A Search for Donald Cottee

by Philip Spires

  ‘Poncho Suzie’s Ribthwaite Castle’ is what it says now. Mick has had it done out in neon. My name is pink, in what he calls a script font, set diagonally across the large green capitals of the pub’s name. He says the handwriting for my name soothes potential punters into a feeling of trust for the establishment. It’s a bit like selling hats, it seems. But it’s so bendy I doubt many people can read it. ‘Poncho Suzie’s’ flashes on and off and then lights itself up letter by letter from left to right. And then it does the whole thing in reverse. ‘s’eizuS ohcnoP’ it reads. During the day it looks like nothing, a bit like the fluffy insides of a television. But at night, obviously the time when we get most of our trade, it looks gorgeous, a real touch of class. There’s a wall of them, of course, all along the street, but our pink and green really stands out. It will stand out even more when the Nookey Wallow next door shuts down. They say it’s changed hands four times in the last five years and dropped its beer price every season. Now it’s packed with boozers all day. It makes you wonder when you realise that their lager is going at cost price and basically that’s all they sell. So the tenants’ reality is that they are subsidising their customers’ holidays. Jessie and Wayne have had it for the last few months. They’re Scotch and think that having the place full is a success in itself. But, unlike most of their compatriots, they’re no good with money and have forgotten to include a profit in their sums, so they’re finished. They really shouldn’t have copied what British Leyland did with the mini. And there’s rumours that Darren and Terri can’t cope in the Rumbledown Hill this side of the corner. I’ve heard it said that they’re coming out as well. And I’ve hardly seen a single customer go into the clothes shop at the end. I happen to know that the owner is semi-retired and doesn’t really care about whether she gets any business. But it does mean that business in general along our part of the street can be a bit thin. Now you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear so I’m hoping that something else nearby picks up. It will help The Castle. It will help all of us.

  But it also has to be said that none of the places nearby has anything to mark it out as different. They seem to think that to be in business all you need is something to sell. But from my experience in Mullins The Milliners, the only high class hats in Bromaton, I know different. Variety is the spice of life, so the street doesn’t need yet another standard bar. I decided that The Castle had to be different, offer some steak as well as the sizzle. Only the insane repeat themselves and expect different results. Something needed to give.

  That’s what The Castle needed, you see, a touch of class. The days are gone when Kiddington people, not to mention wine-bar sophisticates from Punslet, want to do no more than sit in a pub, have a few pints, play bingo and see a turn. It’s different nowadays. People can get music on their mobile phone, watch Michael Jackson dance until eternity at the flick of a web page or shuffle their iPod with half a million free mp3s. They don’t want to sit through a turn by Joe from the council estate, even though he might have a good voice and look just like Elvis Presley when he rents a sparkly costume from the fancy dress outfitter and dons his Ray-bans. What they want nowadays is something sophisticated, a professional show. They’ll laugh at the same jokes every night, but they’ve got to be good jokes, classy ones, not the old stuff that Tia Pepe uses. “We’ve got a great cemetery in our village. Everybody’s dying to get in... I had my wife cremated because I wanted to see what she looked like hot!” I ask you... Tia Pepe is the only comic I know who can deliver a one-liner and make it sound like a paragraph.

  So the first thing I did was reorganise the acts. I went for a series of half-hour turns, presenting them in conjunction with The Smugglers Rest down at the end of the street. They do The Castle first and then The Smugglers in the following half hour. Now we’ve got Jeff Parsons, the tribute to Rod Stewart. Next is Eddie Smith, king of the clarinet, as seen on television’s Face The Faceless. That Acker Bilk Stranger On The Shore works every time. Such a nice tune, even when he plays it three times over by popular demand and looks as bored as he sounds. The punters always sing along, even though there’s no words. Then there’s Jenny Michael and Floppy, the tribute to the world famous Larry The Lamb. She’s very good, and she’s clean, usually. There’s no mucky stuff in her act, so that means we have a good session early doors that attracts families and the like, people who have a few standards and don’t like their turns to use language or anything like that. Mind you, Jenny can put her hand to anything if she needs to. Oh yes. She can mix it with the best of them when she does her routine about Floppy’s sex life with Eunice The Sheep. It’s an absolute hoot bar none, but she is very good, in that she never does it before 9 o’clock at night, just like on the tele. There’s a time and place, after all.

  Mind you, there’s plenty of Jenny to go round. When she’s not smiling on stage, she goes around riding a mobility scooter wearing a face like sin. I wouldn’t call her bitter, but she does deliberately run over children’s feet. I think it’s all to do with spending every night up there with people laughing at you. You need to get some of your own back, I suppose. She’s got another act, a magic show, where she produces things from all over the place. It’s clean, mind you, not like that Randy Sandy, who takes the biscuit, if you ask me. But you can’t just do anything straight. If you’re not mucky you have to do it for laughs. In Jenny’s case, she has to do her magic for laughs, because she’s not good enough to do it straight. She’s like Tommy Cooper without the script. I still can’t fathom, though, where that vase of flowers comes from.

  But when it comes to people producing things from unlikely places, there is simply nothing to touch Randy Sandy. I know she’s been at it for years, but she’s successful because she’s good. With her, it’s always a surprise, always original, no matter how many times you’ve seen it before. On stage, she arrives in a gold lamé glitter gown and you might, given her backing music and the lights, think she’s going to strip. You’d be wrong, of course, because when she takes the gown off, she’s already got nothing at all on underneath - not a stitch. What she produces from various openings around her body is nobody’s business. Her anatomy is apparently cavernous. It might not be exactly pretty, but it certainly pulls them in.

  Mind you, good as it is, I think that sometimes she lowers the tone. Personally, I rule the line at ping-pong balls being shot at the audience, especially when the blokes in the front row compete to see who can catch one in the mouth. And then, if they succeed, the dirty things spit it straight back to see if they can get it back in where it came from before the next one comes out. Disgusting, if you ask me, but the blokes go wild for it and the women get a few good belly laughs. The feat’s never been done, for obvious reasons, but one day one of the jokers will mount the stage to shorten the range a bit, and that would not be the kind of thing we’d want at The Castle. She does pull them in, however. It was always said that you can only see a novelty act once, but the blokes never seem to tire of her openings. And when we follow that up with Katie Dick and Trevor Quim, the wet-look plastic sex act at half-past midnight on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, we have the fullest club in town. And they’re not all blokes that come, either. Katie and Trevor seem to be a must for all the hen parties. And the ladies go wild whenever the couple do requests. It’s hardly sing-along, but it keeps them coming.

  We’ve also got Flasher Tony Gordon, the funniest man in Punslet, who raises an occasional laugh. Personally, I like the one about the donkey and the giraffe. Two halves of a coconut, I ask you...

  But it’s been with the staff that I’ve had my greatest success. When I first arrived at The Castle, they were a surly, disgruntled lot. A couple of them hadn’t been paid for weeks. Karen and Phil were spending all of their time using their computers upstairs, even when there were punters queuing up at the bar. I soon had that sorted out. I delivered everybody concerned an ultimatum. Now they have fixed hours to do their design work, hours that Mick pays for out of
his other budget, and then they have fixed hours on bar work that I stand out of The Castle’s books. At least now we all know where we stand. I also persuaded Mick to set on a couple of new faces, a couple of people who would be grateful for the hours and so would work hard. It was a ploy of mine to keep the others on their toes. You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs, I told them, so hard work is the order of the day from now on. Any slacking and you’re out!

  I got a new plastic bucket and a paint brush and drew up a roster to make sure that there was always someone going round emptying the ashtrays. It saves you time in the long run because they don’t get upset onto the floor if they’re kept empty. I also made it clear from day one that an empty glass left on a table was slovenly and that we were to have none of that in The Castle. I said I wanted the place to be kept as clean as a new pin, as spick and span as my own front room and that it had to stay that way. Trade has gone up five times, quadrupled, I’m told, since I took over. The Castle is like it used to be, the place that everyone thought of as a great night out. But now, of course, it’s not just The Castle, it’s Poncho Suzie’s, and it’s the place to be, the hottest place in town.

  I wish Mick was a bit more supportive, though. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that he gets in the way. Or even obstructs what we are doing. After all, it was him that organised the new sign that put my name up in lights. I don’t want to bite the hand that feeds me, but fool me once and shame on you: fool me twice then shame on me. It might be easier to ask for forgiveness than permission, but I want credit where credit’s due. And it’s my ideas that’s turned this place around.

  Now there’s been several times when I’ve come up with something really simple to improve things. I’ve got onto him straight away, explained things, showed him all the figures and proved it would work. Frankly I expected a “Yes” immediately, given the care and effort I’d put into the preparation and presentation. And then he’s taken as long as a week to get back to me. He’ll never just make a decision. But when he eventually does give the go-ahead, he hasn’t come up with anything more than what I told him in the first place. His procrastination is thieving my time! It’s as if he has to go and ask someone else’s permission before he can agree. And that someone else seems to be someone I either don’t know, or who wants to remain unidentified. Whoever it might be, he certainly never comes anywhere near The Castle.

  Now it’s not like Mick to work like that. He’s a bull in a China shop - at least he always was. He usually knew what he wanted and went straight for it. He’d let nothing - even a pair of tights - get in his way. He was always a headstrong type, eager to get on with something as soon as it entered his mind. These days he’s a real ditherer. I thought it would get easier once he had seen me operate for a few weeks, but his delays seem to get longer as time goes by.

  And as for what we were told about Karen and Phil Matthews selling photo-mounted key-rings to the punters... Well, I really don’t know where that came from. After three months of work at The Castle, I’ve yet to see them take a single photo of a punter, let alone mount anything in a plastic key-ring! I have no idea what they spend their time doing in that studio of theirs. All I know is that during their studio hours, the Do Not Disturb light goes on outside and the door gets locked. It’s strange, if you ask me.

  Twenty Five

  Well, if I’m not fed up with that daft ha’peth... - Suzie describes the vicissitudes she faces in managing The Castle’s progress from failure to its restored position as one of the town’s top nightspots. Michael Watson seems unable to make a quick decision on peeling potatoes. Suzie employs new acts and hints at skeletons in cupboards.

  Well, if I’m not fed up with that daft ha’peth, Mick Watson. As if I’ve not had enough of him in my life! Once bitten twice shy, I usually say. But he’s already made a mess of things for me at least twice and now he seems hell-bent on reaching the hat-trick. I’ve done this. I’ve done that. I’ve cleaned the place. I’ve fixed the chairs and polished up all the tables. I’ve put in a new menu, I mean, the old one had spaghetti this and Thai green that, but you couldn’t even get a plane omelette! Their burguers and chips weren’t fit to eat. The buggres were as thin as paper, straight out of an economy family pack in the freezer and the chips came part-cooked in a plastic bag, special price for bulk order. What they were made of I just don’t know. They were all the same size and shape, cooked like sawdust on the outside and stayed mushy inside, just like the ones that Kiddingtonians use to fill up their freezers. I mean, when you go out to eat, you want something a bit special, don’t you? You don’t want the same stuff you can put on your table every day of the week. He could at least have put some green tomato chutney on the tables! And a side plate where you could leave the bits of jerkin and salad that nobody eats would have helped. Now I get my meat from a butcher and we use real potatoes. We’ve sold thousands of chip butties since I made that decision.

  So what was Mick’s first comment? “You’ll have to sell a lot to pay for Maureen’s time if she’s going to peel taties. I can’t say ‘yes’ to that,” he said. “I’ll have to think it over.” Now a thief thinks everyone steals, but Mick ought to realise that there’s more than one way to kill a cat. Mick’s an old dog and I’m a new trick. And he’s not yet realised that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. He’s taking me for granted! It takes two to tango, and I’m getting fed up with dancing alone.

  I wish I had a pound for every time I’ve heard that phrase, ‘I’ll have to think it over’, come out of him in the last couple of months! Whenever I suggest anything, first he finds fault and then he says, “I’ll have to think it over.” And then it takes him a day or more to make up his mind and, usually, I have to ring him to get a judgment. I just wouldn’t find out any other way. The act of picking up a telephone and pressing precisely nine buttons, three of which are repeated, seems to be beyond both his physical capabilities and his powers of concentration. I’ve complained repeatedly, but it’s water off a duck’s back with Mick. Sometimes I reckon he can’t see wood for trees. I tell him that time and tide wait for no man, but it makes not a scrap of difference. I want to reap what I sow, but I can’t get it planted!

  Take the potatoes, for example. I said to him, “Maureen will be glad of the money. She would work all day if she could. You know she only has her pension. She worked all her life picking out bruised and broken beans as they sped past on a conveyor belt en route to tins and tomato sauce, so this work is a real Godsend for her. She can talk to people. At first I thought she was dumb. Her mouth never seemed to open, but when she gets going she hardly pauses for breath. And she shouts, but that’s just because a lifetime standing next to eighty delibels of machinery has left her deaf.” So what does Mick say? “I’ll have to think about it.” I lost my rag. “Look, Mick Watson. What do you take me for? I’m an accomplished businessman. The Mullins have more business experience in the family than generations of Watsons. All you ever had was a granddad who was a self-employed plumber. I’ve done all the sums. I can make it pay. I’ll tell you what,” I continued - I can recall the exact words, “I’ll make it self-financing. I’ll offer Maureen’s services to a wider market. I’ll set her up as a hotel potato peeling service in The Castle’s kitchen. She can do that in the early morning when the club’s not even open. I’ll set her on as soon as I’ve got some orders. Whatever she does for me and The Castle will already be paid for out of the profit I make on her peeling. You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. Heads you win, tails you win. How about that,” I asked.

  “I’ll have to think about it,” he said.

  I could have throttled him. “Mick,” I said, impatient to say the least, “yes has three letters and rhymes with mess and no has two letters and rhymes with no. Why can’t you just say yes or no? I’m not going to make a mess.”

  “It’s not that easy, Suzie. I have to think things through, run projections, work things out properly..
. There’s the extra hours and taxes to think of...”

  “You’re not telling me that any of these people at The Castle are on official contracts are you? I know enough about the way these places work to know that the words official and contract are taboo round here. And what do you mean by run projections? You don’t use one of those sandwich spreadsheets like my Donkey, do you? We could be here until Christmas before we get an answer out of one of those things. Where there’s a will there’s a way, and a stitch in time saves nine. But your way, I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t.”

  Well he went away and I heard nothing for a day or two. I’d already put up a notice on our board advertising the new service. “Potatoes peeled, bulk order taken, inquire within” it says. I put it right next to the photo of Kinky Karen, who does one of our after-midnight slots and is advertising a couple of large tubers of her own. I thought it might catch the eye. No doubt Mick knew about my poster the moment it went up. I am under no illusions. That Phil Matthews and his missus were probably on the phone the moment it saw light of day. They’re Greeks bearing gifts are those two, if you ask me.

  Within a couple of hours I’d not only had my inquiries, I’d already filled Maureen’s spare time all five mornings a week and had extra in the pipeline to give her some overtime. It makes sense, you see, because the hotel owners can get rid of a kitchen hand or two. They save a lot of money because their people have to be on proper short-term contracts. I’d also already made a tidy profit for The Castle on top of paying Maureen, and I now had my proper chips. I’d killed two birds with one stone.

  So I phoned Mick Watson and asked him what he thought of the idea before mentioning that it was already in place. “I have reviewed your suggestion,” he said, sounding all official and managerial - stuck up, if you ask me, “and I can give it a conditional go-ahead for a trial period of one month.”