by Terry Ronald
Hamish had informed me that Maxie would almost certainly be making an appearance at school tomorrow, and that’s unsettling me too, after the things he’d said to me on the phone when we last spoke. I mean, how will he be with me now? He might hate me for ruining his life, but I didn’t mean to, did I? I suppose that’s something else I’ll have to live with. What was far more crucial to me, immediately, was making up with Frances tomorrow, and being the most fabulous Nancy that I could possibly be in the musical next week – not to mention getting through the rest of the school year without getting the shit kicked out of me every other day.
The eleven o’clock Sunday streets are reasonably hushed, and it’s nippy, so people are not hanging about outside the pubs like they tend to in the summer; but as I cross the road by the bus stop I spot Chrissy and Abigail Henson outside the bistro, so I head over. Chrissy’s got her pork-pie hat on, and the brand-new grey Crombie overcoat that Squirrel bought her last week – quite possibly with his cut of the filthy lucre – and she’s puffing on a fag as per; but she smiles at me, which is a good sign, and then she offers me one.
‘Ta,’ I say, accepting the nicotine-laced olive branch.
‘All right,’ she says and then she smiles.
‘You know, Grandad used to bring me here every Saturday when this was David Greig’s,’ I say, leaning back on the dark window.
She nods and smiles.
‘I know, I remember. He was mad about you.’
She looks at me for a moment with a softness I’d forgotten she even had, and I say, ‘What are you two doing out here this late, anyway?’
‘Filling Abi in on my fuckin’ nutcase drug-dealer of a boyfriend,’ Chrissy says, taking a deep drag on her ciggie.
‘I’m sorry,’ I tell her. And I was.
‘It’s all right,’ she says, exhaling smoke. ‘What with that and the NF connections, he wasn’t much of a catch, was he? His cock was a bit on the small side, to be honest, as well – that’s why I wasn’t that fussed giving up me cherry.’
‘Well, there you are, then,’ I chuckle.
We stand quiet for a minute, and then I say, ‘There’s loads of blokes I know fancy you, anyway, Chris – you too, Abigail.’
‘Are there?’ Abigail jumps in.
As usual, she’s practically nothing on to speak of, even in virtual sub-zero temperatures, and she’s halfway through a bag of sauce-slathered chips from the Wimpy.
‘Yes! Boys at my school,’ I say. ‘They’d go nuts for you. I told you, you look like Debbie Harry in the right light.’
‘A coal cellar?’ Chrissy says, and we all laugh.
Then I have a flash of inspiration.
‘Why don’t you come and see me in the play next week, Abi,’ I suggest. ‘As my personal guest. I’ll introduce you to some boys with twinkly eyes and big dicks.’
Abigail screams.
‘How do you know which ones have got big dicks, David Starr?’
And I give her a wink.
‘I’ve been checking them out in the showers for years,’ I say.
Twenty-four
Becoming Nancy
I’m fairly convinced that I’ve applied far too much of the Twilight Blush panstick and that I should have plumped for the Nouveau Beige, or, perhaps, Forever Porcelain, but then again I am supposed to be a whore, so one assumes that one would pile on the make-up, doesn’t one? I’m not altogether sure, either, that they’d actually refined, or even invented, eyeshadow with glitter in back then, or, indeed, any eyeshadow at all; and my wig’s slightly frizzier than I’d have liked, but it’s a look, I suppose, come what may. Stepping back, and taking in the full picture, I reckon I’d be a dead ringer for Marsha Hunt if it weren’t for the ringlets and the pox scab, and I do feel very strongly that given some of the other poor showings, costume-wise, mine is nothing short of a small triumph. Behind me in the mirror, out of the corner of my heavily made-up eye, I catch Maxie looking at me piteously as he dashes across the dressing room – well, school library, actually – with Mr Sowerberry’s staff and a bunch of Fagin’s handkerchiefs, and I flinch all of a sudden and want to turn around. I won’t, though: I couldn’t stand to look in those guilty hazel eyes – not for a single second; and as it’s been two weeks or so since we’ve even spoken, managing somehow to wholly evade one another during the last few days of play rehearsals, there’s no point. It’s very painful, no denying. But what else can one do?
‘Oh my God – you are an absolute freak!’ Frances Bassey whoops as she lays eyes on me. ‘You look absolutely grisly! Boys cannot do make-up.’
Then she whispers, ‘Even gay ones!’
We’d been emotively reunited, Frances and I, on Monday morning outside the Co-op: me beseeching her forgiveness, and her settling for a cream horn from Broomfields as apt atonement for my former despicability. I told her about Moira and Squirrel’s incarceration, and I thought she’d actually become semi-melancholic at first.
‘Poor likkle Toby,’ she’d said. ‘He was such a nice bwoy when him small, den ’im go bad!’
But after that she screamed with malicious delight as I recounted the actual events adjacent to poor Moira’s arrest at our house the previous afternoon, and Chrissy’s resultant hysteria.
‘I suppose it serve dem right,’ she said in her mother’s voice. ‘Selling drugs to kids!’ And I nodded solemnly.
When we got closer to school, by the big Marlboro man, she stopped me and said, ‘I’ve got something for you, David.’
So I turned to face her, curious, as she fished around at the bottom of her satchel.
‘Remember when we went to the badge shop that afternoon?’ she said. ‘Well, I got you a surprise gift – remember I told you?’
‘Oh yes!’
‘Only I forgot to give it to you, and then last night I suddenly remembered it, and … well … here! I hope you like it!’
And she handed me a badge, a pink badge with a black arrow on it, and a bold slogan: Gays Against Nazis.
‘Oh!’
‘Do you like it?’ she said expectantly.
I stared down at it in the palm of my hand for five or six seconds, and then I said, ‘Yeah, I do. I really like it.’
‘I thought you could wear it,’ she said, ‘to school.’
‘Today?’ I said. ‘You mean right this minute?’
And she nodded, smiling.
‘They all know,’ she said. ‘Why not be the one to say it first?’
So I gingerly pinned the badge on to my blazer lapel, and then grinned at Frances apprehensively, and grabbed her hand.
‘Brilliant!’ she said. ‘Now let’s see them call you queer.’
And we’d giggled and walked arm in arm through the school gates.
‘Now, why don’t you come up to Chorus’ dressing room and I’ll do your make-up properly?’ Frances suggests. ‘You look like you’re auditioning for the Black and White Minstrels! We’re just up on the next floor in Class D6.’
She’s right! My vision of Nancy is looking more and more like a cheap disco act that’s been shopping at Oxfam.
‘OK, then.’
And I gather up my stuff.
‘And mind you don’t trip over your bloody frock, dear,’ she laughs, as she dances back out of the library in front of me.
Inside Class D6, a host of Fagin’s orphans, various black-toothed street vendors and sundry members of the ensemble are all buzzing about wildly under the tentative supervision of a slouching and somewhat dispassionate Miss Jibbs, who must – me and Frances have always imagined – have some sort of bovine lineage. She is currently flaccid in an armchair, smoking, and attempting to ignore the screaming accumulation of students surrounding her.
‘The play’s been extended to a three-night run,’ squeaks one excitable nineteenth-century pallbearer. ‘The auditorium is packed.’
By auditorium, this diminutive coffin-carrier had meant the lower assembly hall, currently rammed to the rafters with our collective families and frien
ds: mine, Frances’s and, indeed, Maxie Boswell’s. Even my dad has shown his face, with an enthusiasm that has floored me. And Moira – full of remorse, and with the cheek of Old Nick – has, rather staggeringly, turned up too, having been charged and released on Monday morning. She is, however, incognito and sporting a brand-new hairpiece and dark sunglasses for the occasion.
‘Isn’t that Myra Hindley sitting next to your mum?’ Sonia Barker had said to me on spotting her. ‘I didn’t know she was out.’
Frances is now hurriedly getting into her own First Act costume, and I’m staring into the mirror feeling much more contented with my overall manifestation – she’s done a superb job, has Frances.
‘That looks a million times better, David,’ she says, as she adds a few finishing touches to my rehabilitated maquillage. ‘You look like a proper Nancy now.’
‘Good! Now I need to warm up my voice before the show. Have you got that Kate Bush cassette?’
And we head back out into the corridor excitedly. As we reach the top of the stairs to come down, a devilishly handsome but authentically evil Bill Sikes – aka Jason Lancaster – is leaning against the wall, flanked by two of his shorter, plainer cronies with the same style of cropped hair as him. My stomach flips, and I involuntarily put my hand up to my lip, to the very place where one of the vicious cuts administered by Jason only a week or so before had been. Frances shakes her head at him in disgust.
‘Well, look who it is,’ she says. ‘Stinkin’ up d’ hallway.’
But Jason doesn’t even look at her, and just flicks the brim of his top hat cockily.
‘I’ve seen it all now,’ he laughs, tugging at my wig. ‘Jesus, could you be any more of a queer, Starr?’
And at first I falter, edging back away from him; but then, out of the blue, something comes over me and I lift the bottom of my gown and step forward, oddly unafraid, shoving my face at Jason’s.
‘Listen to me, you fucking brainless moron, it really doesn’t matter to me what you or any of your miniature brownshirts call me now. Yes, I’m gay, yes, I like boys, yes, I’m all the things you and your little pals say I am: bender, poofter, batty boy, pansy, a fucking fully fledged cocksucking – chance would be a fine thing – queer! So why don’t you run along and taunt somebody that’s vaguely interested in and/or intimidated by your wretched and ever-shrinking repertoire of hate?’
Jason blinked three times.
‘What?’
‘Shall I simplify it for you, dear? Fuck off!’
And I smile agreeably.
Frances is giggling into her pelerine collar, and Jason looks entirely bewildered for a second. It is bewilderment, though, that fast turns to fury, and he whirls around to finally acknowledge her sniggers.
‘And what are you laughing at?’ he spits at her, yanking her dress down at the neck.
‘Did they even have darkies in frocks those days? I don’t think they did … they were all fucking slaves, weren’t they?’
Frances stops laughing fast, and catches her breath, turning to me, eyes wide. I look back at her for what seems an age and then, with one nippy jerk, she yanks up her petticoats and lets fly with a laced-up, calf-length, dangerously pointed boot: a trenchant kick to Jason Lancaster’s soft and unshielded bollocks.
‘Nazi,’ she says quietly.
We both step back, suddenly drenched in a melange of astonishment, fear and utter hilarity, as Jason shrieks an inhuman cry, doubling up in pain and dropping to his knees. When he vomits uncontrollably on to the shoes of his horrified captains, Frances and I turn and saunter, leisurely and somewhat indifferently, down the stairs and back to the library.
Hamish McClarnon is in mid-pre-performance pep lecture as we waft elatedly through the library door, swinging our skirts, with the mood in the room at fever pitch. All around us kids are rushing about singing songs and reciting lines, chased by wild-eyed teachers brandishing mob caps and frock coats, and Hamish seems to be fighting a losing battle as he bellows over the melee.
‘There you are, David,’ Hamish interrupts his speech mid-flow. ‘We’re on in ten and I thought I’d lost ma Nancy and ma Bill.’
‘No, I’m right here, sir!’ I shout over the din.
Sonia Barker is hot on our heels through the door, panting breathlessly and wearing plunge-necked red and white gingham, which looks more Calamity Jane than Oliver Twist, if you ask me.
‘Sir! Sir!’ she hollers. ‘Jason’s been taken sick, he’s spewing his ring up in the boys’ khazi.’
‘What?’
Hamish squints, slightly disbelieving, and I toss Frances a worried glance, biting my bottom lip. Frances just shrugs her shoulders, though.
‘He’s absolutely fucked, sir!’ Sonia goes on, her naturally matted hair generously adding to the facade of a grubby tart from the Old West. ‘Absolutely fuckin’ fucked!’
‘Oh, Jesus, no!’ Hamish says, banging his fist on his head. ‘Not now, not now!’
Step forward Maxie Boswell, who strides into the middle of the room like Sir Lancelot to face a befuddled Hamish.
‘I’ll do it!’ he says. ‘I know Bill Sikes’ part backwards and I’m a better actor than Jason Lancaster ever was. Let me do it!’
My heart does a couple of full and fast flips as Hamish glares down at him.
‘I don’t know about that, Maxie – are ye parents not here?’ he says. ‘They didne want you in the play at all, lad; I don’t want te cause a rumpus wi’ them.’
But Maxie is unwavering.
‘What if I go and ask them, sir?’ he pleads. ‘They won’t say no if I explain that we’ll have to cancel the play otherwise – they’d be too embarrassed.’
Hamish chews his bottom lip and looks around the room, which erupts into cries of ‘Oh go on, sir!’ and ‘Let Maxie do it, sir!’
Nobody wants to cancel the show.
‘Run and ask, then,’ Hamish relents. ‘And if they say it’s all right, and only then, go and see how much of that costume ye can prise off o’ Lancaster. Just make sure it’s not covered in sick.’
‘Yes, sir!’
Maxie dashes across the library, halting in his tracks as he reaches Frances and me.
‘Are you OK with this?’ he says with a delicate but panicky smile.
And then he puts his hands in his pockets and looks down at the carpet like a little boy, so I nod.
‘I’m OK with it.’
‘Right!’ Hamish commands, clapping his hands together. ‘Overture and beginners! Go round up the orphans, Sonia, and then everyone in Act One go down the stairs quietly … I said quietly!’
I’m standing at the top of the stairs now, gathering myself … focusing … becoming Nancy, as her buoyant but ultimately tragic spirit seeps through my every sinew. I descend, as the orchestra strikes up, all set for my too-long-awaited debut. All set to show them what I’m made of. Here I go …
The first act whizzes past in a blur, and goes fairly swimmingly, I think, though I’m unpleasantly aware that nobody can fathom a damn word that our particular Mr Bumble – who boasts a stutter and a fairly thick Zimbabwean accent – is saying. What with that and Oliver’s lisp I start to think that subtitles projected on to a screen at the side of the stage mightn’t have been a bad idea. In the crowd, though the lights are in my eyes, I spot Mum, Dad, Nan and Aunt Val, all grinning with enthusiasm during my stirring interpretation of ‘It’s A Fine Life’. Sonia Barker is of very little use, though, as my sidekick, Bet, so I snatch back most of the song lines that Hamish has charitably and imprudently donated to her, and watch as her mouth opens and closes like a dying flounder while my voice soars across the Three Cripples Tavern over the top of hers.
There is one slightly disconcerting episode just after the start of Act Two, when one of the flower-sellers totters violently backwards into the scenery during ‘Who Will Buy This Wonderful Morning?’, but I don’t think most of the audience even twig, and there’s very little blood to speak of.
Maxie, as Bill Sikes, has, be
twixt all the grimacing and snarling, given me several gentle, almost pining looks during our scenes together, but I am far too swathed in my role to crumble under the weight of those doe eyes at the present time. I am a tour de force – charming the pants off the audience with ‘I’d Do Anything’; inciting them to a vigorous singalong with ‘Oom Pah Pah’; and then, finally, tearing their hearts asunder with ‘As Long As He Needs Me’ (Judy Garland version).
‘You’re doing great, love, absolutely fantastic,’ Mum had enthused when she, plus Nan and Aunt Val, came backstage during the interval, all dolled up. ‘I’m really proud of you, Davey, especially after all the stuff that’s gone on in the last couple of weeks. Really proud!’
‘Fucking fabulous!’ Aunt Val concurred. ‘You’re easily the best one in it; even your father’s singing along, silly bastard.’
And Nan gave me a big wet kiss on the cheek to seal the deal. I was a hit at last!
As the string section of the orchestra – a group of snotty but reasonably capable sixth-formers from Dulwich College – meander around a sinister refrain, I am discovered under a single white spotlight on a somewhat rickety London Bridge. I am clutching dear, runny-nosed Oliver, ready to deliver him selflessly into the safe arms of Mr Brownlow at the expense of my own life. As I cast my eyes across the hall, packed with enthralled spectators, I spot Bob Lord sitting stiffly next to Vi and Geoff Boswell, who are wriggling uncomfortably in their seats in the third row. Oh, God! I take a deep breath and turn my attention back to the action. I am, after all, about to be murdered, destroyed by Maxie Boswell – for the second time in two weeks.
