‘You could teach him how to fuck.’

  This sort of thing could go on for hours. They bought me a drink. It was all teasing, all talk. At least I suspect it was. I had no idea what would happen if you tried to take one of them up on all this. Not that I was interested, and neither would I have had the courage. I bought a round of drinks back, for Pauline and Rachel and for two other girls. It was while I was waiting for my change at the bar that I felt someone’s eyes on me.

  Terri stood alone at the far end of the bar. When people say ‘my heart missed a beat’ I don’t believe that phrase exactly describes the experience. I felt a sudden suffocation, a noose tightening around my throat, an instant of time freezing when all sound was sucked out of that giant hangar of a bar. I had the uncanny and stupid notion that she had been able to do that to me just by looking, like a moment of witchcraft. And then just as quickly everything was normal again.

  I turned away with the drinks I’d bought for the girls. Did my hand tremble? When I looked again at her she was still gazing back at me. She almost huddled into the corner of the bar, as if she was trying to make herself small. Her arms were folded and she was shrunk into herself. She wore a simple black dress, somewhat low cut and reaching halfway down to her knees. The reason I was so struck by her dress was that this was the first time I’d seen either her bare arms or her bare legs. The lustrous dark hair that she always wore tied back now fell forward in a loose wave across one side of her face.

  I went over to her, just as if pulled by a magic thread. As I approached she dropped her eye contact and looked away, squeezing herself with her folded arms. ‘I thought you’d been banned,’ I said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Or that you were suspended?’

  ‘Not me.’ She averted her face, as if she’d found new interest in the band. Anyone looking at our body language would assume that she was bored but trapped by my conversation. She wore large gold ear-rings and a gold bangle that reminded me of something Luca had said about women.

  ‘I saw Colin today. At a meeting.’

  That surprised her. She flickered a glance at me and then looked away again.

  ‘Not that I’m one of them,’ I said.

  ‘So why were you there?’

  ‘It was a mistake.’

  ‘You went to a p’litical meeting by mistake? Not very bright, are you?’

  ‘Did I claim to be bright?’

  At last she looked at me. Her eyes had a feline flame, but with a dissolving quality, an intelligence behind them as if she processed and documented every detail that came before her. She wore eyeliner and a little lipstick, again something I’d never seen on her before. Some instinct told me I should back away. Instead I said, ‘Can I buy you a drink?’

  She looked away again. ‘No, you can’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because everyone will see you buy me a drink.’

  ‘Do you want me to go away?’

  ‘Of course not. Why do you think I’m here?’

  The remark left me open-mouthed. ‘So . . . I can’t buy you a drink. I can’t talk with you because you won’t look at me. What am I to do?’

  ‘You figure out a solution. You’re the one who is supposed to be clever.’

  Not that clever, is what I wanted to say. I asked her where Colin was and she said that following the meeting he had gone back to London. He would be staying down in the capital while his suspension was in force. When I asked why she hadn’t gone with him she said that they simply couldn’t afford for her not to be working. I flashed on what Colin had said in the pub that afternoon and it occurred to me that this, at least, might give me permission to be seen talking to her. I would also be keeping any predators away.

  But even that was no use if she couldn’t look me in the eye. I felt emboldened and I said, ‘It will be dark in an hour. We could go for a walk on the beach.’

  ‘Up to the dunes? Bit obvious, aincha?’

  ‘That’s not what I meant.’

  It really wasn’t. For one thing the idea of the dunes at night didn’t appeal; secondly you would be in serious danger of tripping over any number of fornicating couples in the dark.

  She unfolded her arms. On the bar and in her glass of gin-and-tonic was a pink plastic straw. She took a sip through the straw and set the glass back on the bar. Still without looking at me she said, ‘Do you know where the wreck is?’

  ‘Yes.’ Way up the beach in the other direction a very old shipwreck lay offshore. At low tide the masts and the rotting prow of the boat were exposed, festooned with lime-green seaweed.

  ‘Meet me opposite that. There’s a break in the wall.’

  She didn’t wait for an answer. She just left me and her unfinished gin-and-tonic without a backward glance. I was still watching her go when I felt a shadow at my side. I turned to see a row of perfectly white teeth
smiling at me. It was Luca Valletti. He put his mouth very close to my ear. ‘Stromboli,’ he whispered, ‘you play with a-fire.’ Then with a tiny, formal bow he walked away, leaving by the same door as Terri.

  I’d said one hour. I glanced at my watch. Then I rejoined the rowdy kitchen girls. If they had thought anything of my talking to Terri they said nothing. They were gathering themselves together to drift off to the Tap Room, ready for a raucous sing-song with Bertha at the ivories, so I joined them, knowing that I could easily melt away from the Tap Room without anyone noticing.

  It was a beautiful evening, still very warm but with the lightest of breezes streaming from the seaward. I left the camp by the north gate, passing the little white caravan with the palmist’s board outside. Though I’d never actually caught sight of the said Madame Rosa I couldn’t seem to resist trying to steal a glance inside every time I passed by. The caravan, though, was locked up for the night.

  The wreck was a fair stroll up the beach. Terri had chosen the direction that the fewest people went and a place that was poorly lit. When I got there she was loitering near the gap in the wall, her arms still folded.

  ‘We’ll walk along the beach.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Hang on, I want to take my shoes off.’

  We walked down to the water’s edge with Terri carrying her shoes. The water was midnight blue and a foamy phosphorescence emanated from the surf. It was like being in the Golden Wheel nightclub when they switch to ultra-violet light. She flicked her head in the direction she wanted to walk, away from the streetlamps. After a few yards she turned towards me and I saw the flash of her teeth and the whites of her eyes, but the rest of her was in semi-darkness. She seemed to me like a species of beautiful demon in the ethereal light.