Still Standing: The Savage Years (43 page)

I’d said that I wanted it written into my contract that I was not allowed, under any circumstances, to adopt a Battersea dog. I fell in love every day with just about every mutt in the pound but my big passion was a boxer called Carmine. How I adored Carmine! Ignoring the fact that he slobbered, drooled, moulted and would never win a beauty competition, I was seriously considering adopting him. He was gorgeous, and would take great delight in sitting on my knee and gazing lovingly into my eyes, even though he was the size of a small donkey. Oh, I was hooked, he had me in the pad of his paw and if I hadn’t believed that I’d be away for quite a while on tour with
Street of Dreams
he’d be sat next to me right this very minute.

Moira, who minds my dogs when I’m away, already has two of her own and it would be unfair to saddle her with a dirty great boxer who I just know my dogs would resent bitterly. Oh my lordy, why did I meet this bloody dog? Eventually a decision was made for me when a very nice young couple who were clearly as infatuated with him as I was took him home with them.

As Carmine lurched out of the gate with his new owners he turned and gave me a look, not a look of reproach but one that said ‘See ya around, kid’, before loping off into the sunset. I could’ve wept buckets but as I was on camera I didn’t as I think there’s enough bloody people willing to weep on telly at the drop of a cheque without me swelling the ranks. In true British tradition I kept my upper lip as stiff as a board.

I did, however, to my eternal shame, crack at the end of the shoot. All the staff and volunteers turned out and I had a guard of honour made up of dogs with Claire Horton, the chief exec of the home, making a speech that made me squirm as I hate praise. She concluded by asking if I’d consider
becoming an ambassador for Battersea, an honour that I was more than proud to accept.

Despite all this love and affection my eyes remained bone dry and it wasn’t until I was led through the crowd to be presented with something else that the floodgates opened.

There he was, immortalized in bronze, an exact replica of my lovely old boy Buster on a plinth with a little bronze plaque underneath that read ‘Buster Elvis Savage, the greatest canine star since Lassie’. (Another book, quite a thick one at that.) I was a gibbering mess and there wasn’t a dry eye in the house, and it was the perfect end to what had been a glorious time spent at Battersea.

Oh and by the way, just in case you’re wondering, I didn’t leave empty-handed in the end – but then I knew I wouldn’t, as did everyone who knows me. I’ve now got a Jack Russell/chihuahua cross called Eddy, the size of a newborn kitten and as tough as a marine, the offspring of Bourbon, a neglected little chihuahua who was found abandoned and heavily pregnant tied to the gate of Battersea Dogs Home. My dogs might have refused to accept Carmine but I knew they’d be fine with a puppy, particularly Olga who mothers him.

That’s four dogs now and if the show is successful and runs for a few more series then I’m going to end up on Channel 4, the subject of one of those programmes about people who are compulsive hoarders, sat on the sofa buried under a mound of dogs.

Adrella (Peter), a friend of over thirty years, had, like Sue, been diagnosed with cancer. Peter had cancer of the throat which, had it been diagnosed earlier, would more than likely have been treatable. At first we all thought that he’d beaten it, but he was now deteriorating by the day and the cancer
had spread to major organs. I asked him if he’d like to come and stay with me in Kent for a bit of fuss and country air, at the same time enabling me to spend some time with him before his condition worsened and to say a private goodbye while we still could.

For the first few days he lay on the sofa alternating between watching repeats of
Bullseye
on the telly and playing Sudoku, chain-smoking up to sixty fags a day, reasoning that as he now had terminal lung cancer it didn’t really matter any more, a sad fact I couldn’t argue with. Even if I had I would’ve been shot down in flames as there was no arguing with Peter once he’d set his mind to something.

However, after waking up one morning barely able to breathe and with a throat that felt like he’d been sucking pear drops made of cut glass he never smoked again, calmly getting on with his Sudoku and his telly. Then one day he discovered he had neither the energy nor the enthusiasm and Sudoku and
Bullseye
along with the ciggies were permanently abandoned.

Apart from energy drinks, he could no longer take any nourishment orally. Instead he fed himself with some concoction in a bottle via a tube in his stomach, pointing out that he was the ideal house guest as apart from keeping him supplied with endless cups of tea I needn’t worry myself about catering.

He came downstairs very late one afternoon after a particularly bad night, a combination of pain plus the horrors of what the future held, had kept him awake. Pale and drawn, he looked at me with dead eyes and asked in all seriousness if I could make up a potion that would assist his demise.

‘I don’t want to end up rotting away in a hospice, waiting to die,’ he explained calmly, staring out of the kitchen window, ‘and as you’re the herbalist in the family there must
be something you can brew up from that herb garden of yours that would help me on my way.’

I stopped what I was doing and looked at him incredulously. ‘Are you seriously asking me to pop you off?’

‘Well, not in so many words,’ he replied, still gazing out of the window. ‘But if you could just point me towards some deadly plant or weed I could help myself and, well … Oh, don’t be so bloody difficult.’

‘I’d end up in the dock of the Old Bailey charged with murder,’ I pointed out as he turned to face me. ‘And then what?’

‘Well, you could do “We Both Reached For The Gun” from
Chicago
,’ he said deadpan, ‘or “Roxie” with a chorus line of inmates behind you as backing dancers.’

Despite the underlying gravity of the situation we both laughed, setting Peter off on a prolonged coughing bout that left him physically exhausted.

‘I give in,’ he said quietly when the bout had finally subsided, lowering himself slowly into a chair and sitting for a while staring into space, deep in thought. Eventually he gave a long breath, a drawn-out sigh that seemed to have a calming effect on him but one that signalled the dawning that here was an enemy he’d fought every inch of the way but the time had now come to face the end of the journey.

‘Of course you haven’t given in,’ I said, putting on a brave face and acting as if I were talking about a failed driving test. ‘You never give in. Belligerence is your middle name.’

He sighed again. He no longer looked like the Peter that I knew. I watched him now, slumped wearily in the chair, his tartan dressing gown covered in cat hairs and fag ash, with two pairs of dirty glasses, way beyond repair and held together by goodwill and Sellotape, perched on the end of his nose. He seemed to be shrinking before my eyes as if he were
a balloon slowly deflating, the air gradually slipping away from him until all that was left was that bloody dressing gown hanging off the chair.

‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ I said as millions do in times of stress, ‘and make a cup of tea. D’ya want one? I’ll give it a good lacing with hemlock.’

‘Ooh goody,’ he said, suddenly brightening up. ‘You can bring it up to me in bed and poison me there.’

Peter was no quitter. He had a resolve of iron and was admirable in the way he always stuck to his guns, right or wrong, at whatever cost. This brief and uncharacteristic lapse into desperation was the only time he considered throwing in the towel and I don’t believe for one minute he wanted me to supply him with the means to the end. It was just his way of conveying to me how bleak dealing with cancer can be, particularly when you can’t sleep in those wee small hours of the morning and your darkest thoughts come out of the shadows to plague you.

I only saw him a few times after he left. He was admitted to hospital shortly after returning to his little flat in Dean Street and after visiting him in the rare moments I got between filming in Battersea Dogs Home and attempting to rehearse
Street of Dreams
as he lapsed in and out of consciousness, I said my final goodbye.

I’ve sat through too many round-the-clock bedside vigils in hospital wards waiting for loved ones to expire, each time vowing that I’d never put myself through this most harrowing of experiences again. Now, for the sake of sanity and self-preservation, I prefer to slip away and remember my loved ones as I always knew them and not as an emaciated shell with tubes to sustain life hanging out of every orifice.

After I’d left the ward I sat quietly in one of the little shelters in the square outside for a while, my mind blank, unable to assimilate any information, preferring instead to switch off and to go with the numbing sensation that was slowly creeping over me, allowing it to take control.

‘You’re that fellah off the telly,’ an elderly man in pyjamas and a dressing gown said as he passed. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I’ve just been to see a friend for the very last time,’ I answered him bluntly, unable and unwilling to put the act on for him.

‘Is that so, my friend,’ he said, the beaming smile on his face suddenly switching to one of concern. ‘Old friends are valuable and losing one is a great loss. I’m very sorry to hear that, very sorry indeed.’

I muttered a thank you as he sat down beside me.

‘You known this friend a long time?’ he asked, ignoring the no smoking sign and offering me a cigarette.

‘Over thirty years,’ I replied, comfortable in this stranger’s company. ‘We used to do a double act many moons ago.’

‘Really?’ he said, turning on the lighthouse beam of a smile again. ‘You must have had some good times.’

‘We certainly did.’

‘And now you’ve got some good memories.’

‘We certainly went through a lot.’

‘Then why the long face?’ he laughed.

‘Because I feel like the last of a dying race,’ I moaned. ‘Almost every act I’ve worked with has died, there’s hardly any of us left.’

‘Well there you go,’ he exclaimed. ‘The reason you are still standing.’

‘Why?’

‘To fly the flag and keep us all going, that’s why you’re still standing. Now haven’t you got work to go to?’

‘More than enough, thank you very much,’ I said, suddenly overcome with a surge of sickening optimism that kick-started me back into life again.

‘Then go and enjoy it,’ he said, ‘and good luck.’

‘Does the sister on the ward know you’re out?’ I asked, getting up to leave. ‘Don’t they mind you coming out in your pyjamas?’

‘I don’t tell them,’ he said. ‘I won’t be in for much longer anyway. I’m going on holiday when I get out of here.’

‘Anywhere nice?’

‘Trinidad, I’m going home to see some of my old friends,’ he said, grinning at me. ‘Sit in the sun and drink and enjoy the good conversation.’

As I crossed the road a woman stopped me and said that she hoped her father hadn’t been making a nuisance of himself. Her father was obviously the man in the shelter and I was able to answer sincerely that I’d enjoyed his company and our chat.

‘He comes out for a smoke,’ she said, nodding at him in the shelter and smiling, suddenly resembling her father, ‘even though he shouldn’t in his condition.’

‘Well, he seems healthy enough,’ I chipped in, eagerly defending my new friend, ‘and it can’t do him any harm.’

‘He has inoperable cancer,’ she replied quietly, unable to look me in the eye. ‘He hasn’t got long, less than a month, they said. He’s talking about going back to Trinidad but the journey alone would kill him.’

‘You wouldn’t think there was anything wrong with him,’ I said, ‘he’s so full of beans. It’s just not fair, is it?’

‘No, I don’t suppose it is, but that’s life, isn’t it? And that’s my father so thank you for talking to him. He gets lonely in the hospital surrounded by all those sick people.’

I watched her join her indefatigable father who was busy
telling her excitedly that I was that fellah with the dog off the telly. Giving him a final wave which he didn’t notice, I set off to find a taxi to take me to Battersea Dogs Home.

Peter died peacefully and with dignity. I got out the black tie and much as I’d rather not have had to I got up during the funeral service and delivered my version of a eulogy. I’ve done this so many times now over the years at Golders Green Crematorium that I’m surprised I haven’t been offered a residency.

After the service we congregated outside. There were a lot of old friends and faces that I hadn’t seen in years and I really wanted to join them at the Vauxhall Tavern afterwards for the reception. I’m a firm believer in observing certain rituals: not eating meat on Good Friday, not looking at the full moon through glass and seeing the deceased off with a boiled ham butty and a couple of large whiskies after a funeral.

Instead I got on the back of a taxi bike and went to rehearsals at Shepperton Studio for
Street of Dreams
. Eventually we opened at the Manchester Arena. One day I’ll tell the tale but for the moment I have to stay silent for legal reasons.

Living in rural Kent is just glorious when the weather is fine but because of the recent appalling weather my passion for the bucolic life is beginning to wane. Standing as I have at the window each morning staring out at a grey, bleak vista, almost obscured by a combination of rain and fog, I’ve felt as if I’ve been trapped in a particularly grim Ingmar Bergman film. My allotment, usually bursting with fruit and veg, is barren, the root vegetables rotten in the ground and the soft fruits and lettuce devoured by a plague of Spanish slugs. I can hear the bastards out there now, moaning about the euro and munching on my bloody lettuces.

Our summers are going to remain sodden and miserable for the next twenty years, according to one expert I was listening to on the radio, and if this is true then I’m going to have to consider warmer climes as I couldn’t bear to live in a perpetual state of winter. After all, I didn’t sign up to dwell in bloody Narnia, did I? Fortunately the weather has changed and my mood with it and, with the warm sunshine on my back as I roam around the fields, I’m reminded why I chose to live in this beautiful corner of the world.