You offered me a crisp and it tasted like the sea.
At Gatwick, all the cowboys jumped off the train to let the family get by. They carried their suitcases for them, up over their heads, and tipped their hats. You told me you’d always wanted to be a cowgirl.
At Brighton, we walked down towards the beach. The street lamps were covered in rainbow bunting. You disappeared for a minute and came back with two ice creams in one hand, and a pink cowboy hat covered with tacky plastic jewels.
‘Howdy,’ you said, and slipped it over my head.
The strap met under my chin, and scratched my skin when I turned from side to side. We marched towards the Royal Pavilion at Preston Park. The website said it had been built for George IV, mocked as a carnival sideshow, transformed into a palace. It announced itself loudly. A place within a place.
‘You know, there was a fire here, twenty years ago,’ I said.
You took my hand.
As we turned the corner, I saw them. The police first, in their yellow fluorescent jackets looking bored beyond belief. There must have been ten of them, forming a neon circle around a dozen people holding signs.
‘You’ve got to be joking,’ and I heard you laugh. ‘I thought they’d do better than that.’
The last time you were here, there had been so many angry people lining the streets, but now the police outnumbered the protesters. One man holding a sign that said ‘God Abhors You’ threw an empty water bottle in our direction. The police didn’t move.
‘God pities your choices!’ a lady shouted as we walked past.
‘Oh please,’ you said under your breath. ‘She sounds like my mother … It isn’t her, is it?’
I tried to grin. ‘Shouldn’t we … shouldn’t we say something back?’
‘Are you kidding? They won’t listen.’
‘But why do they care?’
‘Why do you?’
I faltered.
‘Come on.’ You tugged my hand and dragged me onto the grass verge. You took the cowboy hat off my head and put it on yours instead. ‘For goodness’ sake, let’s have some fun.’
One out of every two casualties of war is a civilian caught in the crossfire.
Later that night, after we’d danced under naked light bulbs and laughed ourselves silly, we weaved our way through the streets back to the beach, through Victoria Gardens with hedges cut into domes. The sun was setting at the end of the pier, a wooden walkway like an aisle reaching out into the water, and you went to buy us chips.
I pulled my sandals off and flopped down onto the pebbled beach. The heels had been cutting into my skin where my feet had swollen in the heat. I let my feet slide under the loose stones, let myself imagine that I was sinking. In the distance I could see you, pick you out from the pink cowboy hat that clashed with your red hair. You were queuing outside a kebab house. I raised my arms in the air, pretending I was falling under, that you’d have to rush over and save me, but you were looking in the other direction. I found myself laughing: I could fall right under all this, I thought to myself, my toenails catching on the edges of stray shells. I could tumble under this and never be found. It would be like a rock slide, fighting gravity, punching at the air, fighting, fighting. Buried alive.
In 2011, after a tsunami flooded the Fukushima power station in Japan, over two hundred pensioners, calling themselves The Skilled Veterans Corps, volunteered to go and live at the power station and work to cool the reactors. They wanted to save the younger workers from radiation exposure and cancer. It was organised by a man called Mr Yamada, a retired engineer, who was seventy-two. Some people called them the Kamikaze Corps.
Once, when I was walking through town, I said I wanted to do a survey. I said that I bet we could go up to people in the streets and ask them if there’s a war going on and that ninety per cent of them would say no. I bet that they would look at me strangely, and hurry off down the street.
By the age of sixteen, an American child has seen, on average, 18,000 murders on television.
I pulled myself out from under the stones and stared at the waves.
You weren’t back yet.
I walked into the sea with all my clothes on.
I thought it would be dramatic. I imagined waves coming up to meet me and me shouting in their face, but I was so aware of myself that I just felt stupid and embarrassed and, anyway, the water was cold. I could tell that there were some people watching me from the pier. I could see a few teenagers laughing in the crowd.
I stepped forward and stumbled head first into the next wave. Everything went silent. You see, if you put your head underwater then everything stops existing. Words are no longer words, but drawn-out sounds in plastic bags. It makes your eyes bulge and your chest hurt. It is wonderful and intoxicating and pulls your hair in all directions. It is beautiful and terrifying: so big that not being able to see the edges of it makes you sick, forcing you upwards to breathe. The sea pushes you back up; it saves you. I gasped, dragging myself to my feet, my clothes completely drenched.
‘What the hell are you doing?’
I turned.
There you were. You’d left the chips on the edge of the beach and waded in, up to your knees. The cowboy hat had fallen off the back of your head, the strap cutting into your neck. I had a desperate urge to cut it free.
‘Did you know that war’s like this whole fucking romantic thing?’ I said, starting to shiver.
‘What?’
‘Did you know that? I read it in a book once.’
Waves were hitting the backs of my legs.
‘But … War’s bullshit,’ you said. ‘It’s not romantic at all.’
Your hair was plastered to one side of your face. I could hear people shouting. I bent down and picked up a pebble, shimmering in the light.
I stepped forward and gave it to you, pressed it hard into your palm.
And then I kissed you and, for that second, just for that one moment, the whole world and all its bullshit completely disappeared.
Aunt Libby’s Coffin Hotel
EXTRAORDINARY ANKAA: ANGEL OF DEATH
Desperate to communicate with deceased loved ones?
Looking for answers about mortality?
Dare to spend an evening toying with death?
Spend a night at Libitina Dart’s Coffin Hotel, and meet Ankaa, Angel of Death.
Just thirteen years old, this changeling has untold wisdom collected from years spent in Hades.
So named because she is anchored to the underworld, yet tied to the night-time sky, Ankaa is a child stuck between heaven and hell.
A personification of Purgatory.
A dark fairy trapped in time.
DON’T MISS THIS ONCE-IN-A-LIFETIME DEATH EXPERIENCE.*
*Visitors are encouraged to visit multiple times.
Each visit requires payment in full. See website for details.
It’s all a bit much.
I shove the fliers through the letterboxes of the bungalows on Sunshine Place, and hover at the street sign pointing towards St Bernadette’s.