No Tears for the Clown

by Les Dawson

  Tracy came, and brought a ray of sunshine with her. How I loved this girl; for her and our future, I resolved to get well and lead a more intelligent life. Life was too precious to allow mundane materialism and the pursuit of ambition to destroy the things that really mattered. Trouble was, I’d said all this before, this time would I take heed?

  It may sound silly, but I think it might be a good idea if we all had to spend an occasional day in hospital.… Not only would it make us realise how frail the human condition is, but we would see the selfless devotion shown by those who work in the healing centres.… I have seen a lot of hospitals, God only knows, what with Meg’s long illness, and my own brush with death when my prostate gland operation went badly wrong.… I remember also a morning in Southampton when the cast from the pantomime at the Mayflower Theatre visited a children’s ward. I signed a photograph for a little girl who had terminal cancer. Her father had spoken to me at length, asking how I coped with the death of Meg. He even asked me whether I believed in God.… He desperately wanted an answer as to why his precious child should have to die.… He looked at me with eyes so sunken with despair that I lied and lied.… Yes, I remember saying, a cure is just around the corner.… Yes, I’d said, of course I believed in God.… Of course one copes with death, after all, the loved one is only slipping out of the room, she is still in the house, I lied.… The man’s eyes thanked me for the words, even though he knew as well as I that I was lying.

  As expected the newspapers had a field day with my heart problems. One tabloid’s headline read rather breathlessly: ‘Dawson staggered into the arms of his barmaid lover’. I don’t mind a newspaper proffering a juicy story providing it’s true; but I draw the line when the story has no foundation in fact.

  However, on the credit side, many of the tabloids rang up and wished me a speedy recovery and once again sent flowers. One or two freelance photographers skulked outside the hospital and gleefully snapped Tracy in a large black hat and sunglasses as she left to go home, and in the following morning’s papers she looked as if she’d just betrayed Al Capone.

  Meanwhile I moved to a private hospital in order to free my bed in Victoria for a more needy case, and frankly the press had been getting on the nerves of the over-worked staff. We rather astounded the staff at the very luxurious South Fylde Hospital because Tracy insisted upon staying in the room with me! She got her way despite the opposition, and a small trundle bed was wheeled in. We were together. On one occasion I awoke in the night to find a stern nurse hovering in the doorway, obviously making sure that we were not doing anything naughty. It made us both laugh the first time, then the interruptions became a trifle more frequent and I began to consider charging a fee for admittance.

  The Krankies had come in to replace me in the Opera House, and from all accounts were doing better business … and that information didn’t cheer me up one iota.

  Doctors came and doctors went: they looked at me, then poked and prodded my inert mass and tutted a lot in the process. ‘LOSE WEIGHT’ was one battle cry, another was ‘STOP SMOKING’. I cringed at yet another doom-laden warning: ‘DON’T DRINK ALCOHOL IN EXCESS’. Those edicts were merely the skirmishers before the main assault began.

  ‘Mr Dawson,’ one bloodless pipe-stem of a female dietician roared at me. ‘No sugar, no cakes, no pastry, no beer, no cheese. Less salt, preferably none at all, no white bread, no butter or margarine … no spirits!’ Jesus! I wanted to shout, why did you keep me alive? ‘Don’t be so ridiculous, Les,’ said one white-coated fiend, ‘you can have lots of goodies on a diet: nut fritters, celery, lots and lots of lettuce, fish, boiled or grilled – not fried – and no chips.’ What? Fish without chips? Whatever happened to the British Empire? Chicken? Oh, I don’t mind that. What? Chicken without the skin? But that’s the best part of the bloody fowl!

  I grew cunning even with my loved ones. I had to survive the hospital somehow. I paid a backward orderly a king’s ransom for a bar of nut chocolate which I hid under my mattress and ate when everybody was asleep.

  Tracy bought me fruit, especially bananas. Within a week I was walking around on my knuckles and showing my bum to everybody.

  The orderly put the screws on me when I begged him to buy me a Cornish pasty.… What I should have done in the face of such overt blackmail was to stab him with a thermometer, but my cravings were too great, and I pushed an extra pound in his hand as an incentive for him to purchase said pie and get it back without detection.

  The crumbs I kept in a paper bag in case I felt peckish during the night … which I always did, of course.

  I found a cigarette end in an abandoned ashtray and you might have thought I’d discovered the Koh-i-noor diamond. When Tracy went for a bath, I slipped out of the room and sneaked into a staff toilet. I lit up my cigarette butt and choked and coughed in sheer ecstasy. My hospital room was full of flowers which I ate inside a pillowcase.

  Finally – and gladly – the staff sent me home, but not before urging me to use another hospital next time … if there was a next time, not on your life, I thought, flowers give me wind.

  I stood outside the hospital with Tracy and I felt as though I’d been released from San Quentin. No matter how luxurious, a hospital is still a place of incarceration. The sun was shining and the reporters were out there gripping their pencils in readiness for a story, and I hammed it up.…

  REPORTER: How do you feel, Les, after your heart attack?

  ME: I still feel with my right hand, and my heart never attacked anybody.

  REPORTER: About the future … any thoughts of marriage?

  ME: Certainly not, I hardly know you.

  REPORTER: Come on, you and Tracy, when are you going to tie the knot?

  ME: After the baby’s been delivered I should think.

  Of course the reporter’s little ears shot up – was my blonde barmaid ripe with child?

  I frankly didn’t give a damn what he printed, but he realised eventually that the whole interview was a gag, and strode away irritated.

  We posed for a photograph and then drove back to Garth House and food … real food, and sod the calories.

  Tracy looked after me and refused to let me use the phone, and visits from relatives and friends were curtailed. I recuperated, and for three weeks it was a joy to roam around the garden, prod at the odd weed and drink a lot of tea, but then the workaholic took over and I lusted to start work again. However, in Tracy I had found not just a new love, I’d found a woman with a will of iron!

  Trying to have the odd smoke was out, because her sense of smell was so acute, she could stand on the landing in Lytham and smell bacon burning in Glasgow. I’d met my match, but the knowledge only served to increase my cunning little ways.… I hid fags all over the place and encouraged Tracy to go shopping. She did – and the shopping expeditions were so expensive I had to sell all the cigarettes I’d hidden in order to avoid bankruptcy. To get round that problem, I invited all my heavy-smoking friends round, and then I would sit downwind and breathe in the wonderful aroma. That only happened once because Tracy told everyone that smoking was taboo if I was to live through the night, and so my so-called friends refused to light up when they came to visit.

  Three weeks, and not one cigarette passed from the packet to my lips.… It was not easy. I chewed gum, ate sweets, drew on an empty pipe and sobbed openly. Tracy had noted the doctor’s warning that I should cut down on alcohol and, cold-hearted wanton that she was, she made sure that not a drop of the Devil’s Brew was in evidence. On top of everything else, I was forbidden to do pantomime at Bristol that Christmas, something I had been looking forward to ever since I’d taken part in a grand press launch there some months before.

  For the first time in my life I was frightened.… Everything that I’d taken for granted was no longer there; my health was suspect; and I began to feel that nobody wanted me any more. When the television was on, I’d moodily watch the new wave comedians and that would plunge me into a deeper hole of depression. That
Tracy put up with me at that period of time can only be a measure of her love for me.… Thanks, kid.

  Through a contact of ours with Cunard, I managed to secure a ten-day cruise on the liner Canberra. It was a semi-working trip in the sense that in return for having photographs taken with the captain and crew, we would be given a big price concession on a stateroom.…

  Tracy packed enough clothes to fill the average C&A store and I, with my vast knowledge of cruising, took one suitcase in contrast to her seven.

  The imp of mischief struck the holiday almost immediately … Tracy’s seven pieces of luggage came safely on board the ship, mine didn’t. As the liner churned away from Southampton dock, one solitary suitcase stood on the end of the jetty: mine. It finally came on board at Lisbon, so at least I could wear fresh underpants in case I had an accident and fell off the ship. Despite Tracy’s protests, I started smoking again and with the swell of the sea, the bar was the only place to be in, wasn’t it? Working on the premise that if you can’t beat ’em, then join ’em, Tracy propped the bar up with me.

  The weather was the worst in living memory. The sun fitfully poked its head through the black clouds for about half an hour a day, and we all discarded our vomit buckets and rushed up on deck to marvel at the unaccustomed warmth.

  The weather was so bad the captain couldn’t dock the ship at Gibraltar. Once again, I was experiencing a true Dawson holiday. At the end of it Tracy and I came ashore feeling ready for a holiday, and lounged about the house for the next two weeks.

  Meanwhile the income tax demand wouldn’t go away, and I was still mourning the fact that my watch, bracelet and diamond ring had been stolen from my cabin as I lay on my bunk in a drunken torpor.… Oh, didn’t I mention the theft? I had foolishly gone down into the crew’s quarters and we had drunk the night away, and I had got robbed for my pains.…

  It is my fervent belief that God needs something to laugh at, and I’m it. Years ago, I took out an insurance book. My mother lent me the money to buy the book and lo! I was a fully fledged insurance representative. Nobody had prepared me for such an occupation: my area was a tough, rough, working-class part of Manchester and they only bought small policies – enough to bury a relative and a bit over for a vase.

  I’d spend half an hour crouched over a premium book writing down ‘2p on Alfred … 4p on John’. Half an hour – and then I’d emerge from the two-up and two-down with sixpence in my bag. I couldn’t sell new insurance to anybody, and there were murmurs for my dismissal.

  I’d bought myself a second-hand bicycle and a new air pump because the tyres were so bald they looked as if they’d been backcombed. For some obscure reason, some idiot was going around stealing bicycle pumps, so I used to take mine off the bike and carry it round with me.… That was fine until one gloomy day I entered a terraced house brandishing my briefcase and my pump. The old lady I’d gone to see didn’t enjoy the best of eyesight and screamed when she saw the pump, thinking it was some sort of cosh. Her son rushed into the room and grabbed my arms, and it was a rather ugly scene until they realised who I was and what I was carrying. To make amends, the old lady made me a cup of tea and handed me a bloater paste sandwich. When I said goodbye to her, I walked into the street and found that someone had stolen my bike.

  I was so angry I marched into the local police station, waving my pump, and informed them of the theft of my bicycle. One florid copper with a warped sense of humour remarked, when I asked him how I was going to get home, ‘Shove the pump between your legs and use it as a jet.’

  Some work came my way: heaven-sent commercials for paint and cakes. These small engagements helped to stave off famine and keep my hand in. Christmas came and went, and in the early new year of 1989, Tracy and I made our date with matrimony. It was to be on her birthday, 6 May.

  For Better or for Worse!

  * * *

  The guests watched the little bridegroom adjust the microphone in readiness for a toast to the bridesmaids. They saw him remove the large cigar from his lips and start cracking gags about the state of marriage.…

  ‘Marriage is an institution, and that’s where a couple usually finish up.’

  ‘Compromise is the secret of a happy marriage. My next-door neighbour wanted a second-hand car, his wife wanted a fur coat. They couldn’t afford both, so they compromised … she got the coat but they keep it in the garage.’

  ‘Tracy and I have had a slight disagreement. I’ve gone to a hell of a lot of trouble to book a caravan for her honeymoon.… Would you believe she doesn’t want to go in a caravan? She wants to come to the South of France with me.’

  What the guests couldn’t see was a heart overflowing with love and gratitude to God for allowing me so much happiness.

  Tracy wanted a quiet wedding.… I didn’t.

  Tracy fancied going abroad somewhere and getting married on the beach. I didn’t like that idea one bit because with my track record, the chances were we’d end up clinging to a broken mast in the Indian Ocean after a cyclone.

  No, I was insistent, we had to stage a big wedding so that all would see our union. Somebody leaked the news of our impending nuptials to the press and they started badgering us again, this time for an exclusive coverage of the event.… Instead I decided to invite all the major newspapers to the ceremony.

  Like every wedding, it was a time of chaos; who should be invited and who should not.… How many bridesmaids, what about flowers, drink, the venue for the reception – the way the list of guests was growing we’d probably need Wembley Stadium.

  Tracy’s friend Christine was to make her wedding dress, which was going to be white to symbolise the purity of our union. For me, a visit to Moss Bros for the traditional top hat and tails – that I agreed to wear this sort of outfit must surely be a measure of my love for Tracy, because quite frankly, with my figure I look like a beached sperm whale in it.

  Stuart, my son, was to be my best man, and Pamela and Julie two of the bridesmaids. I blanched at the sheer cost of the forthcoming venture! … Tracy still argued that we should slip away to an island in the sun and get married on a beach.… No, no, I snarled, we’re going to show all the gossips that our love was made in heaven. Before the actual ceremony I talked to Meg’s headstone, and I know she approved the undertaking.

  There was one slight hitch. My Golf Classic that we held in May for charity, fell on 8 May, which meant that we would have to delay our honeymoon. We still hadn’t decided where to go for it, and at this stage there was only a fortnight left.

  Two things transpired which proved to me that Fate was being kind. My agents, Norman and Anne, rang up to inquire, with tongue in cheek, just how much I reckoned the wedding was going to cost. I trembled. My pencil dangled from my lifeless fingers. The wedding list had grown to lavish proportions and I had put down a figure of over twenty thousand pounds as an estimate. Norman knew that my tax bill had neatly cleared out a substantial sum, and casually said, ‘I think we can help. We’ve got a Ford commercial on television for you to do … that should pay for the wedding and a bit left over.’

  I could have kissed him … well, almost.

  Peter Harrison, an old friend, directed the commercial and we had two wonderful days shooting it and enjoying Peter’s hospitality. He and I had worked once before on a TV ad for cream cakes and after the shoot had been wrapped Tracy and I and all the crew drank a bathful of champagne and piled on the calories with fresh cream cakes … sheer heaven.

  The next thing that occurred was that friends of ours in the Isle of Man, Stuart Jameson and his lovely wife Geraldine, told us that as a wedding gift they were going to arrange and pay for our honeymoon.

  The hectic countdown began in earnest. Dresses for the bridesmaids, outfits for the best man and the ushers … the cost was creeping up. The champagne had been ordered, but good grief, would the guests really get through that vast amount? The wedding cake, oh yes, three tiers – I was going to be in tears if the cost didn’t stop mounting. I had nightmares abo
ut strong men frog-marching me to court with a host of creditors demanding the return of capital punishment. The cars, all vintage, had been ordered, and the cost leapt up and was given a further boost by the bill for the flowers.… There were to be flowers everywhere, on the altar, under the altar, up the vicar’s surplice and in my lady’s chamber.

  I was totally ignored as I dashed to and fro waving bills in the air. Everybody was too busy with the wedding to spare a thought for me – after all, I was merely the bridegroom.…

  Gleefully, I counted on a lot of the guests not being able to make the wedding. I argued that would help save a copper or two … but no, all the replies came back saying ‘Yes, we’d love to come.’

  The rehearsals for the wedding came and went, people pulled me into different positions and all the attention was naturally focused on the bride to be. I was simply there as ballast.

  The last days sped by and we grew nervous and snapped at each other.… I thought of all the wedding jokes I’d cracked:

  ‘Marriage, the only union without a shop steward.’

  ‘The bride was so fat I put the ring on her finger with a tyre lever.’

  ‘The vicar said, ‘Do you take this woman or is it Candid Camera?’

  ‘My bride was so fat, when I carried her over the threshold I made three trips.’

  The night before the wedding, I was thrown out of my own home by a band of zealous women. I barely had time to shout goodbye to Tracy before being bundled off the premises.