Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool

by Peter Turner

  Memory of that night in New York came hurtling into my mind as I took Gloria up to the middle room. She fought every inch of the way. She was happy with her achievement. She was pleased with what she’d done.

  ‘I’ve made it down the stairs and back again,’ she held on to me in triumph. ‘I’m getting better, Peter. I must be getting better.’

  I carried her into the room and sat her on the bed.

  I handed her the piece of broken mirror and then the green plastic wash-bag. I opened up the window and then I closed the curtains. I switched on the table lamp and put it on the floor. I did everything she asked. I did everything I could.

  Then, when she turned to face me, the shadows reappeared; Gloria had put on her make-up. The browns and the greens were smudged; the red was on a slant. It was too late to attempt a rescue. Nothing could have helped her. Not even a pale pink light.

  ‘Tell me, Peter. Tell me. Tell me how I look.’

  I told her she was beautiful.

  FOUR

  Old Jack was in his cubby hole listening to the radio; his assistant stage manager was doing all the hard work, setting up the props for the play. All the actors, except Geoffrey, were hanging about in the Green Room. Gil, dressed in her first-act costume, her hair pinned back from her face which hadn’t yet been covered by the mask of stage make-up, was talking on the telephone. She gave me a friendly wave. I smiled and she blew me a kiss. Eric, sitting in the corner, was chewing on a double giant hamburger from the stall across the street. While Linda, happily wearing nothing much at all, except a towel and her sloppy silver shoes, was pinning up a notice in the centre of the board. ‘Rave Up’ it announced, ‘chez moi, Huskisson Street. Bring yourself something to drink’.

  At least everything was normal in the world of make-believe. Tonight it was a relief to be at the theatre. As soon as I was involved in my performance I felt immune to what was happening at home. I was tired, I was drained, but strangely I didn’t feel lacking in energy while I was on stage; it was only after the play was over that I felt exhausted and low.

  ‘Are you going to Linda’s party?’ Gil, back in her everyday clothes, popped her head around the dressing room door.

  ‘No, I’m not,’ I told her.

  ‘Oh, don’t be so miserable. You can’t just go back home.’

  No, I can’t, I thought. I couldn’t face going back to the house. I needed a break. I decided to go and see my cousin Eileen at the Belgrave Club.

  Eileen was the only person with whom I felt I could relax. Ever since I’d spoken to her earlier in the day I’d been thinking about what she had said. She was right, I needed to calm down. For a while, I had to get away from the sadness in the house.

  I took a taxi from Clayton Square. It smelt of cigarettes and chips, which made me feel an emptiness inside. We drove up London Road, away from the down-town area, where anything that might happen, could happen. Ten minutes later we drew up outside the Belgrave. To me it seemed an odd place for a gambling club, standing isolated, alone, in the middle of a wasteland. It looked a bit of a dump.

  As I wasn’t a member, and I didn’t look as if I was dressed for a night out in a casino, the two big bouncers sentried at the door refused to let me in.

  ‘If you’ve been invited, why hasn’t yer name been put on the list?’ the ugliest one of them asked.

  ‘Because it’s my cousin,’ I pleaded. ‘She’s a pip boss, you know, a croupier. She just asked me to come along.’

  Eventually, after a check upstairs with Eileen and a warning that I wasn’t to sit at the tables, I was led upstairs.

  Inside it was quite smart and much bigger than I’d imagined it to be. Gloria would have approved of the subdued lighting that attracted a thin smoky cloud. The atmosphere was pleasant and friendly. The punters, a regular-looking crowd, were quiet and intent. All conversations were kept to a minimum. The only noises came from the waitresses serving drinks, from the turn of the roulette wheel, and from the counting of chips being stacked on the tables.

  Eileen was sitting high up on a stool at the far end of the room watching over a game. Wearing an elegant black dress and with her hair twisted up at the back, she looked very glamorous in her ‘Solitaire’ pose, which came slightly unstuck as she spotted me at the door. Her face lit up and burst into a familiar smile as I walked across the casino to get to her. Wearing jeans and my old worn-out overcoat, I felt awkward and embarrassed in this sacred atmosphere, but as I reached my cousin she put her hand out to touch my arm.

  ‘I’ll join you at the bar in about five minutes. I’ll take a bit of a break then,’ she spoke to me in a whisper, then turned her attention back to the cards. ‘The twenty-five pound bet goes for the next hand,’ she quietly told the dealer, but in a louder voice called after me, ‘The girl behind the bar’s called Debbie.’

  A dispute arose at the table between the dealer and a suspicious-looking punter, and as I made my way over to the bar I could hear my cousin say, ‘I’m sorry, sir. The twenty-five-pound chip was a late bet. I can’t let that pass.’

  Debbie was counting cigarettes in a packet.

  ‘I’ve only had five today!’ she told me in her sing-song Liverpool accent. ‘That’s good, isn’t it? Do you want one? I’m not supposed to smoke working behind the bar, but it’s quiet tonight.’

  I took a cigarette and Debbie struck a match.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said and propped myself up against the counter.

  ‘Now why don’t you take that big overcoat off?’ She took a quick succession of puffs then sent the smoke into the air. ‘It’s nice and warm in here. Anyway, you won’t feel the benefit of it once you get back outside.’

  ‘You’re Debbie,’ I said by way of introduction.

  ‘You’re right,’ she replied and gave me a flirtatious look. ‘You can have what you want to drink.’

  ‘I think I’ll have a Scotch.’ I reached for the money in my pocket.

  ‘Oh don’t be soft,’ Debbie pushed herself close to the other side of the bar. ‘Put your money away, Eileen’s told me not to charge. You’re her cousin, aren’t yer? I heard you might come in. Your name’s Peter, isn’t it? And yer an actor, aren’t yer? You look different from how I imagined you to be. I thought you were blond and blue, not dark and going thin. Still, I won’t allow the superficials to – affect me strong emotion. You can have ice in that drink if you want, or else there’s water in that jug.’

  Debbie told me she was all of twenty-three. Her hourglass figure was squeezed into complementing clothes. She was stunning. In between giggles she told me about herself.

  ‘I’m an actress. Well, I’ve got me Equity card. I used to dance in a club with a snake called Emma but I’m not doing that any more. I left her in a vanity case on the bus, so I got the sack. I’m just working here for the money. I want to go to Hollywood and be a movie star.’ She took away my glass and poured me another huge Scotch. ‘Here’s your Eileen coming over. I want her to see that I’m looking after you properly.’

  ‘Ahhh, it’s great to see you.’ Eileen gave me an affectionate hug. ‘I’m glad you could manage to come. Now look, Pete, I’ve only got a few minutes break and then I’m back on duty, but only for half an hour. Then we can pop. I’ve asked Carol to take over the tables for me and she says she doesn’t mind. So when I finish work we’ll go back down into town to an after-hours Chinese club called the Oceania. It’s a nice place, small, so we can talk and have a couple of drinks. Listen, I’ll have to get back to the tables now, but Debbie will look after you. And don’t worry about money. This place takes lots of cash.’

  She hurried back to her stool overlooking the tables while Debbie sashayed her way to serve a customer at the far end of the bar.

  ‘Cocktails. Cocktails. Good luck to you, sir.’

  The girls were very attractive. I guessed they were probably show girls who had been in too many different shows and just got stuck out in the desert.

  The whole feeling of Vegas was one of dice and vice.
Soon after we arrived at the airport the first thing I noticed was a hooker. Then rows and rows of one-armed bandits.

  I’d just finished work on a play in England and had flown out to be with Gloria who was finishing work on a film. The location setting was Las Vegas, Nevada; the place where fortunes have been made one night and gambled away the next.

  It was late afternoon when we arrived. By the time we reached the hotel, driving past all the glossy hoardings announcing the famous names who were appearing there – Anthony Newley, Carol Channing, Juliet Prowse and the like – it was dark, and the whole of the strip was lit up in fantastic neon.

  One of the more excessive illuminations was a huge silver slipper set with multi-coloured lights and suspended in the sky.

  The lobby of the hotel was not simply a reception area but a vast assembly of gaming tables surrounded by hordes of delighted or disillusioned faces; the courtiers of Caesar in his tinsel palace.

  As the primary pursuit in Las Vegas was to gamble, Gloria and I decided to chance our luck. We pulled at every slot machine in sight that promised a million dollars and one night we played blackjack until the early morning light. We were caught in an exciting compulsive trap.

  Gloria got taken up by an admirer who showed us around the town. He was a small-time professional gambler who worked as a film extra whenever the going was rough. He claimed to have appeared in over a hundred movies and at one time he owned a big ranch. Max knew Las Vegas like the dealers knew the dollars; he arranged for us to see all the big shows.

  The Folies de Paris was a great extravaganza and the MGM show was indeed grand, but the evening with Raquel Welch was particularly spectacular. The curtain went up on Ms Welch standing at the top of the biggest staircase I’d seen. She then proceeded to walk down it while singing ‘You’ve either got it or you ain’t’. By the time she reached the bottom and had finished her song, it was quite clear to everyone that she had everything anybody would ever wish to have.

  ‘It’s all surgery,’ somebody said when there was a lull in the thunderous applause.

  ‘I don’t believe that,’ Gloria objected. ‘That simply could not be true.’ Then she leant close to my ear and whispered. ‘But if that’s the case, as soon as I get back to New York I’m gonna have surgery too!’

  Later we dined at a Japanese restaurant which looked like the peak on Mount Fuji. To the strains of piped Nippon muzak, we crossed a bridge over an oriental babbling brook and were seated at a table three feet off the floor. Scalding towels, geisha girls, samurai and lanterns were extras on the menu, but we did not get around to those. When Gloria was recognized by a posse of gangsters playing with their chopsticks and New Jersey broads, she decided it was time to leave.

  ‘I don’t wanna get wrapped up with any gangsters,’ she said when we got to the door. ‘I met one once who gave me diamonds but I sent them back. I didn’t wanna end up in the East River.’

  We went back to flutter away our two dollar chips at the blackjack and drink the free drinks handed out by the cocktail girls.

  ‘Another large Scotch for yer thoughts! You’re awful serious aren’t yer?’

  ‘Thanks, Debbie. I’m sorry. I was just thinking about someone I know.’

  ‘Oh well, maybe you ought to think about somebody else.’ She ran her hands around the curves of her body and gave me a sexy wink.

  The club was starting to fill up now. More people were crowding around the gaming tables and a group of flash Greek gangster boys came and sat around the bar. A roar of approval came from the direction of the craps table, for some high roller the dice were very hot, and a lecherous laugh erupted from the gangsters as Debbie reached for a glass.

  ‘Oh I’m glad that’s over with,’ Eileen said when she joined me. ‘I’m absolutely shattered. That bastard at the blackjack table tried to pull every trick in the book.’ She frowned. ‘But he knows that I’m on to him,’ she added with a glint in her eye. ‘I bet he hates me guts. Anyway, let’s get out of this place. I’m gasping for a ciggy and a drink. Let’s pop. I’ve just got to pick up me things.’

  I followed her to a room which had ‘Private’ written on the door. Dominated by a blinking fluorescent strip, it was narrow and small. A formica-topped table supported a redundant Kenco coffee machine; a mound of handbags, umbrellas and coats were piled up on a cupboard; a few drinking glasses, saucers and cups, some full of cigarette ash and stubs, were on a tray in the middle of the floor, and three high metal bar stools were shoved against the wall.

  A young man, one of the croupiers, was slouched in an armchair watching television in the corner. The picture was snowy and the volume too loud.

  ‘Pete, this is Kenneth, Kenneth, this is Peter.’

  Kenneth looked forlorn. His face was pale and gaunt and, judging by the way the pupils of his eyes seemed to revolve, I imagined that he worked the roulette.

  While Eileen found her coat and got herself ready to leave, I sat on one of the stools and leant my head against the wall, feeling sweaty and claustrophobic. I was glad when it was time to ‘pop’.

  ‘Eh, don’t forget this,’ Debbie shouted as we passed through the bar on our way out of the club, ‘or you’ll have nothing to keep away the cold.’ She ran around from behind the counter and threw me my old overcoat.

  ‘Thanks, Debbie, thanks for the drinks. I hope I see you again.’

  ‘You never know yer luck,’ she said as she shimmied away.

  It was after midnight by the time we left the casino but there was no shortage of taxis waiting outside for a fare.

  ‘Chinatown,’ Eileen told the driver. ‘Just on the corner by the Blackie.’

  The Blackie, an old abandoned church, signposts the boundary of Liverpool’s dwindling Chinese community. Chinatown is, and always has been, a lively and colourful part of the city.

  At the turn of the century, when Liverpool was a major sea port, its Chinese population became one of the biggest in Europe. It didn’t take long before good and inexpensive hand laundry businesses sprang up all over the place. Exotic restaurants opened and chop suey rolls or chicken chow mein and rice became an alternative to fish and chips. Now times have changed. The city is broke and has one of the highest unemployment figures in the land. Few Liverpudlians can afford to send their washing to the laundry so most of the Chinese laundries have had to close down. Not many people have the money to eat in fancy restaurants, and even fish and chips have been hit by a ridiculous tax. Politicians have allowed the heart of the city to be ripped apart, and Liverpool has lost most of its beauty and character as well as some of its Chinese inhabitants. But those Chinese who do remain are completely at home with the Scouse sense of humour and style.

  The taxi put us off at the corner of Duke Street and Nelson Street, just across the road from the Blackie. We walked around the corner to the Oceania, knocked at the door and had to wait for a few minutes before we were allowed in.

  Pictures and mirrors covered the walls in the hallway and a flowery-patterned carpet ran the length of the stairs. It was just like somebody’s house until we got to the landing on the fourth floor where Sonny was sitting on a desk outside a curtain-covered door. More Liverpudlian than Chinese in mannerisms and speech, he was young, attractive and friendly.

  ‘It should be fifty pence to get in,’ he said. ‘But forget the cash, just sign the book.’ He pulled back the curtain, opened the door and ushered us into the club.

  Suddenly we were in the centre of a dance floor and were plunged into what seemed like total darkness until the revolving glitter ball hanging from the ceiling showered us with sparkles: we were blinded by the dark and then the light. I narrowly avoided walking between two girls who were shuffling around their handbags to the sound of Roberta Flack . . . ‘The first time ever I saw your face’ . . . then Eileen directed me beyond the dance floor to the main room of the club which had tables and chairs spread out like a fan around a brightly lit bar in the corner. We sat at a table in a recess, cut off at either side fro
m the other customers but with an open view of the dancers. The music was at a comfortable level which allowed us to talk without having to shout.

  ‘Christ, Pete. After listening to that story you’ve just told me in that taxi, I definitely need a drink. I’m in a state of shock. No wonder you look depressed. I know, let’s light that candle.’

  She pulled across a candle which was standing in an aluminium ashtray and put a light to the wick. It flickered for a moment before we were protected by the glow.

  ‘That’s better,’ she said. ‘There’s something very reassuring about that little light.’

  The Chinese waiter who came over yawned as he handed us the menu, then apologized profusely.

  ‘Oh stay, stay,’ he insisted. ‘Don’t go. Everything you want to drink.’

  Eileen smiled to show she understood.

  ‘Ah,’ she said. ‘I know how you must feel, lad. I have to work nights.’ Then she turned to me, but spoke to him. ‘Let’s have a nice bottle of the house red wine.’

  He hurried away and within seconds returned with two glasses and a bottle.

  ‘It’ll do,’ Eileen said quietly as she handed me a glass.

  I took a sip. The ‘wine’ tasted more like whisky.

  ‘Well,’ she said, after knocking back her drink. ‘Let’s talk.’

  I drank my glass of wine.

  ‘Jessie told me on the phone that Gloria was sick but honest, Pete, I didn’t think for a minute that it was that bad. I can’t believe it. I just can’t believe that she’s dying. Oh,’ she said and clasped her hands to her mouth. ‘I wish I’d never told you about those photographs I took of us all in New York.’

  ‘No, I’m glad you did,’ I said and poured another drink. ‘I want to see them.’

  ‘Oh Peter, there’s one of Gloria in a T-shirt and shorts looking wonderful, just wonderful, and that wasn’t too long ago. She doesn’t look ill at all. I remember, I’d only met her for a few minutes and when I told her that I used to be a hairdresser she dragged me to the bathroom and wanted me to make her look like Bo Derek. I just covered her head with masses of Carmen rollers, but it looked nice though, didn’t it?’