The Electric Michelangelo (5 page)

When he was very young, almost too young to remember, Cy would be taken up and down the promenade mid-season with his mother and a group of younger women, who came to stay at the Bayview for a day or two from the city. The Ladies of Leeds, his mam called them. They came for three years in succession, each year for a day or so longer. Reeda looked forward to their visit enormously, she would make extra potted shrimp and even buy a better sherry for the occasion. Before the ladies arrived she got a funny look in her eye like a dog about to snatch a bone from the butcher’s counter. They were kind, well-dressed women who would not let Reeda wait on them before first insisting that she did not, they would squabble over who would wash the dishes after supper and would compliment each other on what perfume was being worn or which stockings best flattered an ankle or the choice of book presently being read. There was a great sense that these ladies liked each other very well, they seemed close, perhaps related to his mother, though he knew of only one living blood-relation, his Aunt Doris in Yorkshire. The ladies never scolded him, but they did watch him closely, while he helped his mother to cupboard the crockery, as if they expected him to fumble at any moment and drop her china dishes. They gave him questioning looks, often without issuing any actual questions.

In the mornings, breakfast would be hurried and shoelaces tied quickly. The ladies were flushed in their cheeks and gave each other good-luck kisses.

– Best of luck, duckie.

– Yes, and best of luck to you.

– Best of luck to all of us, I say!

Then they marched out of the hotel with Reeda and Cyril in tow, their skirts snapping like sails in the wind as they strode, heading for the busy promenade. It was unclear to Cy what occurred during these outings, or their purpose, but the ladies all seemed very determined, taking turns to address the crowd and passing round a brass plate which seldom came back bearing much other than a piece of chewed-up fudge which would stick to the plate lip like glue, or shirt buttons or extinguished cigarettes. Though uncertain what the plate was supposed to collect he supposed it was not beachgoers’ rubbish as the ladies would click their tongues in annoyance at their meagre alms. Votes seemed to be what his mother’s friends wanted, and as he’d never seen a vote he did not know how to recognize one on the brass plate if it happened to be forthcoming. Cy spent these mornings holding his mother’s hand and kicking the back of one foot with the other in boredom, looking up at her frowning face.

Frequently one or two of the women came back to the hotel in the afternoon for sandwiches after the pier walk, though most stayed out while his mother returned to her hotel chores. Once settled round the kitchen table with a pot of tea they would continue their talking about votes in louder, more irritated tones. Other times Cy and his mother would return alone, and Reeda would ferociously pound chicken liver into pâté for dinner that night. On the way back to the Bayview there would be trouble if his mother ran into one of the other hotel owners. The arguments were without exception begun by other women. Mrs Thelma Kirkstall from the Grand Hotel once caught hold of his mother’s wrist as she passed by and hissed at her.

– My Ronnie saw you out on the promenade again. Reeda, you silly cow, why don’t you get another husband instead of all this nonsense. Whatever’s in you?

Cy’s mother stood looking at Mrs Kirkstall, just looking at her and not moving until the woman took her hand off Reeda’s wrist, then she turned and walked away. The woman went to pat Cy’s head but Cy made as if to buckle his shoe, though it was already firmly buckled, half unwilling to be touched by the woman who had grabbed his mother, half suspecting that Mrs Kirkstall may also have touched consumptives in her time. He looked up at her squinting face, crumpled like a discarded fish and chip wrapper. She had a badly done permanent wave and cracked dry lips.

– Poor lad, she’ll raise you to wring out her skirts if you’re not careful. You’ll end up selling ladies’ bloomers and shoes in Anderson’s. Come by ours if you want sometime. Mr Kirkstall will show you all you need to know, eh? Come round and he’ll give you a wee drop of man’s talk. There’s a good lad.

And she boxed the air like a March rabbit, upright and punching on its hind legs. Cy unhinged and re-buckled his shoe, then ran down the street after his striding mother.

– Skirt-wringer!

He heard the woman shouting after him and when he caught up with Reeda he found she was cussing under her breath as bitterly as he had ever heard her cuss.

There were better ways to make money in Morecambe than passing round brass plates, Cy would find out. There were in fact more schemes for making money in the town than there were grains of imported Blackpool sand on the shores of the bay. Most of the lesser enterprises were unsurprisingly thought up by children, and Cyril Parks’s gang was not innocent in this regard. The adult spiritualists, fortune tellers, novelty kiosk vendors, hoteliers, whores, the town planners and the contractors may have made more money and lost it out of season but the desperate entrepreneurial efforts of the young peddlers, hustlers and downright petty rogues were remarkable, breathtaking and prolific. Cy liked to think of his peers as the best inventors of the day, unfettered by trivial, traditional constraints, like guarantees or liability. If the town’s tourist industry operated on the premise of vague flight-of-fancy fibbery with regard to its assets, beauty surrounding and health abounding, Morecambrians living to be 120 years of age on average because of the miraculous air, and so on and so forth, the individual juvenile protagonist was far more venturesome and frequently exposed in his swindlery. ‘Buyer Beware’ was the motto of the trio. Children annually sold tickets for tours to see the local boggarts, monsters, spirits and wee folk of the area, who supposedly lived in the dunes, the bushes surrounding the town and out in the Lune marshes. The boggarts themselves ranged from convenient stray dogs, vagrant tramps and drunks, to friends and younger siblings dressed in raggedy clothing with twigs entwined in their hair and mud on their faces. When, one summer, they ran out of suitable candidates for the role, Cy and Morris and Jonty drew lots to see who would have to dress up and cover himself with muck for the occasion. Cy lost the draw, though Jonty later confessed to having fixed it earlier on with Morris as revenge for Cy peeing on his leg.

– Why does the boggart have to have dog shit on him? Can I not just sit in the mud for a bit? It’s all the same.

– No it’s not, stupid. All boggarts roll around in it ‘cause it keeps people away who want to kill them. Can’t have a boggart without shit as anyone knows! Do you want your sherbet dip or not, Parksie?

Jonty winked at Morris and Cy eventually consented to the indignity.

They dressed him up in a pair of old waders belonging to Morris’s dad, which stank to high heaven of flukes, and they stuffed grass into the holes of his shirt, around the collar and up the sleeves. Cy had brought a pocketful of potato peelings from the kitchen of the Bayview and he stuffed them into his mouth and practised his groaning while his pals went on the search for fresh shit. They came back over the marshes with two sticks on the ends of which was a nasty mess and proceeded to poke Cy with them while giggling and putting their noses against their sleeves. He protested through a mouth of peel.

– That’s foul. Get off, it’s enough.

– Wait here while we find our customers. And don’t wash the dirt off, Cyril Parks.

Half an hour later, he was still sitting miserably in the swampy grass of the Lune marshes feeling thoroughly sick at the smell of himself and the rooty, soily taste of uncooked potato. He’d got bored watching the sea in the distance rolling in, shallow and foamy, watching the fishermen moving their hazelwood baulks, and collecting their shrimp. Try as he might he could not imagine being a fisherman like his father had been, not because the industry was not a good one, it provided food for the town, but because there was a quality of uncertainty, you could never be sure what the sea would bestow and what it would reserve for itself – he had seen many a fleet come back to the bay without so much as a mackerel scale or a halibut tail in the hold, the expressions of the men long and webbed, as if casting nets within themselves. Similarly, the clouds in the sky had ceased to form interesting patterns. He looked at the horizon where the sun would be disappearing in a few hours, and he remembered what his mother had told him about that as a very young child – that the sun’s light never went out at night, it just went over to Ireland and then it went to America, then right around the world until it came back up again the other side in the morning. And it was like a lamp that all lost souls could follow. After the watching and the ruminating there was nothing left to do but putrefy in his own revolting stench. Then he heard a whistle, the signal for him to hide and ready himself for his performance. He ducked down in a puddle of water and parted the reeds to watch for the approach of the unsuspecting tourist. He could hear Jonty’s voice warbling away, matter of fact, and informative, as if he were giving a tour of the Winter Gardens.

– Right around these parts he was last spotted, madam. He was eating the skull of an animal – crunch, crunch – they have very powerful jaws you see. Now they are quite smelly, so be warned. You may want to prepare yourself just in case he comes in close.

– Goodness gracious. Is it safe? I mean, won’t it be quite cross with us if we tread near its home?

– Oh, they don’t have homes, madam. They range around and wail at night. Sometimes they approach farms to eat the chickens and they make necklaces out of the feathers, but there’s never been a complaint of one attacking a human being. At least not in Morecambe, in Blackpool possibly. Just a little further, madam. Right around here. Super day, isn’t it?

– Quite lovely.

The lady did not sound convinced, suddenly preoccupied by the thought of powerful jaws and headless chickens, no doubt. But it mattered not; that question was the code-sign for the boggart to reveal itself. Cy leaped up out of the marsh, wailed, and disappeared behind a clump of grass.

– Over there, madam! Do you see it? Crouched behind that hummock.

– No … Where!

Cy began groaning and jumped up into the air again. This time he remained in view and came stumbling towards the lady. His bare feet were filthy with mud and his hair looked like a bird’s nest. She was standing stock-still as if she knew a hunter had her in his rifle sites and she must freeze or perish. Cy roared and spat a potato skin at her. She obliged him with a scream.

– Shooo. Shoo, you nasty, smelly thing. Get away from me. Go on! No, wait, wait, is that a boy, is that a poor little boy under all that disgusting mess?

The boggart turned around and ruthlessly showed her its bare backside. Behind her Jonty and Morris were now helpless with laughter. The woman screamed again and lifted her skirt and began to totter speedily over the moor back towards the town. She was still screaming when she reached the promenade. Suddenly Jonty was running after her.

– Bugger it! Hey, missis, the shilling! Stop, you haven’t paid. You owe us a shilling. Tell everyone you saw a genuine boggart and who showed you …

From the next customer the boys made sure to take payment first. The resulting sherbet was delicious and did a fine job of ridding his tongue of the terrible taste of un-scrubbed potato, but Cy was certain that he could still smell the shit on himself for the whole of the next week, even after several baths, and that guests in the hotel were covering their faces when he leaned past them to ladle soup from the tureen into their bowls in the dining room.

When the local boys tired of acting as tour guides some of them would try to outrun the Bore for bets, that sweeping tidal wave created as two Atlantic currents, one from the north of Ireland and one from the south, met up and converged in the direction of Morecambe’s shore. Cy, having a healthy respect for the sea, which had casually robbed him of his father, considered this scheme to be ridiculous and foolhardy in the extreme, did not mind saying so, and would not participate in any wager. The Bore came in faster than a grown man could sprint, let alone a penny-pinching stump-legged junior. It was one of the fastest tides in the British Isles and on more than one occasion every year lifeboats were sent out to collect a drowning soul who had underestimated its maritime throttle.