The Life of Lee (42 page)

‘And in third place …’

I looked up at the ceiling. ‘If I’m not third,’ I thought, steeling myself for the worst, ‘then I’m nowhere.’ And that prize was worth twenty-five pounds, meaning we
could pay at least the electricity bill and maybe the gas. It would be compensation for the money that Jonathan ripped off. I put my hands behind my back and crossed my fingers.

From where we stood on the pier, you could look out and see the mass of lights like some giant metropolis that lit up the huge oil and gas refinery about thirty miles away across the Thames Estuary on Canvey Island. Next, you would take your eye along to the right where the lights got denser. They would then flicker as they got further and further away, up the river Thames inland to the Isle of Dogs and the financial towers of new money that stick up like miniature Christmas trees. The whole mass of lights play a trick on the eye, as it seems to hover like a space ship on the horizon.

Then you would turn your face into the dark, cooler wind that whips up off the unlit, ominous, open ocean just outside the gaping mouth of the estuary. It looks lonely, vast and black as it opens out wider still into the English Channel. Tilbury is still a busy port, so even at night you can watch the lights of mammoth, lumbering cargo ships as they slowly disembark, make their way past the pier, then break cover into open sea. Out there, they get smaller and smaller, becoming just dots of light as they position themselves in the busy shipping lanes of the English Channel before disappearing off across the world.

It really feels like you could be out at sea, you are so far from Southend – too far away indeed to hear the slightest noise of a moving car. The only things you can hear at the
end of the pier are the deep rush of air as it whisks and beats past your ears and the waves as they crash and mingle amongst the great ironwork legs below.

‘Well, I thought you were the best there,’ Heather beamed, interrupting our reverie. She leaned back on the railings and smiled. She looked so beautiful. I loved the way her hair flipped and flapped around her eyes, which were flickering and watery because of the wind.

I tried to banter with her. ‘How do you know? You didn’t get there until I went on. You didn’t see any of the others.’

Heather didn’t respond. Rather, she stared out to sea. That was all right. Let’s be honest, I hadn’t done much that could be considered useful to anyone recently, let alone her. All I had brought her was bad news – and that was on top of losing the baby, which she still hadn’t really spoken about. So, at last, I felt I had done something, even if it wasn’t much, to lighten things up for her a little.

‘I never doubted you, Lee,’ she replied at last. ‘I know you always think people are against you. And I know that you have no self-confidence and that makes you get all in a muddle. But I believe in you, even if you don’t think I do sometimes. I know we’ve had some pretty bad things happen lately and, well, what I’m trying to say is …’

I turned to her. I had to – I was getting embarrassed. She had never spoken to me like that before. I could feel tears welling up in my eyes. Covering my face, I changed the subject. ‘I’ll tell you what – that wind, it makes your eyes water, doesn’t it?’

Also, I didn’t want to take any credit. As far as I was concerned, I hadn’t done anything. I had just been my
usual stupid self. It was Heather who had suffered so much. It wasn’t about me, it was about us.

I stepped forward and tried kissing her but, as so often happens at times like that, the wind changed, creating an awkward moment when her friggin’ hair flopped across her face. So she was suddenly wearing a kind of woolly-mammoth-Chewbacca-from-
Star-Wars
-hairy-face mask. We both became instantly engulfed in her hair as it flapped about between our faces like a frizzy sandwich. We broke off and started spitting hair balls.

I gathered myself. ‘I know what you’re saying and I’ll never let you down again, and …’ I searched for the right words to give her some hope, faith in me for the future. ‘I promise that next time … I’ll … erm …’

‘Get on with it, you twat,’ she joked. ‘I’ve grown a beard waiting here.’

The compere left as big a gap as humanly possible in order to build up the tension before announcing the runner-up. However, the only tension that was building – to perhaps a critical point – was amongst the gathered number of near-to-bursting bladders that needed to be emptied. Then, of course, there were the other lot who were getting impatient for the winner to be called out, so they could start getting the pints in again.

By this point, I was desperate to get off the stage. The suspense had gone for me now. I had crossed the line the moment I had walked out in front of an audience and managed to perform a ten-minute set, even if it was completely disorganized and manic.

I hadn’t made the third place I had dared to hope for.
So now I knew I was out of the running. I was really disappointed, as Heather and I wouldn’t be able to pay any bills. I’d given up, resigned myself to being back to square one. It had only been a throw of the dice anyway. The adrenaline had slowly seeped from my damp body, rendering me dead on my feet, not from the performance, but the damn nerves. The unrelenting adrenaline that possesses your body like some mad spirit uses up all your body fuel in one go. Then, selfishly, after it’s had its fun, it walks away, leaving you physically drained and shaken.

‘I have thoroughly enjoyed the experience, though,’ I reflected as I stood on the stage, waiting in line with the other performers. I had got a few unintended laughs that had completely converted my mindset. I felt the experience had somehow transformed me. I was on an entirely new bearing. It was nothing serious – it was just that I felt I had somehow crossed an invisible line. There was no doubt, I had been infected by something that had caused a disorder in the whole structure of my expectations. I was aware that I’d always had the symptoms of it, but didn’t know what had made it flare up like it had that night.

All my life I had been a fool, an idiot, picked on, frowned upon, vilified by whoever I came into contact with. Yes, I do mean you, Mrs Taylor. But onstage, I was allowed to be whatever I wanted: a fool, an imbecile, a comedian – with none of the attendant rejection. I was accepted, I was free. Instead of being the victim, in my mind I suddenly became the hero.

‘And in second place …’

I looked up to see the chairman of the brewery getting
all fired up by the excitement that was now growing and beginning to take hold of everyone. He stood clutching a bottle of champagne for the winner. Next to him were a photographer and a journalist from the
Evening Echo
, the local paper. The photographer smiled over at me and winked, as I nervously gave him back a half-hearted grin.

That made me wonder. If I hadn’t come anywhere in the competition, would they still put my picture in the paper? If they did, I decided, I would do my best to hide behind someone else’s head. If I lurked towards the back, I thought, then I’d surely go unnoticed. As soon as anyone mentioned cheese – kazam! – I’d be gone.

I knew my mum and dad read the
Echo
. They got it religiously every day. The headmaster at my last school in Billericay always read it too. At lunch breaks, as I passed the staffroom on my way to getting up to no good, I’d always see him devouring the paper. Gary also always had a copy of the
Echo
tucked down his dash in the front window of his white van.

Then I wondered if Jonathan, that bloke who had conned us out of our last twenty-five pounds, might catch a glimpse of the paper as he was sitting in the café under the pier with some other poor sucker and feel a twinge of guilt about cheating a potential comedy star.

Heather and I turned back to face towards Southend. It felt as though we were so far away from land, it was like we were on a boat drifting offshore all alone. We were like ghosts observing the world from afar, disconnected from everything. There was only us.

From where we were, we could see the whole of the
seafront from one end to the other. We could just make out the odd person wandering around beneath the dancing bulbs hung along the front. The main drag is illuminated by flashing signs luring people in with quotes from Las Vegas or announcing an impending gold rush. The slot arcades, the discos, the pubs, the fish and chip shops, the bingo halls, all that fun and diversion, is pretty exciting stuff – you just can’t get that if you go abroad. It all looked so romantic as its reflection flickered beautifully and skipped around upside down in the water just below the sea wall.

At one end of the sea front, like a great bookend, stands a club marked by huge lettering: ‘The Kursaal’. It boasts the only sprung dance floor in the country, for better bounce when dancing. Then, at the other end of the sea front, you look up to the red flashing warning lights at the top of the helter-skelter in ‘Peter Pan’s Adventure Playground’. Perhaps the lights are a warning to the planes that take off from Southend’s small airport.

Just above that, the Cliffs Pavilion theatre is perched high up on the clifftop, dominating the entertainment below. The Cliffs is home to real show business, people off the telly, even from Las Vegas. They have all the big stars coming to visit. The venue packs ’em in. At that point, Heather and I had never been there. We couldn’t afford it, but I recognized some of the names from when I was a kid. I might spot an advert in the paper and think, ‘Blimey, I remember him,’ or, ‘I know her. I watched her when I was a nipper.’ I always kept it to myself, though. Somehow that sort of talk seemed frivolous and pointless, a world away from where we were in our flat.

By now it was late. It was winter, so the sea front was empty. I love that. The winter months in a seaside town are the best; I can’t stand it when it gets all packed in the summer months. The off-season is when the locals get Southend back for themselves. They can enjoy their town without the hassle of coachloads of marauding pissheads on a weekend beano, or the day trippers who flood in by their thousands. These visitors always head for the beach, take all their clothes off, put up with the brisk, freezing wind as long as physically possible without turning blue, then slowly but surely begin to put more and more clothes back on as they fight off the symptoms of severe pneumonia.

Quite unbelievably, they also endure a phenomenon where, through what’s called sun seepage, people wearing more layers than Scott of the Antarctic appear to go a bright traffic-light red, mostly at the back of the neck. Then, even though they are by now suffering the initial symptoms of frostbite that, if left untreated, would undoubtedly send a person into the screaming ad-dabs, they want to buy a freezing ice-cream cone before boarding the cattle train home.

‘I’m sorry for shouting at you, Lee.’ Heather smiled at me in a conciliatory way. ‘You know, all that stuff about “get off your backside”. I was angry, not with you, but with how everything is at the moment, and I think it all just came out. I’m sorry.’

I looked over at Heather. ‘That’s all right. I’m glad you did in a way. It made me do something. You made me see what a sad state I had got myself into. I’m sorry for giving up. I feel ashamed. I promise, right, from now on, I will
buckle down and stop feeling sorry for myself. Starting from tomorrow, I’ll go all out to get a proper job with real prospects, something solid. I will never just walk off without you knowing where I’m going. That was such a stupid thing to do.’

‘And the winner …’ The compere paused and gave the audience a little wry smile. There was absolute silence in the room as people waited on tenterhooks for the victor’s name. The MC waved the cheque for £250 in the air. I looked at it longingly. White light bounced off it like a lure in the sun. I swear I could hear the paper folding and flapping as he brandished it in the steaming hot air. ‘… will receive this cheque for two hundred and fifty pounds.’

I put my arms around Heather. The wind was whipping up a little more now, and it was getting colder. We would have to make the walk back along the pier any moment. We held each other close, our faces pressed together, our arms wrapped around each other. I begged Heather. ‘Please!’

‘No,’ Heather snapped back at me. ‘I know what you’re like you.’

I persisted in pleading, a little more strongly this time. I knew she would give in eventually – she always does. ‘Just one look.’

Heather rolled her eyes and felt down into her coat pocket. She narrowed her eyes, concentrating hard. Then suddenly she whipped her hand up, held it right in front of my eyes and beamed at me with a smile so bright I
swear it illuminated my whole face in a haze of white light. It was the cheque for £250.

‘Lee Evans!’

It was like an earthquake. An almighty roar from the audience ripped through the room. They went wild. While I stood stockstill, frozen to the spot, my body jammed into a complete state of shock, the other performers gathered around me in a clinch. Cutting out the light, they smiled and congratulated me. Yes, I saw their mouths moving, shouting at me, but it was like I had my fingers in my ear. All I could hear was a muffled hum.

So I just stared at them, dumbstruck, unable to move my lips or speak back. My mouth had become so dry, it was like I was swallowing sand. My tongue had quite literally stuck to the roof of my mouth. I was trying desperately to fathom what was happening. At that moment, I spotted Heather in the crowd. I looked to her for some sort of guidance, as my head was not yet able to take in the situation.

The crowd of performers parted as the MC stomped forward and, with a little too much enthusiasm, began to pat me quite vigorously on my back. In fact, he was slapping me so hard, I lost any oxygen that was still lurking in my lungs. Then, before I knew it, the chairman of the brewery was at my side, shaking my hand with gusto. My limp arm just flopped around like a puppet’s – it felt that at any moment my wrist might snap. It was all happening so fast, I couldn’t keep up.

The chairman then handed me the cheque and the bottle of champagne. Suddenly there was a barrage of
iris-burning white flashes from the photographer in front of us. He relentlessly clicked and clacked his camera at us while shouting out orders: ‘Stand there, Lee. That’s great. Look like you’re drinking the champagne. Brilliant! Make one of your faces. Bite the cheque. That’s it. Right, Mr Chairman, you hold the cheque. Lee, make it look like you’re trying to take it from him. Great, very funny! I’ll tell you what, let’s have Lee and the chairman doing a tug of war with the cheque. That’s fantastic!’ I just did whatever he said – I was too dazed to argue.