Spanish City [Paperback]

Sarah May's first novel, The Nudist Colony, won her huge plaudits. With not a sign of that incapacitating blight--second-novel jitters--she's written another wonder in Spanish City. Distinguished by daring invention and large-heartedness in her plotting and characterisation, she turns her tale of lost hopes, loves, expectations, into a work of immense readability. Glancing actions and unexpected exchanges, often just off centre or out of reach, reverberate like seismic shifts.

It's circa-1960s Setton, a seedy North Sea town that's seen better days: its pleasure palace, Spanish City, is boarded up, its roller coaster rusting. Only the ice-cream parlour, Moscadini's, at the other end of town, struggles on. Hal Price lives in the same house he's been in all his life; he teaches in the same school that staunched his early ambitions ("What do you think you are, Price? A free man?" ... "He knew that after this he would start every day of his life, not with breakfast, but with this conversation between Fitts and himself.") So joining up and being shipped off to Normandy--to "Rat Castle"--at war's end had seemed the only thing to do. There he'd met Stella, who'd emerged from the sea like Aphrodite and who, Hal realised, "had no regard for tragedy and no intention of ever understanding it". What she does understand is what Hal can't quite achieve: "you need to lose your sense of gravity ... exchange real time for air time ... Sensation can be pure, Hal." Now he's almost resigned to playing the cat each year in the Christmas pantomime. But after this year's panto he's kidnapped by two young brothers, Victor and Will, and taken to Moscadini's where his past takes hold--especially his sense of the elusive Stella. She had been spirited away from "Rat Castle" by Major Delavel, Setton's reclusive toff, but had abandoned him only to turn up, years later, in Setton to tell Hal: "I didn't come here because of Spanish City. I came here so that you could find me." Spanish City, permeated by the intoxication of lost and found, found and lost, lingers hauntingly with suggestive mystery. --Ruth Petrie

• Spanish City is joint winner of the 2001 Amazon.co.uk Writers' Bursaries

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

"Sarah May's first novel, The Nudist Colony, was highly acclaimed: 'Quite simply the best book I have read in years, and, for a debut novel, quite incredible.' Time Out.

‘May’s achievements in this book are mildly miraculous. She is, unlike many of her peers, a novelist through and through…'

'Spanish City has a febrile charm…'

'Sarah May writes very good prose. Her Descriptive skills are excellent and she has a wonderfully observant eye for detail' Independent

Little remains of the glamour of Setton, once the Noth-East's premier pleasure resort. The Spanish City is boarded up; its famous Charleston roller coaster turning rapidly to rust. Only in Moscadini's ice-cream parlour, with its glowing mural of an arcadian coastline, is there a hint of its former glory. It is here that the world-weary teacher Hal Price is brought by his teenage kidnappers to meet a ghost. As the snow falls outside and Hal relives the memories of his dancing days, he tells the boys a story - a tale of wartime dreams and peacetime disappointments, of love, betrayal, death and resurrection. Sarah May's fictional worlds are comic and macabre, lyrical and violent. In this second novel, she applies her unique vision to the boom and bust of post-war England to create a romantic fable as heart-stopping as the Charleston Coaster itself. (20021018)

Having left her job after they discovered that she had written The Nudist Colony under her desk, Sarah May is now a full-time writer. She lives in Blackheath, London with her husband, Benjamin May, and their son. Benjamin is a theatre director who has been working in Kosovo and Macedonia, helping young people to rebuild their war-torn lives by making theatre. Sarah recently accompanied him to Macedonia for several months. She is 29 years old. (20021018)

Hal Price walked into his windowless office at 7 o'clock that evening, dressed as a cat. He was always the cat, every Christmas without fail, the annual pantomime cat. He took off the costume, smelling it briefly. Despite the years that had passed, he was convinced sometimes that he could still smell her in it. The world smelt different then; women smelt different. He hung it on the wall behind him, next to his suit. It was a one-piece costume, which had remained unmodified since its inauguration in 1944: black with a white belly, twenty-five buttons up the back, a pink dickey-bow, and a hole cut out for the face. Which meant that he had to make up, something he had become so expert at that, before he made them laugh (which he also did, annually, without fail), every child was terrified.
He stood in his vest and underpants behind the desk, about to put his suit back on. The name on the door was Mr Price, used occasionally by some colleagues, and the uninitiated. Most of the staff called him 'Pricey' to his face, and although the children performed the usual linguistic feats with his name, executed with dexterity on toilet walls, etc., 'Pricey' was still the preferred formal and informal code of address with them as well.
The four or five Christmas cards he got every year made the lack more apparent than if he had received none at all. But he put them up anyway, reading the card manufacturers' poems, printed inside, out loud to himself.
At 7.10, he was still standing in his underwear and make-up, complete with whiskers, when Will and Victor, brothers, one a current, the other an ex-pupil, entered his office by force.
'Sit down,' the older boy said. Victor had been one of the most violent pupils in the history of the school. Both he and his brother were charges of the local children's home.
Hal sat down and felt for the roots of his whiskers, giving them a light tug, but they wouldn't come off.
Victor had an elaborate new tattoo around his neck, and smelt of grease. The lines in the palms of his hands were black with oil.
Will sat down on the Formica chair in front of Hal's desk, risking his brother's stare.
'Do you remember Irene Trench?' Victor leant forward and started to peer at Hal, but soon moved back when he couldn't find him beneath the intricate layers of kohl and false eyelashes.
'Gypo,' Will put in automatically.
Hal looked intently at Victor. 'Is she still alive?'
'I hope so. I spoke to her this morning.'
'How do you know Irene Trench?'
'I don't. I didn't until this morning.'
'And how does this concern me?'
'I can't tell you yet. Not in front of Will.'
Will didn't react to this in any way. He was used to his brother speaking for both of them.
'Will's sixteen today.'
'Are you, Will?' Hal said, turning to the younger boy. The left corner of his mouth, under the white grease paint, shook.
Will nodded, and couldn't help smiling.
'Does that mean anything to you?' Victor suddenly shouted.
Hal turned back to him, startled. He shook his head, helpless.
Victor sat on the edge of the desk and drew a gun out of his pocket, letting it rest along his thigh.
All three were staring at Pricey's full in-tray and the desk calendar that was turned methodically every day. The tail on the costume hanging on the wall swung slightly, and for a moment Will thought it was still attached to Pricey. He looked quickly at his brother and saw that he too was watching the tail's white tip move backwards and forwards. Then it stopped.
'Get dressed,' Victor said abruptly. 'You're driving us somewhere.'
Hal sighed as he took his suit down from its hanger, his small black painted nose twitching. The photograph on the wall, now exposed, was of the cat, arm in arm with a soldier. He put his socks on first, then his shirt.
'That you?' Victor said, staring at the picture.
'Someone I knew while I was in the army.' Hal kept his head bent.
This information made Victor want to tell him to shut up, and he would have done if it hadn't been for the fact that the shadows playing on Pricey's bent head made it look as though two small ears were growing out of the grey hair. Instead he kicked the wall of filing cabinets, and once they had an adequate number of dents, stopped, and began pulling them open. He was anticipating being able to throw armful after armful of paper around the office but his hands encountered something other than paper.
'Records,' he said to Hal who was tying the knot in his tie. 'These drawers are full of records. You, and music? Never would have guessed it, Pricey.'
Will got up to have a look for himself.
Hal could hear the gun rattling on top of the cabinets as the drawers were opened. He was dressed now and stood watching the younger brother, Will, his eyes never leaving him, not even when he felt the beginnings of a nose-bleed trickle down his upper lip and into his mouth.
Will, turning round, saw the blood and helped the old man back into his chair. Victor punched his brother automatically in the stomach, angry that such gestures were in his nature.