The Year of the Ladybird by Graham Joyce Read Free Book Online Page A

grabbed a towel and walked out into the corridor.
    For some reason Nobby followed me. ‘Shower? Shower? Throw water on your face, you’ll be fine. There’s a drought on! War rations. I mean war footing! Plus showering every day is
bad for you no one ever tell you that scrubs away the natural oils so essential to your vitality, son. Not to mention the pheromones yes yes yes. Did I mention the pheromones?’
    There was a communal shower at the end of the building and I walked in and switched on the faucet. ‘The what?’
    ‘The what? They told me you was fuckin’ educated. Pheromones, son, pheromones. This is what it’s all about, in’t it? Are you getting plenty? If you are that’s cos
of your very fine zinging pinging pheromones. If you’re not getting plenty that’s cos your pheromones are no good. Or rinsed out. Wash it all away and well, damp squib sort of
thing.’ He stood watching me shower and didn’t stop talking except to light up a cigarette. ‘Too much fuckin’ showering that’ll do it. Hey! Hey! Hey! You listen to
Nobby. Nobby knows, you know.’
    I dried off and padded back to my room. Or
our
room, as with increasing dismay I now felt I should call it.
    ‘Flip-flops! Get yourself some flip-flops. Cos o’ the slops they’re dirty, lazy bastards in here and you’ll get athlete’s foot off this shower floor and verrucas
and viruses and what else trenchfoot I don’t know warts corns blisters in-growing toenails instep fungus hammertoe, hey hey! That floor is like a smorgas board of infection, hey!’
    I made the mistake of trying to listen to this barrage but it was impossible. I found my brain starting to tune him out. I’d known him maybe three minutes and already he exhausted me. As I
got dressed I said, ‘I thought you’d quit.’
    ‘Why? Why’s that then? Why?’ He went over to the open window, and flung his cigarette butt outside. Then he sat on my bed, took out a fresh ciggie and did that trick of
flipping it in the air and catching it in his mouth.
    ‘Well, you’d been missing for a few days.’
    ‘Missing? I haven’t been missing. I’ve been on my other job.’
    ‘Other job?’
    ‘Look at the state of your whites! Bit how’s-your-father round the waist I’d say. That the best they could do? That’s a joke that. A joke. Go and see Dot and don’t
take any shit. Better still I’ve got some as will fit you better.’ Then he slapped his thigh and fell sideways on the bed, laughing, a cancerous cackle. ‘A joke.’When
he’d recovered from the hilarity of laughing at my ill-fitting whites he recovered to light up his cigarette. ‘Yes I’ve got another job up the road.’
    ‘Aren’t you full time?’
    He did a double-take and then looked over his shoulder as if the management team might be hiding in the tiny wardrobe. ‘Course I’m full-time. Full time up the road, too. You ready?
You look like shite! Hey! Let’s go.’
    We walked together to the theatre for the morning briefing. I was keen to ask him some questions, but it was almost impossible to break into his constant stream of chatter.
    ‘Everyone’s doing two jobs, son, everyone; and if they’re not in the category of everyone they’re on the skim, they’ve all got their skim. Welcome to skim city.
Hey! If you find a way to live on these wages you let me know about it.’
    ‘Well, we do get food and lodgings,’ I suggested.
    Mistake.
    He leapt in front of me and stopped dead, brought his feet together and leaned forwards at forty-five degrees. ‘Food and lodgings! You call that mouse-cage that squirrel-farm a
lodging?’ We started moving again. ‘It’s a matchwood tent! A shanty-town! A papier-mâché ghetto! That famous East Coast wind better not blow too hard or it will all
come down. Huff and Puff Mr Wolf. What’s that? Pigs. Dunno. It’s not even a barn. Better not get caught with a woman in your room or they’ll have you off the site. And you
can’t even keep your own alcohol in