Sarah Hall: The Electric Michelangelo

The music halls were always full. If Morecambe was the poor man’s Blackpool then poor men danced as well as rich. What little money there was in the hands of northerners come summer often ended up in Morecambe’s seafront pavilions, the Taj Mahal, the Crystal Palace, the Alhambra, each gave as many as three concerts a day in season. Often the Bayview’s guests would insist that Reeda and Cyril accompany them, purchasing tickets as thanks for another lovely week’s stay. Inside the pavilions there were orchestras with foreign, exotic sounding names, magicians and minstrels, dandies or local comedians, singing competitions. Nothing was too silly or cheerful or unpopular for the people of the north at leisure who otherwise spent nigh on fourteen hours a day at work for most weeks of the year. Cy watched the shows with interest, and he watched the watching crowds — some people laughed before a joke was even finished being told and he knew they had been to the show before, maybe several times, but their laughter never seemed forced and the gags never got old. It was as if the punch-line was really the joyful state of not-for-blessed-once having to lift a shovel or swipe a loom or smelt or saw or sew.

When the tide went out the crowds came in. Sandy, stony mud was eclipsed by a covering of bright bathing towels, fluttering tents and swaying sunshades. From his window in the hotel it seemed to Cy a delightful, wonderful thing. A jester’s costume draped all across the beach. Hundreds of pale and lumpy legs appeared from under clothing. Skin pinked and peeled, lotions were applied too late to sore knees and rosy shoulders. Flowery-capped heads bobbed up and down in the water and feet splashed in the waves. Boys a little older than Cy in shorts and paper hats moved in and out of the heliolatrous northern masses and the striped red tents selling winkles and jellied eels and warm orange-syrup, swapping information as to where the breasts were biggest, where the legs were shapeliest, and where the bathing suits were lowest. Even the rain, reliable and persistent when it decided to appear, could not dampen the celebratory spirit of the promenade, people ran laughing and shrieking either into the sea where wetness would not matter, or into the cafés and public houses of the town, leaving sand prints on the seats and tablecloths when they departed, and the evening’s merry entertainment simply got started early. There was no silver service, no operatic gowns, there were no foreign spoils, silks brought back for daughters, fine wine for sons, nor artistic decorated objects purchased for a collection. A postcard home, a box of sugar-rock or slab of toffee, a fond memory or two of the easy banter that arose from the collective solidarity of the poor but jovial masses and from the unity of those around you who were in the same boat, so you were all in it together, was souvenir enough for Morecambe’s crowds. It was a place where England’s working weary came to laugh and sing and cast away their cares, if only for a brief and temporary spell.

When he was very young, almost too young to remember, Cy would be taken up and down the promenade mid-season with his mother and a group of younger women, who came to stay at the Bayview for a day or two from the city. The Ladies of Leeds, his mam called them. They came for three years in succession, each year for a day or so longer. Reeda looked forward to their visit enormously, she would make extra potted shrimp and even buy a better sherry for the occasion. Before the ladies arrived she got a funny look in her eye like a dog about to snatch a bone from the butcher’s counter. They were kind, well-dressed women who would not let Reeda wait on them before first insisting that she did not, they would squabble over who would wash the dishes after supper and would compliment each other on what perfume was being worn or which stockings best flattered an ankle or the choice of book presently being read. There was a great sense that these ladies liked each other very well, they seemed close, perhaps related to his mother, though he knew of only one living blood-relation, his Aunt Doris in Yorkshire. The ladies never scolded him, but they did watch him closely, while he helped his mother to cupboard the crockery, as if they expected him to fumble at any moment and drop her china dishes. They gave him questioning looks, often without issuing any actual questions.

In the mornings, breakfast would be hurried and shoelaces tied quickly. The ladies were flushed in their cheeks and gave each other good-luck kisses.

— Best of luck, duckie.

— Yes, and best of luck to you.

— Best of luck to all of us, I say!

Then they marched out of the hotel with Reeda and Cyril in tow, their skirts snapping like sails in the wind as they strode, heading for the busy promenade. It was unclear to Cy what occurred during these outings, or their purpose, but the ladies all seemed very determined, taking turns to address the crowd and passing round a brass plate which seldom came back bearing much other than a piece of chewed-up fudge which would stick to the plate lip like glue, or shirt buttons or extinguished cigarettes. Though uncertain what the plate was supposed to collect he supposed it was not beachgoers’ rubbish as the ladies would click their tongues in annoyance at their meagre alms. Votes seemed to be what his mother’s friends wanted, and as he’d never seen a vote he did not know how to recognize one on the brass plate if it happened to be forthcoming. Cy spent these mornings holding his mother’s hand and kicking the back of one foot with the other in boredom, looking up at her frowning face.

Frequently one or two of the women came back to the hotel in the afternoon for sandwiches after the pier walk, though most stayed out while his mother returned to her hotel chores. Once settled round the kitchen table with a pot of tea they would continue their talking about votes in louder, more irritated tones. Other times Cy and his mother would return alone, and Reeda would ferociously pound chicken liver into pâté for dinner that night. On the way back to the Bayview there would be trouble if his mother ran into one of the other hotel owners. The arguments were without exception begun by other women. Mrs Thelma Kirkstall from the Grand Hotel once caught hold of his mother’s wrist as she passed by and hissed at her.

— My Ronnie saw you out on the promenade again. Reeda, you silly cow, why don’t you get another husband instead of all this nonsense. Whatever’s in you?

Cy’s mother stood looking at Mrs Kirkstall, just looking at her and not moving until the woman took her hand off Reeda’s wrist, then she turned and walked away. The woman went to pat Cy’s head but Cy made as if to buckle his shoe, though it was already firmly buckled, half unwilling to be touched by the woman who had grabbed his mother, half suspecting that Mrs Kirkstall may also have touched consumptives in her time. He looked up at her squinting face, crumpled like a discarded fish and chip wrapper. She had a badly done permanent wave and cracked dry lips.

— Poor lad, she’ll raise you to wring out her skirts if you’re not careful. You’ll end up selling ladies’ bloomers and shoes in Anderson’s. Come by ours if you want sometime. Mr Kirkstall will show you all you need to know, eh? Come round and he’ll give you a wee drop of man’s talk. There’s a good lad.

And she boxed the air like a March rabbit, upright and punching on its hind legs. Cy unhinged and re-buckled his shoe, then ran down the street after his striding mother.

— Skirt-wringer!

He heard the woman shouting after him and when he caught up with Reeda he found she was cussing under her breath as bitterly as he had ever heard her cuss.