Death Of A Diva

by Derek Farrell

  “Christ! What. A. Dump!” As opening lines go, it wasn’t the most original; nor, for that fact, the most complimentary. But I didn’t care. It was uttered by Lyra Day, a vision in white fur as she slid from the passenger seat of a long black Merc and surveyed the dingy little public house I was standing outside of.

  Lyra Day – for those of you who have been in comas since, say, the late seventies – was a legend, even when I was a boy. An East End girl who rose from singing easy listening tunes to edgier songs and who progressed from being just a pop star to being a song stylist. Then, when her progression to Disco Diva turned her into a Gay Icon, she had transferred to Saturday night telly where she’d been, for several years, the host of Kiss & Tell, a game show that gave rise to the catchphrase, Keep it clean, people.

  Lyra wasn’t keeping it clean today: “I must be out of my fucking mind, letting you do this to me. Look at the fucking state of this place!” This last was addressed to a tall, thin man with a mop of salt and pepper curls and the air of a person who is permanently harassed. I guessed this was Morgan Foster, her third husband and current manager.

  And, though it sort of pained me to admit it, she did have a point. Lyra Day had played the Palladium and she’d performed at countless Royal Variety shows. But all of that was before the break down.

  Lyra – under the influence of a cocktail of substances and, it’s claimed, a great deal of mysterious and never subsequently disclosed personal stress – had taken to the stage at the Royal Albert Hall for the opening night of a six week concert tour of the British Isles, with a further two months of European and Australian dates lined up and had, to put it kindly, flipped her lid.

  Fifteen minutes into the opening number, having sung the same two lines for approximately twenty-four bars, while her band, trained like abused dogs to keep playing till the mistress said Kill it, had continued to play ‘Windmills of your mind’ on a loop, Lyra had started screaming abuse at the footlights, torn off half her costume, smeared her makeup and, rumour had it, soiled herself in the middle of the stage.

  She was, needless to say, led away and shipped straight to the funny farm. The concert was cancelled. The tour was postponed, then cancelled and her future as a bookable and bankable artist had – thanks to the losses incurred by the companies who had booked and insured the tour – been severely damaged. But, for the core of the Cult of Lyra, The Incident had only served to make her an even more tortured artiste.

  Of course, with her image tarnished and her physical self locked up in the loony bin, the stories had flooded out; how Lyra had, for over twenty years, been an egomaniacal monster; how she’d wrecked marriages; consumed enough chisel to pay off Columbia’s national debt; hosted orgies at which pop stars, politicians and a certain prince of the realm had partaken of illegal substances and each other’s wives and how, having consumed two bottles of brandy at a late lunch with one of the female members of the Monegasque royal family and a closeted male singer from a popular boy band, it was strongly rumoured that Lyra had been driving the white Fiat that had forced Princess Diana’s car off the road on that fateful night in Paris (this last from the Daily Express, despite the clearly ludicrous idea that Lyra would ever, firstly, have driven herself anywhere and, secondly, have done so in a Fiat Punto).

  Again, it did no harm to her reputation with her loyal fan base, but it decreased the chances that she’d be getting asked back to the Royal Variety any time soon.

  Which was how I ended up with Britain’s Former Sweetheart, Queen of Saturday Night TV and rumoured Top Assassin of Flaky Royals as an opening act for what Caz and I had decided to sell as The Grimiest Night of Glamour on the Planet (a way of hopefully attracting the high-spending glitterati to a pub that I couldn’t afford to refurbish).

  Caz had gone to school with Morgan’s daughter Jenny – the grim-faced petite blonde who was now climbing out of the front passenger seat of the Merc – and had thought that Jenny might be able to persuade her stepmum to perform as a favour.

  The favour had required my signing a rider as long as the Magna Carta, agreeing to a financial arrangement that – when taken in conjunction with what I’d have to pay out for staff and stock on top of what I’d, shall we say, contracted to pay to Chopper – would leave me at best only slightly out of pocket. But tonight would – if things worked out – give me an opening night that those high-spending glitterati would talk about for weeks to come, which would almost guarantee an increase in my turnover during the upcoming Christmas period and a hoped for profitability by the time New Year rolled round.

  So I signed the rider and in order to meet Lyra’s demands I’d had to borrow money from my dad and spend two miserable days redecorating one of the upstairs rooms for use as Mr Day’s personal dressing room.

  Only after all that was it agreed that Lyra Day – who never does personal appearances – would, as a favour perform, a selection of hits to a backing tape but would neither interact with, sign autographs for, or pose for pictures with, the audience. All cameras were to be banned and I was to ensure that nobody in her eyesight was to be drinking anything less than champagne (“No bitter, no Guinness and definitely nothing in a can,” was the exact phrase). I figured I’d get around that one by instructing the lighting guy to keep the spot right in her eyes.

  “Lyra,” I switched on my most welcoming smile, stepped forward and reached a hand out to shake hers.

  The floor length white mink stayed where it was, but I swear the woman inside it recoiled much as a turtle does when threatened.

  “Morgan,” she cried, as her eyebrows shot towards the caramel-coloured cashmere beret which was jammed at a jaunty angle on top of her head.

  Morgan Foster stepped smartly between his wife and me and put a hand up to block my approach. “Ms Day doesn’t meet her public,” he started and, before I could explain that I was, sort of, her employer, Caz’s voice came rolling over my shoulder.

  “Jen! Hello dear!”

  Jenny Foster stepped out from behind the still aloof Lyra, snapped, “Well Miss Foster does!” and opened her arms in greeting. “Caz! Lovely to see you. How are you doing? Working yet, dear, or still waiting for daddy to pop it?”

  “As if! When dad pops his clogs there’ll be just enough left for a Chanel handbag and a Prada mule, love. No – no work yet, but Nil desperandum! Meanwhile, I’m helping my dearest friend Danny here launch this boite de nuit!”

  Morgan, realising who I was, began to relax, at which point Lyra muttered “Boite de merde more like. Jesus, Morgan,” this in a louder voice that was directed at the back of his head, “it’s like something out of Martin Chuzzlewhit. And tell the management never to speak to me directly, until spoken to, or to use my first name. Don’t they read the contract? Or have they stopped teaching basic literacy round these parts? Jenny, when you’ve finished with the love-in, can you fetch my bag from the car? Morgan, sweetheart, I know you’re a pain; but I can’t see through you.”

  Foster gritted his teeth, gave me an embarrassed half-smile and stepped to one side, bringing one arm up to curve behind Lyra, ushering her forward.

  I stepped back and straightened up with my hands behind by back. I felt like I was being presented to a minor royal and waited for her to favour me with that motherly yet oddly seductive smile which, for twelve long years, had lulled the youth of Britain into making tits of themselves on Saturday night TV. I was instead greeted with a look that might have given Medusa a run for her money and a snarled “Well are we gonna stand in the fucking street all afternoon, or are you gonna start shifting my stuff. Where the fuck’s Lizzie?” this last barked towards Foster, who murmured something about Lizzie being due: “Any minute now,” before his wife turned her attention back to me.

  “Chop-chop, Princess,” she snarled, sweeping past me and, without so much as a glance at Caz or her stepdaughter, heading for the door of the Marq, “them frocks ain’t gonna shift themselves, you know.”

  Chapter Seven

  “Bitch!
” Jenny Foster spat as the door of the Marq swung shut.

  “Jen!” her father shot her a dark look, sighed and switched on a warm smile. “You must be Danny,” he said, extending a hand.

  “Mr Foster–”

  “Oh, please, call me Morgan. You’ll have to forgive Lyra’s eccentricities. She’s really a sweetheart, but she feels, sometimes, that she has to keep up the image as a difficult diva. She’s actually very easy-going once you get to know her.”

  Jenny Foster snorted; Morgan ignored her and turned his smile on Caz.

  “Caroline! You look great. How’s your dad?”

  The two made some small talk, till a male voice from behind piped up “Well that went well, don’t you think?”

  I turned and caught my breath. Getting out of the back seat of the car was a broad shouldered man in his mid-forties. He had chiselled high cheekbones, a strong jaw line, cleft chin, deep blue – almost violet – eyes and a dark tan that served only to highlight the bright whiteness of his smile. “Least she didn’t climb back in the car and demand to be taken home. We’re getting somewhere.”

  “Coward,” Jenny moued at the stranger, as Morgan ushered him forward, “Danny, this is my wife’s biographer,”

  “And my fiancé,” Jenny added, sliding up to him and gripping his arm rather possessively.

  “Dominic Mouret,” we shook hands and his smile never faltered as he turned those dazzling blue peepers on the facade of what was, in truth, a fairly grotty boozer. “And I don’t know if Biographer is really the right word. I’m less interested in a chronological recounting of Lyra’s life, more in trying to understand who she is.”

  Jenny slid his hand into hers and pursed her lips in an even more exaggeratedly kittenish pout. “Dom’s already a bestselling author, though,” she announced to no one in particular, “so he doesn’t really need this job. Do you sweetie?”

  “Well, the book sold well, but I wouldn’t say I never need to work again. Especially if I’m going to have a high maintenance wife to look after. But it’s a real challenge to try to get through the crust that Lyra’s surrounded herself with.” Here he addressed me directly, “And don’t worry about the Ms Day thing: I got the same treatment first time we met and was ordered to call her Ly-ly within an hour. She’s a little capricious at times, but you’ll be fine.”

  “Capricious? She’s a cow,” Jenny muttered darkly.

  I realised that we were all still standing on the pavement and suggested we move inside.

  “Would you give me a hand with the dresses,” Morgan asked me, opening the cavernous boot of the Merc.

  I looked inside and my jaw dropped. There must have been a dozen gowns of increasing levels of splendour and opulence. Crystals sparkled, chinchilla trim wobbled in the breeze, sequins made the most of the early morning sunlight. In a series of clear plastic boxes were the shoes to match, none of them with anything less than a six inch heel.

  “You do know that we’re expecting a few songs to backing tapes,” I stuttered.

  Foster laughed. “Lyra never travels anywhere without a full choice of wardrobe. She’ll do no more than one costume change, but won’t decide what to wear till nearer the time. Little eccentricities. Her PA should be here soon and she’ll have the wigs and makeup. Ah,” he hefted the first three frocks from the boot and jerked his head at a green Ford Ka that had just turned onto the street. “Here she is now.”

  I hefted an armful of the surprisingly heavy frocks and Morgan and I headed into the bar where Lyra stood studiously ignoring the barmaid and awaiting our arrival. A look of deepest annoyance was clear on her face.

  “Dressing room,” she snapped at me.

  “Um, yes, certainly, Ms, um, Day,” I swung the frocks over my shoulder and gestured at the door at the end of the bar.

  She stomped to it, opened the door with me almost immediately behind her saying “It’s just up these stairs, Ms Day,” turned her head slightly as we walked up the stairs and spoke to Foster.

  “Morgan, can you please tell him not to swing these gowns around like they were a bag of Top Shop tat! Please remind the management that they’re couture and deserve a little respect.”

  I laid the dresses across my two arms, the way that I’d seen grieving heroes carry deceased heroines in classic movies and muttered an apology. “Just at the end of the hall, Ms Day.”

  Lyra reached the end of the hall, swung the door open, stalked into the newly decorated dressing room, it’s gleaming coats of white gloss reflecting the light (having read somewhere that Lyra loved the purity of white) spotted the huge vases of white lilies I’d pawned my silver chain for (having read somewhere that she loved fresh flowers), snorted and said “Christ, it’s like an undertakers in here. Morgan, be a dear and get those bloody lilies out of the place. They give me the creeps.”

  I hung the gowns on the rail that the rider had required and headed back downstairs to fetch the next two hundred pounds of glamour.

  Chapter Eight

  Ray and Dash were hunkered on a couple of upturned buckets with a large tin bath between them.

  “How’s it going?” I asked, popping my head into the desolate downstairs ‘Parlour’ that would, once upon a time, have been the receiving room for the landlord of the pub.

  Two heads – identical bleach blond French crops and jet black eyebrows over midnight dark eyes – popped up.

  “Alright, shirter,” said Dash.

  “’Ere, this shit’s playin’ havoc wiv me manicure,” Ray sniggered, peeling a label from a beer bottle and slapping it on his forehead. “We’re gonna need more hot water soon.”

  “An’ if you need any tonic water, give us a shout,” his identical twin brother said, slapping an identical label on his forehead.

  “Well, it aint, strickly, tonic. It’s ever fizzin…”

  “Effervescent,” his brother corrected

  “Whatever: it’s fizzy stuff for when you get the squits on ‘oliday. We got a job lot off Yog Stopidoros.”

  “If you slap it in a shot of gin,” said the other one, “nobody’d ever know the difference – just like Schweppes, it is. With the added bonus that you ain’t gonna accidentally shit yourself.”

  “Um,” I said, wondering if this afternoon could get any weirder, “I think we’re OK for tonic right now.”

  “Well, let us know,” they chorused and went back to peeling the not to be sold individually labels off of the beer bottles I planned on selling individually this evening.

  Dash and Ray were my brother Paddy’s stepsons. Their mum Tash had suggested I could save a few quid on stock by using the vast quantities of Eastern European and bulk-buy beers that her dad had stocked in his garage. “Course, I’ll need to strip off the giveaway labels,” I had commented.

  Tash had put down her needlework (she’d taken, lately, to making samplers featuring quotes from the works of Mickey Spillane) and fixed me with a rather sardonic stare. “Mate, if you really think anyone’s reading the labels of their beer bottles, you need to get out more.”

  As I headed out to collect the dresses, I passed Caz, Jenny and Dominic Mouret and heard Jen saying “Absolute bloody nightmare. Wish I’d never said a word,” to which Mouret made some soothing comments. “I’m like a dog on a bloody leash, Dom,” she snapped, as I headed for the door. “And Dad’s not much better.”

  I reached the door just as it swung open and a small, rather mousey redhead with a broad West Country accent barrelled in. She was dressed in what can only be described as a tartan kaftan, strung with enough beads to fuel a whole Mardi Gras. The remaining gowns were flung carelessly over one of her shoulders, a series of shoulder bags slung over the other and both hands held out before her, clutching three vanity cases.

  “So sorry,” she said in a broad West Country accent. “I’m Liz. Liz Britton. Makeup and hair?” she prompted. “You must be Danny.”

  “Here,” I said, “give me a few things to carry up.”

  “Cheers.” Liz dumped the frocks
into my arms, rearranged the shoulder bags and vanity cases and headed in the direction I’d indicated by a nod of the head.

  As we headed across the bar, I decided once again to clarify the reality of the situation. “You know that Lyra’s only doing three songs and a bit of chat, right?”

  “That’s the deal,” she answered.

  “It’s just that, from what I remember, Cher had less wardrobe for Caesar’s Palace.”

  “That’s Lyra,” Liz smiled. “Once a diva, always a diva...”

  As we approached Lyra’s dressing room door, it suddenly swung open and a flustered looking Ali Carter almost collided with us.

  Ali Carter is one of those women who seem, permanently, to be aged somewhere between twenty and fifty. She’d been bar-tending at the Marq for longer than anyone could remember. Today she was dressed in a solid but slightly dowdy smock blouse over a pair of supermarket brand jeans and a pair of clogs that looked like they’d been purchased some time before decimalisation. This was topped off with a utilitarian haircut, minimal makeup and a face now showing a mixture of hurt, anger and confusion. I didn’t know what we’d just missed but, whatever it was, it had totally destabilised her.

  There was no sign of Morgan: I guessed that, as he hadn’t passed Liz Britton and me on our way across the bar, he’d left the pub by the back door.

  I was just about to ask Ali what was up when she turned, a hard glint in her eye and addressed Lyra. “Smirnoff, Absolut or Finlandia, Ms Day?”

  Liz made a noise in her throat that was somewhere between a cough and a squawk of surprise. Lyra, who’d been picking unseen lint from the shoulder of her black silk blouse, clenched her fists so tightly that her knuckles showed white.

  “I beg your pardon,” she said, icily.

  “The vodka, Ms Day. The vodka you just ordered me to bring. Would you like Smirnoff, Absolut or Finlandia?”

  Lyra Day raised an immaculately plucked eyebrow, lifted the lid on her jewellery box, withdrew a drop earring of green crystals and made a show of holding it against her earlobe, whilst staring into the mirror. “I’m afraid there’s been a misunderstanding, dear. Everyone knows that I’m a recovering alcoholic. You must have misheard me. Coffee,” she said brightly, turning around and tossing the earring back into the box. “Strong and black, there’s a good girl.”