Sel said, ‘Well, you’ll have to tell me now. I hope it wasn’t Teilo Morris.’
Or old man Edkins, I was thinking, recalling the night of the three dads.
‘No,’ Dilys said. ‘Our dad was your dad, Sel. It was Gypsy. So you are a Boff, through and through. We kept it in the family, see? But I swear it wasn’t my fault. I swear I never encouraged him.’
‘All lies,’ Mam said. ‘And now you’ve gone and given me angina.’
THIRTY-SEVEN
How could such a thing be? That was what I wanted to know. Married life isn’t always satisfying, as I’d be the first to admit, but the world’s full of understanding women and Gypsy was a good-looking type. He could have had Mrs Edkins next door, for one. I reckon she’d have had anybody. But for him to have had a young girl. His own youngster.
I said to Hazel, ‘I don’t know that I believe Dilys. She could have got into trouble with some lad and then blamed it on Dad. Just said the first thing that came into her head.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘You’re wrong.’
I said, ‘Then why did she sit there hanging her head?’
‘Because she’s ashamed,’ she said. ‘All these years and she still blames herself.’
I said, ‘So she did encourage him?’
She said, ‘She was fourteen, Cled. He was her father. She wasn’t out on a date with the boy next door.’
There wasn’t a boy next door. The Edkinses didn’t have children and Mrs Grimley had one girl and she had a hump on her back.
I said, ‘I don’t know. It still takes some believing.’
‘Well, I believe her,’ she said. ‘I’ve heard the story enough times, how your mam threatened her if she ever opened her mouth. And she loves Sel. She wouldn’t tell him half the truth.’
I said, ‘Why did she tell you?’
‘Women tell each other things,’ she said.
I said, ‘Do you think we should move out? I can’t see you and Mam patching things up now.’
‘I’m not going anywhere,’ she said. ‘I’m staying till it’s over. I’m not leaving Dilys at a time like this, and I’m not leaving Sel and neither are you. And you talk about patching things up. I’ll tell you something. If your mam had just raised him, if she’d taken on the job out of the goodness of her heart and then let him know the truth when he was old enough, I’d have been the first to give her credit, because at least Dilys got to see him growing up. At least she didn’t really lose him, not the way I lost my little girl. But she took it too far. Threatening Dilys. Hiding it from Sel when he could have been told. And she’s covered up for your dad when he should have been prosecuted. To hear her he was God’s gift. Well, he wasn’t. He was a criminal. So I can’t feel a lot of sympathy for her, Cled, and I don’t care if she’s a hundred and ninety.’
Sel was going through Mam’s birthday album when I went to help him into bed, looking at the photos. ‘Did I dream it?’ he said.
I said, ‘I don’t know what to make of it. Do you believe Dilys?’
‘Course I do,’ he said. ‘Why wouldn’t I? It’s taking it in that’s the hard part. So Betsan and Gaynor, they’re my half-sisters, you could say. And then you. I’m your half-brother or your nephew, depending on how you look at it.’
I said, ‘But about Gypsy? Do you believe that?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Everybody always said I was his double. Now we know why. I should be more than his double. Two doses of Gypsy in my blood.’
I said, ‘And you know what they say? The acorn doesn’t fall from the apple tree.’
‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘See this?’ There was a photo of Dilys, in the backyard at Ninevah Street, rocking Sel in his pram. You could just make out Mrs Edkins peering over the wall. He said, ‘It looks different now, doesn’t it? Now we know?’
I said, ‘It was Hazel put her up to it, you know. She thought it’d be better if everybody knew the facts.’
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘So I gathered. I don’t know, Cled. Sometimes I think people have too many facts these days.’
I said, ‘I think Dilys is wondering whether she’s done the right thing. I think it fell flatter than she’d hoped.’
He said, ‘I love our Dilys, makes no difference if she’s my sister or my mother or both. And I don’t care who my dad was. I never did. Apparently he’s who we thought he was and it makes no bloody odds anyway. We always knew he was a skiving piece of lowlife.’
I said, ‘What about Mam?’
He looked beat. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘she’s the one who raised us, right? Leaving everything else aside, she’s the one who did the work, put the grub on the table. Gypsy didn’t cover himself with glory, did he? I don’t even remember him being there. I can’t remember a single teatime he sat down with us, can you? And Dilys couldn’t have done any different. Fourteen years old. Poor bugger. Poor little bugger.’
We looked at the old snaps of Aunty Gwenny and Uncle Rhys standing outside their cottage at Nantglyn where we always went to recuperate from pleurisy or tonsillitis. Or to have a little baby on the QT.
I said, ‘It does make you wonder, though. I mean, if nobody in Ninevah Street realised you were Dilys’s … if Mam stuck a cushion under her pinny and nobody was any the wiser, and if Teilo Morris thought he could claim you as his own, and old Edkins too … what does that say about Mam?’
‘It doesn’t bear thinking about,’ he said. ‘It’s too horrible to contemplate.’
We had a chuckle over that. Just about the last one we did have. It wasn’t long after that we had to put him in nappies and get two nurses in, one for the day and one for the night. It was as though his body was shutting down, like Greely’s factory the first two weeks in August, turning the machines off room by room, putting out the lights.
The worse he got the more we saw of Liquorish and the more we saw of Liquorish the oftener Craig Vertue’s name cropped up. ‘Cled,’ he said one afternoon, ‘I think I’ll do it. Why not? Why carry a quarrel to the grave? Tell Candy I’ll want the tousled look. And I think I’ll wear the apricot terry.’
‘You won’t regret this,’ Liquorish said. ‘It’s going to be a very wonderful moment.’
We had a sod’s opera that morning getting him ready. It had been weeks since he’d had his dentures in and they didn’t really fit any more. We propped him up with nice big pillows and put his fluffy robe on over a nightshirt, to bulk him out a bit. Then Dilys had to put his Pan Stik on.
‘Blend it more,’ he kept saying. ‘I don’t want Vertue seeing me with a tidemark. And then give me some blusher around the eyes. Just fluff it on and a little bit on the chin too. Tricks of the trade, see, Cled? Never meet your public without full battledress.’
Vertue was older than he looked on the television. Forty, I suppose, but one of those who never loses the boyish look. ‘Believe it or not,’ he said, ‘there’s always been a great affection between me and Sel. As his brother, you’ll know what I mean. The toughest fights are with the ones you love.’
Liquorish said, ‘And Sel loved a fight.’
‘He did,’ Vertue said. ‘He was a worthy opponent.’
Hazel said, ‘He’s not dead yet.’
Vertue said men were dropping like flies. ‘It’s a holocaust,’ he said.
But for a man who reckoned he was going to funerals every week, he seemed very shaken by the sight of Sel. And there was the smell, of course. He had fresh flowers in his room and scented candles, and the nurses sponged him down properly every time he was changed, but nothing really got rid of the smell.
‘Sel, Sel, Sel!’ Vertue said. ‘My old sparring partner! It’s been way too long.’
Sel smiled.
Vertue tried to move one of the dogs off the bed so he could perch there, but she wouldn’t be moved. He pulled a chair up as close as he could without her baring her teeth at him. ‘I want you to know’, he said, ‘I’m here out of love for you, old buddy. Unconditional love.’
Sel said, ‘Watch your language, Crai
gie. My mother’s in the house. Both of them are, actually.’
Vertue said, ‘Still got that great sense of humour, Sel. That’s good. That’s so good. I can’t tell you … These are terrible times. So many good men down. And ignorance everywhere you turn. AIDS is the new leprosy, Sel. Everybody’s talking about it, everybody’s scared of it.’
‘That’s right,’ Liquorish said. ‘It’s very big.’
Vertue said, ‘And you know what people think? They think, “Oh it’s just something a bunch of fags have caught. They’ll soon be gone and good riddance. As long as none of them leaves anything on my toilet seat. Uh-oh, better round them up, keep them behind barbed wire. Don’t want them drinking out of my coffee cup.” Well, now it’s started. They’re building camps.’
Sel said, ‘Who is?’
‘The US government,’ he said, ‘out by China Lake and Fort Irwin. It’s the final solution all over again.’
‘Get away,’ Sel said. ‘This is America.’
Vertue said, ‘Yeah. Scared, straight America. I’m telling you, Sel. They’re planning to round us up. I sleep with my passport under my pillow. If it comes to it, I’ll make a run for Canada. Regroup. But it’s not too late to stop it. Somebody like you can make a difference. Mr Starlight can put a face to AIDS. You’re not just some poor anonymous queer. All those old ladies out there panicking, writing to their Congressmen, they love you. They won’t want you rounded up.’
Sel said, ‘Seems to me you’re the one who’s panicking, Craigie.’
Liquorish said, ‘Can we do the pics now, before Sel gets too tired?’
They were terrible photos. Sel tried to wink for the camera, but it just looked as though his face had drooped and Vertue never did take a good picture.
Sel said, ‘What’s the caption going to say? One old shitter meets another?’
‘Sel,’ he said, ‘let’s not part like this. Nothing I did was meant personally. You’re a nice guy. But there was a fight to be fought and we needed names like yours. Still do. It’ll be a memorial to you.’
‘I like that,’ Liquorish said. ‘A memorial.’
‘On the other hand,’ Vertue said, ‘if you go straight from the closet to the grave, imagine what they’re going to say. I hear “hypocrite”. I hear “coward”. I see a reputation in ruins.’
‘Craigie,’ Sel said, ‘Mr Starlight’s going to have to ask you to leave.’
Vertue looked at me. ‘What can you do?’ he said. ‘I tried. What a stupid waste.’
I said, ‘Well, we have got an elderly mother.’
‘Yeah?’ he said. ‘And what does she think he’s got? Food poisoning?’
THIRTY-EIGHT
Vertue was his last visitor, except for family. Ricky came most days, except when he had to go to Reno for a Buffalo Wing Eat-Off, and Betsan came twice a week to give Hazel and Pearl a break. Dilys said she didn’t need one.
Sel suddenly decided he wanted the Christmas decorations put up, even though it was September. He loved Christmas. Normally he had a Black Forest pine in every room and a neon shooting star that moved along a gantry above the garden, a bit nearer the main house every night, until Christmas Eve. But we just did his room. He wasn’t going anywhere any more. Randolph put up a nine-foot tree and ran the snow machine to make a tableau for the frosted deer, and Hazel and Pearl hung the decorations: ice garlands made out of plexiglass and little resin cherubs in red lamé robes.
I said, ‘How’s that?’
‘Beautiful,’ he said. ‘And now there’s one last thing.’
He wanted a priest.
Hazel said, ‘What kind does he want?
I said, ‘The kind that has holy water.’
Mam took straight to her bed. She said her sciatica was paining her.
Hazel said, ‘Just go to any Catholic church.’
I said, ‘Where? I don’t know what to say.’ I’d never talked to a priest in my life.
Dilys said, ‘Go on, Cled, there’s a good lad. Do it for me. Just tell them it’s for somebody who’s very ill. And I think you’re supposed to curtsy. And kiss his ring.’
I said, ‘If you know so much about it, why don’t you go?’
Hazel said, ‘I’ll go.’
And she was back within the hour with Father Victor from the Guardian Angel Cathedral. ‘See?’ she said. ‘That’s how easy it is. And I didn’t have to kiss any rings.’
He was very young, for a priest. Very modern. Jeans and a crewcut and a little black handbag. He was with Sel for an hour, just the two of them, and I couldn’t hear a word of what was said, even with my ear up against the door. Then he came out.
I said, ‘All finished?’
‘Just beginning,’ he said. ‘Any chance of a soda? Do you know if your brother was baptised?’
Dilys said not.
I said, ‘He did go to Sunday school for a while.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘That was Band of Hope. And he only went until they had their summer outing to Weston.’
He said, ‘Could you ask his mother?’
Dilys said, ‘He wasn’t christened, Cled.’
I said, ‘I’ll ask her anyway. You know what she’s like.’
Mam was hiding in her room, playing on her one-armed bandit and avoiding contact with Rome.
I said, ‘Can I come in?’
‘Has he gone yet?’ she shouted.
I said, ‘No. I need to ask you something.’
‘Ask me from out there,’ she said. ‘I’m not decent.’
So I had to stand, shouting through a closed door. ‘Was Sel ever christened?’
‘No. There was a slump on.’
‘Would you like to see him christened?’
‘Can’t hear you,’ she said. ‘Tell me later. I’m asleep.’
Father Victor said Sel had to be baptised first, and then everything else would follow on: Holy Communion, Extreme Unction, Eternal Peace. He said, ‘Normally he’d have a sponsor. Is there someone you can think of? A member of the Catholic Church? A close friend?’
We couldn’t think of anybody. Pearl and Randolph were Baptists, Brett was a Lutheran atheist and anyway he was gone, and the agency nurse said she worshipped Mother Earth. I tried Thelma.
‘Well, I’m Jewish,’ she said, ‘but let me think for five minutes. Do I have five minutes? Is he dying?’
You wouldn’t have thought so. He was sitting up in bed giving his orders. He wanted ivory candles and white flowers and his purple kaftan. He wanted all the dogs to be present.
Dilys said, ‘If we can’t find anybody, does that mean he can’t be done?’
But Father Victor said in an emergency he’d go ahead anyway. He said Sel was as ready as any man he’d ever seen.
Then Thelma called back. ‘I knew I’d think of somebody,’ she said. ‘Lupe. She’s on her way.’
Mam wouldn’t be coaxed out of her room, but the rest of us were all there. Pearl held a candle and Dilys held the bowl of water, and Lupe Leon drove straight over in her tracksuit, hair still wet, and stood as his godmother. He was baptised Gregory. Father Victor had suggested it. He said Saint Gregory was very popular among singers, plus he’d suffered from tummy troubles during his life on earth, so it was doubly suitable. Also, of course, Sel always loved Gregory Peck.
He seemed very happy and serene afterwards, holding on to the crucifix the padre had given him. It did make you wonder. Dilys asked for a blessing and she got a brochure too, about going the whole hog and becoming a Catholic, although she hasn’t followed it up so far.
Pearl put on cold meat loaf and hearts of palm salad afterwards, ‘I don’t have a thing in,’ she said. ‘If a person was given a day’s notice she wouldn’t have to send company away starving.’
But she put some of her brown sugar shortbread in the oven. Father Victor didn’t go hungry. It was getting dark by the time he made a move.
‘What a wonderful occasion,’ he said. ‘Such grace. I hope you felt it too.’
I walked him through th
e garden to the back gate and as we came out on to Rancho Drive there was a bright white flash, then two more. ‘Ah!’ he said. ‘The gentlemen of the press.’
The death watch had started.
Hallerton Liquorish moved into the Continental Hotel and issued a bulletin every day: ‘Gravely ill with pneumonia. Mr Starlight’s condition continues to worsen.’ Craig Vertue wrote in the LA Times that he had visited the bedside of Sel Starlight, but had failed to persuade him to go public with what everyone knew to be the cause of his illness. Bambi Allen’s office asked us to keep her apprised, and more than fifty Mr Starlight regional fan club presidents took turns keeping the vigil, including Vera Muddimer-as-was, who came all the way from Kingstanding. ‘The pleasure he’s given all of us over the years,’ she said, ‘it’s the very least I can do.’ She sat with him for five minutes, but Sel didn’t really know who she was. He wasn’t all there, towards the end, but he gave her a wink and a smile. We had to keep his curtains closed all that last week in case anybody slipped over the wall and tried to get a photo. The cars were bumper to bumper in the street, some with well-wishers, some with the vultures.
I said, ‘I feel sorry for the neighbours.’
Thelma said, ‘Don’t think about it. It’s the neighbours who should feel sorry for Sel, not even allowed to die with a bit of sunshine on his face.’
But it was silence he couldn’t stand. If the telly was turned off he’d grow very agitated. His favourite was an old Mr Starlight Christmas Special so we just kept playing it, over and over. Young Sel, with his curls and his dimples, in a green velvet Beau Brummell coat and a white shirt with a ruff at the neck, singing ‘Home for the Holidays’ to Jack Benny and Zsa Zsa Gabor. Sometimes his lips would move, as if he was trying to sing along.
Hazel said, ‘You’ll have to talk to your mam, Cled. Her head has to come out of the sand before he goes.’
Mam had stopped going to the Tumbleweed. That was the only way you’d have guessed anything was wrong.
I said, ‘She won’t listen.’
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