A Bed in the Sticks

by Lee Dunne

  ‘Here goes,’ I said, slipping out through the slit in the masking curtain, with a Farley Granger smile on my lips.

  Suddenly, a bloody awful racket was being beaten out of the piano. I knew it couldn’t have been Pauline at the keys and she came though the masking curtain to prove me right. She smiled as she reached me. ‘You knew that wasn’t me, right!’

  ‘Right,’ I said, very much aware of her nearness.

  ‘Maria always plays the Opening Chorus. Right now, I relieve May on the cheese scene.’ She smiled on the word cheese, revealing her beautifully even white teeth. ‘It’s all go, isn’t it,’ she said cheerfully, across the front of the hall, her slim legs, beautiful in the burnt flesh-coloured nylons she wore.

  Jimmy passed by shortly after her, already made-up and wearing a white jacket over a maroon shirt.

  ‘Keep smiling kid,’ he grinned at me as he went up the hall, fresh from his change of gear in his caravan. I watched him go, saw him shake a hand here and there along his way, smiling as he acted out every word he said to the punters.

  I saw Pat get up from the card-table cash desk, as another woman that I hadn’t seen before sat down in her place. Her name turned out to be Jenny Darcy, and from the moment Jimmy introduced us later on that night, I felt that she was, naturally, one of the nicest people I had ever met.

  She was somewhere around the thirty five-six, mark and she had large blue eyes and pale skin. Her light brown hair hung straight and while she wasn’t what you’d call a raving beauty, there was something about her that was very beautiful.

  Jimmy had mentioned her casually while I was helping get the hall in shape for the performance as I hadn’t paid that much attention but, I did remember that she had lost her husband a couple of years earlier and the hint of sadness that sat on her features suggested she was grieving even now.

  By eight-thirty the hall was packed. Every seat had been filled and people were standing at the back, bunched together, and there was a line halfway down each side of the place.

  A few moments later, Jimmy came back to me and asked me to relieve Jenny at the cash table. ‘Not that we’ll get many more but you never know.’

  Jenny and I nodded to each other as she left the table and I saw down at it. Jimmy followed Jenny back stage, the hall lights dimmed, as Jimmy’s voice came over the sound system to offer: ‘Lady’s and Gentlemen, Welcome to Showtime!’

  My guts did a back flip as I realised that this was it. As of now, whether I liked it or not, there was no going back. The show was starting and I was part of it, and very soon I would be up there on the stage. I shivered, knowing that there were spots of sweat already sitting on my made-up forehead.

  Pauline, May, Jenny and Pat, wore lime green shirts below their orange blouses. Centred behind them, Jimmy and the Hunter brothers, in white shirts and belted white pants, stood still as the ladies moved slickly into a simple routine.

  Despite what Maria Maguire was doing to the piano, they were all singing ‘There’s No Business like Show Business’ and from the opening lines, May Mitchell’s singing stood out.

  She was giving everything she had; her eyes flashed, her smile was like a beacon, while her young, high full breasts and her amazing legs had me, and just about every guy in the place,

  Seriously wishing to lie down with her and show her what great sexual athletes we all were.

  Pat O’Shea worked hard in that routine, looking stiff to me while, Pauline just went through the motions with a broad smile on her lips. Jenny moved like a real dancer; she smiled all the time, but she still looked to me like someone waiting to just burst into tears.

  The costumes were obviously part of Jimmy’s psychology plan. Something for everybody, in a place where you had a fair number of Catholics living with a large Freemason and Orange population. So it was the green, white and orange for those that dreamed of a united, thirty-two county Ireland, the red white and blue being for those that were loyal to the English Crown and the memory of King Billy and the Battle of the Boyne.

  As the Opening Chorus ended, May Mitchell went straight into a fast tap routine, removing her skirt in a flash and throwing it side-stage, even as the others were still moving off.

  Her dancing seemed very good to me, and I’d wager that a fair few of the men in the audience were pawing at the ground by the time she finished her routine. I know I was getting a bit stretchy standing all the way back at the entrance. She had such a great body that it would have taken a saint not to wonder what it would be like to feel her spread out under you.

  Gary Martine followed May, coming on with that violent stride of his, and he looked every inch the great actor. He stood before the microphone which had moved down from above as he crossed to it to announce: ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, we now continue our variety programme with a song from our own Denny O’Mara who has just returned from a successful tour of Australia. So, a warm welcoming round of applause, please, for your friend and mine, Denny O’Mara!’

  The audience obliged as though they believed that Denny had just come back from Down Under and I smiled, thinking of my mentor, Harry Redmond and what he would have said: ‘Yeh, back from down under the fuckin’ bed!’

  Pauline was by this time back at the piano. There was no mistaking that almost masculine tough that she had, and Denny O’Mara sang well in his rich, baritone voice.

  In a matter of moments, he had the audience right in the palm of his hand, and the applause that greeted him after the first song was again proof that the Irish like nothing so much as a good singer.

  Jimmy Frazer came on after Denny. He rushed onstage in a kind of stutter run that had the audience seriously amused in seconds. He didn’t say a word for a full minute but, he had got it across, simply by the way he moved, that he was the funny man, and to my delight, funny he really was. So much so, that I was laughing just as hard as anybody else in the hall, and I had never gone a bundle on the split in the pants type of comedy. Bob Hope was my kind of comic and I worshipped Groucho Mark and his brothers, but, old fashioned though I thought Jimmy was, he had me in his pocket in no time.

  May Mitchell was next on, singing a couple of Irish songs. She had a small voice, she had no power in her personality, but the audience were very warm in their response and I realises she was simply giving them what they wanted. Denny had done the same thing earlier, working one ‘Come All Ye!’ into his turn, and I thought there and then, that unless I wanted to die as a crooner, I was going to have to learn some Irish songs.

  I hardly knew an Irish song apart from ‘Danny Boy’ which was really an Irish American song that I happened to love. My mother remained bitter about the way my father and, many more like him, after the time and effort - never mind risking their life. She never quit believing that those volunteers had been badly let down, rarely speaking about that part of her life without becoming really bitter.

  ‘Good or bad, he did his share, while others sat snug, busy feathering their own nests, not bothering their heads about the likes of him. So Irish songs had never made the charts in our house, and to me they seemed mostly very corny compared to the American songs I began to learn off from the moment we could afford the one and sixpence a week rental on our first radio.

  The sad spot on the very lively variety bill was the way Gary Martin’s turn died. He burst on, making the microphone in one stride, and he stood for a few seconds while the audience quietened down. Then he began to recite a dreary monologue that was a sad, bad, imitation of Robert W. Service

  At first I thought it was another gag coming up, and when Jimmy didn’t stumble on with that stutter run of his, and I felt very uncomfortable. Surely Gary should have known that those people wanted laughs and some good singing, and hopefully a play well acted for the second half of the programme.

  When he finished the silence was like a kick in the mouth. Then someone clapped a bit and th
is was taken up by a few more people, but this seemed even worse than no applause at all since it emphasized the fact that so many people in the hall had not the slightest urge to put their hands together.

  I felt embarrassed for Gary, but if he was bothered in any way, he certainly didn’t show it. In moments he was into his encore, his natural snobbery obvious to me, but who knows what those decent people of Newtown thought of it.

  Tom Hunter came to me down by the entrance. He was taking over since it was time for me to go up and do my turn, and I walked up along the side of the hall, my legs like lead posts. Onstage, Jimmy and Denny were in the middle of another gag and I was in a cold sweat. For some stupid reason I found myself wondering if Tom Hunter liked me, not that it mattered whether he did or not. Everybody can’t like everybody, I heard myself mumble as I went through the masking curtain, cutting the need to ask myself what the hell had happened to my head and my over sense of well-being at being a member of a show that was up and running.

  Pauline looked up from the piano. ‘Nervous?’

  I nodded with a sad little grin. ‘Like, forget it!’

  ‘Don’t be,’ she said, ‘just sing the way you did when we ran it through...’ She smiled: ‘I’ll be listening.’

  Her eyes were on my face, and without thinking about it I leaned over and touched her cool forehead with my lips.

  ‘For luck’ I said.

  She pulled a face that made me laugh: ‘I’m such a horror you need an excuse to kiss me on the head.’

  Suddenly I was on, not having heard Denny’s introduction;

  I’d been too busy holding my bowels tight and I had a stinging sensation between my legs. I did hear Pauline lead me into the number and then I was singing, feeling that the pokey village hall was the size of the Phoenix Park in Dublin.

  I died!

  That’s right.

  There is no other way to describe it. A lead balloon would have gone over better, and I wanted to run off and cry my eyes out.

  But, I didn’t. I stood there, trying to tell myself that they just didn’t dig my kind of singing. And I did my encore, putting all I had into the number. It didn’t make any difference. Then it was over and I was coming off stage, lathered in sweat, and wishing that a hole would appear in front of me, so that I might just be swallowed up.

  Jimmy brushed past me; his solo spot ended the First Half: then I was out front with Tom Hunter and Denny, selling raffle tickets: ‘Sixpence each, folks and three for a shilling.’

  As I stood putting the ticket stubs into a hat, I heard Jimmy telling Maria Maguire about the alteration in the play.

  ‘Flow Gently Sweet Afton, Maria, y’know? Just sling in the ‘Och, ma poor wee bairn bit. It’s never failed!’

  5

  Pat O’Shea was sitting at a card table to one side of the front entrance, the lighting showing off her shining red hair to the very best advantage. Her head bobbed in greeting to the next customer and from where I stood she looked gay and charming and it was easy to understand that the local men would consider her a beautiful woman.

  I smiled at every female that noticed me and I have to admit I got a lot of attention from the lassies as they paid their half crown admittance fee.

  To help me get over the nerves that were bothering me, I went into my memory remembering how nervous I had been on the day I’d gone for my interview in the insurance office, dressed up like a dogs dinner in Harry Redmond’s one and only suit. That was an awesome mountain to climb and but for the genius of Harry as he concocted the fiction I would offer to the boss of the insurance brokers where I was conning my way into a job, or so I hoped.

  Remember that day, coming away with the job under my belt, that had been the ordeal to end them all, and I used this belief to let go of anxiety and just let things happen. Besides which, I had going for me the fact that Jimmy considered me some kind of lucky charm.

  Pat waved to me from where she sat by the door and it was impossible not to be aware of how well she filled out the front of her orange blouse. And from the way most of the men looked at her while they received their admission tickets, it seemed to me that she turned every one of them into a tit-man.

  I went on smiling, now that the elastic had left my knees on bone and marrow, but I was having a tough time looking normal with the endless smile since it was a mask that I had to keep stuck onto my face.

  A girl with blue-black hair stepped through the masking curtain on the far side of the hall and I guessed this was May Mitchell.

  Seeing me, she walked across the front of the hall, her hair waved in shining ridges to her shoulders, large dark eyes smouldering under fine, well shaped brows and she shook my hand and wished me a happy tour.

  This was a young woman who was every inch a star, while I felt about two inches high, having died in my own turn on my first night with the show.

  There’s no other way to describe it. I went over like a lead balloon and I wanted to just run out of the hall and cry my eyes out. But I didn’t. I stood there, trying to tell myself that the audience just didn’t dig my style of singing. Even when I did my encore, putting everything I had into the number, it made no difference. Then it was over and I was coming off the stage in a lather of sweat, wishing that a hole would open up and swallow me.

  Jimmy brushed past me - his solo spot ended the first half - then I was out front with Tom Hunter and Denny, selling raffle tickets: ‘Sixpence each, three for a shilling!’

  Later as I stood putting the ticket stubs into a hat, Jimmy came to me and said, ‘You look after the door now, Tony, and watch the play. It’ll give you an idea of the kind of drama you’ll be acting in before long.’

  I nodded and when I stood by the door to follow his instructions, I knew that I had never felt so alone before in my life.

  Jimmy hadn’t said anything about my singing but even if he had said I had died a death, it would have been better than nothing.

  I thought the play was awful and the acting not much better, but I wondered if it was really as bad as all that. I mean, I was feeling depressed, lousy, so let down by the way my act had flopped that I wasn’t sure I was fit to be the judge of anything. And to top it all, the man that had been so kind of me earlier, Gary Martin, came out of the drama as the all time, number one Ham.

  His every movement was overdone and everything he said seemed to have been curled by hot tongs before it came out of his mouth. His eyes, my God, they rolled like striped sweets in his face and, once or twice, I thought he came close to knocking Jimmy right off the stage with his ridiculous arm-flinging gestures.

  Yet, he was the one the audience rose to when the play ended, and as he took bow after bow, his long body just bent forward slightly from the waist, his eyes caressing the ceiling of the hall, his expression telling them, one and all, that they were not really such peasants as he had, earlier, thought them to be.

  Jimmy now stepped forward and told the audience what he had in store for them ‘tomorrow’. A completely different variety programme, followed by a wonderful comedy-drama, and, of course, a long sketch afterwards to ‘send you all home with a smile instead of a tear,’

  The sketch that followed was nothing short of a riot, and Jimmy was so funny that I howled with laughter along with everybody else in the hall.

  And sure enough, as the audience filed out afterwards, they surely were going home with a smile instead of a tear. Some of the young women seemed gamey enough and I might have made a move on one of them had I not felt so tired and depressed, choked to the teeth with myself for not killing that audience stone dead, like I had done in the Top Hat, which was in Dublin, for god’s sake!

  So, without so much as a good-night to anybody, I slipped out of the hall and away to the digs with my heart in flitters.

  When I woke up on the Tuesday morning, I thought, at first that I was just w
allowing in self pity. Maybe I was at that, but after a few minutes sitting on the edge of my bed in Molly Dale’s boarding house, I knew for sure that I wasn’t kidding myself.

  I was sure. And absolutely dead certain, without having any previous experience on the subject, that I had gonorrhoea.

  The evidence was all over my pyjamas bottoms which Larry Deegan had given me, which were stuck to me while my pipe felt as if some sadist had run a blow lamp over it.

  Back on The Hill, the Hard Chaws thought the pox was good for a laugh. But you never laughed at the fella who had copped out. You laughed at him, behind his back, and in time you talked with other guys about the subject that you knew next to nothing about. All he-man bravado stuff, and you chuckled that it only happened to the other fella, never to you. So you wee free to join in the banter when someone said, ‘Yeh, Jimmy’s up at the Lock Hospital, got a full-house from a mot up in Dartry, a really decent bird, giving it away like the St. Vincent de Paul Society!’

  I vomited into Molly Dale’s wash basin, wanting to take a razor blade and rip myself free from this disaster. But, I poured water into a basin and took it along the hall to the lavatory and emptied it. There wasn’t anything left to throw up but I felt sick right down to my toenails.

  When I was dressed, I lit a cigarette and sat down on the bed again. If only Redmond or Larry were about. Yeh! And if only my aunt had balls, wouldn’t she be my uncle!

  It had to be the older woman from the previous Saturday night, and God Almighty, there in that guest house in Northern Ireland, I wasn’t sure I even had her name.

  Another cigarette and I had calmed down somewhat. I had to calm down or make a fool of myself and maybe end up losing my job with the show. After the way my act had flopped on my first night, Jimmy could be forgiven for telling me goodbye, baby.

  I went down to the hall, having told my landlady that I didn’t want any breakfast. It was a quarter to ten and I had the place all to myself and I was glad about that. I left the front door open and I opened every window except those that were rusted into place.