Girls' Night In
Page 38
Daisy Waugh
Daisy Waugh used to write a weekly newspaper column from Los Angeles about her attempts to become a Hollywood scriptwriter. Today she writes two weekly columns for the Sunday Times. Her last three novels, Honeyville, Last Dance With Valentino and Melting the Snow on Hester Street, are set in early 20th Century America. She has also written a non-fiction book about the absurdities and indignities of modern motherhood, called I Don’t Know Why She Bothers (Guilt Free Motherhood For Thoroughly Modern Women). She and her family live in London.
A Form of Release
Daisy Waugh
Cocà di Cocà woke up to the sound of her own sweet voice on the radio that morning, singing the song that had once been the nation’s anthem. It was the song that had scooped her from nineteen years of innocent obscurity. The song which Danny wrote for her, which she stole from him, which would forever make the name Cocà di Cocà synonymous with a short and irrelevant moment in British history.
At the time the song was playing (late April, early May 1985) Cocà used to wear a lacy beret which sent the adolescents wild. For a month or two she couldn’t climb out of a taxi without being mobbed. She couldn’t cross the road. She couldn’t buy her own lavatory paper.
Oh! Sasha dooo
Sasha doo Sasha daa
The ja-ja jolting in your heart
Has me a gaga from my start – Sasha!
Oh! Sasha daa-doo-daa
A lifetime later she lay alone in her king-size Ethiopian silver bed while the song on the radio invaded her dreams. She was in the assembly hall of her old school again and Danny was there, elegant and loose-limbed as ever, standing beside her on the stage, just as it should have been, just as it had been that beautiful July night, the night of the Fifth-Form Leavers’ Disco. He was looking across at her and they were both singing – he was grinning at her with so much mischief and love – and then the voice of the DJ broke in and Danny was saying, in an idiotic American accent: Ooo, remember that? What a fab song. 8.17. Traffic news coming up … not looking good out there is it Jerry?
Cocà di Cocà hadn’t woken up to the sound of her own success in years. She could have taken it either way; as a happy reminder of how sweet things had been, or a cruel reminder of how much she had lost. It came to the same thing anyway. Cocà di Cocà woke in a council flat in South Kensington with a stream of tears trickling down her cheeks.
Today was the first day of her relaunch. The first day of her second relaunch, to be more precise. And this time she was doing it on her own; no record company, no public relations adviser. And most definitely, no manager.
So ‘relaunch’ was rather a grandiose way to describe it. Cocà di Cocà’s second relaunch consisted of a single interview. A charming girl called Annabel something, from the Saturday Express magazine, had called her up quite out of the blue, inviting her to feature in the first of what promised to be a weekly series of glittering celebrity interviews, for which, in exchange for a lovely full-page colour picture, the celebrity was required to reminisce, in situ, about their days at school.
‘It’s going to be amazing,’ the charming girl had explained, ‘because, if you think about it, school is really the last place you’d ever expect to find a celebrity!’
Cocà said she thought the series sounded like a great idea and accepted the invitation at once. ‘But I must insist – and, Annabel, you may know from your clippings that I always insist on this when I’m interviewed – but I must bring along my own make-up artist.’
Annabel said the budget didn’t stretch to a make-up artist. ‘If you want to bring your own, then of course – But we won’t be able to pay for it.’
Cocà di Cocà hummed and hawed a while, backtracked, and a date was fixed.
It was from a desert of misery, inactivity and regret that the Saturday Express interview came along so it gave Cocà something to focus on. It also stirred a lot of old memories. She was lying in bed a few nights later, reflecting on her life’s mistakes, when it occurred to her that she had so much to tell readers it couldn’t possibly be fitted into a single page. She decided to write an autobiography and she climbed out of bed to begin it there and then.
The Sasha-Doo Girl, she wrote (because that rang bells with everybody) an autobiography by Cocà di Cocà
And she would dedicate it to Danny. An Apology, she thought. To Danny. An Apology to Danny After All These Years. Or – To Danny. I still love you. After all these years.
Wording of the dedication kept her up until morning. But she felt better than she had in months. It was wonderful to have a project again.
Readers may already have guessed that at thirty-four years old, Cocà di Cocà was what might be described as washed up. A minor industry joke. Soon after the first hit single, for reasons that she never fully understood, and which were possibly never fully understandable, her record company went cold on her. The day before her second single was due to be released they sent a motorbike delivery man to her flat with a meanly worded letter severing all contact with her.
‘Such is life in the nefarious world of show-biz,’ her manager Charlie had said blithely. ‘We’ll get you a better contract somewhere else. Stop fussing and come to bed.’
But soon after that Charlie’s boss Lionel decided, quite accurately, that Charlie’s drug addiction was affecting his judgement, and fired him.
Charlie and Cocà spent the late eighties growing prematurely jowly together. They went to a lot of parties and took a lot of cocaine. They were on toilet-cubicle terms with some of the biggest names in the industry but still nobody wanted to work with them. Charlie might have set up on his own except, by the time he thought of it, he and Cocà had spent every penny he had ever earned. He was ruined. In the winter of 1989 there was a flurry of publicity when the Sasha-Doo Girl and her former manager, known to the industry as Gorgeous Charlie, checked into a drying-out clinic together.
THE SASHA-DOO GIRL
AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY BY
COCÀ DI COCÀ
page 43
At nineteen years old Cocà di Cocà (or Melanie, as I was called before Charlie came along) had the world at her feet. I was fearless and carefree and, though I say it who shouldn’t, I was as pretty as a peach. I drank and, yes, I took drugs. Life was one big party!
Danny and I had known each other since we were five but we didn’t fall in love until our last year at school. Danny had always been so clever and quiet and sort of smallish. But then during the summer holiday of ’81 he had his growth spurt. I remember clocking him that first day of term. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. Suddenly he had these broad shoulders and lovely long legs and that curly brown fringe falling over his blue eyes – I thought I was going to faint! He looked so gentle and self-possessed, as though he were thinking about something so important – like love, I suppose. I felt a lump in my throat. Something about his quiet savoir-faire, if you know what I mean, suddenly made me feel ever so lonely.
He glanced across at me just as I was ogling him and I blushed! Me! I made the boys blush! And that, if you can believe it, was the beginning of a very very special friendship. We set up the band – or rather Danny did. After we left school I would have happily chucked in the whole business. It was Danny who persevered. He wrote the songs, organized the gigs. He was forever bugging me about rehearsals! And when we performed, because we were so very much in love, there was a sort of magic to our act which, I’m told, made everybody who watched us feel like life was beautiful. If only Charlie hadn’t barged in and bust us up when he did we could have been so happy together. We could have made it on our own terms. Danny and Me. Like Sonny and Cher (only not quite!) At the top of the charts forever …
The first time Gorgeous Charlie set eyes on Melanie, or Cocà di Cocà as she was to be called from then on, she was wriggling her lovely hips in time to Danny’s song, on a drab little platform in the corner of a pub in Earl’s Court. Gorgeous Charlie, of the golden tan, the sunstreaked hair and the real Rolex (no longer) happe
ned to have been in urgent search of new talent that night, due to the fact that a week earlier Lionel, the head of the company, had given him what amounted in the world of pop to a Very Formal Warning. Gorgeous Charlie hadn’t been justifying his gorgeous salary of late and Lionel’s patience had run out. Lionel wanted results. Lionel wanted a new sensation. He wanted a stunning kid with wiggly hips and white teeth and a tight arse and a lovely grin. And if Gorgeous Charlie wanted to keep his job then he had better be listening, because Lionel wanted her standing in front of his desk by first thing Friday morning.
It was late Thursday evening when Charlie stumbled into that Earl’s Court pub. She was the thirty-third white-toothed girl he’d seen in four days, and the girls were beginning to merge. His secretary had kept a record of their bust sizes, hair length, smile widths, agent contact numbers etc etc, but then at six-thirty that evening, just as Charlie was about to call one or other of them in, the secretary admitted that the list had been ‘temporarily mislaid’. Whatever. A sensation-free Friday and a salary-free future loomed …
Until Melanie. Half-past ten on a Thursday night and, frankly, she was no worse than the best of them. Nice wiggly hips, tall and blonde, with big blue eyes and a delicate upturned nose. Yes. An ideal woman, thought Charlie. She looked like a bit like a Barbie Doll. She was the one.
THE SASHA-DOO GIRL
AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY BY
COCÀ DI COCÀ
page 82
It was horrible the way Charlie and Lionel split us up. During the first few meetings Charlie didn’t give us even a single hint as to what they were actually up to. It was only on our fourth visit to the offices that Danny was quietly pulled aside …
‘Danny old boy,’ said fat Lionel from behind his fat shiny desk. ‘Won’t you sit down?’
Danny knew. He’d always known. He just didn’t want to – ‘Have you got a toilet, sir?’
‘I think you’re an exceptionally talented young man.’
‘Oh!’
‘I think you’re – a remarkable performer – an extraordinary performer – and a good song writer, too.’
‘Oh!’
‘However I don’t think your interests are best served performing beside Melanie. Have you thought about that?’
‘Well –’
‘I think you are a much more – complicated – personality. You are, as I say, an exceptionally talented young man and to get the best out of both of you – you’re not going to like this Danny, my dear – But I see you as a solo artist. A sort of Bob Dylan for the eighties. I’m going to split you up …’
‘That’s –’
‘To be frank, I see your solo career as having a little bit more depth, a little more longevity than our lovely friend Melanie’s –’ He allowed himself a conspiratorial smile. ‘Now, what I want you to do is to go home and get cracking on some new material. I want you to write until your knuckles are raw! Do you understand me?’
‘Do I? … Me?’
‘I want you to close the curtains, lock the door, take the phone off the hook. I want you to live like a hermit for six months, Danny. And in six months I’m going to get you back in here and we’re going to work out what we want to put on your album. How does that sound?’
‘Cr – we – I mean. Fucking Hell!’
Lionel chuckled. ‘But first of all I’d very much like to purchase the song you and Melanie were singing for us this afternoon. Will that be all right with you?’
‘Of course! My God! Of course!’
‘Excellent … I expect to be seeing a good deal of you in the future, my boy. I have big plans for you.’
THE SASHA-DOO GIRL
AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY BY
COCÀ DI COCÀ
page 84
… sign here please.’ – I never did find out exactly what went on in there but the song he sold that day was the song that sent the nation crazy five months later. He sold it for £220!
Danny obviously realized pretty quickly he’d been duped, which is why he acted so weirdly when he came to say goodbye. I remember I was in the process of analysing a video Charlie had made of one of my dance routines and he put a hand on my shoulder and stood behind me just watching the screen.
After a while he said, ‘It’s really good, Mel.’
He sounded so peculiar. I turned to look at him and there were tears in his eyes. I’d never seen him cry before. ‘I think I’m going to head off,’ he said. ‘Just been talking to Lionel …’
He said Lionel wanted him to concentrate on his writing for a while. He said, ‘Lionel says he thinks it would be better for both our careers if we just – didn’t see each other for a couple of months. He says I’ve got to write.’
‘Write what?’ I said. I suppose I sounded stupid but I knew him. Danny wasn’t a writer. Danny was a born performer. Like me.
‘Just writing stuff,’ he said. ‘Whatever happens, Mel, I’ll be thinking of you. I love you. Always. You won’t forget me, will you?’
‘Don’t be an idiot,’ I said. ‘We’re going to be seeing each other again in a couple of weeks! Once all the fuss has died down.’ But I couldn’t look at him. At the bottom of my heart – and this is what still gets to me – I understood. I understood exactly what Danny was saying. He had been sent on his way.
It was the last time I ever saw him.
Cocà di Cocà married Gorgeous Charlie shordy after they left the drying-out clinic. She had hoped, quite unreasonably, that Danny would read about it first and somehow come to reclaim her. But the occasion excited barely a whisper of media interest and they were married at the Chelsea Registry Office without incident. Charlie, drug free and bursting with enthusiasm for his one and only client, attempted to stage a relaunch off the back of it. It was humiliating. Cocà was persuaded by Charlie (no longer creditworthy) to take out a twenty-thousand-pound loan to pay for the celebrity-studded party. They hired a room at the Café Royal, and organized for all the waiters to be dressed in Sasha-Doo Girl berets which had been specially made for the occasion. Not a single celebrity or member of the press bothered to turn up. (And neither, Cocà couldn’t help noticing, did Danny, to whom she had sent an invitation via his parent’s old address.)
Cocà and Charlie never really recovered. She sold everything but the Ethiopian bed to repay the loan and made the first of many visits to her local DSS. Poor old Charlie took to dealing in cocaine.
Oh! Sasha dooo
Sasha doo Sasha daa
The ja-ja jolting in your heart
Has me a gaga from my start – Sasha!
Oh! Sasha daa-doo-daa
So, Cocà di Cocà, awoken by the sound of her failure, wiped the tears away and dragged her skinny body out of bed. Her head ached. She’d been up until four writing her memoirs and it was apparent from evidence on the desk that she’d polished off two-and-a-half bottles of wine in the process. She was meant to be meeting Annabel from the Saturday Express in two hours’ time – and she looked disgusting. A large spot had developed between her eyebrows while she was sleeping, her long blonde hair looked like a wig, and her skin was yellow and waxy.
The telephone rang. But it was only Gorgeous Charlie, her devastatingly attractive ex-manager, ex-husband, ex-human being; Cocà di Cocà’s last remaining stalker and her only remaining friend. It was always Charlie. He was currently going through a clean phase, which meant he never slept. She let it ring.
‘Cocà? It’s me. Come on, pick up the bloody phone. I know you’re there. Did you hear it? Did you? I know you’re there. For Christ’s sake, you stupid cow, you’ve just been on the radio!’
She picked up. ‘Leave me alone, Charlie. I’ve got a meeting.’
‘A meeting!’ He laughed incredulously. ‘Who with?’
And though she’d sworn she wouldn’t tell him, she’d absolutely promised herself she was not going to let him ruin everything again – she just couldn’t resist it.
‘Come on, Cocà! The dentist? The doctor? The hairdresser? Who with?’
‘The Press?’ There was panic in his voice. ‘The Press! What the fuck is that supposed to mean?’ And then, immediately, ‘Well, it’s fantastic. It’s perfect timing. They will have heard the song. I think we can work it to our advantage. What we need to do now is –’
And perhaps it was because the tears were still damp on her skinny cheeks, or because she was so lonely, or because she felt sorry for him, or perhaps it was simply the force of fifteen years’ habit, but Cocà di Cocà told him – the time, the place, exactly what she had said to the journalist, exactly what the journalist had said to her. He told Cocà she’d done it all completely wrong and that he’d meet her up at the school to repair the damage. As he hung up she was still begging him to stay away.
Charlie called her mobile three times while she drove from South Kensington to the old school in Ealing. The fourth time he called she switched the machine to divert and tried to concentrate on the ordeal ahead … The last time she’d been at the school had been the night of the Fifth-Form disco. She had been sixteen. She had been in love. She had been with Danny … (Charlie was right, of course. The journalist might well have heard her song on the radio that morning. So perhaps Cocà could ask her for advice about the autobiography. Perhaps the nice girl knew of a friendly publisher.) … And she and Danny had sung the song that had vaulted her to stardom. She and Danny had stood on the stage in the old assembly hall and Danny had gazed across at her and she had never felt so beautiful or so alive … (And then of course the Express had – what? One million readers? Seven million? Who knew? Who knew where all this might lead?) It was another chance. One last chance to make something of herself.
She parked her dirty old car in the teacher’s car park (virtually empty; it was a Saturday), pulled out a mirror and added a squeeze more to the thick layer of beige that already smothered her cheeks.
‘Cola de Coco? Is it you?’ A pretty girl in a bright red trouser-suit was grinning vacuously at Cocà’s window. Cocà clambered out of the car as quickly as she could. She had not wanted the journalist to see it.