Death's Sweet Echo Page 13

  ‘And it goes like this – There’s a preacher, Billy Graham type, you know the kind, seen them on TV. I used to be on TV… anyway, he’s got a huge crowd at a concert hall. He’s a healer, he tells them, can cure the sick, heal the lame, a regular Jesus, this bloke. Listen, if you youngsters don’t know who Billy Graham is, then ask your dad, or your granddad.’

  A voice shouted, ‘I’ll ask you, you’re older than my granddad.’

  ‘Ah, I remember my first drink… He calls for someone sick in the audience to come up on stage. “Come on, he says. Don’t be shy, I’ll change your life.” So a bloke stands up. I say stands, he was on crutches so it was more of a slouch than a stand. “Come on up,” Billy says. That wasn’t his real name, but you know what I mean. This bloke on crutches hobbles down the aisle, and eventually gets up on stage. The crowd is clapping and cheering. It’s quite a show.’

  ‘Not like this, then,’ an audience voice shouted, and people erupted in laughter. ‘Only joking, mate,’ the same voice called.

  ‘More than he is.’

  Robbie had grown used to the behaviour of the punters these days. Plied with cheap drink in happy hour – which lasted most of the night. Drunk even before they arrived, a lot of them, necking from supermarket cans and bottles at prices that made sobriety a challenge.

  ‘Billy makes a great fuss of him. Asks him how long he’s been crippled, and all that. The bloke says his name is Henry. Then Billy tells him to go behind a large screen and wait. So off the cripple goes. Then Billy asks if there’s anyone else needs healing. Up jumps this fit-looking young bloke – muscles, tan, looks great.

  ‘Billy looks worried. “You look okay to me,” he says. “Are you sure you’re sick?” The bloke steps into the aisle and nods. “What’s wrong with you?” says Billy. “I-sh caaa-shh-t tss-alss-k proper,” the bloke slurs. The audience laughs because he sounds really weird, but Billy quietens them. “God loves us all,” he says. The bloke says his name is Pete – though it comes out as schPeeete. Billy asks the bloke, Pete, to stand behind the screen with Henry.’

  ‘Get on with it.’

  ‘And it goes like this – Billy starts calling up to God. “Lord, help these poor wretches. Jesus, in your mercy, heal these poor souls.” The audience are lapping it up. Billy thrashes them into a frenzy. They’re whooping and shouting. Then he lowers his hands and it all goes quiet.

  “Henry,” Billy cries out. “I have asked the Almighty to channel his strength through me. Throw away your crutches, you are cured.” And would you believe it, the crutches fly out from behind the screen. The audience goes wild. It’s like a pop concert on speed.

  ‘“Now, Pete, poor Pete, who couldn’t speak a sentence that anyone could understand. Speak, Pete, speak out loud and clear.”

  ‘And Pete speaks out, voice still slurred and distorted like before, no different – and it goes like this – “Henry’s fallen over.”’

  Robbie waited for the laughter, and was rewarded with more than he anticipated. Louder and longer. The heckling had stopped, for a moment, and he was on his way with his routine. He came alive on stage. It was where he felt most comfortable. Offstage, his life was a mess, and had been for a long time. When he stepped out under the lights, the faces of the people all but obscured from view, he felt something inside reach out and grab hold of him. He was more confident, more assertive, more in control of himself than he could ever achieve in the real world.

  Robbie drained his third whisky and shook his head to free his thoughts from the recollections of last evening’s performance. That one was dead and buried. Tonight was another gig, another sea of blank faces and loud shouts.

  He pushed himself away from the bar, slipped off the red vinyl stool, and said goodbye to Doru. His eyes swept the room. The cleaning team was doing its best to make the old lady presentable, but there was only so much that a duster and polish could gloss over. The smell was still there, the marks and the dents; the memories of the life he had been reduced to living.

  Outside he was mildly surprised to find it was a bright and sunny day. Without a backward glance to the club, he turned left, in the general direction of his lodgings, and started the slow walk home.

  The Roadside was situated on a road, that much was true, but it wasn’t a highway or any other route of note that the owners had tried to engender when they named it. The name was another illusion that worked only occasionally. The street was one of a labyrinth of pinched side streets in an area of Essex that didn’t feature in any tourist brochures. Populated by overspill from East London, and increasingly by immigrants from Europe, there was a rundown feel about the place.

  At the end of the street was a boarded-up and disused factory that used to make toys that would be exported all over the world. Now the same toys were manufactured abroad, mostly in China, and sold in large retail hyper-markets rather than the small, family-owned and -run corner shops that Robbie could remember.

  His mother had worked at the factory. He had taken a job there two summers running, when he was at school. Happy days, he now realised, when responsibility was a stranger, and his only concern was whether Spurs would win something that year.

  He didn’t hear them until they were almost on top of him.

  ‘Oi, got a light, granddad.’

  Robbie turned in alarm at the rough voice. There were three of them, dressed smartly enough, he supposed, but their intent was evident. They had found a victim.

  ‘You deaf?’ One of them, the biggest, pushed Robbie’s shoulder. ‘He asked for a fag.’

  Robbie shook his head, fear gripping every part of him. He had never been a brave man, using humour at school as a weapon against the many bullies. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I don’t smoke.’

  They had him surrounded. One of them was plucking at his pocket as if trying to magic it open to get at the contents.

  ‘I don’t have any money,’ Robbie said.

  ‘We’ll just have to see about that.’

  One of them wrapped around Robbie from the rear, trapping his arms. Up close, the youth smelled of sweet chilli. The other two fanned out in front of him. Suddenly one of them punched him in the stomach, once, hard.

  Robbie let out a groan and sagged at the middle. If the boy behind him hadn’t held him in such a tight grip, he probably would have sagged to the floor. They were at his clothes now, hands into pockets, searching out what they could steal.

  Then they stopped.

  Robbie opened his eyes, which he hadn’t consciously closed. He could hear running footsteps, getting closer. Surely there weren’t more of them.

  As the figure got nearer, Robbie could see it was a man in his twenties. He couldn’t see the face clearly, but the body looked capable of handling itself.

  ‘Leave him alone.’ The voice sounded familiar.

  ‘What you going to do…’

  When the newcomer finally reached them, he didn’t say another word. He punched the biggest yob on the chin, and raised his leg in a vague karate kick to another. Robbie felt the arms around him ease, and was aware of feet running away.

  As quickly as they had attacked him, so they were gone.

  Robbie knelt forward, his hands on his knees as he gathered his breath. He wanted to speak, to thank the man for coming to his rescue. But when he stood upright, he was alone.

  Robbie was scared. The potential mugging had unnerved him, that much was true. He had never been able to cope with violence of any kind. That was part of his fear.

  The other part, the far more worrying portion, was that he recognised the man who had saved him. It was the clothes that first confused him; flares were out of fashion thirty years or more ago. The hair was the same, long, down to the shoulders, the face was what he had glimpsed in the bar mirror. He had been saved by himself; the self that existed all those years ago.

  He hurried along the street, pausing at the end to stare back, willing there to be someone there that he could attribute his
safety to, but he was alone.

  Two streets along there was a bookmaker’s, and he popped in to collect his small winnings from yesterday’s race meeting at Newmarket. He’d been there once, the racetrack, guest of a TV big-shot, at the time his star was in the ascendancy, and others wanted to be associated with him in case some of the gloss rubbed off onto them.

  ‘Afternoon, Robbie,’ the tired woman behind the counter greeted him. He was a regular.

  ‘Rita. Come to collect my winnings.’ He handed her a crumpled betting slip.

  ‘Blimey, Robbie, that’s not like you. Maybe it’s the start of bigger things for you.’

  ‘Don’t bet on it.’

  She laughed politely as he opened the door to leave.

  ‘I get off at five if you’ve time to buy a girl a drink. I’ll make it worth your while.’

  Rita was a regular fixture in Robbie’s routine. Not a girlfriend, he would never deign to honour her with that title, but they shared a mutual love of whisky, old black-and-white films, and fumbled, unsatisfying sex.

  ‘Sounds good to me. Meet you in the Black Lion about half five?’

  Rita looked like the cat that had lapped the cream, and Robbie felt a tug of sadness wash over him. If he was the reason her world brightened, he had nothing but sympathy for the woman.

  Outside, the sun was threatening to burn the skin from the top of his thinning head. He considered retreating to the nearest pub, but resisted. If he was going to drink with Rita, he would need to keep this side of sober to be able to perform later. He laughed. Perform on stage, I mean, not with… you know what I mean. He was getting worried about himself: seeing things, and now talking to himself. First sign of madness, Robbie boy.

  He had a room in a large, terraced house that faced the park. It was a nice spot to live, although his room faced the back and overlooked the lorry depot. He couldn’t afford the rates that the rooms with a view commanded. Mind you, he had lived there a while now; perhaps it was time to remind Mrs Gilder that her regulars deserved some special treatment.

  As if on cue, the door opened before he had the chance to get his key from his pocket, and Mrs Gilder stood there in all her splendour.

  ‘Mr Press.’

  ‘Mrs Gilder,’ he said. ‘I was just thinking about you.’

  ‘Never mind all that. I’ve had complaints.’

  Vera Gilder was in her eighties if she was a day. Widowed over twenty years, she rented rooms out in the large and rather commanding house that she used to share with her husband, before cancer dragged him away and left her alone. With no children to lighten her load or brighten her days, she existed on the tittle tattle of gossip that her guests brought her.

  Robbie was conscious he was standing on the steps, for all intents and purposes was on the street, and passers-by might hear what was being said. He had no false hope that he was in any small way famous, but television makes faces recognisable, as he well knew from the times his catchphrase had been shouted at him from cabs, cars, and people walking past. ‘Might I come in? We can discuss it inside.’

  Reluctantly, Mrs Gilder moved her tiny frame aside to let him pass. Once he was in the hallway, she shut the front door and turned towards him; she was bristling with indignation.

  ‘I don’t mind visitors, honest I don’t, you know me – I turn a blind eye when I need to.’

  Which was just as well, as Robbie had brought an inebriated Rita back to his digs on more than one occasion, and the woman was a noisy drunk.

  ‘Indeed not. You are an excellent host, and I am fortunate to stay here. What’s the problem?’

  ‘Problem. I’ll tell you what the problem is. I give you a key for you to use. Not to hand out to all, willy-nilly.’

  Robbie fished in his jacket pocket and drew out his key ring. ‘Here it is. Safe and sound. I only have the one key.’ As you well know.

  Mrs Gilder hesitated for a moment. She knew what she knew, but couldn’t deny that the only key the man had was being held up for her gaze.

  ‘That’s as may be, but you had a visitor in your absence nonetheless.’

  ‘A visitor? Who was it?’

  ‘I don’t mind all sorts, I know it goes on these days. You’re in show-business and all that. Lots of them in there, I know that.’

  ‘Lots of who? Whom?’

  ‘Homosexuals.’ She spat the word out.

  ‘I’m not gay,’ Robbie said. ‘But if was, which I’m not, so what? It’s not illegal any more, you know.’

  ‘Maybe not, but I don’t appreciate your young man friend coming in here as if he owns the place.’

  Young man friend? ‘Are you saying a young man came here to see me?’

  ‘Barged in as if he lived here, he did.’

  Robbie felt a frisson of unease scrape along his back. For some reason, his mind leapt back to the run-in with the louts.

  ‘What did he look like?’

  Mrs Gilder wrinkled her nose. ‘Smelled like those hippies used to, juniper…’

  ‘Patchouli, it’s called patchouli.’ Or cannabis, he thought, they smelled of that, too, but wisely kept silent.

  ‘Dressed like a hippie, too. Flared denim jeans, tight tie-dyed t-shirt. In a play or something? Some sort of revival?’

  ‘Not that I know of. I don’t know anyone who looks like that.’

  ‘Young, long hair. Looks a bit like you, now I think of it. Here, not your son is it?’ Her voice softened. Perhaps she had misjudged Mr Press.

  Robbie shook his head. ‘No, I have no children.’ He had wanted them, but his wife of insufficient years had not, and that resolved that little discussion.

  ‘Well, all right then. I’d better let you get on. He went up to your room. I couldn’t stop him. You’d better make sure nothing is missing.’

  Robbie lived on the top floor, and he took the stairs two at a time until the last flight, when his breathing was ragged and the undefined tightness in his chest slowed him.

  He opened the door, and the familiar smell assaulted his nostrils. It wasn’t a smell that he had come into contact with recently, but in his past he had encountered it at festivals, music clubs, and when he and his friends got together. As smells can, it pricked his nostalgia. Life had been good then; he had liked himself, most of the time.

  Closing the door behind him, he nervously looked around the room, checking if anything had been touched.

  The room felt different. It wasn’t just the pungent aroma. There was something about the atmosphere that didn’t feel the same as it normally did. If he had been a more poetic man he might have spoken of an aura, but he just knew someone had been here – might still be here.

  Alarmed, he grabbed the nearest thing he had to hand as a weapon: it was a book. Hardback, big, but of little use if he had needed to fight off an intruder. A cursory search around reassured him that he was alone in the room. It wasn’t really large enough to conceal anyone, but even so he checked under the bed: just dust and an old pizza box.

  He slumped onto the chair by the window and laid the book down on the chipped table top. He snorted a kind of laugh. The book contained his jokes. He had been diligent in the early days, scribbling them down as he thought of them. They came thick and fast when he was in the mood, often catching him out in the bath, walking along the street, or out shopping. He found he had to write them down fast or else the essence of them was gone, like mist drying in the morning sunshine.

  He wasn’t too proud to admit that a few had been pinched from other comics. But then that was par for the course, the name of the game. Jokes were like buses, he often said, you wait for a new one to arrive and then hear it everywhere for weeks.

  Those were the days. Every week he had jokes added to his growing library. The circuit was good in those days. Working men’s clubs, social clubs, the end-of-the-pier theatres that catered for variety acts in a way that didn’t exist nowadays. It was all television now, and that drained a comedy routine of origi
nality quicker than Robbie could drain a glass of whisky. Not that he shied away when the TV opportunity came knocking. It was the dream of them all. He accepted the congratulations when he signed the contract, even though many of his fellow comedians said it through gritted teeth. To be on television in those days was a mark that you’d made it. The money was good, as well. If only he hadn’t found so many wasteful ways to spend it.

  He sat back in the chair. He could remember his first joke he told on TV as if it was yesterday. Young, brash and confident – well into his thirties, but he felt and looked younger than he was.

  ‘And it goes like this – A lady goes into a bar in Waco, Texas, that’s in America, for those who don’t know. She sees a cowboy with his feet propped up on a table. He has the biggest boots she's ever seen. The woman asks the cowboy if it's true what they say about men with big feet being well-endowed.’

  Here he paused for the laughter from the studio audience. No heckling from them. They’d been warmed up by the resident comedian and were ready for more laughter.

  ‘The cowboy grins and says, “Shore is, little lady. Why don't you come on out to the bunkhouse and let me prove it to you?” The woman wants to find out for herself, so she spends the night with him. The next morning she hands him a $100 bill. That’s about fifty quid, ladies and gents, he didn’t come cheap. Blushing, the cowboy says, “Well, thankya, ma'am. Ah'm real flattered. Ain't nobody ever paid me fer mah services before.” The woman looks at him as if he’s mad. “Don't be flattered... take the money and buy yourself some boots that fit!”’

  They loved it, and he had been off and running for the evening.

  He noticed something out of place in his room. He hadn’t seen it before, but now he had, he couldn’t take his eyes away from it. On the floor of the small kitchen area was a photo frame. He knew without picking it up what it was. It was a picture of him from the end of the first TV series. The producer had given them out to all the main performers, and Robbie had kept it in pride of place in his study, back when he was young and proud. When he owned a decent-sized house, that had survived the divorce; when he could afford any house.