The Palace of Strange Girls. Sallie Day

week sorting out one problem after another, reorganising shifts, dealing with strike threats and all the while continuing the daily struggle to keep output steady. Jack takes another deep breath and, determined to relax, gazes out to the horizon. The tide is coming in and the remaining strip of sand is empty save for a single figure, shoes in hand, making its way painfully over sand hard rippled by the tide. It’s Dougie.

      ‘Mornin’, Dougie! Up an’ at it already?’ Jack shouts.

      The figure looks up and glares. Dougie Fairbrother is knee high to a grasshopper and walks like he’s fighting a gale. When he comes within hailing distance he yells, ‘What time is it, Jack?’

      ‘Just comin’ up to twenty past.’

      ‘What?’ Receiving no immediate reply, he adds, ‘Twenty past what?’

      ‘Seven.’

      ‘That means I’ve been on this friggin’ beach for the best part of two bloody hours,’ Dougie says as he makes his way slowly up the concrete steps that separate the beach from the prom. Jack shakes his head. He has known Dougie Fairbrother all his life. Jack was the first person Dougie went to when his wife walked out and it was Jack who got him sorted out with a solicitor. Dougie has developed a fair thirst since his divorce back in the spring. It’s eight in the morning and he’s still drunk from the night before. When Dougie finally reaches the top of the steps he stops to catch his breath. Dougie has worked in the weaving shed since he was fourteen, that’s the best part of twenty years filling his lungs with lint and dust.

      While he is puffing and blowing Jack remarks, ‘Aye, well, they say there’s no rest for the wicked. What happened to lying in bed, Dougie? I thought your lad had booked a double room.’

      ‘He did. But it’s otherwise occupied at the moment. The little bastard has got a lass from over yonder in with him.’

      Jack follows the direction of Dougie’s thumb and sees a strip joint on the corner opposite with all the hatches battened down. ‘Who’s he got in there?’ he asks, hard pushed to hide his incredulity.

      ‘One of the strippers. I didn’t stop long enough to get her name and there were no bloody point asking Doug. Pound to a penny he wouldn’t know.’

      ‘So where did you sleep?’

      ‘I kipped down in the Residents’ Lounge. I was OK till the cleaners turned up at six and threw me out. I’ve been hanging around here on the off chance one of the lads turned up. I’m chilled to the bloody bone and gasping for a drink. They won’t open the hotel doors before nine at the earliest.’

      Jack puts his hand in his pocket and gives Dougie half a crown. ‘That’ll be enough to get you a pot of tea and some breakfast.’

      Dougie brightens immediately and says, ‘Thanks, Jack. E-e, but you should have come with us last night. We had a grand time. It was a good do.’

      ‘Looks like it,’ replies Jack.

      Dougie blinks his bloodshot eyes and rubs a calloused hand over his sickly face. ‘We started off at Yates’s but, God help us, we ended up at the King o’ Clubs.’

      ‘I’m surprised you went back there. I thought you’d been thrown out last time,’ Jack says as they cross the tramlines.

      ‘We were. It was Tapper’s fault. We sat through this load o’ guff about how we were going to see amazing things. Some tart wi’ her own version of ping-pong, half a dozen Egyptian dancers, that sort of thing. We’d gone in to see Sheba, the star of the show. She was billed as “six foot of exotic woman, naked as God intended, from the distant reaches of deepest Africa”. Tapper jumped up halfway through the spiel and yelled, “Well, bloody bring her out! I’ve summat here from Blackburn waiting for her!” It took three of us, mind, but we managed to get Tapper to sit down again and button his flies. Nowt would have come of it if some lard-arse next to us hadn’t said summat smart. Tapper only got to throw three or four punches before we were out on our ears. Never a dull moment wi’ Tapper.’

      That much is true. Eddie Tapworth is the best tackler in the cotton shed. A giant of a man, he is built for the heavy job of lifting beams. He can keep his looms running all day. He’s not one of those tacklers who hang around making the weavers wait while they sort out a trapped or broken shuttle, or grumbling at Jack to chase up a shortage of spindles from the spinning rooms. Tapper sets to and does it himself. He could replace the used shuttles and put a fresh cop in faster than you could draw breath. He is one of the few tacklers who can reckon how much the shaft speed will increase when the leather drive belts from the looms shrink in the heat. If all the tacklers were as capable as Tapper, the foreman’s job would be a damn sight easier. When he’s sober, Jack has a good deal of time for Eddie Tapworth. But drunk it’s another matter. A few pints and Tapper would fight his own shadow if it followed him.

      ‘We’re off to the Winter Gardens tomorrow night,’ Dougie continues. ‘You’d like. It’s Kenny Ball and his Jazzmen. Why don’t you come?’

      Jack rubs the angle of his jaw and shakes his head. ‘No, I’m not that bothered, Dougie.’

      ‘Come on! You’ve not lost your taste for jazz! I’ve known a time when I couldn’t get you to play a waltz straight without jazzing it up. We lost work for the band because of it. You were Blackburn’s answer to Jack Teagarden.’

      Jack’s expression is transformed by the memory. Laughter rumbles from deep in his chest while his grey eyes all but disappear above the curve of his cheekbones. He and Dougie got up to all sorts in the band before the war. He played trombone to Dougie’s trumpet. Jack had started off as bandleader – top hat, silk scarf, the lot. But it hadn’t taken long to sort out that it was the players who were getting all the girls. The bloke with the trombone in particular. Eddie Cummings couldn’t shift for skirt. When Jack promoted Eddie to bandleader and borrowed his trombone, things started looking up. Jack’s broad shoulders and ability to charm make him popular even now with the women. He may be in his late thirties but he takes care of himself. His blond hair is cut by the best barber in town and combed back into a series of shiny Brylcreemed tramlines.

      ‘No, I’ll give it a miss, Dougie. Kenny Ball’s a bit tame for me. I like the proper stuff – I saw Count Basie at the Tower a couple of years back. Cost an arm and a leg to get in, but it was worth every penny. Kenny Ball is just an amateur in comparison. I listened to a fair bit of jazz in Crete during the war.’

      ‘We were damn lucky to get Vera Lynn where I was stationed. Wasn’t it Crete where you met that bloke… the one that…?’

      ‘Yes. Nibs turned up one day with a gramophone and half a dozen jazz records. He’d brought them over from Greece. Got them from a black GI who was being posted back home. Only the Yanks would think to take a gramophone to war. I couldn’t get enough of it. The first time I heard Meade Lux Lewis playing “Honky Tonk Train Blues” I cracked out laughing.’

      ‘Aye, well, Kenny Ball’s the best Blackpool can come up with. You sure you won’t come?’

      ‘No, I’ll give it a miss. I promised to see Tom Bell tomorrow night.’

      ‘What? The Union bloke? Now isn’t that a surprise!’

      ‘Oh, it’s nothing serious. He just wants a chat.’

      ‘Chat my arse. He’ll have summat up his sleeve. I bet he’s got wind of Fosters’ offer.’

      ‘You haven’t said anything, have you, Dougie? Nobody is supposed to know. I haven’t even told Ruth. I’m still thinking about it.’

      ‘Why haven’t you told Ruth? I’d have thought you’d have wanted to shout it from the rooftops. Bloody hell, Jack, they’ve offered you the top job. Manager of Prospect Mill. What’s there to think about? It’ll more than double your pay packet overnight. Get her told.’

      ‘She’s been distracted with Beth. And anyway I haven’t said I’ll take the job.’

      ‘Then you want your bumps feeling, Jack. You