Sarah Hall - The Electric Michelangelo

— I’m saying someone has probably got to do it.

— Me as well as anyone?

She came around to it like a person slowly developing a taste for bread and dripping because that’s all there is left to eat in the kitchen, or like a dog, finally defeated in a frenzied circle by its own tail and slowing and realizing then that the tail it was after all along was already in its possession. Until her decision was reversed.

— Though I’ll be wanting a word with Mr Riley first, if you’ll pass that on to him. Yes, Cyril, I’ll be wanting a word with him. Oh, Pedder Street! I swear on all things true and holy if you put a foot inside Professor Johnson’s looking for the spirit of your father I’ll honest to goodness wring your scrawny neck. He’s where he should be, and not hanging around trying to … make contact … or whatever it is they say!

Mesmerists were Reeda Parks’s least favourite type of people. She was very much in contempt of that kind of penny-stealing, preying on the weaker soul, charlatan’s act. Manipulating the bereaved and lonely was not only a shabby way to make a living, it was a moral disgrace, she said. Neither was her son to have anything to do with it. And with that Cy received the only condition to her endorsement of his new profession that his mother would issue.

Eliot Riley was a blaggard but he knew when to trim the excessive fat off the edges of his raillery. Face to face with a steel-eyed, dyed-in-the-wool, straight-and-narrow-peddling Reeda Parks was one such occasion. Nor was Riley well suited to unwavering, tedious sincerity. Instead of bluff or sombre, he settled for a compromise of personality, nearer to streaky bacon than a flabby or lean cut of behaviour. He had called at the Bayview at Reeda’s behest and was being poured a cup of her strongest tea. Cy sat on a sofa next to his mam as she saw to the cups and saucers, her best rose-patterned china no less, and he distributed the buttery crumpets. She’d insisted he comb his hair and wear his school tie, which, given his new insight into the trade he was entering, seemed not unlike polishing a shovel to carry muck. She herself was rouged. There was a string of pearls about her neck, and a workwoman’s headscarf hid her thinning hair, suggesting she always went about the hotel’s upkeep bejewelled and made-up like a lady. Riley had on the usual combination of derelict smocking and turn of the century gentleman’s suiting, but the tips of his boots looked buffed. The woollen hat was firm about his ears. It was a most peculiar tea-party, as if several mismatched elements of fable had been stuffed into a magician’s box, thoroughly shaken, then evicted. There was something slapstick and pantomime and overly choreographed about it all, thought Cy, like one of the more farcical shows in the pavilions.

— Eliot.

— Reeda, my dove. It appears your boy wants to learn the annals of my craft.

Eliot? Reeda? He wasn’t aware the two were on such informal terms. The town was small but locals were, in general, candid about their friendships and allegiances, yet here was possibly another of Reeda’s covert associations.

— Yes. So it would seem. And what, in your opinion, is to become of his schooling?

— He’ll finish it, I’ll not hear otherwise, and Reeda, pet, I would suggest you let him do so. I’ve no room for a simpleton at my shop, getting under my feet and fiddling with machinery, not to mention annoying the customers. He’s not exactly sharp as a brass tack now.

— Be serious, Eliot. I won’t have him disadvantaged by this.

— I think you’ll find him well advantaged if he comes to me. Not only will he learn himself a craft, a craft I say, Reeda, and a good one, he’ll learn a thing or two about the wider world.

Cy began to feel rather like a platter of star-gazey pie, scooped into pieces and distributed around the table. His mother straightened her back.

— Yes. That’s exactly my concern. You’re not to take him drinking. You’re not to … harden his edges either. And, I need to ask this of you Eliot and I’ll ask only once, this is an … independent offer, isn’t it?

Riley’s eyes flickered briefly over Cy, who had lost the thread of the conversation.

— Reeda. You know what sort of man I am. Don’t you? Yes, love, you do. I wouldn’t be here in your pretty sitting room eating your delicious crumpets if you thought of me what your tone implies. He has the skills necessary. That’s all. Call it … a happy coincidence. What can I tell you that you don’t already know, love? He’ll be well looked after. Made as firm as any man must be, and not a hinge or bracket firmer. I’ll not say the wage will be anything to look forward to in the beginning mind. But that’s the nature of an apprenticeship, isn’t it? Which brings me on to my next consideration. He’s learning bugger-all at school. I quizzed the boy myself not a week ago and he’s sorely lacking in a nobler knowledge. Do you know the lad had never even heard of Leonardo da-bloody-Vinci? Eh? Eh? Hogarth, Rembrandt. Not a noddle. Michel-bloody-angelo! Masters, all of them. Passing their gifts down to the next generation through which honourable system, incidentally? The apprentice system. You can’t have a craftsman doesn’t ken these things. It’s like having a magistrate doesn’t know the law, then where would we be? The poor lad’s been disadvantaged already Reeda. Sorely disadvantaged.

Here Cy’s mother appeared to be stumped, which was a rarity. Riley was winding himself up into a tame fury over the apparently criminal and substandard education at Morecambe Grammar School. His enormous pale eyes were in a cultivated temper, insulted and assaulting, and Reeda reached and tugged the hem down on her skirt. He was leaning towards her with one arm resting on his leg, his teacup tipping at a hazardous angle. She had pitifully little with which to counter his mock academics or his advancing eyes or his rhetoric. Cy wanted to pitch in that he did, in actual fact, know who Leonardo da Vinci was. Just not Bernini, who hadn’t got a look in to the conversation that afternoon either. But it did not seem to be a three-way conversation, if it had ever been intended as one.

— Well, I’ll have a word with Colin Willacy … perhaps something can be done … and I’ll mention your concern …

— No, Reeda, no! You’ll not! I plan to teach the lad myself, don’t I?

Sanctity of the body, and of the mind which was housed within it, did not exist in Riley’s rooms, that is to say it existed only within the scope the man himself deemed suitable and sacred. Nor did respect for lackeys and flunkies exist. Nor was any former knowledge of anything much useful. Tattooing was a dreamscape type of world, where strange occurrences and dark-wrought ideas, if not normal, were almost commonplace. Within number eleven Pedder Street hideous, painful, often screaming regurgitations of human skin went on. A month in and it seemed to Cy that he was an explorer summiting only the foothills of a bizarre and primitive island. There was the grinding of sharp implements into dart-like points, which would be soldered to a drive shaft, the grinding of pigments to mix with alcohol, the grinding of both aspects into frail swathes of skin, and the grinding of the bossy expedition leader on his nerves. Because Cy was made to feel, almost every day, like a blundering idiot with all the handy skills of a caveman wielding a flat rock.

— You ground the needle down too far, it’s bloody useless. This coil burnt out too fast, you didn’t fit it properly. There’s too much powder in my ink solution, mix it carefully, part by part like I showed you, we’re not running an artists’ retreat here lad. You’ll be going to Lancaster for more supplies docked out of your own wages if you keep this malarkey up. Come to think, I could fancy one of Donaldson’s oatcakes right about now. So, off you toddle.