Part 12 (1/2)

Nikki stooped beside me and whispered in my ear, 'You're putting me to shame.'

I looked at her. The sun was up hot and I was sweating. I must have been wild-eyed.

'It's okay,' she said sweetly. She lifted my hair out of my eyes and parked it behind my ear. Then she went back and lay down.

I thought some of the parents were looking at me oddly so I left the kids to their sand designs and went to sit next to Nikki. She was stretched back on the sand with her hands behind her head and her eyes closed. I tried to copy her, but as soon as I put my head back and closed my eyes I saw Colin standing over me. I sat up. There was no Colin. 'I'm really sorry about that thing,' I said.

'Without opening her eyes she said, 'What thing?

'That meeting. They're not my kind of people.'

'Oh forget it.'

'I didn't know what I was getting into. I just went along for the ride. Literally. I mean I was invited to get into a car without knowing where it was taking me. Next thing I know I'm up to my jaw in flags and regalia and spearheads and all this about the commies and the unions and the Jews and the blacks and-'

'Look, we've been through all this. I've forgotten it. Why don't you?'

'I would never have gone if I'd realised.'

'Realised what?'

'Who they were. How it would offend you. All that.' Now she opened her eyes and sat up.

'I mean to say, what if those people ever got into power?'

'They won't,' she said.

'How do you know?'

'They're a hate club. Most people are decent, you know.'

'You say that. But it has happened. In history.'

'What do you think we should do?'

'Well. Organise.'

'Organise? Right! This afternoon. We'll go after them with an iron bar and a cricket bat. You and me.' She closed her eyes again.

I vented a deep sigh. I know I sat there for a while pinching a loose bit of skin above the bridge of my nose. At least it was better than forcing small children into making over-complicated sandcastles.

Eventually Nikki got to her feet. 'Come on. Put on a happy face. I'll pick the winners while you give everyone a stick of rock. Sod it, give them two sticks apiece.'

14.

The reward of a cigar while Sat.u.r.day comes More than ever I needed to find Terri, to re-establish terra firma, to stop my world from spinning out of control. But I couldn't locate her anywhere. A sweet-natured grey-haired woman called Elsie supervised all the cleaning staff. I tracked her down and asked where I could find Terri.

Elsie wore a pair of plastic-framed spectacles patched together with clear Sellotape. Metal hairgrips pinned back her hair and she was weighed down by an enormous silver ring of keys dangling from a leather belt looped round her thin waist. She seemed too frail to be carrying such a bunch of keys. 'What do you want her for, duck?'

'She left some stuff in the theatre. I want to take it to her.'

'Give it here. I'll see she gets it.'

'No problem. I'll return it to her myself.'

'Please yourself, duck. Only she hasn't been in today.'

'Oh?'

'Happen she'll be back tomorrow, eh?'

'Happen,' I said. I don't know why. I never say hap- pen.

I thought briefly of home. I don't know if these are the sort of things young men discuss with their fathers or their stepfathers or not at all, but I was in serious need of someone to talk to. Though the idea of me telling all this to Ken seemed ridiculous. I'd always kept him at arm's length as if, through no fault of his own, he wasn't to be trusted with intimacies. As I pa.s.sed by the palmist's little white caravan I couldn't help glancing through the door. Tony was in there, laughing and sipping tea from a china tea-cup, his feet crossed at the ankles. I couldn't actually see Madame Rosa, but I could hear her talking in animated fas.h.i.+on No, I didn't think that she could see my future, or that she could see into my past. But a kind of desperation made me look towards the caravan. Not that I was ever going to give her the chance: I'd found out that Madame Rosa charged four pounds fifty for a reading. That seemed to me to be an astonis.h.i.+ng amount of money: the equivalent of about fifteen pints of beer. I didn't need a palmist to tell me that I was serious danger of getting my head kicked in, and that it was all of my own doing.

Nikki had a direct way of speaking. 'You don't look happy and you don't look well,' she said.

'I'm not sleeping well.'

Nikki sighed. 'This place. It can really get to you. That's why your predecessor left. He just couldn't stand it. Long hours of the happy face. It's dangerous. Doing a happy face when you really want to scream. Is anything else bothering you?' She looked at me with dark eyes full of intuition.

I was close to telling her everything. I wasn't in love with Terri but I felt responsible for her. I couldn't see how I could spill the beans on any of this without seeming like I'd made it all happen. 'I'm just not sleeping. That rabbit hutch doesn't help.'

Of Colin or Terri there was neither sight nor sound. A new cleaner had been drafted in to take care of the theatre. I got her to switch off her noisy hoover so that I could ask her about Terri. She didn't know anything. She said that all she knew was that she'd been taken off Block B where she was happy and put on the theatre where she didn't know a soul.

In blistering heat we judged the compet.i.tions around the swimming pool. The heat and the lack of sleep exhausted me. Nikki wanted me to go to the canteen with her for lunch but my need to sleep was overwhelming. Images from the previous evening's escape were was.h.i.+ng over me and the dreaming part of my brain was flooding my waking mind. I went back to my room and was relieved to find no sign of n.o.bby. I locked the door, flung myself on my cot and instantly fell into a deep sleep.

Though it seemed like only seconds, it was maybe a couple of hours later when I was roused by a hammering on the door and a woman's voice calling my name. It was Nikki.

I got to my feet and opened the door.

'You're supposed to be preparing for the farewell show,' she said. She peered round me into my room, as if to see if I'd got anyone with me.

I felt drugged. I was like a zombie. 'Need a shower,' I slurred.

'You haven't got time. They're all there. Only you missing.'

I ignored her and in a stupor I shuffled to the shower room, stepped out of my clothes and ran the shower cold over my head. I stood under the icy water for a moment and began to revive. When I opened my eyes Nikki was there, shamelessly watching me. Her arms were folded. She was holding one of my towels. She flapped it at me. 'You'll need this.'

We hurried over to the theatre where the preparation for the farewell performance and prize-giving ahead of the Friday Review was already underway. Tony and the others were already onstage, setting up. As I came in he asked me to go backstage to wheel out the sword casket and his fez in readiness for his Abdul-Shazam routine.

It was the first time I'd been alone backstage since it had all kicked off. Before then I'd made sure there were others around, people I could talk to, just so that I didn't have to confront the loaded silence of the place. Backstage in the theatre is awash with ghosts. It is a memory bank for every cue missed by an actor; every gag that died; each m.u.f.fed line and dance routine gone awry; each dropped catch, muddle, mix-up and mistake: the tragic moment that turns to farce. For all of this there is a dark audience perched and waiting.

The sword casket was covered with props and stage junk. I was thinking about Nikki, who would be called upon to get into the box as I took all the junk off the box and unlatched the lid. When I opened the lid and looked inside I let the lid slam down and I toppled backwards.