Rose frowned as she thought about this strange boy’s plan. She had watched a concert in the Indian Pavilion on the North Pier a few nights before with her parents. It was a beautiful, exotic hall full of blue and green and red decorations that reminded Rose of other worlds, ones she would probably never even see. The Pavilion had been filled with people and perfume and hats and music when Rose had visited. She imagined being there when it was still and quiet, and a delicious shiver coursed through her body.
‘I’ll come. Where shall I meet you?’
The boy leapt with joy, high into the air, and Rose smiled, glad that she had made him happy.
‘I’ll meet you on the pier at 4 o’clock. Outside the sweet kiosk. We’ll take some fudge in with us.’
Rose nodded, wondering what she could tell her parents, and thinking that she had perhaps made a terrible mistake, but before she could change her mind, the boy with the purple eyes had shot off through the crowds.
At 3.30 on Sunday, Rose’s mother was folding clothes very carefully back into the suitcase, and Rose’s father was sitting in the hotel lounge reading his newspaper. Rose sat on the bed, swinging her legs forwards and backwards. She stood up, then sat down again. The boy with the purple eyes would be expecting her soon. Rose didn’t want to let him down, and she didn’t want to get the train back home to Yorkshire’s black streets without her gift.
‘Mummy?’ she said after a little while, her legs kicking furiously against the bed. She had practised her speech in her head over a hundred times in bed last night, but now that she had to say it, she didn’t feel very confident.
‘Yes, Rose?’ her mother replied, as she held up a stained blouse to the light and shook her head.
‘I made a friend yesterday. And I’d like to see him again before we leave. He has something for me.’
‘I see. I wonder if this is vinegar?’ Rose’s mother lay the blouse on the bed and scratched at the stain gently with her rounded fingernail. ‘I don’t remember spilling anything.’
‘So, can I visit my friend?’
Rose’s mother turned, distracted from the blouse for a moment. ‘He’s staying here, is he?’
‘I’m not sure.’ Rose remembered the boy’s tough skin and long hair, and doubted that he was staying anywhere like The Fortuna.
‘Ah!’ her mother said, her eyes suddenly becoming wide. ‘I remember! It’s a wine stain! My glass was a little too full and I spilt some. Well, that should wash out without too much of a problem.’
‘Mummy?’
‘Well, that is a relief. This was new for the holiday. Yes, Rose?’
‘Can I go and see him? Quickly?’
Rose’s mother folded the blouse, and placed it in the case. ‘Yes, yes. But be quick.’
Rose sped out of the huge front of the Fortuna Hotel, clattering down the wide steps and tearing along the promenade towards the North Pier. She wound in and out of jostling bodies, past the refreshment rooms and the portrait studios. When she reached the end of the pier, she saw the pink and blue sign hanging above Seaton’s sweet kiosk. There were two girls who looked about Rose’s age waiting to be served, and Rose hung back, feeling as though she didn’t want anybody to see her. She watched the girls take their paper bags from the man in the stall, and then looked around her. Everybody seemed to be in a group, bouncing from one person to the next, and Rose suddenly felt very alone.
And then, past Seaton’s sweet kiosk, past the ticket kiosk and next to the closed doors of the Indian Pavilion, Rose saw the boy, his face a shadow amongst the bright, swirling colours of the pier. He smiled and beckoned her, and although there was a flurry of noise around her, Rose’s world fell into a blurry, underwater silence.
As Rose moved nearer towards the boy, she noticed that he was holding a small, glistening box. Could this be her gift? Her heart fluttering with all kinds of ideas about what a small silver box could contain, she broke into a run. When she reached the boy, she was breathless and laughing, although she didn’t quite know what she was laughing at.
The boy didn’t speak to her. He took out of his pocket an odd, gold key, and without looking like he was doing anything he shouldn’t, unlocked the grand, high door of the Indian Pavilion. Rose stared at the boy, wondering how he looked so confident when he was doing something he wasn’t allowed to. Rose knew that she would have dropped the key and been caught red-faced straight away. The boy turned to her and grabbed her arm.
‘Quickly!’ he hissed, and they tumbled into the giant room, the door blowing shut behind them with a bang.
The Pavilion looked different in the daytime. Although Rose had thought it beautiful when she had visited the other night, the crowd of people and roar of the orchestra had hidden much of the extravagant decoration. It was even grander than the Winter Gardens. Rose lay back and rested on her elbows so that she could stare up at the huge glass skylight that ran along the centre of the roof. She could make out gulls circling ahead of them, their grey wings bouncing on the blustering winds.
‘You know, I am going to live somewhere like this one day,’ the boy announced, making Rose sit up and look at him.
‘It’s true,’ he said, seeing Rose’s doubtful expression. ‘It’s meant to look like an Indian temple. And I have Indian blood.’
‘You can’t be all the way from India,’ Rose said, wrinkling her nose in confusion.
‘Well, my grandfather was. I could be an Indian King for all we know. And one day, I’m going to travel there, and I’m going to find out. And my palace will look just like this.’
‘Can I come and visit?’ Rose asked.
The boy shrugged as though he didn’t care either way, and Rose wondered, not for the first time, if she had found the right boy after all. He flicked open his silver box, but before Rose’s heart could begin fluttering again at a possible gift, he picked out a drooping cigarette and lit it with a matchstick.
‘What on earth are you doing?’ Rose said, suddenly feeling very much like her mother.
The boy stared at her with his violet eyes, smoke floating out of his mouth and curling around Rose’s face. The smell was heavy and almost pleasant in a way, and Rose took in deep breaths until her head was filled with grey, making her cough delicately into her powder blue sleeve.
I don’t think you’re allowed to smoke in here, Rose was going to say. But something stopped her. Not the fact that the boy might be an Indian King, or the fact that Gypsy Sarah had told Rose to find him, but because Rose wanted this moment to last. She wanted to be in the Indian Pavilion in Blackpool with smoke curling around her ears and weaving through her hair and her mouth, with the boy and not with her parents. She felt as though she had left a grey world behind and had stepped into a world of power and movement and colour, and she didn’t want to leave it. Not just yet.
And so they sat, with the colours of India all around them, yellowed and hazy with smoke.
After a time of sitting, the boy jumped to his feet, tossing his cigarette end away. ‘They’ll be coming in to set up for tonight’s concert soon. You’d better go. I’ll lock up again.’
They walked to the doors of the Pavilion and Rose looked out to the sea which was glinting with the dipping sun, and then back at the boy.
‘You can come and visit me, if you like,’ he said after a few seconds. ‘When I’m King.’
Rose smiled at the boy. ‘Goodbye.’
She skipped a little as she headed back to the north of the pier. She liked the idea of seeing the boy again, in a land as exotic as the Pavilion. She pulled her collar up to her nostrils and inhaled the smell of cigarette smoke, smiling as she did so. She surely hadn’t been with the