The Ghost in the Electric Blue Suit (14 page)

I said, “Sure.”

We strolled along the beach and she suggested we find a place in the deep dunes. I started to feel uneasy about the dunes so I suggested we sit on the pebbles, but she insisted we go deeper into the spiky marram grass and the hills of sand. It was still hot. She said she wanted to get some sunbathing in. I gave in.

As soon as we settled down, she wriggled out of her skirt and took her top off. “You don’t mind, do you? I want to get some air to my body.”

I assured her that I didn’t mind. She lay on her back with her hands behind her head. I sat down near enough to her but with a couple of feet of distance between us. I felt too agitated to lie back. I opened a can of cola and it frothed over. The spray went onto her midriff. She wiped her flat belly with a tanned, elegant finger and sucked her finger to clean it.

With the heat diminishing by the second, the day had distilled itself into a wonderful calm, even if inside I was fighting my own inexplicable anxieties. Were I not still troubled by the apparition of the man in the boat, I would have said it was a moment of paradise. We could hear the sea, gone far out now, rhythmically sucking at the sand. I had to force myself not to scan the dune hills. I had this idea that I would
see a boy and his father there. Finally I forced myself to lay back with my tormented thoughts, and I thought Nikki had gone to sleep.

I felt a finger trace my neck. I opened my eyes.

“Ladybug,” she said. “Look, they’re everywhere.”

She had one on her arm, too, so I flicked it off. I lay back again but Nikki flopped lazily on her side and reached out a hand toward me. At first she rested her hand on my thigh and then she moved her hand to cup my genitals. I felt a jolt inside my jeans. I gasped.

Yes, she was beautiful. Yes, she was sexy. She was extraordinary. But I had to stop it. I wasn’t ready to stop thinking about Terri. It was ridiculous: It hadn’t gone anywhere with Terri, but I was still obsessed.

I knew what I should do. I should speak to Terri and remind her that she was married and tell her straight up that I didn’t want the complication. It was the right and decent thing to do. I could honestly say to Terri that nothing had happened with anyone else and that I’d made a moral decision about her situation, and after that the way would be clear with Nikki.

That was what I
should
do.

I lifted Nikki’s hands from my balls.

“What’s wrong with it?” Nikki said.

“Look, Nikki, there’s someone else.”

“Who?”

I shook my head.

“Is it a man?”

“God, no!” I said.

Then Nikki screamed, right in my face. She pulled her T-shirt on, scrambled to her feet, and stormed over the dunes and ran toward the beach. I waited for a while and then decided to go after her.

She stood on the sand in her T-shirt and knickers with her back to me. Her arms were folded and she appeared to be gazing out to sea. With the tide out and the sun dropping behind us, her lonely figure cast a long shadow across the sand. I didn’t say anything, just stood abreast of her, gazing out to sea.

“I could have any man back at that resort,” she said. “Any man. I know it. That’s not being vain. I just know it. I would only have to point at one of them. So why is it I pick the one man I can’t have? Why is it? I always do it. Always. Something in me sees that I can’t have this or that one, and that becomes the one I want. If I can have them I don’t want them; if I can’t have them I want them. Who are you seeing?”

“I can’t tell you … just yet. I want to get it sorted out.”

“Oh? Well, I think I know anyway.”

“Really? Who?”

“Never mind.”

“Go on.”

“No.”

“Please tell me,” I said.

“You don’t want to say. I don’t want to say. Let’s nobody say.”

I looked hard at her. I couldn’t tell whether she was just playing games or if she had seen something that had suggested it was Terri.

She sighed. “Oh, come on. Let’s walk back to the resort.”

She linked her arm in mine and we walked along the sand back to our workplace.

“Anyway,” she said when we got back to the gate, “I had a great day.”

“Me, too,” I said.

We kissed briefly. Somehow in that moment I popped my tongue inside her mouth. She drew back and shook her head minutely, as if she didn’t understand me.

She wasn’t the only one.

10

THINGS THAT COULD GET ONE EVICTED FROM THE MAGIC CIRCLE

Before turning in to the theater the next morning I made my way over to the canteen for breakfast. It was hard going. The ladybugs that had been bothering us for a couple of days had begun swarming in the hot air. They pinged at my face as I walked across the yard. One flew in my mouth and I had to spit it out. I could see holidaymakers batting them away with the flat of their hands. What had been a nuisance was becoming a plague. It was a relief to get to the canteen and shut the door on them.

The ladybugs were the talk of the breakfast tables. No one had seen a swarm like this before. Someone said there was a plague of hoverflies one year. Another declared that it was happening because the greenflies were plentiful that season and the ladybugs fed on greenflies. A third reported that it was caused by the drought and the ladybugs were coming to the coast looking for water. I had no wisdom about ladybugs to contribute to this vigorous debate.

After finishing my breakfast I cleared away my plates, stashed my tray, and headed over to the theater. The ladybug blizzard had gotten even worse. If anyone was out and about, they were running. On my way to the theater I passed by reception and one of the office secretaries opened a window and said that I had a call.

My first thought was that it was from home. I had an idea that my stepdad would call at some point and tell me that Mum was sick or would find some other way to pressure me into coming home. I picked up the receiver and pressed the earpiece to my ear.

“All right, son?”

“Oh! Hello, Colin.” Of course, Colin would know my exact moves. He would know exactly what time I would pass by the offices on the way to the morning briefing. This was all surveillance.

“Anything I should know, son?”

“No, I don’t think so.” One of the secretaries was eavesdropping, so I moved away as far as I could and turned my back.

“What does that mean? You
don’t think so
.”

“It means nothing to report.”

“Right. You all right for everything?”

With Colin it was like speaking in code. “What do you mean?”

“Are you short for a few quid? I’ll get it to you if you’re short.”

“No, no, I’m fine.”

“Good lad.”

“Where are you right now?”

“I’m around. I ain’t allowed on the resort.”

“Colin.”

“What?”

“If I see her out, am I to buy her a coffee or whatever?”

There was a long pause. “You can buy her a coffee. But not a drink.”

“Okay. I’ve got to go to work now, Colin.”

“Right.”

I put the receiver back on its cradle. The secretary looked at me and compressed her lips.

When I got to the theater Pinky and Tony were hastily revising the program.

“What’s it like out there?” Pinky asked.

“You couldn’t cut it with a knife,” I told them.

We were scheduled to organize a Swimming Gala around the pool. “Can’t do it in this,” Tony said with finality. “Right, let’s get ’em all in the ballroom. We’ll have another fuckin’ magic show.”

“Right,” Pinky said. “Another fuckin’ magic show.”

“We need,” Tony said, “someone to jog up to the pool to see if there’s anyone hanging about. Bring ’em all down to the ballroom.”

“I’m not going out there!” Nobby shouted. “Have you seen out there? It’s like a biblical fuckin’ epidemic out there is what it is. A fuckin’ biblical fuckin’ plague I mean. Cecil B. DeMille, without the toads. Four horsemen of the fuckin’ ladybugs. That’s right. Apopolypse. No, what is it? Apocalypse. I open my mouth to speak and ten ladybugs fly in.”

“What a shame you have to shut your mouth,” said Sammy the elder Greencoat, adjusting his wig.

“Hey!” went Nobby. “Hey! That’s not nice!”

While all this was going on Tony leaned over to me. “Will you go, David? Someone has to.”

“Yeh, I’ll do it.”

Pinky opened his office and reappeared with a battery-powered megaphone. “Use this if you like. You’ll need to hang around up there for half an hour collecting the stragglers and latecomers. Good lad.”

Off I went with my megaphone, into the ladybug storm.

I didn’t jog. I made my way pretty smartly up to the deserted swimming pool area and switched on the thing. The airborne insects were pinging into the metal funnel as I mouthed a few words about everyone going down to the ballroom to have a great time. The trouble was there was no one there to hear me. Hardly anyone was actually outside in the ladybug storm. I let the megaphone fall at my side. “There’s a magic show waiting for you,” I said to no one, or maybe just to the flying bugs.

The ladybugs seemed attracted to my blazer. Maybe the green stripes had them confused into thinking they were settling on a lush leaf. Thankfully they didn’t seem attracted to my white trousers in the same way, but I wiped about two or three dozen ladybugs off my blazer sleeve alone. Tony had told me to stick around for half an hour, but what with the insects targeting me I didn’t feel like standing still so I went about the chalet blocks, trying to be inventive with what I gabbled into my megaphone. Something unfunny about emergency anti-ladybug legislation. Occasionally a door would open and a bemused family would peer at me, trying to fathom what I was saying.

Ladybugs were crawling inside my collar and in my ear and I’d had enough. I walked past block D mouthing about an all-star magic show with Abdul-Shazam and all the gang when one of the chalet doors opened. It was Terri. She’d been cleaning one of the refurbished chalets. I went over to her.

“Look at you,” she gasped. “Come inside.”

She pulled me in and slammed the door on the cloud of insects.

“Look at you!” she said again, this time pointing at me.

I looked down. The ladybugs had swarmed over my blazer. There was barely a patch of cloth to be seen under them. They were live but motionless, anchored to the colored threads. My blazer was a live garment, like something from a dream. I was shocked.

“Let’s get it off you,” she said. Very gently she reached a finger under each lapel and eased the blazer off my shoulders, like she was determined to lift the thing off me without killing a single ladybug. I felt the thrill of her fingers stroking my collarbone. She stepped in closer to me and delicately slipped the blazer down the length of my arms. I could smell the shampoo in her hair. I could smell something like sunshine on her skin. She was close enough for me to feel her breath on my neck. When she’d lowered the blazer sleeves free of my arms she stepped to one side, holding the blazer in one hand, and then she gently hung it over the back of a chair before stepping back. I don’t think she lost a single ladybug in the process.

For a long time we were motionless, staring at the ladybug-sheathed coat. Then she turned and stepped over to me and pressed her mouth on mine. We were still kissing as
she popped the buttons on my shirt and tore it from my back. The shirt cuffs wouldn’t go over my wrists as she tugged the shirt behind me. There was a new, uncovered mattress on the bed and we fell on it. I was still manacled by my shirt as she worked my trousers down. I remember gasping, and looking up, and seeing the live ladybug blazer on the back of the chair, and then closing my eyes.

THE MAGIC SHOW was hitting its stride by the time I got to the ballroom. Tony had some kids on the stage, fumbling for colored handkerchiefs in a soft blue velvet bag. When they pulled out white handkerchiefs instead of colored ones he pretended to be annoyed. Nikki was up there with him in her fetching costume of sequins and fishnet tights. I avoided eye contact with her.

“Thought we’d lost you,” Pinky said drily, eyebrows aloft.

“I swallowed a bug and it stuck in my throat,” I said. “I had to go and get a drink from somewhere.”

“Ha,” said Pinky. He flicked imaginary ash from his unlit cigar. “Haha.”

Tony—or should I say Abdul-Shazam—wrapped up that part of his conjuring act and I saw Nobby and Sammy wheeling the large sword casket onstage, carefully settling it between two chairs. Tony went serious for a moment and changed his microphone style. He asked for quiet because, he said, the next trick was genuinely dangerous and the swords he would be using were sharp. He invited someone to come up and check the swords. He held a piece of ribbon at arm’s
length as one of the audience cut through the ribbon with a whisper. He warned us that they had tried to get insurance against any mishaps but no insurance company in the land would offer a premium. And with that, Nikki climbed into the casket.

Tony perspired visibly. I thought he looked anxious. I glanced at Pinky but he was poker-faced. Nobby and Sammy looked pretty serious, too. A hush descended over the audience, broken only by the clink of glasses or the sound of the till opening at the bar. The trick should be perfectly safe, even though I didn’t know how it worked. I just had an awful feeling in my stomach that something was going to go wrong.