back and forwards like a see-saw when you put the brakes on. You can drive one of them when you’re sixteen over there. Just think, our kid. Driving one of those along one of them highways wearing a drape suit with no tie, like Richard Widmark, with the radio on real loud listening to Benny Goodman. Cor! I reckon when I leave school I’ll go to America. Work my passage. I could easy get a job. Even labourers out there get fifty quid a week. Electricians and that can get two hundred. They can. And you can go to pictures at two in morning and see three pictures in one programme. You could get one of them houses with big lawns and no fences.
I drove down the hill past the houses with the big lawns and no fences.
The Cecil. I parked the car again and went in. The lights were lower now. A crooner in a John Collier suit was trying to sound like Vince Hill. I went over to the bar and ordered a large scotch. Keith was serving at the far end of the bar. The bar was three deep in blokes. The tables had at least six people round each one. The crooner finished. A lot of people clapped and whistled. The crooner turned into his M.C. bit and said:
“And now, Ladies and Gentlemen, and especially gentlemen, I’d like to introduce the star attraction for tonight, a little lady who’s no stranger to these parts, someone who’s having a highly successful tour of the northern clubs, and who’s managed for one night and one night only to squeeze (and I mean squeeze) in an appearance here for us tonight. In fact she needs no introduction from me, Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present Miss … Jackie … Du … Val!”
Loud cheers and whistles and all the blokes at the bar shoved along to get nearer to the front. The music started. “Big Spender.” Miss Jackie Du Val walked on to the stage, arms raised high. She was wearing a tangerine evening gown and matching gloves that didn’t. She had black hair wound up into a grotesque bee-hive and if she was this side of forty she was only just. She walked along the short dais that led a bit of the way into the tables and the band got round to the beginning of the tune again and she began to sing à la Bassey, only louder. As she sang she began going into the routine of first one glove and then the next and pushing the fishnet knee through the slit in her dress and I thought Jesus Christ! and turned to the bar and looked at the bottles and read the labels.
After I’d done that I thought about me and Audrey. And like when I usually thought about me and Audrey it was with mixed feelings: I used to think, Christ, what a bloody idiot thing to do, start shacking up with the boss’s wife when you’re on such a good number and then I used to think about the things Audrey could do to make me act like a bloody idiot.
God, she was good.
I’d never had anyone like her. Not that I’d had a lot. I’d had it regular from the slags that worked for us, but the trouble was all I’d had to do was to phone up and a couple of them’d be round in half an hour. And more than likely gone in half an hour.
But when Audrey touched me for the first time, that’s what it was like: the first time, and it’d taken me all my time not to blow it as soon as her fingers’d felt me.
But she’d made me wait and that’d had something to do with it too.
She’d only been married to Gerald for eight months before I started getting the picture. Gerald’d picked her up out in Viareggio while he’d been on his holidays. He’d come back early and given Rae and their two kids the boot and he’d moved Audrey in straight away. They’d got married the day the divorce came through. Les’d thought Gerald’d been a bit of a cunt about it all but he’d never told Gerald to his face. Gerald’d been like a bloody kid over her. Everything she wanted she got. But it wasn’t because of Gerald she’d got me. She’d managed that all by herself.
Keith wandered up. He was polishing a glass. He could afford the time
I drove down the hill past the houses with the big lawns and no fences.
The Cecil. I parked the car again and went in. The lights were lower now. A crooner in a John Collier suit was trying to sound like Vince Hill. I went over to the bar and ordered a large scotch. Keith was serving at the far end of the bar. The bar was three deep in blokes. The tables had at least six people round each one. The crooner finished. A lot of people clapped and whistled. The crooner turned into his M.C. bit and said:
“And now, Ladies and Gentlemen, and especially gentlemen, I’d like to introduce the star attraction for tonight, a little lady who’s no stranger to these parts, someone who’s having a highly successful tour of the northern clubs, and who’s managed for one night and one night only to squeeze (and I mean squeeze) in an appearance here for us tonight. In fact she needs no introduction from me, Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present Miss … Jackie … Du … Val!”
Loud cheers and whistles and all the blokes at the bar shoved along to get nearer to the front. The music started. “Big Spender.” Miss Jackie Du Val walked on to the stage, arms raised high. She was wearing a tangerine evening gown and matching gloves that didn’t. She had black hair wound up into a grotesque bee-hive and if she was this side of forty she was only just. She walked along the short dais that led a bit of the way into the tables and the band got round to the beginning of the tune again and she began to sing à la Bassey, only louder. As she sang she began going into the routine of first one glove and then the next and pushing the fishnet knee through the slit in her dress and I thought Jesus Christ! and turned to the bar and looked at the bottles and read the labels.
After I’d done that I thought about me and Audrey. And like when I usually thought about me and Audrey it was with mixed feelings: I used to think, Christ, what a bloody idiot thing to do, start shacking up with the boss’s wife when you’re on such a good number and then I used to think about the things Audrey could do to make me act like a bloody idiot.
God, she was good.
I’d never had anyone like her. Not that I’d had a lot. I’d had it regular from the slags that worked for us, but the trouble was all I’d had to do was to phone up and a couple of them’d be round in half an hour. And more than likely gone in half an hour.
But when Audrey touched me for the first time, that’s what it was like: the first time, and it’d taken me all my time not to blow it as soon as her fingers’d felt me.
But she’d made me wait and that’d had something to do with it too.
She’d only been married to Gerald for eight months before I started getting the picture. Gerald’d picked her up out in Viareggio while he’d been on his holidays. He’d come back early and given Rae and their two kids the boot and he’d moved Audrey in straight away. They’d got married the day the divorce came through. Les’d thought Gerald’d been a bit of a cunt about it all but he’d never told Gerald to his face. Gerald’d been like a bloody kid over her. Everything she wanted she got. But it wasn’t because of Gerald she’d got me. She’d managed that all by herself.
Keith wandered up. He was polishing a glass. He could afford the time
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