It was his White House engagement that prevented him flying to England for Jennifer Jane’s graduation. And Lupe was very put out about the timing as well.
She said, ‘You can’t go. Sammy’ll be in town. I’m giving a party.’ I’d waited a long time to meet Sammy Davis Junior, but the day your little girl passes out as a doctor isn’t a day you’ll even consider missing.
Lupe didn’t understand that. She’d never had children. ‘Why bother?’ she said. ‘Hell, you haven’t seen the kid in years.’ Things became quite cool between me and Lupe after that.
Sel said, ‘Tell them to put it back a week. I can’t say no to the President of the United States.’ But the University of Liverpool couldn’t make allowances for Mr Starlight’s social arrangements.
Jennifer said, ‘Just as well. What if he’d turned up covered in flashing light bulbs? Anyway, I’m only allowed two tickets. I did tell you.’
It was a pity because he had been a big encouragement to her, sending her humorous little cards, and money, so she could study hard and not knock herself out working for pin money like a lot of them had to. It would have been fitting for him to be there.
But it wasn’t to be. He had to go to Washington DC to sing ‘Bless This House’ and I had to go to England on my own. I had to face Hazel for the first time in five years.
TWENTY-NINE
I went to Dilys’s for the night before I drove to Liverpool. She said, ‘You’re going to see a difference in Hazel.’ I said, ‘I suppose you knew about Stanley?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘No. It wasn’t Stanley. You mean Trevor. Travelled in office stationery.’
I could have sworn his name was Stanley. I said, ‘I’m sure Jennifer Jane said he sold biscuits?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Sticky labels. Window envelopes. All that sunshine must be addling your memory.’
I said, ‘She involved with anybody at the moment?’
Dilys said, ‘Are you?’
I said, ‘When are you going to come and visit?’
‘When it’s time to bury Mam,’ she said.
I said, ‘Don’t wait for that. She’s going to see us all out.’
The graduation ceremony was at eleven o’clock. There were hundreds of people milling about outside the hall. It caused me a pang of sadness, seeing all those couples, arm in arm, sharing a proud moment.
I was waiting on line with my ticket when Hazel claimed me. ‘Hello, Cled,’ she said. ‘You’ve got a suntan.’
She was wearing her hair shorter than I’d ever seen it, very sporty-looking, and a nice cherry-red trouser suit. She wasn’t wearing her wedding ring. She noticed me noticing. ‘Lost it,’ she said. ‘Down the drain, probably. It didn’t fit me any more.’
I said, ‘Well, we’ve got a nice day for it. I’ve brought my cine camera.’
‘That’s nice,’ she said. ‘Journey all right?’
I said, ‘How are things?’
‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Things are fine. The Cadwalladers have given up the Tal-y-Bont. Bought a retirement flat in Rhos. Sel all right? And your mam?’
It was a strange thing to be shuffling along in a queue having a conversation with your wife.
The three of us went to the Adelphi Hotel afterwards for an à la carte lunch. I ordered a bottle of their best champagne, but Jennifer said she’d sooner have a beer.
I said, ‘We shall have to get used to calling you Dr Boff now. So what’s next on the agenda?’
‘MRCP,’ she said.
More exams.
I said, ‘At this rate you’ll be running Glan Clwyd.’
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘That’d really be something to aim for.’
Hazel said, ‘Conwy needs doctors, Jennifer. There’s nothing wrong with going back to your roots.’
‘Well, since you ask,’ she said, ‘I’m thinking of Australia. Somewhere where there are opportunities.’
Hazel put her knife and fork down. She didn’t say anything, but she hid her meat under her veg and didn’t eat another bite.
I said, ‘Who’s for pud?’ I had my eye on the Steamed Syrup Sponge with Custard. I said, ‘Pearl doesn’t make custard. We’ve got a garage full of Creamola, but it’s not the same.’
Jennifer said she didn’t do puddings. ‘Actually,’ she said, ‘I should be making a move. I’ve got stuff to do.’
Hazel said, ‘Jennifer! Your daddy’s come all the way from America to see you.’
‘So?’ she said. ‘Nobody made him go to America. Did they?’
I said, ‘Back to work, eh?’
She had to stay another year in Liverpool. Junior houseman, her job was called.
I said, ‘Your Uncle Sel’d love to hear from you. He’s very proud of you, you know?’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I know. I wrote to him. We can get a beer later, if you like. I should be free about eight.’
Me and Hazel finished the champagne.
I said, ‘It’s understandable. I can’t expect her life to come to a halt just because I’m in town. How about a crème brûlée?’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I think I will. And I’ll have a glass of Sauternes wine to go with it.’
I said, ‘Got many clients in at the moment?’
‘Two,’ she said. ‘That’s all I do now. They look after themselves, really. They know where everything is.’
‘Yes,’ I thought, ‘I’ll bet they do.’ I said, ‘Dilys tells me you’ve started doing yogi.’
‘Yoga,’ she said.
I said, ‘Get your legs round the back of your neck, can you?’
‘No,’ she said, ‘I do it for inner tranquillity.’
I said, ‘Betsan and Larry have a whole gymnasium in their house. Of course, it’s his line of business. We’ve got one as well, but nobody uses it, really, apart from Blue.’
She said, ‘He the boyfriend?’
I said, ‘I don’t know. He’s on the payroll. He could be. Sel pads across the garden and watches telly with him. I mean, with those types how would you know? You’re not going to see them canoodling on the settee, are you? I mean, what exactly do they do?’
‘Cled,’ she said, ‘where have you been all your life?’
I said, ‘So … Australia … I thought she might go to London, didn’t you? Still, it might never come to it.’
‘Oh, I think it will,’ she said.
I said, ‘Well, don’t lose sleep over it. Twelve months from now she’ll probably have some different scheme. She could be courting by then.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Courting. I haven’t heard that expression in a long time.’
I said, ‘And if she does go, you’ll be able to visit her. Australia’s not the other side of the world.’
I was hoping to cheer her up but I hadn’t expected to make her laugh that much. People were turning round, looking at us, wondering what was so comical.
I said, ‘Another glass of that Sauternes?’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘why not? And after that, I’ve got a double room upstairs, if you’re in the mood for sexual intercourse.’
I hadn’t lain in bed, dozing, in the middle of the afternoon since Avril. The curtains made everything look orange. I said, ‘Did you plan this?’
‘No,’ she said, ‘I don’t plan anything any more. I expect you’ve got a girlfriend?’
As it happened I wasn’t sure how things stood between me and Lupe. I said, ‘Not really. The pub keeps me very busy. You seeing anybody?’
‘Penri Clocker’s a poor old wreck these days,’ she said. ‘Arthritis. Nerys takes him a dinner in every day, in an aluminium tray.’
I said, ‘Remember the Ripening Room?’
She laughed. Her skin was still nice, for fifty-six. Very pale, but smooth. Lupe was the colour of mahogany.
I said, ‘I’ve been trying to talk Dilys into coming to Vegas. Perhaps you could come with her?’
‘The Lorina Dance School closed down,’ she said. ‘Did I already tell you that? And the Aphrodite chipper.�
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I said, ‘I’ve got my own bungalow, you know? Air-conditioning. Jacuzzi. Palm trees outside the window.’
She said, ‘Dilys’ll never come. She should do. See your mam one last time. But she won’t leave her garden. She only comes to see me when the ground’s too frozen for her to do anything else.’
I said, ‘Hazel, I know we’ve had our ups and downs.’
‘Mrs Cadwallader had a breast off,’ she said. ‘But she seems all right now. Yes, we have had our ups and downs, Cled. There have been times when I didn’t like you very much.’
I said, ‘Twenty-five years is a long time.’
‘When you were doing those summer shows,’ she said. ‘Bragging about your hit single. Coming home smelling of women.’
I said, ‘I never did.’ I’d always been very careful about that.
‘Now, Cled,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t matter any more. You had your disappointments and you needed your little consolations.’
I said, ‘I wouldn’t say I’ve had disappointments. I’ve been successful in business. I’ve rubbed shoulders with the stars. Got a daughter who’ll be able to take care of me in my old age.’
‘It just seems to me’, she said, ‘you’ve always been in Sel’s shadow. That must be hard.’
‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘I’m a perfectly satisfied man.’
She said, ‘Well, that’s all right, then. Because what’s Sel got, when all’s said and done? Fifty years old and still living with your mam. Always having to get dressed up, always having to smile. Never knowing who his real friends are.’
I said, ‘Are you going back in the morning?’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘in the morning. How about you?’
I said, ‘Tonight. Take Jennifer for a beer and then head back to Dilys’s.’
‘Unless you stayed,’ she said.
‘Could do,’ I said.
She said, ‘It seems a pity to waste a double room seeing as Jennifer booked it.’
I said, ‘It does.’
She said, ‘You dripped custard on your nice shirt, Cled. I’ll put it to soak in the sink. And then in the morning you could come back with me to Llan.’
I said, ‘Well, there’s my pub, that’s the thing.’
‘Just while I see to my gentlemen and pack a bag,’ she said. ‘If you really meant it. About visiting?’
THIRTY
I’d only been away two weeks but by the time I got back Blue was gone and I had a new neighbour: Brett. Another big blue-eyed boy. ‘Husky’ was how Hazel described him.
He was certainly nicer to get along with. He’d been a centurion in his previous position, at Caesar’s Palace.
Hazel said, ‘Why is your boyfriend living down the garden, Sel? Haven’t you got room for him indoors?’ She said it right in front of Mam.
Mam said, ‘He’s security. Twenty-four-hour security, protecting us from intruders. What’s she doing here?’
I said, ‘We don’t get intruders.’
Sel said, ‘It’s only a matter of time. Either they’ll be after my silver or they’ll be after me. Thelma was broken into while you were in England. They took all her stereos and she slept through it all, didn’t hear a thing.’
Mam said, ‘And they left their visiting cards on her white carpet. She’s had to have it all ripped up and replaced. Nobody has any manners any more, not even the burglars. I thought your wife was running a lodging house in Llandudno?’
I said, ‘She’s here on holiday.’
Sel said, ‘Here on her second honeymoon, eh, Cled?’ He was so thrilled I’d brought Hazel back with me.
I said, ‘It’s called a trial reconciliation.’
‘Sure it is,’ he said. ‘Take her to Malibu. Take her to Van Cleef, buy her a new wedding band. Put it on my account.’
Hazel wasn’t interested in going to California. She liked it at Desert Star. She swam in the pool every morning and used the treadmill that had been gathering dust. ‘Why are we all eating on trays?’ she wanted to know.
It was just a habit we’d got into: Mam in her room; Sel in his; Brett in the kitchen.
Hazel said, ‘All these beautiful rooms. All that lovely food Pearl makes.’
‘None of your business,’ Mam said. ‘We’re happy the way things are.’
Hazel said, ‘Well, at the very least I’m going to eat at a table, and Cled with me. Even if it’s only the kitchen table.’
But Pearl insisted we should use the elephant tusk dining room. ‘Now you’re here, Mrs Cled,’ she said, ‘we’re gonna do things properly.’
‘When’s she leaving?’ Mam kept asking.
But Hazel was getting her sleeves rolled up at the Old Bull and Bush. ‘Why don’t you get some tankards, Cled,’ she said. ‘And a darts league? And who’s this Loopy Lion everybody’s worried I’m not going to like?’
‘Don’t leave us,’ Sel kept saying to her. ‘I know Cled’s a boring old bugger, but we need your smiling face around here. This place was turning into an old age home.’
Mam was nearly eighty-nine. Pearl was seventy-five, Randolph must have been about the same. And young Ricky had moved out to live in sin with a pretty little blackjack dealer called Kim. Ricky was working part-time as a leprechaun at O’Lucky’s Casino, but he was also starting to make a name for himself in the world of competitive eating. He’d got through the Nevada hot dog qualifiers, scoring thirty-eight in ten minutes, including the bread roll and tomato ketchup, so he was on his way to Coney Island for the 1981 championships.
Hazel said, ‘I’d like to stay. But it’s up to Cled.’
‘Cled,’ he said, ‘beg this woman to stay.’
I said, ‘I never thought you’d like it here.’
‘Neither did I,’ she said, ‘but I do. I like the way people are so cheerful. I like being a thorn in your mam’s side.’
Sel was still having trouble with Craig Vertue and others of his type. ‘The Glads,’ Sel called them. Glad to be Gay. They said he should be sending a message to young queers. ‘Message!’ he said. ‘I already sent mine, Western Union. Mind your own business, stop. Stay out of mine, stop. Get a bloody life, stop.’
I said, ‘What does Hallerton Liquorish think?’
He said, ‘Hallerton thinks I should carry on doing what I do best, entertaining people. He wants to get me my own chat show.’
I said, ‘I suppose your singing days are over.’
‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘Once I get my own show, I shall be able to do whatever I want, in between chatting to my guests. A bit of the old soft-shoe shuffle with Liza. A little duet with Engelbert. And I’ll tell you another thing. I’ll only have true entertainers on my show, people I want. It’ll be in the contract. I’m not having any boring old windbags on my show, flogging their latest book. You’re going to have to sparkle to sit next to Mr Starlight. And I’ll be a natural. I can sit on a couch and talk to anybody.’
It seemed a funny thing to get paid for, but as Kaye Conroy had rightly predicted, there was getting to be no place in television for skill and musicianship. ‘Some day’, she said, ‘they’ll have programmes about people doing absolutely nothing. Some day they’ll have telly programmes about people watching telly programmes.’
But Sel loved television, especially if he was on it, and when he was invited to appear on Levine Late, hosted by Kooky Levine, he jumped at it.
Hazel said, ‘Do be careful, Sel. What if you get asked something tricky?’
‘I won’t be,’ he said. ‘These things are all agreed beforehand.’
I said, ‘Once those cameras are rolling anything could happen.’
‘Cled,’ he said, ‘this is Mr Starlight you’re talking to. You know me. Prepare, prepare, prepare some more. And I’ve got so much to talk about nobody else’ll get a word in edgeways. My lovely homes, that’s what people want to hear about. My work with sick kiddies. My fabulous lifestyle.’
We’d known Kooky Levine back in our early days at Kaycee, when he was trying to be a co
median. A hopeless case, in my opinion. He knew a lot of jokes but then, so does your average travelling salesman. There’s more to it than that. You’ve got to have presence. You’ve got to have timing and a feel for your audience. But Kooky had managed to land himself a chat show, and Sel was invited to be on it with Chrissie France, another old friend from our supper club days, and Telly Savalas, who played Kojak. Only, as things turned out, Kojak cancelled at the last minute and they brought on a substitute. Sel came home from the studios looking very thoughtful.
Mam said, ‘Did they love you, Selwyn?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘They did.’
But then he went straight to his room and stayed there under a bed full of dogs till next day.
I said, ‘What happened?’
‘Vertue,’ he said. ‘He was the surprise guest. Don’t worry. I fettled him.’
I said, ‘Why didn’t you pull out, as soon as you realised?’
‘And disappoint my fans?’ he said. ‘Never. Anyway, I handled myself all right. It takes more than that dreary little runt to get the better of Mr Starlight. I came out on top.’
I said to Hazel, ‘Talk about bad luck! Kojak cancelled and Sel’s arch enemy was on instead.’
‘You muggins!’ she said. ‘Kojak didn’t cancel. It was all a put-up job.’
Then we saw the show.
Sel was in a jonquil flamenco shirt and burnt-orange pants embroidered with bugle beads.
Vertue was in his usual jeans and plaid shirt. He said his mission in life was to persuade gays to make themselves visible.
That got a laugh.
He said, ‘Gays in the public eye should be just that, don’t you think, Kooky? There are still queers hiding away in Straightsville afraid to come out and enjoy the daylight. Scared they’ll lose their families, scared they’ll lose their jobs. And that’s no way for any human being to live, wouldn’t you agree, Sel? As a completely impartial straight guy, Sel, wouldn’t you say it’s a tragedy to live a lie?’
Mr Starlight Page 23
