Sick On You

by Andrew Matheson

  Presently, Slats returns minus blood-clotted tissue bits and plonks himself down in the armchair. He sticks a hand into his right trouser pocket, rummages around a bit, and pulls forth a pipe, black of stem and gnarled of burl. Clamping it between his teeth, he proceeds to suck and blow like a mechanical Popeye getting up a head of steam. Then his eyes cross as he examines the bowl for shine. Plucking the pipe from his chompers, he begins to rub and buff it on his inner thigh, close to a zone generally regarded in more comely individuals as erogenous. He examines the bowl, decides it is still too dull, and so strokes it, with a lack of self-consciousness that is, frankly, repulsive, along the sides of his nose, which evidently produces the desired sheen.

  He admires it briefly then tucks it, unsmoked, back into his pocket, where it remains for the duration of our meeting. Stein, being Stein, gets to business.

  “So, tell the boys what you were telling me.”

  Slats crosses his legs then uncrosses them. He pinches the material of his trousers at the knee and squeezes an inch-long crease into existence. One “ahem” is followed by another, neatly spaced. He begins.

  “Yes, well, you boys, you lads are . . . interesting, I must say. Unrefined, of course, but oh, yes, interesting. Caught your act, your gig, quite by chance, yes, hmm. Something there, something there, no denying it so why try? It’s rough, of course, angry you might say, needs manipulating, needs kneading, needs a bit of . . .”

  “Needs needing?” I ask, confused.

  “What? Yes. Yes, exactly, precisely. Needs kneading.”

  “Needing?”

  “You got it. Kneading, like dough. You’re like dough.”

  “Needs needing?” I persist.

  “No, no, no,” says Slats, exasperated. “Kneading . . . kneading. It’s a . . . comparison, a . . . metawhatsit . . . adage, whatever. Kneading . . . you know . . . ?”

  Here, he sticks his hands out and wiggles his fingers in the manner of a chap playing a concertina or strangling a chorus girl. “Kneading. Like you boys are dough, you know? A big lump of dough.”

  He notices the way we are looking at him.

  “Great dough, mind you. I mean, dough like this doesn’t come along every day. Know what I mean? But dough, nonetheless. No, no, no. I see your faces. Don’t get me wrong here. You can have the best dough, made from the best ingredients, you know? Best flour, an egg, fucking marvelous yeast, whatever the fuck else. Best dough.” He lowers his voice, conspiratorial like, and wags a forefinger.

  “But dough, even the best five-star dough, needs a fucking good knead before you can stick it in the oven and fry it up. Get my point?” He doesn’t wait for an answer.

  “You’ve got that definite summink, that indefinable je ne sais whatsit. It’s raw, mind you. Fucking raw, if you ask me, but it’s different. A cut above. It’s what separates the dicks from the cunts, is what I’m saying. Know what I mean?”

  What language is this chump speaking? We don’t say a word. Encouraged by the stunned silence, he rattles on.

  “It’s the audience, see? The reaction of the punters is paramount. I stand back, clocking the reaction of Jack ’n’ Jill Normal, right? It’s my way, my modus whatsit. Standin’ back, clockin’ it.”

  He taps a forefinger on the side of his recently degreased nose.

  “And the audience, all them punters, were in a state of . . . how should I put this? . . . Transported into a state of utter . . . utter . . .”

  “Revulsion?” I suggest, remembering all too well. The lads chortle and nod but Slats decides to say “no” five times.

  “No, no, no, no. No. Far from it. They were in a state of . . . ah . . . what’s the fucking word? A state of . . . of . . . agog. That’s it. A state of agog is what they were in. Well, didn’t know what to make of it, did they? Never seen anything like it, ’ad they? Lads in lipstick? Fucking boas? Trousers? Do what? Tight? Tight? Heh, heh. I mean, come on. No Hebrews in this band, right? Am I right? Heh, heh. No offense, mind you. I’m of that persuasion myself. Silverstein, know what I mean?”

  He pauses to let us fully drink all this in, using the time to examine the soil content of his fingernails. Then comes the pitch.

  “But . . .” he intones dramatically, “you need that summink . . . extra. You need to take it to the next stage, the next level, the next . . . stage. Now, modesty prevents me from extolling my virtues, talents, business savvy, whatever, but . . . let me just say that, after due consideration, I may—may, mind you—be open to adding you lads to my roster, my stable, if you will, of artistes, exclusive management-wise.”

  He stops and leans back in the armchair. What a performance. It demands a response. Roger beats me to it.

  “And who are you, anyway?” he asks. Slats seems taken aback. His eyes shift one after the other to look at Roger. Sort of.

  “Well, I’m . . . I’m actually quite well known, regarded that is, in certain Northern circles.”

  “Any horse we know in this stable of yours?” I inquire, politely enough, considering.

  “Well, deary me.” He starts counting on his hand. “There’s . . . well, there’s DJ Jammin’ Roscoe Barnes and his Sounds of the Islands Cavalcade; Didgeridoo and his Aussie Revue, currently packin’ ’em in at Pommies in Doncaster; Freddie Paunch, don’t get his humor myself but the old dears in Margate love him; fabulous mime troupe, well, mime and juggling really, Marcel and the Marceaus. Who else have we got? There’s James du Maurier . . .”

  We can stand it no more. Hands shoot up to staunch the verbiage. “Whoa, whoa. Who are all these specimens?”

  Slats looks at us, affronted and incredulous.

  “Come now, lads. I mean, I can understand p’raps Didgeri and Roscoe, certainly Roscoe, what with the work permits and the police and all. Not quite household names, those two. Not yet, anyway, I hasten to add. But I mean, how about James?” Heads shake. Roger rolls his eyes for the umpteenth time. Slats is at an astounded loss.

  “I can’t believe it. James du Maurier, the dancer?” No reaction. “Matinee idol looks, cross between a young Olivier and Bruce Forsyth?”

  This guy’s off his nut. But he’s not letting that stop him. “Christ, just last week, two weeks ago at the most, he was backing up Lionel Blair on ITV. Fuckin’ extravaganza, Cilla, Engelbert, the works. You do know Lionel Blair, right?”

  “Can you get us a record deal?” Guess who? Stein, of course.

  “Ah, yes . . . no . . . not as such, not right away, like. But I do have some quite tasty connections in . . .”

  The time has come to interject. I stand up. “Yeah, yeah. I’m sure, but listen, here’s the story. Yes, we are looking for a manager, that’s true, but not just any lower primate that drops out of the palm tree. No offense.”

  “None taken.”

  “We want a manager with a certain image. We need someone who’ll get us a record deal and look good doing it. Someone prepared, no, programmed to go for the jugular on our behalf. What we want, actually, is the next Andrew Loog Oldham. All style, balls, and bottle. Wearing a sharp suit, tooling around town in a sports car. Wimpy burgers, island DJs, and a vanful of mimes? What is this, a circus? No offense.”

  “None taken.”

  “All I’m saying is, I’m not sure we’d fit in your . . . what did you call it?”

  “Stable of artistes?”

  “Yeah, that.”

  I sit down. An awkward silence descends. Around me bums shift, throats are cleared. Eunan giggles quietly. A beer is opened with a soft crack and a softer fizz. Slats, ruddy cheeks ruddier than ever, fidgets and glances surreptitiously at his wrist, where there is no watch. Seconds crawl by on broken legs.

  Outside in the night a steady rain falls, gently soaking the Derelict of London Street on his piece of sodden cardboard outside Ladbrokes. He sips Brut aftershave for comfort and, like Blanche DuBois, relies on the kindness of
strangers. Unlike the rest of him, his breath smells lovely.

  Inside Stein’s flat the silence has reached squirm-inducing proportions. Something must be said. Something. Anything. Something apt. Ease the tension. Strangely, it is Slats that says it.

  “Listen, lads, I was just wondering. How would you like to attend the premiere of Cliff Richard’s new film next Tuesday?”

  Well, what were Ladbrokes’ odds on that being the silence breaker? We are struck monosyllabic. All we can come up with as a response is “What?” and “Huh?” and the like.

  “Yeah, it’s just that Cliff’s new film premieres Tuesday night next, gala event, ’course, and, ah, I just thought you might like to be my guests for the evening. Cocktails afterward, nibbles I’m sure, chance to meet the director and Cliff, naturally. Cliff’ll be there. Mayfair, actually, or is it Holland Park? Well, Leicester Square for the film and then off elsewhere for the reception, I should imagine. Should be a lark. Meet Cliff, have a drink, have a nosh. What say?”

  Well, you could knock us over with a feather boa. We can’t say yes quickly or grovelingly enough.

  “Fine, excellent. That’s good, then. Yeah. I’ll send a motor for you that evening. Shall we say sixish? Right, then. See you, lads. Ta-ta.”

  He’s in the tweed and he’s out the door. Just like that.

  V

  The next thing you know, the Hollywood Brats are splayed in the back of a big, black limousine driven by a big, white driver named Edgerton. And let me tell you, this is the life.

  Outside, through the smoky-glass windows of the Roller, the pavement is teeming with Londoners, faces gray, grim, heading home, Evening Standard under their arms, looking forward to Nationwide, fish fingers, and Smash. I usually live in barely suppressed, green-raged envy of these Tetley Tea Folk, but not tonight.

  We’re done up to the nines and beyond, dolloped, feathered and frilled, jangling with junk jewelry. It’s not every day you go to a film premiere.

  I don’t really know much about Cliff, England’s answer to a question nobody asked. Polite quiff, government-approved sneer, riding a double-decker with the Shadows in Summer Holiday, doing things they always wanted to. Bachelor boy, favorite of the Queen Mum and Eurovision, been around forever, has a hit every eight months or so. Actually, now that I think about it, my Bushey housemate Ewen had an old LP in his collection with Cliff doing a thing called “Move It.” His first single, I think. I played it a couple of times and it wasn’t bad. But that’s about it, sum total of my knowledge of Cliff.

  Eunan prods the upholstery, trying to find the hidden bar. As is his bewildering wont, he often turns out to have an almost encyclopedic knowledge when it comes to a variety of oddball subjects. One of these subjects turns out to be Cliff. We find out, for instance, that his real name is Harry Webb. This information is seconded by Roger. “Yeah, Harry Webb,” says Eunan. “But forget Summer Holiday; his best film, his absolute classic, man, is Expresso Bongo.”

  This announcement brings out the heckler in all of us.

  “No, really. It’s brilliant, man. Brilliant. Cliff plays this working guy, Bongo Herbert, who occasionally sings and plays bongos at this club called Expresso Bongo. He drives the chicks wild and gets discovered by this manager played by Laurence Harvey, who’s brilliant, man. ‘I’m gonna make your boy a star’ brilliant: bent fedora, shrugging shoulders, really lays on the Hebrew. Great flick.”

  “Yeah, I remember,” says Roger. “Topless dancing girls in kilts, right?”

  “Right, right. It’s brilliant, man. If this film’s half as good as Expresso Bongo it’ll be a gas.”

  Around Piccadilly we go. Eros, Aphrodite’s kid, winged god of something or other, gazes down on the traffic, tourists, heroin addicts, and cubicle chancers. Past the shop I Was Lord Kitchener’s Valet, outside of which one night a couple of months ago Stein and I were loitering without the slightest intent, when all of a sudden Piccadilly went pitch-black. Miners on strike and refusing to hack out the black stuff and here’s your consequence. Chaos. Screaming, cursing, squeals of delight, outrage, fear. But I finally got Stein to calm down.

  I remember cars and taxis slamming on the anchors, pranging into one another, police whistles blaring, a thousand voices, a dozen languages, everybody yelling and yapping. Two double-deckers, both traveling the same route and both naturally traveling bumper to bumper in tardy tandem, ground to a halt in the jam, passengers’ faces pressed up to the windows, peering out.

  It was a surreal sight to witness but I witnessed it mainly without Stein. He was nowhere to be felt. Twenty minutes later, the lights came back on, some jobsworth at Battersea Power Station having located a spare bag of coal and stuffed it in the boiler. Stein wandered back, cool and calm, having dashed into Lord Kitchener’s under the cloak of darkness for a spot of opportunistic thievery. Great. Just what we need. Three Big Ben paperweights, a London Underground tea towel, and a handful of Beefeater key chains.

  Tonight, though, it’s the film premiere. Searchlights, red carpet, toff liggers no doubt, the odd politician, a threadbare royal or two, Pinewood starlets. Drive on, Edgerton.

  Anyway, back to Leicester Square. But this isn’t Leicester Square. We’ve turned right and right again, I think. What street is this? Shop windows full of dangling, glistening, plastic-looking dead ducks. We’ve slowed to a crawl. As far as I can tell it’s so we don’t run over any of the many Chinese people milling about. They’re everywhere. Barrows and stalls overflowing with sandals, vegetables, Mao couture, jars full of gelatinous things, and hanging dried skins of recently living things clog the pavements. Crushed tomatoes and melons splatter the gutters, through which our black expensive tires squelch. Little kids in beanies take potshots at us with peashooters, spit-drenched peas dinging off the windows.

  Around another corner we come to a halt in front of a less-than-distinguished gray building. There are about twenty people out front but it doesn’t look remotely like a film premiere. At least, not the ones I’ve seen on telly. Maybe we’ve got a flat tire. Maybe we ran over a cat. What am I saying? Everyone knows there are no cats in Chinatown. Maybe we’re picking somebody up.

  A ruddy-complexioned wide mug, complete with oscillating eyeballs and yellow smile, bumps into the window. We all flinch away in fright. It is an obvious lunatic and he’s gesturing, beckoning for us to get out. But where are we? Can this really be it? Can this be the film premiere equivalent of a bag of Wimpy burgers? Yes, it can. We disembark into the waiting fussiness of not a lunatic, as such, but impresario extraordinaire Slats Silverstein.

  “Hello lads, good evening, you made it. Everything all right, then? How was the motor? Yeah? Yeah? Yeah, I know. Thank you, Edgy . . . Edgerton, my good man. Come this way, lads. You look smashing. No other word for it. On my life.”

  “Is this it?” I ask him.

  “Yeah, great, innit? Hello, Cynthia,” he says to a woman’s rapidly departing back. In we go. There is no red carpet, no pomp or circumstance. “I’ve got your seats saved, Andrew. Reserved, as it were. Smell that excitement?” I smell damp, musty old cinema.

  In with the straggling strays of the crowd we go. Some crowd. They’re aggressively, stridently bohemian, mums and dads, dog-collared clergy, heavy-knit sweaters, fish pendants everywhere. Slats seats us in the back row. No sign of Cliff. The lights dim, chatter is hushed, the air expectant; the red velvet curtain rises.

  Lou belches. We laugh.

  The screen comes to life with a wide shot of Trafalgar Square at dawn. Nothing but pigeons, statues, bronze lions, and the ubiquitous American tourist clad head to toe in patched denim with the usual headband, backpack, unkempt hair, and mustache. Her boyfriend stands nearby. Otherwise, the square is gray and deserted.

  Lord Nelson stands atop his column, looking off down the Mall. Thanks to some foreign swine’s cannonball the right sleeve of his naval tunic hangs empty. There’s no arm in that.
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  Timpani start low and build to a pounding thunder. Large red letters appear across the screen.

  JAMES SWACKHAMMER PRESENTS

  Jack Swackhammer? Now there’s a handle and a half. Sounds like a railroad boss driving that ribbon of steel through the Rocky Mountains for the Union Pacific in the 1800s. Mopping his brow with a red bandanna, laying those ties, hands blackened with creosote, pounding in them spikes, drinking whiskey, standing on a hillock reading blueprints, chopping the pigtail off a quivering flunky for some minor infraction.

  More timpani.

  A JAMES SWACKHAMMER FILM

  Trumpets join the timps. Then the title appears.

  WHY SHOULD THE DEVIL HAVE ALL THE GOOD MUSIC?

  Oh no. It can’t be. Oh yes it can. For the next eighty minutes we are subjected to an experience so excruciatingly dull as to make tedium an attractive option. The film captures a day-long free (big surprise) concert in Trafalgar Square, featuring bands and singers mewing into microphones about Christ, forgiveness, second comings, hallelujahs, and other yawningly boring things. This is no Summer Holiday. The production seems intentionally designed to be as cheesy as humanly possible. The handheld camerawork is jerky in both senses of the word. It’s enough to make you see-sick.

  Interviews with the performers reach heretofore unplumbed dark depths of vapidity. Interviewees praise Jesus in fervent automaton cliché then bound onto the stage to play some of the worst music these ears have ever endured. In the back row we laugh, razz, and catcall. Lou is particularly hilarious, but our ecumenical jive is shouted down by other patrons. We even hear a couple of “Repent, sinners!” I mean, seriously. Beware the wrath of the publicly righteous. They’re very touchy.

  The film plods inexorably toward a frenzied moment: the entrance of Cliff. Here he comes, folks—bouncing, buoyant, teeth and flares pearly white. He runs onto the stage flashing peace signs, and the band lurches into a clapped-out version of “Put Your Hand in the Hand.” The audience on the screen and in the cinema goes wild. The camera pans to the crowd and they are rapt and joyous, many of them sporting the thousand-mile stare indicative of mass psychosis. It’s as though everyone knows a mere glance from Cliff can turn wine into water.