by Paul O'Grady
‘Neither can we,’ Alistair chipped in so as not to appear outdone. ‘We’re more or less fully booked for months.’ He turned his attention to a wig that sat on top of the telly, and gently ran a hand across it to see if its heavily backcombed and tortured surface could do with a bit more lacquer.
Alistair was one half of a mime drag double act called the Harlequeens. His partner Phil and he hadn’t been doing the rounds of pubs and clubs for very long but they were quickly becoming extremely popular. Alistair was the larger of the two both in height and girth. Phil was smaller, very funny and like Alice could go from gross caricature to high glamour. They did a ‘tarts’ routine at first, made up of bits of recognizable songs cleverly edited together on a reel-to-reel tape. They had a wealth of songs to choose from courtesy of Chris’s extensive record collection and between them had concocted a very funny montage. The tarts had gone down a treat when the Harlequeens made their debut. They had planned on calling themselves the Harlequins until someone suggested the funnier alternative, then with a new name they had extended the act into the requisite two twenty-minute spots and successfully gone on the pub circuit.
There was a drag boom on. Every pub in London, gay or straight, seemed to have a drag act. Mime acts were extremely busy too. They could work any pub, no matter how small, and were cheaper as the landlord was spared the expense of the drummer and pianist required to accompany live acts. All the mime acts needed was a record player or a tape machine plus a speaker to play them through. The Harlequeens had their own sound system, not exactly high tech but nevertheless effective and worth the initial expense as it allowed them greater scope.
‘What are you doing tonight, Sadie?’ Alistair asked. ‘Why don’t you come and watch us? We’re working a pub in the East End.’
I couldn’t wait. I’d read about the famous East End and seen it depicted in films on telly. It was home to the Krays and Jack the Ripper, Limehouse opium dens and the white slave trade. Gaslit alleys crawled with whores who lurked in the shadows and said, ‘Wanna good time, duckie?’ to every passing male. And fog, lots and lots of fog. Oh, I knew all about the East End all right, so it was not surprising that after an unremarkable journey squashed in the back of Alistair’s sister’s Mini with the speaker on my lap I was more than a bit disappointed when we pulled up outside an ordinary-looking pub on a main road. No fog, no opium dens, just a couple of girls outside a kebab shop.
Inside was equally unremarkable. The stage was a little carpeted platform with a bit of silver and red slash curtain tacked to the back wall for theatrical effect. A small organ and a set of drums completed the scene and at the side of the stage a chenille curtain had been hung for the acts to change behind. I sat at the bar while Alistair and Phil set their costumes up behind the curtain. They had no need to get made up as they’d arrived in full slap, hiding their heavily painted eyes behind dark glasses in the vain hope that it made them less conspicuous.
The changing facilities in most pubs ranged from appallingly squalid to non-existent. Very few had what could be described as a proper dressing room; at best the manager might allow them to change in the kitchen or at a push in the living accommodation over the bar, but it was more than likely the act could be found in the ladies’ toilet trying to apply an elaborate make-up in a dirty mirror lit by a forty-watt bulb while standing in two inches of pee. It was usually a wise move to arrive fully made up to save the hassle and abuse from the women who were, quite rightly, annoyed at finding their lav taken over by a couple of fellahs.
‘Get us two bevvies, Sadie,’ Alistair shouted, waving a couple of pound notes from behind the curtain. ‘And get one yourself.’
As I waited to be served I studied a poster that was pinned to the wall at a jaunty angle. ‘This Week’s Cabaret,’ it proclaimed in shaky black felt-tip. ‘Saturday, the Fabulous Harlequeens! with Compère the Lovely Shane!’ This was accompanied by a black and white ten-by-eight photo of Philip dressed as a baby, complete with bonnet and teddy bear, and a deranged Alistair advancing towards him wearing a fright wig, bovver boots and clutching a lavatory brush. Underneath this, written in a smaller hand, it said, ‘Comedy, mime drag. Not to be missed!’
There were lots of photographs of drag queens pinned to the wall of the bar, the majority of them sporting enormous wigs and huge eyelashes. A few were dressed in corsets and negligees trying to look like fifties sex kittens, candyfloss wigs, one leg in front of the other, knee slightly bent, heavily painted lips pouting as if blowing a kiss at the camera. An act called Derek Reece was even dressed as a pregnant bride.
My attention was diverted by the arrival of a woman behind the bar. I was transfixed by this glamorous creature in an elegant full-length, low-cut black velvet gown dispensing drinks and holding court. She was extraordinary, her features chiselled and hard yet not unattractive, her movements slow and deliberate as she daintily poured a gin into a glass from one of the optics.
‘Ice and a slice, love?’ She weighed me up from behind a heavy blonde fringe as she popped an ice cube into the drink. ‘Are you waiting to be served,’ she asked in a husky voice, ‘or are you just gonna stand there gawping at my tits all night?’
My face slowly turned scarlet as I realized that I’d been staring at her chest. It was hard not to, they were hanging out of the top of her dress. I muttered my order.
‘You one of the act’s bit of trade?’ she asked casually, pulling a pint of lager. ‘How far do you go for a quid then?’
I wanted the floor to open up as she took the money Alistair had given me out of my hand and glided off towards the till laughing.
‘Who’s that woman behind the bar?’ I asked Phil, taking the drinks behind the curtain and trying to find somewhere to put them in the cramped space.
‘What woman’s that then, love?’ Phil asked in his strong Welsh accent, quickly moving a ratty-looking feather boa before I spilled the drinks on it.
‘The blonde one behind the bar in the long black frock.’
‘You mean Shane?’ Alistair pulled the curtain back so he could take a look. ‘She’s not a woman,’ he laughed, ‘Shane’s a drag queen.’
‘But she’s got tits and real hair, and she’s hardly got any make-up on,’ I protested.
‘The tits are taped up but the hair’s her own. She pins it up and backcombs it,’ Alistair said, laughing at my ignorance. ‘Didn’t you twig that she was drag? Honestly, Sadie, open your eyes, dear. This is London, you’re not in Berkhamsted now.’
‘Birkenhead.’
‘If you say so, dear.’
I hadn’t had a lot of experience when it came to drag queens. The first time I ever saw a man in a frock was on the Royal Variety Performance, when I must have been about eleven.
‘Paul, leave your homework for a minute and come down here and have a look at this on the telly,’ my mother shouted up the stairs to me. She was ironing pillowcases in the front room. ‘What do you think of her then?’ she asked, pointing to a voluptuous woman on the screen with lots of hair and a very fancy dress. I leaned on the ironing board and watched her for a moment. She had a strange voice and was flamboyant, painted up like one of the elegant mannequins in Robbs’ windows.
‘Is it Fanny Cradock?’
‘Of course it’s not. Have a good look. Can’t you tell what’s different about her?’
‘She’s very tall?’
‘No, soft lad, she’s not a she, she’s a he. He’s called Danny La Rue. He’s a man! And stop picking that asbestos at the end of me ironing board, will you.’
I remember wondering if he dressed like that all the time, and if so, did people mind? How did he do his shopping? I couldn’t imagine him running around Birkenhead dressed like that or anywhere else for that matter.
I’d since run into trannies in Sadie’s and the Bear’s Paw. There was a six-foot-six heterosexual builder by trade who called himself Carol and liked to drink in Sadie’s dressed in the tiniest of miniskirts and the highest of heels. Carol was not the prettiest girl in
the chorus. She was built like a brick shithouse, thick neck with an Adam’s apple the size of a King Edward potato and a masculine face, cowpat craggy, that made Ernest Borgnine look cute. When this was covered with a thick application of greasy cosmetics it could be quite startling to the uninitiated.
Despite her intimidating appearance we treated Carol like a lady. It wasn’t just the knowledge that a punch from one of her Desperate Dan-sized fists might put you in hospital that stopped you tittering in her face, it was her quiet dignity and almost regal composure that commanded respect and consequently we treated her with the reverence she deserved. Even so, I was still a comparative neophyte when it came to the world of cross-dressing but I was learning fast.
‘Wait till I tell her you thought she was a real palone,’ Phil chuckled, violently shaking out an Afro wig before putting it on his head. He bent down to get a better look in the minuscule mirror propped up against the piano, an instrument recently made redundant by the arrival of the Bontempi organ that now proudly sat on the other side of the curtain.
‘She’ll be delighted, absolutely bloody delighted,’ he said, tucking his hair into the sides of the wig. ‘Now do us a favour, love, get lost and leave us to get changed, will you? We’re on soon.’
Shane was indeed absolutely delighted on hearing that I thought she was the real McCoy, and consequently made frequent use of me during her opening act by gently sending me up.
I stood rooted to the spot, a fixed grin on my burning face, wishing I were somewhere else. Shane didn’t have a bad singing voice. She seemed to prefer ballads and torch songs to up-tempo numbers, probably seeing herself more as a sophisticated chanteuse than a raucous pub drag act. She reminded me of the Gladys George character in the movie The Roaring Twenties and both terrified and fascinated me at the same time.
Eventually she finished her spot with a dramatic Shirley Bassey ballad that had the devotees in the audience cheering the roof off and, satisfied that she had the crowd warmed up sufficiently, she introduced the Harlequeens. They opened with the tarts routine. Alistair was the battered old bag with a fag hanging from her mouth wearing a short plastic mac and tatty wig and miming along to Marlene Dietrich’s ‘Lili Marlene’, while Phil played the lip-smacking, sly-eyed sexy little scrubber. They were very funny. Alistair galumphed around the tiny stage to Joyce Grenfell’s ‘Stately As A Galleon’ while Phil, dressed in a bonnet and romper suit, mimed to Helen Kane’s ‘I Wanna Be Loved By You’ sung in her poop-doop-a-doop baby voice.
Reality was temporarily suspended. For a time I forgot that the precocious brat on stage was in reality the grown man I’d been speaking to a moment earlier. There was more to this than just standing there miming to records, I reasoned, as I watched them both at work. You had to act the number out, make the audience believe that the disembodied voice you were mouthing along to was really your own.
By the time Alistair dropped me off back at Formosa Street it was past midnight. I helped him unpack the wigs, costumes and equipment and carry them into the flat.
‘I’ll have to go for a slash, Sadie, I’m burstin’,’ he shouted, making a dash for the lav. ‘Put those wigs on the hooks in the hall, will you.’
I looked at the blond crash helmet of a wig that I was holding and felt an overwhelming urge to put it on. I couldn’t resist wigs and still can’t, if I see one it has to go on my head. Alistair was audible through the wall, groaning with relief as he peed. It sounded like it was going to be a long one so I was safe for the moment. Going to the mirror and gazing at my reflection, I was amazed to see how different a wig could make you appear. Tugging the fringe down further so it just sat over one eye, I pulled the same face that my aunty Chris called her Marlene Dietrich, letting my fag dangle from the side of my mouth and sucking my cheeks in. I peered at myself in the glass through hooded eyes. I looked ridiculous. The wig was fixed in the shampoo-and-set style that old ladies went in for when they got their hair done for half price on a Wednesday afternoon and it made me look like a skull who needed a shave. Still, I thought, admiring myself in the mirror, with a different style and the right make-up I reckon I could look halfway decent …
‘Sadie, you’re very quiet out there. What are you up to?’ Alistair shouted from the lav. ‘You’re not trying my wigs on again, are you?’ The raging torrent that had rumbled against the bowl was calming down into a light stream, heralding the fast-approaching end of Alistair’s marathon pee. I took the wig off and hung it on one of the hat pegs in the hall as I heard him pull the chain.
‘Ooh, I needed that,’ he said, coming out and looking around to see if I’d put the wigs away or dumped them on the floor. ‘What you been up to?’
‘Nothing,’ I replied, ‘I was just thinking.’
CHAPTER 4
Formosa Street
WHAT LITTLE MONEY I’D ARRIVED WITH SOON RAN OUT AND by the end of a fortnight in Formosa Street I woke up to the realization that I was now totally destitute. Chris and Billy had gone to work so I had the flat to myself. Before he’d left Billy had put his head round the front-room door and barked a list of instructions at me as I lay semi-conscious, wrapped in a blanket, on the floor.
‘I want to come home and find this flat cleaned from top to toe, Sadie, or there will be trouble. You’re not pulling your weight, dear, and if you’re not job-hunting then at least you can clean up.’
I pretended not to hear and rolled over, preferring to concentrate on running my big toe through the shagpile carpet rather than getting up and cleaning it. I didn’t blame Billy. I was a lazy sod when it came to housework, believing that somehow it did itself.
After a while hunger drove me to rouse myself from my bed on the floor and go down to the kitchen in search of sustenance. It suddenly occurred to me that the last meal I’d eaten had been over twenty-four hours ago and that had only been sausage and chips. A bit of bacon on toast and maybe some cornflakes plus a nice pot of tea, I mused, putting the kettle on and inspecting the contents of the fridge while I waited for it to boil. My vision of crispy bacon slathered in Daddie’s Sauce evaporated in a flash as, apart from an empty tube of cream cheese spread that looked as if it had been there since the Crimean War and half a tin of cat food, the fridge was bare. Not even a drop of milk for a cup of tea, let alone cereal. I searched every cupboard in the kitchen for something to eat but the only remotely edible thing on offer seemed to be an ancient slice of French toast and a vegetable stock cube. What was wrong with these queens? Didn’t they eat? Oh well, as my ma would say, ‘Needs must when the devil drives,’ and making the best of the paltry ingredients I rustled up breakfast.
Petit Déjeuner à la Formosa Street
Take one vegetable stock cube, preferably slightly battered and past its sell-by date, add boiling water and stir. A little pepper may be added if required. Take a pinhead of dehydrated cream cheese hanging out of the end of the flattened tube and dab carefully on the corner of a slice of ten-year-old French toast and voilà! Soupe de Légumes et Croque Monsieur. Extremely suitable as breakfast for a prisoner in the Bastille.
Delia would’ve been proud of me.
Next on the agenda was a ciggy. My packet of Cadets was empty, which meant there was nothing for it but to go through the ashtrays and bins for a respectable-sized stump. A search of Chris and Billy’s bedroom proved fruitless as every single butt in there had been smoked right down to the filter. The miserable bastards, I cursed, going through every coat pocket, scouring the living room, kitchen and bathroom and then searching again, driven like a mad thing by my craving for nicotine. Eventually I got dressed and ran over the street to Alistair’s to see if either he or Tony Page could ‘give us the loan of a fag’. I hated asking as I’d not known them that long and was loath to reinforce the stereotypical image of residents of Merseyside as scrounging scallies, constantly bumming cigs. As for borrowing money from them, forget it, I’d sooner starve than ask for a loan and it seemed that in my current predicament I was about to find out just what that
felt like.
Neither Alistair nor Tony Page was at home. Oh Lord, I’d have sold a kidney for ten Cadets, both of them for a pack of twenty, and as I was putting my key in the door a woman came out of the newsagent’s and lit a cigarette. The whiff of smoke that assailed my nostrils as she strolled past made my craving for the dreaded weed unbearable. I had to have a fag, just had to and if it meant swallowing my pride and asking for a packet on tick from the newsagent that we lived above then so be it.
‘Hello, I’ve just moved into the flat above with Chris and Billy.’
‘Oh yes, you mean the two pouffes?’
‘I don’t know about that, I’m just the lodger.’
‘And?’
‘I was wondering if it would possible to get ten Cadets on tick? I can pay you back tonight.’ God knows how but I’d cross that bridge when I came to it.
‘Sorry, mate, no can do. I don’t give credit and you know what they say.’
‘No?’
‘If you can’t afford to buy’em then you can’t afford to smoke’em.’
‘Do you know a woman called Molly O’Grady by any chance?’
‘Who?’
‘Doesn’t matter.’
Feeling very sorry, for myself I went back up to the flat and sat on the stairs to have a think, not very easy when your mind is fixed on ciggies and food. Was this what living in London was all about? Sat on a staircase surrounded by pictures of Betty Grable and June Haver, starving and skint?
Even if I’d wanted to give up and go back home, which at this moment I did, how was I going to find the money for the fare? Plus there was the added worry of not being able to keep up the dreaded maintenance payments. Did this mean the worry over food, fags and a roof over my head would soon be taken care of by HM Prisons? A job would bail me out of this mess but it seemed no one wanted to give me one. Even though I’d scoured the Situations Vacant section of the Evening Standard each evening, I’d been unsuccessful with every job I’d applied for.
