The Year of the Ladybird Read Online Free PDF Page B

because even though I didn’t smoke I found myself taking one. I mean, I’d smoked a few cigarettes here and there, but it was as if the
invitation to take one of his cigarettes – they were the short, unfiltered kind – was irresistible. I put it between my lips and he flicked a smart lighter. I dipped the tip of the
cigarette into the flame, knowing that he was still peering hard at me.
    ‘Seen anything?’ he said.
    ‘About what?’
    Without taking his eyes off mine he lit up a cigarette for himself. He inhaled deeply and then blew out a long thin blue plume of smoke. ‘Anythin’.’
    I hadn’t the faintest idea what he was talking about. ‘No.’
    He held his cigarette in his left hand and I noticed that his right fist was bunched. He nodded slowly. The he held a single finger up to his face and gave a slight tug on the skin under his
eye. ‘Keep these open for me, will ya?’
    ‘Sure.’
    ‘How you fixed?’
    ‘What?’
    ‘They paid you yet?’
    ‘No.’ He knew that we all worked a week in hand and I wouldn’t get paid until the end of the second week. It discouraged quitting without notice.
    ‘Here.’He put a ten pound note in my top pocket.
    ‘What’s that for?’
    ‘Help you out, son. Tide you over.’
    A tenner was a lot of money. After deductions for food and palatial lodgings I was only being paid £25 per week. I wasn’t sure I wanted to keep it. ‘I can’t take that off
you.’
    ‘Leave it out,’ he said.
    ‘I’ll pay you back when I get my wages,’ I said.
    He turned very slowly and fixed me with a glare. ‘It ain’t a loan.’
    After that he melted into the darkness. I was left alone with a cigarette I didn’t want burning between my fingers and wondering what, exactly, I’d agreed to keep a look out for. I
tossed my cigarette to the floor and stamped on it. Then I made my way to the Golden Wheel.
     
    The Entertainments Business is hierarchical. As Greencoats we were at the bottom of the well. Then there were the dancers and the Assistant Stage Manager and the DJ. Moving on
up came the stage acts and their place in the pecking order was measured strictly by the font size of their name on the billboards. Near the crest were the musicians who accompanied the acts, and
Abdul-Shazam. But topping the bill, highest paid and commanding the best dressing room facilities was the
Italian Tenor
.
    I’d never even seen an Italian Tenor before I worked at the holiday camp. Mine was an era of rock music, with Punk just around the corner and within spitting distance. Yet in the holiday
camp theatre they were still serving up the old-style Variety formula: comedy duos, dancing girls, lady singers in glamorous gowns, magic acts. Beyond that, and somehow connecting low music-hall
traditions and operatic high culture, stood the Italian Tenor. Tony told me that every holiday camp theatre had one at the time. Not all of them were from Italy, even though they might have Italian
names. Quite often they were from Italy-next-Blackburn.
    Our Italian Tenor was the real deal. His name was Luca Valletti. I did the lights for him in The Golden Wheel that evening. Before the show, while I was still shaking off my strange encounter
with Colin, he introduced himself to me, very politely, and asked if I would do something different.
    ‘Doesn’t Perry do the lights?’ Perry was the ASM.
    ‘I would like you to do it.’
    Luca wanted to finish on a song called ‘Autumn Leaves’. He showed me how to mix the gels on the lighting so that we could get green and gold at the outset, move through some
appropriate variations and finish on red and gold. It didn’t involve much more than gently moving a lever, but Luca wanted it done sensitively and at certain places in the song. Perry was a
bit grumpy but cheered up when Luca bought him a drink and explained that it also meant that Perry could quit early. I was impressed with Luca Valletti. I mean with how he managed people.
    Luca came out on stage in