Having gone out together with Rex in the Summer term, Sarson and I maintained cordial relations, but we did not get any closer. There was something in his smiling, scheming nature which either prevented intimacy, or warned of its dangers. I did not look forward to being so close to him, but the world of Rex Raymond had captivated me and held out a prize for my tolerance of Sarson. The question that I did not ask till later, too late, is why Rex wants us there.
Sarson and Mort are there to meet me at Seabourne station with the Rolls. I do not know what to say to Sarson, but that is all right, because he chatters all the way back to the Metropole. He tells me about the dog track that Rex took him to last night, and how he won five pounds. He is full of repressed excitement, and I am sure that it not simply the dog racing. I notice that his voice is beginning to crack; mine is still a treble.
I’ll give you the memories that come to me. They are clear, but mostly they have no date. The first night there we go to see the show — I’ll come to that later. But I remember the first night that Sarson and I share a room together. We are talking a long time about the show and everything, in whispers, though there is no danger of anyone overhearing. I fall asleep. The window is open and we can faintly hear the waves scratching the shingle beach. I fall asleep and then I am awake. A weight is on top of me. I look up and find I am staring into the face of Sarson two inches away from mine. He is lying on top of me, naked and smiling, that much I can see in the dim light. I think he senses my alarm, because all he does is to say, ‘Ha!ha!ha!’ in a conspiratorial, whispery sort of voice and slide off me.
I don’t know what to make of it all, but I know I have entered a new and strange world. It is frightening and exciting in about equal measures. Nothing is said about this incident in the morning. We have breakfast in the dining room with Rex, and discuss the show.
That is very clear in my mind, because I saw it many times. It became an obsession with me, and with Sarson too, but I think for different reasons.
Oddly enough Rex’s act was the one I remember least clearly. He occupies much of the second half of the performance, with the first half being taken up with what he, but nobody else, calls his ‘support act..’ It is smooth and accomplished and, most importantly, rapturously received. I imagine that he must be on the pinnacle of happiness, but this is not the case. He is suspicious and insecure. He is troubled that there are others waiting to take his place, to depose Rex, the king.
I think he is wrong. He has a record player in his suite and he is always playing records, his own and other people’s, and restlessly comparing them. I remember he played me some records of a new man who is becoming all the rage in America. Priestly, I think his name was. Rex thought a lot of him, but I didn’t. Negro muck if you ask me — why are you looking at me like that? But he wasn’t a black, apparently. Rex thinks this new type of music will sweep aside what he is doing. I doubt it. It might have been big in the States for a while but would never have caught on in England. I wonder what happened to Mr Priestly. Do you know? He could still be alive, I suppose.
For me, the part of his show I love best is the dancers. This is mainly because of Roxanne, who is becoming a friend. But to me, the Dave Dixon Dancers are the essence of theatrical glamour. After the overture the red velvet curtains of the theatre womb part, and your vision is filled with light. Into them comes this line of girls, all moving and sparkling in unison. They and their ever changing costumes are the punctuation marks of the show, its shape and refrain. I know all their names now, and I am on the innocent edge of loving them for more than their sweetness.
The stage is crammed with spectacle with Carloni’s acrobats and with Mephisto, ‘The Great Illusionist’. I ought to remember him better. I think I can see a small, stout man in white tie and tails who does things with doves. There is a box in which Roxanne, who acts as his assistant, disappears, or is pierced with swords. But off stage he is an unremarkable person. His real name is Dennis Smith and, when he is not quarrelling with his wife in his dressing room, I see him slowly and meticulously poring over a stamp collection.
Then on comes the comedian, Joey King. Joey is, I suppose, in his fifties, red and raddled, with slicked black hair on a fat misshapen head that seems to burst from his collar like a boil on an adolescent’s back. On stage he wears black tie like the rest of them, but, as a concession to comedy, his jacket is composed of some loud check material of the kind you only otherwise see made into trousers for American golfers. ‘Only Jo-King!’, that is his catch phrase which Sarson and I thought was terribly clever, and we used to repeat it a lot, as a sort of secret code between us. We also repeat his other catch phrase which is ‘Here’s one off the top shelf.’ He says that when he’s going to give us a rather naughty joke.
‘Oi! Listen! The Manager’s just gone out for a quick one, so here’s one off the top shelf for you. Fellow goes into a chemist, and he’s a bit how’s-your-father. Know what I mean, Lady? Bet you do, sir! He walks a bit like this. Oops! Now, don’t get any ideas, sir. Goes up to the chemist, he says, ‘I’d like some Vaseline.’ Just like that. ‘I’d like some Vaseline.’ The chemist goes, ‘What’s it for? Is it for chilblains?’ He says, ‘No, it’s for chaps.’ Ooo! Wash my mouth out!’ We repeat this joke without quite knowing what it means, but we know it is funny because it always gets a good laugh, especially from the men: a rather raucous laugh, as if they don’t want to be found out not finding it funny.
He exudes a smell of brandy, and there is always a little patch of white foam on his lower lip. Roxanne tells me it is from the milk of magnesia tablets he takes incessantly for his dyspepsia. ‘He suffers from ulcers something chronic. A lot of comics do,’ she adds knowingly. Whenever I met him back stage or out in the town his reaction was always the same: he would wink at me and say: ‘Hello, son. What d’yer know, eh? What d’yer know?’ This unvarying ritual puzzled me at first, then began to worry me. I began to feel threatened, even persecuted by it, so much so that I consulted Billy Wilshire about it.
‘What am I supposed to say?’ I ask. There is a pause and finally Billy says, with his usual glum expression, ‘Well, why not say: ‘Not much for my age.’’
Next time I see Joey King I try this, and from that moment on I am greeted only with a wink, which is horrible enough. I thank Billy for his advice.
Ah, Billy Willshire! In many ways he is the strangest of the lot. Billy is around fifty, I think, but from a distance you’d think he’s my age, twelve, thirteen that is. He is only a little over five feet tall, so shorter than I am, slender and willowy, and he wears a chestnut coloured toupée and horn-rimmed spectacles. Close to, his face is wizened and worn, and he has a wary look. He is best known for his long-running radio comedy series Billy the Kid. You must remember. Well, the catch phrase then? He plays this naughty little boy of about ten, and at the end of every episode he gets found out and the last line is always: ‘Oo, not the slipper, dad!’ The voice is a husky falsetto with a Lancashire accent. I often catch him looking at me, and he is always ready to talk.
I think he has the same attitude to show business as Rex does; if anything, his view is blacker. ‘Don’t go into the show business, kid,’ he said to me once. ‘It’ll break your heart.’ He always has a bottle of port in his dressing room — ‘for the voice’, he says — and it’s always full at the beginning of the first house and empty by the end of the second. (Most days they do two evening shows back to back.) He always tries to give me some of his port in a plastic cup. It is cheap port — even I know that — it is raw and sticky and gives me a headache. Billy reeks of the stuff during the show. He does a few comedy sketches with Joey and then he has a solo spot, playing the xylophone, finishing off the first half with a version of the William Tell ‘Overture’, very fast. That’s how he started in the business, he tells me, as a child musical prodigy. They called him ‘Little Billy Wilshire, the Miniature Maestro of the Xylophone.’ But that was long ago before the war, when he was younger, but no smaller.
We have chats, Billy and I, in his dressing room, and I’m not sure that I understand them. Mostly he tells me long stories about the friends he has had. They are not proper stories, because they have no beginning and no end and no point. Most of his friends seem to have been sailors: he has a liking for all the services, but the Senior is the one he prefers. ‘I had a friend once. A sailor. Jack, his name was. I used to call him Jack Tar. It was my bit of a joke, see. He liked that. We met on the front in Southsea. You should have seen his arms: big they were, like tree trunks. Muscles, you see. It’s all that pulling on ropes. He used to stay with me at my digs. I was in panto at the King’s playing Little Jack Horner. Mona didn’t mind; that was my landlady. Mind you, no more she should have: I once caught her in full sail on the kitchen table with a gas fitter. ‘Oh, Mr Wilshire,’ she said to me afterwards, ‘you must think I’m a terrible flirt.’ Jack was a lad. He went away. I never saw him again. I found out later he was lost on one of them convoys. Wartime, you see . . .’ Sometimes, after these recitals, which could be tearful if the day’s port bottle was nearly empty, he used to ask me about me and my life. I don’t think he really understood what I told him about school, but he’s interested in Giles Sarson. One day he said to me, ‘You want to watch that friend of yours, that Giles. He’s a growing lad. He’ll be up to all kinds of mischief. I know the sort. I had a friend like that once. Tinker, his name was. He was a tinker and all . . .’
Sometimes in the mornings Rex takes Sarson and me out in the Rolls. Often he drives himself — I think he may be afraid of Mort — and sometimes Roxanne comes too. The best fun is always when Roxanne comes, because she chirrups like a happy bird. She’s a child like me. Rex and Sarson are different somehow, and I can’t quite work out why. I think it’s in the way they take their pleasures. Roxanne and I just enjoy them as they come, and laugh them off when things go wrong. Rex and Sarson are fiercer, more intense, as if they want to suck the life out of their amusements. Rex takes a lot of photos of us all which I never see, and he always gets either Sarson or me to take a picture of him with Roxanne. I can see them through the reflex lens of his expensive camera. He is holding Roxanne’s slim little form close to him, too close, I think, for her comfort. She smiles bravely, though. We go to the races; we go to fun fairs (there isn’t one in Seabourne); once we set off really early and went to France and back, and nearly missed the first house in the evening.
But in the beginning it is all fun, and there is not a cloud in the sky, though there is one thing I see which puzzles me, ‘troubles’ would be too strong a word. We are on our way back from the Arundown races. It is Saturday and, though we’re not going to be late for the first house, Rex has, as usual, cut it pretty fine. He is driving and I, as some special treat, am sitting beside him in the front seat; Sarson and Roxanne are in the back. We are going fast, which is exciting, but not frightening because Rex is a good driver. He concentrates intensely on his driving. The Rolls leaps along like a panther. As we crest a ridge we almost take off and everyone laughs except Rex. He grins though. I see his teeth exposed, clamped on the ever-present Montecristo cigar. I look back at Sarson and Roxanne to share their pleasure. They are both bright-eyed and smiling. Roxanne is wearing a light summer frock of a pinkish floral pattern with a wide skirt. The New Look: you know what I mean. She is fresh and lovely. Sarson, who is sitting behind Rex, has his left hand under her right thigh and she has her hand round his wrist. It looks as if his hand has been severed. That is all. It is very discreet, but it also looks very secret. Suddenly I seem to know more than I think I know. Do you understand? I can read their faces. She looks bewildered, excited, afraid; his look is one of triumph. I turn back and keep my eyes on the road. Nothing more is said.
The next morning Sarson sleeps in late while I get up to fulfil my mother’s request by going to church. Sarson does not ask where I am going, and I do not tell him. I think it is about eight on a Sunday morning, and the town is cool and silent. There is a breeze from somewhere, which blows last night’s fish and chip papers down the empty promenade. I look around for a church, but I have no particular one in mind. In a side street I came across a small, blood-coloured Gothic building, like a large municipal toilet. Outside there is a sign which reads: CONVENTICLE OF GOD. Underneath it says: ‘Pastor: Dr Emmanuel Bocock.’ This must be a church, and there are respectable people in suits and overcoats going into it, so I go in. I do not want to waste time looking around for something else, so this will have to do.
A smiling middle-aged woman in a hat like a flattened sponge cake hands me a hymn book. She asks if I am a visitor and I nod. She says I am very welcome. It is polished pine everywhere, rather like the chapel here. Yes, I can remember that: I can’t think why. I am slightly surprised that the focus of the church is not the altar like the churches I know, but a great pulpit. The windows are of plain, opaque glass. There are no pictures, but there are texts written up on polished wooden panels, and there are two in particular on either side of the pulpit. One of them reads: BE YE SURE THAT THE LORD HE IS GOD (Psalm 100, v.3). I puzzle over this. After all, who else would he be? The second was somehow more comprehensible to me: HE HATH PREPARED HIS THRONE FOR JUDGEMENT. (Psalm 9. v.7) Immediately a picture comes into my mind of our Head Master, The Reverend Richard Cowdray, preparing the arm chair over which the victims of his judgement are bent. Even then, I know this is ridiculous, but I cannot escape the image. Its familiarity thrills me; somehow I have been connected to the Divine.
I begin to worry, though, because I can see that this is not a usual church. For one thing, it seems to be entirely composed of the middle-aged and elderly. There is a harmonium murmuring in the background, sounding like the wheezy, subdued conversation of the old. Someone sits next to me, a neat, white-haired man with a plum-coloured waistcoat under his grey suit. He asks me questions which I answer shyly. I avoid mentioning Rex and the life at the Grand Pavilio, because I feel sure he will not approve. He puts his hand on my knee and tells me I am very welcome. I move cautiously away from him in my pew.
Another man enters through a door in the wall and mounts the stairs to the pulpit. He is not wearing a surplice, as I had expected, but a black velvet gown over his suit. I see hints of purple silk in the hood and sleeves. He has big, regular features and greying, curly yellow hair. There are hymns and prayers and readings, and then he speaks.
This is the annoying thing. I cannot tell you exactly what he said; I only know that the words he speaks are for me. His eyes are on me. It was to be the end of time, that I know, and the elect would be lifted up while the rest were going to be cast aside like so much waste paper to be burnt in the flames. To those who have come to Him, all power and authority is given, and we will be charged with taking the fiery sword of His judgement to every corner of the earth and sea. In a moment I am not so much listening as living his words, floating high, unhindered over the forest of time, skimming the mountain tops like the eagle, running in the plains like the ravening lion. I come out of God’s Conventicle charged with His mission and a certainty that it must be kept secret. I have become God’s spy and will not give the game away. I am entering enemy territory. I think I say a few words to Dr Bocock, as he shakes hands with his congregation on the steps. I know he has invited me to take coffee in the little hall next door to the Conventicle, but I decline. He asks me to visit him the next day and I agree, not knowing if I will go or not, feeling free of all obligations except my divine mission.
As I walk back a part of me expects that at any moment my vision will be restored to normal sanity, but it is not, quite. I sense that from now onwards I will be walking between two worlds, and that gives me a secret pleasure and a sense of superiority over both.
As I am going back to the hotel for breakfast I see two people standing at the railings of the beach promenade. It is Rex and Roxanne. Not wanting to be seen I watch from a distance, so I do not at first catch what they say.
He is leaning casually against the railing, a smoking Mont
ecristo in one hand, but I can tell that his pose is unnatural. He is tense, pretending to be casual. She stands upright, about three feet away from him, wearing a pale blue raincoat, though there is no sign of rain in the sky. She wipes the tears from her red-rimmed eyes. Distance exaggerates her qualities: she looks unnaturally frail and slender, like a delicate wading bird on a sea-fringed shore. Rex is talking, and she keeps turning away from him and then looking back into his face with wide, wet eyes. Again I have this feeling that though I have no idea what is being said and felt, yet some part of me knows. And equally as part of me, my physical body, stays staring at the scene, another part, huge and unknown, runs to comfort and embrace her.
Rex raises his voice and I hear some words: ‘Cool it, baby. It was nothing. Don’t make a big issue of it.’ She turns and walks away from him, now sobbing so that the whole of her body is convulsed. He says: ‘Roxy!’ and starts to follow her. She begins to run. He pauses, decides to let her go, and petulantly tosses his cigar from the promenade onto the beach. He begins to stride towards the Metropole, and as he does so he catches sight of me.
Together we walk towards our hotel for some moments in silence, then he says, ‘Take a tip from me, Pete old sport, don’t have anything to do with women. Be like Billy Wilshire and stick to sailors. Love ’em and leave ’em; shag ’em and shake ’em off. That’s the drill. I mean, I’m an easy going man. Everybody knows that. Easy come, easy go, that’s always been my motto. So don’t let them get their sticky mitts into you. All right, boyo?’
I nodded. He ruffles my hair savagely.
MASQUES OF SATAN Page 27