The Illuminations (31 page)

‘I’m having it large,’ he said.

The bass was loud and it filled the room. They settled round the table and the girls came back and forth to have swigs from their bottles and to open and close their handbags and fix their make-up. Other groups of young people arrived and the wallpaper began to gleam. ‘It’s just bollocks,’ Dooley said. ‘They have a trial and these three NCOs get off.’

‘Who?’ Flannigan said.

‘The two sergeants and the corporal. Budgies.’

‘What?’ Luke said.

‘The Royal Welsh. These three guys get acquitted the other month. They were beasting a young lad and he died.’

‘It was a normal beasting,’ Flannigan said. ‘The boy was a tit. He was undergoing a reprimand.’

‘Fuck off, Flange. The guy was twenty-three.’

‘So what?’

‘So everything, you twat. The guy was twenty-three and got a bit pissed at a party in the mess. He fucked about with some office equipment and he got smashed for it. But it was too much. They marched him out the next day, it was thirty degrees Centigrade, and they beasted the kid until he had a heart attack. That is totally fucked up, man.’

‘If you don’t want a good rifting, don’t be an arsehole,’ Flannigan said.

‘This was on the news?’ Luke asked.

‘Yeah,’ Dooley said. ‘On the news. The adjutant captain told the three fucking bears, these feather-heads, the NCOs, to melt the kid out on the parade ground.’

‘Where?’

‘Lucknow Barracks.’

‘Right.’

‘It was over the top.’

‘Oh, fuck off,’ Flannigan said. ‘How many times have you been trashed up and down the mudflats, Sponge Bob?’

‘Not for hours in that heat. Not when it’s boiling outside and I’m still dehydrated from the night before.’

‘Dry your eyes.’

‘No, seriously, Flange. That’s fucked. The main guy who did it was the most hated dude in the battalion. A real fucken drill-pig with a hard-on for sprogs.’

‘He wasn’t a sprog.’

‘He was twenty-three.’

‘So what, our kid? That’s old. You do shit, you get beasted. My dad told me they once beasted him from arsehole to breakfast-time just for dropping his stick. So stop fucking moaning, and bring on the rums.’

‘The kid had traces of ecstasy in his bloodstream,’ Dooley said, turning to Luke. ‘He was off his tits when they were beasting him out there. Fucken animals. And the guys who did it get off because everybody thinks they’re a bunch of hard-asses who can do what they like.’

Flannigan was looking at the girls. ‘You can’t have a military without militarism,’ he said.

Luke put his drink down. ‘And you think they deserve the Victoria Cross for that, do you, Flange?’

The two just stopped in each other’s eyes, the younger man’s pupils so large and so ready for action, engulfed by the moment. Luke paused to see just how far he would go, but Flannigan was biting his cheek and he came back with nothing. ‘The boy was about the same age as the guy we lost,’ Luke said. ‘Remember him? The kid we lost in that stupid ambush? That’s a fucken life, mate. And when you don’t do the right thing and you rub out a life you’ve lost your decency.’

‘Captain.’

‘Just saying. That shit happens: you’ve lost your decency.’

‘All right, sir.’

‘Do you get me?’

They went quiet. ‘I’m just messing,’ Flannigan said. Then after a moment one of the girls came up to the table and pulled him by the arm. He looked up at the other men with a grin, and said, ‘I’m off my face.’

‘Go and dance, Flange,’ Luke said. Flannigan saluted and was never so much himself as then. It would be a long road for him, thought Luke. He was vulnerable, his friend, a veteran of bad dreams, made for toughness, inclined to ruin. ‘Away and dance, ya big daft bastard.’

‘We’re okay, aren’t we, Captain?’

Luke smiled. ‘Of course we are. Go and enjoy yourself.’ Flannigan shrugged and turned out his hands.

‘I get better-looking every day,’ he said. ‘I can’t wait for tomorrow.’

Ten minutes later, Dooley was dancing so much in his seat that it seemed he could just take off. He got some water and then high-fived the captain. ‘I miss my wife,’ he said. ‘You know she’s a registered nurse, Jimmy-Jimmy?’

‘A staff nurse, eh. She’s qualified.’

‘I’m going to make her proud, Captain. I want to become sergeant and then we’ll buy a wee house.’

‘That’s a goal, Doosh.’

‘Awesome.’

Luke sensed he wanted to say more. More perhaps about life in general and whether the captain had somebody special and would he like to settle down with her some day and buy a house? It was all on Dooley’s face but he was too shy of the captain’s privacy. Dooley wished he could summarise their friendship and his emotions were rushing into the moment. But he wasn’t easy like the Scouser when it came to feelings so he just put his arm around the captain and said it was a great night. ‘I feel fucken magic,’ he said as he got up and joined the others on the dance floor. Luke watched his comrades-in-arms and thought them the best young men in the world. He realised how young they were and put two twenties under Flange’s glass.

As he walked home, he looked out and saw a hill of deckchairs stacked at the end of the pier. He looked over the sea and wondered if it might be one long dream, his family, his friends, the lives they tried to live. It was strange, but the dark water seemed experienced and alive, as if conscious of the people on the shore, as if it could see to the heart of things. The Ferris wheel was still but the lights blinked as he walked down the Golden Mile. There was no sound but the sound of the waves. This was Blackpool. The lights were part of the town but the moon was simple and white up there, and he loved how it shone without frailty over the sea and the coast.

HARRY’S VERSION

Sheila stood on the second-floor landing with a mug of Lucozade in her hand and a cigarette going. You could smell bacon all the way up the stairs and it was a fine morning if you believed the sunlight. ‘Oops,’ Sheila said, spilling a drop, her hands busy as she spoke, wreathing the air with smoke and fizz. ‘This carpet needs doing. Happen it’s only three years old. Would you believe that? It’s these young ones coming up and down in their boots. My mother ran it old-fashioned, you know, kippers for breakfast, two to a bed but she’d want to see the wedding ring.’

‘She was strict, then?’

‘Always wore a pinny, me mam. But good to the guests. She put a wireless in every room.’

‘Who did the bird drawings?’ asked Luke.

‘That’s father. He loved birds. All his books are still in the cabinet down in the lounge. He was like Mrs Blake, an artist at heart, really. When she pointed a camera at something you really knew it was captured.’

Luke was pleased as he listened. According to Sheila’s mother, who didn’t have kids at the time, Mrs Blake was famous one summer for haunting the cafes of Blackpool. It must have been the summer of 1962, she said. ‘The town was full of teenagers, they were always fighting and some of them drove their scooters up and down the front, and Mrs Blake was making a study of them.’ Apparently, the darkroom was like an art gallery at the time, rows of photos pinned up around the walls and the smell of chemicals, good God, Sheila’s mother thought she might have to say something. ‘But Mam knew it was important for Mrs Blake to get on with her work,’ Sheila said. ‘She
photographed all these youngsters and their hair.’

You couldn’t resist Sheila. She said her mother spoke of all the places where Mrs Blake used to take pictures. Putting down the mug, she began to count them off on her fingers. ‘The Shangri La cafe on Central Drive. The Hawaiian Eye cafe on Topping Street. Redman’s Cafe in Bank Hey Street. The Regal Cafe on Lytham Road.’

‘Wow,’ Luke said. ‘You’ve some memory.’

‘And Jenks Cafe in Talbot Square.’

He took care to close the door. He put down the newspaper and the groceries and turned to see Anne sitting up. He made tea with lots of milk and he buttered the rolls and put ham inside them. Anne liked it, chewing quite happily, introducing sips of tea after every bite. She saw the day when she would run down to get the breakfast for Harry. And when she came back carrying the sausages or the bacon wrapped in paper, the bread, the brown sauce in a bottle, she would hesitate at the top, knowing he was inside the darkroom waiting for her. She could picture it: how she stood there, how she kissed the door before going in.

‘Did you black out the windows?’ she said to Luke.

‘To let you sleep?’

‘For processing. Harry and the blankets. Just like they did in the war. Harry was in the war, you know.’

‘So I gather.’

‘He flew planes.’

Luke tried to imagine the darkroom as it used to be, when it was invested with all the ambition in the world. He tried to see it: a studio, a love nest, a place of light music and waiting.

Anne had spent time with the women. You could tell. She seemed restored a little to her old self, less agitated after an
evening of vodkas and songs down in the lounge. She spoke more that morning. It was as if her spirit had been encouraged by like-minded souls, the sort of people who take the elderly at their own estimation. The women loved memories of every kind and they weren’t minded to frisk them for accuracy. ‘Harry had medals,’ she said to Luke. ‘Because of the war.’ She paused to have another sip of tea. ‘And you’re in the war, aren’t you?’

‘The war’s over now,’ Luke said. ‘For me, anyway.’

He took her cup and plate. She began to doze and before long she was snoring into the pillow. He stood in the room and felt odd to be at the centre of Anne’s lost horizons. The night before, on the way back to the guesthouse, he imagined the sea must be conscious, and now the room had memory. These thoughts were strange expansions of an old faith, like ghosts returning to their rightful place and living now with him, part of the person he’d become. He felt watched in the room as he cast his eyes up to the ceiling, just as he felt watched when he walked along the prom. Looking up, he saw the shape of dead moths in the frosted bowl of the ceiling light. They had flown too close and been there for years. His phone was buzzing in his pocket but he assumed it was the boys and didn’t answer. He felt he had said goodbye, so when he took out the phone and saw texts and missed calls, he just pressed the button and turned off the phone.

He opened the cupboards. The files were dusty, the labels peeling. One cupboard was full of glass beakers and chemicals, droppers, lengths of tubing and packs of Ilford paper. His gran once told him that Harry mixed chemicals the way people in films did cocktails. Sheila knocked on the door at one point and suggested he go downstairs and have a coffee. Her sister was with her and they carried fresh towels. It was another aspect of Sheila’s
character: the no-nonsense approach to difficult necessities. They wanted to wash Mrs Blake and take her into the toilet. ‘Go and have a cuppa,’ she said. His gran woke up and stared at them. ‘We’re due to throw a good old Pippa Dee Party in here, aren’t we, Mrs B?’

Anne slept again that evening with the bed freshly made and the radio turned up a little. He’d arranged with Sheila to stop down for a chat. When he turned up in the hall at seven o’clock she already had her coat on and announced that her sister would go up and sit with Anne. ‘I need a touch of fresh air,’ she said. ‘You don’t mind, love?’

‘No, let’s go,’ he said.

Walking along the prom, Sheila said Anne was still lagging from last night’s festivities. ‘The lounge got lively after you left,’ she said. ‘She’d a few drinks, Mrs Blake. A dark horse, that one. Confused, though, eh? Doesn’t really remember anything in order. Gets mixed up. She kept thinking I was my mother and in the end I just said fine.’

‘It’s got worse.’

‘Mind you. She still comes out wi’ things. And you’ll be like, “Lord Jesus, where did that come from?” Then she goes back into herself.’

‘That’s the pattern.’

‘Bless her.’

They walked to the Pleasure Beach. Sheila was telling him how a popular ride called the Derby Racer had been scrapped a few years back. ‘That was something in its day,’ she said. ‘You could hear the squeals for miles.’ The lights still amazed Luke but there was nothing harsh in them any more, no reminders of tracer fire. It was just life repeating itself in a northern town and
he was glad to be part of a million bulbs.

‘Sheila,’ he said. ‘Why does she have that room?’

‘It’s like I told you,’ she said. ‘Your grandmother actually owns that bit of the house.’

‘You didn’t say that.’

‘Well, she does. She rented it at first. Just a bedsit, you know, when she first started coming to Blackpool. But then my mother and father hit rough times. Mrs Blake’s aunts died one by one up in Glasgow and eventually she got some money and one of the things she did … she bought that part of the house. It wasn’t a lot of money. But my mother was in a lather at the time and your gran has always helped with the bills coming in. Off-season we used to sit and wait for Mrs Blake’s cheque. And it would always come until it stopped about a year ago.’