All the Rage (16 page)

This is a not pleasant or secure location and you should leave it.

You lead him up to the pier entrance, wear your glasses again, smile again as you go through the gate and onto the boards.

Some of the wood is soft-rotted, unreliable underfoot, which is amusing although you couldn't explain why.

In Cloppa Castle it is slidey underfoot.

You have special notebooks you can write on when it's wet. Could write on them underwater. You don't have to be underwater. That's not a problem that will afflict you, ask things of you, demand.

The notes you take can sometimes seem absurd and surprise you when you look at your hand writing, your handwriting and the words you continue to find in testing situations.

On the pier, there's a dart game, an old-fashioned scam. You have to chuck darts into playing cards to win a shit prize of this or that sort, or else to win nothing. The cards are pinholed and warry, they seem to have taken hits, which encourages, is intended to draw you, and the stallman, boothman, whoever, gives you a patter which makes it clear that he knows you are military, has noticed it on you although you are not wearing anything approaching uniform because this gets you stared at in the street. Come home and be hated by strangers in the street, avoided by the women in the village who are gathering shampoo and shaving things and affection for returning heroes only. You are not exactly that.

The boothman does not hate you. He lies to you in ways that mean he can steal very small amounts of money for a rigged game and a bit of a chat and a consolation prize of playing cards – made in China – you'll take them with you. If you had darts, you could set up a game of your own. This is perhaps what occurs always – that the scam is passed along from one to another and either harms a little or a lot and that's how we know time is passing, by the progress of each lie – set them free and let them run.

Take the cards back to the Castle.

Where we play many, many games. Shoeing and beasting and whatelsewouldyoulikefromus games making use of the objects to hand.

A childish place, the Castle – even its name – they took it from this 70s' show on the box –
Cloppa Castle
– puppets and a theme song that warned you'd be staying a while.

You didn't believe it.

First day.

Hoods on the men, but they're naked and singing the theme song.

Fucking mad house.

So you go fucking mad.

What a lily-white lawyer wouldn't understand.

It was hard to explain how annoying you eventually found it when you ordered up the singing from them – they could all speak English, everyone can speak English – and the prisoners sounded scared when you wanted them sounding angry, or sounded angry when you wanted them sounding scared, or when they were faking tiredness, illness. Or when one of them slipped his cuffs and tried to take off the hood.

Which is a very, very clear threat – a man looking at you.

Necessary evil.

Everyone's a victim.

No doubt about that.

You get an education in that.

Injured parties on every side.

You weren't quite there and you didn't quite see it and were only informed at a later time of what occurred. No sounds were audible and no jokes were made.

No question.

You will go to the Pleasure Beach next.

It isn't a beach. It won't be a pleasure.

‘Is it still the same? Still the same stuff?' He wants you to talk, unburden.

‘Yeah, the same.'

‘Searching? You just do office work and the searching? Do you still have to?'

‘I search the women sometimes. Yes. And I do first aid. It's mainly admin, though, with the other Dorises.' A long time ago this was true and all that you were informed you'd be involved with and a source of contentment and a duty well performed.

‘Admin?'

‘Admin.'

At the Pleasure Beach you will be not able to meet your already-dead mother and your already-dead nan and your turned-back-to-being-younger father and they will not tour you about in another time, a further than hell and the moon and who you were and nailed underground already time when there were magical undercurrents that could pick you up clear like a prize in one of those grabber machines, drop you down safe in the slot and ready to be loved as was intended.

White tiles – a flat white with squares on it, like squared paper, the type you'd use for maths. When you think of it like that whatever happens becomes calmer, quiet, whatever you see.

Easy to hose down.

After the necessary evil.

Ask them questions, though, and the fuckers have nothing to say and they should say – stands to reason, if they'd actually fucking make an effort to help you, then it would stop.

Or not.

It has a purpose.

A not-clear purpose.

If there was none, that would be

That would be

You remember – very sharply remember – being in a playground, your school playground, and you were skipping. This day – mental – you were skipping and something caught all of you, this craziness – one girl and then another, then another, you didn't know who'd started it – nice girls and the good sisters watching, bemused – it was like there'd been this silent agreement – and everything else was just stopped and you're bounding, covering ground – you've let go and it feels, it feels, it feels – eventually all of you are covering the ground and you're widening into a kind of circle until your hands brush each wall and boundary fence and your footfalls are loud and there's no talking, shouting, laughing, only this movement that all of you have – wild with it – arms swinging – dizzy with it – every one of you together and this is what you have to do, this is wonderful – this is most wonderful, this is being a big no one, a big everyone, big happy and your worries gone and your body so alive and unalone.

It's sort of what you'd wanted – to get that back. You'd wanted to be one among many and safe in it – a bit of searching females when required, paperwork, filing, honour, having a laugh when possible. You wanted to give and get respect, which was meant to be available.

‘You have to pay to get in now.' His body is sad, the will in it is deforming and soon he'll do something regrettable, undignified.

‘Where?'

‘The Pleasure Beach – you pay to get in and then some of the things are free and other stuff you pay again.'

You would like to hold his hand, suggesting compassion, but fingers are a difficulty. You cannot stand them any more – how they are both clever and delicate.

Explained very early – information which serves you well – like how to undertake the bulling of your boots – that real guardsman shine, cavalry shine, important and mind out for cracks – and more important, most important, is that you have the one mouth and two ears and so you listen and shut up, you listen and shut up and it is not your fault.

Except that was incorrect.

That was bollocks.

You shouldn't listen, because listening has effects.

You also shouldn't see.

And you shouldn't be present and an observer and you also shouldn't be a participant, which you can't help if you're there – you're out or in, no halfway – and you also shouldn't walk out of the room and leave it going on behind you and you shouldn't go far off and lie down on your bed while what's happening happens and what's going on goes on – there's no out, you're only in – you can still hear, like everyone can hear, but no one listens.

So you don't listen.

Can't go on if you listen.

It has to be like they sewed up your head, like you pulled the sack down over your head and you've pissed off out of it.

Missing.

You go missing.

You have to miss more.

Takes an effort.

Is a problem.

But they say that you'll be fine.

Go to Cyprus, get forgetful, you'll be fine.

Think once you're out of Blackpool you'll be fine.

IT COULDN'T LAST.
Not this. There was no way it ever would have.

Never mind.

That's what you say when stuff buggers up –
never mind.
Simon's adults said it all the time. First there would be talking that fell into pieces and then retreats, fussing in more distant rooms and, after that, silences until one told the other
never mind.
This gave them something to do, beyond being helpless. Adults couldn't be helpless. They were, but they couldn't. But they were.

Never mind.

Simon wasn't minding.

He was sitting on the beach and not minding with the dog – his still-unnamed dog. They'd settled themselves on the cobbles as much as they could. It was that kind of beach. Uncomfortable. A seaside without sand. There weren't even any patches of little stones, or maybe gravel – you got nothing but these big, grey cobbles: lumpy when you sat, clacking and unsteady when you tried to walk. They made everybody look crippled and end up being slow, getting nowhere much.

Simon was hunched down a touch, his back to the far-away path, partly because he was warmer like that and partly as if he were hiding – which he was, only no one was looking for him, so that probably meant he wasn't. The looking produced the hiding, he knew that: without it you were only playing a game in your head.

And he knew about the opposite, too: hiding was the best way to get looked at. Simon had been hiding for two weeks. To be exact, he had kept on pretending to himself and playing a game in his head for sixteen days and now here was the truth, pressing at his ribs, searching. The feel of how things would turn out was already in his throat and sinking. Cold. By this evening, the inside of him would be uncovered and shown to be stupid. His mother would see. Everybody would see, including him.

Silly boy. Silly little boy. Could do better. Ought to. Must.

Never mind.

The dog wasn't bothered, though. She was just breathing on his hand, which was nice for him and good. And she was much larger than on Monday. Yesterday, when she tried to bite the tennis ball, she couldn't manage because of having a too-small mouth, but today on the beach she'd caught it, held it and had been so pleased, crazy with having defeated it when it had seemed really that clever and puzzling before. Simon had known – because he knew things about his dog – that she was imagining a great huge forever and ever of chasing and bringing back and had found the idea so beautiful she had to shudder and give one big bounce. Then she'd stopped imagining and had run and run and been desperate with having to run more: catch, run, catch. Eventually, finally, she'd raced herself out, panted into a flop and so was – at the moment – warm and heavy on him and given up to sleep.

His dad had suggested she could be called Pat, which was a joke: Pat the dog. Simon didn't want to make his dog a joke.

He sneaked his finger along her muzzle – the silk and wiry tickle of her – and made her twitch with memories.

But he didn't want to wake her.

To the left of Simon – not close – a man was wedging a towel's corners under rocks and then balancing – one foot, the other – to undress. Woollen hat, parka, pullover, shirt, trousers, socks, he staggered them off and then paused in what was left: an onshore breeze and orange trunks. His skin was greyish and a sadness about the angles of him showed he was ashamed of himself and wasn't as fit as he had been and couldn't keep his stomach tucked flat. He stepped beyond the towel like someone intending to be athletic, but the cobbles foxed him and he slithered across the tricky slope before the sea, seemed to be hurt in his toes, visibly beaten. Eventually, he didn't stand up straight, simply rushed and staggered for the water, flailed into the dark rise of a wave.

The sections of shoreline to either side of this had notices which said their bits of sea weren't safe. Simon didn't swim anywhere in case he got lost, or swept to the dangerous parts. The current was strong. He could see it fighting the man, stealing his direction and making the bald top of his head mark time, or drift, while his arms tried to be powerful in changeable directions.

Simon hoped the man wouldn't start drowning. There were lifebelts back at the path, but the drawings that showed how to use them were confusing.

He looked down at his dog.

She did need a name.

Simon understood that when you're born, you're not called anything and then people study you and think of what would suit – how you are will tell them what to pick. There would have been a time when something about him said
Simon
and his parents noticed. That's what must have happened, because he wasn't named after somebody else – not a relative, or that – he was Simon, and Simon was him. Otherwise he couldn't feel right when he answered to it.

He wanted his dog to feel right when she answered to her name. For now, she would run to him if he whistled or clapped. He was careful not to say any words when he wanted her, in case she got confused about them and thought they were hers.

Whatever was chosen would have to be like her and what she was like was needle teeth and smooth pads to her paws – pink – and new in the world. The first time they'd walked outside, she'd been shaking, she'd wound in tight beside him and made him stumble. But she'd got excited, too, and tugged her leash and dashed at spaces in the air, or sniffed and yipped, which was almost the largest noise that she could make so far, and on the trip back they'd met a Labrador which was enormous, but slow, and his dog had flattened all the way down so the stranger dog couldn't touch her, or sniff her, or anything, but she'd been yipping up at it the whole while, so you were sure that she wasn't allowing herself to be bullied. She was brave. Simon had frowned and kept quiet and eventually the Labrador's owner had stopped smiling and talking and had gone, yanking the Labrador along behind.