The Devil Rides Out

by Paul O'Grady

  ‘This is Robin,’ he said, smiling slyly as he presented me to this scruffy little hobbit.

  Robin shook my hand effusively and sat down, blowing his nose on a piece of ragged toilet paper before necking three-quarters of his pint without drawing breath.

  ‘Ah, that’s better,’ he gasped in his plummy public-school accent, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘I’ve literally just flown in from Nice, had a quick spot of lunch at La Colombe d’Or before jumping on the plane. Do you know the Colombe d’Or by any chance? No? Oh it’s fabulous, up in the hills on the outskirts of Saint-Paul de Vence. Wonderful roast lamb and an incredible cellar, I must take you both for dinner one night.’

  Yeah, sure, I thought, watching him greedily demolish the remainder of his pint. He didn’t look as if he could run to egg, chips and beans at the New Piccadilly Caff, never mind fancy restaurants in Nice.

  Tony, however, seemed impressed and nodded knowingly at the mention of the wine cellar. Being a bit of a connoisseur himself, there was nothing he loved more than a chance to show off his impressive knowledge, but before he could speak Robin had wiped his mouth on the back of his hand again and was carrying on the conversation from where he’d left off.

  ‘Yes, absolutely glorious cellar. May I have a cigarette? I seem to have run out,’ he said, smiling, helping himself to one of my Cadets. He inhaled deeply and threw his head back, blowing the smoke towards the ceiling and scrunching his face up as if he were in agony.

  ‘My God, these are strong, aren’t they? What are they called?’ He examined the cigarette as if he’d never seen one before. ‘Are they Turkish?’

  ‘No, they’re Cadets,’ I snapped, ‘and if you don’t like them then I suggest you buy a packet of something that’s more to your taste. There’s a fag machine at the bottom of the stairs, bloody ponce.’

  ‘I would if I had any money, my dear, but I’m afraid all I’ve got on me are francs at the moment. I haven’t had a chance to change them into sterling yet. You couldn’t let me have a few quid until we get back to the hotel, could you?’

  ‘What hotel would that be? The Sally Army?’ He was getting on my nerves.

  ‘No, I’m staying at the Hilton for the time being and I’d be delighted if you would both join me for dinner tonight,’ he said, ignoring my jibe and smiling disarmingly. ‘Now are we having another drink?’

  Gullible as I was, I didn’t believe for one minute that he’d just flown in from Le Column or whatever it was called with its fancy wine cellar et al. He looked to me suspiciously like he’d spent the night sleeping rough, unshaven and unwashed as he was with his dirty fingernails and creased suit, and the closest he’d get to a meal at the Hilton would be whatever he’d fished out of the bins round the back. He was all my arse, I thought, a conman, the type who could charm a maggot off a corpse. He’d certainly captivated the normally sagacious Tony, for here he was gaily handing over a tenner so that the bum could ‘get a quick round in before we go off and eat’. Robin? Robbin’ bastard more like, I muttered as I stomped off to the lav.

  We took a taxi to the Hilton, which Tony paid for amid apologies and promises of immediate reimbursement from Robin.

  ‘Let’s dump him and go back to the house, I don’t believe that he’s …’ The words died on my lips as the doorman opening the cab door tipped his hat and greeted Robin with a ‘Good evening, Lord Robin.’ Tony winked, delighted with himself and his catch. He liked collecting men with titles, his address book read like Burke’s Peerage.

  ‘Are you a real lord then?’ Out it came before I could stop myself. ‘Are you a real lord then?’

  Tony snorted and I cringed with embarrassment as I became painfully aware that my voice sounded higher than usual and my already broad Scouse accent more pronounced. Most annoying of all was that my tone suggested I was impressed by this news when in fact I’d intended to sound disbelieving.

  Looking at Robin again, it started to make sense. Didn’t my ma and Aunty Annie and Chrissie say that ‘real gentry’ always looked like they ‘didn’t have a pot to piss in or a window to chuck it out of’? Well, wasn’t Milord Robin living proof of that rather direct but nevertheless well-founded theory? Unshaven and tousled, looking like he’d slept in a skip and sounding like Lord Haw-Haw? He certainly appeared to have the right qualifications.

  ‘Nobs never carry cash on them,’ I remembered my aunty Chrissie saying. ‘They put everything down on account. They haven’t got any ready cash anyway, all their wealth is tied up in property and land and then there’s the crippling taxes. They haven’t got an arse in their trousers.’

  ‘Yes, awful, isn’t it?’ Lord Robin said over his shoulder as we followed him into the hotel lobby. ‘But please don’t even think of addressing me as “Lord”. I’m plain old Robin to my friends.’

  ‘No danger of that,’ I wanted to say, but left it unexpressed as suddenly the night looked like it was beginning to show some potential. Robin breezed up to the reception talking loudly and flapping his hands about, and people were staring. My brown leather bomber jacket and skin-tight jeans felt out of place in the lobby of the Hilton Hotel among the immaculately dressed staff and flashy Yanks.

  ‘Yes, good evening, can I have my key please?’ he said, sounding suddenly vague and flustered, exactly like the toffs and eccentrics in The Avengers. ‘And can you tell me, has my luggage arrived yet?’

  ‘Not yet, Lord Robin, but as soon as it does I’ll have it sent directly up to your suite. Is there anything else I can do for you, sir?’

  Suite? Suite? Maybe I’ve got this all wrong.

  ‘Could you cash a cheque for, say, five hundred pounds and, erm … send some cigarettes up. A couple of packs of Winston for me and, er, what are those fags you smoke called, Paul?’

  Please don’t say I smoke Cadets. Cadets were one of the less expensive brands, down there with Sovereign and No. 10. Common as muck. Not the done thing to be seen smoking in the hallowed corridors of the Hilton. A sophisticated Sobranie, yes, or even one of those awful French things that Scottish Billy smoked. Galoshes? Galouise? Ghastly. But most definitely not a humble Cadet.

  ‘Cadets! That was it,’ he shouted triumphantly, his voice carrying across the lobby.

  Oh Lord.

  ‘I’m afraid we don’t stock Cadets, Lord Robin.’

  Sweet Jesus, just let the earth open up and take me now.

  ‘However, I can send a member of staff up to the garage to get you some. How many packs?’

  ‘Oh, a couple of cartons,’ Robin said absently, ambling off towards the lifts, ‘and send some champagne up as well. Oh, and make a reservation for eight o’clock at Trader Vic’s, will you?’

  His suite was impressive, brown suede sofas and modern art – very Jason King – and we sat glugging champagne and looking out of the window at the view across Park Lane to Hyde Park while Robin took a shower. He appeared from the bedroom definitely looking cleaner but still wearing the same clothes. Peeling a few twenties off the five-hundred-quid wad from his recently cashed cheque, he offered to pay back his debt to Tony. It seemed a more than generous interest rate on a loan of ten pounds, give or take the one pound twenty for the taxi, but as I expected Tony refused it. Wouldn’t hear of it, he said, please put it back in your wallet. Robin insisted, Tony resisted. In the end Robin turned to me.

  ‘Make him take it, will you plea—?’ It was out of his hand and in my pocket before he could finish his sentence. Gift horses and mouths? Not me.

  Dinner was very lively. We drank nearly every cocktail that was on the menu, followed by wine and then more champagne and became very animated and loud. I lost all inhibition and did the court jester bit and when the cigarette girl with her tray appeared at the table (they still had ‘em then) Robin insisted I took at least a dozen packs. By the end of the evening I had enough to stock a small tobacconist’s shop. Oh, a good time was had by all. The other diners must have hated us and even today I’m squirming a little bit as I recall it. Robin in
his matter-of-fact way told us wild and highly improbable tales about his titled friends and family and the many adventures and interesting people he’d encountered on his extensive travels. An outrageous fantasist or not, there was no doubting he was great company and I started to warm to him, my affections no doubt fuelled by that inner glow you get from slugging enough booze to make you feel affable towards all mankind.

  He insisted that we came back up to his suite, which suited me fine as I’d never have got back to Mount Street in my condition without having my collar felt. Imagine it: Scouse, blind drunk, weaving up Park Lane with two hundred fags under his coat. I wouldn’t have stood a chance, would I? Six months, O’Grady, stand down.

  Robin passed out on one of the sofas as soon as we got in. Tony and I collapsed on the bed, too drunk to even raid the minibar. We discussed Lord Robin quietly in the dark, trying to work him out, and in the end came to the unanimous decision that he was indeed a lord, albeit a little eccentric, but obviously very wealthy. I must remember to take the shampoos and soap out of the bathroom before we go was the last thing I remember thinking before I sank into a deep sleep.

  The phone was ringing. I came to with a start and half opened my eyes. Where the hell was I and why won’t somebody answer that phone? I moaned like a cow in labour as the pain of the hangover started to kick in and put my hands over my ears. The phone eventually stopped ringing and from another room I could hear a voice talking to the inconsiderate swine on the other end of the line. Who would be so persistent as to ring and ring at this godforsaken hour of the morning? A pox on ‘em whoever they are, I rambled to myself, rolling over and trying to go back to sleep. As I lay there, the night’s events slowly came back to me in sporadic flashes. I nudged Tony.

  ‘Jesus,’ he groaned.

  Robin knocked on the door before breezing into the room. There was something pathetic about him in his crumpled suit, trying unsuccesfully to disguise the anxiety in his voice as he explained, ‘I just have to pop downstairs to the main desk, there’s a bit of a problem to sort out. Bloody American Express. Order yourselves something to eat, I shan’t be long.’

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Good heavens, it’s one thirty. What a night, eh? Got a fag on you, anybody?’

  ‘Help yourself, there’s thousands of ’em on the bedroom floor,’ Tony croaked, slowly pulling himself up in the bed. As soon as Robin left to attend to his ‘bit of a problem’ Tony was out of the bed and hastily pulling his clothes on.

  ‘Get up now and get dressed,’ he demanded. ‘We’ve got to get out of here.’

  ‘Why?’ I could do with another hour in bed.

  ‘American Express, that’s why. Didn’t you hear him? He said there’s a problem with his card which means it’s probably nicked, so get dressed unless you want to be seen as an accomplice.’

  Not again. Not the police. My mother would kill me.

  I was out of bed like a whippet on cocaine and we were both dressed and out of the door within minutes, taking the lift to the mezzanine instead of all the way to the ground floor so we could watch the front desk from the balcony, unobserved. There was a bit of a commotion going on. The manager was there and a couple of members of security. Two coppers were talking to Robin, who was running his hands through his hair and shouting that there had been a terrible misunderstanding. The police eventually took him off.

  ‘Told you,’ Tony said. ‘That card wasn’t his and you were right all along, he was a fraud, no more a lord than you or me. Still, it was a bit of fun. Now let’s make a discreet exit. Side door, I think?’

  Before I caught the train back to Liverpool and Tony to Southend on the Sunday evening we went for a drink. I can’t remember which pub it was but I do remember a guy at the bar telling me that he was an ‘out’ gay football referee and also a lord. It seemed that London’s streets were not paved with gold but with peers of the bloody realm. He asked me for my phone number so I gave him Diane’s address and told him to drop me a line there, not wanting my mother to come across any fruity correspondence as she was ‘tidying up’. Hopefully Diane wouldn’t mind me using her address as a PO box providing I read her the contents of the letter. Either way I’d had my bellyful of lords, even fairly handsome ones like this specimen. The ball’s in his court, I thought, and if he wants to get in touch then fine and dandy. If not, well, I really couldn’t care less.

  CHAPTER 8

  Littlehampton

  NORMAN DID WRITE, AND I WROTE BACK, WHICH eventually led to regular conversations on the phone. On my twenty-first birthday he sent me a hundred pounds and a promise of a trip on the Orient Express. He also asked me to go and live with him, in Littlehampton. I hardly knew the man but the head was well and truly turned. The movie Murder on the Orient Express, featuring Albert Finney and a galaxy of stars, had recently been released. I must have seen it at least three times and would’ve done just about anything to ride on that beautiful train from Istanbul to Paris. I loved trains, still do, although it would be years before I fulfilled my ambition to travel on the Orient Express.

  My twenty-first birthday party took place in Sadie’s. Back then, after a few drinks I became, to put it mildly, boisterous and mischievous, although in retrospect I think yobbish would describe my drunken behaviour more accurately. Once I pushed Vera down a six-foot hole in the road on our way up Church Street from the Bear’s Paw to Sadie’s. His cries brought the workmen out of their hut, exclaiming, ‘Don’t worry, lad, we’ll get your girlfriend out,’ as they mistook the tears of laughter running down my face for those of grief and concern.

  At my twenty-first I really excelled myself, flinging my birthday cake across the club and scoring a direct hit on Vera’s face, and dragging Diane around the floor by her ankle until she had carpet burns on her back and one of her contact lenses fell out. Not surprisingly, come closing time no one was speaking to me. This darker side of me, the unsuspecting Norman knew nothing about. When I was ‘lively with drink’ I made mild-mannered Clark Kent look like Attila the Hun.

  I’d been at the Conny Home three years now and typically I was bored. In my last year the nursing sisters gave us a few tutorials to prepare us for a written exam. If you passed you got a certificate that meant absolutely nothing as it was not a recognized qualification. I did very well, thanks to the Reader’s Digest Medical Dictionary, and can still remember today how to do an Acetest for ketones in a diabetic’s urine and how to change a colostomy bag.

  The winds of change blew through the Conny Home. A new childcare superintendent had been appointed and he was supposed to be a bit of a mover and shaker, a wonder boy with innovative methods who was going to transform the place. Let’s call him Greg Tate. He wore a cravat and had a goatee and I hated him from the minute he first swanned into the building with a lion cub in tow, encouraging the children to stroke it while reassuring a surprisingly captivated Mrs Dickie that the animal was perfectly safe around children. The cub seemed to grow into a hefty beast literally overnight. I remember sitting in the staff room trying to pretend I was invisible as it prowled menacingly around the tables, looking for something or someone to eat. Greg Tate liked to drive around West Kirby with this cub on the back seat of his car, hanging out of the window like a dog, until one day the sensible creature leaped on him from behind and badly mauled his face. He ended up in hospital and the cub went to Chester Zoo.

  In my three years at the home I’d never once hit any of the children, wouldn’t dream of it as belting kids just wasn’t and isn’t in my nature. No matter how near to the brink of insanity I was driven, I’m proud to say I never resorted to violence. Hitting a child was quite rightly a sackable offence and so I was more than a little bemused to find myself on two occasions in Greg Tate’s office, wrongly accused of hitting two of the boys. Curiously he refused to name the boys I’d supposedly given a good hiding to, claiming he’d witnessed me in action and that was all the evidence he needed. He was a liar and he knew it, but it was his word against mine a
nd Mrs Dickie took Greg Tate’s side. ‘One more warning,’ she said angrily, ‘and you will be instantly dismissed. Now get on with your work.’ Oh for a union for underpaid, overworked houseparents, I moaned for the umpteenth time, for if there were such an organization the staff at the Conny Home certainly didn’t know about it.

  Tate definitely had it in for me and wanted me out, and since it was impossible to keep secrets in the home all the staff and most of the children knew of my alleged crimes. Tate’s pet houseparents had been told to keep a close eye on me and what authority I had with some of the boys went out the window. Tell them to clean their teeth and they’d threaten to go downstairs to Tate and whine that I’d hit them. One night as I was reading the boys a story, Tate marched through the unit. I used to act out the tale I was reading and the lads loved it. Tate caught the tail end of the evil fairy’s speech to the prince she had chained up in her dungeon: ‘You’ll never escape from here,’ I cackled over one of the boys, who was squealing with mock terror in his bed. ‘You’re trapped in here for ever!’ Ten minutes later Tate’s main henchwoman, a surly cow who had more or less ignored me for the last three years, took great delight in telling me that she’d take over my unit for now as I was wanted in the office.

  When I arrived Tate flew at me like a maniac, his face purple with rage.

  ‘What right have you to tell a boy that he will remain in here for the rest of his life? How dare you bully these boys like that.’

  I tried to explain but he refused to listen, instead ranting some textbook shit at me about building a child’s confidence. I told him in no uncertain terms where he could get off and after giving the matter some thought handed in my notice to Mrs Dickie a few days later.

  She busied herself at her desk with a bunch of papers, muttering angrily as she shuffled them around.

  ‘This really is most inconvenient, Mr O’Grady,’ she snapped. ‘Won’t you please reconsider? Apologize to Mr Tate for swearing at him and we’ll try and forget about it.’