by Stuart Evers
‘I brought something for you,’ Eugene said and took out some beers from his shoulder bag.
‘Thanks,’ Nina said. ‘Good to see you, Gen,’ She kissed him on the cheeks.
‘You’re looking well,’ he said tapping her stomach. ‘It must agree with you.’
She nodded and Karel put his arms around her. She pushed him away and went back to stirring the pot.
‘We have a balcony too,’ Karel said and opened the fridge, poured beer for them both. ‘Let’s go outside, yes?’
They opened the door onto the smallest balcony Eugene had ever seen. It was just about big enough for them to stand side by side. There was an ashtray set on a very small wooden card table.
‘So how are you?’ Karel asked.
‘Fine. You?’
‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Excited.’
‘You have a lot to be excited about.’
Eugene smoked a cigarette and they both drank their beer and both agreed how good it was to see each other at last. Then Nina called Karel inside to help with serving lunch.
Nina was a fine cook and Eugene had three helpings of stew.
‘You can come any time, Gen,’ she said.
‘Thank you, Nina,’ he said. ‘I would be honoured.’
After they had cleared the plates, the two men went outside again. The wind had got up and there were teeth in it. They agreed the food was good, that Nina was a fine cook.
‘I have something for you,’ Eugene said as they went back inside. Out of his shoulder bag he took a plastic sack and handed it to Karel.
‘Here,’ he said. ‘I thought you must be missing them.’
‘Thanks, Gen,’ he said. ‘Look, Nina, Gen has brought us oranges!’
‘Oranges?’
‘Yes, look, from the shop I used to live above. Best oranges I ever tasted.’
‘They were nice, yes,’ she said and shrugged everyone back to the table.
Karel sat at the table peeling an orange. By the time he’d finished, the flesh of the orange was clean, pithless and perfectly round. He passed the plate with the orange to Nina. She split open the orange and quickly ate it. He peeled another, split it, and quickly ate. Eugene watched the two of them, the juice on their chins, the way they licked the juice from their fingers. He watched them smile and with his right hand, Eugene took an orange from the plastic sack. He dug in his thumbnail and began to peel.
LIVE FROM THE PALLADIUM
The man bends down and asks: ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ After the pause, after the raising of the eyes, I deliver the line Mother has taught me. ‘When I grow up, Mr Hughes, I want to be a proctologist.’ Mother laughs. Mother shakes her head. Mother puts on her finest Jewish accent: ‘My son, the proctologist!’
The best jokes exist in the present tense: man walks into a bar; your momma; knock-knock. This is something Mother says when we talk about comedy. I am nine years old the first time I tell the proctologist joke. It is a success and Mr Hughes takes us home in his big car. The following night I am allowed to sit up with Mother and watch the videotape of my father. He performs the brown-suit routine and we laugh like it’s the first time. The best jokes, she reminds me, exist in the present tense. ‘You can depend on a joke,’ she says. ‘A joke is always happening.’
There are faded colour photographs of Mother in her youth, drink and cigarette in hand, laughing with men who were once well-known. Mother has high, arching eyebrows, a bowed mouth, long painted nails; she is dressed impeccably, stylishly. You cannot ignore her glamour.
She knew the hotel bars where the pier entertainers drank and would approach them if she’d enjoyed their act. She slept with some; provided others with material. This she tells me.
‘One of mine,’ she tells me once, twice; again, again, ‘was on the Royal Variety Show. Old Roy came out on stage all fat and sweaty in that dinner jacket that never fitted, and he says’ – Mother adopts a broad northern accent – ‘ “My wife said we should experiment more in the bedroom. After two weeks, I’d discovered a cure for cancer and now she’s left me. Some women are never satisfied.” ’
The following Saturday, Mr Hughes picks Mother up in his big car. Mother has asked our neighbour Serena Jenkins to babysit. I am obviously, shyly in love with Serena Jenkins. I will never smell hairspray without thinking of her; will never hear Whitney Houston without seeing her shift from left to right in her tight denims.
The sofa is old and surprising with springs; it is made for two. I sit next to Serena and put my feet up on the coffee table in a way I am not allowed. The flat is tidy for once. There are vacuum-cleaner skids in the nap of the thin brown carpet, polish smears on the windowsill, a new air-freshener beside the television.
‘Do you know what I want to be when I grow up?’ I ask Serena after I’ve poured her a glass of Coke.
‘What’s that, little man?’ she says.
‘When I grow up, Serena, I want to be a proctologist.’
She sips her Coke and puts it down on the coffee table.
‘That’s nice,’ she says and looks down at her homework. In her textbook there is a picture of Gandhi; in her exercise book her rounded, bubbly handwriting. I assume she hasn’t heard what I said.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘That’s what I’m going to be: a proctologist.’
She closes the textbook on her index finger and turns towards me. She hasn’t laughed twice. Everyone always laughs.
‘What’s a proctologist?’ she says.
Mr Hughes invites us to live with him. He has a big house with a garden, four bedrooms, a garage. Also a big television and two bathrooms. I am thirteen and it’s the best thing that could have ever happened to us. Even Mother says that. But we make heavy work of leaving the flat. The move takes over two months, always an excuse found to stay another day, another week. There is no pressure from Mr Hughes, he reminds us of that, but he seems confused as to why we spend so many nights a week back at the flat, huddled by the gas heater watching videos.
‘I’m going to miss this place like cystitis,’ Mother says. ‘Like thrush.’
‘Like a boil on my cock,’ I say.
‘Like a bitten tit,’ she says.
A month, two months of this, and we are living with Mr Hughes.
‘How do you like your new bedroom?’ Mother asks as I come down the stairs, my skin still pink from the power shower.
‘It’s so much better than the bedroom I had last week,’ I say. ‘There’s a double bed for a start.’
‘A double bed? Which side do you sleep on?’
‘Whichever one’s dry,’ I say.
Mr Hughes watches us laugh, and eventually he joins in; though his thick face and reedy moustache suggest tension, perplexity even. He is roasting a chicken and the house is clean and warm and homely; as though he has been waiting much longer than three years for us to arrive. He has prepared roast potatoes and homemade stuffing balls; for afters a gooseberry crumble with real custard. He pours us glasses of champagne as a welcome to our new home.
‘Mr Hughes?’ I say. ‘Do we get champagne before every meal?’
‘Only special dinners,’ he says, smiling. ‘And call me John.’
‘Well, Mr Hughes, every dinner’s special to me,’ I say. ‘You never know where the next meal’s coming from with her’ – I thumb towards Mother – ‘I’ve lived my life in fear of being sold into the white slave trade.’
‘It can still be arranged,’ Mother says and we both laugh, and a little later Mr Hughes joins in, again with the tension, again the perplexity. That look becomes the poor man’s constant, niggling expression. I never call him John. After a few months he stops even mentioning it.
When I turn sixteen, Mr Hughes tries to talk to me (the man has always tried; he is very trying). He feels this is the kind of conversation a man should have with a boy looking down the barrel of adult life. I know this because I heard him say so to Mother. I am in my bedroom; a Woody Allen stand-up record is playing on the turntable he bough
t for me.
‘Can you turn that off for a moment?’ he says.
‘It’s the moose routine,’ I say.
He clicks off the record and sits on my bed.
‘We need to talk, Clive,’ he says.
‘What about?’ I say.
‘Well,’ he says. ‘I’ve always said that I’m not here to replace your father, but there are some things that are best said man-to-man, so I thought—’
‘Oh, Mr Hughes, I know all about sex,’ I say. I have been preparing this for a few days and I’m watching Mr Hughes for a reaction. His eyes are wide: this is good.
‘Yes, Mr Hughes. I know all about sex. You really don’t need to worry. I know all about it. I know all about foreplay, fingering, heavy petting, hand-jobs, tit-wanks, cock-sucking, cunny-licking, sixty-nines, straight sex, missionary sex, rough sex, anal sex, gay sex, lesbian sex, roleplaying, threesomes, foursomes, bondage, frotting, felching, rimming, fisting, golden showers and pegging.’
He shakes his head and stands up.
‘Well, it’s hard not to,’ I say. ‘My room’s right next to yours.’
He slams the door on the way out.
‘Ooh, shut that door,’ Mother shouts from downstairs.
Not long after our little talk, Mr Hughes comes home with a red setter. He walks the dog whenever he can, no matter what time of day or night. I call it Mr Hughes, though Mr Hughes calls it Ivanhoe. Mother and I both think this is a funny name for a dog. She always calls it Steve.
If we are in the hallway when Mr Hughes is ready to take Ivanhoe out, Mother points at the dog.
‘I say, that dog’s got no nose,’ she says.
‘How does it smell?’ I reply.
Mr Hughes mouths the punchline and slams shut the door.
Mother and I say, ‘Ooh, shut that door.’
The best jokes, she says, get better with repetition.
Mr Hughes checks into a hotel on the night of the first episode of the third series of Blackadder. Mother only cries after the credits roll. For the first time in months we watch Dad performing the brown-suit routine. We rewind the tape, watch it back, rewind the tape, watch it back. Again, again, again.
‘I love the way he winks just then,’ Mum says replaying a section midway through his five minutes. ‘It’s just perfect.’
‘It’s great, yes.’
‘When he forgot his lines, when he was too drunk, he used to do that wink. Then he’d say. “I only have to wink at a bird and she gets pregnant.” ’
I feed the line. ‘Is that what happened with me?’
‘No,’ she says. ‘The rubber split, but the effect was pretty much the same.’
We laugh and later run through some Round the Horne and Goon Show. ‘You have deaded me,’ she says as we go up the stairs. She is wobbling drunk and holds on to the sleeve of my shirt. ‘You have deaded me,’ she says again, but does not laugh.
We call the new flat ‘the corridor’ for its narrowness – we both love the Four Yorkshiremen sketch – and I keep it tidy, despite Mother’s best efforts. I do homework at the small table and she watches videos. Men come and go, quoting lines from ’Allo ’Allo!. They do not. This is my joke and Mother doesn’t find it funny.
‘The only wasteland I know,’ she says after I have explained it, ‘is between the ears of the men who write ’Allo ’Allo!.’
Men do come and go, though, in the night, in the morning. Mother still looks sharp on her legs, her chest high and supported; her heart-shaped face underneath the elegant yet slightly old-fashioned do. They are always gone when I wake. They are nothing like my father; they are nothing like Mr Hughes. Mother and I joke in the same way, still feed each other lines, but we laugh less than before. Sometimes she sounds like she’s just playing along. Even when I say, ‘To cut a long story short,’ and she says, ‘Too late,’ it doesn’t sound like her heart is quite in it.
Mother perches on the edge of the bed. I am sitting at the small desk, writing. For a moment I think she’s going to start on like Mr Hughes.
‘It’s all right, Mum,’ I say. ‘I know all about the birds and the buggery.’
She laughs and something lifts slightly in her brow, then falls.
‘Trouble at mill?’ I say.
She starts to cry. Her face make-up darts like military manoeuvres on old maps.
‘It’s my fault,’ she says. ‘It’s all my fault.’
‘What?’ I say. ‘What’s your fault now?’
‘This . . .’ she says. ‘This . . . hiding yourself away. Always at home, always . . . I don’t know, making dinner, tidying up. It’s never normal. I blame myself, I should—’
‘The only thing I blame you for is the Suez Canal Crisis, you know that.’
I put down my pen and smile but she doesn’t even pout. She says nothing. It’s like a pause for timing, but she has nothing more to say.
‘Honestly, Mum, I’m fine.’
‘No you’re not,’ she says. ‘It’s not right your being here the whole time. What about friends?’
‘When I was growing up we were so poor, we couldn’t afford friends.’
‘I give up,’ she says.
She slams the door behind her. Neither of us says anything.
A week later she comes back from a night out. I am watching the video of my father. The brown-suit routine. She sits down next to me, damp from rain and fog.
‘I’ve fixed it,’ she says. ‘You’re booked.’
I press pause. Dad is standing there, about to imitate an Irish glue sniffer, a roll of Sellotape soon to emerge from inside his brown jacket pocket.
‘What?’ I say. ‘What have you booked?’
‘You. Cyclone Club. Monday week. First act up. Five minutes.’ She sniffs and wanders to where she keeps the whisky.
‘You’re not serious.’
‘Do I ever joke about comedy?’ she says and pours herself a drink. Her face says Gotcha. Since the slammed door, this has been her threat of choice: get out of the house, or I’m putting you on the stage.
‘I’m not doing it,’ I say. ‘I can’t do it.’
‘Don’t be such a child, of course you can. We’ll write it together.’
‘You do it.’
‘Me?’ she says. ‘Oh, give over. I’ve told you this before: there are no funny comediennes. There are funny women, but no funny comediennes. Name one that’s any good.’
I’ve heard this before; I know how it plays out. I follow the lines, hoping it will swing her off topic.
‘Joan Rivers.’
‘Joan Rivers? An unconvincing drag act with a voice like a synagogue on fire.’
‘Roseanne Barr.’
‘Roseanne? Like a sack of lesbian potatoes shouting in a mini-mart.’
‘French and Saunders.’
‘Double acts don’t count. The fact is that alone on stage, women look desperate and whorish,’ she says. ‘And I hate to look desperate.’
She gets up and looks at her reflection in the mirror. Tests the bounce of her hair.
‘Think about it,’ she says. ‘Think about it at least.’
‘Okay,’ I say as she ruffles my hair. ‘But I’m not promising anything.’
‘It’ll do you good, love,’ she says. ‘Promise.’
She pauses by the door.
‘And you’ll get sex,’ she says. ‘Lots and lots of sex.’
For inspiration we go through Dad’s old material, the odd jokes he wrote down on menus and cigarette packets, snippets of things he overheard in pubs. Dad was a listener, but not much of an archivist. He was a presenttense comedian. Died young and with him most of his gags.
We spend the weekend working on the routine, then weeknights working on delivery. She borrows a video-camera from Pam at work – God knows what she records on this normally – and sets it up in the lounge. I start the routine. Nervously and without conviction.
‘Fuck off,’ Mother shouts. ‘You’re shit.’
I do not react well to her heckles, not well
at all. I stutter as I try to move on to the next line, but she’s shouting over me, calling me a poof; a fucking nancy boy.
‘Mum,’ I say. ‘Please.’
‘You need to learn,’ she says. ‘There’s no point in playing nice. Remember that comedy is not only communion between performer and audience, but also between every constituent part of that audience: friends in groups, couples, people on their own. Remember that.’
The argument starts there; the tape still spooling. The video shows my eighteen-year-old self shouting back at her, her shouting louder, telling me that if I want to succeed, I’ve got to toughen up. She makes no jokes in fifteen minutes of argument, not even an attempt at one. Had Mr Hughes seen that, he might not have ended it. After twenty-three minutes I disappear from shot. You can hear the slam of my bedroom door.
‘Ooh, shut that door,’ Mother shouts.
The Cyclone is a club on the northern edges of the city. Backstage, I meet the three other comedians: an Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman. No joke. The Scotsman has slept with Mother. This I know for certain: it’s him who’s got me the gig. The comedians do not speak to me; they just sit on old armchairs drinking bottled beer, talking loudly to each other.
‘You said you’d never come back here. Not after what happened,’ the Scotsman says.
‘Apparently they’re only really brutal to you the first time around,’ the Englishman says.
‘Yes,’ the Irishman says. ‘The first time I came here I was crying piss by the end of the night.’
The compere is out on stage doing his routine. It is stitched together from better performers’ work. I hear my name being called and the Scotsman pushes me in the back. I come stumbling out onto the stage, into the light. No one laughs. The lights are not as bright as I had expected. I can see the audience, no more than forty strong, and Mother at the bar. I pause for timing purposes. The best jokes exist in the present tense.
‘I’ve heard you lot are a tough crowd,’ I begin, ‘but before you say anything, please remember that I was born with ginger hair and I’m an orphan. Until I was twelve, everyone called me Annie.’