Mr Lonely, page 20
‘One Bacardi and Coke and one Scotch on the rocks.’
‘With ice,’ Sid said.
‘Oh, sure.’
‘Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome,’ said Marie and stepped back into the blackness.
Sid asked Olly, ‘How did you know she was there?’
‘Pardon?’
‘Nothing,’ Sid replied.
They sat waiting for their drinks in silence. Olly lit a cigarette. The light from his lighter showed the contours of his face. Sid realized that up till then he’d been looking at another fella thinking it was Olly.
The drinks arrived in a couple of minutes. Marie came out of the blackness into the darkness of their table. Sid was tempted to ask her where she kept her white stick and seeing-eye dog, but thought better of it.
‘Alrighty,’ Marie said, putting down two coasters, two tissue napkins and the bill. She walked away without saying another word.
Sid asked, ‘What time do they stop saying, “Have a nice day”?’
‘What do you mean?’ Olly asked.
‘It’s okay,’ Sid answered, grinning to himself in the darkness. His eyes were now getting a little more used to the dark. He could actually see the outline of his drink. ‘Cheers,’ he said.
‘Cheers,’ said Olly, holding up his glass to be chinked, but Sid never saw it.
They watched people playing the machines and walking around the bar. One bright spark was wearing sunglasses.
‘You want to go backstage a little later, Sid?’
‘Well,’ Sid said, ‘it’s up to you …’
‘No, it’s up to you. If you do, we will; if you don’t, we won’t. There’s lots of time. Maybe you should get settled in first. Maybe a couple of days from now.’
‘Yes, that would be better.’
‘Fine.’ Olly thought for a minute, then said, ‘Do you want to eat later, or do you want to have a drive round the town?’
‘No, thanks. I think I’ll just hang around here and have a look at the hotel.’
‘Would you like to see the first show in the room tonight?’
‘Er, no, honestly. I might get to bed early tonight. You know, it’s been a long flight.’
‘Sure.’ Olly looked away.
‘Look, Olly, I know it might sound rude but you’ve no need to stay if you have other things to do.’
‘No, nothing, but don’t worry, I’ll split after this drink. If you have any more drinks here, or in any other bar, or any meals you have here in any of the restaurants, just sign the tab with your name and room number. Don’t pay for anything. That’s all been taken care of.’
‘I feel like a high roller.’
‘Well, you’re gambling something, too, you know.’
‘Tips? What about tips?’
‘Ten per cent, that’s fine. No one will say anything or throw it back in your face. If you want a “Have a nice day”, then it’s twelve per cent. If you want great service while you’re here—fifteen per cent. If you want service that will knock your eye out, grumble at everything but don’t leave a tip.’ Olly got up to leave.
‘You haven’t finished your drink yet, and I’ve only just found mine,’ Sid said.
Olly sat down. Sid tried to look at his watch but in the darkness had difficulty finding his arm. They talked about show business in general. The two people at the next table got up to go. Marie came up and cleared the table as two more people sat down.
‘I can’t see a dashed thing, dwarling,’ one said.
‘Never mind, dear …’
Sid stopped halfway through his sentence. It was Bobbers. Thank God it’s dark, he thought. He looked over to their table, his eyes now fully accustomed to the gloom. He could have led a group of miners out to safety. It was them all right. She looked stunning and he looked British.
‘You were saying, Sid?’ Olly pressed.
‘What?’ Sid whispered.
‘Pardon?’ Olly said.
‘What?’ Sid whispered again.
Olly leaned towards Sid. ‘You were saying something about Benny and Hope, something or other … Are you all right?’
‘Fine,’ Sid said very quietly. ‘What’s the time?’
‘Pardon me?’
‘What?’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘What’s the time?’
Olly switched on the light of the clock on his arm. ‘Hold on. I’ll have to put my glasses on.’
Sid looked over again towards Bobbers. Marie was standing between them and him. He heard a female English voice ask for Campari and soda.
‘Alrighty, and how about you, sir?’
‘I can’t see the list, dwarling. It’s so dwark.’
‘Six-fifty,’ Olly said.
‘Thanks,’ Sid murmured.
‘Have a Scotch, Robin,’ Bobbers said.
‘But I don’t like Scotch, do I, dwarling?’
Marie moved her weight from one leg to another. Sid tried to time his movements so that his face was hidden by her bottom as it swayed from side to side.
‘Maybe I should come back, sir,’ Marie said. Olly was looking at his watch again.
‘Er, no, I’ll have a er … What do I like, dwarling?’
‘You can’t have that here,’ Bobbers laughed.
Olly was still looking at his watch.
‘Oh, naughty Bobbers,’ Robin whawhad.
‘Have a Campari and soda, dear.’
‘No. It tastes like that nasty medicine Nanny used to give me.’
‘I think my watch has stopped,’ Olly said.
‘How can you tell?’ Sid inquired.
Marie switched her weight again. Sid leaned forward as she moved. Olly picked up the tab and signed it.
‘Have you got a Draught Bass?’
‘A what, sir?’
‘A Draught Bass.’
‘I don’t think so.’ Marie was getting tense and Sid was looking at Bobbers through Marie’s legs. ‘I do have other tables, sir.’
‘No, this one’s fine, thank you.’
Sid heard in the darkness a black voice whisper, ‘Jesus.’ He thought it was time to leave and tapped Olly on the arm and nodded his head towards the lights and freedom. Olly rose and left the tip, then followed Sid, who was leaving the bar walking like Groucho Marx.
Sid arrived back in his suite at seven-thirty, after losing another five dollars on the same machine. He was starting to feel a little tired now, but the excitement was keeping the adrenalin flowing. He switched on the television and started to watch a panel game give-away show. As he watched, a man won two thousand dollars and a car for answering questions like, ‘Who played the lead in The King and I? and ‘Who was buried in Grant’s Tomb?’ It made shows like ‘Blankety-Blank’ seem intellectual.
As Sid sat there, all of his eleven phones rang. He picked one up. ‘Hello,’ he said.
‘Bobbers here,’ said a laughing voice. ‘Can I talk?’
‘A lot better than your husband.’ Sid laughed and continued, ‘I was down in the black hole of Calcutta while you were there with him.’
‘No!’ she exclaimed.
‘Oh, yes. What drink did he eventually order?’
‘You’re not going to believe this.’
‘Try me.’
‘A port and lemon!’
‘I don’t believe it.’
‘And the waitress brought a glass of port and a slice of lemon.’ They both laughed into the phone. ‘Poor man. He’s lovely, really.’
‘When can I see you?’ Sid asked.
‘Probably tomorrow, if I can arrange it.’
‘Where are you now?’
‘In the ladies, or as they say here, the powder room.’
‘I don’t suppose there’s any chance of seeing you tonight.’
‘Well, it is a little early in our marriage to start saying I’ve got a headache.’ Sid smiled. ‘I’ll try and get to you somehow tomorrow. Where are you going to be in the morning?’
‘I could be here about lunch time. I think I could arrange that.’
‘All right, Sid, I’ll ring you about one. And keep off the drink. Remember what happened last time.’
Sid looked at the glass in his hand and drank it straight down. I’m on the wagon as of now, he thought.
‘I must go, darling,’ Bobbers said. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’ The phone snapped down quickly.
Sid went back to the television, watched for a while, then went downstairs for a snack, put another five dollars in his own machine and watched the person next to him win a jackpot. That night he slept like a baby and dreamt he was covered in quarters.
The sound of the phone ringing in the bedroom finally penetrated Sid’s sleepy head. As he woke up to daylight coming through the curtains, his jumbled senses at last marshalled themselves into some order. He automatically put out his hand to pick up the phone near his bed. As he touched it, it stopped ringing. He looked at his watch. It was two-fifteen. He tried to work it out. He remembered he went to bed fairly early—about nine-thirty. He hadn’t left a call. Had he slept through seventeen hours? The phone call was probably Bobbers. She said she’d ring around lunch time. He sat up quickly and rang 1190. He waited but there was no reply. He gave it a couple of minutes but nothing happened. He slowly put the phone down but kept his ear to the receiving end to the last second.
He looked out of his window. The weather was just the same as yesterday and probably the last hundred yesterdays. He thought of his raincoat hanging alone in the wardrobe. He bathed, dressed and rang down at two-forty-five in the afternoon and ordered breakfast. It would be in his room within fifteen minutes. The hot food would be hot, the cold food would be cold. No one complained that he wanted flapjacks, bacon and eggs, fruit juice, coffee and toast at two-forty-five in the afternoon. Very similar to a British hotel, but he couldn’t remember which one it was. After breakfast he rang 1190 again but with the same negative result. He then rang Olly, who was out, but a young voice took a message saying she would get him to ring at about sixish.
Sid was at a small loose end. He felt great. He’d slept the clock round and he’d had a cracking breakfast. He looked at his watch. Now what time is that in England? he wondered. He knew England was so many hours back, but not how many. Anyway, I’ll ring Carrie, he decided. He dialled direct.
His call was answered by a sleepy voice saying, ‘Hello?’
‘Hello, darling.’
‘Who is this?’
‘It’s me, Sid.’
‘Sid who?’
‘Me, Sid. Is that you, Carrie?’
‘Carrie’s asleep. This is Carrie’s mum. What’s the idea ringing at this time of the morning? Who are you? You’re not the police, are you?’
‘It’s me, Sid,’ he shouted from Las Vegas to North Finchley.
‘He’s in America, thank God,’ and with that she slapped the phone down.
Sid was left over four thousand miles away looking dumbly at a silent phone. He threw the receiver down with such force it rang out once as if in pain. Out loud he said, ‘The old cow! The stupid old cow! She’s staying in my home and rings off. The bitch! I swear one of these days I’ll kill her and laugh and applaud all the way to the funeral.’ He walked round his suite slowly cooling off.
Over four thousand miles away, Carrie’s mum took a cup of tea up to her daughter. Carrie was awake and her mum knocked and walked in with the tea. ‘Oh, you’re awake, then?’ she said.
‘Yes, I heard the phone ring downstairs. Who was it?’
‘A crank. I told him where to get off.’
‘Did he say who it was?’
‘No,’ Carrie’s mum lied. ‘He just breathed heavily and said some dirty things.’
‘Oh dear.’
‘I think you should change your number. You don’t want that going on while your husband, what’s-his-name’s away.’
‘I’ll tell Sid when he comes back.’
‘No, you should do it now. Once these vile people have your number they ring and ring and they tell their friends to ring. No, I think you should change your number. I’ll do it for you later on today.’ Carrie’s mum spoke with a certain authority. ‘And if I were you, you’d better let me answer the phone for a while. I don’t want you hearing the kind of filthy things they say, and I’ll tell Elspeth not to answer it, either.’ Her mum left the bedroom with a smile.
Sid thought, I’ll ring back later. He rang three more times and kept getting his mother-in-law, who always told him the same thing, to stop being filthy, which he couldn’t understand. After about three days of trying, he couldn’t get the number at all. He eventually wired Carrie to ring him. When the wire arrived at his home in Finchley, his mother-in-law thanked the postman, put the wire under the doormat and never mentioned it to anyone. Sid had been in Vegas almost a week now. He’d had one letter from Carrie, saying that everything was fine but up till writing the said letter she hadn’t received any mail from him, but then America was a long way away and if he remembered the last time they went to Spain his mother didn’t get their card till they’d been back home a week and they posted it the day after they’d got there. That afternoon he rang Leslie, his agent, and told him to get in touch with Carrie. Leslie rang and rang but the number was unobtainable.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Sid was getting bored. He’d been backstage, he’d met all the people he should have met. He was keen to work. He had worked hard on his act and thought sensibly he would cut down on the dialogue and keep in as much mime and business as possible. He’d only seen Bobbers once more and that was by the pool. She looked fabulous in a swimming costume so small she would have had to use a magnifying glass to get it on. She left a note for him at the desk saying that she and Robin were off to LA for the last week of their honeymoon and she would try and see him in England some time.
Sid’s opening night came. He didn’t cause any waves, but at least he wasn’t paid off. He played his ten days and left Vegas making neither enemies nor friends. It was a part of his working life that Sid hardly ever spoke of. He was disappointed to say the least, but although he was never asked back, he always felt inside that he had not failed. He said the difference between American and British show business was that in Britain you could have failure and be remembered for your success, while in the States you could have success and then be remembered for your failures. And, as he once said with a rueful smile, ‘The money’s different, too.’ But Sid felt when the Americans said goodbye it was permanent. Sid had Olly sent a half a dozen cans of Newcastle Brown with a note that said, ‘If the Lord Mayor of Newcastle ever stays with you, these should make him feel at home.’ He never received a reply.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Late November, 1979
Carrie’s father dropped dead suddenly in a pub an hour after closing time, and just after getting the barmaid to say she’d see him upstairs later. Everyone said, ‘That’s the way he would like to have gone.’ Yet the look on Carrie’s father’s face just before he hit the floor seemed to say, ‘No, it isn’t.’ The last thing he heard in this world was someone saying, ‘No, this is my round.’ The last thing he saw was the barmaid looking at him and laughing as if to say, ‘Haven’t I got big tits?’ And the last thing he thought was, ‘Hasn’t she got big tits?’ Embassy, St Bruno and Castella smoke enveloped him. The drunks, the locals and the local drunks had laughed at and with him all evening. He hit the floor hard, with surprised, unblinking yet fearlessly open eyes. Well, the left one was open. The right one was closed, because when his maker called him, he was winking at the barmaid. Laughter, noise and the general hubbub of pub life faded within three seconds of Carrie’s father actually hitting the floor. Some wag shouted, ‘Give him another drink, then throw him out.’ The ambulance arrived and took him to the hospital.
When the phone rang, Carrie’s mum answered it. The police explained what had happened. Very gently they told her he’d dropped dead.
‘Pardon?’ she whispered.
‘He dropped dead. The doctor thinks it was a heart attack.’
Very slowly she put the phone down, sat on the chair next to the phone and quietly sang, ‘Nuts, whole hazel nuts, Cadbury’s take them and they cover them with chocolate.’ She sang it three times, made a cup of tea and went back to bed.
Sid made all the arrangements for the funeral, secretly wishing it was for his mother-in-law. Carrie took it extremely well, as did Elspeth. Carrie’s mum reacted as if it was the death of King George VI. She went into mourning and seemed to expect the rest of the country to do the same. She wore black from the day after he died until the night she remarried, two months later. She spoke of her dear departed as He and in the best royal tradition said, ‘When one loses one, one should keep one’s memory of one.’ According to Carrie’s mum, ‘Carrie’s dad didn’t die, he became deceased.’
Sid, who quite liked the old boy, sent flowers from many different stars. The stars never knew and Sid paid for them. The wreath from Lord Olivier was very nice. It simply said, ‘Alas, poor Yorick,’ signed Sir Lord Olivier. Carrie’s mum wanted to know who Yorick was. Sid spent over two hundred pounds on flowers from the stars. As the coffin left the cottage it looked like the scene from the gangster film where the Mafia had bumped off Mugsy and then given him a great send-off with thousands of flowers. It took the four carrying men almost five minutes to find the coffin under the flowers at the cemetery. As the four men, dressed in black, carried the coffin towards the church they were followed by the family. Carrie’s mum leaned heavily on an embarrassed distant male relative. She sobbed and moaned, all in all enjoying every second. Carrie, Elspeth and Sid followed close behind. Sid was stopped twice for his autograph, once by one of the gravediggers, who told him it wasn’t for him as he didn’t think he was any good, anyway. It was for his sister’s boy, who was in hospital. The other time was by a boy of about sixteen, who asked him if he could do it four times for his mates, then asked him if who they were burying was anybody famous and could he get Charlie’s Angels’ autographs for him?
The family slowly moved on towards the church. Bringing up the rear was an old man in a wheelchair, being pushed by a middle-aged lady. Sid had never seen them before. He nudged Carrie and with his eyes got her to look back. She smiled at the old man in the wheelchair. She turned back to Sid and said quietly, keeping her eyes forward, ‘Dad’s older brother, my uncle Luke.’
