Sarah Hall - The Electric Michelangelo

It seemed that Riley had almost forgotten Cy’s presence. Until, about five minutes into the work and mid-snake-muscle, he glanced back and gestured with his head — an impatient jerk to the side for Cy to approach. Then what Eliot Riley did was bring Cyril Parks in very close to the lower back being tattooed on the chair while the customer gritted his teeth and continued sweating. Cy saw fine lines being set in under a slight wash of blood. There was close black hatching, diagonal upon diagonal, done in a way to cheat the eye into a shadow, into artificial dimension. More water than blood was the leakage really, a strange combined fluid that reminded him of something else, the Bayview’s discharge basins with their wet-farmed contents. The customer’s knuckles protruded yellowy from under his hands’ skin as he gripped the wooden railing, which creaked a fraction under the strong fingers. Riley paused for whisky. After ten more minutes the customer stood wearing art. The snake and dagger flexed on his back, weeping a little as he bent for his shirt. The man had added to his body in a way that was brave and timeless and beyond adornment. No argument Riley could have made in the street or the bar would have been more convincing and he had known it, and Cy knew then why Riley had wanted him to come see, why it was important, boy.

— It’ll bleed a little colour, give it a day or two of rest. Now, it’s not a wound, so don’t treat it as such. Don’t bathe it for a while, give it a chance to scab up. Don’t soap it ‘til the scab comes off and don’t put pure cotton right against it ‘til it’s dried out. That’s important, it’ll wick the ink out, make it duller. And listen to me now. Let that scab come off of its own accord! If you’re not happy with the lines come back. You will be, but if not come back, I’ll work you right — if the scab’s been messed with, mind, I’ll know and there’ll be no alterations done free.

Riley’s words sounded half wise-man’s lecture, half witch-doctor’s ramble. And part scold, and part commandment. Then he glanced at Cy and asked the man to stay on for a minute, he needed a witness so this ludicrous goggle-eyed boy wouldn’t have him arrested for perversity. The customer nodded, took a permissive slug of whisky and rolled the tension out of his jaw with his hand. Then Riley stripped himself out of his clothes and boots, until he was completely naked, and he stood proud and unfocused like a glass-eyed, taxidermy tiger at the edge of the jungle. Except he wasn’t naked. He was tightly dressed with ink. The section of gut seen earlier that day had only been the tip of a vast and ornamental iceberg. Riley’s good, smooth, Welsh-looking skin appeared not to have many borders remaining on it. He was an assemblage of abstract patterns and cartoon images, reptiles, birds, dragons, like a fishing net cast into the ocean and catching a bizarre school of fantastic objects. Black lines courted and controlled colour, right up to the hilt of his genitals. His elbows, the backs of the knees, every raised plateau of muscle was taken. He turned his arms as if twisting two invisible dials in front of him for Cy to see the complete designs ringing them. The left arm contained some kind of Eden, the right was as full of animals as Noah’s ark. He lifted a leg and along the sole of his right foot was a passage of writing, the words too tiny to be read. Cyril Parks was speechless. He had never seen a living thing so camouflaged with art.

After he had dressed his painted, taproot body and dismissed the customer, for he had already taken payment from him prior to starting, Riley claimed every piece on his body, either by design or executed by his own hand, and he made as if to cuff Cy’s head when the enquiry was made, more in earnest than jest, how and by what contortion exactly Riley had managed to tattoo the rose garden blooming down his back. And true to the brash assertion of being a three-dimensional master and genius that Riley had made on Strickland Street that afternoon in the rain, one or two pieces had tried to step outwards off his naked body, right off his body into life. Like magic, like an illusion, or a trick of light, or some other unspecified miracle, one or other of which, that night in late November, according to Cyril Parks there seemed to be.

Reeda was not overly pleased to hear about the prospect of her son’s new apprenticeship. In fact she simmered hotly while she spoke like a pan of broth left on the hob too long, her words beginning to stick together. He was fifteen years old. There was his schooling to consider. And his after-study work at the print shop. Eliot Riley was definitely a drinker, she knew that to be true of him. Those partial to drink were hiding faults and dishonesty, they were sloppy souls, even the ones with pleasant manners and fine noses. Reeda Parks was an honest if occasionally private woman who did not appreciate those with untidy dispositions. That Reeda had noticed Riley’s nose, and that Riley had commented upon his mother’s ankles did not pass Cy by without first clipping him like a buggersome fingernail on the back of an earlobe. Her answer sounded dangerously like a no.

— Is it because he’s a left-footer? Is it because he’s a Bolshevik?

Catholics were generally less tolerated in the predominantly Methodist town than any other denomination. Jonty’s dad for one would not entertain them at his table. Nor humour them with conversation at the pub. It was assumed that there was something belligerent about stray papists in Morecambe, and though his mam had never seemed to judge one way or another when it came to matters of religion it did not mean she was without discrimination. Anybody remotely liberal in Morecambe was considered to be a Bolshevik, and about as remote to the affection of the town as Russia itself.

— No, love, it’s because it’s a difficult trade.

The curious part was that for all the bits and pieces of argument Cy had stored up in preparation, how his dad had had a tattoo as she herself had told him, how he just liked seeing the colours go in, how it gave him opportunity to use his best talent, how Mr Greene at the print shop was a boring old coot who left his hands too long on ladies elbows and made them uncomfortable, it was Reeda herself that changed her own mind during the course of the discussion the following Sunday morning. First she insisted it was not a good idea. Next she began to dwell on the profession of tattooing itself, in relation to her own, the difficulties, she wouldn’t wish them on anyone let alone her own, but for herself she could justify them. Cy suspected that his mother was alluding to her secondary profession undertaken with her silent partner Mrs Preston rather than hotel managing. Then she became defensive, and from that empathy, part pride, part fool’s pardon, she gradually spun a web that caught her.

— It’s not that I don’t approve of the trade, for all its oddness. And goodness knows I should comprehend an odd profession. I cannot say I don’t. But sometimes what choice have we? Life conspires to plant us in the funniest of gardens where the trees need an especial form of tending. We are all here to serve one another, Cyril, after all, and some serve in stranger ways than others, but one without the other we are made the poorer. There’s room for all kinds of folk in this wide world. You’re old enough to see that now, that what I do is necessary. Mr Riley, well I’m sure he has his incentives too. It’s a most unusual calling, those who go to him are sent for very deep and mysterious reasons as best that I can see. And I suppose you’re old enough to make your judgments as you will of him also.

— So, you’re saying I’m grand to do it.