A. Kennedy - All the Rage

They worked up a sweat. They got happyweary until it was evening and time to put on Simon and Garfunkel — a folky exception to their rules and suitable for winding down — and they’d lean back against songs that sounded unconsoled and broken, but happy with it. They made everything seem fine and mildly transcendent. Perfect.

Once the bridge had gone over the troubled water, Mike set the brushes to soak and cleaned the rollers and Margaret would unveil the room, be dramatic as she whisked back dustsheets and tore away masking tape.

Then they’d smile. Then they’d pause. Then they’d have to get tidy themselves, because that was simply necessary, anything else would be uncivilised.

They’d trot off to be with each other in the shower and search for signs of paint, get scrubbed down to new pink and as clean as weans and as grown as grown and lovely. This running of joy along their skin.

On their last day, he’d told her that they ought to start again, give themselves a new profession, be a couple who painted their flat forever, who’d hook and roll and sidestep for each other. He wanted to mainly spend his life making shapes to entertain her and watching her make them back and feeling her take it home, right home, right home for him.

But they did declare it over and finish. She said she felt wiped out the following afternoon, seriously exhausted, which was their first clue. Maggie didn’t seem quite right to herself from then on.

And the doctors agreed when she saw them. She wasn’t quite right.

And after that was badness.

Night.

And I can’t stand it.

I can’t.

So leave the flat.

Please.

Leave the flat alone.

Please.

Keep what’s left of us safe without me, because I can’t stay, because it was lovely, because I’m asking. You won’t hear, but I’m still asking.

Because Maggie was the kindest person I ever met.

She was where I used to live.

Please.

EVENTUALLY HE’S GOING to say it: ‘You don’t love me any more.’ You can see it in him — a panicky, bleaty light about his eyes — and a couple of times he’s actually started the sentence.

‘You don—’

It’s not that you interrupt him because he’s wrong — you can’t actually remember if he’s wrong. It is true that you didn’t think of him especially while you were away. Then again, you thought of no one especially while you were away.

There’d been nowhere for thinking while you were away. Close the doors and draw the blinds and block the chimney, that was the sensible best when you’d been out there.

Not that they’d had really any chimneys out there. Not the way she was used to.

‘You don—’

You don’t mean him any harm. You wonder if you should tell him, for example, Stay on known safe areas. Avoid verges. This is good and accurately retained information, but may not be applicable from his point of view.

He is making you tense and perhaps attempting to bring on a confrontation.

‘You don—’

You don’t have clarity. It is unclear — no, it is uninteresting whether you love him — and your main aim at the moment should be simply to prevent the argument and the ending.

You can’t break up with him here.

Not in Blackpool.

You don’t want to break up with anyone in Blackpool.

You don’t want to be in Blackpool and commit an act you may at some later date recall. Not anyone, not anything, not at any time, not in Blackpool.

That should be the rule. Your rule.

What happens in Blackpool shouldn’t.

Not in Blackpool .

Not in fucking Blackpool .

So hard to keep other determinations steady, but you’re glad you can be sure that if Blackpool has touched a thing, then the taint will stick. This is a macabre consideration . There’s someone you trained with who’d put it like that and where they’ve ended up since then you’ve no idea, not where you did, not where you have, that’s sure certain. It’s macabre but bloody funny, sort of, to picture yourself in your death’s hour, your own death’s moment, and your inner eye, you discover, ends up full of that postcard view of Blackpool Tower. That would be a joke. You’d lie there remembering sterilised milk and over-stewed tea — daytime here tastes of that — and if it wasn’t the Tower you’d see your boyfriend’s face, only not romantic. And they’ll watch you — whatever observers are there — and they’ll possibly guess you are staring at inrushing angels, heaven’s glare, but it’ll be all Blackpool stuff you’re seeing and you’ll want to piss yourself laughing and explain, but no chance there.

This is good, excellent — so much to hate in Blackpool, such a focus. Focus is essential for operational efficiency.

The beach here doesn’t even smell of beach — it’s got that particular stink of small houses where they fry too much. You’re right by it, a real sea with the wrong smell and this pretend shoreline, you’re on the sand and walking beside the cold of these huge concrete tidal defences — giant steps like something left over from the Reichstag, something bloody vicious, something you’d fabricate to stop a car bomb, an assault.

Is that what they’re expecting? An assault? A landing? Amphibious craft and reckless foes swarming in towards Louis Tussaud’s?

There’s a man up there with a high-pressure hose, wiping the algae and the seaweed off the steps. It’ll take him days. And when he moves on he doesn’t leave them really clean. Rubbish job, so why bother doing it well? Or maybe that’s his best attempt, right there — doing everything he can with what he’s got, maximum effort and nobody’s right to criticise. The observer can never tell.

Not that you’re observing, you’re flat-out staring at him — no reason to do it, but also no reason to stop — and you’re stuck in between the concrete and the poisoned wave tops on this dead-flat sand and the Central Pier’s behind you and the South Pier’s up ahead. Hemmed in, as you might consider it. The South Pier being the Scum Pier, apparently, and the North somehow more sophisticated about its slots and tuppenny falls and kiddies’ rides and variety shows involving people you thought were long gone, sewn up years ago and nailed underground to stop them corralling the biffs and pensioners and heroes returned home and singing at them, or dancing, or doing tricks, or cranking out gags to please, or maybe all of the above.

Quite probably all of the above. Some of these people are highly versatile — annoying the arse off you in bags of ways.

Vince Hill’s here. My dad likes him. Vince Hill ‘singing and answering questions’. Bet he never thought he’d end up doing that. Questions. About what?

The whole of your childhood’s telly is still here. Hard to be sure which side of the equation is the one in hell: the waxworked entertainers or yourself.

But you would notice, wouldn’t you? If you were in hell.

The Central Pier is said to be, just as it ought, somewhere in the middle when it comes to the style and tenor of its diversions.

Trust Blackpool never to miss the obvious.

And the boyfriend, too.

He’s looking at you — easy to tell without having to check, because his attention is tangibly leaking, scampering down the side of your face. Fair enough, your boyfriend’s supposed to pay heed, but his payment feels like a trickle of something sad. Or as if he’s spitting on you.

It is offensive to be spat at, a provocation in many cultures.