The whole of your childhood’s telly is still here. Hard to be sure which side of the equation is the one in helclass="underline" the waxworked entertainers or yourself.
But you would notice, wouldn’t you? If you were in hell.
The Central Pier is said to be, just as it ought, somewhere in the middle when it comes to the style and tenor of its diversions.
Trust Blackpool never to miss the obvious.
And the boyfriend, too.
He’s looking at you — easy to tell without having to check, because his attention is tangibly leaking, scampering down the side of your face. Fair enough, your boyfriend’s supposed to pay heed, but his payment feels like a trickle of something sad. Or as if he’s spitting on you.
It is offensive to be spat at, a provocation in many cultures.
He does, of course, want you to be happy here and to accept the blousy, big-grinning town in the proper spirit. He’d like you to join in — this is absolutely the capital of joining in and being of an age when fake plates of bacon and egg made from peppermint rock should prove hilarious, or tasty, maybe even a proof of magical undercurrents in your world.
When you were little here it was all sweet undercurrents.
Recalling your childhood unleashes your capacity for wonder, appreciation of kindness and belief. Returning someone to their child self will cause an increase in their potential depth of helplessness and fear. The shock of capture, prolonged, can assist in usefully producing this effect.
Half the shops are selling cocks made of rock now. Or sticks with filth written through them. This isn’t for the kiddies and families any more. It’s for lap dancers and being on the lash, and sick lights squirming down flat in the rain and being with the boys, except you can’t, you’ve got to watch that — they forget you’re not a boy, or else they remember and both are No Bloody Chance in the end. You are not one thing and not the other. You are not most things. You have been somewhere in which most things are not most things and no one gives a toss so why should you and how would you know you ought to and this is how you’ve ended up.
Bad enough, but then you talked to a milk-white lawyer. Afterwards, he hated you more than anyone, even though you did nothing. You did nothing. That was the point. You did nothing in every way. Nothing about the goings-on, the box of frogs clusterfuck of what was going on.
You did nothing. Then you talked. And you didn’t mention the well-meant but turned-out-badly rugby tackles and honest self-defence, because that was bollocks and you were sick of it. You did not speak as agreed.
By the end, with the lawyer and the lawyer’s people, there was contempt. You were doing them a favour and that’s how they repaid you.
‘Are you tired?’ Weak boyfriend has to ask something, so he picks a weak question, one you won’t block.
‘No, I’m not.’
‘Are you sure? You look tired.’
This is unsurprising because you do not sleep and, for the last three days, he has been with you and found that out. It is easy to imagine that your wakefulness disturbs him.
‘You’ve got these big shadows under your eyes.’
Lack of sleep cannot be underestimated as a modifier of behaviour and personality. The truth will out.
Easier to imagine your sleep has crawled away from you during the dark and infected him, slid into his pillow and filled him with your dreams. It is Sunday — he looks at you differently today — not the way he did on Saturday or Friday.
‘Are you listening?’
You offer him, ‘What?’ Because you want to delay him, give him another go, so he can change direction.
‘I said you seem tired. .’ He pushes an unmistakable amount of misery into his following, trailing silence while he scrambles about for other words, ones that you’ll like. ‘I thought this would be nice for you. A holiday. . To get away. .’ He keeps putting you in charge of conversations, choices, directions. You would rather he did not. You would rather be without responsibility.
Still, you’d wanted to leave the village, the cottage, he’s right about that. As soon as you were back there you’d noticed the spiders and they’d worried you. Everyone said the weather had been wet for the whole of the summer and autumn — floods in the lower valleys and warm, unremitting rain, damp plaster in your old bedroom’s ceiling.
Not your old bedroom — it’s just still your bedroom. No one else’s.
For some reason these conditions had bred up spiders, fat-bodied and numerous, an infestation your father had failed to mention in his letters. They hung in the corners of doorways and from lamp posts, traffic signs, window frames, in the dark of shrubs and hedges. They bobbed and fidgeted, a sense of unnatural weight about them. Your dad didn’t seem to mind — almost gave the impression he had somehow encouraged them, let them colonise the fading raspberry canes and the beans, the shed, the chicken coop. For some reason, the chickens didn’t eat them — perhaps this breed was venomous to some degree.
And he let them go into your bedroom. You killed four. Killed them for making it different when it should have been the same.
So you’d cut short your visit, left a bag to show you’d be back, indicate affection, and off to Blackpool with the boyfriend.
Stupid word — he isn’t a boy and isn’t a friend.
But Blackpool is also inaccessible to lawyers and questions, just as Cyprus will be. And Cyprus is renowned for causing service personnel to get innocent and forget, I’m told. And this is a good thing for everyone, I’m told.
You and your not-boyfriend are currently facing each other — no idea how that happened — and he is very visible, but you realise that if you reach out you won’t touch him, he’ll be further than the moon, than hell’s arsehole, than the back of your mind in the mornings, although this is not his intention.
‘Do you want to go? Will we pack up and. . there are other places. .’
Like Cyprus.
In the distance beyond him there are three dark shapes, thin men standing and angled perfectly into the breeze, the slack little gusts that taste of dirty washing and stale fat.
They stick on your skin, the oily scents, because of the oil that you have on yourself, the greasiness of being human.
First time you went into the Castle, that’s what you noticed — the human reek. Made you gag. Nowhere else was like it: not a tent, not the broil of a Saracen, not the scared wet heat that you leave with your clothes.
You bring it outside on yourself when you leave, the stink, and it doesn’t go and you know each other by it — the ones who are your kind — you would know them in the dark.
It is sometimes very dark.
Back and forth from your block to the Castle and the Castle to your block. Noises dragging at your ankles. You didn’t like it. You imagined your footsteps laid down as if they were sacking and wet and guilty and layering up.
Guilt is triggered by proximity — over the line and you’re too near them and you don’t know who should ask the questions, them or you. You’ve both done stuff, everyone has done stuff — nobody clean over there, and blink and it gets all mixed up. Get in first and then you’re safe, it’s the order that makes everything. Keep the order and keep angry and then you’ll be cooking by gas — that’s what you’ve observed. That’s what you’re not forgetting, although you will, of course you will.
Your boyfriend is confused. This is your fault, because for a while you liked Blackpool, it was a buzz. You have misled him: first when you arrived you thought the town was fine and this afternoon it’s not. Up at the swaying top of the Tower and holding hands while you stood on that little square of clear plastic, the one that lets you peer down at the streets between your feet — that was okay. And shunting each other at the dodgems wasn’t bad: the two of you by yourselves, chasing round and round, because the season’s over and no one else is playing any more. That electric tang when you swallowed, those spiky little flowers of noise, you would have preferred to skip them. But being one of two adults trying to laugh and yell and get happy, that was okay, a bit mong but okay. And having an Olde Time photo taken together, you couldn’t think why you shouldn’t. They gave you a dress that fitted in silly places, because you’re lean and also muscular and not an average customer. You have grown into the shape the job requires.