The Year of the Ladybird (6 page)

‘Aren’t you full time?’

He did a double-take and then looked over his shoulder as if the management team might be hiding in the tiny wardrobe. ‘Course I’m full-time. Full time up the road, too. You ready?
You look like shite! Hey! Let’s go.’

We walked together to the theatre for the morning briefing. I was keen to ask him some questions, but it was almost impossible to break into his constant stream of chatter.

‘Everyone’s doing two jobs, son, everyone; and if they’re not in the category of everyone they’re on the skim, they’ve all got their skim. Welcome to skim city.
Hey! If you find a way to live on these wages you let me know about it.’

‘Well, we do get food and lodgings,’ I suggested.

Mistake.

He leapt in front of me and stopped dead, brought his feet together and leaned forwards at forty-five degrees. ‘Food and lodgings! You call that mouse-cage that squirrel-farm a
lodging?’ We started moving again. ‘It’s a matchwood tent! A shanty-town! A papier-mâché ghetto! That famous East Coast wind better not blow too hard or it will all
come down. Huff and Puff Mr Wolf. What’s that? Pigs. Dunno. It’s not even a barn. Better not get caught with a woman in your room or they’ll have you off the site. And you
can’t even keep your own alcohol in your own room, have they told you that? As for food, hey!’ He suddenly lowered his voice. ‘Eyes right! Eyes right!’ I thought he was
asserting himself, saying ‘
I is right
’ but then he said ‘Three o’ clock!’ and I realised that he wanted me to look to my right-hand side.

A very pretty girl in a tiny bikini was strolling away from us.

‘You like school dinner? I f’kin don’t. Okay if you want spotted dick and jam roly-poly every Wednesday and pummelled spuds and choked carrots and strangled sprouts and canteen
cuisine . . . Eyes left! Eyes left!’

To the left, two good-looking full-figured mothers led their toddlers over to the play-sand.

‘. . . and strangled sprouts and canteen catering well let me tell you I had better grub in the fuckin’ army and if that’s your idea of a good . . . Eyes right, eyes right,
four o’clock.’

I glanced to the right and a very old lady with dowager’s hump came creeping towards us. Nobby howled with laughter. ‘Got you there, son, didn’t I? Walked into that one you
did! Shake hands! Hey! Hey!’

I admitted he’d ‘got me’ there. Nobby refused to move on until I shook his outstretched hand. Then he started up again with his unbroken patter. I was glad when we reached the
theatre. I looked at my watch. It was 9.15 a.m. I hadn’t even got to the day’s briefing and I was dog-tired.

Nobby’s excitable energy wasn’t the only reason why I was so shattered. I’d had my worst night so far. I couldn’t sleep. I’d had the window wide
open but the air was stifling. Every time I thought I might drift off to sleep I had an image of Terri mouthing that single word at me.

In fact it wasn’t just while I was sleeping. After the assault on Luca Valletti I’d taken a seat at the side of the theatre watching the show without really seeing any of it. The
entire Variety act. Paget and Drum, the comedy duo. Shelly Breeze – I’m not making up these names – doing her diva routine. Abdul-Shazam in his fez inserting swords into a casket
containing one of the dancers. Oh yes, Nikki danced at the edge of the stage. She was magnificent under stage lights. All the dancers were and they maintained dazzling smiles that you rarely got to
see offstage. But at some point in the show Nikki caught my eye, and she winked at me.

Finally Luca, consummate professional that he was, topped off the show. He had a white silk scarf wrapped tightly around his bruised throat and you wouldn’t have known what had taken place
in that theatre ninety minutes earlier. He had this farewell song – something about fighting in the Foreign Legion – where he waved a white handkerchief and the ladies in the audience
took pocket handkerchiefs out of their handbags and waved back at him.

They lapped it up. But I couldn’t help thinking about what was going on in Luca’s head as he smiled and sang and levelled the blade of his hand at his breast.

So I’d spent an entire evening thinking about Terri; and I’d spent a night tossing and turning in the heat with her face appearing in the dark. Now I was about to go into the theatre
where I would see her cleaning the stage. I knew I was going to have to fight to avert my eyes. I thought I was transparent and that the chirpy mad Mancunian or Nikki or Tony or all of them would
see through me straight away. I was ready-tailored Music Hall material. I’d only been in the camp a week and I’d fallen for the old story about rescuing the woman with the
mop-and-bucket.

But when I walked in I didn’t get to see Terri at all. A much older woman with a dry scowl and a giant hair-pin was up on stage swinging the mop to and fro giving the boards a good
grinding. Tony sat in the front row of the seats, legs spread far apart, his well packed midriff spilling over his belt buckle. He looked glum.

‘Where’s Punch and Judy, then?’ I said. I was trying to sound distant and casual.

‘What?’

I jerked a thumb at the new cleaner.

‘Chance they’ll be fired,’ Tony said.

I was crestfallen. ‘Really?’

‘Yes, really,’ he said dryly. ‘Turns out it’s against camp rules to disconnect the windpipe of your bill-topping Italian Tenor. Who’d have thought it? What’s
the world coming to?’ He yawned; a little theatrically, I thought. Then his eyes fell on my room-mate behind me. ‘Nobby, you good-for-nothing Mancunian bastard.’

‘Charming, fucking charming,’ said Nobby, ‘you get one dose of gastroenteritis for a couple of days, one miserly virus and you stay off work to protect your mates from
contagion and what abuse do you get? What abuse do you get? I’m glad you asked me that. I’ll tell you what abuse you get . . .’

But I wasn’t listening. I sat down. I was too busy thinking about whether something precious had been torn away from me or whether I’d had a lucky escape. I know that if Terri had
asked me to walk over a cliff with her I would have followed, just for the chance of a kiss on the way down.

Nikki, in crisply laundered whites, crashed in the seat next to me. ‘Why the long face?’ She lifted her leg so that her exquisite right ankle balanced on her tantalising left knee.
Her pleated white skirt fell away to expose her tanned thighs.

I realised she was talking to me. ‘Can’t sleep. Since I’ve been here.’

‘You’re not drinking enough, college boy. Or too much.’

‘I don’t like getting drunk. I’m a mean drunk.’

She looked at me sceptically and was about to speak when Tony jumped out of his seat and clapped his hands loudly.

‘Right then, if I can interrupt you love birds,’ – he was looking at me and Nikki – ‘let me point out we have a big day ahead of us. Before that, please, a big
round of applause for Nobby who decided to come to work today.’

Ironic applause followed. I found myself joining in.

‘Fucking charming, that!’ Nobby said. He started to say a lot more but Tony waved him into silence.

‘Girls, whist-drive this morning and round-the-clock. Sammy, you do the Glamorous Grandmother and don’t let those old birds grab your wig this week. Nobby, supervise the Crown Bowls
if you please.’

‘Fuckin ’ell,’ Nobby croaked, but to himself.

‘Nikki, show David the cheeky on the Junior Tarzan and the Bathing Belle around the pool. This afternoon, everyone in here with me for the prize giving and farewell. That means
all of
you
and that means
you
as well, Nobby. Right, out you go, and smile like it’s already home-time.’

By ten o’clock we had the open-air swimming pool arena set up, with the PA crackling and buzzing. It was already sweltering. We broke the rules and took off our heavy blazers and worked
instead in our whites. Let them fire us, Nikki said, drawing columns on a sheet of paper attached to her clipboard. Then she looked up, put her pen behind her ear and reached out to hook something
off my shirt. It was a ladybird. She blew it off her finger.

‘And another,’ she said finding a second on my collar. ‘They’re all over you.’

The ladybirds darting through the sultry morning air were well outnumbered by the Junior Tarzans. The sunshine seemed to bring them out. The Tarzans, that is. About seventy or eighty skinny kids
and a dozen fat ones, all aged between seven and eleven, sporting swimwear and lined up around the edge of the pool. It was my job to employ the PA system to rustle up a couple of impartial judges,
over which Nikki would preside. I was told to whittle the eighty kids down to a more manageable dozen. I had to ‘interview’ each kid in turn and keep it interesting. I failed. The only
thing I could think of doing was to get each lad to say his name into the microphone and to offer a semblance of a Tarzan-like jungle cry. After the discriminating judges had got the number down to
a dozen contenders, we started again, this time with a fiendish question, which was ‘Do you help your mum with the housework?’ These things passed as entertainment and all the boys got
a stick of rock. The winner’s name – the boy with the best blood-curdling cry – had his name written down on the clipboard for the prize-giving show.

There was a half hour break before we ran the Bathing Belle competition designed for young women aged between 16 and 21. This time I got to be a judge along with a fresh pair of holidaymakers
and Nikki did the interviewing. It all went fine but the heat was building. At the hottest part of the day the girls were forced to swat the flying bugs as they described their hobbies and
expressed an interest in World Peace.

We agreed on a pretty winner and Nikki made the announcement. Nikki embarrassed me by declaring that part of the prize was the chance to give me a kiss. I took it all in good part as the winner
planted her lips on my cheek. It wasn’t exactly a hardship.

As the Bathing Belle competition was wrapped up, half a dozen sexy promotions girls dressed in hot-pants and low-cut blouses moved about the campers with trays of cigarettes. The hot-pants
livery matched the design on the cigarette pack. It was a marketing drive for a cigarette called Players No. 6, a market-leader of the time.

One of the No. 6 girls went into action on me, but I explained I was a non-smoker. I got chatting and she said all the girls were ‘models on assignment’. I didn’t know what
that meant. To me they looked like pretty girls peddling coffin nails; though the girls were okay and I kept that opinion to myself. I noticed that Nikki, also a non-smoker, was sniffy with
them.

Nikki and I took our clipboards and tin bins – emptied of candied rock – away from the pool and went to the cool of the cafe. I had a question for my fellow Greencoat. ‘Nikki,
is everyone here on the take?’

I wasn’t just thinking about what Nobby had told me. I was also flashing back on Colin’s words on my first day.
Give ’em a cigarette but don’t never buy ’em a
drink.

‘Why do you ask that?’

‘Dunno. I thought we were just paid to give everyone a fun time. But it seems like everybody’s got an angle.’

As I spoke, one of the No. 6 girls drifted near plying her wares, all smiles, full of easy charm.

‘Watch that girl,’ Nikki said.

The girl, a willowy brunette, made a sale to a beefy looking man seated at a table with his wife and three children. Everyone was sucking on a straw dipped in a vividly coloured milkshake. Money
exchanged hands and the girl took a pack of cigarettes from her tray. She popped the cellophane wrapper, flipped open the pack and flicked the box so that she could proffer one of the cigarettes to
the customer. Then she discarded the cellophane wrapper in her tray. The customer, impressed by this sexy, extra little service smiled happily and the girl moved on to the next table.

‘What did you see?’ Nikki said.

‘Nothing.’

Nikki sniffed. ‘Not very clever for a college boy, are you?’

‘Uh?’

‘She makes the sale. She unwraps the pack for him as a nice little service. She flips open the lid and offers him a ciggie and that’s when she takes the voucher out of the pack. She
tosses the voucher, with the wrapper, back into her tray and lights the ciggie for the dumb customer. Those vouchers trade for goods. It takes an age to save up the vouchers but if you skim one off
each sale it’s worth a small fortune to you. Watch her again.’

I studied the girl making another sale and this time I saw it: a green voucher slipped out of the pack and dumped in the tray with the wrappings. ‘Doesn’t anyone ever
complain?’ I asked.

‘Most don’t notice. Most who do notice, they let it go. When the one person in every hundred complains she’ll apologise and give it back. If the customer complains further she
might even pretend to cry and will claim it’s the only way they get paid. She’ll live with one complaint in a hundred.’

‘Well, it’s a small thing.’

‘It’s fucking stealing, is what it is,’ Nikki said sharply.

‘Okay, okay. You’re right.’

But she was exercised now. ‘The whole camp is run like this. Who gets the kickback for letting these girls come in? Pinky and Perky, that’s who.’ Perky I discovered was her pet
name for the man in the blue blazer who’d interviewed me while feeding sparrows from his desk. ‘Every promo you see on this site. Look at the little ponce who runs the arcade machine.
He sponsors the Bathing Belle prize. You’ll see why this afternoon. And the bookie who comes on Donkey Derby day to fleece the campers. He pays to get his nose in the trough. Why
haven’t you got a uniform that fits? Cos they budget for the gear but pocket it rather than give Dot the money she needs to kit us out. Everyone here has an angle.’

‘I don’t have an angle.’

‘Yes, you do.’

‘What’s my angle, then?’

I didn’t get an answer. She slipped on her sunglasses and looked away from me.