The Ghost in the Electric Blue Suit (4 page)

When my co-workers came in I could hardly wait to mention it. Pinky arrived first. He always had that cigar wedged between his fingers, but he was too professional ever to light up in the theater. When I enthused about what I’d just heard, he waved his cigar at the stage. “I offered to put her on there. But it wasn’t allowed.”

“Who stopped it?” I knew the answer before I asked the question.

“Who? Vlad the Impaler.”

IN THE GAPS between events that evening I took to drinking the odd pint of Federation ale, frothy amber stuff, mainly just to try to fit in with all the other male staff who quite casually drank copious quantities. I watched them downing seven or eight pints of the stuff without it seeming to touch the sides or affect their performance. So much of it was consumed by the staff and the holidaymakers alike that the slightly vinegary tang permeated the entire site. The odor of barley and hops was in the weft and warp of the carpets; it was in the plaster and lath; it was like a resin in the timber joints.

As a college boy I was fair game for teasing. Luckily the Federation ale loosened my tongue a little and I was able to match the raucous banter of the girls who worked the kitchens. They weren’t bad girls, but they could scare the juice out of a man. Strapping figures, most of them, with self-administered bent-nail tattoos, they would grab your bottom as you walked by. It was popular among the girls to have
LOVE
written on one bicep and
LUST
on the other. I seemed to spend a lot of time dodging the goose.

After that, when feeding times came around I could identify faces I knew well enough to squeeze next to at the table. At every meal I saw scary Colin and his pretty wife installed at the same table at the distant end of the canteen, eating in complete silence. They cut a lonely sight.

One lunch, after clearing my plate into the slops I passed their spot and saw him flicker a glance at me. It wasn’t an acknowledgment exactly, just a darted look from the corner of his eye. I thought I should speak.

“Thanks for your advice on my first day,” I said.

Terri looked up at me and again the palm of her hand fluttered to her cheek. Colin, though, kept his head down.

He wasn’t going to answer me. I felt embarrassed and stupid for having opened my mouth. My cheeks flamed. He lifted his head, but instead of making eye contact with me, he looked at his wife. At last he said, “Nuffing.”

Wanting to get out of the situation with at least a shred of dignity, I said, “Well, I appreciate it.”

At last he turned his gaze on me. There was contempt scribbled in the lines of his face, and I knew I’d made a mistake in trying to engage with the man. His features twisted into a bit of a sneer. But there was something else written into his expression. I knew what it was. It was puzzlement. What I’d just said had somehow perplexed him.

I clattered my empty tray in the clearing area, trying not to look back. But I couldn’t help stealing a glance. Colin had his head down and was digging into his food again from the far side of his plate. But his wife, Terri, was looking at me. She wound a single finger corkscrew fashion into her auburn hair.

AFTER LUNCH WE had to organize something called the Donkey Derby. This was a major item in the program, so the full regiment of Greencoats—five out of the six, anyway—plus
Tony (alias Abdul-Shazam) were gathered on the sweltering, bone-dry football field for the event. Tony had two modes of operation. Abdul-Shazam, complete with red fez and tassel, was the resident stage entertainer, mostly for the children’s program but also for a theater magic act supposedly aimed at adults, using some of the same tricks with a different patter. When he wasn’t Abdul-Shazam, he was just Tony, sans fez, the punter’s friend, the noisy, funny, friendly exhibitionist with a stage tan and an all-weather smile.

Tony took over the PA system for the Donkey Derby, only occasionally surrendering it to the nominal head Greencoat with the wig, Sammy from Stockport. Sammy had bucketloads of enthusiasm for broadcasting but little talent and less wit. He would liberally spray spittle onto the hand-held microphone as he chortled and blathered away. Tony winced as the mike was handed back to him; I noted how Tony’s ready smile could manifest as a form of violence.

The donkeys arrived with a fairy-tale figure called Johnny, who looked like he lived in the stables with his animals. The crotch of his trousers hung down near his knees and his thin leather belt, having lost its buckle, was tied off in a double knot. He had a bit of straw in his hair and one ear that stood perpendicular to his head whereas the other did not. His team of donkeys smelled less of donkey than he did.

“He spends hours perfecting that look,” Pinky told me, deadpan. “Just so he can make a case for a better fee next time.” I didn’t know if he was joking or not.

I don’t know whether donkeys can ever be said to look “happy” but Johnny’s herd seemed totally pissed off at life. Flea-bitten molting things, they made me nervous. One tried
to bite me before I snatched my hand away just in time. I also saw one kick out. I worried that they might try to take a chunk out of one of the children, so I kept a close watch.

The jockeys were those children brave enough to scramble on a donkey’s back. I was told to grade the children by age so that we could run off five races over the course of the afternoon. Each event had a name like Seahorse Stakes and Jellyfish Handicap. While I tied high-colored silks to the children, Nikki or one of the other girls grabbed the donkey’s halter so that Sammy could hoist the child onto the donkey, hopefully without incident. A genuine bookie appeared from nowhere with a blackboard, chalking odds on the board at 3–1 the field. The parents waved shocking amounts of cash at him as they backed their own kid to win the race. I made a quick calculation. Identical odds. For every race if he took sixty pounds he knew he’d only have to pay out thirty; if he took a hundred he’d pay out sixty. For the bookie it was like scooping money up off the beach.

While I was making my calculation, I saw Pinky squeeze by the bookie and give him a pat on the behind. It was odd because the crowd wasn’t so tight that he needed to squeeze by, but in that moment I saw a brown envelope change hands in Pinky’s direction. It was such a rapid sleight of hand it could have happened on the Abdul-Shazam! Magic Show.

But it was a gala afternoon for the holidaymakers, and the sunlight rippled off the dazzling silks while the parents roared as if they were at Ascot. Tony ratcheted up the excitement with a commentary that echoed from the Tannoy speakers around the playing field. As for the race, it was impossible to predict a winner because all the beasts did the same thing,
which was to bolt five yards and then stop dead until Johnny, running behind them in his flapping, baggy pants, laid his crop over their loins. Then they’d advance another five yards. It reminded me of the mechanical horse race I’d seen in the slot-machine arcade.

After five races I was hot, fly-bitten, and reeking of donkey, but there was still one more race to go. Tony took up the microphone and announced the Thoroughbred Fillies Half-Dash Triple Crown, in which mothers—exclusively—were invited to mount the donkeys. For some reason this attracted the most overweight women. It was a struggle for me to get the ladies mounted. The crowd thought I was playing it for comedy. I wasn’t. It was hard work to hoist these large ladies onto donkeys that knew what was coming. The canny beasts sidestepped, backed up, dipped forward, or even bucked to avoid their fate. After a lot of sweating, grunting, endless hilarity, and reckless betting from the spectators, we managed to get them all under starters orders.

From the off the women screamed, the donkeys brayed, and Johnny’s whip lashed through the burning afternoon air. Instead of five yards, the poor beasts advanced two or three. Tony kept up an excitable commentary, but I doubted whether all the animals would complete the course. They seemed to know it too well, and every time they stopped, they tried to munch the parched grass. One of the ladies was in danger of falling, to the wicked merriment of the crowd. I stood aside, watching with a mixture of humor and disbelief, when I felt something tickling the little finger of my left hand.

A ladybug had alighted there.

Bright red with black spots, a seven-spot variety as we
called them as children. I don’t know why but of all the bugs in creation the ladybug is the only one that doesn’t make most people want to shudder or swat it. Maybe it’s because it’s known as the gardener’s friend. I don’t know. I lifted it toward the blue sky to look at it in relief. It was like a bead, a jewel, a drop of blood on my tanned finger. I pursed my lips and was just about to blow it away when someone gently touched the back of my hand to stop me.

It was Terri. Terri the cleaner, the mop-and-bucket singer, the wife of Vlad the Impaler. “No,” she said. “You have to say the rhyme:
Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home. Your house is on fire and your children are gone
.” And then she blew gently on my finger and the ladybug took flight.

“Flown,” I said. “We say ‘flown’ where I come from. Not ‘gone.’ ”

“Well, you’re wrong where you come from.”

“No, we’re not.”

“Argumentative, ain’cha? Did you make a wish?”

It was the first time I’d seen a smile on her lips. Her eyes swam at me; she made them squeeze slightly. I hadn’t made a wish at first, but I did now. “I heard you singing.”

She made a little snort. Not even a snort, just a release of air beneath her nostrils, as if in dismissal.

“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 said.

“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 naïve beyond belief. Then she said, “Next time a ladybug 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 ladybugs?

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 sometime 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 passing 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 anythin’?” 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. Then 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 banknote in my top pocket.

“What’s that for?”

“Help you out, son. Tide you over.”

It was a lot of money. After deductions for food and palatial lodgings I was only being paid twenty-five pounds 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 lookout for. I tossed my cigarette to the ground and stamped on it. Then I made my way to the Golden Wheel.