Hazel said, ‘Well, say something anyway. Poor Annie. I feel sorry for her, now it’s come to it.’
I persuaded Mam to take a turn round the garden with me. She was pretty sturdy, for ninety. She only relied on her stick if she saw a dog in her path and the dogs were all indoors with Sel. They wouldn’t leave his side, except for calls of nature. I said, ‘There doesn’t seem to be anything else they can do for Sel. His chest’s worse this morning.’
‘Yes,’ she said.
I said, ‘Dr Rosen says he’s slipping away.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I know. I’m ready.’ She was very calm.
I said, ‘At least he’s peaceful.’
‘Yes,’ she said.
I said, ‘It’d be nice if we could all get along with each other now. For Sel. No more quarrelling.’
She didn’t say anything.
I said, ‘I don’t think it did any harm, Dilys telling him where he came from, do you? I think it was the right thing.’
She said, ‘I’ve always done the right thing by my children, Cledwyn. I can’t answer for anybody else.’
I said, ‘Father Victor’s going to come back. You know? For the end. He’s very nice, really.’
Silence again.
I said, ‘Mam, you do realise what kind of funeral it’s going to be? Sel’s decided and we can’t go against his wishes.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Well, it doesn’t matter. I shan’t be there.’
And she wasn’t. Pearl went to clear her dinner tray and found her having some kind of seizure. It was the second one that finished her off. The ambulance was chased all the way to the Sunrise Emergency Center, reporters thinking it was Sel, thinking they were in with the chance of a photo, but Mam never knew anything about that. They said she hadn’t suffered.
‘No,’ Dilys said. She was dry-eyed. ‘Mam never suffered.’
And when we got back to Desert Star we had other things to think about. The press were back, annoyed about the goose chase they’d been on and Hallerton Liquorish had paid a call. He’d wangled his way past the night nurse and got himself a dog bite on his ankle and Sel’s signature on a new will. It must have been a very shaky signature.
I said to Hazel, ‘Where were you?’
‘Running up and down with a stepladder and a mop handle,’ she said. ‘Stopping photographers poking their cameras over the garden wall.’
I said, ‘Where was Pearl?’
‘Training a hosepipe on the ones I missed,’ she said. ‘Never mind. That signature won’t be worth a light. You all right, Dilys? You look all in.’
Dilys said, ‘I’m all right. I just wish she’d gone sooner. Given me more time with him.’
Hazel said, ‘You had your way in the end, that’s the main thing. You stood up to her and had the final word.’
I said, ‘It was as if she knew. That last walk I took with her round the garden? It was as if she knew her time had come.’
Hazel said, ‘She was ninety. She hardly needed a crystal ball.’
I said, ‘Well, she was a remarkable woman, you must admit.’
‘Here we go,’ she said. ‘Rewriting history. She was horrible, Cled. She was a poisonous old meddler. Look how she treated Dilys. Think of the names she called me and I never did anything to cross her, not till the end.’
I said, ‘She was just an old lady.’
Hazel said, ‘She wasn’t “just” anything. She was very, very nasty. All that sentimentality over Sel and over that child molester she called a husband, and yet she treated you like dirt. So don’t get misty-eyed around me, Cled. I’m glad she’s gone. And I’ll be even happier when they’ve put a good heavy stone on top of her.’
Pearl stripped the bed in Mam’s room. She brought a waste-paper basket to show us, full of ashes and photos half burned. She said, ‘She been burning her effects. She musta heard death’s chariot coming for her.’
Dilys said, ‘Leave everything, Pearl. Rooms can be cleared any time. Sel’s the one who matters now.’
His eyes were open, but he was very pale. ‘Brett?’ he kept asking. ‘Turn the sound up on the telly, baby,’ he said. But it was turned up.
He lasted two more days and the agency said they’d have to send a new nurse. The one we’d got used to had already booked her holidays. ‘I hate to leave him,’ she said. ‘He’s been so sweet. But I’m going to my sister’s wedding.’
We could have done without that upheaval. The old one did as she was told regarding his wig, but the new girl argued about it every inch of the way. She said, ‘I’m here to make him comfortable and he isn’t comfortable sweating under a thing like that.’
Hazel said to her, ‘If you knew him, you’d know he’s never comfortable without it.’
‘Well,’ she said. ‘It’s not normal procedure. What’s the big deal anyway? Was he somebody?’
If she’d followed instructions that last picture of him would never have been taken.
Hazel was convinced money had changed hands.
Father Victor came about an hour before he died. ‘May the Lord who frees you from sin, save you and raise you,’ he said.
Sel was trying to sit up. His chest was bad. Dr Rosen had come but we hadn’t alerted Liquorish. He was in the habit of just turning up anyway.
Sel was still calling for Brett, right up to the last. Then he asked for Mam. We hadn’t told him. There didn’t seem any point.
Dilys said, ‘I’m here, our kid.’
It seemed to pacify him. ‘Lovely,’ he said. ‘It’s all been so lovely.’
And then it was all over.
Dr Rosen said, ‘The death certificate. You know what I have to put on it? I’m obliged, by law.’
Hazel said, ‘It hardly matters, really, does it? He’s dead. His mam’s dead. They can all come crawling out of the woodwork now.’
And when I went out with Randolph to let the hearse pull inside the gates, there was a helicopter circling overhead, and Liquorish was in the pool with a pair of total strangers, photographers from Zoom!.
THIRTY-NINE
‘What a tragedy,’ Craig Vertue said on Late Night Live. ‘Sel Starlight could have become an icon of gay pride, but he clung to hypocrisy. Well, dead men have no secrets. What must all those fans of his be thinking now?’
The national president of the Official Mr Starlight Fan Club soon told him. ‘He was every mother’s ideal son,’ she said. ‘Every sister’s favourite brother, every girl’s perfect date. We don’t need an autopsy to know he had a kind heart. We don’t need any doctor’s report to know he infected the world with joy. Now we pray that he’s allowed to rest in peace.’
‘One of the twentieth century’s unsolved mysteries,’ the Daily News wrote. ‘How did Mr Starlight conquer America? How did a British boy, a closet queen with a mediocre voice and a gruesome family entourage, come to be worth an estimated ten million dollars?’
‘Mega-weird,’ celebrity party-goer Bliss Bellaire was quoted as saying. ‘And not quite the perfect guy everyone thought. No one knew Sel the way I did and I’ll be revealing all in my forthcoming memoirs.’
‘BATTLING BRETT’, the Nevada News headline said. ‘Former Caesar’s Palace centurion Brett Maples has announced he intends to contest the will of his long-time companion, Sel “Mr Starlight” Boff. A document signed by the controversial showman just before his AIDS-related death allegedly gave control of the five-million-dollar estate to Starlight’s agent Hallerton Liquorish.’
The embalming company said they guaranteed complete security but after the photo of him without his hair started doing the rounds we hired Pinkerton guards, just to be sure. It took five vans to carry all the flowers and traffic was nearly at a standstill along the Strip. He was late for his own funeral.
The Flamingo had put his name up one last time and as his car drove past, they dimmed the lights. Dilys was holding up pretty well, till that happened. We buried him alongside Mam at the Oasis Memorial Park, in his sun-kissed wig and a replica of his f
avourite suit; a white three-piece covered in gold rocaille beads and Swarovski crystals.
‘Sad day,’ Liquorish said.
Hazel said, ‘It’ll be a sadder day for you when you try to get that forgery proved.’
‘He signed it, fair and square,’ he said. ‘Sel’s wishes. I’m only carrying out Sel’s dying wishes. People often change their mind at the last minute. I believe he realised it’d be an unfair burden on his bereaved family. Better to hand everything over to someone who knew his affairs inside out.’
I said, ‘I’d just like to know about the Old Bull and Bush. Half of that’s mine.’
‘I’ll be in touch,’ he said. ‘Great ceremony, by the way. Beautifully staged.’
Hazel said, ‘You’re not to talk to him, Cled. You’re not to tell him any of your business.’
I said, ‘I just thought I should bring it up. We’ll have to stay on the right side of him, in case this will stands up. We could be up the Swanee.’
‘Liquorish is the one who’s up the Swanee,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing left.’
I said, ‘What do you mean, nothing?’
‘All given away,’ she said. ‘Ocean Star to Dilys. The Double Down to Pearl. The Backdoor to Ricky. The Old Bull to you.’
I said, ‘What about the Chickering grand?’
‘Mine,’ she said.
I said, ‘Why you? You don’t even play.’
‘Because Desert Star’s mine,’ she said. ‘And everything in it.’
I said, ‘Are you sure? Have you seen it written down?’
‘Signed and sealed,’ she said. ‘Know why?’
I said, ‘Because he came to his senses. Realised how much he owed to me.’
‘No, Cled,’ she said. ‘Because it’s going to be his memorial. To his gracious lifestyle. It’s going to be a display of all his beautiful costumes. The suit that gave him visions. His light bulb cape. His lapis shirt studs.’
That were never paid for.
I said, ‘What, people tramping through? And where are we supposed to live?’
‘Where we are now,’ she said. ‘So I’ll be on hand. To keep everything perfect. To make sure people remember him the way he really was.’
I said to Dilys, ‘Did you know you were getting the place in Malibu?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
I said, ‘Did Pearl know what she was getting?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
I said, ‘So how come nobody told me?’
Hazel said, ‘Because Sel didn’t like people knowing his business. And you’ve got a mouth like the Mersey Tunnel.’
We didn’t hear from Liquorish for a few days. Then he phoned.
I said, ‘I’m not talking about wills. There’s nothing to say.’
Hazel had written it on a pad for me next to the telephone, what I had to tell him.
‘No, Cled, no,’ he said. ‘That’s all in the hands of lawyers. But I wanted you to know we have breaking news. We have ourselves a love child. A twenty-six-year-old catering operative from Wilmington, Delaware. The mother’s dead, of course, and the girl’ll disappear when it comes to taking a blood test, but I predict she’ll be the first of many. And stuff like this is gonna keep that Starlight name shining for years to come. Maybe I should get her on the Craig Vertue Show. Stay well, Cled. Don’t you just love this shit?’
After the ball is over
After the break of morn
After the dancers’ leaving
After the stars are gone
Many a heart is aching, if you could read them all
Many the hopes that vanished
After the ball.
HARRIS
If you enjoyed Mr Starlight, check out these other great Laurie Graham titles.
Reissue of a classic novel from the bestselling author of ‘The Future Homemakers of America’.
What hope is there for Poppy Minkel? She has kinky hair, out-sticking ears, too yellow a neck and an appetite for fun, and her mother Dora despairs of ever finding her a husband, despite the Minkel's Mustard fortune that seasons these dubious attractions. When Daddy disappears, Poppy's tendency to the unusual is quietly allowed to flourish. World War I opens new horizons. With never a moment of self-doubt, she invents her own extraordinary life in step with the unfolding century.
Buy the ebook here
The hilarious and touching novel from Laurie Graham – the fictional diary of the Queen’s best friend in pre-war London.
Laurie Graham's brilliant novel is the fictional diary of Maybell Brumby, a wealthy American widow who arrives in London in 1932 and discovers that an old school friend is in town: Bessie Wallis Warfield, now Mrs Ernest Simpson. Maybell and Wally are made for one another. One has money and a foothold in high society, courtesy of a sister who married well. The other has ruthless ambition and enough energy to power the National Grid. Before the year is out, Wally has begun her seduction of the Prince of Wales, and as she clambers towards the throne she makes sure Maybell and her cheque book are always close at hand.
So Maybell becomes an eye-witness to the Abdication Crisis. From her perch in Carlton Gardens, home of her influential brother-in-law Lord Melhuish, she has the perfect vantage point for observing the anxious, changing allegiances for and against Queen Wally, and the political contours of pre-war London.
When the crisis comes and Wally flees to the south of France, she insists on Maybell going with her. 'Are you sure that's advisable, darling?' asks the King. 'Of course it is,' snaps Wally. 'She's the Paymaster General.' Maybell's diary records the marriage, the Windsors' exile, and the changing complexion of the Greatest Love Story. It takes the sound of German jackboots at the gate and personal tragedy to make her close its pages for the last time.
Buy the ebook here
Filled with warmth, wit and wisdom, ‘The Future Homemakers of America’ takes us to the heart of female friendship. A novel fans of ‘Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood’ will not be able to resist.
Norfolk,1953. The Fens have never seen anything quite like the girls from USAF Drampton. Overpaid, overfed and over here.
While their men patrol the skies keeping the Soviets at bay, some are content to live the life of the Future Homemakers of America clipping coupons, cooking chicken pot pie but other start to stray, looking for a little native excitement beyond the perimeter fence. Out there in the freezing fens they meet Kath Pharaoh, a tough but warm Englishwoman. Bonds are forged, uniting the women in friendship that will survive distant postings, and the passage of forty years.
Buy the ebook here
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Laurie Graham is the author of 9 novels. ‘The Ten O'Clock Horses’, was shortlisted for the Encore Award and dramatized for Radio 4, as was ‘Perfect Meringues’. Later titles are The ‘Dress Circle’, ‘Dog Days’, ‘Glenn Miller Nights’, ‘The Future Homemakers of America’, ‘The Unfortunates’, ’Gone with the Windsors’ and ‘Mr Starlight’, which was shortlisted for the Saga Wit Award. Her latest novel, ‘The Importance of Being Kennedy’ was published in 2007.
ALSO BY LAURIE GRAHAM
Fiction
The Man for the Job
The Ten O’Clock Horses
Perfect Meringues
The Dress Circle
Dog Days, Glenn Miller Nights
The Future Homemakers of America
The Unfortunates
Gone With the Windsors
The Importance of Being Kennedy
Non-fiction
The Parent’s Survival Guide
The Marriage Survival Guide
Teenagers
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street
Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
www.harpercollins.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Canada
2 Bloor Street East – 20th Floor
Toronto, ON, M4W 1A8, Canada
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www.harpercollins.ca
New Zealand
HarperCollins Publishers (New Zealand) Limited
P.O. Box 1
Auckland, New Zealand
www.harpercollins.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London, SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
195 Broadway
New York, NY 10007
www.harpercollins.com
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