Sarah Hall - The Electric Michelangelo

— Sir. I’ve found mine. The Pisces vaginales. That’s what I’ll hunt for today.

— What’s that Parks?

— Pisces vaginales, sir. Recorded at Morecambe Bay in the eighteen hundreds according to the book. So called because it resembles the genitalia of a woman. What’s a genitalia, sir? Sir? It says here that they contract tightly when touched and emit a liquor like that of a vagina in coy … in coy … in coitu …

— My room, Parks! Immediately! The rest of you, on with your study. In silence. And if I hear a word …

Cy was marched down to the fusty, book-strewn office of Colin Willacy where all castigations and lectures were issued, and where, it was widely rumoured, the headmaster took a wee drop of port daily around about lunchtime. If you licked your hand before Old Willacy had a chance to whip it with his cane it didn’t hurt so very much. It still hurt, but was less likely to redden up and blister and smart all day. However, it turned out there were misdemeanours that did not warrant a caning. Much to his surprise and relief Cy did not get birched for his fishy transgression, though the headmaster paced about the room a good while before making this clear, giving Cy ample time to prepare his appendages for the onslaught of stinging wood. The old man removed his mortarboard and ran a hand lengthwise through his thinning white hair, smoothing long wayward strands of it along the dome of his pate. He adjusted his chalk-stained gown about him.

— Sit down, lad.

Willacy had never called him lad before. He was a funny old codger, with foibles and eccentricities, like insisting Cy write script with his unnatural right hand not his natural left, and a recurrently weepy, pus-crusted eye when it came to the examination period, but this term of endearment was a new one to Cy. He wiped his palms on his breeches leg and sat.

— Now, Cyril, I’m going to tell you this because I know you are without a father and it is a father’s duty to inform his offspring of such matters. I do not fault your mother for her neglect, indeed you’ve arrived at your inquisitiveness and speculation reasonably early it seems; then again you are a rather… tall fellow for your age, but, she shall not be blamed for ill preparation. However, we cannot have you running around declaring vulgarity to the world. That would not do. I shall try to be brief and I shall try to be frank.

Being brief and frank were not two of Colin Willacy’s strong points. In all fairness, Cy was of the opinion, he did not get off lightly. It was quite possibly one of the worst punishments he had ever received, and after a dire, meandering, inclusive speech containing every loathsome aspect of a curriculum Cy had no inclination to participate in, he left the headmaster’s quarters, pale and visibly shaken, so his pals were at first convinced he had taken the birching of a lifetime. He probably would have preferred a caning. The incident did not prevent him from sharing his new-found knowledge about the school yard, since he was now in possession of some remarkably formal terminology, some remarkably extensive slang words, and some remarkably modern concepts — Mr Willacy was, after all, a thorough teacher. Within a week several new rhymes had been introduced to Morecambe’s school yards, though Cy sincerely maintained,

whilst getting severely caned, that he was the author and distributor of none of them.

— French letter, French letter, on the spot, there’s nothing better.

— Fishy fanny, fanny fish, won’t you make a funny dish.

So it was that another mysterious world creaked open its door for him.

That July they were all treated to Gaynor Shearer’s obvious nipples, seen like broomhandles through her bathing suit as the chill wind off the Atlantic puckered her skin and the skin of all the other Bathing Beauties lined up on the promenade. They were in the midst of a four-day carnival in anticipation of armistice. Decorated horses and carriages had made their way through the streets in the parade, streaming with banners and leaving snowy trails of paper confetti in their wake. The beauties were officially daring to bare more than had ever been bared before. Had any of the Tory councillors been present at the pedestal that afternoon there may have been a swift dismantling of the exhibition, coats flung over scantily clad bodies — which would not have been entirely unwelcomed by the girls for the air was not a little nippy — and a general sense of spoiled fun. As it was the Bathing Beauties were not interrupted and they posed bravely on the platform, hips at hourglass angles, and with lunatic grins on their powdered faces which were in actuality jaw-locked grimaces of discomfort at being exposed to the elements in such a savage fashion. Cy and every other come-of-age lad in town of such proclivity marvelled at the show, which was nice and naughty at once, and stirred a new ingredient up in them, like batter which would thereafter coat every desirable woman in their lives. He came home immediately after the show and disappeared into his room, eyes a little fazed, gait a little obstructed, so that Reeda assumed her son to be sick with excessive eating. The affair was destined to become one of Morecambe Council’s annual pet peeves and one of England’s best-loved, male-melded, seaside-resort traditions. And though Gaynor’s were not the only nipples on display that day, they certainly were the most pronounced and most persistent and she was crowned queen of the first ever Morecambe Bathing Beauties competition.

On the third day of the carnival there was an ox roast on the prom. A beast from a nearby farm had been slaughtered and roasted on a massive medieval spit. It was set up on a pole resting between two trestles. The strong meaty fragrance drifted across the piers and through the streets, rumbling stomachs and suggesting to the whole of Morecambe that just around every corner was a gorgeous oven-warmed dinner. It was high season and the crowds thronged about the town, queuing for almost a mile to buy their ox sandwiches. Reeda Parks and her son had been helping the butcher carve and distribute the fare all day with the help of two other ladies. It was up to Cy to wrestle as best he could with the monstrous bottle of HP sauce, getting as little as possible on each sandwich — though it was a tad like riding a bicycle downhill without a handle-bar for steering or brakes for stopping — before one of the women whipped the bread together and handed it out to the next in line. Lomax, the butcher, a striped-aproned giant who seemed completely suitable for the task of slicing up such a carcass, was carving furiously and great portions of shredded brown flesh fell into the catch tray below, where Reeda and the others would retrieve it in accordance with the customers’ preferred tastes, lean or gristle or crackling. The butcher’s patter never tired, and never altered.

— Lancashire or Yorkshire, sir? Meat or fat? Lancashire or Yorkshire, madam? Meat or fat? Lancashire or Yorkshire sir? Meat or fat?

By the end of the afternoon if Cy never saw an ox sandwich again before departing the earth for more clement climes, or gruelling, furnace-like ones — he still had not ruled out that possibility — it would be entirely too soon.

The boys were cutting down an effigy of Kaiser Bill from the flagpole hook in Pedder Street ready to burn him that evening before the dance when Cy first got a whiff of what was to become, later on, his profession of choice. Though at the time, had this been revealed to him in Alva’s crystal ball or via some other tarot table, it would have seemed pure madness, he would have scoffed and laughed and asked for his carny-thieved jiggery-pokeried pennies back. But that was all to come.