Sarah Hall: The Electric Michelangelo

Nina Shearer waltzed through the front door of Eleven Pedder Street in leather and torn trousers, with purple glitter on her cheekbones and Egyptian kohl around her eyes, on Cy’s sixty-fifth birthday, just as he was thinking about retiring. He was vaguely expecting her, at least he was in the habit of expecting unusual and meaningful events on significant calendar days. She herself was in the habit of tutting and sighing before almost every comment she uttered, as if perpetually annoyed or put upon by what she was about to say. Her hair was raked up at the sides above her ears by two painful-looking plastic combs and it was very difficult to tell how many colours of dye were present in it, or how many perms it had endured.

— D’ya do piercing here?

— No, love, I don’t.

— Why bloody not?

— I’m a tattooist. Not a sodding hairdresser.

— Well, I’ll just do it myself again then.

— Fine.

— Fine.

She stood with her hands on her hips looking boldly at the walls of the shop. Nothing about her surroundings appeared to intimidate her, the tattoo parlour may as well have been a florist’s. Not many people had that variety of astringency, thought Cy, that natural counter-balance, the wherewithal or presence to dampen fire or dry up floods. Only a handful of people he had ever met had the ability, reacting with their environment to take away an extreme quality of it, like pepper with salt or sugar with bitterness. He had a feeling his list might be about to go up by one. There were several piercings in the cartilage of her ears, through which heavy rings and several studs had been inserted. Her right eyebrow was swollen in a pink lump at the corner where a new jewel wound had recently been made. She couldn’t have been much beyond the age of eighteen and her make-up served only to make her seem younger, overdone as it was. Her eyes might have been a marshy green but as with all colours when set against the borders of black they seemed brighter, much brighter. She was pacing about in the shop, snapping her chewing-gum against her teeth and putting on a show. There was a restlessness to her, forthrightness, an echo of some of his favourite people, and Cy found the corner of his mouth pulling up in a smile.

— Can I help you, pet? Going to get something done, are you? Or just browsing?

— Nice present for me mam on Mother’s Day that’d be, eh? Why don’t you cut your hair, it’s too thin to be worn long. Your scalp comes through. You look like an old hippie.

— And you, young lady, look like trouble with a capital T. Go on, piss off.

She looked at him, looked him over with her scornful, cheeky, eyes. Everything about her manner informed him that she would go in her own good time and not a moment before, there was no point in making his case. She looked back at the walls again, her arm bracelets rattling and tinkling as she reached up to touch the flash cards. Cy waited for her to finish her dramatic production. But either she was a thorough little madam or something had caught her attention, for she moved closer in to scrutinize the pictures.

— How much?

— How much for what?

— Any of these.

— Depends on the size and the time it takes. Or if you want it done freehand. That’s extra. Look in the corner, it should say.

She stopped chewing and put her hands in the pockets of her leather coat. The burrs and brassiness seemed to be rubbing out of her. Her head dropped to one side. And there under the costumery and the kinks and claws stood a serious girl in admiration of what she saw, like a buff in an art gallery. Cy let her be a while and put the kettle on in the back room. When he came back out she was sitting on his work stool with one of his designs in his hand — it was the word ‘Mother’ with flowers woven through the lettering. There was a strange watery look in her eyes, as if she might be about to shed tears but also as if gladdened by inspiration. She began talking to him with the immediate confidentiality and the lack of inhibition of a thoughtful, expressive youth whose ideas are too large to contain, too important to go unsaid.

— She’s had a rough time lately, eh. Dad’s in the nick again since he got made redundant and the pub’s not doing well ‘cause everybody buggers off to Spain come summer these days. Who’d want to come to Morecambe anyway and sit in a deck chair in the pissing rain for their holiday or ride on a stinking donkey on the prom? Full of old cronies that just want to play bingo, not exactly a riveting venue, is it? I want to go to art college in Manchester but I’ll end up having to help out in the pub until I’m bloody sixty and past it, no doubt, ‘cause she says I’ve got to help out. Oh, it’s not her fault. He’s the one that kept nicking from the till so he could lose it all at the dogs. Fucking selfish prick. She’d skin me alive if I got this done but she’d like it really — she’d sit and cry for a bit but she’d be touched deep down, the silly cow. I’ve only got three pounds, mind, and it says five on the corner.

— Well, all right, I approve, love. I approve. But don’t call your mother a cow. Tell you what, get yourself over to the corner shop and get us a bottle of silver top for some tea and we’ll talk about a price when you get back.

He wasn’t sure that she would ever set foot in the property again. But ten minutes later, just as the teapot was beginning to stew, she waltzed back in with the milk and a packet of custard creams.

Gaynor Shearer might have had nice big nipples and svelte buttocks in the days of the first Bathing Beauties, but her granddaughter Nina was a royal pain in the backside when she wanted to be, and quite frequently when she wasn’t even trying. She was of a new breed, loud, inquisitive to the point of interrogation, she had a filthy mouth, an unapologetic manner, and under it all Cy liked her very much. After four or five more visits, a couple of which were in the capacity of customer, the rest of which saw her turning up on rainy mornings, blagging tea, with bottles of milk pilfered from doorsteps in between the Horse and Farrier and Pedder Street, he offered to apprentice her. For the proposal he got a smile with her bottom jaw stuck far out and a loud kiss on the cheek.

She had a genuine interest in the profession and it became apparent that her aspirations for art college were not built without the foundation of talent. She drew many new designs for the walls, abstracts, which were in vogue, and emblems she considered attractive to both sexes. She said that people did not know themselves anymore, not as they once had, and they did not know how to define their lives. Abstracts were old, mysterious, inexplicable, and that made sense, folk were drawn to them for that very reason. It was as close to sage philosophy as she got. Cy gave her the old art books that had once belonged to Eliot Riley, their condition was appalling but there was no sense in them going to waste, and she told him flippantly that Michelangelo was too old-fashioned for her liking, though his sketches were obviously not too bad. She preferred something with a bit of oomph. Van Gogh. Edvard Munch. Egon Schiele, the randy bugger. Matisse. At that Cy smiled and thought fleetingly about telling her his fantastic tale involving the great artist’s temporary reincarnation, and that there had been plenty of oomph in that bizarre existence. But he didn’t and before long she was rabbiting on about how the north of England needed a good art gallery, something to rival the Tate, and one of those dilapidated crusty old lords should donate an empty castle, lying around like an old Wellington boot as it would be, for those very purposes.