The Misadventures of Margaret Finch, page 5
She packs the compact back into its box, and her father speaks so softly she can barely hear him. ‘More like her every day,’ he says. ‘It’s the eyes.’
‘Precisely,’ says Mother. ‘Margaret, I’ll show you how to make them look less … well … a little powder can work wonders.’
The afternoon is spent taking lessons on the correct application of make-up in which she learns there is a fine line between looking polished and looking cheap. ‘When you are a naturally plain girl, you need to work a little harder at it than everybody else.’ Mother’s excitement turns to exasperation as Margaret fails to master the techniques to ‘add shape to her thin lips’ and draw attention away from her ‘unfortunate jawline’. She should be trying hard to make the best of herself. Mother talks as if there is another version waiting to emerge, like a butterfly from a chrysalis. But painting her face only emphasises Margaret’s shortcomings; proves that she has tried, and failed, to make herself more desirable. She is more of a moth than a butterfly.
She still has no use for a mirror. But James is right: it would serve a practical purpose here. ‘I’ll bring it next time,’ she tells him. She will have to buy one if he wants this to be a regular partnership. And to her surprise she finds she is not averse to the idea. He is delighted with his new contraption, taking photographs of young boys fishing from the end of the pier and young women adjusting their dresses to expose their legs to the sun: collecting people much like he collects his souvenirs. While he changes his umpteenth roll of film, she takes the opportunity to sit down on a bench and look out to sea. The water is calm today, sunlight catching on rivulets that trail like ribbons behind the disappearing tide. It feels good to look but not observe; to watch a child build a sandcastle without timing how long it takes before they knock it down; to hear snatches of conversation and not commit them to paper. It’s as if she has been given permission to tune out for a couple of hours, to turn down the noise.
She is grateful that James is too busy for conversation. The skill of making small talk, which seems to come so easily to everyone else, has always been something of a mystery to her. The constant fear of saying the wrong thing always leaves her depleted. But today she is required to do nothing more than stand and pretend. And pretending is a skill she has honed over her lifetime. Her role demands no more exertion than forcing a smile. And there are moments when even that seems to be occurring naturally.
Another click. She looks back over her shoulder just as he lowers his camera; sees him tilt his head again and stare at her intensely. His expression is strange. He looks as if he has just remembered she is there. Just noticed her for the first time. Typical James.
‘I almost feel like I’m on holiday myself today. Takes me back. Where did you go when you were a child, Margaret?’
She feels her cheeks flush, and turns back to look out towards the beach. What can she tell him? That her family didn’t believe in holidays? That Mother made sure that every penny was spent on creating the right impression, living in the right area, wearing the right clothes? Trips were made with purpose rather than leisure in mind. Train tickets to London were an investment because it meant they could go to the dress agencies: shadowy places hidden behind unmarked doorways and up flights of stairs. To get the quality Mother insisted on, they had to buy second-hand, travelling to an address across the city to collect previously worn garments she’d seen advertised in The Lady, occasionally making short detours past St Paul’s Cathedral or Buckingham Palace so that she could gather just enough detail to convince the neighbours that they had spent the day sight-seeing. ‘Oh, all over the place,’ Margaret says.
‘I have fond memories of being by the sea. Not like this. Wild places. Quiet coves. No one else around. I used to wish I could live there all year.’ He pauses, starting to put the camera back into its case. ‘Did you grow up near the coast?’
‘No, Northampton.’
‘You don’t get much more landlocked than that!’
He looks up at her but she darts her own eyes away to watch his fingers trying to coax the camera’s concertina closed. ‘Do you think you’ve got the hang of it?’ she says.
‘Hope so. I’ll find out when I develop the photographs. Beautiful day for it anyway.’
‘Yes.’
He pauses. ‘It’s not nearly as bad as I thought it would be.’
‘We were lucky with the weather.’
‘We were. And I was so busy with this,’ he nods at the cam era, ‘that I quite forgot about …’ She wants to prompt him. Not finishing his sentences is another of his habits. But he is distracted again, turning to look over his shoulder. ‘So many people. We should …’ His words falter. She has studied enough conversations to know that she is expected to step in and say something. But she is not quick enough and silence takes hold – the easy atmosphere between them shifting quite suddenly. And she is at a loss to explain why. She wants to leave now, be somewhere else. Be by herself. She feels this awkwardness as a physical sensation: a prickling fear that makes her skin itch and her stomach burn. A drink will calm her nerves, slow her thoughts. A drink to take the edge off.
‘I couldn’t have done it without you,’ he says, stepping forward to stand beside her again, so close that his shoulder briefly brushes hers. She resists the urge to tell him this is a ridiculous assertion. Of course he could. He is the one with the camera. She didn’t do anything. Not really.
‘Well, I’d better get on,’ she says.
‘Of course. Sideshows again?’
‘Not sure I’ll get anywhere near them today. But I’ve been thinking about Davidson,’ she says. ‘I’ll go back tomorrow once it’s calmed down. See what I can pick up from the crowd.’
8
At school, Margaret was taught that there were seven wonders of the world, but when she arrived in Blackpool she found one on every corner: ‘The Missing Link from Borneo’ and ‘The Glamour Twins: Identical In All Ways!’ Every building along the Golden Mile is emblazoned with giant billboards that advertise the acts within; hoardings jut out to corral punters inside. ‘You won’t trust your own eyes’ they promise, or ‘you’ve never seen the like’. It upsets her to see families handing over money they can’t afford to spend; confuses her to think that they are taken in by this sham or that; angers her to think that these tricksters make their living by cheating others of money they have worked so hard to earn. She tries to understand why people crave the outlandish and the grotesque, why they gasp in collective amazement and recoil in collective disgust. James says it’s a hunger for the exotic. They travel no further than 40 miles to Blackpool for their annual holidays, but they want to deceive themselves that they have seen something of the world. They want to return home with a story to tell in the pub.
She has seen the new batches arrive into Blackpool’s Central Station, spilling from the carriages even before the trains have reached a standstill. They swarm the platforms and the streets outside, moving as though in thrall. Oblivious to the cars that are trying to navigate the roads around the station precincts, they crane their necks upwards instead, thirsting for a glimpse of the Tower that stretches up to greet them. The moment they satisfy themselves with a sighting is the very moment their holiday begins in earnest. They slow their pace and fan out in different directions. Some carry their luggage straight to their boarding houses, others waste no time in rolling up their trouser legs and going for a paddle in the sea.
James told her when she arrived in Blackpool that, until recently, it had been the busiest railway station in the world. She couldn’t fathom it until she went up the Tower herself and, from the viewing platform 380 feet above the ground, watched the queuing trains pull into its fourteen platforms.
So far, she has spent a fortnight taking a full inventory of the attractions on the Golden Mile. At first, she struggled to fight her way through the hordes but, after two exhausting and unproductive days, she had a breakthrough: succumbing to the flow of people like a boat being carried in a current. Now she travels south along the full length of the promenade before finding a bench or low wall to sit and make her notes. Then she crosses and is swept northwards on the other side of the street.
It’s not yet 7 a.m. but there’s already a crowd gathering for Davidson halfway down, beneath a board so big that it covers both the ground- and first-floor windows.
STRANGE! BUT TRUE! THE RECTOR OF STIFFKEY!
On the street is a low platform: a stage built of rough wood that runs right across the front of the building. Those turned away yesterday are already staking their claim to a place in the queue, determined not to be disappointed a second time. They huddle together for warmth, silently urging others to join the ranks and prove that they were right to get here early. At this hour the sun has not yet taken the sting out of the wind. Women shiver in their holiday dresses; children whine about the wait, fathers forced to subdue them with the threat of a slap (it will be a good hour before Pablo’s ice creams offer the option to silence them with sugar). Standing at just five foot two, Margaret can see only the backs of heads, tanned necks, the stripe of braces and the clasps of handbags held tight. At times like these, like so many others, her size is a blessing. Small and slight, she is able to pass unnoticed.
‘Can you see?’ shouts a woman just in front.
‘Not from here,’ comes an answer from a few rows ahead of her.
‘We’ll be lucky if we get sight of him.’
There are two older men beside Margaret, taking great delight in discussing the merits of Davidson’s trial. ‘It’s a rum thing in’t it? How the mighty have fallen.’
‘If you ask me he should’ve worn his trousers back to front the way he wears his collar. Would’ve saved himself a lot of trouble!’
Margaret finds it distasteful that they have come in their droves to see the rector, to revel in the lurid details of the charges made against him. But she can recognise that he’s the perfect draw. Vulgarity, the researchers have been told, is an idiosyncrasy of the working man who wields it as both weapon and shield. And never more so than here in Blackpool, where even the most innocent of comments or innocuous of items can be twisted into a bawdy joke. The Tower, standing erect on the seafront, the biggest punchline of all.
‘Watch it!’ A thick-necked man beside her turns and pushes back against the row behind. The atmosphere is becoming fraught. She can feel the crush of the crowd. It carries her forward, her body moving but her feet slower to catch up. If she wasn’t packed so tightly between other people she would fall. She is trapped, stifled by the odour of so many bodies sickly with perfume and pipe smoke. But the men beside her are showing no signs of flagging.
‘Well I never believed it of him. Those two women—’
‘One. The other didn’t give evidence in the end.’
‘One then. And she was no better than she should be. Bet she led him on.’
‘He were already making a nuisance of himself in the tearooms. Chasing the nippies.’
‘Good luck to him if he could catch ’em!’
The crowd starts to stir and she looks up to the raised platform to see two men emerging from behind a hoarding. They are carrying a barrel, the kind you might expect to see on the deck of a galleon, with a small metal pipe jutting out from the top, their task made more difficult by their marked difference in height. One of the two is shaped like a barrel himself, the other as lean as a strip of bacon. Margaret watches them heave it onto the platform then rock it onto its rim, spinning it slowly towards a curved wooden support that has been fashioned to hold it in place. They shake the barrel to check it is wedged firmly, before the stouter man steps back and rubs his hands together in confirmation of a job well done. Communicating silently with a nod, they both climb down from the platform and push their way into the crowd. Margaret will include this detail in her report. They are ‘gees’: plants paid to blend in with the paying public. There may be a dozen or so in total. Some at the front to lead the way to the ticket booth, some at the back to encourage wavering families to join the queue and part with a shilling each.
She can feel the crush of bodies building behind her, a thickening of the air as the numbers grow. Like the splitting of cells, the crowd seems to double in size with every passing minute. She can understand why they’ve built the stage outdoors; the logistics of getting so many people in through the front door would be difficult and possibly dangerous. Blackpool has never seen the like, has never seen so many people mustering for a sideshow act. All for a glimpse of a man in a clerical collar, which they could get for free in church on any Sunday.
Someone steps onto the platform now. A spieler: the most important component of any sideshow. Because, Margaret has observed, it is never about the act itself, not really. They come for the story. Anticipation is always the most satisfying part of the experience. Good spielers can make a customer believe that what they are about to see might be the strangest and most remarkable sight of their life. The very best can make them leave convinced it really has been. Margaret supposes this one would be considered handsome for his age: dark hair, greased back, and a dash of grey at his temples. He wears a grey three-piece suit, and lifts a watch from his pocket which he swings on its chain. ‘It is time, ladies and gentlemen.’
There’s a cheer from the crowd and a lone voice shouts: ‘About bloody time!’
‘An innocent man, much maligned by the newspapers. An innocent man thrown to the lions by his own church. An innocent man whose only crime was to help those in need, to extend the hand of Christian kindness to girls with nowhere else to turn.’
‘It was where he was putting his hand of Christian kindness!’ someone jeers. The spieler raises an eyebrow (whether in censure or encouragement, Margaret is not sure) but hastily drops it back to the required expression of solemnity.
‘The Rector of Stiffkey is the most famous man in England. More talked about, surely, than the new king. More talked about than the old king, his brother! He has been defrocked …’ he pauses for the inevitable wolf-whistle from the crowd, ‘… he has been defamed. He has been derided. What next? Why, you might ask, has Mr Harold Davidson come to Blackpool?’ He pauses again and chatter breaks out in the crowd. He does not raise a hand to hush it. He stands instead with a feigned look of disinterest. Experience has taught him that this will make them more eager to come to him. Only when there is absolute silence does he go on. ‘Why has he come to Blackpool? A very good question. One I have asked him myself. And if you will permit me, I will share with you his answer.’ There’s a thud behind the hoarding at the back of the stage, but he does not miss a beat. ‘Mr Davidson has come to demonstrate his innocence. To seek from you – the good, the fair, the just – the judgement he has been denied. To seek from you, the righteous and the pious—’ howls of derision from the crowd now, ‘—understanding of his plight and help for his predicament.’
‘Where is he then?’ shouts a man on the front row. ‘And what’s the barrel for?’
‘Another excellent question, sir! The barrel is a contraption built to the exact specifications of Mr Davidson himself …’ He pauses for dramatic effect, knowing this is the point he could lose them. ‘A design inspired by the Greek philosopher Diogenes.’
(‘Dioge-whats?’)
‘A humble man who lived in a barrel to demonstrate the virtues of poverty.’
(‘There’s no virtue in being skint!’)
‘Diogenes lived in a barrel in the middle of a marketplace to make his point. Ladies and gentlemen, the Rector of Stiffkey has a lesson of his own. He will imprison himself every day until the Church considers his appeal.’
(‘What – you mean he’s—’)
(‘Look at that!’)
A single line of smoke coils up from the pipe on the top of the barrel.
(‘He’s inside the bloody thing!’)
Word is passed from the front of the crowd to the back, carried on the drift of cigar smoke which rises from the makeshift chimney. If Davidson really is inside, Margaret deduces that there must be some sort of hatch or doorway in the hoarding behind it. Either that or he has crawled through a cavity underneath the stage.
‘Ladies and gentlemen. The most famous man in England has put himself on display. You’ve seen him on the front page of every newspaper in the land. Now you can see him for yourself.’ The spieler strides across the platform and gives a small knock on the front of the barrel. ‘Mr Davidson,’ he says, bringing his mouth close to the chimney but projecting his words out into the crowd. ‘Are you ready to meet your public?’
Perhaps she imagines it but Margaret thinks she hears a muffled knock from inside.
‘Very well,’ says the spieler, returning his watch to its pocket. ‘I am proud to present Harold Davidson, the Rector of Stiffkey!’ With that he opens a hatch on the front of the barrel, revealing a small window covered in wire mesh, the kind you’d find on the side of a rabbit’s hutch. The rows of people behind her surge forward to try and get a glimpse, but invisible forces (which Margaret suspects may be the gees) begin to organise them into a queue. They line up in front of the ticket booth: another opening which has appeared in the hoarding.
‘He’s a brave ’un to do it,’ says a man to another. ‘Wouldn’t get me all shut in like that.’
‘That’s not bravery. It’s good sense. In a barrel no one can see ’im. Not unless they pay up.’
‘True! And he’s a wet bugger from what they say. Ran out during a sermon once because he saw a church mouse. Terrified of animals.’
