The Fandom of the Operator

by Robert Rankin

  I was happy with Sandra now. And I know that had she been able to form entire sentences, she would certainly have said that she was happy with me.

  I’m sure.

  ‘How are you doing, darling?’ I called through the bedroom door. Do you need any help with your legs?’

  I heard grunting, and a dull and uninspired thump.

  ‘Leg fall off again,’ called Sandra, whose husky tones reminded me of the now legendary Tor Johnson. ‘Need glue.’

  ‘Coming, dearest.’ And I went to her assistance. ‘We really must hurry a little, a cab is picking us up.’

  ‘Lion cub?’ said Sandra, as I helped her with her leg.

  ‘Cab, not cub,’ I said. ‘Remind me to poke a pencil in your ears. I think they’re clogged up with pus again.’

  ‘Thank you, Masser Gary,’ said Sandra, as I got her looking presentable. ‘Sandra love Masser Gary. Masser Gary love Sandra?’

  ‘Masser Gary love Sandra very much,’ I said. ‘Now get a shift on, or I’ll confiscate your head again.’

  I do say that by the time we’d finished, Sandra looked pretty good. She’d have passed for living any day of the week. And when the cab came to pick us up and whip us off to the world-famous night club, I knew that it was going to be a night to remember.

  Which, of course, it was.

  I don’t know about you, but I love dressing up. I’ve always been something of a dandy and I see nothing wrong in that. If you’ve got it, flaunt it. And if you haven’t got it, then at least you can make the effort, so the fact that you haven’t got it isn’t so glaringly obvious.

  Clothes maketh the man, so said the Bard of Brentford. And I’ll tell you this, I looked pretty damn fab dressed in the height of seventies fashion. High stacked shoes with double snood gambol-bars and trussed tiebacks of the purple persuasion. A triple-breasted suit cut from Boleskine tweed (as favoured by Mr Penrose, though of course the style was different when he cut a dash as the Best Dressed Man of nineteen thirty-three). A kipper tie, made from a real kipper, dipped in aspic and with flounced modulations on the soft underbelly that glittered against my shirt of quilted fablon. I looked the business and I did feel sure that one day soon I would actually be the business.

  If only someone really famous would hurry up and die.

  Over my dazzling ensemble I wore a trenchcoat and fedora, in homage to Lazlo Woodbine. Sandra wore a trenchcoat and a fedora too. All invited guests were required to do so. And of course we wore our masks.

  The masks were Barry’s idea. He had to maintain anonymity. The book was published under the name that Mr Penrose had given to him, Macgillicudy Val Der Mar. But Barry didn’t dare to be seen. So he’d come up with the idea that everyone should wear masks. Which suited me fine, as I didn’t want my picture in the paper. Nor Sandra’s: questions might be asked if Sandra was seen again in the flesh. They might well be asked by Harry, who was Peter now. So Sandra and I and Barry were all better off in our masks.

  I wore an elegant domino in black-and-white check. Sandra wore a rather fetching facsimile of Roy Rogers’ Trigger.

  Well, she wasn’t really up to impersonating ponies any more and I thought she looked good in it. Both masks had nice big mouth holes, so that we could talk and drink and stuff our faces with expensive food, which was what you did at such functions. At a little after nine of the summery evening clock the cabbie drew us to a halt outside ‘Peter’s’ night club.

  Now, I don’t know what gets into cabbies. They seem to live in a world of their own. They take you (eventually) to where you want to go, by a route picturesque and circuitous, and then they charge you some fabulous sum and expect you to pay up without a fuss. And then if you do make a fuss they become surly and make threats about calling the police.

  When our cabbie disclosed to me the extent of his charges, I counselled him that he should drive us on a little bit and park up a quiet side road, so I could ‘deal with the matter’.

  Which I did.

  Peter’s night club looked simply splendid. It was very posh, with lots of flashing light bulbs on the front. They were very nice flashing light bulbs. Mostly PRI 77s, although I noted several XP7Ols and a couple of DDlO9s. I really knew my bulbs by then. I took a pride in it. Knowledge being power and all that.

  The bouncer looked like a right sissy boy to me. He was tall and thin and certainly didn’t look as if he knew how to handle himself. I showed him our gilt-edged invitations.

  ‘Got any drugs?’ he asked, as he frisked me.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Good,’ he replied. ‘Pass on, sir.’

  ‘“Pass on, sir”?’ I said. ‘Do you mean to tell me that you’re not going to try and sell me any drugs?’

  ‘Certainly not, sir,’ said the skinny boy bouncer. ‘This is not that kind of night club. Now, pass on, sir, while I frisk this spastic with the horse’s-head mask.’

  ‘Spastic?’ I said. ‘That’s no spastic, that’s my, er, sister.’

  ‘So sorry, sir,’ said the skinny boy. ‘But her left leg is – how shall I put this? – a bit funny. The foot facing backwards and everything.’

  ‘Ah,’ said I. And I corrected Sandra’s foot.

  The sissy boy reached out his hands to frisk Sandra, then thought better of it and waved her on. And so we entered the night club.

  And we were greeted at once by Harry/Peter. ‘Greetings,’ he said. ‘And welcome.’

  ‘Good grief,’ I said. ‘Harry, you’ve changed.’

  ‘Who’s saying that to me?’ asked Harry/Peter.

  I lifted the chin of my mask.

  ‘Gary,’ said Harry/Peter. ‘Good to see you. I haven’t seen you since Sandra’s funeral. Are you doing all right?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘You know, bearing up. But look at you. You’re all slim and stylishly dressed and what about that haircut.’

  ‘It’s a mullet,’ said Harry/Peter. ‘The very acme of style. And as style never dates I shall be keeping it for the rest of my life.’

  ‘And all power to your elbow,’ I said.

  ‘And are you still working at the telephone exchange?’

  ‘Job for life,’ I said. ‘And still loving every minute of it.’

  ‘Well, good for you. Go in and mingle. I have to greet guests. Here comes the Sultan of Brunei. See you later.’

  I led Sandra into the glittering bowels of the world-famous night club.

  Barry sat at a table signing copies of his book. He wore upon his head a paper bag with two eye-holes and a mouth cut out. The ironic wit of this disguise wasn’t lost upon me.

  I jumped the queue and tipped him the wink. ‘How’s it going?’ I asked.

  ‘Who are you?’ asked Barry.

  I lifted the chin of my mask. ‘And who are you?’ I asked.

  Oh, how we laughed.

  Barry signed me a freebee.

  ‘I shall treasure this,’ I said. And then a thought suddenly crossed my mind and I leaned towards Barry.

  ‘Barry,’ I said, ‘a thought has just crossed my mind. If you’re here, who’s manning the bulb booth?’

  ‘My brother Larry. He’s my twin brother, so no one will know the difference.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ I said. ‘Drinks later?’

  ‘Sure thing,’ said Barry. ‘By the way, who’s the spastic? Is she with you?’

  ‘See you later at the bar,’ I said.

  Now, I don’t know whether you’ve ever been in Harry’s/Peter’s world-famous night club. Probably not, if you’re poor, or just working class, which accounts for most of us, but I do have to tell you that it’s rather swish.

  There’s lots of chrome and marble and black shiny stuff and lots and lots of women. Beautiful women, and most of those women have hardly any clothes on.

  I looked all around and about, at the place and at the women, and I thought to myself this is for me. This is the life-style that is for me. The life-style I was born to. Oscar Wilde once said that every man reaches his true station in li
fe, whether it is above or below the one he was originally born into. And old Oscar knew what he was talking about. And not just because he was a homo. I knew instinctively that this was for me. This was where I belonged.

  ‘Masser Gary buy Sandra drink?’ asked my lady wife, the late Mrs Cheese.

  ‘Indeed,’ I said to her. ‘I’ll get you a cocktail.’

  I ordered Sandra a Horse’s Neck, well, it went with her horse’s head. I was impressed that this time it didn’t come out of the drip tray and it had a cherry and a sunshade and a sparkler on the top.

  The barman told me the price of it and I laughed politely in his face. ‘I’m with Mr Val Der Mar,’ I told him. ‘A close personal friend. The drinks are on his publisher tonight.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ said the barman. ‘I was only trying it on. I’m saving up for a motorbike.’

  ‘Stick to fiddling the till,’ I told him. ‘A bottle of Bud for me and a hot pastrami on rye.’

  The barman served me with a bottle of Bud. ‘The hot pastrami is off,’ he said. ‘Irani terrorists broke into the fridge and liberated the last jar we had.’

  ‘I hate it when that happens,’ I said. ‘I once had a pot of fish paste liberated from my kitchen cupboard by members of Black September.’

  ‘Horrid,’ said the barman. ‘My mum was shopping in Asda and had her pension book nicked out of her handbag by Islamic Jihad.’

  ‘Bad luck,’ I said. ‘Osama bin Laden ate my hamster.’

  ‘Isn’t it always the way?’ said the barman. ‘But you’ll have to pardon me, sir, because much as I’d love to go on talking toot with you regarding the crimes committed upon you and yours and me and mine by extreme fundamentalist groups and terrorist organizations and the distress that these crimes have wrought upon you and yours and me and mine, frankly, I can’t be arsed. And as I see Mr Jeff Beck up at the end of the bar calling out to get served, I think I’ll go and do the business. If you know what I mean, and I’m sure that you do.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ I said to him. ‘I hope you die of cancer.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. And if I might be so bold as to mention it, your girlfriend’s left hand is weeping into the stuffed olives. Kindly tell her to remove it, or I’ll be forced to call the sissy boy bouncer, who will politely eject you from the premises.’

  ‘I hope it really hurts when you’re dying,’ I said.

  ‘Thank you, sir. Coming, Mr Beck.’

  I lifted Sandra’s hand from the olive bowl and folded its fingers around her Horse’s Neck. ‘Enjoy,’ I told her.

  ‘Thank you, Masser Gary,’ said Sandra.

  ‘Just call me “master”,’ I said. ‘Master Gary makes me sound like a schoolboy.’

  ‘Cheers, masser,’ said Sandra, pouring her drink into the vicinity of her mouth.

  ‘I think we should mingle,’ I said to her. ‘There’s lots of famous people here and as I mean to be very rich very soon I want to get used to mingling with rich and famous people. I can get in a bit of practice tonight.’

  ‘Masser,’ said Sandra.

  ‘Sandra?’ said I.

  ‘Masser, everyone wear mask tonight, yes?’

  ‘Yes,’ I told her. ‘Everyone wear mask, yes.’

  ‘So how come barman recognize Mr Jeff Beck and Harry recognize Sultan of Brunei?’

  ‘Ah,’ I said.

  ‘And how come you know lots of rich and famous people be here, if all wear masks?’

  ‘I’ll confiscate your head again if you try to get too smarty-pantsed,’ I said to Sandra. ‘Rich and famous people are still recognizable no matter whether they’re wearing masks or not. It’s only in stupid films like Superman where Clark Kent can put on a pair of glasses and comb his hair differently and not be recognized.’

  ‘Clark Kent is Superman?’ said Sandra.

  ‘Shut up and drink your drink,’ I said to Sandra.

  ‘Drink all finished. Most of it go down cleavage.’

  ‘Go and speak to Olivia Newton John,’ I said, pointing towards the instantly recognizable pint-sized diva. ‘I’ll mingle on my own.’

  And so I mingled. I mingled with the rich and famous. They’d all turned out for the occasion. Because that’s what they do, turn out for occasions. First nights, film premières, fashion shows, ‘audience with’ evenings. All those events are peopled with the rich and famous. Nonentities need not apply. Because, let’s face it, the rich and famous have to have somewhere to go. Something to do. If they didn’t, then they’d just have to stay at home watching the TV like the rest of us. So the rich and famous go to ‘do’s’ where they’re on the guest list. It’s a very small world and the same rich and famous meet the other same rich and famous again and again. In fact, that’s all they ever meet. Which is why they have affairs and intermarry and divorce and do it all again. In the same little circle. And it’s a tiny little circle. There are two hundred and twenty-three of them. You can look them up and count them if you don’t believe me. There will always be, at any one time in history, exactly two hundred and twenty-three rich and famous people alive and all going to the same places at the same time in the world. Why? I just don’t know, but there it is.

  Most of them turned up for Barry’s book launch that night. And I mingled with as many as I possibly could. But I didn’t have any idea at the time where this mingling was going to lead me and I certainly wasn’t expecting the evening to end in the way that it did.

  Which was not a pleasing way.

  Although it was certainly different.

  19

  I really like the rich and famous. In my opinion, the rich and famous prove Darwin’s theory of evolution. It took millions of years for man to evolve into man. The state of manness that we are today. And no one has ever found the missing link, or the many missing links, that join the chain of human evolution together. But if you want to see the entire process played at fast forward as if on a video machine, then view the life of a self-made rich and famous personality. They start out as nothing, just another part of the great homogeneous mass of mankind, that great seething organism. But they evolve, they take on an identity of their own, an individuality; they rise from the collective primordial mire, they raise their heads, they become. It’s a complete evolutionary cycle. They demonstrate the potential of mankind. They are an example to us all of what is possible.

  Not that most of them deserve their fame and fortune. Do me a favour!

  Most of them are talentless cretins who just happened to be in the right place at the right time and made it.

  Do I sound bitter about this? Do I?

  Well, I’m not. I know that it’s true. But I do like them. And what I really like most about them is their excess. The way they waste away millions. I was brought up in a poor household and I was conditioned to be careful with my money. I spend a bit on clothes, but not a lot, and I never waste money. I was taught to understand the value of money. My daddy was really hot on the value of money, which was probably why he never gave me any. ‘Money must be earned and then looked after,’ he used to say, which was another reason that I hated him. It’s hard to break away from that kind of early programming. The rich and famous are able to do that. They can squander, big time. They have it, so they spend it and they enjoy spending it. They don’t turn off lights after them, they don’t have to sniff the milk from the fridge to see if it’s fresh (it always is if you’re rich). They can buy the fluffy toilet rolls that cost that bit too much. They don’t give a damn for a ‘two for one’ offer. They don’t say, ‘A watch is a watch. I’ll have this cheap one.’ They say, ‘That’s a really nice watch. I don’t give a damn how much it costs, I’ll have it. And the car too, and the house — no, make that two houses. And a yacht.’

  I sort of yearned to be like that. But it was different for me. I was programmed. I’d been conditioned. I had been taught to be frugal. So I didn’t know whether I had in me that special something that would allow me to squander money if I ever got to be rich and famous.

  I
thought I’d go and have a word with Jeff Beck. I’d heard that he’d bought himself some really expensive guitars. Had them handmade to his own specifications. Paid a fortune for them. I thought I’d like to shake the hand that played those exclusive guitars. But although I hung around on the periphery of Jeff’s group of chatting chums, I didn’t get the opportunity to say hello and tell him about how I’d seen him back in the days when he was paying his dues at the Blue Triangle Club. So I thought, stuff it, and went off to mingle elsewhere.

  And while I was trying to find someone to mingle with, I found myself in the vicinity of the food table. And what a lot of food was on it, and all expensive too. It was quite a trouble getting into the near vicinity of the food table, there were so many rich and famous crowded around and filling their porcelain plates. They do like to trencher down free grub, the rich and famous, which is another thing I admire them for.

  I had to make my presence felt in order to get near that table. I had to tread on David Bowie’s toe and elbow Cat Stevens in the ribs, but when I did get myself right up close to the extravagant nosh I spied a most curious thing. I spied someone slipping silver spoons into their pocket.

  Now I know that the rich and famous are not averse to this kind of behaviour. And I know that their status makes them immune from prosecutions. Like that secret law that allows people with expensive four-wheel-drives to park on double yellow lines, when the rest of us would get nicked for it. But I was strangely shocked to see it happening right before my eyes. And as this was Barry’s bash and those were Harry’s/Peter’s spoons, I was doubly offended by it.

  I leaned over and grasped the wrist of the offender. ‘Excuse me, sir,’ I said, for he was a he, ‘but I think you’ve inadvertently slipped a load of silver spoons into your pocket. I think we should perhaps go and discuss this matter outside.’