Welcome to the Real World

by Carole Matthews

  The only downside is that not having a permanent partner makes life so hard for them both and they really don’t deserve it. I’ve offered a million times for Joe and me to throw in our lot together, pool our meagre resources and for me to move in with them. But Joe is under the illusion that one or both of us will, at some point, find suitable partners and that we should keep our options open. I like his optimism and I never say anything to bring him down—believe me, he has enough on his plate—but my options closed down years ago.

  ‘Do you want to join us for beans on toast?’ Joe asks, reaching for a pan.

  ‘You’re a lifesaver.’ I sit down at the small table. These are organic, sugar-free, additive-free beans, as Nathan is allergic to practically every convenience food known to man. Anything from cleaning products to strong scents to peanuts can cause him to go into dreadful and sudden bronchial spasm. He has regular, long courses of steroids and he doesn’t sleep or eat well—all of which have combined to make him small for his age. He has ‘vulnerable’ written all over him—though not in felt pen, to which he’s also allergic.

  I wonder whether if we moved out of London and went to live, say, in the Caribbean, life would be easier for him.

  ‘So,’ my brother says. ‘What have you been up to, sis?’

  ‘I got a new job yesterday. That’s why I couldn’t come round.’

  ‘Cool.’

  My heart not only breaks for Nathan, but it tears into shreds for Joe, too. Caring for a sick child 24/7 is no fun. I’m sure that Joe would love to go out to work—even part-time would help him to get a break—but such is our benefits system that he’d be so much worse off if he even earned a few quid legitimately.

  Very rarely, Joe might do a cash job for a friend which helps him out—but most of the time he’s barely above the breadline. How wonderful it must be, not to have to continually worry about money and to be able to rent huge penthouse apartments at the drop of a hat, and have chefs to rustle up whatever your heart or your stomach desires, and to be chauffeured around in limos wherever you go.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Working for an opera singer.’

  ‘What, like Pavarotti?’

  ‘He’s even bigger than Pavarotti.’

  ‘No one’s bigger than Pavarotti.’

  Joe has a point, even though Evan is as far removed from the stereotypical image of a portly opera singer than it is possible to be. ‘It’s Evan David.’

  My brother looks at me blankly. He doesn’t get out much. Particularly not to the opera.

  ‘He’s quite famous,’ I say lamely.

  ‘Fantastic. And what do you do?’

  ‘Not much yet,’ I admit, ‘but it’s a full-time job—for the next few weeks, at least. I haven’t been paid yet, but it means that I can help you out a bit. Maybe I could pay for you both to go away for a week.’

  ‘You do enough for us, sis.’

  When I see them both here in this dump, I don’t feel that I do anywhere near enough. ‘You could get a cheap week in Spain, maybe. Some sun would do you both good.’

  My brother slides his arm round me and says, ‘For once, I’d like you to think about what would do you good, Fern.’

  Thirteen

  Carl is all ready and waiting on his bar stool by the time I get to the King’s Head.

  ‘Peace,’ he says when I arrive and puts two fingers up—in the nice way.

  ‘Whatever,’ I reply as I strip off my coat and throw my bag down with a sigh.

  ‘How did the job go today?’

  ‘Fab,’ I say. But for some reason I don’t want to share my experience with Carl. I want to keep it private. And, besides, it would worry Carl. He’d think that I’d want to go off and become an opera singer. Or at the very least, slip ‘Nessun Dorma’ or something into our set at the pub. ‘Tell your sister thanks from me. I owe her one.’

  ‘And you owe me one,’ Carl points out.

  ‘Yeah,’ I say, taking up my place behind the bar. ‘Send me your bill.’

  Carl looks shifty.

  ‘What?’

  ‘There is something you could do for me.’

  ‘Does it involve strange sexual practices?’

  My friend looks offended. ‘No.’

  ‘Shoot then.’

  ‘Don’t dismiss this out of hand,’ he says. Then he takes a deep breath. ‘The Fame Game are holding auditions this weekend at Shepherd’s Bush Empire. I think we should go along.’

  I laugh out loud. ‘No way! That’s for fresh-faced, hopeful kids, not jaded cynics like you and me. They didn’t have anyone over the age of twenty in the last series.’

  ‘They’re extending it,’ he assures me. ‘The upper age limit is thirty-five.’

  ‘Wonderful. So we just about squeeze in.’

  ‘It would be good for us.’

  ‘How do you work that out?’

  ‘It will stretch us as artists, and you never know…’

  ‘I do know.’

  ‘Someone’s got to win,’ Carl insists. ‘It might as well be us.’

  ‘No. No way.’

  My friend frowns. ‘You said you’d consider it.’

  I stare at the ceiling for a moment. ‘I have. And the answer’s no. No way.’

  ‘Fern,’ Carl says. ‘I ask you to do very little for me.’

  This makes me feel ashamed. Carl is my prop, my life, my one true friend. And it’s true, he asks for nothing in return. Well, that’s not strictly accurate. He frequently asks for sympathy shags, but never gets them.

  ‘Please do this for me.’ He gives me his little-lost-boy look.

  ‘I’ll probably be working.’

  ‘Can’t you ask Pavarotti for the time off?’

  ‘It’s my first week,’ I say. ‘I don’t want to piss him off.’ And what I don’t voice is that I’m reluctant to admit to Evan David that I have aspirations to become a singer. My attempts seem so feeble compared to his and, don’t ask me why, but I wouldn’t want him to laugh at me. And, believe me, I’m used to people scoffing at my ambitions.

  ‘This could be our last big chance,’ Carl says seriously. ‘Do you really want to spend the rest of your life behind the bar in here?’

  We take in the all-encompassing dreariness of our surroundings, the billowing smoke, the tar-coloured curtains and the sticky 1960s orange-and-brown carpet.

  ‘No.’ I indulge in a pout. ‘But the Fame Game…’ I rearrange my features into a suitably disdainful expression.

  ‘If you won’t do it,’ he says, ‘it’ll have to be the strange sexual practices.’

  ‘I’ll do it.’

  Carl reaches across the bar and squeezes my hand. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I’ll do it if I can get the time off,’ I qualify.

  ‘That’s good enough for me,’ Carl says. ‘We could win this.’ His eyes are bright with excitement. ‘We could really win this.’

  And then my dad comes in and I lose the will to humour Carl. Instead, my heart sinks. What is it about this man that makes me want to grab him warmly by the neck and shake him? ‘Did you go and see Mum today?’

  ‘Hello, darlin’,’ my dad says, pulling up a stool. ‘I’m fine, thank you. How are you today?’

  I ignore his jibe. ‘Well, did you?’

  ‘Yes.’ He sighs.

  Pouring a pint of beer, I put it down in front of him, noticing that he offers me no money in return. I also notice that this isn’t his first drink of the evening.

  ‘Hi, Mr Kendal,’ Carl says. ‘Derek.’

  I don’t like to tell Carl that my dad is only ‘Derek’ to him when he’s being bought double whiskies.

  ‘Hello, lad,’ Dad returns in a slightly slurred voice, looking relieved to see at least one friendly face. My guess is that he’s been in some other hostelry since lunchtime. So much for him changing his ways.

  I’ll not be swayed from my interrogation. ‘And?’

  He hangs his head. ‘I’ll be making use of your couch again toni
ght.’

  I tut at him. ‘You are hopeless.’

  ‘Love, I tried my best. She’s not a well woman,’ he says after he’s drained half of his drink. ‘I can’t understand what’s wrong with her.’

  I polish some glasses with a certain amount of venom. If only it was as easy to rub some sense into my most annoying parent. ‘She’s had enough of you, that’s what’s wrong.’

  He tips the rest of his beer down his throat in two gulps and then slams his glass down onto the bar.

  ‘Fuck,’ my dad says suddenly and rather loudly. ‘Fuck it all.’ Both Carl and I jump. My father might be a lot of things, but he’s not normally a potty mouth. We both look at him in astonishment.

  ‘Dad.’

  ‘I’m fucking sick of it,’ he continues in the same vein. He’s now starting to wave his arms in an aggressive manner. Ken the Landlord straightens up and pays attention. I give him the eye to say that everything will be okay—which I’m sincerely hoping it will be. He’s used to closing-time fights in the King’s Head, but it doesn’t mean to say that he likes them any better. ‘I’ve tried my naffing bloody best all my life and what for?’

  I decide not to point out that Dad’s best isn’t really anything to shout about.

  ‘Well, fuck her.’ Dad is in full flow. ‘Fucking, fuck her.’

  His voice is rising with every ‘fuck’. People are starting to look. Even people who normally make no distinction between this pub and the building site.

  ‘I don’t know what to do. So she can fuck off. She can fuck off and make her own life. Without me.’

  ‘Dad,’ I grumble. ‘Lower your voice. And stop swearing. You sound like you’ve got Tourette’s syndrome.’

  ‘Tourette’s?’ Dad brightens. I can almost see the light-bulb ping on above his head. ‘I wonder if she’d take me back if I was ill?’

  Fourteen

  ‘How’s she working out?’

  Evan turned to his agent, Rupert, as he fiddled with his tie in an effort to stop the knot from lying crookedly. ‘Who?’

  ‘Your new assistant. Fern.’ Rupert had been waiting for him for ages.

  ‘Oh. Fine,’ he said dismissively.

  ‘But she didn’t remind you about the dinner tonight?’

  ‘No,’ Evan had to concede. Perhaps Fern wasn’t working out too well. It had completely slipped his mind that he was attending a reception with the Blairs at Downing Street. That wouldn’t have gone down too well if he’d missed an important party with the prime minister of England. If she’d done her job properly and jogged his memory, then he wouldn’t have embarrassed himself by asking Fern out to dinner. ‘I think I distracted her.’

  ‘And would you like to tell me how?’

  ‘Not really.’

  The last thing Evan wanted his agent to know about was his rather gauche approach to his new assistant. Rupert usually had more than enough to worry about without Evan adding to it.

  Evan was even less likely to confess that since this afternoon he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Fern. It had been a shock to him to see the way that she had responded so honestly to the music today, but rather a pleasant shock. Perhaps he’d been in this business too long, but the music somehow failed to move him like that any longer. It was clearly the first time she’d heard opera at close proximity, and it was a potent reminder of how it used to affect him, too. He remembered times when tears would stream down his face as he was singing—but only just. It was years and years since that had happened. Was it surprising that some of his enthusiasm had waned when his whole world had revolved around singing since he was parcelled off to choir school at the tender age of eleven? The passion and drama hadn’t gone out of his performances, but they had in recent years gone out of his heart. It would be nice to think that he might recapture that through Fern’s eyes. If she did that for him, then whatever they were paying her was worthwhile—he allowed himself a rueful smile—even though she forgot to tell him about important appointments.

  To inject some new life into his creativity was part of the reason he had agreed to come to Britain in the first place. One of the projects on the cards was recording an album with some of the up-and-coming stars of the future. Rupert assured him that it was a marvellous thing to do. Evan felt it was more like the sort of publicity stunt someone like Tom Jones would be involved in. Not that he blamed Tom. To be hanging in there in the entertainment business after all that time was something of a miracle and, no doubt, you had to use every trick in the book to do it. He just wasn’t sure if he wanted that for himself. Already, he was criticised by the purists as being ‘too commercial’. He wondered what they’d make of it if he started recording with Keane or Athlete or some of the other bands he’d only just heard of. What would it do for their street cred, too? It had never hurt Freddie Mercury’s career to sing with Monserrat Caballé, he supposed. That, primarily, was why he’d allowed Rupert to set up some ‘exploratory’ sessions for him with a few new kids on the block—mainly acts that Rupert also represented. There was no harm in that, either. Over the years Rupert had made him one of the most sought-after and highly paid opera stars in the world—a long way from the impoverished chorus member he’d once been. So what if Rupert wanted to exploit him a little every now and then. His agent was always telling Evan that he had a unique talent that he should fully embrace, and it was true, there were very few people who were comfortable singing anything from contemporary songs to Broadway show tunes to Mozart arias. Perhaps it was time to unleash that on the world. Evan smiled indulgently at the other man. He’d drawn the line when Rup mentioned hip-hop though.

  ‘We’d better get a move on, Evan.’ His agent tapped his watch. ‘If we want some money for the arts out of this wretched government, then I suggest we don’t start the evening by being late.’

  Without argument, Evan followed Rupert to the door and to the waiting limousine. The other reason that he was in Britain was to open the new National Welsh Opera House in Cardiff in a few weeks’ time. This evening was a formal celebration of the forthcoming event and an excuse to go cap in hand to the tightwads in the Treasury who controlled the funding for developing arts. It had long been a pet project of Evan’s to try to get opera to a wider audience. His dream was that it wouldn’t be seen as some expensive, elitist pastime and that he could bring it to inner cities and to kids in schools. The California Opera House provided free ‘brown bag’ opera performances every year, which were staged in Yerba Buena Gardens, and a huge annual feast at the Golden Gate Park, which celebrated the opening of the fall opera season. Both were open to all comers and were some of the most exciting events that Evan had been involved in—bringing opera to the masses—and he’d be taking part in another one later this year. That was something he’d certainly like to see over here, but when this country didn’t even seem to have enough money to clean its hospitals anymore, it certainly felt like an uphill struggle. Did people really feel that their life was the poorer for never having seen a performance of Turandot? Evan sighed. And yet the way Fern had reacted today…it was moments like that which gave him hope.

  As the long black car pushed its way slowly through the evening traffic Evan wondered where Fern might be now—and, once again, surprised himself by doing it. This woman was starting to occupy his thoughts far too often. Maybe she could have even come along with them tonight. That would have got Rupert’s radar twitching.

  There was already a long line of people waiting outside the imposing iron gates at the mouth of Downing Street, which barred the general public from the prime minister’s official residence. The glossy black front door of Number Ten lay tantalisingly inside, the days when the general public could drive straight up to it long gone in a frenzy of security clamp-downs.

  ‘This is as far as we go,’ Rupert muttered. ‘Celebrity or not, you’ve got to queue up with the hoi polloi and have your armpits tickled by a policeman toting a machine gun.’

  Evan stepped out of the limo after Rupert. There w
as the flash of paparazzi cameras. Magnanimously, he gave them a wave.

  ‘Why couldn’t you be a visiting head of state? They’re the only ones who get straight in without all this nonsense,’ his agent complained. ‘There are times when being an opera singer is absolutely no bloody use at all.’

  And Evan really couldn’t have agreed more with him.

  Fifteen

  This morning I’m regretting agreeing to go to the Fame Game auditions with Carl. Mainly because I’m now going to have to ask Evan David for some time off work to attend them, and that seems rather foolish after only a few days in the job. I’m not even sure that he’s happy with me sloping off early every evening—but then he doesn’t know about my second career in the leisure industry. Even I, who am not generally known as the world’s most reliable employee, have the sense to realise that it’s not a good idea.

  Plus this job has the huge potential to be enjoyable, and I don’t want to mess it up. For instance, this morning I’ve spent the time simply listening to Evan having another singing lesson. Now, I’m not sure if that’s the technical term, because it seems to me that someone who can sing like he does has no need of lessons. I wonder if Madonna has a voice coach? Or J-Lo? I also wonder, miserably, if whether the only thing I will ever have in common with Jennifer Lopez is the not inconsiderable size of my arse.

  Listening to Evan makes me feel overwhelmed by the things I know I will have to do in order to become a better singer. I think I have a good voice—I’m sure I do—but I’ve never had any coaching in my life. How could I be so stupid as to think that it involved nothing more than belting out a few tunes? Carl must be equally stupid to think that we have a chance of winning the Fame Game. Do I really want to put myself through this form of humiliation just to keep my dearest friend happy?