Still Standing: The Savage Years (8 page)

We arrived at the Keighley Fun House to find a diminutive drag queen berating a couple of strapping youths towering above him in the corridor leading to the dressing room.

‘You think you’re funny, don’t you,’ he was shouting. ‘You’re lucky I don’t beat the shit out of you.’

‘Classy joint then,’ Hush muttered as he struggled to get past them with the costume sack.

‘We were only having a bit of a laugh, Diamonds, no offence like,’ one of the lads said in a feeble attempt to mollify this minuscule hell-cat.

‘
No offence!
’ Diamonds roared. ‘You great long streak of piss, go on, bugger off before you get the toe of me shoe up your arse!’

The two lads scarpered, sniggering as they ran.

‘And if you’re going near that bar then you can get me a large brandy and water as an apology,’ he shouted after their retreating backs.

‘You having a bit of trouble then?’ I asked.

‘Do you know what they called me?’ he said, flicking his shoulder-length black wig out of his face. ‘They said I looked like Tattoo from
Fantasy Island
. Cheeky bastards.’

Fantasy Island
, if you remember, was a popular series set on an island somewhere in the Pacific Ocean where those who were able to afford it could go and live out their fantasies. Tattoo was the pint-sized assistant of Ricardo Montalban, who ran the island. I didn’t dare look in Hush’s direction in case I caught his eye and started laughing as this Diamonds didn’t look the type you’d want to offend, so instead I pretended to show great interest in a poster advertising the next week’s act.

‘For one night only!’ it proclaimed. ‘Mr Dave Berry!’ And to prove it there was a ten-by-eight photo of the great man peeping mysteriously over the collar of his leather jacket with ‘“The Crying Game” and other Big Hits!’ artfully written underneath in felt-tip pen.

‘You must be the Playgirls then,’ Diamonds said, unimpressed. He turned his attention to Hush’s sack. ‘What the hell have you got in there? A dead body?’

Hush explained that it held our costumes.

‘And how many costumes have you brought then? They only want a twenty-minute spot, y’know, not the
Ziegfeld
bloody
Follies
. Are you live or mime?’

‘Mime.’

‘They prefer live in here. Never mind, I’ll tell the DJ you’re here and you can give him your tape.’

When Liz Dawn arrived she was far more impressed. She was everything I’d hoped she’d be, friendly, warm and very funny.

‘Look at these dresses, Don,’ she kept saying to her husband, who, like Diamonds, couldn’t be less interested. ‘You don’t get the likes of these off the back of an ’andcart in Salford Market.’

We went on and did our spot and going through my routine I was suddenly aware of just how incongruous our show must seem. An act that was originally conceived and tailored for a gay audience was now being performed to a crowd of mill-workers and miners. I made a mental note that if we were to survive and make a living on this northern pub and club circuit we would have to make the act a little more lairy.

When the time came for Liz to go on stage she was suddenly gripped by fear.

‘I can’t do it,’ she said to me, grabbing my arm.

‘Of course you can, they’re gagging for you out there.’ I was really surprised she was like this as she’d worked the clubs for years before
Coronation Street
.

‘What am I going to say?’ She was slowly inching her way back to the dressing room. ‘What am I going to do?’

I was genuinely concerned for this lovely lady’s distress and tried my best to calm her fears with a few encouraging words. ‘They love you, just be yourself, sing a few songs, tell a few gags, you’ll be fine.’ From behind the curtain we could hear Diamonds out on the dance floor.

‘Listen to them,’ she gasped, gripping my arm even tighter. ‘He’s going down a storm, I can’t follow that.’

‘So, he said to me, “If you can guess what I’ve got in my hand you can have it,”’ Diamonds was saying, the audience loving every minute. ‘So I said, “If you can get it in one hand I don’t fucking want it.”’

Uproar.

‘I can’t,’ Liz said again. ‘I really can’t go on, honest to God, cross me heart.’

‘Come on, Liz,’ Don was saying. ‘Don’t be daft, get out there.’

‘Let’s hear it,’ Diamonds was shouting, ‘for our Vera herself. Miss Liz Dawn!’

‘I want to go to the lav’ were Liz’s last words as we pushed her on to the dance floor.

Needless to say, she brought the house down and you’d never have guessed that the confident, smiling, totally natural performer under the spotlight was the same person who a moment earlier was on the verge of collapse backstage.

As the Fun House was closing, Sid turned up and Diamonds suggested that we all go on to the International Club on
Lumb Lane, a notorious thoroughfare in the heart of Bradford’s red light district and teeming with ladies of the night of all ages, shapes and sizes, regardless of the fact that Peter Sutcliffe, alias the Yorkshire Ripper, was out looking for his next victim. Diamonds knew the owner of the club and said we’d be OK for a couple of drinks.

‘Stay in drag,’ Diamonds advised. ‘We won’t have to pay for our ale that way.’

Diamonds wore a black sequinned dress slit to the hip and a lot of jewellery and I couldn’t help feeling concerned at the amount of gold rings, bracelets and diamonds he was wearing, especially in a place like Lumb Lane. Diamonds was nonplussed. ‘I’d like to see the one who’d try and take it off me,’ he growled. So would I.

Since it was my first trip down Lumb Lane I put my tart’s outfit on, the usual ensemble of leopard-skin mini, ten tons of cheap beads and bangles, the platinum blond wig modelled on Vivian Nicholson’s hairdo, a tote bag with a tassel hanging off it and a ratty old leopard-skin coat. Dressed like this, a lad could slip into Lumb Lane and blend in with the crowd beautifully. Hush stood out like a sore thumb. He didn’t want to go at first but after a few drinks and plenty of encouragement from Diamonds and me he agreed and found himself stepping into the back of Sid’s car in an emerald-green-velvet retro swingback coat complete with wicker basket, the type that schoolgirls used to take to their domestic science lessons. To complete this look he wore a red Doris Day-style frock with a green polka dot headband. He wouldn’t have looked out of place on the set of
Mad Men
and apart from his height could’ve easily passed as a well-preserved WASP housewife on her way to a ladies’ charity luncheon.

The clientele of the International all looked like they should be helping the police with their enquiries, which on reflection they probably were, and to describe the club, which was in the basement of a house, as a dump would be a gross understatement. It wasn’t very busy at first but when word got round that four drag queens were in residence the place soon filled up with working girls popping in and out, curious to have a look at us. We soon got chatting and after a bit of persuasion, not that it took a lot, I was out on the street with them standing alone under a lamp-post sucking on a fag, blowing plumes of smoke up towards the light in a manner I imagined looked glamorously cinematic.

To my surprise and, if I’m honest, horror, a car that had been crawling past at a snail’s pace suddenly pulled up alongside me.

‘You looking for business then?’ the driver asked briskly, leaning out of the open window as if he were ordering a Big Mac and fries at a drive-in McDonald’s.

One of the girls who had been sitting on the wall behind me rushed forward to negotiate on my behalf.

‘Five quid for a blow job,’ she said, much amused.

‘Five quid!’ I protested in a voice that could be heard in Sheffield. I was only out here on a dare, only pretending to be a hooker, only playing, and certainly had no intention of jumping in a car with what might turn out to be a deranged serial killer for five quid or five thousand. ‘Five quid,’ I said again, open-mouthed with disbelief, not a good idea when a hooker is negotiating the price of oral sex on your behalf.

‘Here, you’re not a woman, you’re a bloke,’ the punter exclaimed, the penny suddenly dropping. ‘Not that I mind, like. ’Op in, we’ll park up Alice Street.’

‘I’m sorry, the shop’s closed,’ I snapped, mustering what
was left of my dignity and turning on my wobbly heels to head back to the relative safety of the club.

‘Hang on, luv, I’ll go the whole way for fifteen,’ I could hear the girl saying. ‘Are you on for it or what then?’

They drove off together. I made a mental note of the registration, just in case her body was found on waste ground the next day, but by the time I got back to the club I’d forgotten it.

Thankfully the girl’s punter didn’t turn out to be the Ripper as within fifteen minutes she was back in the club and stood at the bar enjoying a hard-earned half of lager. I asked her, with a maniac going around killing women, if she wasn’t scared each time she got into a car with a strange man.

‘Course I am,’ she said. ‘We all are, but I’ve got rent to pay and a baby to feed so I haven’t got much choice. I reckon I risk me life each night more times than a lion tamer in a circus.’ She studied the bar top for a moment, absently drawing a figure of eight with her finger in a pool of spilled beer. ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘You’re thinking, what a way to earn a living.’

‘No I’m not,’ I protested, as I wasn’t and besides I could ask myself the same question.

‘Well, that’s all it is, a livin’, and speaking of which standing here won’t get the baby fed.’ She sighed and draining what was left in her glass she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and was off.

‘See ya,’ she said as she strolled up the stairs and out on to the Lane again.

We stayed at Diamonds’ flat that night. He set about making a curry as soon as we got in and we demolished it, sitting up till dawn chewing the cud and drinking brandy.

Hush was forever making costumes, and where he went so did his Singer sewing machine. ‘I’ve seen some fabulous fabric in the market, dirt cheap. We’ll take twenty quid out of tonight’s fee and I’ll get it in the morning’ became a familiar cry.

We were off to work a club in Denmark for a month and Hush was insistent that we ‘needed new’. Almost every afternoon the floor of the flat vibrated violently to the sound of the sewing machine while I sat on the sofa making tassels and watching
Farmhouse Kitchen
on Yorkshire TV with Henry chattering away and dancing a little jig on my head.

To Hush’s frustration his industrious endeavours came to an abrupt halt when, just like a lot of the mills around us, production shut down, although in our case it was because the electricity was cut off. As well as the current bill there were some steep arrears from a previously unpaid bill that Phil had inherited when he took over the flat, and as we couldn’t come up with the astronomical sum of three hundred pounds Yorkshire Electricity understandably pulled the plug.

This blip in the proceedings didn’t deter Hush for long. He doggedly carried on stitching, setting up camp wherever he could – the back bedroom of the Stone Chair, a garage in Bradford and in the flat above the Amsterdam Bar, home to the resident drag compère Alan Ward. While Hush furiously sewed away, Alan would try to teach me the mystery that was VAT. At first we adopted the spirit of the Blitz and adapted to living a life without electricity but as the nights drew in and the temperature dropped dramatically our gung-ho approach quickly turned to desperation. Without electricity and heating the flat became unbearably grim, particularly as the mice from downstairs had moved in with us.

Slaithwaite seemed to hibernate as winter approached, appearing more foreboding than ever. When I stood alone at the bus stop waiting for the bus into Huddersfield on a cold November night opposite the dis concertingly named Silent Woman pub with its swinging sign bearing the image of a headless woman, it was easy to sink into melancholia and ponder on dark thoughts. When Vera came to visit us one weekend he said standing at that bus stop on a snowy Sunday night was one of the loneliest experiences of his life.

We were glad to be getting out for a while and looked forward to working in Denmark. A Danish agent had seen us in London and had booked us into Madame Arthur’s club in Copenhagen for the month of November. The initial plan was for the three of us to travel in the van by boat from Harwich to Esbjerg and then on to Copenhagen. However, the morning we set off from Slaithwaite on our epic journey it became apparent that we’d be lucky to make it as far as Watford Gap in the van, never mind Denmark.

I made a quick phone call to DFDS Seaways to find out if there was anywhere closer to sail from. There was: Newcastle, not exactly round the corner but closer than Harwich. By the time we got to Newcastle Phil had decided not to come with us, so we hastily changed our tickets and boarded the boat with a trolley loaded up with four large sacks containing the costumes, five bin-liners holding wigs and headdresses, four suitcases, two holdalls, a cassette player and the sewing machine. The only thing missing was Henry. We’d intended to bring him with us but he’d gone back to Slaithwaite with Phil in the van instead. I was going to miss him but as Hush had pointed out at the ticket office, ‘Getting to Copenhagen with this lot is going to be fun
without a bloody bird in a cage to worry about,’ and besides, Phil refused to let him go with just us.

As there was a refund on the ticket, we blew some of it on a cabin. Luckily for us the boat wasn’t very busy and we found that we were occupying a four-berth, which meant some heaven-sent extra space for all our gear.

I love sleeping on boats and trains. The last time I’d made an overnight crossing had been as a small boy on the boat from Liverpool to Ireland and lying in the dark of the cabin, the boat rolling on the North Sea beneath us, I felt the same sense of security that I had then. I had no idea what to expect in Copenhagen, nor did I have a clue how we were going to get there from Esbjerg on very little money, but I’d work that one out in the morning. At the moment the most important thing was sleep and with the lullaby of the ship’s engines in my ears, I drifted off.