Still Standing: The Savage Years (7 page)

Whipping her headscarf off and making herself comfortable on the sofa, she carefully balanced the plate with the ham roll on the arm and took a sip from the steaming mug.

‘Coming home on the bus yesterday from the market I was sat behind this woman and I couldn’t help but notice that all her hair was sticking out at the back, a great big tuft of it, like a wire-haired fox terrier’s tail.’

I tried to visualize a fox terrier’s tail but couldn’t bring one to mind.

‘Anyway,’ she went on, ‘it was driving me mad and I wanted to lean forward and tell her, quietly like, not so that the whole bus could hear me, but I suddenly twigged that it
was a wig so I didn’t say anything.’ She paused for a moment to blow on her hot coffee. ‘I didn’t draw attention to it, you see, because she might have had cancer, the poor woman.’

‘What made you think she had cancer?’ I asked.

‘Well they give you a wig, you see.’ She took another tentative sip of the coffee.

‘So you go to the doctor and he says, “I’m very sorry you’ve got cancer but here’s a wig to cheer you up”?’

‘No, you soft sod,’ she roared. ‘As a result of the chemo your hair falls out and if you want you can borrow a wig off the National Health. I wouldn’t fancy it though as you’d never know who’d had it on before you and I wouldn’t want to be walking around in a dead woman’s wig.’

I was tempted to say that I’d lend her one of mine if, God forbid, the occasion should ever arise, but didn’t think it was quite the right moment for such flippancy.

‘So, as we were coming up Whetstone Lane,’ she continued, ‘I thought to myself, she’s got a big back for a woman, and I wondered where she managed to get anything to fit her. Well, it’s no good going to C & A’s as everything’s tiny in there these days and I doubt if even Evans Outsize would’ve had anything to fit someone with a back that wide. Maybe she got it in George Henry Lee’s, it looked dear.’

My mother would’ve had a field day on an identity parade.

‘And then as she was paying her fare I noticed the conductress giving her a funny look. She had hands like great big shovels, huge they were.’ She paused to take a bite from her ham roll, attempting to chew the impressive chunk that she’d absently torn off in as polite a manner as possible. This took some time.

‘The conductress?’ I asked, knowing full well who she meant.

‘No, you daft thing, the woman in the mac sat in front of me,’ she said eventually, following another bout of prolonged chewing and a hefty slug of coffee to wash the last chunk down.

‘It was only when she stood up that I realized,’ she said, leaning forward conspiratorially on the sofa.

‘Realized what?’ I had to play the game even though I was fairly positive I knew what the tag line would be.

‘That she was a he. It was a man dressed as a woman,’ she crowed, slapping the arm of the sofa to emphasize this shocking revelation. ‘What d’ye make of that then, eh? And on a packed number sixty.’

‘Well, he’s obviously a transvestite,’ I offered, slightly embarrassed by the way the conversation was going.

‘And how do you know about transvestites then?’ she pounced, not missing a trick.

‘Cos London’s full of them, that’s why, they’re everywhere, the buses are packed with them. This ham roll is gorgeous.’ I wanted to change the subject.

‘I watched him when he got off, striding across Church Road in his mac, feet the size of a yeti’s, poor bugger. I thought, there goes some mother’s son, a mother who’s probably crippled with shame and broken-hearted and with a bloody big padlock on her wardrobe door. Now what was it you were going to tell me about a new job?’

‘Oh, nothing,’ I said airily. ‘It doesn’t really matter, it’s just that I’ve taken a job full time in a pub.’ Now didn’t seem the right moment to discuss my theatrical career.

‘I wish you’d get a decent job and settle down,’ she sighed. ‘Oh, you’re a worry, you really are, all that money wasted sending you to St Anselm’s so you could end up working behind a bar.’

‘What would you do if I waltzed in one day wearing a frock and wig?’ I asked her, eager to get her off the subject of my schooling but also curious to see what her reply would be.

‘I’d bloody poison you, that’s what.’

No, this was definitely not the time for full disclosures. Best leave sleeping dogs undisturbed for the moment.

The days of the great northern variety clubs were over. Perhaps the most famous club of this genre was the Bartley Variety Club, where for a fiver you could sup your pints of bitter and sip your Cherry Bs in a plush velvet ‘pod’, dining like a celebrity on chicken and chips served on a red paper serviette inside a wicker basket while watching turns of such calibre as Louis Armstrong, Tom Jones, Shirley Bassey and the Bee Gees.

The clubs were gone and now fun pubs, an oxymoron if ever I’ve heard one, were the order of the day, springing up like boils in towns and cities all over the north. They were extremely popular even if the punters did sometimes seem a little nonplussed by the antics of the bar staff, who, regardless of age, shape or size, were made to wear a uniform of white T-shirts bearing the name of the pub and white tennis shorts with knee-length socks and pumps. This whiter-than-white ensemble made them glow under the blue fluorescent lighting as if they were coated in luminous paint.

When not pulling pints, these poor buggers were not allowed to stand idle but were expected to bash a tambourine and dance, like people possessed, up and down the bar in time to the ear-splitting music being played by the drag queen DJ, who interspersed his selection of records with pithy put-downs and audience-baiting asides such as ‘Look at the arse on her, shame it’s got a hole in it.’ The end of the evening was
usually heralded by a blast of Kim Cordell’s ‘We’re Having A Gang Bang’. This entailed the staff and customers forming a human caterpillar and violently thrusting their hips back and forth to represent mass sexual intercourse. The air of enforced joviality made me withdraw into myself and I seldom got involved, unless I was drunk or found myself unexpectedly caught up in it.

One fun pub that Hush and I both loved was the Stone Chair in Mixenden, just outside Halifax. The management and staff may have worn the obligatory fun-pub uniform but it was friendly, well run and civilized and on a cold winter’s night travelling up the lonely Moor End Road in our clappedout van the rosy glow from the bar windows proved to be a welcoming sight. Action Enterprises was the agency that supplied us with most of our work. Paul, who ran the agency, also ran the Stone Chair with his partner Bob, and when business was slack he’d give us a few extra nights at the pub. When times were really tough he’d frequently feed us or give us an advance on fees not yet earned.

The first time I worked the Stone Chair was with Paul (aka Joyce) in the Glamazons. We’d travelled by train from York to Halifax and then by bus up to the Stone Chair, lugging suitcases and bin-liners full of wigs and arriving at the pub far too early. As the bus pulled away, leaving us alone on this lonely stretch of road, our hearts sank at the sight of what looked like a deserted pub and the prospect of sitting on our cases in the middle of a windy car park until someone showed up.

Fortunately Paul, the landlord, was at home and instead of telling us to come back when they opened – even though we’d rung the bell incessantly and woken him up from a between-shifts nap on the sofa – he invited us in. He showed
us to a comfortable back bedroom where we could change and get slapped up, and even gave us our tea. I was fully aware that he’d cottoned on that we were green as grass and took pity on us, and I haven’t forgotten the many times he helped us out. Nor do I forget that back bedroom – I still bear scars on my back from that sloping ceiling covered in razor-sharp Anaglypta and whirlpools of vicious little stalactites that I invariably forgot to avoid each time I stood up from the bed to haul up four pairs of supermarket tights over my hairy legs.

The resident drag act at the Stone Chair was a creation called Sid who didn’t do an act as such but worked behind the bar. My first encounter with Sid was in the bathroom as I applied my slap in the mirror over the sink.

‘Hello, lass,’ he shouted cheerily as he breezed into the room with the force of a tornado. ‘Ooh, I’ve had a right fooking day, look at me fooking nerves,’ he said, holding out a trembling hand in demonstration. ‘Look at me – I’m shekkin’, lass, shekkin’.’

Pulling his miniskirt up and just enough girdle and tights down to allow him access to his tackle, he straddled the toilet bowl and peed.

‘Eeh, fook me, lass,’ he said, breathing a sigh of relief. ‘I’ve been bursting for that since I got int’ car.’

Sid was of an indeterminable age, possibly in his late thirties, tall and slim with a broad Leeds accent. He was wearing a wiry brown wig that had probably started life as a tight curly perm but after years of Sid’s ministrations it had surrendered its curl and collapsed, defeated, into a ball of frizz. His taste in drag – a lurex halter-neck top worn with a micro-miniskirt and platform shoes – was strictly Lumb Lane
scrubber. Covering his legs, which weren’t bad at all, he wore fishnet tights with a hole in them, big enough to drive a hamster through, just above the heel. I could relate to Sid’s sense of style though, as mine, in drag, was very much on the same lines.

‘D’you think this lippy goes with me complexion?’ he asked anxiously, giving himself a good shake, popping it back in the girdle and shoving it between his legs. He could’ve been juggling red-hot potatoes down there from the way he was hopping about from one foot to the other, gurning and grimacing with the effort of it all.

‘It said Burnished Amber on the tube but it don’t look like it to me.’ He pulled his dress down and wiped his hand down the side of it, satisfied at last that everything was in place. ‘Does it look like Burnished Amber to you, lass?’

I wasn’t sure what Burnished Amber was meant to look like, but I was damn sure it wasn’t the vivid Day-Glo orange sludge that Sid’s thin lips were dripping with. His face was caked in a tangerine panstick that ended at the jawline, contrasting sharply with the deathly pale flesh of his razor-burned neck, and there was a blob of kingfisher blue on each eyelid and a dab of carmine rouge on his cheeks. As this look was meant to be au naturel he’d not bothered with false eyelashes, opting instead for a lick with the mascara wand on his own stubby lashes. The evidence of this attempt at beautifying his eyes was written all over his face as there were little flecks of mascara splattered everywhere and you could’ve been forgiven for thinking that a very small child in a dark room wearing boxing gloves had applied Sid’s slap during an earthquake.

‘I can’t do me make-up like you,’ he said, as if reading my mind. ‘Me hands shek because of me nerves, you see.’ He held
his shekkin’ hand out again. ‘Eeh, I don’t know why I put me’sen through it, I really don’t.’

‘Why don’t you ask Miss Hush to do your slap for you?’ I offered before I got roped in to assist. I liked Sid, liked him on sight. He was blissfully unaware of just how funny he was and if Fellini had known of Sid he’d have undoubtedly cast him as a tart with a heart in
Nights of Cabiria
.

‘Who’s Miss ’ush?’ he asked.

‘Sandra Hush, the one I work with?’

‘Why’s she called that then?’

‘Well, it started out as Sandra Hutchinson and was then shortened to Hush by a friend,’ I started to explain.

Sid stared at me blankly.

‘Well, originally he was called Sandra Hutchinson after the posh, glamorous one in
The Liver Birds
, y’know? Not that Hush is posh, he’s from Wolverhampton, used to be known as Miss Saltley Gas Works in her day.’

‘I heard that, Miss Savage,’ Hush said, sashaying into the bathroom in full slap and a towering flame-red beehive. ‘Never heard of glasshouses and stones on the Birkenhead dock road then?’

‘Fookin’ ’ell,’ Sid gasped, open-mouthed in awe at the vision in front of him. ‘You’re a big lass.’

Hush liked to take his time putting his slap on so he could enjoy a packet of fags and a few bevvies as he teased and tortured the wigs till they matched his high standards.

‘I’m Sid, love,’ said Sid, taking a slurp of my pint of cider. ‘The bag in drag.’

‘And from what I hear you’d like me to do something with your make-up,’ Hush said, wincing at the amateur daub smeared over Sid’s face.

‘Oh, I wouldn’t dream of bothering you,’ Sid said, putting
the toilet seat down quickly and sitting on it, holding his face up to the light in readiness. ‘But if you’ve got a second I wouldn’t mind a bit o’spit and polish. If you could try and do me up like Elkie Brooks I’d be right chuffed, lass. Folk say I’ve already got a bit of a look of her so you’ve got a head start.’

More like Mel Brooks, I thought, but didn’t say anything. I didn’t know Sid well enough yet to indulge in a bit of bitchy but friendly banter.

Sid was delighted with Hush’s ministrations. ‘Eeh, lass,’ he kept saying as he preened in the mirror with the enthusiasm of an excited budgie, ‘I look fookin’ lovely.’

He certainly looked a lot better than when he first came in.

‘Here!’ he shouted suddenly. ‘What time is it? I best get down to that bar before he sends a search party out. You’re working the Keighley Fun House after here, aren’t you? Her from
Coronation Street
is on, i’n’t she?’

She was indeed and I was very excited to be meeting Liz Dawn who played Vera Duckworth as I was a huge fan both of the
Street
and of the lady herself.

‘I might come down later,’ he said, taking one last glimpse in the mirror at his freshly unearthed loveliness. ‘If I hang on in here much longer I’ll only want to piss again. I only have to look at a lavvy, me, and it’s flying out of me.’ And with that little nugget of information he was gone.

I liked working at the Stone Chair. The shows nearly always went well and the crowds were a warm, appreciative audience and even though when we performed there it was usually to pay off the commission we owed – a sensible arrangement – I still always enjoyed it.

Liz Dawn had been working on the
Street
playing factory worker Vera since 1974. Vera’s husband Jack had recently
been introduced and her role had become more prominent, but even so Liz was still playing dates on the circuit. She had started her career as a club singer.