Liverpool Revisited

by Michael White

  He hurried back to the hairdresser's shop. He had brought his scrapbook of press clippings to work with him today as he had a new review to add. He had decided very early on in his career that he would keep every newspaper clipping he could find, whether they were good or bad. His rationale was that once he made the big time (he thought of it in his mind now as “making it big”) then the reviews that were less than perfect would be the source of many an amusing anecdote once he was a major player in the field of UK entertainment. He compared this to the Hollywood producer who once famously remarked that a then unknown Fred Astaire couldn’t sing, couldn’t act, was going bald and could maybe dance a little. Les stroked his own full head of hair. He liked to keep it short - you could never tell when you may be required to wear a wig for a part - and although his dancing skills were by his own admission limited, his acting skills were, as far as he was concerned anyway, considerable. Not that the cuttings in his scrapbook would seem to agree though. The vast majority of his reviews were terrible. Still, good to his word he kept them anyway. One day when he was lunching at the Ivy he would be able to dine out on them.

  He flicked through the scrapbook now, his latest review put off to one side ready to be sellotaped in. He munched distractedly at his chicken sandwich as he scanned the reviews page by page. Unlike the reviews, the chicken sandwich was very good he thought. The beginning of the scrapbook was probably about twenty-five years old now, and some of the earlier cuttings were definitely showing their age. School plays mostly. Most were from local papers, broken down by different areas of Liverpool. Only one was from the Echo. He moved forward a few pages, scanning the words as he did so. He was fairly well insulated from most, if not all of the scathing comments therein.

  “Les Sanderson was unfortunately disappointing.”

  “More wood in his performance than there is in the New Forest”

  “Sanderson must learn that lurking is not acting. One’s eye is rarely drawn to him; if it is then it is purely out of curiosity.”

  “This man is depriving a village of an idiot. Can’t act for toffee. Awful.”

  And so on. Les did not have any particular animosity towards the reviewers though. Not really. Quite simply he knew he was good. He had never doubted his acting abilities and never would. What did a drama critic know anyway? If you knew it, do it, if you can’t do it, teach it, was his motto. They were all arseholes. He was just awaiting discovery. He looked around the small store room that doubled up as the canteen. Fame couldn’t come soon enough as far as he was concerned. At least then he would be able to drink decent coffee. He unfolded a tea towel from the radiator and gave a few mugs a wipe, placing them back on the tiny table once he was done.

  He didn’t feel like putting the new cutting into the scrapbook right then. It was as equally scathing, but he had a thick skin. Sometimes, like now, less so. Les closed the book and sat staring at the water boiler. He could see into the shop from where he was and could see that it was still quiet, Sally busying herself with brushing up whilst she had the chance. Les had the feeling that it was going to be one of those quiet days, then also began to wonder if the old guy would be back again in the morning for yet another haircut. He placed his scrapbook back into his rucksack, carefully folding the as yet unattached new cutting inside the pages.

  He considered his acting career so far. School plays, amateur dramatics. He was a fully-fledged member of the local amateur dramatics club, and though they rarely let him take centre stage as such he was always there for rehearsals, performances, meetings. He just had this unshakeable faith that one day he would be a famous actor, and nothing that anyone else could say or criticise his acting abilities for, ever swayed him from this idea.

  He had spent several fortunes over the years on coaching, lessons, courses and had completed them all. He did know however that there was something missing in his acting skills. Something at the core of his dramatic personality just didn’t fit, and it rubbed at him endlessly, like a pair of badly fitted shoes. He had of course tried everything to fix this issue: method acting, various workshops and courses; the lot. He had spent many a lonely night sitting up into the small hours trying to find his motivation, and so on and so forth. He felt that he was getting it right. He knew he was missing something, however. He just didn’t know what it actually was.

  He sighed deeply and peered around the doorway into the shop. It was still empty but he noticed an older guy walking across the green and heading straight for the shop. He knew he was coming in because of the way he was walking: looking to see if the shop had any customers waiting; not committing himself. Once he saw that the hairdressers was indeed empty his pace increased exponentially His lunch was over so he went back into the shop.

  “Do you want to take your lunch?” he asked Sally, and she put the broom down. The floor was spotless as it was.

  “I’ll go and get a sandwich myself.” she said brightly, “Yours looked lovely.” and went into the back of the shop to get her handbag. Les smiled distantly. He could not remember eating the sandwich at all, never mind if it was tasty or not.

  He stood patiently waiting as the man from the green reached the shop and entered. To the customer’s slight surprise Les ignored him completely and as the man removed his jacket and stood waiting, Les failed to acknowledge him at all, instead standing motionless. He stared across the green to the pub, watching the pub sign swaying in the slight breeze.

  He shook himself and studiously not paying any attention to the customer shouted, “Next!” The customer looked around, making a bit of a show of checking that he was the only person in the shop, and seeing that yes, he definitely was, he took a seat. Les covered him up, and catching his eye in the mirror decided not to ask for instruction with regards to the type of cut the customer wanted. Short back and sides was almost certainly exactly what the man was about to say. How many times did he hear that a day? He sighed deeply and managed to catch the customer’s eye in the large mirror.

  “Twenty-five years in show business!” He suddenly exclaimed, and beneath the cover the customer jumped in surprise at his raised voice. Les continued however, oblivious to the man’s surprise. “Who would have thought it?”

  ***

  I left via the keyhole. It would appear that the Marid was indeed correct. Les cannot act for toffee. I pause to give it some thought but decide that really I should return later and have another look. For now, I shall make my way to the second person to whom I have been forced to grant a wish, and so I close my eyes and the pleasant village green fades, to be replaced with what appears to be a smoky cellar. I have a good look around and through the smoke just about spot a flashing red arrow and so I invisibly approach the man known only as “Rudge” and listen to what he has to say for himself.

  ***

  “What is the first rule of Smoke Club?” Asked Rudge, his words echoing loudly off the back wall of the cellar of the Gym and Splint public house in the semi darkness. There was an awkward silence from the thirty or so people gathered around the barrels and upturned stacked crates that had become tables that were just about visible through the combination of smoke and the dark. Ashtrays, some stuffed full of discarded cigarette butts almost to overflowing were littered all around the room, the only source of light within which seemed to be several guttering candles placed along the pub cellar walls.

  The silence continued.

  From the back of the room a nervous voice from the darkness piped up.

  “Bring a lighter?” the voice enquired in a tone of voice that not only did the respondent realise that the answer was wrong, but that it was wildly wrong.

  “Bring cigarettes!” shouted another voice, causing Rudge to twitch once again.

  “Or a pipe!” protested another voice from the other corner of the room.

  Rudge tutted loudly. The silence deepened as even in the gloom and fog of exhaled cigarette smoke it was obvious that his face was reddening.

  “The first rule of Smoke Club.” he
spat venomously, “Is not to talk about smoke club!” He cast a gaze of anger about the room, and the silence deepened apart from a small outbreak of barely suppressed tittering from the back. Rudge couldn’t make out who it was, but he had a fair idea and he mentally well and truly marked their card for them.

  “What’s the second rule?” giggled another voice from the right, and Rudge snapped his head around to try and catch the heckler out, but to no avail.

  “Never mind that!” spat Rudge, noting at the same time that the vast majority of his customers, or certainly the ones that he could actually see, which admittedly wasn’t many, were tutting too. Pleased with what appeared to be the general feeling of discontent at the heckling he continued.

  “You all know the rules.” He decided to get on with it quickly, as he only had one thing to let his smoke club members know, and he had also noted one or two of them were looking decidedly thirsty. “So there’s no need to go through all them again.” he gave one of his carefully practiced piercing stares into the darkness from where he thought the original piss taking had commenced. “Just one thing I need to tell you. The area manager is making his monthly visit this Friday, and therefore as per the tenets and rules of Smoke Club, there will be no meeting that day.” This was followed by a low moan from quite a few members gathered in the cellar, and Rudge waved his hand in dismissal, resulting in the fog around him decreasing slightly for just a moment, before returning with a passion. “Nothing to be concerned with.” he continued. “Just the routine monthly visit. Quite normal.” Rudge finished his speech and made himself busy with his little notepad, moving amongst the members taking orders for more drinks and the occasional packet of nuts or crisps.

  Yes. The monthly area manager’s visit, which used to involve the counting up of stock sold and wild chats about maybe starting to serve food, quiz nights: so on and so forth. Now it was a meeting of gloom, signing off huge quantities of stale crisps and the area manager giving furtive glances about the building, almost as if he were trying to evaluate the price the brewery would get for converting the entire building into student flats. Sometimes Rudge found himself considering this as an option too.

  This is why he had to take such drastic action in the first place. When the public house indoor smoking ban came into force Rudge’s customers dwindled, dwindled even more and then stopped altogether. He found himself facing bankruptcy, homelessness and knew he had to do something about it. The answer of course was Smoke Club, and he had recruited members he knew well by amongst other things bumping into them into the street and making them aware of his plans. At first he thought that it would be a few regulars maybe, but it snowballed. Now it was threatening to get out of hand, but he found he was on a runaway train that he was powerless to stop. Put simply, Smoke Club was the only thing that was keeping his business going. He had had to let all of his staff go, which was not a rarity in Liverpool by any means, and definitely not anything to write home about in the pub trade. In fact, it was perfectly normal. Sometimes it was a nightmare trying to run a bar both up and below stairs, but only because it was tiring work bringing a constant flow of drinks down the cellar steps one tray at a time. The upstairs bar was hardly ever busy at all. He had considered building a bar in the cellar, but was put off by the fact that he thought the delivery men from the brewery might just notice it.

  The weekly delivery was a nightmare as it was already. The wagon from the brewery arrived religiously at eight in the morning every Thursday. The night before Rudge would have to first empty and then hide all of the ashtrays, and place the barrels and crates back against the walls. This was without a doubt hard work, but it was a necessity. The worst bit was what to do with the smell of the smoke. This was only half of the problem. When Smokers Club was in full session the amount of smoke generated was considerable, and was in definite danger of creeping up the cellar steps and into the actual pub itself upstairs, which was of course open for business too. This wasn’t generally a problem as more often than not upstairs was completely empty, but discovery and the constant fear of quite hefty fines and even perhaps prison, made caution on Rudge’s behalf a very big deal indeed.

  Several members of Smoke Club had come up with numerous solutions for dispersing the smoke generated from the cellar, some of them at best eccentric, some plain idiotic. Sid Delaney from one of the blocks of flats near to the Mersey had suggested they all bring a sack with them and fill it with smoke whilst there, and upon leaving disperse it by opening the sack once a safe distance from the pub. Others had gone into great detail about ventilation outlets and possibly even a tunnel. There had even been a discussion about linking it to the Queensway tunnel under the Mersey but they had binned that idea because of the size of the plumbing they would have to do. Leaks were also mentioned in hushed tones too. Rudge discouraged them gently, though one member of Smoke Club did bring in a study from an esteemed scientific journal that claimed loud noise could be used to disperse smoke effortlessly. Rudge had therefore put Motorhead on continual play at full volume on the jukebox in the pub upstairs ever since, but he had yet to determine whether it actually made any difference at all. It certainly hadn’t proven itself yet, though it had made a drastic difference to some of the plaster on the ceiling of the lounge.

  So this was the problem. Smoke Club was becoming continually popular and he had all kinds of members from all walks of life now sneaking down his cellar steps most nights and at lunchtime too. A casual observer outside the pub would be greatly confused by where exactly the constant stream of customers entering the Gym and Splint actually were if they ventured inside themselves, it being highly unlikely that they would realise that they were actually having a pretty good time down in the pub cellar.

  This is what Rudge considered it to be all about. Surely it could not be a problem to give a few customers exactly what they wanted? It wasn’t as if they were holding orgies or filming snuff movies down there. Putting it quite simply it was a few men and women (Smoke Club was a non-discriminatory organisation. Rudge insisted on it.) Having a nice quiet alcoholic drink and a cigarette at the same time. In a pub.

  Indoors.

  Simple.

  Rudge had a carefully balanced view of this. Smoke Club was essential to his economic future on an ongoing basis, and although he was strictly speaking operating outside the law he thought his crimes trivial. He was a rebel, but a rebel definitely with a cause; a freedom fighter for the indoors fag generation. There was another side to it, a side that played to the darker side of Rudge’s personality, and that was that he loved to get one over the authorities. It wasn’t however that he liked to be considered a criminal, and he did not for a minute consider his flaunting of the smoking laws to be criminal at all.

  It was more the case that while the more po-faced members of the council and local planning authorities considered smokers outside his pub spilling onto the pavement and the village green as almost a force of darkness and evil, they were also completely and utterly unaware that right beneath their feet Smokers Club was growing from strength to strength on a daily basis.

  Putting it even more clearly, Rudge was beside himself with joy that he was, quite simply taking the piss.

  ***

  I decided that I quite liked Rudge, even if the cellar was more than just a little bit smoky and had made me cough twice already. Nobody there noticed of course, for I was completely incorporeal. It goes with the name really. Jinn means quite literally, “to hide”, though a less literal translation would be “Concealed from the senses”. So my cough was silent and my presence unseen, which is just as I would have it, for I could see that my work was cut out for me here. It was not beyond my powers to change the laws of the land with a wish of course, but that would be considered a little coarse to the Jinn.

  A much more wily, crafty approach is the trademark of the jinnie and it is to be taken literally. I would solve this man’s problems but it would take a little time to consider how I was to attain this, and so I decided t
o visit the last person I was to grant a wish, and the one that I had the most misgivings about.

  So I faded from the smoke fogged cellar and went to visit the last person, expecting to find myself in an office or the like, but instead I found myself in what appeared to be a small car that was flying at an unnatural speed through the streets! Glancing down I could see the road flashing underneath the vehicle through several holes in the floor, and glancing out over the bonnet I saw that it was silver in colour, but it looked odd, as if it had been painted by hand with paint that was never meant to see metal. It was actually silver wood paint in fact.

  As we veered somewhat sharply around a particularly tight bend I saw the young man beside me had a red flashing arrow above his head which faded as I saw it, but I hardly noticed as when we hit the next bend we went around it so quickly I was forced to grab at my turban to prevent it falling off.

  ***

  Pip pulled the small hand painted silver mini into the car park of Regulus Telecom and parked up beside a wall upon which was mounted an enormous lions head logo that the company used as its masthead. His shift had started five minutes ago and he was running just a little late, though true to form he couldn’t have cared less. In fact, as he entered the lift to that would take him to the third floor he couldn’t but help but wish that the wire pulling the lift up between floors would snap and plummet back down to the ground floor. A small smash would be enough. Maybe a broken leg. That would keep him off work for a good few months. Might even be a bit of compensation involved too.

  Disappointed when the theoretical lift plunge didn’t happen he stepped out onto the third floor and made his way to where his team sat. The wide-open windows of the old docks building had a great view of the Mersey, which as far as Pip was concerned was the only perk of the job. He noted with delight his manager wasn’t there. “Probably off in some meeting or another” he thought and slinging his coat over his seat and placing his bag on the floor he sat down quickly. Adrian, his team member next to him gave a broad wink and Pip made himself busy frantically pressing buttons just as his manager came around the corner. Noting that Pip’s computer wasn’t turned on he came over to investigate, but Pip was an old hand with three years’ experience under his belt. Staff turnover was particularly high in the call centre game, and he was one of the survivors. He achieved this primarily by doing as little as he possibly could. His reasoning was that the less he did, the less he could be blamed for, and in the call centre game absolutely everyone was trying to blame someone else for something.