Part 5 (1/2)

I was grateful for the role. I dodged another bucket and an incoming Spearhead vendor and made my way to the bar. There was nothing I could do but wait out my time before getting a lift back to the camp. At the bar I bought myself another pint of bitter, a whisky for Colin and a whisky for myself. I didn't want the latter but I felt like I needed it. I leaned against the bar sipping my drinks and watching buoyant party-members leave in small groups, some of them resting ceremonial flags on poles across their shoulder.

Colin re-appeared. He had a way of ghosting to your side. 'What you make of that then?'

'Interesting,' I said.

His face was like a sea-washed stone. 'Interesting, eh?' Then for the first time ever I saw him laugh. It was a cynical laugh. 'Listen, I'm not a c.u.n.t. I know it ain't where you're at. I told Tony but he thought you deserved a chance.'

I'm not sure what chance it was that was being offered to me, but I nodded my appreciation.

'Listen,' he said again. 'You're honest. I like that. You come to me for anything. You got that?'

'Yes.'

'No,' he said. 'You 'aven't got it.'

'Yes, I have.'

'No, you don't get it. You come to me for anything. Any reason.'

I was embarra.s.sed by the idea that Colin was telling me he'd taken a liking to me. I didn't know what to say so I offered to buy him a beer, but we were interrupted by Tony. 'Enjoy any of that, David?'

Colin rescued me from having to think of an answer. He said to Tony, 'Any word?'

'Suspended without pay, old son, and banned from the camp for two weeks.'

Colin swore. 'Cowsons.'

Tony put a forefinger under his own right eye and pulled down the fold of skin there. 'You're lucky that I put a word in for you,' he said. 'Be grateful. Could have been a lot worse.'He switched his gaze to me. His lower lip was moist. 'A lot worse.'

I recalled what Norman Prosser had said about them looking after their own. It seemed that Colin's party members.h.i.+p had come in useful: Tony would have some sway with Pinky and the rest of the camp management team. In the next moment I heard someone call Colin by his name but he didn't look up. Instead, while Tony was buying more drinks at the bar Colin drew me aside and tapped me with extreme delicacy on my breastbone. 'While I'm away I want you to keep an eye open.'

I shuffled. 'Keep an eye open for what?'

'If she talks to anyone, I want to know.' He fixed me with an intense look. It was like having someone insert their thumbs into your eye sockets.

Most of the party members were drifting away, with their flags and regalia, while we knocked back our drinks. Tony seemed upbeat, cheerful. He wanted us to stay but Colin was ready to leave. But not before Norman Prosser came bustling through.

'Where's my young student?' he said loudly. The whisky had given him a red complexion and there was a glow of perspiration on his jowls. When he put a hand either side of my face and gently patted my right cheek I could smell his cologne. He was all smiles. 'I saw you listening. I saw you listening. And that's all I ask, that you students give us a fair hearing and then spread the word. That's not unfair, is it? You want another drink?'

'He doesn't,' Colin said. 'We're away.'

'Now you've got Colin if you need anything from us,' Prosser said.

'Colin's not going to be around for a bit,' Tony said.

Prosser tipped his head back to look at Tony. From that simple remark he seemed to gather all he needed to know. 'Well, in that case he's got you.'

'Give the lad a breavin' s.p.a.ce,' Colin said.

Prosser brushed some imaginary lint from my shoulder. 'Never mind these two. Colin's a good spotter. We're like family and you come to me for anything at all. Are you all right for a few quid?'

'I'm fine thank you, Mr Prosser.' I said.

'Norman to you. And you come to us for anything at all.'

Out in the car park the two back-seat pa.s.sengers were waiting by the car. They stood in their high-laced Doc Martens with their arms folded, fists bunched behind their biceps. I hadn't seen them in the meeting though I knew that's where they'd been. They sized me up like I was the Prodigal Son. Or the fatted calf, ready for the knife.

We climbed in and set off to return to the coast.

'Ignore Norman,' Colin said. 'He can't hold his drink.'

'What's Norman said then?' asked one of the lads in the back.

Colin ignored the question so I thought I should, too. There was no further discussion about the meeting and I certainly wasn't going to bring up the topic. Meanwhile Colin drove in silence, utterly focused on the heat-s.h.i.+mmering road ahead.

At one point in the journey Colin stopped the car and took out a cloth to wipe away the huge number of bugs that had splattered the windscreen. I studied his face as he worked. It was flat and emotionless; but it was full of history. Deep diagonals raged across his forehead and twisted over his brow. I wondered if there were people who could read faces, in the same way that a palmist looks at your hands.

He caught me looking and I glanced away sharpish.

Shortly after he started again, the buck-tooth pa.s.senger in the back said, completely out of the blue, 'Is he a poof, then?'

'Ask him yourself,' Colin said.

'Are you a poof, then?'

I realised he was talking about me. I turned and looked him in the eye but said nothing.

After a while the same boy piped up again. 'He thinks we're all c.u.n.ts,' he said.

I turned around a second time. 'No,' I said. 'I don't think Colin is a c.u.n.t. And I don't think your mate is a c.u.n.t either.'

'Ha!' shouted Colin, and he hooted his horn. 'That's f.u.c.ked you!' Then he hit his horn again. 'You're out your league wi' this boy! Haha!'

After that we drove back to the camp in complete silence.

6.

The extraordinary seduction of marine phosph.o.r.escence I spent the rest of the afternoon sleeping. I wasn't accustomed to drinking in the day-time whisky or beer and, what with the heat, when I got back I just crashed on my pallet bed. By the time I awoke I'd missed tea at the canteen. I remember sitting up on my bed in a semi-stupor, gazing down at the floor where my sandals lay alongside the copy of Spearhead magazine while a stupid newspaper shoutline Was Jesus A Fascist? looped around my head. It was half an hour before the paralysis left me and I was able to drag myself off to the shower.

It had been my plan to wander into the town of Skegness that evening, to get away from the camp, but I still felt sluggish and I decided it was too late. I needed to eat. I trailed over to the Fish & Chip bar but even that failed to shake me from my stupor.

Several drinking venues were available on the site. There was a licensed ballroom where older couples did the foxtrot and the cha-cha-cha but following my afternoon with the National Front I didn't feel up for either. There was another watering hole known as the Tap Room featuring a stout and rather warty lady called Bertha who slapped the piano stride-style for a traditional singalong. 'The Old Bull and Bush' and all that. Then there was the strip-lit giant aircraft hangar of the s...o...b..at. If you didn't like any of these, the last recourse was a tiny bar situated in a corner of the theatre foyer, a hideaway favoured by the professional acts if they wanted a drink after a performance, and that's where I decided to go. But of course there was no Variety show on a Sat.u.r.day evening, so the Review Bar as it was t.i.tled, was closed. I settled instead for the s...o...b..at.

The residency three-piece band bashed away on stage at the far end of the hangar: drums, organ and ba.s.s artlessly covering standards and cla.s.sics. Dozens of circular table-and-chair sets filled the s.p.a.ce between the band and the bar, populated with new holidaymakers relaxed and drinking at a hearty pace that would last all week and quicken on Friday. I made for the bar and was surprised to see Luca Valletti sitting near the band and in his civvies. He was smoking a cigarette and he had a gla.s.s of wine in front of him. I wanted to go over but he seemed deep in conversation with a woman I knew to be the girlfriend of one of the band members. Anyway, I was immediately distracted when I was rounded on by a coven of kitchen girls.

'Hey it's him from the college of knowledge! Show us your IQ!'