Sarah Hall - The Electric Michelangelo

As stout gave way to spirit, Riley proceeded on to personal matters. There was no way Cy should consider him a father figure, that was absolutely clear. Not unless his mother could be brought into the equation.

— Fine legged woman, your mother, I saw her at the fishmonger’s last Thursday buying cod for her guests at the hotel. A good ankle on her. Oh, yes. A fine woman.

Spitting laughter from the man. He went on with the conversation again, while the room sailed out to sea a little further for Cy and he swayed on his stool. No. Riley did not need the obligation of a son, not even a part grown-up and useful one. This was business, open and shut. He had seen Cy’s work at the printers, his hand was fair. Fair was flattery in his book, he’d say no more than that. Riley thought it unfortunate and somewhat foolish not to bestow upon the world his extraordinary gift when he passed away, at this juncture the man left off for a moment, crossed himself profoundly and then in reverse, kissed the back of his wrist and took a lengthy swill of drink. He’d been considering an apprentice for a time now. Found one, potentially. That was that. Death did not scare him, by the way, no. All death would do was secure his place in history as the considerable artist that he was, the way Van Gogh’s life was celebrated after he’d lived it out in poverty. Had Cy heard of Van Gogh? And as far as he was aware he was not up for that prize soon, he did not have a dicky ticker, nor a tricky dicky, spitting laughter, so there was little rush in the matter of bequeathed craftsmanship and genius endowed. Cy should find himself some patience, maybe by the summer he’d be ready to help out with the barrage of holiday-makers wanting tattoos, oh yes, barrage, for his was not a slender occupation. And Riley was ready to teach. Because there came a point in every man’s life …

The offer was not illustrious. Not overly tempting or pitched all that well. At this point, Eliot Riley hadn’t entirely sold Cy on the profession. He still had not made it clear exactly why Cyril Parks was his chosen target and Cy was not informed that Riley had visited the print shop on Strickland Street a couple of times when he was absent with no apparent motive or request for work. What had caught Riley’s eye initially were the bold designs on the wooden signs that hung in the windows to advertise Greene’s service, painted by the boy. The renditions of high-and low-skirted women holding cigarettes, joker faces, bubble lettering and scrolling borders. He had loitered about the shop front, several times, flicking through scripts and letting out the occasional grunt. The work was very good. It described an illustrator who had both imagination and dexterity of hand. He’d seen the boy working through the window, a long loose shank of a fellow, scruffy and soulful, but careful with his ink in his rolled-back shirtsleeve. And he remembered him, remembered him climbing up the shop building, remembered the look on his face, grey-eyed and ash-bark-whittled, like his mother’s. It was a risk for Riley, that surveillance — Greene had seen him in Hagan’s Manufacturing in Lancaster on occasion when both were purchasing supplies of ink, knew him for what he truly was, not the sign painter he professed to be because there was only one in Morecambe Bay, though Greene had thankfully not made mention, suppliers could get shy in their support of the tattooing industry, or downright vicious. Discretion aside, Reginald Greene would not want him in the print shop. That would suggest appreciation, friendship, or secondary distribution of ink — ink, the only thing Eliot Riley and Reginald Greene had in common other than a masculine set of tackle! Their difference as great as collaborating with the living compared to working with the dead. So Riley had waited for the busier moments and was quick about his perusal of Cyril Parks’s work.

Eliot Riley knew he was not popular with many of the businesses in Morecambe, which frowned on the seedier aspects of the town in which they were located, nor the Council, nor the sanitation department, for similar reasons. But that did not alter the fact that in summer the crowds flocked to his shop, the way they flocked to the pie rooms and the ghost-train rides and the ballrooms, wanting to take home an altogether more permanent holiday souvenir. Something they could call their own and never have it taken off them. He was just as much a part of the town’s leisure and entertainment features as the other businesses, and sometimes made better money.

Then the last Saturday of November 1921, a handful of years after meeting the lad, he decided to make his move. He wasn’t sure why he chose that moment over any other. Maybe just because the boy was getting taller and older. Maybe just because he was passing him in the street. As Cy was locking up and leaving work, Riley collared him and said there was a better job for him if he wanted it, better than blocking in signs and calligraphy and being forced to produce insipid, uninspired art. And he took him to the pub where the boy spent near on all his wages on ale and listened to him talk.

Outside the Dog and Partridge two hours later the wind had calmed, having lost the spouse’s quarrel with the sea, and it was replaced by a gentle roar inside Cy’s ears from the merry passage of drink around his body. Riley took hold of him and suddenly became serious. The drawbridge lifted in his face, he clouded over, and he seemed to Cyril, through a pair of eyes that were for once in his life not truly well behaving, incredibly angry. The man appeared thunderous with concentration and premeditation, as if some kind of vendetta were in operation. It was the look of a bully about to strike. The look of a man closed up sentimentally from those he faces and about to pull a trigger. Perhaps it was the broken window, thought Cy, perhaps that was what this meeting had really been all about, though it seemed a little unfair to be holding a grudge this long and Riley had made no mention. He’d seen a pocket full of coin and not claimed compensation.

— You have until eleven o’clock tonight to give me an answer. I’ve someone coming in at ten if you want to see what it’s about. Won’t take me more than an hour. Eleven Pedder Street, door with the split lock and the Jewish looking lights in the window. You know it? Yes, you know it.

Cy nodded. Something about the length of time Riley said his work would take gave the scenario an official feel, gave it credibility and made Cy nervous in his stomach, as if a doctor’s appointment had been scheduled, as if he were about to enter the rooking parlour room in which his mother worked with Mrs Preston.

— Ask for me if someone else answers. Don’t take guff off any of them. This is important, boy.

And Riley placed his hand around the back of Cy’s neck and seemed to tighten his grip on the hairline.

— This is important, boy.

He said it again, quietly. There was the manure smell of stout on his breath, and pickled herring. For a brief second Cy thought the man might be about to kiss him on the forehead with his large lips. He held very still. Those eyes looking at him! Desperate and dying blue, like the top of the sky when the sun is sinking. Then Riley released him, stood back, untucked and pulled up his painter’s shirt and exposed five inches of gut sporting some of the strangest compositions of ink that Cy had ever seen. He was bright like the skin of a tropical creature, like he was half-lizard. And then the man was gone, arched-legged up the wet, leaf-blown street.

Cy almost didn’t go. There were taut fibres within him that told him to stay at home, stay put at the Bayview after supper, go to his bedroom and read or sit with his mother at the kitchen table, which always made her happy. He should find the boys and throw stones into the sea. Anything other. He could not eat much of his dinner, being fairly well filled with ale from the afternoon, and as he forked the kale around his plate he remembered the blue-fascination of eyes, and the profound words, hearing them as well as if a light chanting curse had been laid upon him. This is important, boy. He had an inkling that within this choice there was one path, flat as the promenade, which doubled back and led somewhere he had already been, and another path that led somewhere high and low and haunted, like the trail alongside Moffat Ravine, where land fell sharply away and black space opened like a channel to the underworld. Or like one of the wending tracks on the Yorkshire moors by his Aunt Doris, which led away to nothing, and only sick animals or werewolves or madmen would choose to take them. And he’d a sense that if he saw Riley twice in that same day it would mean consent, it would make it certain, because Riley was a strong whirlpool of himself taking others in, because he was conviction. And while his manner was tawdry, the ink stains on his fingers were so very oddly compelling. When Cy thought of Riley it felt fated, like water was already tunnelling past him. Some rip current had already taken him, and he was going without fighting. He was going. Not to say yes, for he didn’t think he would, not to say no, because he was not sure refusal was yet ready in him. Just going.