by Terry Ronald
‘Doing what, exactly?’ I asked her.
‘Sex!’ Aunt Val said loudly. ‘It was against the law for two men to have sex up until a few years ago, you know.’
‘Oh!’ I said. ‘How strange. And do they do the same as what men and women do when they have sex?’
‘Sort of …’ Mum said.
‘But they do it up the back passage,’ Aunt Val clarified, ‘which, I should imagine, is quite bloody painful.’
Mum nodded.
‘It is,’ she said, under her breath.
I remember, quite clearly, being intrigued and appalled all at once as I mulled over this fresh information during the adverts. So that’s what all the fuss was about, I said to myself as I watched Rodney Bewes extolling the virtues of Bird’s Eye Cod in Parsley Sauce to busy housewives countrywide. That’s why the rough boys considered being queer so ghoulishly abhorrent: they must have known about this all along – so why didn’t I? And come to think of it, how did any of this apply to me anyway? I didn’t have sex with men. I hadn’t had sex with anyone, or even considered it. It wasn’t something that I felt was high on my list of priorities, to be frank – not like getting my Look-in comic every week, or saving up for a Three Degrees LP. And as for make-up, well, I didn’t wear that either – so that was that theory out of the window. In fact, apart from trotting round my nan’s front garden in a pair of my Aunt Val’s lilac suede ankle-strapped platforms a couple of times the previous summer, I really couldn’t think of anything that would induce those terrible boys to tar me with any sort of ‘homo’-related brush. I was sure of one thing, though, as I watched the end credits of The Naked Civil Servant roll, the very next day at school, some smart arse would undoubtedly – in front of an entire class, or playground full of people – call me ‘Quentin’!
And sure enough …
Six
A Golden Boy
‘What are you doing, wankin’ off them light ale bottles or stacking them on the shelf?’
I look up, somewhat appalled, at Marty Duncombe: droll bar steward extraordinaire, and my boss at the Lordship Lane Working Men’s Club.
‘I’m wiping them off, they’re dusty,’ I offer. ‘Folk don’t appreciate grimy beer bottles, Marty.’
‘Well, get a trot on, love,’ he says. ‘It’s twenty past seven and I want that bar open in ten: we’ve got a dance on tonight – it’s not like a normal night, y’know.’
‘Oh, shut up, Marty, you fucking idiot,’ comes the clarion call that is the voice of Marty’s wife, Denise. ‘Leave the boy alone.’
Denise saunters over to the front bar and hauls up the shutters, puffing on a Rothman as she goes.
‘Take no notice of ’im, darlin’. He couldn’t get it up this mornin’ and he’s ’ad the ’ump ever since – miserable bastard! You all right, sweetie? You’re looking a bit peaky.’
‘Yeah, I’m fine, thank you, Denise,’ I smile, getting up. ‘Did Mum tell you, I got a part in the school musical, Oliver!? I’m playing Nancy.’
‘Haaaaa ha!’ Denise screeches, with a good inch of ash dangling hazardously from her cigarette end over the vodka and orange she is preparing for herself. ‘I bet that pleased yer father no end.’
‘He wasn’t too impressed, I don’t think.’
‘No, I shouldn’t imagine ’e was,’ she laughs, swabbing out an ashtray with a bar towel. ‘Well, fuck ’im – that’s what I say.’
Denise downs the majority of her drink in two gulps, and then throws me a slightly befuddled stare.
‘’Ere, Dave, don’t they ’ave any birds at your school? How come you’re playin’ a tart’s part anyway?’
‘We only have girls in the sixth form at our school, and none of them can sing, apart from Barbara Saville, and she looks like something out of Star Trek,’ I explain.
‘Well, fuck me!’ Denise says absent-mindedly as she replaces the bottle on the Malibu optic.
I get back to the bottling up and then Marty swishes past me, shouting once more and slapping my arse hard as he goes.
‘Come on, Mary-Anne,’ he says, putting the drip trays in place. ‘Look sharp! I want you workin’ in the dance hall tonight with the wife.’
And then he turns to Denise.
‘Couldn’t get it up, my bloody eye!’ he says. ‘What bloke could with the look on your mooey half the fucking time?’
Marty and Denise Duncombe are a reasonably attractive, if slightly rough, couple in their late twenties, and they’re from somewhere horrendous, originally – I think it’s Dagenham. Denise regularly sports an unfeasibly staunch perm, and seems to possess a bewildering array of low-cut satin tops, while Marty, still fancying himself a bit of a lad, harbours a teenage twinkle in his eye that he regularly trots out for the benefit of some of the younger ladies propping up his bar – when he’s out of the wary eye-line of his wife, that is. All in all, they’ve been pretty decent to me – I’m actually, legally, not supposed to serve behind the bar, as I’m not even sixteen for another month, so I’m officially just the pot-washer. Everybody knows me here, though, and Marty has told me that if anyone should question me, I’m to say that I’m just the pot man, and that a working-men’s club has different rules. It is slightly different to a pub, as one has to be a member and pay a yearly subscription, and everyone knows the ins and outs of absolutely everybody else’s business.
The Lordship Lane Working Men’s Club (the working men can even bring their working wives, if they’ve a mind to) is quite cosy, in a red Dralon sort of a way: smoky, and just the wrong side of tatty. But there’s undeniable snug banality in seeing the same faces sup the same tipples every weekend, while the same dreary three-piece band of geriatrics hammer out tunes that should have been lain to rest fairly brusquely after the Battle of the Somme. I mean, really: does anyone in 1979 know what a kitbag even looked like, and whose troubles could possibly fit inside one these days anyway? Does anyone know, or indeed care, who the fuck Dolly Gray was to say goodbye to? I don’t think so. I try to sneak the French version of ‘Sunday Girl’ on the jukebox whenever I go out to collect some glasses and the band are on a break, just to annoy everyone. Still, I love working here as it makes me feel rather grown up; and as my dad’s on the committee, he and Mum are here most nights, so they don’t mind either. At least I can keep an eye on him, Mum had oft remarked to Denise.
I can’t quite seem to focus on getting a good head on a pint of mild tonight, though. My mind is on other issues. Try as I might – and God, I’ve tried over the last few days – I can’t stop thinking about him. Maxie. Maxie the divine, Maxie the brave, Maxie the beautiful … I am far beyond being in love: I’m contiguous to obsessed. In fact, it’s getting to the stage where I’m past caring about the convolutions of my burgeoning sexual proclivities. Maybe I am gay. To be brutally frank, if Abigail Henson jerking me off has made anything clear, it’s these two imperative facts: a firmer, more masculine hand would doubtless have made the experience considerably more pleasurable; and, secondly, getting dried coral-pink nail varnish off one’s cock is no mean feat.
‘A pint of Kronenberg!’ Dad shouts across the bar.
‘And I’ll have a pony!’ my nan adds, appearing from behind him.
She’s wearing an astrakhan coat she’s had since the fifties, and her unyielding lilac hair has been set in an ‘Italian boy’ as usual – almost certainly by my Aunt Val in Nan’s scullery.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ Nan says to me. ‘Looks like you lost two bob and found a shilling.’
‘Nothing, I …’
‘Can you bring me drink over, love? I’m sitting in the blue room with your mum and Auntie Val. Your father’ll pay.’
Nan throws Dad a sardonic smirk; she doesn’t much care for him either, and makes little secret of it. Dad slams the money down on the bar, not even looking at me – evidently he’s not forgiven me for my impending foray into public transvestism, but I’m far too engrossed in my quixotic musings to concern myself with his shitty mood.
He slurps on his lager but still doesn’t look up.
‘I expect so,’ he mutters.
I endeavour to fill the silence as he seems to have no intention of moving away from the bar.
‘I do like a good dinner and dance,’ I say. ‘Everybody having a bit of a knees-up, all kitted out in his or her finery. The ladies always look so nice in their long frocks …’
Oops. Finally Dad looks up at me, but it is with such disdain that I feel I might melt like the Wicked Witch of the West at the tail end of The Wizard of Oz, when Judy Garland chucks a bucket of water over her.
‘You’ll be in a long pink frock behind the bar yourself next,’ he says blankly.
Pointing out at this juncture that I’d be far more suited to something in midi-length cobalt, I feel, is unwise, so I just smile and say, ‘Nuts?’
Mercifully, within seconds, Marty is back – salvation! Suddenly Eddie is smiling again.
‘All right, Mart?’ he almost bellows. ‘Come and ’ave a pint wiv me.’
Marty swaggers over like Edward G. Robinson in track pants and puts his arm around Dad’s shoulder, planting an overzealous kiss on his cheek, in what I presume is jest. Though Marty is a few years younger than Dad, the pair of them are as thick as thieves – literally, as it turns out – and have been ever since Marty took over as bar steward two years previously. Marty had evidently discovered that some of the committee members, including Eddie, had been fiddling the fruit machines of a Sunday morning when it was their job to empty them, pocketing sizeable cloth bags of fifty-pence pieces for themselves. Marty, instead of berating Eddie, or, indeed, dobbing him and the other pilfering committee members in to the club chairman, had insisted that Dad cut him in on the deal, so to speak, and that had apparently been the beginning of a beautiful if somewhat illicit friendship. What neither of them knew, however, was that I, on discovering this sumptuous titbit of information, chiefly through loitering outside the appropriate doors and keeping my shell-likes open, would in turn help myself to some of this perfidiously acquired bullion – the odd tenner out of the bar till, perhaps, or a fistful of fifty-pence pieces from Eddie’s ill-concealed cloth bag (it was right next to the porn in the wardrobe, for Christ’s sake) – and I’d use the cash to bolster my already enormous record collection. Eddie would be livid if he ever found out the number of Boney M singles he’d unknowingly stumped up for from Follett’s record shop on Lordship Lane.
‘Another pint of lager, David,’ Dad demands.
‘And get a move on, lady – I want you in the dance-hall bar with Denise in five minutes,’ Marty adds, guffawing.
Dad joins in the hilarity. Cheers, Marty. That’s all I’m fucking short of.
I bumble about behind the bar during the dance, not able to concentrate in the slightest. Denise does most of the serving.
‘You’re neither use nor ornament tonight,’ she says. ‘Like a spare prick at a wedding.’
At about half past nine, Nan, Mum and Aunt Val all rock up to the bar together in their evening frocks, breathless – exhausted, apparently, after a spirited turn around the floor to ‘Cracklin’ Rosie’.
‘Two medium white wines, a barley wine and a couple of bags of dry roasted,’ Aunt Val pants, leaning across the bar in cinnamon crêpe. ‘I’m still fucking hungry; that dinner wouldn’t have kept a sparrow alive. David! David, are you listening?’
‘He’s in another world,’ Denise says, reaching for a bottle of Black Tower, ‘’as been all night. I reckon ’e’s in love, aren’t you, Dave?’
‘Yes … NO!’
And they all shriek with laughter. It’s like some sort of chiffon-swathed coven.
‘His ’ead’s full of lines,’ Mum says. ‘He’s been rehearsing for the play all week and he can’t think about anything else.’
You’re almost right, Mother, but not quite. I can think about one other thing, and that’s Maxie. He’s the reason I can’t flaming concentrate tonight.
It’s been a week and a half since the commencement of Oliver! rehearsals, and I think they’ve been the happiest days of my life, with the possible exception, perhaps, of the day Frances and I met all four of Abba outside the Thames Television studios last February after standing in the freezing rain for two and a half hours – but in the happiness stakes, this last week has unquestionably been up there. From the very first day of rehearsal I just knew there was a spark between Maxie and me – I just knew it. When Mr McClarnon and the dramatis personae all piled into the hall after lessons had finished, the day after the cast had been announced, Maxie sat down on the stage right next to me before even Frances (who’d now been cast as chorus/flower-seller/sundry black-toothed whore) could get there. She wasn’t pleased, and gave Maxie an untrusting sideways glance, her pretty eyes almost flashing fury for a split second, and parked herself the other side of him. Then, as the read-through of the script got under way, I could feel Maxie’s shoulder rubbing against mine, and my mouth got dry.
‘I can’t wait till it gets to our scene, can you?’ he turned and said to me after a few minutes, and I nodded and gulped, trying not to make full eye contact with Frances, who was peering at me curiously over Maxie’s shoulder. But as it went, we didn’t get that far along into the play on the first evening’s rehearsal and I’d been disappointed. On the second evening Hamish was otherwise engaged, so Bob Lord presided and we just hammered through a bunch of the songs. Even then, though, Maxie pulled his chair right up next to mine around the piano and shared my song sheet, our hands actually touching three times: twice during ‘Food Glorious Food’ and then again – this time with the lingering implication of intent – during the opening few bars of ‘Who Will Buy This Wonderful Morning?’ It wasn’t until the third rehearsal on Monday just gone that Maxie and me actually got to walk through our first scene together, and then he really knocked me for six.
‘I want te move on te the scene wi’ Nancy and Bill at the Three Cripples Inn,’ Hamish had announced, after a cheerless eternity watching our chosen – and to my mind woefully miscast – Oliver struggle through the first few bars of ‘Where Is Love?’ with a defiant lisp. ‘Let’s give it a go, shall we?’
Maxie and me wandered over to the chalk mark on the hall floor that was designated the imaginary doorway we were to appear through. Quite unexpectedly he took my hand and I virtually leaped out of my skin, but he just turned to me and grinned like some handsome fool.
‘Come on then, Nance,’ he said, and I heard a few sniggers from the ensemble.
Maxie’s hand felt hot. Mr Lord, who’d been sitting behind the piano with his nose in the Daily Mail until this point, suddenly jumped up: he looked a bit flushed.
‘Err … I don’t think Bill Sikes would have been the holding-hands type, Boswell, thank you. What do you think, Mr McClarnon?’
Hamish looked over at me, standing there with a cocky, beaming Maxie clutching my sweaty hand.
‘Perhaps you’re right, Bob,’ Hamish said softly. ‘It’s not Mr and Mrs, boys – drop the hand-holding.’
Maxie’s grin got even wider, so I pulled my hand away sharpish, and I clocked Hamish smirking.
‘Let’s get on now, kiddies,’ he trilled, clearly trying not to laugh.
‘Don’t we need Bet somewhere along the line?’ I said, scanning the room for Sonia Barker. ‘It’ll be “Oom Pah Pah” before you know it.’
She was in the corner sucking an Ice Pole.
‘And Sonia Barker, too!’ Hamish shouted. ‘Quick smart!’
The run of the scene went moderately well, despite the off-putting vision of Sonia’s purple tongue every two minutes, as did the whole rehearsal, and afterwards Maxie and me stayed behind to go over lines for the next day. The hall had emptied, and the smell of new-term floor varnish caught my nose as Maxie sat opposite me in the middle of the vast room, our knees touching like bookends with no books in between.
‘How come you’re doin
g this musical as well as playing in the football team?’ I asked after we’d run a couple of pages. ‘You mustn’t ever go home.’
‘It is quite a lot to take on,’ Maxie said, ‘but I promised Mr Lord faithfully that I’d keep up with the footy if I did the play – he made me promise.’
‘He doesn’t like me, Mr Lord,’ I said. ‘He never has, ever since I suggested that découpage might be more use to me in later life than technical drawing. He thinks I’m a sissy.’
Maxie laughed out loud.
‘Well, I’m his golden boy,’ he said. ‘He certainly likes me. He made me football captain after one match when I first joined the school, and I made the running team when there were definitely a couple of kids who were much faster than me at the time trials. Every time he claps eyes on me mum and dad, he tells ’em how fucking wonderful I am. I think I must be like the son he never had.’
Then Maxie glanced over his shoulder and around the room, as if to make quite certain no one else could hear him.
‘More often than not,’ he said, hunching forward conspiratorially, ‘Mr Lord will find some excuse to make me stay later than the other kids after games: discuss match strategies, pick the team for the next game – you name it …’
Maxie was close to me, and the tang of varnish was replaced by his own scent.
‘Really?’ I gulped.
‘Yeah, I reckon he’s lonely, poor bastard.’
‘But he’s married!’
‘I know,’ Maxie said, ‘but he just seems to like having me around. Not in a creepy way. I mean, he don’t stare at me in the showers or nuffin’ like that. Not like some blokes I’ve caught lookin’ at me … as if they … you know … like me.’
I bit my bottom lip, hard.
‘Looking at you? What, in the showers?’
Maxie nodded.
‘Don’t you ever get that? Other geezers looking at you like that?’
I shook my head.
‘I try to avoid the showers if I can, to be honest,’ I said.