The Year of the Ladybird (21 page)

I told Pinky that I had a doctor’s appointment and that I’d need a couple of hours off.

‘Haven’t got the clap, have you?’ Pinky said.

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Joke,’ he said. Then he looked away. ‘At least I think it was a joke. We’ll cover for you. See you later.’

I put my civvies on and took a green double-decker bus into town and visited a doctor’s surgery that dealt with temporary workers from the holiday camps. I waited about half an hour in the
reception area flicking between copies of
Vogue
and
Practical Wireless
magazines before finding a newspaper. A fourteen-year-old Sikh boy had been killed in a racially motivated
attack in the Midlands and one of the senior figures in the National Front had made a statement saying, ‘
That’s one step closer to a better country
.’ I was still reading
the report when a rather haughty secretary told me to go through to the surgery

A white-haired GP with half-moon specs and a white coat over a tweed jacket grunted that I should take a seat as he finished making notes in his last patient’s records. He took so long
over it I was able to observe his impressive, large troll-like ears. When he’d finished he sniffed and wheeled his chair round to face me. He said nothing, just peered across the top of his
half-moon specs. He also had huge flappy jowls, like a species of bloodhound. I started to tell him that I was having trouble sleeping but he cut across me.

‘Which camp are you working at?’

I started telling him and he opened my notes on the desk in front of him. He interrupted me again.

‘It says here you’re a student. What
kind
of student are you?’

I thought the question sounded hostile. I began to tell him what I was studying at college and he spoke across me for the third time.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘what’s your problem?’

I suddenly felt cross with the man. ‘You’re the doctor,’ I said. ‘I was hoping you’d be able to tell me.’

‘Can’t help you unless you tell me what’s wrong with you, now can I?’

‘I started telling you and you shut me up. Is this your idea of having fun?’

‘You’ve woken up,’ he said. ‘You’ve come to life.’

I had a family GP at home. I nearly told this patronising old bastard what a nice, sensitive and compassionate human being my family GP was. Instead I tried again, carefully explaining that I
hadn’t been sleeping at all well, for some time, and that on some nights I was only getting maybe an hour or two.

‘I’m not going to prescribe sleeping pills, if that’s what you’re thinking, sonny.’

‘Did I say I wanted pills? I don’t want pills, I want some help.’

His brittle manner seemed to relax. ‘I get all sorts of young men coming from these camps wanting all sorts of pills,’ he said. ‘Do you use drugs?’

‘Emphatically not.’ That one occasion in the archery hut might have caused me to blink.

He blinked back at me. ‘Drink?’

‘Moderately.’

He asked what I meant by that and I told him. He seemed satisfied. He asked if I was getting enough exercise. I described my daily routines and he concluded that wasn’t a problem
either.

‘Are you anxious about anything at the moment?’

‘I’m anxious all the time. For no reason.’

‘For no reason?’

‘I’m generally anxious. But I never used to be.’

‘Roll your sleeve up. I’ll check your blood pressure.’

Of course I went along with all of this. He told me that my blood pressure was perfectly fine. He looked in my ear with his otoscope and found no signs of anxiety there. He also actually got a
hammer and tapped my knee to test my reflexes – something I only thought happened in comedy films. He listened to my breathing with his stethoscope.

‘There’s nothing obviously amiss,’ he said. ‘What happens when you try to go to sleep?’

‘Nothing. I lie awake for long periods. Then if I fall asleep for a few minutes I get terrible nightmares.’

‘Oh? What are the nightmares?’

I heard myself say, ‘Things to do with children. And a man in a blue suit. It doesn’t make much sense. I feel like I’m seeing ghosts. Obviously there’s no such things as
ghosts and obviously I know that but they keep coming. Plus I’m having dreams which are much more vivid than ordinary dreams though I expect that has something to do with the fact that
I’m not getting enough REM sleep.’

‘REM sleep?’

‘Yes REM sleep. Rapid Eye Movement sleep. If you don’t get REM sleep it sends you crazy and I’m not sleeping so I’m not getting REM sleep and it’s vital for
survival to the extent that prolonged REM sleep deprivation leads to death in experimental animals. I don’t know if they’ve studied humans, I mean they probably have but I don’t
know of the conclusions. Of any studies. You probably know all this; you’re a doctor.’

The doctor stroked his chin and regarded me steadily. ‘Have you done anything you feel guilty about?’

‘No.’

‘What about your parents?’

‘What about them?’

‘Do you feel bad about leaving them? About having left them behind?’

‘What’s it got to do with them?’

‘You’d be surprised. Look, it’s not my area. I can refer you to a mental health practitioner.’

‘Right. You’re shuffling me along.’

Now it was his turn to sound cross. ‘Look, I’ll prescribe some mild sleeping pills. But it’s not going to become a habit, so don’t think it is. I’ll give you
four.’

‘Four? Four pills?’

He looked over the top of his spectacles at me then scribbled on his pad at super speed before tearing off the top copy. ‘Cut out the drink altogether. No coffee either. Take one an hour
before bedtime and then go for a walk before turning in. That’s what I do when I have trouble sleeping.’

I thanked him and I got up to go. As I was leaving I heard him say, maybe to me, maybe to the closing door. ‘We’re all anxious. What is there not to be anxious about?’

I got back in time for lunch at the canteen. Before I went in to eat, one of the campers tugged at my sleeve. He wanted me to line up with his family for a photograph. The man
held up his instamatic and I quickly slapped on my happy face for them.

It was one of the features of being a Greencoat. The holidaymakers always wanted you to be photographed with them. I might as well have been dressed up in a cuddly bear suit for all they knew of
me. Would my smiling face define the holiday for them? Would I help to fill in a hole in their memories? Even people to whom I’d never spoken pulled me into their snapshots. I often wondered
what they would think when they reviewed these photographs, maybe years later. Would they only see the bright smile? Or would they recognise a troubled young man behind it all? But the photograph
was a detail in a holiday story, where I was a theatre prop, a bit of scaffolding on the stage. I crossed from my story briefly into theirs and back again.

I joined Nikki and Gail in the canteen queue and we all filed past the hatch to get our steak and kidney pie.

‘You all right then?’ Nikki said when we sat down. ‘Pinky said you had to go to the doctor’s.’

‘No secrets there then.’

‘Have you got the clap?’ Gail said.

‘What???’

Gail covered her mouth with her fingertips. ‘It’s what everyone says around here. Whenever you say you’re going to the doctor’s, I mean.’

‘You haven’t, have you?’ Nikki said.

‘No I bloody haven’t.’

‘So why the doctor’s?’ said Nikki.

‘I can’t sleep,’ I said.’ It’s getting me down.’

When Gail rose from the table to get her dessert at the serving hatch, Nikki waited for her to move out of earshot, touched the back of my hand with a long fingernail and said, ‘I could
make you sleep.’

I didn’t know what to say. I think I coloured.

‘You sure you’re all right?’ Nikki said.

‘I’m fine,’ I insisted.

That afternoon I used the public telephone in the kiosk outside the theatre to phone long-distance. I don’t know, maybe it was something the doctor had said about feeling guilty about my
parents. I had a pile of coins in my hand ready to force them into the spring-loaded slot whenever the rapid-pip signal demanded to be fed.

‘You haven’t forgotten us, then,’ said my mother.

‘Who are you?’ I joked feebly.

I answered the usual questions: where I did my shopping, how was I managing with my laundry, did I know that Tesco’s had a giant size box of washing powder on offer at half price. I
squirted another coin into the trap and then she passed me on to Ken. I asked him how was business and he told me that he’d had to lay off a couple of men who had been with him a long time. I
was sympathetic. I knew the men. When a country moves into recession, building is one of the first things to be hit. I expressed the hope that they would find other work and my dad said that they
hadn’t much chance of that what with all the wogs taking up the jobs.

I admit I over-reacted. I heard myself calling him some names – interrupted when I had to shove another coin in the box to complete the list I had in store for him – and to his
credit he just took it. Somehow we salvaged the conversation and turned it to safe things: football, the drought. He asked me if I needed any money. I told him I was fine.

‘Ken, can you put my mum back on the line?’

When she came back on I immediately said, ‘Mum, why did my dad come here?’

There was a long silence at the other end. Then she said, ‘What is it you think you are doing there, David? What do you think you’re doing in that awful place?’

‘I’m working,’ I said. ‘I just want to know why he was here. I have the photograph. I know he was here.’

I heard a muffled conversation at the other end, then Ken spoke again. ‘You’ve upset her, David.’

‘Then we’re all upset,’ I said callously.

‘David,’ I heard him say, ‘David.’ But his voice was overridden by rapid pips in my ear. I had some more coins in my hand, but in the few seconds I had before cut-off I
said, ‘I’m out of change, Ken. Tell Mum I love her.’

‘David—’

The line went dead.

As I put the receiver back on its cradle I became aware of another man standing a few paces away, waiting, as I thought, to use the phone after me. I stepped aside so he could
get to the kiosk, but he held out an arm to obstruct me. ‘Can I have a word?’

I recognised him. It was the man who had nodded to me outside the pub the time I’d spent the day in town with Nikki, after seeing the lion. I’d met him originally, with his head of
black hair swept back and fixed in place with Brylcreem, at the National Front meeting. It was John Talbot, the man that DC Willis had revealed was Terri’s brother.

‘It’s about Terri,’ the man said.

‘Oh yes?’

‘You know she’s my sister, don’t you?’ Though this man was taller and rough-featured, there was a resemblance though not one you would have seen if he hadn’t
mentioned it. ‘She’s gone missing.’

‘Yes, the police came here asking about her.’

‘Police,’ he spat. ‘Useless.’

I nodded.

‘Did you tell them anything?’

‘Anything? I don’t know anything.’

‘You don’t know anything about what’s gone off?’

‘Gone off?’

‘Yes. Something’s gone off.’

‘What do you mean?’ I said.

‘It’s not like her. She’s left everything. I smell a rat.’ He looked at me hard. I had the notion he was saying to me that he was looking at the thing he could smell. I
had to summon all my willpower not to look away. ‘The only people she had anything to do with here was Colin, and you.’

‘Me? Have you spoken to Terri about me?’

He nodded. Then he wagged a finger in my face. ‘There’s something not right here. Not right.’

I shook my head slightly. I was trying to model my features into an expression of concern and bafflement at the same time.

‘You’re a friend of Tony’s, aren’t you?’

‘Tony? The Tony here at the camp? The children’s entertainer?’

‘You know who I mean.’

‘Well, yes. I mean, yes, he’s a friend.’

He took a step away from me. He was still tapping his finger at the empty air. ‘Be assured I’ll be back with more questions. Be assured.’

Then he turned and left me.

I was falling apart. Isolated. I had to know that Terri was all right and that Colin hadn’t done something terrible. But I was also re-examining my feelings for her. I
suspected that she’d misled me about a great many things. She hadn’t actually lied outright but by cleverly editing any information she had given me she had painted a partial picture of
herself. Colin’s story of rescuing her from prostitution didn’t match up with hers, and for some reason I believed Colin’s version. She hadn’t even told me she had a
brother. Just as Colin had led me down one garden path, so she had led me down another. The garden of hate and the garden of love; and I found no succour in either.

Meanwhile I had to go round organising these trivial and inconsequential – not to say silly – activities when all the time I felt like some kind of horrific dragnet was closing in.
That night I was on the roster to run the lights in the nightclub. Normally I stayed sober while I was still on duty, but drinking took the edge off my anxieties and stopped certain thoughts from
bubbling to the surface. There were three acts on that night: Tony put them onstage and took them off while I dealt with the lights. During the first interval I sat on a high stool at the bar with
Tony, when Nikki turned up looking like she was dressed for the London Palladium Royal Command Performance.

‘Look at that man-trap,’ he said, tapping my thigh.

She was stunning. She wore a short black cocktail dress, opaque black tights and black heels. She had a white flower – maybe it was a gardenia or a magnolia – pinned in her hair,
which was tied back. I don’t think I’d seen her face made-up before that night. So pretty was she that her natural look served her beautifully on most occasions, but here she was
looking like a cover girl from a magazine. Heads turned all over the small room. If she saw it, she made out she didn’t.