The Devil Rides Out

by Paul O'Grady

  ‘This sailor comes up to me and says, “You remind me of Elizabeth Taylor.” I said, “Well, that’s awfully kind of you. Is it my figure?” “Yes,” he said, “it’s gone for a Burton.”’

  ‘This sailor and me, we were standing outside the pub talking about this and that. I don’t know what I said that upset him – I know I’d mentioned the price of plums – but he suddenly went berserk and made a lunge at me. Well I shot down this side turning which I thought would be an escape route but turned out to be a cul-de-sac and I’m stood there with me back to the brick wall and me legs in two dustbins with a John West salmon tin where it mattered most, with the lid up. And there’s him with his good conduct medals clanking away and his string vest at half mast, well, I thought, this is it tonight Gladys, death or dishonour. And then I thought to meself, well, I’m not bloody dying yet …’

  Shuff collapsed one Sunday afternoon on his way to buy fags from his local shop off Camden High Street and died from a heart attack. I was shocked to hear that he was only fifty-eight. I’d thought that he was a lot older than that. At his funeral, they sang ‘My old man said follow the van’ as the coffin vanished behind the curtains and then retired to the Black Cap for a salmon barm cake and a glass of sherry.

  To be honest, I’d never been interested in watching drag until I saw the acts at the Cap in action. It was very rare to see a drag act performing in any of the Liverpool gay clubs. The only one I can ever recall was a hairy-chested lorry driver from Manchester who appeared to think that a cheap black wig poking out from underneath a joke shop bowler hat and a tatty corset that looked as if it had probably once belonged to his grandmother instantly transformed him into the living image of Liza Minnelli. He was also under the misapprehension that to get big laughs all you had to do was shove a balloon up an ill-fitting crimplene dress and mime along (badly) to a recording of Dionne Warwick’s ‘Always Something There To Remind Me’, preferably using a disc that had seen active service and was so heavily scratched it sounded as if Ms Warwick was frying chips when she recorded it.

  The act was crude and offensive and I wasn’t amused that I’d had to pay fifty pence to witness this freak show – fifty pence! A bloody fortune in the early seventies to have to cough up for the privilege of getting into Sadie’s, and on a week night. What annoyed me most was that the audience seemed to be lapping it up. What was wrong with them? Couldn’t they see how bad this crap was? I said as much to Billy the barman.

  ‘That’s because they’re all pissed, love, so pissed they actually think that it is Liza up there. Just look at old Greta. She’s ecstatic, God help her.’ He indicated towards one of the more senior members of Sadie’s clientele, a tiny wizened old queen, blissfully drunk, who was slumped against the wall by the dance floor, blowing gummy kisses and clapping along as Judy Garland’s twenty-stone daughter tried to balance her massive girth on a bar stool while miming to ‘Mein Herr’ from Cabaret.

  ‘Good on her at her age I say, getting out and about and enjoying herself instead of sitting in the bloody house on her own. Cider?’ He took a drag of his fag and gently rested it on the edge of the bar while he dipped down daintily to take a bottle of cider from the shelf behind him. ‘Mind you, she’s always been lively,’ he went on. ‘She was a right one in the war, you know, not that I was around to see it, of course, way before my time. Glass?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Yes, man mad, anything in a uniform, even the bus conductors weren’t safe, on her back twenty-four hours a day. Broken’earted she was on VE Day, poor cow.’

  He seemed oblivious of the fact that he hadn’t given me my cider and there were a couple of people waiting to be served, carrying on with his potted history of the life and times of Greta regardless. ‘They should have given her a medal for services rendered,’ he said, giving Greta a little wave. ‘Well let’s face it, love, she entertained more soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines than Vera Lynn and Gracie fucking Fields put together.’

  ‘Was she on the game then?’ I asked, moving my empty glass across the bar towards him by way of a hint.

  ‘Was she buggery. She was only too happy to give it away. Now as for her,’ he said, ignoring my hint and the two restless punters still waiting to be served, who were now vainly waving fivers and their empty glasses at him, and turning his attention instead to the act, throwing it a look that Medusa would’ve given her snakes for, ‘I say if you’re going to indulge in this kind of tat trannyism then at least have the decency to keep it within the confines of your own home and not feel obliged to inflict it on a paying public.’ He shook his head in disgust as he deftly opened the bottle of cider, plonking it down on the bar before me. ‘It wouldn’t have hurt her to have had a shave, would it? You’d think the least she could have done was shave her dirty great back before she flung a frock on.’ He took my money and slithered towards the till, never once taking his eyes off the activity on the dance floor.

  ‘Jesus tonight, poncing about in an’alf-mast nightie with a chemo wig slapped on yer’ead isn’t drag, love,’ he said, slithering back and giving me my change. ‘I’ve seen the best and I know what I’m talking about. You can’t put the likes of that dog in the same category as Ricki Renee, Laurie Lee and Danny, can you? Drag’s an art and there’s nothing worse than bad drag. It’s an insult to both men and women and makes me want to grab a rope, organize a lynch mob and hang that out of the front window as a warning. Now who’s waiting to be served?’

  On the whole the majority of the acts who appeared at the Cap were polished professionals, although it has to be said that there were more than one or two who were complete and utter pony and trap. Some of them were so bad they deserved ten out of ten for cheek, for having the barefaced effrontery to get up there in the first place, blatantly stealing other, more successful acts’ routines and mannerisms and working cheap, undercutting the others. Watching these dogs prance about the stage I’d always remark that I could do better than that, anybody could.

  The Disappointer Sisters were a big influence. If ‘cool’ had been in use back then we’d have described them as such. They seemed so ‘today’, unlike the old timers from another era who stood there and sang ballads in nice frocks leaving me stone cold. I couldn’t see the point. There was no reason for them to be in a frock if all they were going to do was sing. They might just as well have worn a suit. Looking like a woman simply wasn’t enough any more, it was what you did with it that made it interesting.

  I wanted to get up there but be larger than life, a creature that was more cartoon than human. I wasn’t sure yet. I wanted to get up on that stage and join in the mayhem at the circus that was part Weimar Berlin cabaret, part vaudeville and burlesque and yet quintessentially British, its roots steeped firmly in the traditions of music hall.

  I certainly didn’t want to pass as a woman and be able to walk down a street in full drag undetected – that was transvestism. Nor were my desires in any way sexual. There was no urge to don lacy apparel and sheer stockings and come over all girly – quite the opposite, in fact. Watching the acts at the Cap night after night I finally realized that what I’d wanted to do all along was perform, not as an actor but as a bump and grind, loud and lairy drag queen. Exactly how you went about joining the ranks of this sisterhood was quite another matter.

  My next assignment as a peripapetic was looking after a girl and her three brothers while their mother went into hospital for a hysterectomy and their father into prison for alleged IRA activities. It was in another run-down flat, this time near King’s Cross, that I found myself playing Mary Poppins for six solid weeks.

  Luckily they were smashing kids, their ages ranging from four to ten, who were hardly any trouble at all to look after and seemed to live only for food and football, the girl included. I took them to see Arsenal play, only the second time I’d ever been to a professional match. My induction into professional football had taken place years earlier when Frank, our next-door neighbour, had taken me to see Tranmere Ro
vers play and the man standing behind me had done a beery wee down the back of my duffel coat through a rolled-up copy of the Liverpool Echo.

  Apart from being woken each morning at the crack of dawn by Irish rebel songs played at full belt on the record player by Liam, the youngest boy, who liked to rouse the neighbourhood each daybreak with a selection from his father’s record collection, life at King’s Cross was fairly uneventful until the arrival of the children’s aunty Rita, recently released from a spell in the nick and hot to trot. She was big and blowsy, Mae West with a touch of Blanche DuBois. Except this version had a thick Dublin accent. She was married and lived with her husband in Kilburn, not that she paid him much attention, but she’d taken to spending most of her time with us in King’s Cross, more for its close proximity to her favourite boozer than out of any concern for the kids’ welfare. Rita was a perennial good time girl and had got it into her head that in her sister’s absence she’d be able to use the flat as a place to entertain her gentlemen callers.

  One afternoon, returning to the flat unexpectedly, I was treated to the sight of Rita lying naked on the sofa with her flabby white legs wrapped round a big black arse that seemed to be pounding her into next week.

  ‘He’s a friend,’ she grunted by way of explanation, waving at me over his shoulder. The ‘friend’, startled by the arrival of a third party, leaped off her as if she were an electric fence and hurriedly attempted to get dressed, shouting ‘Sorry, sorry’ as he hopped about the room pulling his trousers up.

  I was extremely grateful that he’d reacted this way, as I didn’t relish trying to throw him out. He was built like the proverbial brick latrine and a blow across the head from the penis that he was having trouble zipping his fly over would’ve been enough to stun me for a week, never mind a smack in the mouth from one of his massive fists. He was extremely apologetic, though, and I almost felt bad about walking in on him.

  ‘Your mother’s a nice lady,’ he said, offering his hand for me to shake which I declined as I could see where it had been.

  ‘She’s not my mother,’ I spluttered, looking down at Rita scratching her tatty head and yawning. Her lipstick was smeared up one side of her face and strands of her yellow hair were stuck to her forehead with sweat. I could see now that she wasn’t naked but was wearing a flimsy bra that had started out in life as flesh-coloured but was now grey with age, one strap attached to a fraying cup by means of a safety pin having no doubt snapped from the stress of attempting to support the weight of her sagging breasts.

  ‘Ah, don’t go, Ernest,’ she pleaded drunkenly, rooting around on the floor for her fags and matches. ‘This is only Paul, he won’t mind at all.’

  But Paul did mind, and while Ernest beat a hasty retreat out of the front door I read the old slut the Riot Act. She seemed unfazed by my rant as if she’d heard it all before and just sat there yawning, scratching her crotch. I could see that she wasn’t a natural blonde.

  ‘Ah c’mon, give us a break will ya. The kids are all at school, no one was harmed,’ she said eventually. ‘I’m fresh out of the nick and gagging fer it. I get nuttin’ of that owld eejit at home so you wouldn’t blame me if I met a nice fellah in a pub and let me feelins get in the way of me common sense? I’m an owl fool, that’s what I am. An owl fool.’

  ‘You’re an owl who-er,’ I thought, leaving her to get dressed but deciding nevertheless to give her one last chance.

  For a while she was the model of decorum, visiting every day bringing bags of sweets for the kids, a packet of fags for me and half a bottle of Bacardi for herself which she drank from a stainless steel goblet as she mooched about the kitchen, occasionally giving the table a cursory wipe with a dishcloth to show that she was ‘helping’. She’d led me to believe that her husband was a monster, a red-haired giant of a man with a ferocious temper who when drunk, which by all accounts was twenty-four hours a day, was not beyond slapping his wife about.

  ‘I should’ve left the owl divel years ago,’ she’d sigh. ‘The hidin’s I’ve had off him.’

  ‘Then why didn’t you?’

  ‘Because I love him, that’s why,’ she’d answer, adopting a wistful expression and looking into the middle distance with big bloodshot eyes. ‘As God is my witness I worship the very ground that man walks on.’

  ‘But you live in terror of him,’ I’d protest. ‘He’s a violent bully who batters you up.’

  ‘And if he ever turns up here looking for me then for Jaysus’ sake don’t open the door, he’ll kill the pair of us.’

  Oh, great, just what I need, a drunken Finn McCool on the rampage.

  He must have shrunk in the wash because when he eventually did turn up he turned out to be five foot nothing, with a cast in his eye and a stammer, his shiny, ill-fitting suit hanging off his puny frame, making him look like the stooge from a Benny Hill sketch.

  One morning Liam, the youngest boy, wearing only a dirty vest, seized the opportunity of an open front door to escape. When I eventually realized that he was missing I took off looking for him in my bare feet, frantic that he’d wandered on to the busy road. Finally discovering him outside the station, barefaced and bare-arsed, I suffered the humiliation of seeing commuters on their way to catch their trains either averting their eyes completely or viewing the pair of us with a mixture of disgust and pity. A woman on her way out of W. H. Smith said that I wanted reporting to the social services for allowing a child to run around like that. Catching my reflection in the window, unshaven and unkempt, clutching a none too clean half-naked child, I could see why.

  Getting back to the flat I found one of the neighbours from our house in Crouch End waiting for me. He explained that he’d answered the communal phone to a frantic Vera, who had been arrested coming out of the dole office and was being held at Hornsey Police Station. I was to go home to the flat and find the number of a pub in Liverpool called the Fountains and get a message to his dad that he’d been arrested for a series of burglaries he hadn’t commited in Liverpool.

  Vera hadn’t been up to Liverpool for ages, not since his mother had died, so he couldn’t possibly have gone on a crime spree breaking into the homes of wealthy Liverpool residents even if he’d wanted to. I could no more imagine Vera scaling a drainpipe with a stocking over his head and jemmying a bathroom window open in the dead of night than I could him coming home sober. It was a ridiculous notion. Besides, he had an alibi – me. I set off to Hornsey Police Station, Liam in tow, to prove Vera’s innocence.

  I went to the flat first to get the number of the Fountains from Vera’s address book and rang them up. Pop, as Vera’s dad was known, wasn’t in the pub but the woman who answered told me that she’d send a message to him immediately to ring me urgently.

  I peeled some spuds while I waited for Pop to ring back, genuinely concerned at the thought of Vera banged up in a cell just round the corner and thinking that it might be a good idea if I made him a bit of dinner and took it round to him at the station. The phone in the hall rang. It was Pop.

  ‘All right, lad,’ he growled. ‘What’s the score then?’

  I explained what had happened and waited for Pop’s reply.

  ‘OK then,’ he said after a momentary pause, sounding like a cop in an American police drama, ‘I’ll get things moving at this end. You sit tight, I’ll keep you posted.’

  Feeling a little reassured by Pop’s grasp of the situation I sat Liam down and we had something to eat. I’d set some aside for Vera, a plate of corned beef, mashed spuds and peas sitting on top of a pan of simmering water to keep it warm. Covering it with another plate and wrapping it in a tea towel I took it down to the police station, hoping that if they searched it they wouldn’t discover the note hidden inside the mashed spuds that read, Don’t worry, Vera, we’ll get you out.

  The desk sergeant refused to give me any information apart from the fact that they were indeed holding Vera, and my protestations of Vera’s innocence fell on deaf ears. Even though he promised to pass on the magazines,
fags and corned beef dinner Vera never got them, nor did I get my plates and tea towel back. Thieving bastards.

  When I explained to Rita what had happened to Vera she insisted on going up to the police station herself. Having met Vera a few times and liked him, she was determined to get him out. As she was a little drunk I couldn’t risk letting her go on her own. With Rita as her counsel Vera would probably end up getting transportation, so I piled the kids on the back of the bus and we all made our way to Crouch End.

  Rita had to pop into a pub first ‘to calm her nerves’ – this coming from a woman who didn’t have a nerve in her body – while I waited outside with the kids. She wasn’t in there long but when she came out she smelled strongly of whisky.

  ‘Don’t normally drink the stuff,’ she explained as we trailed round to the police station. ‘It has a tendency to make me violent.’

  Consequently I was a little apprehensive as she approached the desk sergeant, one hand on her big fleshy hip which she rolled as she walked. ‘This is Mr O’Grady,’ she said grandly, pointing towards me. ‘He is a social worker with the council and we would like to know why you are keeping his friend.’

  ‘And who may you be, madam?’ the sergeant asked, looking us up and down as if he’d just been invaded by gypsies. He wasn’t the one who’d been on duty earlier and didn’t seem the type to suffer fools.

  ‘Olivia Shelbourne,’ Rita replied without missing a beat, ‘Miss Olivia Shelbourne.’

  I could feel my face burning as I clumsily explained the situation, but I could tell he wasn’t listening to me. He was more concerned about a poster for death watch beetle that Liam had ripped off the wall and was waving about.

  ‘Look,’ he said to his siblings, ‘there’s one of them things we had in the bathroom.’

  ‘What’s your friend’s name, sir?’ the sergeant sighed wearily, watching me try and fail to get four highly excitable kids to sit down and keep quiet.