The Life of Lee

by Lee Evans

  The next morning I did my customary it’s-a-new-day-let’s-get-cracking routine. From very early, I was at the call box dialling up vacancies from the paper, but I quickly found there was nothing out there. I was either too late, or I wasn’t qualified enough, or they just didn’t like the sound of my voice.

  I gently replaced the receiver, despondently walked from the call box and stood on the corner of the street. I was staring up at the phone lines above my head that criss-crossed the road, shooting off in all different directions. My eye followed the line to other telegraph poles, then angled off to buildings all the way down the road into the distance. I thought of all the places they could go, even under the sea and to other countries, across towns and cities, offices and factories, hospitals and police stations, everywhere. Then I thought back to where I was standing, right underneath one such line. It held all that potential and yet here I was, jobless and useless. I felt so insignificant. A nothing. I was throwing in the towel, admitting defeat. Mrs Taylor was right all those years ago. What those other pupils were looking at on that day was a failure.

  I was officially a loser, a misfit who fitted in nowhere. Even if I managed to get a job, I couldn’t hold on to it because I kept messing up one way or another. I spent my life trying to conform, going out of my way to meet other people’s wishes. I was a happy-go-lucky bloke, always looking on the positive side, but to whom nothing positive ever happened. I was always friendly to people, but I had no close friends. I liked to be a part of everything, but I was a part of nothing.

  I drifted off home, drew the lounge curtains and sat quietly on the floor. I tucked my face into my knees, covering my head with my hands to cut out the world and began to cry.

  It might have been hours later – it felt like late afternoon – when I heard the curtains being pulled back violently. Bright light ripped into the room. I blinked my eyes open and standing over me was Heather.

  ‘What do you think you are doing?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Heather, but I have let you down. I can’t find a job. I am nothing, a failure. You can throw me out if you like. I would completely understand. That’s how it is.’

  ‘No, let me tell you how it is. They’re cutting the electric off tomorrow if we don’t pay the bill. We had the last red one yesterday. It’s the same with the gas. We haven’t paid for the flat in months, and we have survived on clocking up money on a credit card which needs paying off. Plus, the bank that likes to say yes have just told me no. So I want you to get up off your arse, get out that door and find something. Please!’ Suddenly, she cracked. She slumped on to the couch and burst into tears. I gave her a hug. I had known we were in serious trouble, but as usual I had blocked out the full extent of it.

  I got to my feet and stormed out of the door with a new sense of determination. Heather was right. What was wrong with me, I thought, giving up like that, after what she had just gone through? I should be ashamed.

  I reached the call box, dived in, plunged my hand into my coat pocket and whipped out a torn corner piece of newspaper. I slapped it against the back wall just above the phone and stared at it for a moment. It was the scribbled note I had written a few days earlier from The Stage newspaper while Heather slept next to me: ‘Talent Show’. Underneath, I had hurriedly copied out the telephone number in South Woodham.

  I hesitantly lifted the receiver, jammed it under one side of my chin and began dialling the number. I was concerned as the competition was to be held that night, so I hoped I wasn’t too late to enter. The man on the other end of the phone informed me there was only one place left and asked what he should enter me as. I hesitated. I didn’t know what I was, so I just blurted out, ‘A singer, aaaaargh? A singer-instrumentalist.’ He sounded quite impressed. I asked if there would be a piano; he said that there would be and that he would mic it up for me ready to play.

  I calmly thanked him and gently replaced the receiver. I stumbled out from the call box on to the pavement in a daze. I bent over, putting my hands on my knees. I felt very light-headed and thought for a moment I was going to throw up. My whole body began to tremble. Thoughts began to whizz around inside my head. What I was doing? Basically, I had just lied to that man. I’m not a singer-instrumentalist, I thought, I’m a nothing. I have never performed in my life. Oh sure, I’d had seen acts all right, lots of them. I had been around performers since I was a sperm. But that didn’t mean I could get up there and do it myself.

  I spent the walk home thinking through various scenarios. ‘I will open with perhaps a guitar number. Then maybe I should get on the piano and do a bit of twelve-bar blues to get the place jumping. To finish off, I should get back on the guitar and work up a bit of a sweat.’ I tried convincing myself everything would be all right. ‘I mean, I only have to perform a ten-minute spot – what’s that? Three songs, I could do that easily.’ But then doubt would creep in. ‘Why are you doing this, Lee, you fool?’

  I didn’t know what might happen. There would be no time to rehearse. It was a gamble, but at least I felt I was doing something. By now I didn’t even care why, how, what or where. I suppose I had nothing to lose. What did it matter if I was booed off the stage, chased out of town? At least that would be one step up from where I was right now: nowhere.

  Even if I never set foot on a stage again, it was a throw of the dice that was worth trying. A little voice in the back of my head kept egging me on. Despite my wavering, somehow it felt perfectly natural to be on the edge, in a situation of uncertainty. I liked the feeling, the buzz, the risk. I hated the awareness that I might suffer the humiliation of failure, but at the same time that was the whole point. It was like stepping over a border to see what might be on the other side.

  This felt like something I knew about, a world I had dwelt in. For the first time in my life, I reckoned there was a minuscule bit of good fortune in my favour. At the same time, I knew I might have to suffer some form of hardship or even humiliation to get it. But I liked the idea of punishment; I had to suffer in order to get something. I felt much more comfortable with the idea that if anything decent should come my way, I must first be afflicted by some kind of sacrifice, otherwise I wouldn’t deserve it. I was used to failure, to being knocked. I was an idiot, a disappointment, a loser. I was so used to that tag, I damn well expected it. If I was to be treated as a fool, I would act like one.

  At the front door to the flat, I slammed the key into the lock. Before entering, I paused for a moment. ‘Right, I shall go inside, have a quick wash, grab my amp and guitar, then head off to South Woodham.’ I gave a little careless shrug of my shoulders. The only thing I was doing was gambling the bus fare to get there. In the end, I thought, if it all goes wrong and is a huge embarrassment, so what?

  I didn’t care any more. I was fed up with being kicked in the teeth. I’d had enough indignity, shame and struggle to last me a lifetime. I stamped my foot on the front step and looked briefly up to the sky. ‘Enough, enough now.’

  I turned the key and entered the flat.

  37. What Was This Strange Feeling I Was Experiencing?

  Everyone was there, the managing director of the brewery, the local newspaper and an audience of several hundred packing the venue to the rafters. Then I noticed the pub door opening and Heather enter and search the room for me. She needn’t have bothered looking; she was about to see me – everyone was.

  ‘He says he’s a singer-instrumentalist – let’s see if he’s right! Let’s hear it, ladies and gentlemen, for the last act in tonight’s competition … Mr Lee Evans!’ the compere announced. As I lurked nervously offstage at the back of the venue, I heard it booming out, vibrating, shifting the hot, heavy, thick air around me. The sound was resonating from two huge speakers pitched on stands either side of the stage like sentries that marked the gateway to another world.

  ‘About time, too,’ I thought, ‘thank God.’ I was relieved, just wanting to get on with it and over with. I was on the verge of explodi
ng after having to mill around at the back of the jam-packed, lively room the whole night. The fact that it had dragged on so long had only added to the tense, rowdy atmosphere in the venue. The extra time had given the rammed pub more opportunity to get cheap promotional beer down as many necks as possible.

  My ears were attuned to every shriek, shout and heckle that the last performer had had to battle through. Every fibre in my body now racked with nerves, I held my hand up just to confirm to myself that it was shaking. I had waited for my turn, half-watching all the other acts as they had done their ten minutes. Mostly, though, my head had been dipped and my eyes had been fixed upon the floor at my feet, not really able to face what would eventually be my fate.

  Instead, it felt more comfortable just to listen, assessing my own chances as, one by one, the acts got better and better. This only fed the growing voice of doubt which was now so easily drowning out what had been the whisper of such certainty and hope on the bus on the way there. I remembered when I was a kid, standing, waiting, watching by the side of the stage, and thinking it was all so magical. But not now, not from where I was standing – this was a different story.

  I used to wonder why almost all performers looked so solemn and their eyes seemed so fixed and concentrated while either waiting to go on or just coming off the stage. Now I knew. That’s when they began to doubt themselves. I hadn’t known that was how they felt.

  When I was a boy spending months travelling theatres and working men’s clubs with Mum and Dad, I only felt the excitement, the wonder, skill and brilliance of all those comedians, singers, dancers and musicians. If I wasn’t there watching from the wings, I would be tucked away back in some seedy dressing room, listening to the muffled sounds of what I imagined was going on out in the club, and which always sounded so intoxicating. Now I was experiencing the reality.

  After announcing my name, the compere pointed to where I was standing at the back of the room, and the crowd parted like the Red Sea to allow me a passageway through to the stage. They began their exuberant beer-fuelled whooping and clapping. I felt I was a lamb to the slaughter as I stood trembling, still pinned against the back wall, hair ruffled up like a hairdresser had just finished drying and lifted the towel off.

  The image was not helped by my faithful but rancid Oxfam suit, which was now showing signs of real wear, with one leg shorter than the other, one arm hanging off, a torn pocket and a gaping hole on the underside of the trousers bigger than the bomb-bay doors of the Enola Gay. It would have been more humane to have taken the damn thing outside and given it a fatal injection of dry-cleaning fluid. I gripped my old cumbersome Vox amp in one hand and held on for dear life to my electric guitar in the other.

  This was it. I couldn’t even think of how badly we needed that money – the only reason I was there. No, I would have gladly swapped any amount of cash not to be where I was at that moment. I wouldn’t have even cared if we had been thrown out of the wretched flat and made to sleep under Southend Pier for the rest of our lives as two mumbling hobos.

  It felt as if I was held to the wall by Velcro, but somehow I found the strength to peel myself off it. I forced my feet out in front of me to make my way along the corridor of people, all their eyes now fixed on me. I almost sleep-walked towards the set of three steps that led up on to the stage where all the lights were focused.

  I could see everyone clapping and shouting, but I couldn’t hear anything at all. My body was so on edge, my senses now completely in tune with the situation. The only sound surreally audible was the rustle of my suit as it bent and twisted with my movement – that, the sole of my shoe thumping against the ground and the loud deep gasp of air forced in to fill my lungs before rushing out again.

  Time seemed to slow right down. People’s voices sounded like a record with someone’s finger pressed upon it. I pushed out another debilitating step in front of me. I felt as though I was wearing an anvil as a shoe; my knees wobbled and bent around in their sockets as I had to concentrate to find the strength to hold them in place. I was sure they would buckle from under me at any point, weighed down as I was by the amp and guitar that now felt like huge, great, cumbersome boulders. Every muscle had now turned to blancmange; the blood had drained off and left them as soon as my name had been called out and was now probably languishing somewhere around the Kursaal Ballroom on Southend seafront, doing a lively version of the mambo bop de do da friggin’ day.

  I forced another step forward, then another. I would only have to climb the three steps and I would be there, in front of all these people. My heart was now in my mouth, pumping at full steam ahead as more coal was thrown on the furnace. I heaved myself up the first step, my stomach bubbling away like it was a Jacuzzi at a swingers’ party.

  I took another step; just one more and I’d be on the stage. I was hardly doing anything that physical, but sweat, as though it were abandoning a sinking ship, poured out from every nook and cranny of my body at such a rate that my suit and shirt were drenched through. I was starting to resemble someone who had just got off the wet and wild ride at a theme park.

  I lifted my leg up to take the final step, but then something unexpected happened. The compere who had just introduced me turned to exit the stage. He was obviously leaving me to it, but as he swished past me at speed, my instincts now having been heightened to such a degree, it made me jump. I didn’t quite know what it was – he was simply a blur that came out of nowhere, unexpectedly rushing towards me. Just catching him out of the corner of my eye like that made me flinch.

  It put me off my concentration and, as a result, my feet did not quite clear the lip of the top step, but instead struck the front of it. The top half of my body then toppled over and the sheer weight of the Vox amp shot me forward like an out-of-control firework. So, I imagined, there I went, straight into the losers’ basket, arriving like some mal-coordinated lunatic on to the stage and then, just as suddenly, disappearing again below the heads of the audience like a drowning maniac.

  On the way, I had managed to crash face-first into the microphone stand, which had now joined in the proceedings. I, along with the mic stand and everything I was carrying, then careered like a panicked pack horse of electrical equipment across the small, temporary platform into a loud amplified thumping pile just beneath the massive banner stretched across the stage that read: ‘Talent Show. Winner gets £250’. Well, I thought from my crumpled heap underneath it, that’s me out then.

  My face now buried on the stage beneath a pile of equipment, I could hear only silence. The whole room seemed dumbstruck, trying to fathom exactly who, what or even where I was.

  Deeply frustrated, I winced at my embarrassment. This was not a good start. I had blown it completely. I imagined what Heather might be thinking. Having asked her friend to drive her there, she had obviously wanted to follow me after our small row earlier. I had stormed out of the door with my guitar, and she, of course, had demanded to know what I was up to. I told her, ‘I don’t know, but I just need to do this!’ I had left her looking annoyed and perplexed. Now here I was, a heap on the floor, our only chance of keeping anything we’d ever had abandoned at that last step.

  I scrambled to my feet and, in a futile attempt at covering my initial mistake, I carried on setting up the amp and guitar as if nothing had happened. I was under the impression that if I could get that going and start playing something, then maybe I had the narrowest of chances of getting away with it. But I panicked, thinking there was too long a silence during which something should be happening. I felt the audience becoming a little impatient and everything began getting all muddled up.

  I slammed the plug of the amp into an extension lead at the back of the stage, but then from sheer nervous energy started manically leaping around the tiny stage area, trying to organize my guitar. Its lead had become a frustration as whenever I tried plugging it into the amplifier, the volume was inadvertently turned up way too loud and just shrieked with feedback,
causing me to jump back with fright. The noise of me landing would then rattle the echo-springs inside the archaic amp, resulting in another loud burst of ear-splitting racket. Another leap back then loosened the strap on my guitar, which fell to the ground just before I attempted a strum.

  By now things had got so out of control, I didn’t know what I was doing. I was all over the place and could see any hope of even remaining on stage fading fast. I looked for help at the side of the stage, where I knew the compere-stroke-DJ stood behind his record decks. But he appeared to be laughing so hard at my misfortune that I couldn’t get any understandable response out of him.

  I felt so deflated, mortified at being laughed at. I couldn’t believe how badly it was all going. I just didn’t envisage this happening at all. Eventually, the compere jabbed his finger towards the piano on the other side of the stage: ‘Get on that, you nut case!’ he cackled over the now-growing laughter from the crowd before dissolving into a fit of hysterics again.

  As I stumbled over towards the piano, I picked up the mic stand on the way. I was going to use it to sing into, but it was now just a mangled, floppy, useless piece of uncontrollable metal in my hand, all the tightening screws having been loosened in the commotion.

  I tried desperately to find some dignity at the piano, but it was made completely impossible by the continuing unpredictability of the mic stand. Every time I tried tightening it into one position, another joint would somehow loosen and it would fall to pieces again. At the same time, I was trying to position the piano stool, but was frustrated that I was unable to get it to the correct height. One moment I was sitting at the keyboard like a small child, the notes just below my chin; the next, after desperate attempts to raise it, it looked like I was sitting on a bar stool and the keys were so far away I couldn’t even reach them.