The Year Of The Ladybird Part 2

'You're a great singer.'

She narrowed her eyes at me again, as if to see if I was mocking her. There were very tiny trace wrinkles at the corners of those eyes, whether from laughing or crying too much, I didn't know. I had a sudden impulse and I couldn't stop myself looking round, scanning the crowd of people laughing at the slow progress of this last race.

'He's not here. He's gone into town.'

'Who?' I knew perfectly well who she meant.

'My husband.'

'Oh, I wasn't,' I lied.

'No, you weren't,' she said. She blinked at me and I felt as though she could see right through me, and I felt stupid and young and naive beyond belief. Then she said, 'Next time a ladybird lands on you, you'll know what to say, won't you?'

She turned and went without looking back. And I thought, dumbly, is she talking about ladybirds?

I was pulled out of my reveries by a sharp tug on my blazer.

'Hey,' said Nikki, and I knew she'd seen me talking to Terri. She gave me the look.

'What?'

'Just hey,' she said.

3.

Of course one had heard speak of Dante That evening I met the top of the bill, but not before I was accosted on my way over to the Golden Wheel nightclub. It was some time after last orders had been called in the bars. I knew that I should have phoned home to let the folks know things were okay but it was too late and it was as I was pa.s.sing through the alley leading to the nightclub that a hand reached out of the darkness and roughly grabbed my wrist, whisking me round the corner.

I gasped. The hand released me and I was face to face with Colin the cleaner. He blinked at me, took a pack of cigarettes from the breast pocket of his neat short-sleeved shirt, opened the pack and offered me one. The next bit is ridiculous because even though I didn't smoke I found myself taking one. I mean, I'd smoked a few cigarettes here and there, but it was as if the invitation to take one of his cigarettes they were the short, unfiltered kind was irresistible. I put it between my lips and he flicked a smart lighter. I dipped the tip of the cigarette into the flame, knowing that he was still peering hard at me.

'Seen anything?' he said.

'About what?'

Without taking his eyes off mine he lit up a cigarette for himself. He inhaled deeply and then blew out a long thin blue plume of smoke. 'Anythin'.'

I hadn't the faintest idea what he was talking about. 'No.'

He held his cigarette in his left hand and I noticed that his right fist was bunched. He nodded slowly. The he held a single finger up to his face and gave a slight tug on the skin under his eye. 'Keep these open for me, will ya?'

'Sure.'

'How you fixed?'

'What?'

'They paid you yet?'

'No.' He knew that we all worked a week in hand and I wouldn't get paid until the end of the second week. It discouraged quitting without notice.

'Here.'He put a ten pound note in my top pocket.

'What's that for?'

'Help you out, son. Tide you over.'

A tenner was a lot of money. After deductions for food and palatial lodgings I was only being paid 25 per week. I wasn't sure I wanted to keep it. 'I can't take that off you.'

'Leave it out,' he said.

'I'll pay you back when I get my wages,' I said.

He turned very slowly and fixed me with a glare. 'It ain't a loan.'

After that he melted into the darkness. I was left alone with a cigarette I didn't want burning between my fingers and wondering what, exactly, I'd agreed to keep a look out for. I tossed my cigarette to the floor and stamped on it. Then I made my way to the Golden Wheel.

The Entertainments Business is hierarchical. As Greencoats we were at the bottom of the well. Then there were the dancers and the a.s.sistant Stage Manager and the DJ. Moving on up came the stage acts and their place in the pecking order was measured strictly by the font size of their name on the billboards. Near the crest were the musicians who accompanied the acts, and Abdul-Shazam. But topping the bill, highest paid and commanding the best dressing room facilities was the Italian Tenor.

I'd never even seen an Italian Tenor before I worked at the holiday camp. Mine was an era of rock music, with Punk just around the corner and within spitting distance. Yet in the holiday camp theatre they were still serving up the old-style Variety formula: comedy duos, dancing girls, lady singers in glamorous gowns, magic acts. Beyond that, and somehow connecting low music-hall traditions and operatic high culture, stood the Italian Tenor. Tony told me that every holiday camp theatre had one at the time. Not all of them were from Italy, even though they might have Italian names. Quite often they were from Italy-next-Blackburn.

Our Italian Tenor was the real deal. His name was Luca Valletti. I did the lights for him in The Golden Wheel that evening. Before the show, while I was still shaking off my strange encounter with Colin, he introduced himself to me, very politely, and asked if I would do something different.

'Doesn't Perry do the lights?' Perry was the ASM.

'I would like you to do it.'

Luca wanted to finish on a song called 'Autumn Leaves'. He showed me how to mix the gels on the lighting so that we could get green and gold at the outset, move through some appropriate variations and finish on red and gold. It didn't involve much more than gently moving a lever, but Luca wanted it done sensitively and at certain places in the song. Perry was a bit grumpy but cheered up when Luca bought him a drink and explained that it also meant that Perry could quit early. I was impressed with Luca Valletti. I mean with how he managed people.

Luca came out on stage in an immaculate pressed tuxedo with bow-tie. His dark hair was slicked back with hair-oil and he'd accentuated the sharp line of his pencil-moustache. The brilliant white light of the spots flashed along his high cheekbones and quickened the sheen in his eyes. A previously quite boisterous audience dropped into complete silence as the first few chords struck up.

Luca used a microphone but I sensed he didn't need one in that small s.p.a.ce. He performed a set of crooner type numbers all of which might have been dismissed by anyone of my generation. Sinatra. Como. Nat 'King' Cole. But to hear this live performance, even I had to concede that some of these old tunes were pretty good.

He wound up his act and went into 'Autumn Leaves'. I did my best with the light gels, as instructed. At the climax of the song he hit a superb, soaring note and as it faded I brought the coloured lights down through a narrowing circle. Luca finished to rapturous applause. When I killed the stage spots and bought the house lights up I noticed that amid the applause one or two women were dabbing their eyes with a handkerchief. I wanted to laugh: not at them, but at myself. It was moving. Transforming, even.

There was a small dance floor in the nightclub and the show was followed by a disco, mostly of golden oldies. The fact is that in the 1970s only kids like me listened to 70s music. The music most people listened to in the 1970s that is everyone over the age of twenty-five was their preferred 60s and 50s and 40s music.

After a while, Luca came out his dressing room, clutching a make-up case, ready to make a brisk exit. I intercepted him. I wanted to ask him if I'd done okay with the lights.

'Beautiful, my boy!' He had a strong Italian accent. He was a tiny, dapper figure who somehow managed to project himself as much larger on stage. 'Thank you! I appreciate. Very much.'

I said I was glad and all that because I'd been a bit nervous. I was burbling at him. He smiled at me. 'Come. I buy you drink.'

'That's not necessary!'

'I insist.'

We went to the bar and sat on high stools. He ordered a gla.s.s of wine for himself which in 1976 in that place, and had he been an Englishman, was dangerously close to a declaration of h.o.m.os.e.xuality. I opted for a manly pint of Federation Ale.

'You are studenta? What you study?'

'English Literature.'

'Ah! Shakespeare! But you know in reply I can offer you the divine Alighieri!'

'Dante. I know of Dante.' Well, I'd heard of Dante. I can't say I'd read him. Perhaps I'd read the book cover of a paperback.

'We are all in h.e.l.l,' he said cheerfully, 'we just don't know what level. What a joy, to have a person of culture in a place such as this.' He offered a hand to shake and I told him my name. He held up his wine so that we could clink gla.s.ses.

He asked me what I would do with my studies and with my life. I did have one half-formed and slightly ridiculous ambition, one that I tended to keep very quiet about but for some reason I blurted it out. 'I'd like to be a writer.'

He widened his eyes at me and then tilted back his head. Then he stroked his chin judiciously and leaned forward close enough for me to smell his coconut-scented hair-oil. 'Then I advise you. If you go into this kind of life, you need a strong a-heart. And a strong liver. In some ways it is like show business. You need a strong liver because some days you only eat bread. And find a good woman. This is terribly important. Not one of these silly girls who likes shiny necklaces and bangles and such things. No.' He summarised this advice for me. 'Good heart; good liver; good woman.'

Then he tipped back the remains of his wine, stood up and bowed formally. He wished me a buona notte and was gone. I stayed at the bar supping my beer. When I looked round the nightclub I noticed quite a few women in there who seemed to like shiny necklaces and bangles and such things.

But I liked the holidaymakers. They were relaxed, friendly and h.e.l.l-bent on enjoying their well deserved break from the grubby offices and the scruffy factories and the dirty coal-mines of their industrial year. I saw them at their best for the two weeks when they put down their loads and kicked off their shoes. They laughed easily and loved to share a joke or a story. I saw how the mothers loved and how the fathers indulged their children. Perhaps it was that, and the fatherly talk from Luca Valletti, that made me call home the next day.

The conversation started badly. 'You've remembered us, then,' my stepdad said.

I think I had disappointed Ken. I don't know when or how it started. He was a thoroughly decent man who had provided everything for me and my mother. Ken had spent his life developing his building business. Raised in poverty, he knew the value of a good roof. I think he was always afraid that some misfortune, or a thief, or bad luck would come round and steal some of the tiles from the roof of our own home. Yes, he was a working man made good but he was the kind who wants to pull the ladder up behind him so that no one else from a similar background can make good.

As an only child he had no biological children of his own it was somehow a.s.sumed that I would follow him into his business. I'd surprised him by wanting to go to college and by standing up to him. He took it badly, as if my rejection of his trade was a personal insult. I don't know why I'd never once played that despicable game of saying you're not my real dad and so on. Now that I was old enough to understand what he'd done for us, I was grateful to him. But he seemed to take the whole college thing as a rejection of what he'd done for me and my mother, too.

I knew that his plan for me to work with and for him that summer was part of a deeper scheme to embroil me in his business. Presumably he thought I would come to my senses after I'd finished my three years at college. In a sense I had run away from all of this; run away to sea, or at least to the seaside.

The conversation with Ken was short and stilted. He pa.s.sed me on to my mother, who asked a lot of questions about where was I washing my laundry and where was I doing my shopping. She finally came to the point. 'Why Skegness? Why have you gone to Skegness?'

'I told you. There's a job here. Plus I've got one of the better jobs going.'

'It's an awful place.'

'No it isn't. It's a lot of fun.'

'Of all the places you could choose,' she said. 'Of all the places.'

The days were getting hotter. The thermometer gla.s.s was reading the upper eighties day after day. It was all highly unusual for this temperate island of ours so the cool shadows of the empty theatre were a regular seduction. I still wasn't sleeping well and during one of my breaks I knew I could find a seat in the dark corner of the auditorium as a comfortable place to take a nap. I was snoozing in there one evening, drifting in and out of sleep, disturbed now and again as the theatre acts began to arrive to make preparation for the big Variety show we had that night. It was too early for any of the holidaymakers to be inside so the acts breezed in through the front of the house, walked down the aisle and up the stage steps to get behind the wings.

I woke properly to the sound of an industrial vacuum cleaner. It was Terri, pushing the machine around the carpet in front of the musician's pit just below and in front of the stage. I smacked my lips and rubbed my cheeks, thinking I'd better go and throw water on my face. Then to the left of the stage the emergency doors swung open and Colin came striding in. He spoke to Terri. The hoover was still roaring so I couldn't hear what was said; and I was pretty sure neither of them knew I was up in the upper auditorium watching them from the shadows. Terri opened her mouth and said something in reply.

It was like watching a dumb-show. Colin seized his wife by the throat with one hand. He shook her side to side and lifted her a few inches off the ground. It was like seeing a lurcher shake a rabbit. Then he dropped her back on her feet, turned around and marched out of the theatre the way he'd come in.

It all happened in a second. Terri stood with her hands on her hips, looking at the door by which Colin had left. After a few moments she switched off the hoover. She bent to pick up some cleaning cloths and a spray-polish, starting in on the mahogany woodwork that defined the edge of the stage. Whatever had just happened, it didn't seem to faze her much.

I was trying to think how I might slip out without her noticing. I didn't want her to know that I'd just seen that small exhibition of marital bliss. But then she started singing again. At first she sang softly, then after a few bars she let her voice ring out, just as she had the previous morning. Whoever was in her heart when she sang these songs, I couldn't imagine it had much to do with Colin. She was using her singing as antidote to her woes. It was self-medication.

From behind me I heard the swing doors open and then I saw Luca Valletti padding down the carpeted aisle. Luca didn't see me either. He had his make-up bag in one hand and his other arm was flung wide. His face was illuminated with delight.

'My darling girl!' he shouted. 'What is this song-bird I hear?'

Terri stopped in mid-flight. As she turned to him in surprise her palm fluttered to her face in that already familiar gesture.

Luca moved towards her in a skip. 'Beautiful, my darling! Beautiful! Why you not on the stage with me? It's a crime! We should make music! We should make the duet! It's like the Cinderella to see you here when you should be up there! Under the lights! It's a songbird you are! A beautiful songbird.'

Luca stood with his hand outstretched to her, smiling, his head tilted back and to the side, delighted.

The emergency exit door cracked open. Colin came in. He seemed to be in no hurry and yet something in his step alarmed me. It had calm intention but his face was impa.s.sive. As he crossed in front of the stage he was like a postman walking up to someone's front door with a letter.

He attacked the unprepared Luca and with his left hand around the Italian Tenor's windpipe he pushed the singer up against the wall, sweeping him off the ground. He held his right fist bunched and drawn back ready to strike. 'Don't you no never never never speak to my wife like that! No f.u.c.kin' never! You don't never you f.u.c.kin wop, you what? ? If I ever you f.u.c.kin' wop! If I ever!'

I made out the words but it was more like hearing a dog barking rapidly. I got to my feet; not to intervene, because I was too afraid of Colin, but to let him know that there were other people around witnessing this a.s.sault. The racket drew others from back stage. Amongst them was Tony, his face half plastered with orange stage make-up. 'Put him down you dozy b.u.g.g.e.r!' Tony roared.

Colin didn't seem to hear any of it. He was in a zone of his own making. Tiny bubbles of saliva beaded his lips and yet his eyes were cold.

'Colin,' said Terri quietly, but firmly. 'Colin.'

Pinky Pardew appeared on the scene holding a carton of No. 6 cigarettes. 'What the f.u.c.k is going on?'

'Colin,' Terri said again.

Finally Colin released his grip on Luca's windpipe. The Italian slid to the floor, gasping, holding his throat.

Pinky was red in the face. 'Enough. You don't come near this theatre again. Nowhere near. Set foot in here again I'll have you off the camp and you can pick up your cards. I'm not having it.'

'He was having a pop at my wife!' Colin stated mildly. He pointed at Pinky. 'What would you do if he had a pop at your wife?' Colin looked around wildly. He pointed at me. 'What would you do if some wop had a run at your wife?'

'Go on, clear off,' Pinky shouted at him. 'Terri, you get on with your work. We've got a f.u.c.king show to run around here.'

Colin bared his teeth, put his head down and left.

Meanwhile Tony had helped Luca to his feet. Two of the dancers were fussing around him, dusting him down. 'It's finish,' the Italian was saying. 'It's finish here.'

'Come on, old son,' Tony said, 'let's get you backstage and straightened up.'

'No I can't. It's no possible. It's finish.'

'Look,' Tony said, 'you know we all worship you, Luca. Never mind that f.u.c.king idiot. We all love you. You know that.'

Terri burst into tears. 'I'm sorry, Luca. I'm so sorry!'

Luca suddenly recovered his composure. 'My darling, was it you? Or was it him?' He stepped over to Terri and took her hand, bent his head and pressed his lips to her trembling fingers. Then with a sad smile he released her hand. 'Yes. Si. Si. We have a show, no? We have a show.' He turned and skipped up the steps and onto the stage to disappear behind the wings, followed by Tony and the dancers, all still babbling incredulity at the event.

I was left out front with Pinky. Terri switched on the hoover and moved away from us. 'I saw it all,' I said.

Pinky sniffed. 'Was he?'