Telling Lies to Alice (3 page)

Anyway, that night I was all over the shop—not a good thing to be, because you needed to keep on the right side of the barmen. They were like a Mafia. A lot of them had been on the cruise ships so they were very slick and expected us to be the same. If they decided you were no good or they didn’t like you, they could make your life hell. I usually got on well with them, but
that night
. . . There was one bloke who must have been working a double shift because he’d had a few, and he kept shouting at me, “What’s got into you, you silly cow?” That made it worse, and every time I happened to glance in Lenny’s direction, he seemed to be staring straight at me, and I felt so exposed. . . . Then when I was on my break I was talking to one of the other girls, and when I told her what had happened she said, “You know who that is, don’t you?” I said I hadn’t got a clue and she said, “Lenny Maxted and Jack Flowers, that’s who.”

I said, “What, those comedians on the box? You’re pulling my leg,” because I thought someone like that would be in the VIP Room, and I wouldn’t believe her till a couple of the others backed her up.

Then I asked which one was which and when she told me I realised . . . that little tumble in the haystack . . . it must have been Lenny. I didn’t go into details, just said, “Oh, really?” or something, as if it were no big deal. . . . So I went back in and carried on, and then at one point I looked over to where they were sitting and they’d gone. I felt relieved and disappointed at the same time but I thought, well, that’s that.

Except it wasn’t, because when I came out of the club at four, there was this bloke sitting in a car. I didn’t see who it was immediately because it wasn’t near a streetlight, but he’d wound the window down and when I walked past he leant out: “Alice?”

I recognised the voice immediately. It was all right because we were by the back entrance, not in full view or anything, so I went over. He was by himself.

“Hello there.”

I said, “You’ve been here awhile,” because they’d left around two o’clock.

“Get in, I’ll drive you home.”

“No, thanks.”

“Got your car, then? Want a race?”

“No.”

“It’ll be fun—I’ll even let you win.”

“The only reason you won last time was because I let you. Anyway, I told you, it doesn’t belong to me.”

“Put it back before he noticed, did you?”

“How do you know it was a he?”

“Well, it was, wasn’t it?”

“Yes . . . anyway, I think you could at least tell me your name, now you know what mine is.”

All he said was, “Lenny.” Not “Oh, don’t you know who I am,” or anything like that, just “Lenny,” as if he’d come to fit a carpet or something. I liked that, although I thought afterwards, he probably knew I knew his name already. . . .

“Are you a Keyholder?” That’s what the club members were called. They could bring in guests if they wanted, but you had to see the key before you took the order for drinks.

“Only recently . . .”

“I’ve never seen you in the club before, that’s all.”

There was a pause, and then he said, “Look, I’m sorry about what happened.”

I said, “It’s all right”—well, I couldn’t really do anything else, could I? But I wasn’t going to let him off the hook that easily, so I said, “I suppose you told your friends what we did.”

He said, “No,” and he looked a bit surprised, but I thought, don’t come the innocent, so I said, “The bunny in the haystack—I bet you all had a good old laugh.”

“No!” He looked quite hurt. I thought, oops-a-daisy, but there was something about the way they’d been laughing and looking at me in the club that made me not believe him. He said, “Are you sure you don’t want a lift home?”

“Positive. Thanks.”

“What about dinner? Would you have dinner with me?” He sounded quite humble, as if he thought I was going to turn him down. I thought that was sweet, that and the fact he must have waited for the best part of two hours, so I said I would. Then he got his diary out and started going through it, saying can you come then, can you come then, and I kept saying no, I’ll be at the club, or, no, I’m doing something else . . . most of it was true, but also I wanted to show him that I wasn’t just, sort of . . . there for the taking, if you know what I mean. We fixed up something eventually and Lenny wrote it down on a piece of paper. When he leant out of the car to tuck it into my pocket I jumped about three feet into the air—“Don’t do that!”—because the management were obsessed about keeping their gaming licence. If anyone had seen him right outside the club giving me something that looked like money, they might have reported that it was a knocking shop, which would not have gone down well, I can tell you. “Are you trying to lose me my job or something?”

“Sorry, sorry . . . no, of course not.” He put his hands up like “I surrender” with the note between two of his fingers, so I had a quick look up and down the street before I grabbed it from him and stuffed it in my pocket. I said good-bye and headed off—every time I looked back he was still sitting there in his car, looking after me, and all the time I had my hand in my pocket, clutching his little piece of paper. . . .

I’ve still got it. In a shoebox under my bed, where I keep special things. I don’t look in there—not often—but it’s nice to have them. Just stuff like birthday cards from my granddad . . . my wedding ring, from when I was married to Jeff . . . and Lenny’s last note to me. The one he wrote before he killed himself.

I was excited about the dinner. It was at Mirabelle, which I’m pretty sure was Lenny thinking, let’s impress her, but I’d been there before with James Clarke-Dibley, so I wasn’t totally bowled over. I didn’t expect to see Jack, though. Well, I didn’t know I was
going
to see Jack until the maître d’ met us at the foot of the stairs, all smiles—Lenny’d picked me up from my flat so we arrived together—and said, “This way, sir. Mr. Flowers is already here.” So we went over to the table, and there was Jack with his feet well underneath—he obviously wasn’t going anywhere, and Lenny was clearly expecting him, because he said, “You beat me to it,” and Jack said, “Only to the table,” and they both laughed. Well, I thought, so much for Mr. Injured Innocence, but I didn’t say anything, just sat down. In fact, I don’t think I said more than about ten words the whole time we were there, because the minute we’d ordered, Lenny and Jack went into their double act and I was sitting between them with my head going back and forth as if I was watching a tennis match, and half the restaurant watching, too, but pretending they weren’t because Mirabelle isn’t the sort of place where you go up to someone and ask for their autograph.

Lenny had introduced me—“Meet Jack, I know you’ll get on like a house on fire, you’re just his type,” but it sort of felt like . . . I don’t know, as if I could have been a new car he’d just bought and not a person at all. I wasn’t thrilled about that, but it was exciting sitting there with them in this luxurious restaurant, and I was enjoying myself because they were very, very funny and I was getting my own personal show. I can’t remember much of what they said. A lot of it went straight over my head because they were talking about people I didn’t know—not then, anyway—and it was hard to concentrate because they were both playing footsie with me. I kept wondering how the evening was going to end, especially when Jack started going on about this Polaroid camera he’d just bought and saying how it was good for taking sexy pictures, and I wasn’t sure about that, so in the end I tucked my feet under my chair and let them do it with each other . . . it took about ten minutes before they noticed but they both wound up looking under the tablecloth. . . . Jack said, “I thought your legs were a bit hairy,” and I said, “Well, what do you expect? I’m a bunny.” Which made
them
laugh, and that made me feel a bit more confident, so I said, “How did you two meet, anyway?”

They both started laughing again. “National Service,” Lenny said. “We were in some godforsaken dump in the West Country on a training course. Men from all different regiments, and there was this Regimental Sergeant Major who’d been through the war, and he thought we were a bunch of no-hopers. We’d had it up to here with being shouted at and all the rest of it so we were pretty fed up, and the RSM kept ordering these bloody fire drills. . . . He used to sound the siren and you had to drop whatever you were doing and charge over and parade outside the guardroom. We were meant to assemble in three minutes but nobody could be bothered, so we’d come ambling up five, ten minutes late and he’d start shouting—

“You’re a cretin! What are you?” Jack bellowed in a strangled voice. I went bright red because the whole restaurant was looking at us.

“I’m a cretin, sir!” yelled Lenny. “Anyway,” he continued—more quietly, thank God—“we’d had enough of it, so Jack—I didn’t know him then—Jack decided he was going to do something about it.”

“What this RSM used to do,” said Jack, “was he always went to the local town on Friday nights. He’d have a few drinks at the British Legion Club and then he’d come back and set off the fire alarm. So one night I was on guard duty, and a few of us climbed up on the roof of the guardroom with a plank of wood and stuck it through the siren, because it used to rotate, you see, to make the sound, and we jammed this great big plank in there and lashed it with rope so it couldn’t move . . .”

“And then the RSM comes back,” said Lenny, “and he sets off the alarm and nothing happens. So next morning he goes up on the roof. . . . When he saw what was causing it he went mad. So Jack owned up—well, he had to, or we’d all have been in the shit, so he got put on jankers—”

“Jankers?” I asked.

“Punishment,” said Lenny. “After that, of course, it was fire drill every other minute. He kept on at us about how it didn’t matter what we were doing, we’d only got three minutes to get down there.”

“We knew damn well,” said Jack, “he’d always do it midday Saturday because it was a free afternoon, so everyone wanted to get their skates on and down to the town as fast as they could. So Lenny said, ‘Right. We’ll take our clothes off—like we’re in the showers—but keep your boots on, and when the siren goes we’ll all rush down there stark bollock naked and line up.’ So we got there in two minutes flat, and the RSM came out on the steps to inspect us.”

“He didn’t say anything,” said Lenny, “but you could see his eyes light up, and he made us form up and marched us down the road to the parade ground—still in the buff—and, of course, the NAAFI girls’ quarters were on the other side of the road and they were all cheering and whooping—and then the fucker only went and drilled us for an hour. . . . Oh, dear . . .” Lenny wiped his eyes. “Then he called it quits . . .”

“Lenny and I were standing next to each other in the lineup, and he turned round and gave me a wink, and I thought, nice one, because I’d been told it was his idea, so we shook hands, and I said I’d buy him a drink . . .”

“And that was it, really. . . . But it still makes me laugh, us standing there with our tackle blowing in the breeze and this bloke never batted an eyelid . . . he was all right, though, wasn’t he? Remember when he retired, we had a whip round for a cigarette case, and he made a speech . . .”

“Yeah,” said Jack. “He took it pretty well, when you think about it . . .” He raised his glass, and Lenny raised his, too, and they said, “The sum of our parts!” I thought I’d better join in, so I raised mine—“The sum of your parts!”—then I asked, “Why do you say that?”

“It’s silly, really,” said Lenny. “But it’s what Don Findlater says. He’s our agent. He’s always telling people that the act works because we’re greater than the sum of our parts.”

Jack gave a schoolboy smirk. “Don’s in love with Lenny. Besotted with him.”

“Pack it in, Jack.” Lenny looked uncomfortable. “She doesn’t want to know about that.”

“Don’t worry,” Jack said to me. “Don knows Lenny’s normal so he contents himself with longing from afar. . . . That’s how he likes it. He’s the sort of queer who can only get a hard-on if he’s paying for it. Thinks it doesn’t count, poor sod.” Jack rolled his eyes. “He only comes to the club with us because he’s got his eye on one of the busboys . . .”

It was a combined effort at seduction, really, although they didn’t ask me anything about myself, which is what men often do when they’re trying to get you into bed. . . . Actually, I got the feeling that they were trying to impress each other as much as me, which was quite weird, and the fact that Lenny was sort of showing me off to Jack—“Isn’t she great?” and all that. It made me feel a bit like I was on parade, or something, but it sort of intrigued me, as well—probably for all the wrong reasons. I’ve always thought Jack was attractive—if I was being completely objective I’d say he was better looking than Lenny, and he’s definitely sexy. . . . They were quite similar, both tall and dark, but Jack had this sort of wolfy look to him, narrow eyes and pointy incisors, and something very physical, a really strong sexual presence. More than Lenny did, I think, but Lenny was
the one
and that’s all I can say about it . . . I don’t know if that happens to some people more than once in their lives, but that’s the only time it’s happened to me.
But:
As soon as we’d finished our coffee, Lenny said, “Shall we go back to my flat?” It was obvious that Jack was included in the invitation so I made some excuse about having to get up early. They were pretty fed up but they didn’t press it, and Lenny said he’d drive me home. Jack left before we did. Lenny went with him to get his coat and I saw them standing at the other side of the room. Lenny said something and Jack shrugged his shoulders. Then they both glanced over at me and I had to pretend not to notice. Lenny came back after about five minutes. “Let’s go,” he said abruptly. “I’ve paid the bill.” I thought, ouch!

He hardly said a word all the way home and I thought, I’ve really blown it this time, now he thinks I’m a spoilsport. I was sure he wouldn’t contact me, but two days later, he rang up—just about the time I was starting to think I’d made a real mistake saying I didn’t want to go back with them. I was so astonished to hear his voice that I couldn’t think of anything to say, but it didn’t matter because he launched straight in with, “Will you come out with me again? Jack won’t be there.”