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was not looking forward to it. Keith, the manager, when I'd asked him for a job a few days after I'd arrived in Morecambe, had given me a twice-over with gimlet eyes the colour of blood oranges and asked if I had hair on my chest.
        'A little,' I'd said.
        Then you'll wear this and unbutton the top of your shirt.' Into my hand he pushed a small phallus made of wood, depending from a thin strap of leather. 'We get a load of old giffers in during the week, coming for a last hurrah before they peg it. Come from all over. Ireland. Denmark. Spain. Penge. If I'm having a bloke on my staff, he's going to fucking well act like one. Black trousers. Tight. I want to see a bulge in there the size of a baby's arm. Put something down there-I don't care what. Banana, Black Mamba, pound of fucking tripe. Not bothered. As long as you're long. See you Wenzdy night. 7 o'clock. You'll be on four quid an hour. Love it or shove it.'
        I told him I'd love it and he warned me not to cheek him or he'd 'annihilate' me. I'd found some black pants but they weren't very close fitting. I was considering pushing some socks down the front, or the cap from a can of Lynx deodorant.
        I remembered his pub from my student days. We'd used it as a kind of half-way house on the way from Morecambe town to The Battery on interminable pub crawls. Weekends they'd have a charity jar and if it was filled within an hour, Elizabeth, the head barwoman, would take off her blouse and serve in her bra for fifteen minutes. Seamus used to stand and stare first at her chest, then at her face, as if he were trying to assimilate the two features as being under one roof. After the first few minutes, it got boring and we'd fall into a huddle, talking earnestly about complete rubbish such as how it was that you never saw a person with two glass eyes. Apart from Seamus, who would wander back when the quarter of an hour was up and Elizabeth had wormed her way back inside her T-shirt, playing down his interest by saying that he was trying to work out what had caused the scar on her belly.
        I moved back under the cafe's awning. That it was daylight and colder than before mattered not at all. Being here again helped detail the shape of my loss so acutely I thought that I could smell Helen's fruity lips, taste their texture once more. I could almost hear the flighty confidence in her voice, the youth and innocence which had somehow vanished during the years we'd spent apart. There was still an ache for her, something I recognised from the past, a familiar, almost comforting ache which spread like a lazy ripple in a pool of oil. My old optimism had returned; a misplaced, irrational faith that she would gradually warm to me and we could lapse into the past and all it meant to us. God, how we become inured to the pain. Sometimes I think it's the pain we embrace rather than the insecurities of love that precede it. It seems a paradox that a pleasure should be derived from such a torment; that the wrench, the persistent hollowness that follows, is somehow attractive. I suppose it's like waking with a hangover to vow never again. Easy to forget what the pain means and how much it's likely to affect us, until next time. Standing there, with the wind and my memories buffeting me, I was filled with the slow, bemusing shock that I would gladly welcome a reawakening of our relationship despite the threat of another disintegration.
        Walking back to the guest house, I saw a man in a gaberdine coat picking his way across the damp sand below me, a metal detector ranging about before him. The footprints he made grew misshapen, were sucked smooth by trapped water; erased. I wondered what he was looking for and what he might find instead. He was like me, seeking a sign, something solid that would make the aimlessness of his search worthwhile. Only I didn't have the luxury of a tool to help. A dread that was child-like in its intensity whipped through my midriff