The Life of Lee (38 page)

I walked back into the lounge and looked at the grumpy old TV over in the corner. The dusty screen was blank, the stations off air. It was late. I rolled my eyes. ‘Show business?’ I mocked myself for even thinking such rubbish. ‘A ridiculous idea, that is not a life for us. I know, I’ve lived it already.’ I was sure that would never be a life for Heather and me. I was always absolutely determined one day to get a proper job with security. I sighed, shrugging my shoulders. ‘Something has to turn up soon.’

I stood in the middle of the room and looked around me at the shabby walls, the lumpy, frayed carpet, the peeling woodwork, the hole in the ceiling, the dirty, bright
orange, moth-eaten curtains. I thought again about travelling with Mum and Dad when I was a kid, the theatres and smoky clubs, the performers, some good, some truly awful.

All of them, it seemed, had had one thing in common: they all had the same fear and insecurity about where their careers were going or how a particular show went. It was always noticeable that the ones who were the ascending stars had a more bubbly, positive way about them. Only a few years later, if you bumped into that same person when they were no longer flavour of the month and on the way down, it would be a whole different story. They seemed consumed with anxiety about why they’d been dropped in favour of the younger guy.

I noticed how, when you met all those people who you might have seen filling the TV screens with their massive white smiles and dazzling personalities, they looked somehow odd, alien even, like their heads were too big for their bodies. They had fixed, frozen smiles and laughing eyes that, like a mask, could in an instant drop. It was like a switch being turned off – as soon as they felt they were out of the sight of the punters, their faces immediately fell.

I thought of all the wasted talent I’d seen. Then, of course, there were the ones with just a minuscule amount of talent who had still managed to become a huge success, something that only fuelled the resentment in other performers. I thought of all that. Then I began to feel a little sad as I started to recollect how it affects the families of people in show business, the kids who never see their dads, the wives who find out their husbands are having
affairs while away, the constant reassurance needed from the spouses, the cleaning of the suits, the shoes, the handling of the props, the hair dye, the stitching buttons back on, the sequins and the hems.

A shiver went up my spine. No, I’d always sworn I wouldn’t begin to get involved in any of that sort of stuff. I shall get a proper job, I said to myself, something I’m good at. There is something out there for me – I just haven’t found it yet. But I will, and soon. I hid
The Stage
back inside the
Echo
again.

I checked on Heather; she was sound asleep. Standing in the doorway as the light from the hall rested on her peaceful face, I stared at her for a moment. I didn’t deserve someone so beautiful, someone who always held out so much hope for me. I felt as though I was letting her down very badly. ‘It won’t be long now, Heather. Something will turn up. I can feel it in my bones.’ I quietly closed the door and went off to bed.

I awoke the next morning curious. Rummaging through a few boxes we had tucked away in a small cupboard next to our bedroom, I found my old guitar case. Flipping it open, I grabbed the Fender guitar that lay quietly inside and sat down on a box. I caressed its smooth, shiny surfaces, letting my fingers lightly touch the strings at the top of the neck. I questioned if I could perhaps still play it, then I wondered if I could still play the piano as well. I mean, I hadn’t played any music at all since I was in the band and that had been a couple of years back.

I began softly playing a few riffs I used to know. Shit! It was like riding a bike. The chords, I seemed to be just
finding them with my fingers automatically. The rock’n’roll songs we would bang out to warm up just popped into my head. I strummed away. ‘Johnny B. Goode’? Easy! It was only three chords, twelve-bar blues, simple, no problem. I thought of the talent show advertised in
The Stage
. What if I entered it? I wondered. I strummed a little louder. I imagined I was on stage, I was there. Yeah, I could do that, a couple of numbers on this, maybe one on the piano. Yeah, I could do that. If there’s one thing I know, it’s music. I was lost in my imagination for a moment.

Strumming away in our donated chair during the first Christmas in our flat in Westcliff-on-Sea.

But then a wave of doubt and anxiety swept through my entire body. I stopped playing. This is not for me, I thought, this is bullshit. I slammed the reluctant guitar back in its box and hid it away back amongst the junk and unpacked boxes. There was no way I was going to stand on a stage, no way. I felt stupid – you fool, Lee Evans, I said to myself, what you need is a proper job. I knew there had to be something that was right for me out there. I only wished I knew what that was.

But it wasn’t on the stage.

I was utterly sure of that.

35. The Governor

A couple of hours later, after making sure Heather was fine, I was up’n’at’em in the call box, furiously calling the job vacancies that we had picked from the paper the night before. Most of them had already been filled, and it was only 10.00 a.m. Blimey, give us a chance!

I was used to rejection by now, so it was water off a duck’s back that most calls resulted in bad news. I would just plough on, instantly going to the next one. Then I thought I’d call a random number, why not? It wasn’t one we had picked out – it was a small ad tucked away near the bottom of the page and only consisted of a few words: ‘Salesman needed. Potential to be very successful. No qualifications required. Start immediately. Earn good money fast.’

A man by the name of Jonathan answered. His voice was quite posh. ‘Meet me at the entrance to Southend Pier, all right, in a couple of hours, say? Great!’

I went to meet him as planned, making sure I was prompt and ready. I was quite excited. He sounded very firm, concise and businesslike over the phone. His middle-class accent gave the impression that he must have been sitting in a leather-backed chair surrounded by plans, wall-charts and graphs. I think he may have been speaking to me with his back to a large floor-to-ceiling pane of glass tinted the same colour as my mum’s Pyrex casserole
dish. I imagined him looking out across a bustling floor of professional office workers.

I checked the time. I had to say he was quite late, but then I envisaged Jonathan arriving any second, probably in a chauffeur-driven Jag, perhaps climbing out to shake me by the hand and welcoming me to the company. I began to think he was being strategically late – maybe he wanted to play everything down, hold back. I mean, for all I knew it could have been a test, part of the interview. I only had to crack once and I was out. I could have been a time-waster. I had a little scout around, half-expecting to see a steamed-up car full of suits wearing sunglasses watching me. I was definitely getting this – he didn’t want to show all his cards.

From what I could glean from our brief telephone conversation earlier, I reckoned this guy took no prisoners. Jonathan was mean and he was lean, and that’s what he expected from me. I did my best to look dynamic, standing there under the arch of the blisteringly cold and exposed pier entrance, stamping my scruffy black trainers and rubbing my hands to keep warm. I felt a little as if I didn’t quite fit the ‘Potential to be very successful’ mould in my now-nearly-threadbare-and-holding-on-for-dear-life Oxfam suit. I was also regretting opting not to wear the only coat I had at the time, a short red lumber jacket. But I knew it wouldn’t work. ‘Think dynamism, Lee!’ – that was my mantra.

That’s why I was initially taken aback when Jonathan eventually arrived, much, much later than the agreed time. I was lucky – any longer and I’d have lost at least a couple, if not all, of my outer extremities and I needed one of them if we were to try for kids again. I was on the point
of having to marinate myself in a vat of boiling antifreeze for a week.

Jonathan had cut it fine, but I put his lateness down to his very busy schedule. Actually, I don’t know what I put it down to; I didn’t know anything by then, as I had significant brain freeze and probably, if asked, wouldn’t even have been able to operate a spoon.

I nearly dismissed Jonathan at first as some poor beggar struggling to get up the seafront. As it was by now blowing a gale, he wobbled like a penguin along the freezing, abandoned promenade, his long black coat flapping furiously in the wind that howled in sideways and fired sharp rain like needles up over the seafront wall.

Disconcertingly, he appeared angry and frustrated with something as he shuffled towards me, all dishevelled, restless and spitting nails to himself. I noticed he was clinging on to something wrapped up in a carrier bag under one arm. Disrespectfully, I thought for a moment that he looked like a hobo who had just climbed off the bus down the road. But I immediately dismissed that as ridiculous – I was being unkind. I remembered our high-powered telephone conversation back at the call box, and rejected my preposterous idea right away. I reminded myself, this bloke takes no prisoners.

As we retired to a small, steamy café nearby, Jonathan dispensed with the formalities and launched straight into his pitch. ‘There’s no room for shirkers in my organization,’ he blasted. Even though I desperately didn’t want to admit it to myself – my mind was, like a bloodhound, fixed firmly on getting that job – he looked like a bit of a shirker himself.

He was a dumpy, besuited, untidy little man, well into his forties, with a bloodshot face, big, panda-like, dark drooping eyes and so many chins he looked like he was peering over a loaf of bread. He had been wheezing and short of breath when he hobbled up to me; he reminded me of one of those inbred miniature dogs you see under some large wealthy woman’s flabby arm.

‘Oh, I nearly forgot,’ he smiled, with questionable sincerity. ‘Did you bring the old money that I asked you to?’ When he spoke, I was transfixed. I couldn’t take my eyes off his chins, which all moved at different times to each other. They looked like those big red brushes that sway from side to side on a drive-through car wash.

‘Yeah!’ I enthusiastically replied, frantically searching for it in one of my trouser pockets, a task made all the more difficult by the fact that we were seated in a tight booth. Although I had started to warm up now that we had come in from the cold, my tingling hands still hadn’t quite thawed enough to be fully operational.

‘How much was it? I can’t remember,’ he said, feigning innocence. He didn’t look at me when he uttered those words. It felt like he wanted to avoid eye contact. He occupied himself with moving objects around the Formica table. It was like he was playing chess. He never sat still for a second, cleaning his knife and fork with the serviette, placing them neatly next to each other at exactly the right space apart. The whole time he talked, he kept moving stuff, the salt cellar, the pepper pot, then picking up the sugar bowl and pouring so much sugar into his tea that I thought when he went to the toilet he was going to pump out candy floss.

‘Twenty-five pounds, was it?’ I enquired, momentarily stopping my search and desperate to sound like I knew what I was doing.

‘Right, yeah. You’ll want the Executive Kit, then.’ He looked up from scanning the menu, slammed it on to the table, put his hands on top of it and now turned to look directly at me, smiling broadly once again. I squirmed – I was in his power. Blimey, I thought, that’s how good he is, that’s the aura he has. Just think, one day, I’ll have that – although I’ll perhaps pass on the ascending mountain range of chins.

To be honest, I was crapping it right then. I was finding Jonathan really intimidating and anticipated that demeanour might be something I would have to learn at some point if I were to become an equally go-getting hotshot. I was feeling a little like the Karate Kid, sitting at the feet of the Master.

Unable confidently to look at him directly, I sat cowering in the booth, flicking a glance up at him now and again to see if he was still staring at me. He was – in fact, he wouldn’t stop. His eyes were boring into me. I was momentarily distracted when I noticed his teeth, every one of them a rotten dirty brown colour. They looked a bit like a series of badly painted pub signs flapping about in the wind. The gaps between them gave them the appearance of Stonehenge at dusk. He was probably too busy running his organization to worry about petty things like personal hygiene. Still, you could get your secretary to go out and get a toothbrush, surely. But who was I to question the great Jonathan … actually, thinking about it, I never got his second name.

I found the money in my back pocket and handed it to him. That’s when he stopped staring at me and focused on the money. He quickly counted it and shoved it into the inside pocket of his heavily dandruffed jacket. He appeared to relax after that. He sucked in a deep lug of the steamy grease of café air and ran his fingers through his thick, oily black hair, then sat back contentedly, looking around the empty tables, picking up and sipping loudly on his sugary tea.