The Year Of The Ladybird Part 11

'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 carca.s.ses. 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 carca.s.ses 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 pa.s.sed 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 phosph.o.r.escence on the dark beach as she invited me to go further. She put her hand inside my s.h.i.+rt 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.

's.l.u.tcha.'

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 s.p.a.ce 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 s.n.a.t.c.hes 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 a.s.saults 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 gla.s.s. I saw through the gla.s.s. When I say clear gla.s.s 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 compet.i.tion 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 around 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 ma.s.sively. The task force was still sweeping the carca.s.ses 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.

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 c.r.a.p 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 m.u.f.fled 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 s.h.i.+p 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 k.n.o.bs 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 m.u.f.fled report of Sammy, in his bad toupee, 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 s.h.i.+t. 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 s.h.i.+p 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 ma.s.sive 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 s...o...b..at. n.o.bby 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 s...o...b..at and I planted my back against the wall so that I could scope both entrances.

Up there on the microphone n.o.bby 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. n.o.bby'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 s...o...b..at 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 a.s.sault; 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 gla.s.s; 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 would find out.

When I finally did drift off to sleep I had dreams. I was on the pier standing before the mechanised fortuneteller. The gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s. Clear gla.s.s, no pupil. They reflected the light and shadow of the room; and even though his eyes were clear gla.s.s I could see he was looking down at me. But because his eyes were clear gla.s.s 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. n.o.bby, 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 h.e.l.l.'

'Not letting that n.o.bby have a bad influence on you, are you? Not going to turn out like him?'

'That's f.u.c.king nice, that is,' n.o.bby spluttered. 'Charming. f.u.c.king 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. G.o.d knows why. But I wondered if n.o.bby 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 pa.s.sed through the beach wall tunnel and emerged onto the sand. 'I prefer fresh air and s.e.x 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 s.h.i.+ny plastic buckets amongst them, the innocence of the children almost made me want to cry. I very nearly did.