Читать книгу Mr Starlight - Laurie Graham - Страница 8

It was September of 1949 when it happened. It had been so hot the tar was melting on the roads and there wasn’t a breath of air. You didn’t feel like doing anything, only sitting still in your vest and pants and having a glass of lemonade, but we had club appearances three nights in a row so we had to stir ourselves, and of course we got a very poor turnout. People were staying at home, sitting out on their front steps, hoping for a cooling breeze. Things were so half-hearted the night we played the Alma Street Liberal I said we should cancel the rest of our bookings till the weather broke, but His Numps wouldn’t hear of it.

‘Sel Boff never cancels,’ he said. ‘The show goes on.’

So the show did go on. We were appearing at the Birmingham Welsh, with a novelty gargler who did the William Tell overture, Chucky Crawford doing his old card tricks and a vocalist called Avril who was just starting out, dark honey blonde with a nice frontage and a big voice for such a pint pot. She was making a play for Sel, straightening her stocking seams in front of him, getting him to fasten her necklace. I could have saved her the trouble. When it was showtime he had a one-track mind.

He seemed all right in the first half. We did ‘Start the Day With a Smile’, ‘Where or When’ and ‘You Rascal You’, and he’d acted the giddy goat as usual, running around, showing the ladies his new cummerbund, getting into a sweat.

I said, ‘I don’t know why you insist on wearing a jacket in this heat. Why don’t you get yourself a short-sleeved shirt like me?’

‘Because I don’t want to look like a PT instructor,’ he said. ‘Because I’m tonight’s star turn and my public has expectations.’

Then, just before we were due back on, he said, ‘Cled, I don’t feel too clever.’

I said, ‘Is it your guts?’

‘No,’ he said, ‘I keep coming over dizzy. Ask Mostyn to give us another five minutes.’

Mostyn was the emcee. He said, ‘It is stifling tonight. I’ll open another window.’

I fetched a glass of water and carried it through, and there was Sel, collapsed on the floor, turning blue around the mouth. I thought it was his heart. You do hear of it happening in young men. His eyes were open but he appeared not to hear me. We needed to phone for an ambulance but the telephone was in Mostyn’s office and he had to find the key.

Avril was shouting, ‘Hurry up, you silly old sod. There’s a boy dying while you’re going through your pockets.’

‘I am hurrying,’ he said. ‘You go out front and keep the punters happy.’

‘Send the gargler on,’ she said. ‘I’m not leaving Selwyn.’

Chucky Crawford said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll go back on.’

By the time Mostyn came back from the telephone Sel’s eyes had rolled back in their sockets.

Avril said, ‘Did you tell them to hurry?’

Mostyn said, ‘Ambulances always hurry. And you’ve got a few things to learn about show business, my girl. Rule number one, whatever’s going on backstage, you look after your audience.’

‘Mostyn,’ she said, ‘there’s hardly anybody in and as long as the beer keeps flowing they won’t complain.’

And it’s true. It’s been my experience that people would rather take part in a heart attack than watch card tricks any day.

That ambulance had no great distance to come but it seemed to take hours. We were in a cubbyhole that passed for a dressing room, boxes of Christmas trimmings piled up on the shelves, mops and buckets in the corner, wondering if Sel was going to last the night.

Avril had his head cradled on her lap, stroking his hair. ‘Beautiful curls,’ she said.

I could have told her where those curls came from: a Toni home perm done in our Dilys’s living room.

When they arrived they gave him oxygen and asked me a lot of questions. All I knew was he’d had a ham salad and a glass of orange squash for his tea, the same as I had except I’d let him have my spring onions. I didn’t like to eat anything like that on a club night, in case I got lucky with the ladies. Also, he’d had brown pickle instead of salad cream, and three rock cakes. He’d seemed right enough during the first set apart from missing a line or two, but he did that sometimes, when he ran out of wind. He never breathed properly, for a singer. They said they were rushing him to the General Hospital and I might want to notify his next of kin.

Then Uncle Teilo turned up, alerted by Mostyn. ‘Oh dear,’ he kept saying. ‘My star turn. Oh dear, oh dear.’

By rights I should have ridden in the ambulance. I was family. But Teilo whispered something to the ambulance people, elbowed his way in.

‘You go and fetch your mam,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry about Sel. I’ll make sure he gets a top doctor.’

I’d have had to wait for a bus only a very nice couple called Jean and Dennis offered to run me home in their Hillman Minx.

‘We couldn’t bear for anything to happen to him,’ Jean said. ‘We follow him all over, don’t we, Dennis?’

He had fans like that even in those days. The husband didn’t say a lot. It always was the ladies he appealed to, but still, that Dennis drove like the clappers to get me back to Ninevah Street.

Jean said, ‘And then we’ll run you to the hospital, won’t we, Dennis? Who’d have thought it! Selwyn Boff’s brother riding in our motor!’

‘Did you loosen his cummerbund?’ That was the first thing Mam wanted to know. ‘Did you tell them he was invalided out of the RAF?’

I could have strangled her. Three times she ran back into the house, fetching things to take to the hospital. Indigestion pills and his hairbrush and then the evening paper, for the crossword puzzle, and all the while the car was ticking over, burning juice.

I said, ‘Leave that! He’s in no state for crosswords.’

‘He will be,’ she said. ‘He’ll perk up once he knows I’m there. Did you tell them he can only drink sterilised milk?’

I said, ‘He’s unconscious, Mam. He won’t be drinking any milk tonight.’

She said, ‘Well, if they give him the wrong milk and he comes out in hives we’ll have you to thank.’

I said, ‘I’m not his keeper.’

‘Yes you are,’ she said. ‘That’s exactly what you are. He’s only a bab.’

They allowed us to see him for five minutes but he was in a big machine, to help him with his breathing so we couldn’t really see him at all. They said they hoped to be able to tell us more in the morning.

Mam said, ‘I’ll just brush his hair. Tell him I’m here.’

‘Not tonight,’ they said. ‘He’s too ill.’

That’s when it hit her. ‘Oh, Cledwyn,’ she sobbed. ‘Whatever can it be? Don’t let me lose him. I couldn’t bear to lose him.’

She wouldn’t come home, insisted on waiting there all night though there was nothing to be done.

I said, ‘Should I ask Dilys to come? She could wait with you.’

‘No,’ she said, ‘Dilys is neither use nor ornament at this time of night. She can’t manage without her sleep the way I can.’

I said, ‘Well, if I’m going to be up all night, I’d better phone Greely’s, tell them I shan’t be in tomorrow morning.’

‘Just go home,’ she said. ‘I don’t need anybody to sit with me. It’s a mother’s job to keep watch. And it’ll be me he asks for when he wakes up.’

So Jean and Dennis kindly drove me home and when I offered them something for their trouble and their petrol, Jean said, ‘You keep your hand in your pocket. We don’t want your money, do we, Dennis? Of course, what we’d really love is an autograph.’

‘Happy to oblige,’ I said. ‘Where’s your autograph book?’

‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘This wouldn’t be the right time. He’s a sick boy. But when he’s on the mend, if you think to mention it to him, a signed photo would be lovely.’

I expect she lived to regret not letting me sign her book, especially after I’d had my hit single.

Sel got worse before he got better. He was on the critical list for several days and Mam instructed us on what we were to say to the reporters.

Dilys said, ‘There aren’t any reporters, Mam.’

Mam said, ‘That’s because you keep using the front entrance. They’ll be round the back, thinking to catch you out. That’s what they did when Judy Garland was in hospital.’

Avril tried to visit too, just the once, but Mam soon saw her off. ‘Family only,’ she said. ‘Doctor’s orders.’

This wasn’t quite true because Uncle Teilo was buzzing around every day, looking for progress reports, wondering how many more bookings he’d have to cancel. Sel was unconscious for a whole day and when he came to we had a bit of a fright. ‘I’ve gone blind,’ he said. He was clinging to Mam. ‘I can’t see anything. I’m too young to go blind.’

Mam said, ‘Don’t worry, Selwyn, Mam’s here. Mam’ll send for a specialist. Cledwyn, tell your Uncle Teilo to get a specialist. Whatever it costs.’

But it was only blurred vision. Gradually it cleared, then his eyeballs turned yellow and his belly swelled up like a balloon, and he itched so much he scratched himself nearly raw. It had all been caused by his jacket, they said. He’d been poisoned by the stuff that had been used to clean it. Carbon tetrachloride. Mam said, ‘It was no such thing. It was DabAway. And I only freshened it up. What was I supposed to do? Leave the sweat to rot the seams? Costly fabric like that?’

They said Mam wasn’t to have known. It was in very tiny print about using the product in moderation and airing the garment thoroughly after it had been cleaned. They said four bottles was a lot, but she still shouldn’t blame herself. She said, ‘I’m not blaming myself.’ But I think she did, on the quiet.

At the end of the first week they asked me to step into the doctor’s office.

I said, ‘Are you sending him home?’

‘No,’ he said, ‘far from it. Your brother isn’t out of the woods yet. There could be kidney damage. We have to wait and see.’ I said, ‘How long?’

‘Two to three weeks,’ he said. ‘If there is damage … you might want to consider whether your mother should be warned.’

I said, ‘She’ll do whatever it takes. She’ll cash in a policy if it’s a case of going private.’

‘It isn’t,’ he said. ‘It’s a case of a possible sudden deterioration.’

Dilys was visiting when I looked in on him. She was trimming his hair and they were laughing and joking, no idea he might be on death row. ‘Cheer up, our kid,’ he said, when he saw me. ‘You look like you just saw a ghost. Come and sit down. I’ve got quite a story to tell the pair of you. I’ve had an amazing experience. A vision.’

Dilys said, ‘Well, you are on a lot of medication.’

‘Nothing to do with medication,’ he said. ‘A beautiful lady came to me, in the middle of the night. She was dressed in long white robes.’

I said, ‘It was probably that little staff nurse with the nice ankles.’ I had my eye on her myself, always crackling her apron, pretending to be busy.

‘No,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t any nurse. It was a visitation. She stood as near to me as you are and she was bathed in a heavenly glow.’

Dilys said, ‘You must have been dreaming. Had they given you a jab?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I was as wide awake as I am now. Something made me sit up all of a sudden and there she was, smiling at me. But here’s the best bit: she knew all about me, all about my singing career and everything.’

I said, ‘Did she tell you Industrial Brush Social Club want to charge us for a no-show?’

‘Bugger Industrial Brush,’ he said. ‘This lady laid out my whole life before me. She said my days singing on the clubs are finished. She said I have a Higher Purpose.’

Dilys said, ‘What, like Dewi Elias?’ Dewi was one of Aunty Gwenny’s in-laws, worked as a roofer for years until he slipped and had a bang on the head. Then he went for a deacon. Reckoned he’d heard celestial voices.

‘Never mind Dewi Elias,’ he said. ‘I’m on the threshold of a momentous change in my life.’

It made my blood run cold to hear him making plans, after what I’d been told.

‘See?’ he said. ‘That’s why I was spared from DabAway poisoning. She told me I’m meant to go to America and there I shall make my fortune.’

Dilys said, ‘Could it have been the lady with the library trolley?’

I said, ‘Not in the middle of the night.’ I was hoping he had seen a vision, in a way. He was too young to die.

He said, ‘She was sent from above. I know she was. One minute she was here, clear as I see you, next minute she was gone.’

I said, ‘Did she glide away?’

‘Not so much glide as fade,’ he said.

Dilys said, ‘You haven’t told Mam?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I didn’t think she’d like it.’

He was right about that. Mam didn’t even like Joan Wagstaff visiting, who had been one of his best pals in school, and she was a married woman.

I’ve often wondered if it was caused by the pills or if he made it all up, but he stuck to the same story all his days. Then again, Sel never saw any harm in being approximate with the facts.

I walked with Dilys to the bus stop.

She said, ‘Are you going to say anything to Mam?’

I said, ‘I think I might. If America’s on the agenda she ought to be warned.’

I was inclined to leave well alone with the other business. If Sel started to go downhill I could always get the doctor to explain things to her. No sense in running to meet trouble.

I said, ‘It could kill her.’

Dilys said, ‘What? Him going to America? I don’t think so. She’s made like a Sherman tank. As long as Sel’s in the limelight she’ll keep rolling.’

So I brought the matter up with Mam that same evening.

‘Visions!’ she said. ‘I’ll give them visions. They’ve been letting nuns in to bother helpless invalids. I shall make a complaint to the matron in the morning.’

Mam hated nuns. We were chapel. Well, we weren’t anything, really, but if we’d had to be something we’d have been Ebenezer Congregational.

‘Well, that settles it,’ she said. She’d got a right old cob on her and I hadn’t even got as far as the details of Sel’s Higher Purpose in America. ‘I’m getting him out of there,’ she said. ‘I’ll have him moved somewhere nice and quiet where he’s not troubled by intruders.’

And she did. As soon as he got the all clear on his kidneys he was on his way to a convalescent home in Abergele, thanks to the generosity of well-wishers from the Birmingham Welsh, and then on to Aunty Gwenny’s, for fresh air and home-made currant bread. It made no difference, though. He may have been sitting in the Land of our Fathers with a rug round his knees, but in his heart he was already on his way to America.