Chase the Ace

by Clare London

  We found the road off the seafront to the Sea Spray Hotel, with Nick’s satnav leading the way.

  “With any luck, Gerry will be working today.” I checked my notebook, where I’d jotted down everything the young girl could remember from moving into the Coles’ old house.

  Nick nodded, his eyes still on the road. “I’ll park for a while, just while you check Gerry’s still there. If not, you may want a lift back.”

  “Well, thanks. I’m very grateful.” We found a public car park around the back of the Lanes and walked companionably back to the hotel. It was small, but the decoration was fairly new, with a polished wooden floor in the foyer and fresh flowers on the reception desk. I wandered over to a young man in a smart suit who sat there updating something on a screen. “Hi. I believe Gerry Cole works here?”

  The receptionist glanced up at me. There was a curious glint in his eye. “Yes?”

  I didn’t know if that was a “yes, he does” or a “who’s asking?”

  “I’m an old friend,” I said pointedly. “I’d be grateful if you could let Gerry know I’m here. Daniel Cross.”

  “Gerry’s not here at the moment. The artists don’t usually arrive until an hour or so before the show.” He made it sound like I should have known better. And he smirked.

  “Is there a problem?” I was glad we’d got the right place, but this felt decidedly awkward.

  “I just haven’t heard Gerry use that name for a while,” he said, still smirking. “It’s all stage names here, you know? For the evening entertainment.”

  “Of course.” There was a large board propped up on an easel beside the desk, advertising “Shows Every Night This Week—Cabaret, Music, Comedy!” I wondered which category Gerry supported. “When does the show start?” Maybe it’d be better to wait to see him after his spot.

  The receptionist told us eight o’clock. He was openly grinning by now, his eyes twinkling with mischief. I felt rather apprehensive, but damned if I was going to ask what he found so amusing. Nick sat on a sofa on the other side of the foyer, waiting for me, and I walked over to join him.

  “It’ll be two to three hours before anyone turns up for the evening show,” I explained. “If you want to go home, I can easily get a train back.”

  “You want me to?”

  “No! I didn’t mean that. But I’ve put you out enough already.”

  “No way.” He looked very relaxed, maybe a bit excited. “I always travel with an overnight bag in case I have to stay away with work, and I can get a B&B here if needs be. I’d like to see this through, to be honest.”

  “Me too.” We both laughed. “Let’s have a drink while we wait. The bar’s open until then, isn’t it?”

  The Sea Spray bar area was small but perfectly comfortable. The tables and chairs stood in clusters on a wooden floor that was probably used occasionally for dances. A small stage occupied the other side of the room. Thick velvet curtains hung down at the back where I assumed the performers made their entrance. Coloured spotlights attached to the walls were trained on the stage, and a keyboard and small drum kit stood at the side.

  Nick brought a bottle of wine and two glasses over to the table we’d taken. To my surprise, the room was already filling up, and it seemed plenty of patrons came in from the street, not just from within the hotel. Most of them were men, many of them in couples or groups. Some were quiet, business types; some young, and others of more mature age; some in rather outrageous summer wear, bearing in mind the weather on our south coast lent itself more to “Singing in the Rain” than “Surfin’ USA.”

  Was the performance going to be a full house? The piped music in the background was a mixture of muzak and various show-tune covers. I wondered for a second exactly what I’d signed up for, and I took a grateful swig of the wine. Nervousness made me shaky. It had been a very long time since the summer of the Scorching Summer Sports Club. Who knew if Gerry would even remember it?

  “Tell me about the club that summer,” Nick said. “Nate didn’t tell me much about it from his point of view.”

  “To be honest, it was the ideal place for lively kids, girls as well as boys. I was sixteen and in no mood to stay at home for weeks on my own, with my parents at work and sister at uni. There were a few local boys there I knew from school, but everyone else was a potential new friend. It was great.” It had been an eye-opening time for me, a taste of the freedom and independence I could have as an adult. “There was a lot of sport, and good coaching too. And on wet days, it was like a youth club, with table tennis and cards and computer games to keep us occupied. We never felt we’d been dumped there. In fact, I can remember begging my parents to let me go the following summer.”

  “But you didn’t?”

  “No.” My stomach gave its familiar lurch, even though the pain had eased over the years. “They died in a car crash that winter. Friends and relatives took over responsibility for us both, and we moved away for a while. There wasn’t money for that kind of holiday club again.”

  “My God. I’m sorry.”

  “No, it’s okay.” I smiled reassuringly at him. “It was a long time ago, and we managed all right. We both ended up with reliable jobs and our own homes and lives.” Though at times my sister seemed reluctant to cut my umbilical cord.

  “So tell me about Gerry. You met him at SSSC, right? What was he like?”

  “Gerry?” The idea of describing him was intriguing. “He was very good at football, but he was always messing around, so he got left as a reserve for most of our local matches. But he was a good supporter and kept us entertained with jokes. He had a really wicked sense of humour. Everyone liked him, or if they didn’t, he never seemed to care. When we had more artistic sessions—music or drama—he was always the best. He was very bright. But apparently he’d been excluded from school several times, and he wasn’t going back after that summer. He told us he was dating an older man who was getting him a great job in show business.” I glanced around the Sea Spray bar with its slightly dusty picture rails and scuffed chair legs. “Maybe that’s still a work in progress.”

  “He was out, then?”

  “I think he was trying, if you know what I mean. We were sixteen. We didn’t talk frankly about things like that, so he never got to put a name to it. I’m not sure he was bothered about that, anyway. He was just… Gerry. He’d wear brightly coloured shirts when we were in dark ones—he dyed his hair more than once. But I think we all knew Gerry with his older boyfriend was a closer match to us than the other boys, who all lusted over the female netball coach.”

  Nick gestured at my glass. “Another drink?”

  I was surprised to find we’d finished the bottle already. We ordered a selection of bar snacks including nachos and mini samosas, ordered more wine, and agreed to split the bill. I hadn’t realised how hungry I was, but we demolished the lot while we went on chatting about school, and the SSSC, and what Nathan was doing nowadays, and how Nick had built up his business after doing work experience with a local architect. Before I was fully aware of how much time had passed, the stage curtains rustled as if someone was behind them. The spotlights clicked on and off, testing, and we heard a hum of excitement building around the room.

  The show was about to start.

  Chapter 4

  A FANFARE blared out of the portable PA system. I had to lean over towards Nick to see between two large men at the table in front of us, one of whom was wearing a huge blonde Marilyn Monroe–style wig. A young man in top hat and tails slipped through the curtains and swished to the front of the stage. He wore a dress shirt and bow tie over a pair of sparkling green shorts—perfectly named for their brevity over a very fine, tight pair of buttocks—and he called the room to order.

  “Gentlemen, ladies, and our very awesome others! Welcome to the Sea Spray tonight for our much-maligned, yet persistently praised floor show. And tonight’s mistress of ceremonies will be—”

  “We want Dina!” yelled a squeaky-voiced young man in a mesh shirt
from the other side of the room. Everyone laughed, and the announcer bowed in his direction.

  “And you shall have her. Let me introduce the star who will shine your way through the programme tonight.” He waved his hand back towards the curtain. Someone tweaked it from behind, getting ready to sweep it open.

  “The lovely, the lascivious, the loquacious diva—our Dame Big Splendour, our Pearly Sassy—yes indeed, our own darling Dina!”

  The star of the show swept through the curtain, dressed in purple sequins from neck to toe, the sumptuous dress fitting closely over high, shapely breasts, skimming over the waist and down over slim hips to a swirl of feathers around her feet. Down one side was an outrageous split from thigh to ankle, showing a strong, shapely leg. Her makeup was stage-heavy but sexy, her mouth pursed in a wide pout, and her eyes sparkled under thick lashes. Her hair was a high pile of artfully styled dark curls, à la Shirley Bassey herself.

  The crowd was cheering, some of the audience on their feet and whistling appreciation. Dina was obviously a popular favourite.

  Nick put his hand on my arm and whispered, “Dan.”

  “I know,” I whispered back to Nick, who’d obviously guessed a few seconds before I did. “I can see.”

  The way that Dina tossed her head at the audience’s adulation, the way she winked and blew a kiss to the young man in the mesh shirt…. I recognised the gestures even though I hadn’t seen them for twelve years. Gerry had come out in a rather spectacular, star-spangled way.

  And Dina was astonishing! She took the floor for an hour of humour and song and clever innuendo. Everyone loved it, even chanting repeats of some of the set, proving it was a regular event. Her voice was low and husky but with a fine singing tone. Her version of “Big Spender” was outrageously tongue-in-cheek, particularly after an exaggerated shake dropped a small jewelled thong around her ankles from under the frock, and her cover of “Goldfinger” was as good as any cabaret singer I’d heard before.

  And Dina was decidedly more colourful.

  The jokes were rich, funny, and downright obscene. She talked about politics, religion, and sex—all the things you weren’t meant to mention in polite, dinner-party conversation. But I laughed until the tears squeezed out of my eyes. She also touched on schooldays—the ghastly behaviour of young boys, the fighting and posturing, the spots and gangly limbs, the uncontrollable and almost always embarrassing misbehaviour of a young man’s cock when he was too close to a girl….

  “…Or in my case, another gangly boy’s equipment, even if his pork sword came out of its scabbard for the female netball coach rather than me.” Dina snickered. “I could still offer support and a comforting stroke to him”—with appropriate, elegant hand gestures—“regardless, couldn’t I? I’ve always been an equal-opportunities gal, after all!”

  The crowd, as they say, went wild.

  WE SLIPPED through the curtains after the show. No one seemed to mind. The rest of the patrons were milling around the tables with fresh rounds of drinks and friendships already in place. We found ourselves in a narrow corridor running behind the stage and the bar, where two small rooms served as dressing areas. The young man who’d acted as receptionist was in the doorway of one of them, swigging from a can of drink and dressed in a tight, sparkling green Lycra vest and denim shorts. He turned to stare at me.

  “Looking for Gerry?” he asked with a grin.

  Behind him, the show’s announcer chuckled—he was sitting inside the room on a chair in front of a large mirror, now dressed only in the shorts. The two men were both of slight build, with similar pale good looks. All I could do was wonder if they shared outfits, taking turns to wear the top and then the bottom, until laundry day.

  “I’m looking for Dina,” I said, raising an eyebrow.

  Alice used to tell me I could look very forbidding, but the young man just laughed and nodded to the next room.

  Dina sat in front of a similar mirror with a large cosmetic bag open on the counter in front of her. She’d taken off the huge wig and eyelashes but was still in costume, and she turned her chair to greet us as we entered.

  “Hello, Daniel,” Gerry said. He was smiling, though his eyes showed some nervousness. “I saw you in the audience. Long time no see.”

  His voice was lower than on stage, his natural hair a shaggy, dark mess, but he was still a long way from the schoolboy I’d known. He’d taken off the heels as well. It looked incongruous: his large, masculine feet showing under the feathered hem of the sparkling frock, the nail polish on his toes that coordinated perfectly with his fingers.

  “You remember me?”

  Gerry chuckled. “You’re memorable, honey. Not that you ever believed it.” He glanced at Nick and winked.

  “Do I call you Gerry, or do you prefer Dina?”

  He laughed, and in that moment I was reminded of the joker at summer school, the easy-going extrovert. “Call me what you like, honey. I love Dina, and I love Gerry too.”

  “Are you a transsexual now?” I asked, from nothing but curiosity.

  Nick’s hand tightened on my arm. “Dan, that’s pretty rude.”

  “It’s okay,” Gerry said in his rich drawl. “I’ll talk about anything, you know.”

  “We gathered that much from this evening’s show,” I said wryly.

  Gerry laughed again. “I always liked you, Danny Boy. You were bright, but you weren’t an arsehole. No, I’m not female, and I’m not sure yet if that’s what I want. For the time being, I’m happy being both of me, whenever and whichever I choose.”

  “And the diva is a star,” Nick said with a smile. “It was a great show.”

  Gerry flushed with pleasure that could almost be called coy, if I hadn’t recalled how he spiked the cola in the club fridge one lunchtime with vodka he’d stolen from his mother, or the time he offered to wash the tennis kit and turned it all baby pink, or the time he smuggled in a family bucket of fried chicken and sold it piece by slimy piece to the younger kids under cover of the table tennis tournament.

  He was watching me, smoothly plucked eyebrows raised. “Remembering the good old days, Danny?”

  I laughed then. I realised how buzzed the atmosphere was, how light-headed I felt, and not just because of the wine. “Your costume is magnificent. You always did like playing with the dolls’ clothes. Remember that time we tried to re-enact Chariots of Fire with Sindy dolls?”

  Gerry rolled his eyes. “I twisted one of the legs half out of its socket, taking it through the finish tape. And the homoerotic subtext? Well! That scene snapped the other leg right off, as I remember.”

  “And Mark was whimpering we’d get caught, you know how tough the girls could be with him—”

  “And Alec sneering how fucking stupid the dolls looked in string vests and shorts made of chopped-up dishcloth—”

  We were roaring with laughter by now.

  “Do you remember…?” I paused, but I’d gone too far now to stop. “Do you remember that game of chase the ace?”

  Gerry stopped laughing, abruptly and startlingly. “Honey, you’re not still worrying about that, are you? After all these years?”

  I flushed, and I could feel Nick’s curious eyes on me. “It’s stayed in my mind. I just wondered if it was still in yours.”

  “Bloody good punch-up that day,” Gerry said, with glee that owed more to a sixteen-year-old’s boasting than an adult cabaret singer’s set.

  “I just wanted to know….”

  “Of course you did,” Gerry said. “Close your eyes, honey.” His voice was suddenly stronger and much deeper. He stood, towering over me even without his heels on. “You hear me?”

  Shivering, I did. God knows what Nick thought was happening. He must have worried we had some weird ritual going on, worried what kind of lunatic he’d given a lift to. Then Gerry grasped my chin, tilted my head, and kissed me.

  I didn’t open my eyes; I just surrendered to it. His lipstick was sweet and slick and his lips firm. The end of his tongue brushed
my mouth, but he didn’t push in, just licked briefly at my lower lip. Nick stifled a gasp, and Gerry chuckled in the back of his throat.

  Then our lips drifted apart.

  “Well, honey?” Gerry murmured.

  I opened my eyes and smiled. “That was nice.”

  Gerry raised his eyebrows again. “I’m damned by faint praise.”

  “You know what I mean. It was great, but it wasn’t….”

  Gerry nodded. “I know. Even at sixteen I had a kiss you’d have remembered.” He glanced over at Nick. “And your cute man is looking daggers at me, so he needs to be in on the story, right?”

  I said, “He’s not m—”

  “I’m not h—” Nick said at the same time.

  Gerry ignored us both. “Whatever. Fun, fascination, or fuck, you both look good on it.” He turned back to the mirror and sat again. “Now I have to get ready for my second set. You’ll stay for that?”

  I was still a little bemused at Gerry thinking I was with Nick. “Why didn’t you keep in touch?”

  Gerry looked up at me shrewdly, which looked pretty odd because he’d only stuck on one of a new pair of eyelashes. “Same reason as you, honey. Life moved on. And what would I have had to say to you all? You were going places with your brainy swotting, Mark was the type to wet himself any time someone mentioned men’s underwear, and Alec…. Well, I was never as close to him as with the rest of you. He wasn’t the most sympathetic person, was he?”

  “Have you heard from any of the others?”

  Gerry peered into the mirror, fixing a wig cap on his head. “I have an address for Mark. He’s living in Hampshire, near the New Forest. He came to see me in a few shows when I started out, though I didn’t have much time for catching up. I was covering several venues, trying to get a regular contract. There’s not a lot of time for oneself in this business, you know? Anyway, we emailed a couple of times, and he sent me the address of a place he was getting with a new boyfriend. Then the emails stopped. In the final one, he said his boyfriend didn’t like him going to my shows. So many men are threatened by the glamorous lifestyle of a star, you know?”