{"id":7091,"date":"2017-02-11T12:00:39","date_gmt":"2017-02-11T11:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=7091"},"modified":"2017-03-28T12:51:54","modified_gmt":"2017-03-28T11:51:54","slug":"days-of-the-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=7091","title":{"rendered":"Days of the Dead"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tom had chosen Whitby, a pretty port on the North East coast, for our first group weekend away. He had a rather tiresome interest in nautical matters and particularly eighteenth century swashbuckler, Captain Cook, but he had never been to \u2018the town at the epicentre of Cook\u2019s early career.\u2019 \u2018Cook was the finest British explorer, captain and cartographer,\u2019 Tom had said, in his bombastic manner of lecturing us on things we already knew but were too polite to mention. Given what Tom had recently done we should have known that the trip was reckless. Months later we\u2019d remember how he\u2019d repeatedly praised the explorer for being a man \u2018who learnt to command own ship.\u2019
\n              On that wet October Saturday we were unnerved by a change in our daily habits and slept badly and woke early and traveled North by the first train. To chill the bossy vibe of a school trip we\u2019d made group travel plans, but booked individual accommodation. At the bottom end, creatives Fred and Maria had the Youth Hostel alongside the ruined Abbey, while the wealthiest among us, Kurt and Gemma, had a chic boutique cottage over-looking the harbour. It promised ceramic hair straighteners, and an in-room safe (for which, later, we \u2018d be grateful) as well as Abbey views. The rest of us were in a range of mid price B&Bs, where the unbranded shampoos and body washes came bolted to the walls.
\n              On the train up Yolanda revealed, to our considerable surprise, that she had used Airbnb to book a last minute houseboat. Or \u2018a pad on a ship\u2019 as she called it.
\n\u2018Motion could be a problem,\u2019 Tom said, the first words that he\u2019d spoken which weren\u2019t about Captain Cook. Or perhaps they were about Captain Cook. Sometimes it was hard to tell what inspired Tom to speak when Yolanda was near.
\n\u2018I like idea of off grid, so could be good experience,\u2019 Yolanda said. \u2018That is my future plans.\u2019
\n\u2018How did you find that?\u2019 we asked, piqued by her daring and a certain secretiveness around its choosing.
\n\u2018It was right there, under \u2018unique accommodation.\u2019 It\u2019s a proper boat, moored now of course, but it did sail.\u2019
\n\u2018A boat! In October!\u2019 Kurt exclaimed. \u2018You\u2019ll freeze to death.\u2019
\n\u2018Perhaps I find a nice warm Whitby blanket,\u2019 she laughed and Tom stared out the window, and we tried not to stare at him staring.
\n              Six months ago Tom, hitherto a man of careful words, had confessed, entirely sober, and using what Gemma said was \u2018 the excited despair of a boy band lyricist (\u2018I can\u2019t get you out of my mind\u2019. \u2018But what am I supposed to do?\u2019 \u2018I\u2019m so in love with you\u2019 etc) his love for Yolanda, his wife\u2019s best friend. The news had spread quickly. Not so much a trickle of gossip as a teenagey torrent of texting: Yolanda confided in puppeteer Maria, who asked advice of social worker Gemma, who let slip to the rest of us. We met up to know more, and babbled in whispers until Yolanda put up her slender, bronzed hands and sighed, \u2018Asi es la vida.\u2019 That\u2019s life!
\n              Unexpected and inappropriate declarations of love had happened to Yolanda before. She is beautiful and Mexican and doesn\u2019t look 49, perhaps because she is a yogi, who cycles and runs, swishing her long black ponytail as she glides. For reasons we never understood, she is, or was, long-term single. \u2018She refuses to wither within a long-term relationship,\u2019 Gemma decided. Of course, despite \u2018Asis es la vida\u2019, Yolanda soon felt terrible for telling what should have been kept a secret, but \u2018Muy tarde ahora.\u2019 Too late now!
\n              As the train ripped through Doncaster Yolanda comically detailed the Airbnb\u2019s toilet arrangements. \u2018I don\u2019t care about bucket. I like to do things different,\u2019 she laughed. \u2018That\u2019s opportunity for me.\u2019
\n\u2018Has it got electricity?\u2019 Fred wondered. \u2018You might need to bring some candles?\u2019
\n\u2018Make sure you have batteries,\u2019 Kurt said.
\n\u2018I always have batteries,\u2019 she laughed, and the men stared at her to see if she meant what they thought she might. Jaya went to the buffet car for wine. Everyone, except Jaya, Tom\u2019s lovely hard-working midwife wife, and all of the men in our group, knew that Tom was in love with Yolanda. The men didn\u2019t know because none of us had told them about Tom\u2019s Bomb (as it had become known). According to Maria, Tom had wept, clasped his head in his hands, offered to re-plaster Yolanda\u2019s bathroom, and shown her an agonised haiku he\u2019d written on the back of a train ticket. For some reason it was hard to pass this news on to our men folk without insult and mockery.
\n              Of course we felt uneasy about Jaya\u2019s ignorance, but what choice was there? To cut her and Tom out, like catty teens? To tell her that the man she\u2019d married twenty-six years ago and with whom she had a sixteen year old child, was in love, and had been for two and a half years, according to his tearful confession, with her best friend? We went over and over it, together and in private, and there really was nothing to be done but for us to carry on as normal. Yolanda said she was putting it behind her, and we agreed that there was no more to say. \u2018Asis es la vida.\u2019
\n              But even before the train got to York the secret gave off such a rancid perfume it made regular breathing difficult. To lighten up we enthused over the green fields and brown streams. The boats and trees, which fizzed behind drizzle. At home we live on traffic-choked city streets and half our kids have asthma, so sunshine on chunky Yorkshire livestock was fresh and real and by 8.30am we were each unscrewing another dinky bottle of Pinot Noir.
\n              The reason we had chosen to go away together at all was because one of us (Kurt, in IT) has a second home (a Cumbrian lakeside barn: bought long ago when the economy was better and we were younger and more financially reckless). Last spring six of us had headed north to sit round Kurt\u2019s wood-burner. We\u2019d sourced, and carefully cooked, good local food and stayed up late and played vinyl and smoked weed<\/em> (Gemma\u2019s son, Caspar, mocked us for calling it dope<\/em> or pot<\/em>). We\u2019d been spontaneously affectionate with one another. We\u2019d had uncomplicated stoned sex with our spouses. And because that weekend at Kurt\u2019s had made us feel freer and younger, and because (did we mention this?) we\u2019d had easy sex, we\u2019d decided to take it further, looking for more spontaneity, more adventure, more chats, more air, more wine, more sex, more weed<\/em>, further from home. So we\u2019d gone for this full weekend party. Which was all arranged and paid for before Tom\u2019s Bomb and we\u2019d foolishly progressed with our plans despite it.
\n              By the time the train passed Middlesborough we were gently pissed, and privately we women felt lucky that we were all fifty-ish and trusted one another. If such a selective passion had detonated within any sisterhood we were part of thirty, or twenty, or even ten years previously, emotional shrapnel would have spiked us all causing instant heartbreak. It is tribute to our age and experience, (and the fact that none of us were capable, or desiring, of being impregnated) that not one of us was in the slightest bit envious of Yolanda. The last thing any of us wanted was a stray emotional firework landing in our own bone-dry marriages. And, though we liked him, and of late felt sorry for him, none of us fancied Tom, who is prone, when he does get verbal, to being a know-all, particularly in matters of DIY, miles-per-gallon, world history, supermarket price comparisons, Game of Thrones<\/em>, regional government and all natural and mineral elements of planet earth. He has a habit of shaking open ordnance survey maps to prove a point.
\n              This might suggest we were boring mid-lifers. We were not. Even though our parents are dead or dying, and our jobs unsatisfying, and our finances thinner than we\u2019d ever expected, between us we still held popular and stylish parties: generous fun scheduled on birthdays and for all the major festivals; Halloween, Bonfire Night, Christmas and both summer and winter solstices. New Year is a biggie (in fact, Gemma thinks that it was at our New Year animal-themed fancy dress 2013, when Yolanda slinked in a ginger body suit with a stiff tail attached, that Tom first fell for her). It was common for those of us not born in the UK; Yolanda, Jaya and Fred, to cook their national dishes. Fred might do a Jerk Chicken or Jaya her special pakoras or Yolanda those chimichangas. We shared what we had. Copious rhubarb, kale and butternut squash were the bountiful delights of Kurt and Fred\u2019s allotment attempts to raise their increasingly low spirits. All were received gratefully, particularly by puppeteer Maria who often claimed to be saving money by starving.
\n              If all this is all somehow giving the impression that we are wealthy, that\u2019s wrong. We are English and middle class, yes, but of the twenty-first, not the twentieth century, variety. We\u2019re mostly stuck in small Edwardian terraces bordering affluent areas (expect Maria and Fred who bought far away in a ghetto of low house prices and high car insurance). We had weekend breaks in lieu of proper pension provision and those parties instead of life insurance. Yes, we liked the arts but only went to the theatre when Maria got us free tickets to the flops (we didn\u2019t mind seeing flops because we agreed that the best bit about going to the theatre was the dressing up, the bar in the interval and the pub afterwards). We all attended regional state comprehensives except Tom, (who, from the age of seven, went to a much-hated boarding school, which is probably the twisted root of his understanding of cartography, and his lovelorn inappropriateness towards Yolanda). We all fear that what we have won\u2019t keep us in red wine in old age because none, hell, none of us, not one, own so much as a shoe cupboard in London though three of us studied there and most of us have lived there at some point, dammit! If only! How different our lives would have been if only we\u2019d bought there then and….<\/p>\n

We woke to Whitby\u2019s rain-streaked harbour with a gasp. That earthy collision of dark water, sky, stone and the sooty silhouette of a ruined Abbey, which rose up behind the cliff-top graveyard like the stage set for a spooky show. \u2018Don\u2019t let this cause any despondency,\u2019 Tom said, as we exited the station, \u2018but by the time Cook was our age he\u2019d circumnavigated the globe three times.\u2019 As made our way to the town, stalked by seagulls big as pelicans, Kurt assured us the town was not in the middle of a zombie invasion, but said our visit coincided with the annual Goth festival. \u2018Held to celebrate Whitby\u2019s place in Bram Stoker\u2019s Dracula<\/em>,\u2019 Tom added unnecessarily. We took pictures of the ghouls to post to Facebook, then after we had flung our bags in our rented rooms we raced to the harbourside, where gusts of salty wind rolled in from the North, whipping Styrofoam chip cones and greasy wrappers along the rain-glistened street. \u2018I wonder what they get out of it,\u2019 Fred said as we pushed through the army of undead crossing the swing bridge.
\n\u2018It looks like a lot of hard work,\u2019 Kurt agreed, glancing at a wrinkly white-faced grandmother wearing a basque; an ice cream cone in one hand and an antique parasol in the other.
\n\u2018Fun,\u2019 Yolanda said, shouting to be heard above the wind. \u2018A change to the normal.\u2019
\n              Because it was too early to go direct to the pub and because we were all feminists and didn\u2019t like the idea of splitting up and the men going to the Captain Cook Museum and us women going to the jewelers to price up the jet (the town\u2019s prized black gem) we all headed to the museum. \u2018You know Cook discovered Hawaii,\u2019 Tom shouted back to us as he marched ahead into the lashing rain.
\n\u2018Discovered, Tom!\u2019 Fred exclaimed. \u2018Not the right term.\u2019
\n\u2018Hasn\u2019t been married to me for thirty years taught you anything,\u2019 Jaya added and we wondered if she was reminding him of their legal union at the beginning of what even she, the ignorant party, intuited to be a dangerous weekend.
\n              In the little museum we peered respectfully at Cook\u2019s barkcloth waistcoat and the illustrations of native seacraft of the Polynesian islands. We considered how turtles \u2013 \u2018a delicacy for Cook\u2019s seamen\u2019 – tasted. \u2018Like a rubbery crab,\u2019 Tom informed us, though when challenged he admitted he\u2019d never actually tasted a turtle. \u2018Slippery, wet, a little salty and delicately fishy,\u2019 Yolanda murmured, and Fred said, \u2018Hmm, I think I remember that taste,\u2019 and we giggled like teenagers as Tom blushed and stared at his feet.
\n              As some of us had our own lovelorn, wimpy sons, we felt as much pity and concern for Tom\u2019s masculine decline and delusions, as we did amusement. At the time of his confession of love for Yolanda Tom was midway through a hard year; his father had died after a long, gnawing cancer. Brexit jitters had ended his European funded job and he\u2019d panicked himself into an unsatisfactory new role with a ruthless multi-national, before walking out, leading to six months of unemployment, during which time he\u2019d unexpectedly failed his grade four piano exam.
\n              In the museum library Tom used an eye glass to read, in a gentle lilting voice, from a faded, velvet-soft letter written in 1772: \u2018I whose ambition leads me not only farther than any other man has been before me, but as far as I think it possible for man to go.\u2019<\/em> We gathered around and stared at the frail inky words and felt speechlessly sad.
\n              Over a pub lunch of foamy fish, hard chips and gassy bottled beer, we returned to the subject of Cook. It seemed the safest place to go. \u2018At twenty-nine he was surveying the St Lawrence River. Every place he stopped he befriended tribal chiefs and he foraged for exotic fruit in the rain forests, you know, places untrodden by human foot.\u2019
\n\u2018Is a Hawaiian foot not a human foot, Tom?\u2019 Jaya reminded him gently, then nuzzled against his shoulder and laughed. We knew she loved him as she\u2019d told us several times. Could she confess to love so freely because she was religious and so more naturally faithful than the rest of us? Or was it just the HRT? Either way, given what we knew, it was awkward to hear her warm declarations of marital love.
\n\u2018By the time he was my age he\u2019d kicked the bucket,\u2019 Kurt said, wiping the froth from his mouth with the back of his hand. \u2018I read that in the museum.\u2019
\n\u2018Killed on a trip to chart the course of the planet Venus,\u2019 Tom nodded
\n\u2018The planet Venus,\u2019 Yolanda said, turning to Tom. \u2018How romantic.\u2019 She had a straw stuck in the neck of her beer and she sucked it.
\n              \u2018Let\u2019s have night out and not talk about our children,\u2019 Yolanda had insisted several months back. We\u2019d taken this badly: as a criticism. Had we spent our forties successfully dampening our desires, lowering our romantic expectations and working hard to keep our feelings on an even keel simply for our ungrateful kids? If so, even if it was for the sake of what we truly, helplessly loved in our lives, it seemed Yolanda\u2019s inference was right, a big error had been made. Though it must be said, the one childless couple in our group, Fred and Maria, didn\u2019t seem to be living through an age of sexual or intellectual discovery either. While we mothers nagged about music practice and agonized over screen-time and grades, Fred and Maria talked of their parents, though both sets were long dead.
\n              \u2018Who wants another drink?\u2019 Kurt said, though we\u2019d already discussed the dangers of the coastal pub in autumn; cosy boozing too early. A Frisbee, a kite and a cricket bat had been packed as a corrective but outside the seagulls cawed and the wind was whipping up needles of icy rain and in the pub that fire was roaring. Kurt cut through a crust of Victorian witches and wizards to get to the beer.
\n              \u2018It\u2019s about the unexpected,\u2019 Tom muttered as we drained our dregs and waited for more. \u2018We\u2019ll never know what it\u2019s like to lay eyes on a new land.\u2019
\n\u2018Whitby\u2019s new enough for me. I have no need to conquer,\u2019 Maria replied. She was facing down a viscous menopause with just weekly yoga and a foul tea made of black cohosh root, and was frequently blunt and irritable.
\n              \u2018But a place so beautiful, so alien to everything you\u2019ve known before,\u2019 Tom said too loudly, squeezing his fingers into a fist. \u2018How can that not be mesmerizing? The difference \u2013 God it must have been…\u2019 Hot passion in his voice caused several of the undead to turn from the bar and stare.
\n\u2018Oh I\u2019m too old for difference,\u2019 Gemma said. \u2018I\u2019m like Maria. I feel worried when they move the tights section in M&S.\u2019
\n\u2018But to come across the golden natural world! To watch it rise before you out of the blue ocean,\u2019 Tom cried, standing up to help Kurt distribute the beers. \u2018The white sands, the azure sky. The Pacific!\u2019 He spread both arms high and wide, like a preacher. \u2018And after overcoming so many obstacles. Yet still you forge on. And you are rewarded with \u2013 pure natural beauty.\u2019 And he sank his furious gaze on Yolanda who glanced at Jaya before turning away.
\n              \u2018Did they have women on these boats?\u2019 Gemma asked as Kurt stumbled to the bar again.
\n\u2018He was making a map of its passage,\u2019 Tom said, wiping his eyes with his sleeve, ignoring Maria, still gazing between Jaya and Yolanda. \u2018Venus.\u2019
\n\u2018No, Gemma, they didn\u2019t. It was very much a boy\u2019s adventure,\u2019 Maria said sharply.
\n\u2018I think they tended to have rampant sex with the local women whenever they arrived at a new place,\u2019 Gemma said.
\n\u2018How do you know that?\u2019 Fred asked.
\n\u2018I saw it in a movie. That\u2019s how I know most things.\u2019
\n\u2018Mutiny on the Bounty!\u2019
\n\u2018Marlon Brando!\u2019
\n\u2018Actually sexologists…\u2019 Tom said, blowing his nose. \u2018Sexologists,\u2019 Tom continued, \u2018have done quite a bit of research into this whole thing.\u2019
\n\u2018Marlon Brando?\u2019
\n\u2018No. Human desire.\u2019
\n\u2018Steady on, Tom.\u2019
\n\u2018Hawaii is particularly interesting because it was of course non-Judeo-Christian, so the islanders saw sex in a purely…free way. Very differently to Cook and his Western crew tainted by years of English moral rectitude.\u2019
\n\u2018How so?\u2019 Kurt asked, clapping Tom on the shoulder with his palm.
\n\u2018Less guilt and shame, I guess,\u2019 Fred said, and Maria stared out the window, and suggested we go to the whalebone arch after all, as we were getting too drunk too early. \u2018Or there\u2019s a good Mountain Warehouse.\u2019
\n\u2018Sinless,\u2019 Tom nodded.
\n\u2018And I believe they also carried out human sacrifice,\u2019 Maria said.
\n\u2018No, that was The Wicker Man.\u2019
\n\u2018Hawaii too,\u2019 Maria said. \u2018All those islands. Slavery and human sacrifice and infanticide alongside your lovely sunlit sexual innocence.\u2019
\n\u2018There\u2019s often a worm in the free love apple,\u2019 Jaya sighed.
\n\u2018It\u2019s always been the white man\u2019s dream to go native,\u2019 Gemma said. \u2018But I didn\u2019t know you knew so much about it, Tom.\u2019
\n\u2018Well, yes, actually I do.\u2019 Tom nodded. \u2018It\u2019s interesting that sex outside of non-committed relationships was completely acceptable throughout the Polynesian islands. They were world famous for indulging their sexual appetites. In fact they were trained for it, both men and women, from a young age and…\u2019
\n\u2018Trained! Really? How?\u2019 Fred asked, leaning forward and cupping a hand behind his ear.
\n\u2018Good God,\u2019 Kurt laughed. \u2018Steady on, we\u2019ve only just had lunch.\u2019
\n\u2018By older members of the community, I imagine,\u2019 Yolanda said. \u2018Happens in Mexico too.\u2019
\n\u2018They train you for sex?\u2019 Fred asked quietly, his eyes locked on hers.
\n\u2018Pretty much,\u2019 Yolanda nodded. \u2018Being good at sex is considered a useful life skill. Essential in fact.\u2019
\n              Luckily at that moment the landlord appeared with a new log for the fire, and we watched it fizz and sizzle, as the flames rolled around its rim of moss, hissing and licking.
\n\u2018So how exactly are you trained?\u2019 Fred asked. We laughed, though heat ran through us all. It could have been a blaze of menopause or the new log on the fire but really it was the sex-in-middle-age-cat, out of the bag and under the table, curling its stiff, stubby tail between our legs.
\n              \u2018Didn\u2019t they have penis statues everywhere? I read that in a brochure once,\u2019 Kurt said, as Yolanda leaned forward and purred at the fire.
\n\u2018Well, penises and vaginas,\u2019 Tom said, settling his rubbed glasses back onto his red nose.
\n\u2018It\u2019s not actually a hugely phallocentric culture,\u2019 Jaya said and Tom nodded and readjusted his glasses.
\n\u2018Where did you do all this research?\u2019 Gemma asked, looking round at us with her hands spread wide, like she was balancing an invisible tray.
\n\u2018On the internet, I bet,\u2019 Kurt said. \u2018All that time you thought he was looking for that new job.\u2019 We didn\u2019t normally refer to the six long months of unemployment Tom had suffered, or, according to Gemma, \u2018enjoyed,\u2019 after his father\u2019s death.
\n\u2018There\u2019s a twenty foot vagina statue in a cave on Hawaii,\u2019 Tom said.
\n\u2018If we had wifi I\u2019d check that,\u2019 Fred said.
\n\u2018It\u2019s true,\u2019 Jaya said. \u2018He showed me.\u2019
\n\u2018Not everything on the Internet is true,\u2019 Gemma reminded us.
\n\u2018Ach, stone vaginas, I mean, don\u2019t get me started,\u2019 Kurt said, in an attempt at an American mobster accent. Then he quickly went to the toilet without even glancing at Gemma.
\n\u2018Let\u2019s go,\u2019 Gemma said, and stood up, grabbed her handbag and marched out of the bar.
\n              Grumbling against the weather we followed her outside to where the rain was heavy and the daylight dim, turning the crowds of Goths to a murky swarm on the wet pavements. The sea, rougher and horizonless now, seemed a foggy grey infinity. The earlier rain had turned our hair frizzy and we were beginning to miss the kids We should already have gone for a bracing walk along the harbour, followed by beach Frisbee, vigorous kite-play and a jolly wander round the craft shops. \u2018I read that there\u2019s a lovely independent bookshop,\u2019 Maria said sharply, typing into her phone. When Kurt appeared she marched away.
\n              \u2018It\u2019s a shocking crime how many bookshops we\u2019ve lost in this country,\u2019 Gemma said, hurrying to catch up with Maria. \u2018Personally I refuse to use Amazon.\u2019
\n              Far away on the windy, empty beach we saw a striped deckchair, and, cradled in it, an old woman.
\n              In the bookshop we wandered along the shelves trying not to brood. With some resentment each of us bought a full-price hardback, before agreeing with Kurt that we needed the toilet and so might as well have another drink. \u2018Can we go somewhere with wifi?\u2019 Gemma cried. \u2018I need to check in at home.\u2019 But already Tom and Kurt had dipped into the nearest ghoul-filled bar. \u2018In Hawaiian mythology, Kapo, the Goddess of Fertility has a detachable vagina,\u2019 Tom said as he pushed through the throng of neon skeletons in the doorway.
\n\u2018Well now that would be useful.\u2019 Maria said and we all agreed.
\n\u2018Detach it. Hand it over and consider it job done.\u2019
\n              That bar\u2019s zombies were noisy and we had to yell to be heard, either that or we were just shouting because we were drunk and weary. We knew we\u2019d probably not be arsed to go for a meal now but Gemma found some wifi and took a group selfie and sent it to Caspar with the caption \u2018Cheers, darling!\u2019 Instantly he texted back, \u2018Wow lucky Whitby.\u2019
\n              Caspar had never got over seeing his Pilates mum sucking through a pack of Marlboro Red at the World Cup all-nighter, and had famously called us \u2018sad old fuckwits.\u2019 All our children considered our gatherings with typical teen sourness. They attended our parties early, scoffed the most expensive food, and then left quickly. Kurt\u2019s daughter, Elsie, slammed our Chinese New Year do as having \u2018a veneer of cheer.\u2019 But, at the time, we thought so what? We\u2019d blown them our best years and our parties gave us something to list and plan and shop for. To structure our house maintenance around. The chance to be drunk in company, and to behave better to our spouses in public than we did in private, and to be seen as energetic, in company, with friends. And if our weekends and parties did, as Elsie said, \u2018truly stink of middle age\u2019, well it was denial with a beautiful Mexican woman dressed as a ginger cat nibbling from a Waitrose Luxury Party Platter.
\n              \u2018Well, non-Western cultures are less harsh on us single parents,\u2019 Yolanda said, waking us all up. \u2018For us a baby is a blessing even if there isn\u2019t a daddy around.\u2019
\n\u2018You make it sound like England\u2019s stuck in the 1950\u2019s,\u2019 Maria replied coolly and glanced at Gemma who nodded.
\n\u2018Babies get raised by the whole family,\u2019 Yolanda continued. \u2018It\u2019s only here, in this hypocrites\u2019 paradise, that marriage is so sanctified. Think of that horrible word, \u2018illegitimacy.\u2019 Tom nodded down at the table and Jaya stroked Yolanda\u2019s arm comfortingly. HRT had allegedly made Jaya not only calmer and more tactile, but it had reawakened and strengthened her sexual drive.
\n\u2018I don\u2019t think that term\u2019s widely used anymore,\u2019 Maria said.
\n\u2018No, it\u2019s not,\u2019 Gemma agreed.
\n\u2018The word might not be but the attitudes behind it are,\u2019 Yolanda said and there was a murmur of agreement from Tom.
\n\u2018So, it was only when the European missionaries arrived that all this sexual freedom stopped?\u2019 Kurt asked.
\n\u2018If it has stopped,\u2019 Fred grinned. \u2018Might be worth checking on Trip Advisor.\u2019
\n\u2018First Nation people have always been eroticized,\u2019 Gemma said. \u2018Take Gauguin in Tahiti.\u2019
\n\u2018Wasn\u2019t he a paedophile too?\u2019
\n\u2018Was Cook?\u2019
\n\u2018Well, I read in the museum that he married a thirteen year old,\u2019 Maria said. \u2018If that\u2019s what you mean.\u2019
\n\u2018Either a bohemian or a paedophile depending on your point of view.\u2019
\n\u2018Cook?\u2019
\n\u2018No, Gauguin.\u2019
\n\u2018Or your sex.\u2019
\n\u2018That\u2019s a movie too isn\u2019t it?\u2019
\n\u2018Kiefer Sutherland.\u2019
\n\u2018Now he is an actor I do rate. No need to detach the vagina for that one.\u2019
\n\u2018Wasn\u2019t it Nastassja Kinski as his wife?\u2019
\n\u2018Tess of the dirty D\u2019Urbervilles. Remember that? That girl ruined me for ever.\u2019
\n\u2018More inappropriate eroticising of young women, Kurt.\u2019 Gemma sighed, and took out her reading glasses and opened her new hardback at a random page.
\n\u2018I think feminist revisionism is somewhat problematic here,\u2019 Fred said.
\n\u2018Agreed,\u2019 Jaya said. \u2018We can\u2019t judge people of the past by the standards we have today.\u2019
\n\u2018But you\u2019d think all those Tahitian women had to do all day was sing songs and have sex,\u2019 Maria said.
\n\u2018Yes, possibly, so,\u2019 Tom nodded. \u2018But there are many studies attaining to the authenticity of Cook\u2019s accounts.\u2019
\n\u2018Apparently Cook writes about seeing girls \u2013 young women – happily having sex, in public,\u2019 Jaya said.
\n\u2018Spontaneously,\u2019 Yolanda added.
\n\u2018Lemmeattem\u2019 Kurt said, as though he were in another pub at an entirely other stage of his life.
\n\u2018Happily according to whom!\u2019
\n\u2018It was very common, Maria. Odd now, granted, but sex between friends, between the same genders, between different age groups, between relatives even was simply not a problem for the Polynesian peoples.\u2019
\n              Tom, Yolanda and Jaya nodded. \u2018Do you mind if we go now. And don\u2019t talk about the issues around prepubescent sex,\u2019 Gemma said, putting her book down so hard on the table our drinks slopped over. \u2018I\u2019m on holiday.\u2019 But too late. The sex cat had its arse in our drunk red faces and was beginning to whine and hiss and claw. <\/p>\n

Night had fallen. High waves were beginning to shatter against the harbour walls. Blue floodlight, which bathed the ruined Abbey above, glittered on the quaking black seawater. We loitered in a restless knot. \u2018You know what,\u2019 Yolanda said quietly, her exotic voice gently stroking the tension in the English air. \u2018Tonight we dress up.\u2019
\n\u2018I only bought jeans! Did you all bring a suit?\u2019 Kurt exclaimed.
\n\u2018No, Kurt. Listen.\u2019 Yolanda said, placing a silencing smooth dark hand on his pale hairy forearm, and moving him back from the edge. \u2018Not smart. The fancy dress. We party.\u2019
\n\u2018No!\u2019 we exclaimed, zipping our anoraks up firmly and thrusting our fists into our pockets. \u2018No way. Not again\u2019
\n\u2018We can\u2019t be only ones dressed as middle-aged mommas,\u2019 Yolanda said. \u2018Look around you.\u2019 She swept her hand towards a group of half-dressed young vamps trotting into town, and we felt truly insulted. We\u2019d thought carefully about what to pack for a costal weekend break. We\u2019d even consulted Gwyneth Paltrow\u2019s blog, then tried to recreate the suggested LA-style relaxed waterproof-chic via Boden and the John Lewis website.
\n\u2018Goths, you mean,\u2019 Fred asked, glancing at a nearby couple in black latex crunching through a sack of nachos.
\n\u2018It take not much energy,\u2019 Yolanda purred. \u2018Just creativity.\u2019
\n\u2018We have energy and creativity,\u2019 Maria snapped. \u2018What we don\u2019t have is any cobwebs or fangs.\u2019
\n\u2018Have we got any weed?\u2019
\n\u2018The shops sell nothing but,\u2019 Kurt said. \u2018Haven\u2019t you noticed?\u2019
\n\u2018He means cobwebs not weed, Fred.\u2019
\n\u2018I\u2019d like to see you as a convincing skeleton,\u2019 Gemma scoffed, then shivered, more with panic than cold.
\n\u2018It\u2019s no the same as Halloween,\u2019 Yolanda said softly, as Kurt, began to peck at his phone.
\n\u2018I need a cape and a cane,\u2019 he muttered.
\n\u2018Don\u2019t you even think Edward Scissorhands,\u2019 Marie said, pointing a crooked finger.
\n\u2018Well, why not?\u2019 Fred snapped back, \u2018we\u2019re meant to be having fun aren\u2019t we? Seriously, have we got any weed?\u2019
\n\u2018You\u2019re no Johnny Depp, darling.\u2019
\n\u2018There\u2019s fancy dress shop,\u2019 Yolanda said calmly, pointing towards the glittering town. \u2018I see it from my ship.\u2019 We\u2019d all forgotten about her boat. \u2018On harbourside.\u2019 She stroked at her phone for a moment and then handed it to us, \u2018Look.\u2019 We stared at a garish sign: Hey Fancy Pants<\/em>.
\n\u2018It\u2019ll all be sold out,\u2019 Maria said. \u2018And anyway I don\u2019t like fancy dress.\u2019 Because we all knew Yolanda was a great dresser-upper. Just as make-up and fancy dress greatly aged us, it youthened Yolanda.
\n\u2018After forty it always feels such an effort.\u2019
\n\u2018Doesn\u2019t that apply to everything, Gemma?\u2019 Yolanda said quietly, hanging her head back to stare up at the bright full moon. \u2018Your whole entire existence?\u2019 Tom nodded and inhaled heavily, and we understood. If we had one scrap of youth left, it was to be found in some grim, certainly not quite willingness, but rather a stubborn determination to still give new things \u2013 which increasingly disturbed us – a last go.
\n              \u2018It\u2019s Dia de los Muertos. So, we have party. In honour of all lost loved ones.\u2019 She put her hand on Tom\u2019s shoulder and slowly massaged and his eyes caught the golden glisten of the orange streetlight. \u2018Steady, tiger,\u2019 Jaya said softly and put her arms around both of them and smiled and swayed, back and forth like the surging sea below. Yolanda\u2019s parents, who had never left Mexico, were both long dead. Jaya\u2019s father was alive in Mumbai, but her mother had died a year ago. \u2018Off you go. One hours \u2018til shops shut,\u2019 Yolanda said. \u2018Make best of it, amigos. Anyone want to come with me?\u2019 Tom snapped upright but Gemma had already grabbed Yolanda\u2019s wrist.
\n\u2018Are there charity shops?\u2019 she wailed. \u2018And we need an off-licence.\u2019
\n\u2018Of course,\u2019 Yolanda laughed. \u2018It\u2019s recession Britain, right?\u2019
\n\u2018Every man for himself,\u2019 Kurt yelled, and stormed away across the swing bridge.<\/p>\n

Two hours later, on seeing Yolanda re-enter the bar, several of us instinctively took off our varifocals. Whether the reason was to see her beauty less sharply or to free what threads remained of our own, we didn\u2019t know, but instantly we recoiled a little. Fred rearranged the iron cross which was resting high on his belly mound, and reached for his Gothic cane, which was indistinguishable from a walking stick. Kurt tugged at the studded collar he\u2019d buckled around his slack throat. Above it his big face and jowls make him look like \u2018grumpy dog\u2019, which was the caption we\u2019d put on Facebook.
\n              At first we thought Yolanda was wearing a ceramic mask, but as she came closer the ivory skull twinkled and smiled and we saw that the newly painted porcelain visage was her own. Some of us quickly zipped a fleece over our already disintegrating costumes. Around her glittering eyes were pink patches, stitched with spikes of silky black, which speared into the ivory gloss on her cheeks. The ghoulish needlework was repeated around her purple lips, so her face created the theatrical effect of a sewn-up, sexy corpse. When she pouted her mouth appeared tightly stitched together. Her hair was scraped back into a glossy ballerina bun. Of course the situation was made much worse by the way the rest of us had fallen foolishly back on the cheaply eroticising punk trends of our distant youth \u2013 gel in the hair, black nail polish, red lips (on downturned mouths) a rag roll of white gunk over our fallen cheeks, and, pinched into our plump torsos, tatters of torn cloth revealing too much puckering flesh. We\u2019d hung tin crosses and chains around our crepey necks, though even the youngest of us were saggy as rag dolls. We looked like a bunch of geriatric trick-or-treaters.
\n              Still, Yolanda took photos and praised all our flimsy outfits. As she stood before us wearing a man\u2019s black suit, white shirt and black tie. From the breast pocket poked a tiny skull. Tom came in next in a white shirt, waistcoat and pair of breeches, and though Hey Fancy Pants<\/em> had might have intended Captain Hook rather than Captain Cook, his raunchy fully limbed pirate was oddly impressive. Somehow he\u2019d managed to be more Adam Ant than Jeremy Clarkson. A tricorn hat covered his bald patch, and the heeled knee-high boots meant he stood taller and prouder. He seemed to have biceps. Hooking his thumbs in his belt loops, he smiled at Yolanda. It was only a moment later that we noticed Jaya at his side, comically dropping one hip to display herself in a brown squaw outfit. \u2018Pocahontas,\u2019 she said. \u2018It\u2019s all there was left. We\u2019ll have to say it\u2019s irony.\u2019
\n              \u2018Well, let\u2019s get this death party started.\u2019 Kurt said, grasping his cane and struggling up on aching knees. <\/p>\n

Behind a line of black-clad crows we crossed the swing bridge and wheezed and puffed our way up the one hundred and ninety-nine steps towards the Abbey. Wind howled. The rain had stopped but as we moved higher towards the misty graveyard the tempest swirled stronger and great gusts muzzied the Goths\u2019 long hair. Behind us waves smashed higher and burst as spray over the road. Ahead the blue floodlight and the silhouetted throng of tall vampires and skinny ghouls, held the seedy promise of a nightclub. \u2018Are they real,\u2019 Kurt said, pointing his iPhone 7 up into the air. \u2018Bats,\u2019 Tom nodded and we all took out our phones and traced the quick black flashes as they cut and stabbed the night.
\n              \u2018We need some weed,\u2019 Fred gasped, as panting and yawning we reached the top of the steps and pushed through the stone doorway into the grassy Great Hall of the open-air Abbey. Kurt found a shadow beyond the floodlight and Yolanda said we would set up an ofrenda, which, she explained, was an altar where the dead would be honoured. Kurt spread out his satin cape and we sunk down on it and unpacked the supermarket booze and sloshed it into the toothbrush tumblers we\u2019d borrowed from our hotel bathrooms. Fred identified a knot of young Goths as possible druggies and headed their way. Tom remembered that he had his father\u2019s watch on, and a photograph in his wallet. He placed these on the slab of stone, which was to serve as the ofrenda. We were secretly startled by Tom\u2019s photograph; his own face was a pink replica of his late father\u2019s.
\n              From her suit pocket Yolanda took tea lights, which she placed in a jam jar, taken from her other pocket (later we\u2019d think this suggested she\u2019d planned the whole debacle more fully than it seemed at the time). She placed a photograph of her own doppelganger mama by the photo of Tom\u2019s father, and Jaya took from her finger a golden ring, which had belonged to her mother. We shared out more alcohol, stared at the flickering candles, listening to Yolanda softly murmuring, in Mexican, a prayer for the dead. No one had ever talked to us of our griefs, which we kept as hidden as the truths of our sex lives and it was late and dark and we were drunk and cold and missing our babies and because of all this havoc inside some of us cried.
\n              An hour later a crowd of assorted drunks, punks and parents had gathered around the ofrenda, elevating our grief picnic to an official performance group. Bats circled above. A bearded old wizard appeared and mumbled spells for the occult until Yolanda spoke softly through her sewn-up mouth about Dia de los Muertos and the ragged audience listened, spellbound by more than just her face and voice. Captain Cook stood behind Pocahontas fondling her ear lobes, nuzzling her neck, whispering, staring at Yolanda. Then he stretched out an arm and swept it high across the misty blackness, as Jaya arched her neck to see where her lover pointed. We didn\u2019t want an affair with Tom, God no, but we missed flirtation. We missed being fancied. Pre-fifty all our relationships had included humour, challenge, confession, laughter, wit, and the ripe, warm fruit of this fertile bush was flirting. Now it was as if one key ingredient had been withdrawn from every dish we tasted and prepared. On that dark cold cliff top, with our hair gone frizzy and our old skin flayed by the north wind, this seemed a subtraction as dramatic as the loss of, salt, or sugar or onion. Now, facing the deep iron sea, we knew it wasn\u2019t just a flavour at all: it was a core nutrient that had nourished and sustained us.
\n              A young onlooker arrived with a white face, purple eye sockets and a noose around his neck. We were excited but frightened by the presence of these strangers, which is why when a scrawny vampire, with brown fingernails and white plastic daggers for teeth, handed us his marijuana we shared it immediately, as we watched Tom shake open and stroke flat on the grass, a map. Generously, we thought then, the vampire rolled us another, fatter, joint. Sucked between our dry lips it felt thick as a cigar. Soon we were lying down to stare at the broomsticks curling across the copper moon and the last thing we remembered was Maria roaring that weed wasn\u2019t weed anymore, oh no it was a giant, fee fi fo fum and so strong that it could snap you in two.<\/p>\n

We woke cuddled together at dawn. Bones jellied, eyeballs burning, fingers tingling, dew-covered, coughing and dazed, our bags, phones, purses and keys gone. Stolen. Lost. Even our ruinously expensive varifocals were taken, replaced by several pats and puddles of vomit. We weren\u2019t surprised. In fact we weren\u2019t even annoyed. Demented, we laughed (later when we began to cry and rage and panic we Googled this eerie, early hysteria to discover it to be the effects of excessive dopamine).
\n              Sick in our hair, stinking of sweat, fetid breath steaming, we spent a long time feebly stumbling through the dawn mist, peering and stroking at slain bodies looking for Yolanda and Jaya and Tom. The frosted stone ofrenda was still there, but the photos of their dead doubles and Jaya\u2019s gold ring were gone, replaced by scorched tea-light tins, empty beer bottles, fag butts and not a furry black sock but a decapitated bat. \u2018Some sick fuck\u2019s eaten its head,\u2019 Gemma cried.
\n              When we couldn\u2019t find them on the battlefield we tried to believe they\u2019d drifted, drugged, back down the steps. Maria spun us a sickly hope they might have our varifocals, phones and credit cards safely on their bedside tables as Gemma wriggled into a fetal ball on the wet grass and sobbed.
\n              Our tickets home were booked for 5pm, twelve hours time. Fred and Maria stumbled over to their hostel and the rest of us blurred back to our B&Bs, clutching at one another like eyeless Gloucesters. If a glorious east coast sunrise dyed that new day in iridescent pinks and purples, we didn\u2019t lift our pounding heads to notice. Back in our rooms we ravaged the complimentary cookies and shortbreads, sucked sugar from sachets, drank cold hot chocolates and collapsed. When we assembled, five hours later, stubbly, sore, starving and still lobotomized, there was no sign of Jaya, Yolanda or Tom. Just sheepish Kurt, who clutched an armful of new golf clubs, and his red-eyed wife, who cuddled a top of the range Nutribullet.
\n              Maria arrived next with hostel rolls. Then puffy-faced Fred with muffins. We sat on a seafront bench and ate in foggy silence. As we came back to life we remembered Yolanda\u2019s houseboat was moored outside Hey Fancy Pants<\/em>, and Kurt set his iPad, which he had sensibly secured, together with his credit cards, in the in-room safe (he wasn\u2019t the wealthiest of us by accident).
\nFor many months we came back again and again to the scene outside Hey Fancy Pants<\/em>, and wondered if we imagined what we saw. Later Caspar said the potent levels of tetrahydrocannabinod in the bad vampire\u2019s joint could still have been causing hallucinations twelve hours later. Perhaps, as our brain receptors were shot, our memories were freaks. Maybe we\u2019d \u2018monged-out\u2019 as Elsie said and Caspar agreed because his research suggested we were lucky not to have ended up fully paralysed on a ventilator in A&E.
\n              But what we remember is that Hey Fancy Pants<\/em> was there, and in front a line of boats with just one sloshing gap. On the boulder in front of the empty mooring was a damp tricorn hat. \u2018Don\u2019t let this cause any despondency\u2019 Maria whispered, sinking to her heels, \u2018but by the time Cook was our age he\u2019d circumnavigated the globe three times.\u2019 Even so we still thought, as did the North Yorkshire police, that they\u2019d be there, shamed, confused, hung-over, when we got back to our city later.<\/p>\n

Months pass and we have no more parties, no more weekends away. We stay home to finger the weekend for clues, thumped around by the shocking first stages of grief. Suicide, abduction, insurance fraud and murder are all considered, but really we knew it was love. The only crime that had been committed was against morbidity itself. Then their houses go up for sale and we are jealous. Their children are officially removed from the school register and we are angry. Their workplaces say they\u2019ve tended their resignations in writing and Kurt and Gemma announce they are divorcing. Fred confesses he\u2019d been in love with Tom for several years and in recent months he\u2019d told him so in many drunken voicemails. Maria, unable to afford leaving or counselling, begins a course of HRT and takes up Park Run. Soon the weekend goes beyond talking. We stop meeting up to speculate and begin to lose touch.
\n              Now we feel them when we are alone. Sleep comes late, if at all, and always soundtracked by the crack and creak of sail and rope. Office days drift by on a dizzying fantasy of another life lived better elsewhere. If this sounds half familiar, it was to us too; we were tossing, panting, aching through another more painful, more restless, more fiercely anguished adolescence. In the early hours, in the grip of a sea dream or a wild menopausal urge, each of us are far away: powering through the tumbling waves, the rolling black night, on through the wind and darkness, eyes shut, limbs twisted, skin warm and wet, waking to sun dazzle and soft white sand, the lapping of foam on flesh, feeling love, love, love. As charting Venus we go on besides them in our mortal dreams, hunting for the new, together under the sun and stars.
\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tom had chosen Whitby, a pretty port on the North East coast, for our first group weekend away. He had a rather tiresome interest in nautical matters and particularly eighteenth century swashbuckler, Captain Cook, but he had never been to \u2018the town at the epicentre of Cook\u2019s early career.\u2019 \u2018Cook was the finest British explorer, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[340,338],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\nDays of the Dead - The Manchester Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=7091\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Days of the Dead - The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Tom had chosen Whitby, a pretty port on the North East coast, for our first group weekend away. 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