by Paul O'Grady
If I was looking for sympathy then quite rightly there was none forthcoming from Diane.
‘Now you know how I feel,’ she said smugly, going upstairs to check that Sharon had survived the night in my care.
My ma hadn’t questioned my absences from home as my sister Sheila had given birth to a boy, Martin, and she was in her element, helping with the new baby and having the children over at weekends. I was in the way, she’d complain, and she couldn’t be bothered with a troublesome teenager under her feet and prayed for the day when I’d finally leave home for good. If I arrogantly assumed that this was just another of her fanciful rants and she didn’t really mean a word of it, then I was about to find out otherwise.
‘That’s it, pack your bags and sling your hook,’ she roared, bursting into my bedroom and waving a bit of paper at me. To my bowel-dropping horror I could see that it was my summons, the damn thing must have fallen out of my pocket when I threw my jacket on the sofa.
‘Who is she?’ my apoplectic ma demanded. ‘Who is this poor girl that you’ve gone and got into trouble, you dirty little sod? Well, God love her, that’s all I can say, getting mixed up with a lying cowboy like you.’
I tried to interrupt but it was pointless attempting to stem the tide of abuse.
‘You fornicating, no-good, dirty big who-er, how old is this poor girl?’
Diane was older than me. It made no difference to us or anyone else, for she certainly didn’t look or act her age.
‘Twenty-seven.’
‘She’s how old?’
‘Twenty-seven.’
I didn’t like the tone of her voice nor the way things were going.
‘What?! Twenty-bloody-seven, nine years older than you? Nine years!’ she squawked. ‘And pray tell me who is this Jezebel preying on daft young lads?’
Oh good, she’s changed her tune, I thought as it began to dawn on me that there might be a way of getting out of this mess relatively unscathed. I was swiftly going from villain to victim, the wronged son seduced by the older vamp.
‘Oh Paul, fancy letting some predatory middle-aged woman get her claws into you. Where did you meet her, the She Club?’
‘I’ve never been in the She in my life,’ I protested. ‘It’s full of desperate old divorcees looking for a fellah.’
‘Exactly.’
‘C’mon, you can hardly call twenty-seven middle-aged, can you? She’s nice, me dad met her.’
That did it.
‘Don’t be bringing your poor father into this,’ she yelled, laying into me with her fist. ‘Just as well he’s not alive to hear all this carry-on because if he was he’d be in his grave.’
‘Eh?’
‘Bloody fool, getting caught out like this. You’ve ruined your life, d’ya hear me, you’ve ruined your life.’
She sat down on the chair under the window, putting her head in her hands and sighing loudly, exhausted for the moment by her anger.
‘It’s not the first time I’ve sat in this room with a silly fool and had a conversation not dissimilar to the one we’re having now, you know.’
‘When was the last time then?’ I foolishly asked.
‘When do you think, soft lad?’ She looked at me pityingly. ‘When our Chrissie was sent home pregnant with John in the war.’
‘Well, that turned out all right in the end, didn’t it? Look at our John, he’s the most well-adjusted of all of us.’
‘The things he comes out with,’ she said, directing her conversation towards the wardrobe. ‘Well-adjusted, like he’d know anything about that, the bloody lunatic. Now straighten that bed then come downstairs pronto, I want to investigate this carry-on further.’
I told her everything and except for the odd flare-up of temper she took it quite well on the whole – apart, that is, from the court order demanding three pounds a week for sixteen years.
‘Why oh why did you have to go like a lamb to the slaughter into a court? Why couldn’t you just do a runner like everyone else?’ she wailed, throwing me completely off my guard by this unexpected change in attitude. ‘If anyone had come looking for you I’d have just said that I didn’t have a clue about your whereabouts. I wish you’d told me, you daft bugger, I’d have helped you.’
This was so out of character for my mother, thinking of covering up for me, condemning herself to a lifetime of confession to atone for the lie she’d told to protect me. My ma, honest as the day was long, was actually prepared to lie for me, even though she considered it to be a mortal sin. I was amazed. But then she never ceased to amaze me.
‘Well, I’ve got to pay me way, haven’t I?’ I said, not trying to curry favour with her but acknowledging that I had a responsibility to help support the kid.
‘Yes, but did you have to go and settle it through the courts?’ She got up from the sofa and shut the window in case any of the neighbours heard us. ‘They’ll be on your back for sixteen years, that’s a long time. If you miss a payment you’ll have the worry of being put away hanging over you like the Sword of Damocles. Honestly, son, you’re so daft I’m beginning to think that you shouldn’t be allowed out on your own.’
I was praying that she wouldn’t want to go over to Liverpool and have it out with Diane but thankfully for the moment she expressed no interest in getting involved with Diane or the baby and chose to let the matter simmer on a back burner until she felt able to deal with it.
‘If I were you I’d get myself down to the Labour Exchange and have a look for a decent job with a proper wage instead of that hell-hole of a wine lodge. You’ve got maintenance to find now.’
She was right, I couldn’t exist on the wages I was earning at Yates’s and the occasional night at the Bear’s Paw, but there didn’t seem to be much going in the way of well-paid jobs on Merseyside for an unqualified barman. Maybe it was time to venture forth again and give London another try. Chris and Billy, a couple of gay guys I’d stayed with for a few nights in their Maida Vale flat, had offered to put me up on their sofa as a paying lodger if I ever returned to London to look for work. They’d thrown me out the last time I’d stayed with them for bringing a girl back from an Irish club one night. It had been a purely platonic affair – she didn’t have her cab fare back to whatever outer region of north London she lived in so I’d offered her a bed, or rather a floor for the night. Chris and Billy – a pair of dyed-in-the-wool misogynists unless of course you happened to be Rosalind Russell or Mae West – were not amused the following morning when they found a hearty Irish girl sprawled across their front-room floor and slung us both out.
We’d made up since then and I gave them a ring to see if their offer still held. Thankfully it did, and so that night I gave Molly a week’s notice. I’d have left for London immediately but I’d grown fond of Molly and Jean and didn’t want to run out on them, and besides, I had yet to break the news to Diane. Jean wasn’t very happy at my leaving, nor was Molly, and had I known that my going would upset them so much I might have been tempted to stay.
Diane was surprisingly philosophical at the news that I was off again but wondered what I was going to do for a living down there. Chris had told me over the phone, in all seriousness, that if I ever considered stripping as a way of earning a living then he knew of an agent he could have a word with who booked male strippers for the pubs.
‘You don’t have to go all the way,’ he added as an incentive, ‘or be hung like a horse.’
I considered the offer for all of a second. An image of me swishing around the altar of St Joseph’s as an altar boy to the imaginary beat of a kettledrum and a blaring trumpet sprang to mind. Here was the chance to do it for real, but I knew that I’d be laughed off the stage if I started to get’em off. Revealing my skinny, pasty white frame to a paying crowd was out of the question; I’d rather be horsewhipped than take my clothes off in public, or so I thought at the time. I didn’t know my attitude towards appearing on stage barely clothed was about to change.
Sharon, now four months old, stil
l screamed like the banshee if she suspected that I was about to go anywhere near her, let alone, horror of horrors, attempt to pick her up. I suspected I wouldn’t be missed. In fact, as soon as the whistle was blown at Lime Street Station and my train pulled out, she’d probably get the bunting out and hang it round her cot.
I said goodbye to friends and lovers and went up to see the aunties before I left. ‘Trust you to get things arse about face’ was Aunty Chrissie’s only comment on my situation. ‘Aren’t you supposed to bugger off to London before the courts get you? Not the other way round?’
Aunty Anne adopted her priest’s housekeeper voice and an enfeebled manner and hinted darkly that she hoped she’d see me next time I was home, if she were spared, that is, but I was not to hold my breath.
‘Jesus, is she in one of her “one foot in the grave” moods? Take no notice of her,’ Aunty Chrissie snorted, rooting around in her purse. ‘Here, take this ten bob and buy yourself some chips from Billy Lamb’s and get a fishcake for the Grim Reaper here, she’s getting on my bloody nerves.’
I was going to miss my sister’s kids. The latest addition to the family was only a few weeks younger than Sharon and I questioned myself as to why I could feel such affection for my nephew but not for my own flesh and blood. I began to agree with my mother that I was indeed ‘odd’.
My mother insisted on coming over with me to Lime Street to see me off on the train. She was unusually solicitous as she said goodbye to me on the platform.
‘Look after yourself, son, and for God’s sake be a good lad and try and keep away from any trouble, eh?’
I kissed her and boarded the train quickly so she wouldn’t see my eyes welling up. I waved at her from the open window of the door as she stood on the platform watching the train pull out until finally she vanished from sight, then I popped into the toilet for a quick cry before I found my seat.
CHAPTER 3
In Which I’m Introduced to the Finer Art of Drag Artistry …
CHRIS AND BILLY’S FLAT WAS ABOVE A NEWSAGENT’S SHOP IN Formosa Street, Maida Vale. It was a shrine to every female star who ever graced the stage and silver screen. Movie posters and photographs of their idols adorned every wall. They kept a rabbit in a hutch at the bottom of their bed and a couple of cats. One of them, a petulant Siamese, was known as ‘the Baby’, not due to the urge to satisfy any latent yearnings they may have had for fatherhood but because that’s what Madame Rose called Baby June in the musical Gypsy. Like me they were devotees of Gypsy, but on reflection I doubt they were so keen on the soundtrack after I’d been there for a while as I played it every chance I got.
Chris had the biggest LP collection of obscure movie soundtracks and musicals I’d ever seen, some of them extremely rare and worth a fortune. They were his pride and joy. He was very camp, tall and thin with a mop of frizzy hair that he occasionally ‘threw a rinse through’. His partner Billy was a small and officious Scot with the unsettling habit of flying off the handle at the slightest provocation. He’d furiously swish about the flat in a grubby kaftan with the Baby yowling at his feet, leaving a trail of French cigarette smoke in his wake. I usually went for a walk or over to the neighbours’ flat when Billy was throwing a hissy fit.
The neighbours had been a revelation. Chris had taken me across the street to meet them not long after I arrived. The door was opened by a tall friendly bloke who Chris greeted as Mrs Page.
‘Hello, dear, nice to meet you,’ he said, extending his hand and inviting me in. ‘Tony Page, singer, compère in or out of drag, available for bar mitzvahs, private functions and cock and hen, especially the cock, dear.’
As he chivvied me down the narrow hall I noticed every coat peg on the wall had a wig of a different colour and size hanging from it. In a clear polythene bag on the peg nearest to the kitchen door a teased-out wig of frizzy grey hair rested on a polystyrene wig block that someone had drawn a face on. An image of a decapitated pensioner flashed across my mind.
‘We’ve got company, Alice,’ Mrs Page sang out as we entered the back room. ‘It’s Mrs Scott come to introduce her niece from the country.’
Alice, all smiles, was standing in the middle of the room modelling a strapless cocktail gown that had seen one too many parties, the zip of which was undone at the back. ‘Hello, dear, I’m Alistair. I take it you’ve already met my mother?’ he said, nodding towards Tony Page.
‘New frock?’ Chris asked.
Alistair blinked his enormous eyes and went into mock coquette mode, holding the dress close to him, his arms crossed coyly over the bust in case it fell down. ‘What, this tatty old rag?’ he simpered. ‘Just a little something I threw on.’
‘And missed,’ Tony snorted, dragging on a fag and coughing violently as he laughed at his own joke.
‘Those things are going to kill you one day,’ Alice snapped back, emulating my ma, ‘hopefully sooner than later. Now give the jaw a rest and let’s have another go at pulling this zip up.’
Tony squinted and contorted as he attempted to pull up a zip on a dress being worn by a man at least three sizes bigger than its original owner. Alistair was optimistic though and kept up a running commentary concerning the dress’s origins, wincing in discomfort as Tony struggled.
‘Got it in a charity shop near Westbourne Grove … Pull it then, dear … Wanted a fiver, got it for three … Careful! Mind the flesh, you nearly had me fucking back off then, Mrs Page … I’ll wear it with that naff wig for “I Hate Men” … Uuugh. Come on, you’re nearly there, dear. Pull it hard.’ Chris went to give a hand and between them they miraculously got the zip to go up.
‘There you go, ladies,’ Alistair gasped, unable to breathe or move, ‘a perfect fit.’
The dress was so tight that two fleshy rolls of his flabby chest oozed over the top of it. Alistair pushed them together so that they met in the middle and looked like a real cleavage.
‘Varda,’ he smiled proudly, holding his arms up and bending his knee in an Ethel Merman pose. ‘Look at the size of those balloons.’
‘If I were you I’d have a couple of panels put in that frock before you go on stage,’ Tony said, eyeing the bursting seams dubiously, ‘because if you don’t mind me saying, dear, and I know you won’t, there’s simply no way that delicate little zip is going to cope with the tonnage it’s expected to hold in.’
‘Go to work, dear, before they see sense and cancel you.’ Alistair grunted, admiring the enormous cleavage he’d created. ‘She was the cabaret at the Last Supper, you know, her act’s so old,’ he added in a stage whisper to me.
‘You should know, dear, you were the barmaid,’ Tony jumped in, roaring with laughter, delighted with himself at the speed of his comeback.
‘Sad, isn’t it?’ Alistair smiled, patting Mrs Page on the arm in a gesture of mock concern and staring intently into his face. ‘Look at that eek, those bags, those lines, poor old thing. She’s as old as her gags, and they’re ancient.’
‘Hark at her, that’s a bit rich coming from a mime act who can’t even fart unless it’s on tape.’
‘Why don’t you make yourself useful and put the kettle on, Lime Street Sadie here looks like she could do with a cup of tea after the shock of seeing you in daylight.’
I was already known as Lil in certain circles, now here I was being rechristened as Sadie. I had an Aunty Sadie, my dad’s sister, and I didn’t think of it as a particularly funny or unusual name. Mrs Page, Chris and Alistair did though, and so Sadie I became. Alistair called me nothing else from that day on.
He was extremely easy to get on with, warm and good-natured, as was Tony Page. I sat round the table smoking and drinking tea, listening to them gossip and bitch. I felt a little out of my depth at first which made me come over shy, but eventually, prompted by Chris, I stirred myself and fed them a few highly salacious and grossly exaggerated titbits about the prolific sexual activity that was available to any queen who fancied a stroll down the Liverpool dock road. Their eyes stood out like chapel hat
pegs as I described the hordes of sex-mad sailors from the four corners of the globe who frequented the gay bars of Liverpool and were just ripe for the picking.
‘Who’d have thought it?’ Tony said, whistling through his teeth and looking me up and down. ‘She’s like the League of fucking Nations!’
The more they laughed the more I loosened up and started to enjoy myself. Making people laugh is a potent drug that gives you a real buzz, whether it’s on a stage or in a west London kitchen. I liked these people and wanted them to like me.
They were different from anyone else I’d ever met. They were showbiz. Not the showbiz of the blues clubs of Long John Baldry or the classical world that Sir John Pritchard lived in – these being the only two people I’d previously met who were famous and worked within the entertainment industry. No, Alistair and Tony Page were something else entirely. They were a different breed, lairy, funny, brave and ever so slightly devious and the world they inhabited sounded daring, exciting and extremely appealing. I felt that I’d found my tribe.
‘You should be on the stage, wack,’ Tony said, getting up from the table, ‘and talking of which that’s just exactly what I should be preparing to do.’
‘It takes her a long time, you see. It’s tricky getting that iron lung in the back of the car,’ Alistair simpered, smoothing his hair and pursing his lips.
‘I shall clean you when I get back, madam, but right now your mother has got more important matters on her mind, like getting to work. I’m resident compère at the Black Cap, you know.’ Tony looked into the mirror over the fireplace and, licking his finger, ran it over his eyebrows. ‘Got to bring the shekels in, so thank God I’m very busy and working every night, twice on Sundays. Can’t complain, dear.’