All the Rage (15 page)

This is good, excellent – so much to hate in Blackpool, such a focus.
Focus is essential for operational efficiency.

The beach here doesn't even smell of beach – it's got that particular stink of small houses where they fry too much. You're right by it, a real sea with the wrong smell and this pretend shoreline, you're on the sand and walking beside the cold of these huge concrete tidal defences – giant steps like something left over from the Reichstag, something bloody vicious, something you'd fabricate to stop a car bomb, an assault.

Is that what they're expecting? An assault? A landing? Amphibious craft and reckless foes swarming in towards Louis Tussaud's?

There's a man up there with a high-pressure hose, wiping the algae and the seaweed off the steps. It'll take him days. And when he moves on he doesn't leave them really clean. Rubbish job, so why bother doing it well? Or maybe that's his best attempt, right there – doing everything he can with what he's got, maximum effort and nobody's right to criticise. The observer can never tell.

Not that you're observing, you're flat-out staring at him – no reason to do it, but also no reason to stop – and you're stuck in between the concrete and the poisoned wave tops on this dead-flat sand and the Central Pier's behind you and the South Pier's up ahead. Hemmed in, as you might consider it. The South Pier being the Scum Pier, apparently, and the North somehow more sophisticated about its slots and tuppenny falls and kiddies' rides and variety shows involving people you thought were long gone, sewn up years ago and nailed underground to stop them corralling the biffs and pensioners and heroes returned home and singing at them, or dancing, or doing tricks, or cranking out gags to please, or maybe all of the above.

Quite probably all of the above. Some of these people are highly versatile – annoying the arse off you in bags of ways.

Vince Hill's here. My dad likes him. Vince Hill ‘singing and answering questions'. Bet he never thought he'd end up doing that. Questions. About what?

The whole of your childhood's telly is still here. Hard to be sure which side of the equation is the one in hell: the waxworked entertainers or yourself.

But you would notice, wouldn't you? If you were in hell.

The Central Pier is said to be, just as it ought, somewhere in the middle when it comes to the style and tenor of its diversions.

Trust Blackpool never to miss the obvious.

And the boyfriend, too.

He's looking at you – easy to tell without having to check, because his attention is tangibly leaking, scampering down the side of your face. Fair enough, your boyfriend's supposed to pay heed, but his payment feels like a trickle of something sad. Or as if he's spitting on you.

It is offensive to be spat at, a provocation in many cultures.

He does, of course, want you to be happy here and to accept the blousy, big-grinning town in the proper spirit. He'd like you to join in – this is absolutely the capital of joining in and being of an age when fake plates of bacon and egg made from peppermint rock should prove hilarious, or tasty, maybe even a proof of magical undercurrents in your world.

When you were little here it was all sweet undercurrents.

Recalling your childhood unleashes your capacity for wonder, appreciation of kindness and belief. Returning someone to their child self will cause an increase in their potential depth of helplessness and fear. The shock of capture, prolonged, can assist in usefully producing this effect.

Half the shops are selling cocks made of rock now. Or sticks with filth written through them. This isn't for the kiddies and families any more. It's for lap dancers and being on the lash, and sick lights squirming down flat in the rain and being with the boys, except you can't, you've got to watch that – they forget you're not a boy, or else they remember and both are No Bloody Chance in the end. You are not one thing and not the other. You are not most things. You have been somewhere in which most things are not most things and no one gives a toss so why should you and how would you know you ought to and this is how you've ended up.

Bad enough, but then you talked to a milk-white lawyer. Afterwards, he hated you more than anyone, even though you did nothing. You did nothing. That was the point. You did nothing in every way. Nothing about the goings-on, the box of frogs clusterfuck of what was going on.

You did nothing. Then you talked. And you didn't mention the well-meant but turned-out-badly rugby tackles and honest self-defence, because that was bollocks and you were sick of it. You did not speak as agreed.

By the end, with the lawyer and the lawyer's people, there was contempt. You were doing them a favour and that's how they repaid you.

‘Are you tired?' Weak boyfriend has to ask something, so he picks a weak question, one you won't block.

‘No, I'm not.'

‘Are you sure? You look tired.'

This is unsurprising because you do not sleep and, for the last three days, he has been with you and found that out. It is easy to imagine that your wakefulness disturbs him.

‘You've got these big shadows under your eyes.'

Lack of sleep cannot be underestimated as a modifier of behaviour and personality. The truth will out.

Easier to imagine your sleep has crawled away from you during the dark and infected him, slid into his pillow and filled him with your dreams. It is Sunday – he looks at you differently today – not the way he did on Saturday or Friday.

‘Are you listening?'

You offer him, ‘What?' Because you want to delay him, give him another go, so he can change direction.

‘I said you seem tired . . .' He pushes an unmistakable amount of misery into his following, trailing silence while he scrambles about for other words, ones that you'll like. ‘I thought this would be nice for you. A holiday . . . To get away . . .' He keeps putting you in charge of conversations, choices, directions. You would rather he did not. You would rather be without responsibility.

Still, you'd wanted to leave the village, the cottage, he's right about that. As soon as you were back there you'd noticed the spiders and they'd worried you. Everyone said the weather had been wet for the whole of the summer and autumn – floods in the lower valleys and warm, unremitting rain, damp plaster in your old bedroom's ceiling.

Not your old bedroom – it's just still your bedroom. No one else's.

For some reason these conditions had bred up spiders, fat-bodied and numerous, an infestation your father had failed to mention in his letters. They hung in the corners of doorways and from lamp posts, traffic signs, window frames, in the dark of shrubs and hedges. They bobbed and fidgeted, a sense of unnatural weight about them. Your dad didn't seem to mind – almost gave the impression he had somehow encouraged them, let them colonise the fading raspberry canes and the beans, the shed, the chicken coop. For some reason, the chickens didn't eat them – perhaps this breed was venomous to some degree.

And he let them go into your bedroom. You killed four. Killed them for making it different when it should have been the same.

So you'd cut short your visit, left a bag to show you'd be back, indicate affection, and off to Blackpool with the boyfriend.

Stupid word – he isn't a boy and isn't a friend.

But Blackpool is also inaccessible to lawyers and questions, just as Cyprus will be. And Cyprus is renowned for causing service personnel to get innocent and forget, I'm told. And this is a good thing for everyone, I'm told.

You and your not-boyfriend are currently facing each other – no idea how that happened – and he is very visible, but you realise that if you reach out you won't touch him, he'll be further than the moon, than hell's arsehole, than the back of your mind in the mornings, although this is not his intention.

‘Do you want to go? Will we pack up and . . . there are other places . . .'

Like Cyprus.

In the distance beyond him there are three dark shapes, thin men standing and angled perfectly into the breeze, the slack little gusts that taste of dirty washing and stale fat.

They stick on your skin, the oily scents, because of the oil that you have on yourself, the greasiness of being human.

First time you went into the Castle, that's what you noticed – the human reek. Made you gag. Nowhere else was like it: not a tent, not the broil of a Saracen, not the scared wet heat that you leave with your clothes.

You bring it outside on yourself when you leave, the stink, and it doesn't go and you know each other by it – the ones who are your kind – you would know them in the dark.

It is sometimes very dark.

Back and forth from your block to the Castle and the Castle to your block. Noises dragging at your ankles. You didn't like it. You imagined your footsteps laid down as if they were sacking and wet and guilty and layering up.

Guilt is triggered by proximity – over the line and you're too near them and you don't know who should ask the questions, them or you. You've both done stuff, everyone has done stuff – nobody clean over there, and blink and it gets all mixed up. Get in first and then you're safe, it's the order that makes everything. Keep the order and keep angry and then you'll be cooking by gas – that's what you've observed. That's what you're not forgetting, although you will, of course you will.

Your boyfriend is confused. This is your fault, because for a while you liked Blackpool, it was a buzz. You have misled him: first when you arrived you thought the town was fine and this afternoon it's not. Up at the swaying top of the Tower and holding hands while you stood on that little square of clear plastic, the one that lets you peer down at the streets between your feet – that was okay. And shunting each other at the dodgems wasn't bad: the two of you by yourselves, chasing round and round, because the season's over and no one else is playing any more. That electric tang when you swallowed, those spiky little flowers of noise, you would have preferred to skip them. But being one of two adults trying to laugh and yell and get happy, that was okay, a bit mong but okay. And having an Olde Time photo taken together, you couldn't think why you shouldn't. They gave you a dress that fitted in silly places, because you're lean and also muscular and not an average customer. You have grown into the shape the job requires.

The boyfriend who isn't is keeping a copy for when you've left again – straight backs, you're good at that, and sepia, an aspidistra on a table – and you will throw your copy away, because in Cloppa Castle it will not make sense.

After the photo you were discontented and anxious for candy floss because that has a reliable, unoffending smell. You ate toddler-blue spun sugar until your teeth hurt so that it could be a part of you, a place you'll dip into later, but it did not cure you. And you went back to the Tower Ballroom and watched the old, old couples creeping and sliding about to the jaunty organ medley – ‘Pack Up Your Troubles' – and this did not help you. Pairs and pairs of people.

Pressure may be usefully applied or threatened against relatives and partners.

Same angles bent in their spines – and here they are dancing, wrapping each other around and high heads and big smiles and if you get to their age you still won't know the steps. You don't believe in dancing. It makes the body visible and is an invitation. It is reckless.

Ended up in a club last night. No dancing. Not the music for it. Red lights darting about in rods and slices, a bit of smoke, and a skinny, big-lipped guy on the karaoke singing ‘Nellie the Elephant' – sweating and screaming it.

You nearly laughed at that. Nasty crowd in the place. Nothing in the look of them, in their bearing, that you could like. But you nearly laughed anyway, because ‘Nellie the Elephant' all the way through, that gives you your chest compressions and then the two breaths and then again.

FFD and pressure – Dressing soaked – Hemcon – Hemcon – Bleeding not controlled – FFD and direct pressure.

Training for injury.

For when their hearts stop.

And somebody doesn't want them to.

An observer.

Just Another Fucking Observer.

Boyfriend would like to see your eyes – everyone always wants that, point of contact, proof of humanity – but you've got on your new Inks – no sun, but the glasses anyway because you express yourself better in their dark.

Sometimes very dark.

He has seen you, thinks he understands you naked.

Standard Operating Procedure – the utility of nakedness – necessary – you did ask – necessary – make them sing ‘Nellie the Elephant
'.

When you observe strangers they seem cautious, bundled, prudish. They should be skin and singing – Standard Operating Procedure.

You take off your glasses, show willing, show something, the colour of your thought, a shade that he won't recognise, won't understand. Standard Operating Procedure.

And you're nearer to the standing men by this time – except it appears they're actually cormorants: three birds and not three men. Completely unforgivable you'd get this wrong. They don't like you being so close and fit themselves into the air, long heads and lizard necks pointing into the whitewashy sky.

Nice to hop up like that – leave.

You smile for them and he misunderstands and smiles back and you stroll him in under the pier – repetitions of metal, verticals, diagonals, bad repairs – slush of surf to your right and mercury pools seething in the hollows and at the pillars' feet. The rust is so established it has bloomed into purples, oranges, greens – wide flaking bruises that look infectious, predatory.