Welcome to the Real World

by Carole Matthews

  Although I’m looking considerably sexier than I would have done left to my own devices, I’m bucking the trend by not having my midriff, my legs or my entire cleavage on display. ‘Look at them,’ I complain to Carl. ‘They’re all so young.’

  ‘It just means that we’re so much more experienced than they are.’

  Sometimes I could batter my friend because he’s so relentlessly optimistic. For some strange reason, he’s convinced that one day our talent will win out. We will be ‘discovered’ by some fantastic pop impresario and our miserable little lives will be transformed into one of wealth and wonderment. For Carl, all that means is that he will buy designer jeans rather than ones from Matalan. But then he also buys a lottery ticket every Saturday and gaily assumes that one day his boat will come in if only he believes hard enough—despite the fact that he’s not won so much as a tenner in the last three years, proving that the odds are very definitely piled against him.

  There are boy bands, girl bands, too many Britney look-alikes to mention, but very few long-haired hippies accompanied by ageing barmaids. All the men look gay—apart from Carl—and none of them look as if they’ve wandered out of the line-up of Black Sabbath. This is a dreadful, dreadful mistake. We are people in the wrong place at the wrong time. I’d really like to go home now and have some hot chocolate and put my feet up and pretend that this never happened, but I know that Carl—having managed to get me here—won’t be that easily dissuaded. He might look laid-back, but that man is blessed with a core of steel. I’m going to have to go through this whole unhappy ritual just to please him.

  Despite my misgivings—and there are many of them—we join the back of the queue. A camera crew wanders up and down, recording our misery. Everyone else waves and pouts in a suitably hysterical manner. I can’t be the only one who feels like giving them the finger. Even Carl gives them a peace sign and a goofy grin for heaven’s sake! The only solace I can take is the fact that it isn’t raining. Which is just as well, because an hour later than the auditions were due to start, a couple of harassed-looking assistants totter out on impossibly high heels and slap stickers bearing numbers on us all. Carl and I are, collectively, number 342. How long, I wonder, is it going to take to get through all the 341 acts before us? Darkness will surely have fallen. We’ll have to take it in turns to go out of the queue to visit the loo in the Kentucky Fried Chicken place down the road and to get sustenance. I glance down at our number.

  ‘We haven’t got a name,’ I say suddenly.

  Carl looks shocked, while I panic. In the pub we’re just known as Carl and Fern—not exactly cool. Shouldn’t we have spent more time thinking about calling ourselves something suitably trendy and happening to grab the judges’ attention?

  ‘Bollocks,’ Carl mutters.

  ‘Not catchy enough.’

  My friend gives me what I can only class as ‘a look’.

  ‘The Winning Couple?’ I suggest, trying to bolster my rapidly failing bravado.

  ‘“Just the Two of Us”,’ Carl says. ‘That’s what I feel it’s always been like. Just the two of us against the world.’

  I can see that he’s serious, so I say, ‘Okay. Just the Two of Us, it is.’ Or do I mean Just the Two of Us, we are. And, rather late in the day, our duo is born. It doesn’t sound very showbiz to me, but I say nothing.

  And then, with nothing much else to do, we settle in for the long wait. Carl amuses himself throughout the day by smoking a dozen fags and strumming his guitar. I amuse myself by thinking of Evan David in faintly erotic situations until I realise that it is doing me absolutely no good at all. I wonder if he’s noticed my absence today. Does he think that I’ll be back on Monday as if nothing has happened? I have no idea, and I’m sure that he won’t mark it down as a significant loss in his life when I’m not. Still, I can’t help wondering what might have been. In my fantasy land, Evan David would have been so impressed by my personal assistant skills that he would have sacked the chicken-poxed Erin and would have given me her job instead, whisking me around the world in five-star comfort for the rest of my days. And we would have flirted endlessly and hopelessly, like James Bond and Miss Moneypenny.

  After a while, when Carl and I are bored with each other, we chat to a couple of the other hopefuls in the queue, and it’s fair to say that none of them are blessed with our wealth of experience, as Carl predicted. We’ve been singing in pubs for years. Too many years. For most of them, this is the first time they’ve ever auditioned for anything. And I can’t help but admire their sheer optimism that all they need is a belief in themselves to carry them through. A lot of the people queuing for their five minutes in front of the judges seem to have no particular talent but are here fuelled only by blind ambition and a desire to grab fame in whatever shape they can get it. None of them seem to have my inhibitions despite the fact that I could probably—when I’m feeling confident—sing most of them under the table. But so many people want to achieve celebrity status these days without having to work for it and without doing anything of merit to warrant it.

  The Fame Game phenomenon has gripped the nation and, whether we like it or not, the entire population of the UK is glued to the telly at six o’clock every Saturday night to watch the struggling pop artists of the future in their quest for fame. Sometimes it is a supportive and fun show. Sometimes it’s positively gladiatorial. But I guess, as they say, that’s entertainment! As long as it keeps pulling in the viewers, they’ll keep running it.

  A mere five hours have passed while we’ve been standing in the queue, and we’re finally nearing the front. Carl has kept me going by nipping off to nearby cafés to ply me with regular supplies of hot tea and chocolate. I wish I’d let him bring a couple of joints and we could have smoked them. Or even a hip flask of booze might have helped for Dutch courage. To do this stoned would be infinitely preferable than doing it stoned-cold sober. Already a stream of weeping girls have been dispatched from the bowels of the Shepherd’s Bush Empire. Some are begging the high-heeled assistants for another chance. Some are rejoining the queue at the end, probably in the hope that the judges will be so addled by the time they perform again that they won’t realise they’ve already seen them three hours previously.

  ‘Feeling okay?’ Carl asks.

  ‘No.’ My hair has gone flat in the damp air. My feet hurt. Inside my coat, my lovely chiffon top is getting crumpled.

  He puts his arm round me and squeezes me tight. I can feel the tingle of excitement running through him and wish I could share it. ‘It’ll be fine,’ he says confidently. ‘We’ll be fine.’

  Will we? All I can do is wait.

  Twenty-two

  When we eventually reach the front of the queue, one of the Identikit assistants asks us our name, so I’m really glad that we remembered to make one up. ‘Just the Two of Us,’ Carl informs her.

  She fails to swoon at our originality, but instead she hushes us lest we feel inclined to speak and then ushers us into a corridor, which takes us down to the backstage door. I hadn’t considered that we might be required to perform on an actual stage. Apart from one summer when Ken the Landlord at the King’s Head had a beer festival in a nearby park and Carl and I—Just the Two of Us—performed on a sort of open-sided trailer from a lorry that formed a makeshift arena, this is the first time I’ve been on a real stage. My knees tremble with anticipation. Why on earth did I wait until today to make my debut?

  I can’t feel nervous anymore, because I can’t feel anything. We stand in the wings and watch the act before ours. It’s a frighteningly young girl—number 341—also known as Amber who we’ve been chatting to for most of the day. Carl bought her a couple of cups of tea and they swapped a few ciggies, but not in a chatty-up way because she’s only seventeen. I think he just felt sorry for her. Amber is a truly awful singer and my heart breaks for her. Even her mother wouldn’t come along with her today because she thought she was wasting her time. Sometimes it’s worth remembering that Mum is so often right. She st
rangles some Shania Twain number for a few bars until a voice from the darkened auditorium says, ‘Thanks,’ with a degree of boredom that must be very difficult to achieve.

  And then we’re shoved in the back by the lovely assistant onto the waiting stage. I follow Carl’s footsteps in a kind of trance, listening to my feet clonk on the wooden boards. Footlights blind me, but I can just make out the vast empty space of the theatre. The seats are long gone and, instead, there is a makeshift table behind which are the judges, seated on three chairs. Some minions wander round in the background.

  The assistant has followed us onto the stage. ‘Three hundred and forty two,’ she announces. ‘Just the Three of Us.’

  Carl and I both look round for the other one of us. Perhaps they think we’re being ironic. We should have stuck to plain old 342.

  ‘Just the Two of Us,’ I correct and I hear a returning sigh out of the gloom for my pains.

  ‘Okay,’ one of the judges says. ‘When you’re ready.’

  Fame Game speak for ‘get on with it.’

  I can’t make out the judges too clearly. The main man is usually one of the well-known pop impresarios—people whose manufactured groups have topped the charts for a number of years. There’s usually some sort of fashion pundit, too, and I wonder what he or she will make of Carl’s retro-style. To make up the three judges, there’s more often than not a media rent-a-quote presenter from one of the youth programmes. Three people who can break a person’s spirits or help them fulfil their dreams. What a position of power to be in! They all look slightly bored by the weight of it.

  Carl takes up position with his acoustic guitar and gives me an encouraging look. My heart suddenly shoots out of the doldrums. I have to do this for my friend. For him alone, I have to give this my best shot.

  We went through a million different songs before we settled on one that would be suitable. It’s an old Prefab Sprout number ‘Couldn’t Bear to Be Special’, a bit of a melancholy ballad which I’m hoping will stand out amid the hundreds of ear-splitting renditions of Britney’s ‘Toxic’. The lyrics of the song really reach out to me and I can only hope that they reach out to the judges, too. I suddenly wish that I’d spent some of the time in the queue doing vocal exercises. How would Evan David have prepared for this? At the thought of him, my mind goes into a tailspin again and I have to force myself back into the present.

  Carl plays the first chord and I call on whatever inner strength that I might, unknowingly, possess and give my performance all that I can summon. My mouth is dry and my palms are clammy. Sweat trickles between my breasts. The first note comes out strong and clear, then the music takes over and I lose myself in it.

  Just when I’m starting to relax and even venture to think, ‘This could be my moment’, a voice out of the darkness says, ‘Thank you’, in that same bored-to-death fashion I heard for the previous act. Which seems so unfair as I’m so, so much better than her—even though I’m the only person who seems to think so.

  My singing grinds to a halt. Carl strums what sounds like an annoyed riff.

  ‘We’ll be in touch,’ a disembodied voice says.

  ‘Thanks,’ I mutter feebly, sounding pathetically grateful. ‘Thanks.’

  Thanks for what? Humiliating us completely? Getting our hopes up and dashing them against the rocks? I want to shout and stamp my feet and say that they should have listened to the whole of the song. Wouldn’t that be common courtesy? And then I think of the hundreds and hundreds of other hopefuls waiting for their turn in the spotlight, and I shuffle off the stage in Carl’s wake.

  Outside, in the harsh daylight, I can see him shaking. With fear or excitement, I don’t know.

  ‘That wasn’t too bad, was it?’ he says.

  ‘No.’ I have no idea how to class that experience. Nerve-wracking. Terrifying. Exhilarating. Mind-blowing. My body feels electrified. Adrenaline is galloping round my blood like a wild horse charging inside me. I’ve never felt like this before and I only know that it’s a drug I want more of.

  Carl wraps his arms round me. I wonder if he’s going to cry. I feel like I might join him. ‘You were sensational,’ he says.

  ‘You weren’t too shabby yourself.’ We hug each other some more and then we become aware of the people on the street and the traffic and reality hitting home once more. I stand away from Carl.

  His arms hang limply by his side. ‘So what do we do now?’

  ‘We could get some food before I start my shift at the King’s.’

  ‘I meant about the audition.’

  ‘There’s nothing else we can do,’ I say. ‘We gave it all we’d got.’ And I really believe that we did—for our one brief moment of glory. ‘If they liked us, they’ll be in touch.’

  I shrug as if I really don’t care. How can I sound so nonchalant, when at this moment I would sell my very soul to the devil for a chance to appear on the Fame Game show? And, to be honest, I’d sell Carl’s, too.

  Twenty-three

  My shift at the King’s Head drags interminably. Every time a phone rings—anyone’s phone—my nerves turn me into a jangling wreck. The good people at Fame Game didn’t say exactly how long it would be before they would call if they wanted us back to go through to the next round and audition again. My stomach has turned into a swirling maelstrom, but that could be due to the dodgy-looking Chinese takeaway that Carl and I consumed in great haste after our ordeal. I can’t even think how I’ll feel if they don’t call us at all.

  Even Carl is subdued this evening. After the high, here comes the low. Mind you, Carl is sitting next to my rather inebriated father—and that’s enough to make anyone depressed. Dad is rambling on incoherently about love gone wrong. As far as I can ascertain, he hasn’t done anything remotely useful or constructive towards putting his own particular ‘love gone wrong’ right again. Neither has he forgotten that he’s pretending to have Tourette’s syndrome and tosses out the occasional torrent of abuse at a passing punter—a very dangerous occupation at the King’s Head, which is known locally as something of a pugilist’s paradise.

  ‘Nellies. Knockers. Knackers,’ he mumbles at a large and much-tattooed man, who glares at him.

  ‘He’s not well,’ I tell the man, making a politically incorrect this-is-a-loony circle against my temple with my finger.

  He gives me a glare, too, but continues on his way to the dartboard without thumping my dad into the ground. Which I view as a result.

  ‘Dad!’ I snarl at my extremely annoying parent. ‘Stop it.’

  ‘Nellies…’

  His repertoire is wearing thin and I cut him off before he can repeat himself. ‘You’re going the best way about getting yourself flattened.’

  Dad returns to staring into his beer.

  Don’t I have enough to worry about without adding my dad’s self-inflicted mental illness to the list? I can’t wait for our set to start tonight. I want to see if I can lose myself in the music again as I did this afternoon. That’s not something that happens often to me—probably because I’m too concerned about someone throwing stuff at us while we’re on stage at the King’s.

  At the allotted time, Carl slides down from his stool and we wander over to the little dais. Unusually, Ken the Landlord follows us. Before I can take up the microphone, he grabs it.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he says, ‘tonight we have our very own songbird…’

  I give him a sideways glance. Songbird?

  ‘…the lovely Fern Kendal, who’s performing for you tonight straight from her fabulous audition for the Fame Game!’

  I’m glad I didn’t mention to Ken that we’d only managed to get half of our song out before we were unceremoniously ejected. Also, unusually, the crowd cheer up a bit and give us a round of perky applause. Ken hands me the microphone. I cover it. ‘We’ll be wanting a pay rise if you build us up too much,’ I warn him.

  His face falls and he slopes off to the bar to pour himself a stiff drink.

  Carl and I launch into our
first song and, I don’t really know how to explain this, but I feel somehow more confident. I’m not exactly jumping around the stage in ecstasy; however, somewhere there’s been a very subtle shift in my belief in myself. Self-aggrandisement isn’t normally my forte, but I know that I could do this. I could do this in a big way. Given the chance.

  We finish the set and again, it might be my dream-fuelled imagination, but I do think the reception is a little more rapturous than usual. Jumping down from the stage, I’m clapped on the back by some of the punters, faces smile widely at me—and not just the mad ones. Then my phone rings: I feel it vibrating in my jeans. I can hardly catch my breath. Could this be it—the call we’re waiting for? Our destiny nestling impatiently in my pocket? Could our second performance have drifted to them through the ether of the universe, prompting the powers that be at Fame Game to contact us?

  ‘This could be it,’ I say to Carl. My mouth feels as if it’s filled with sand. ‘This could bloody well be it!’

  Hurriedly, I snatch at my phone before it switches to voicemail. ‘Hi,’ I say, trying my hardest to hold on to the confidence I’d experienced just a moment or two ago.

  ‘Hi.’ It’s a man’s voice. One I don’t recognise. ‘It’s Rupert Dawson,’ he says smoothly. ‘Evan David’s agent.’

  ‘Oh, hi.’ The bubble of my jubilation is popped.

  ‘I’m calling to check that everything is okay with you.’

  ‘With me?’

  ‘You left in a hurry yesterday and didn’t turn in for work today. Evan was worried.’