At My Mother's Knee (40 page)

A guy named
Steve
, who up till now hadn't had much to say
for himself, offered me a lift home. He was older than me, with
sly eyes and a small moustache, and he only came up to my
shoulder; not really my type, although I was still unsure what
my type was. But since the alternative to a lift meant having to
stand at a bus stop on Upper Parliament Street, then a
notorious red-light district at eleven o'clock at night, I accepted
the offer.

'We'll stop off in New Brighton and have a drink at the
Chelsea Reach first, shall we?' he said innocently, failing to add
'followed by a session in the back of my van on Egremont
Promenade'.

I wasn't agreeable to this suggestion at first but it's amazing
how a combination of cider and persistent persuasion can
weaken the resistance of a lad who's far too well brought up to
say no. Feeling that it was easier just to give in and get on with
it, I climbed into the back of the van. If my farewells to John
at Hamilton Square station had been my
Brief Encounter
moment, then this was most definitely
A Taste of Honey
.

I got him to drop me off on Church Road. I didn't want him
knowing where I lived, and I didn't want to see him again. I'd
kept up the Simon King pretence as there was something about
him that bothered me. He'd told me that he was an ambulance
driver but I didn't believe him, and I was right. It turned out he
was really a copper, and a cunning one at that. He found out
my real name and where I lived and worked and was waiting
for me in his car outside the factory a few nights later.
Needless to say I wasn't very happy about this, but saw an
opportunity to use the situation to my own advantage.

I made a deal: I'd continue seeing him if in return he
promised to take me out on the
gay scene
and agreed to
dispose of all traces of my criminal record. He was a wily
bugger but by now I quite liked him, and apart from the van
he had a nifty little MG and would take me out to country
pubs in it. I still hadn't seen the inside of a real life gay bar and
was too scared to go in one on my own. Steve, reluctant to take
me to the
Bear's Paw
or Sadie's, always managed to come up
with a fairly plausible excuse as to why we couldn't go. He
frequently claimed that, as a copper, it was more than his job
was worth to be caught with a seventeen-year-old in a gay
club, whereas the real reason he was keeping me away from
the bars was because he knew that I was a new face, a young,
fresh chicken, ripe for plucking. One of the many chicken
hawks, men who hovered hungrily at the bar and around the
edge of the dance floor, would be sure to choose prey like me
and Steve wasn't taking any chances. He wanted me for himself
and guarded me with a jealous eye, coming up with more
and more elaborate reasons why we shouldn't go 'on the
scene'. I was desperate to go to these mythical places.

The only club, gay or otherwise, that I was getting to see was
the RAFA club. I was still working there four evenings a week,
growing more and more disenchanted after each dreary shift,
resenting the club's hierarchy and committee meetings and all
the petty rules and regulations. The crumbling old fuddyduddies
who danced to the resident trio's interpretation of the
hits of Vera Lynn and drank sherry and played bowls were
driving me insane. Excessive and prolonged exposure to all
things boring depressed me at that age and still does. I had
bags of energy and an enthusiasm for life that needed constant
stimulation, as a plant does water, in order to flourish. I
certainly wasn't getting it in the RAFA club or in the plastics
factory and couldn't help feeling that somewhere out there a
fabulous party was in full swing and I was missing out.

It was my mother who came up with the answer to my craving
for change. Together with Aunty Anne she had a cleaning job at
the
Sandpiper, a nightclub
on Conway Street, and she got me an
interview with the manager,
Lenny Macmillan
, for a job as barman.
The Sandpiper was done out in a beachcomber theme –
fake palm trees, fishing nets, bamboo bar stools and wicker furniture
that snagged the girls' tights. Twice a week a resident
combo played on the tiny stage at the end of the dance floor.
Light years away from the RAFA club's trio, they were really
good and sang the hits of Stevie Wonder, Roberta Flack and
Donny Hathaway. This was more like it! The Sandpiper was
trendy with a capital T, popular with the in-set of the Wirral.
The only old people in the place were Lenny and my mum's mate
Fanny Roscoe
who worked in the cloakroom. Plus the job had
the added benefits of being cash in hand and nearer home.

On my first night there Lenny asked me if I'd like to pop over
to Liverpool with him in the car as he'd left the keys to the safe
in his flat. Lenny wore his shirt unbuttoned to the waist with
the collar up and the cuffs turned out and over his suit. He had
skin like a crocodile handbag, bleached blond hair and was
adorned with the usual array of medallions and gold chains.

'Keep your hand on your ha'penny,' one of the barmaids
warned. 'He does this every time we get a new barman. He's a
harmless old queen really, just don't let him get you into his
flat.'

Here we go again. What was it with these old fruits? And
why did they single me out? What am I going to do if he tries
his hand? I've only just got this job and I don't want to lose it,
and if I don't oblige then he might not only sack me but Aunty
Anne and my mother as well. All these questions ran through
my mind as we drove through the Mersey Tunnel in Lenny's
E-type, with me keeping a careful check on Lenny out of the
corner of my eye.

'You've got nice long legs,' Lenny said suddenly, running his hand along my thigh. The nice long legs stiffened and froze.
'Relax,' he said, taking his hand off me and changing gear. He
was wearing beige leather driving gloves and half a gallon of
Aramis and I couldn't have had sex with him if my life had
depended on it. Besides, I was off men for the moment. I'd
finally given
Steve the Copper
, as I'd come to think of him, the
elbow and had taken up with a girl called
Susan
whom I'd met
at the Cabin Club, a dimly lit dump where you stuck to the
carpet if you didn't keep moving but that had great music and
atmosphere. Nope, no more gays for me, least of all the likes
of permatanned Lenny bloody Macmillan.

'I've got a girlfriend, Lenny,' I said, trying to sound casual.
'I'm not gay.' And to prove it I lowered my voice.

'What makes you think I am?' Lenny sounded slightly
rattled and put his foot down as we left the the tunnel.

He invited me into his flat, an offer which I politely refused,
and after he found his supposedly lost keys we drove back to
the club in silence.

'Tell me,' he said, as we pulled up outside, 'how old do I look?'

This is always a dangerous question to answer as you
invariably offend – or at least I do. I hesitated, then muttered,
'I haven't got a clue, I'm no good at guessing ages.'

'Go on, guess,' Lenny persisted, combing his yellow hair
with his fingers.

'Fifty-five?' I hazarded, smiling.

There was an awful silence. The smile slowly faded from my
lips as Lenny leaned towards me, distinctly unamused.

'I'm thirty-two.'

Oh, beware the wrath of an evil queen whose vanity has
been dented. He didn't speak to me much after that, which
suited me fine. I didn't last long though, only a couple of
months, after which he sacked me for not dressing trendily
enough for the Sandpiper's image. He replaced me with a
pretty blond lad in skin-tight flares. Bastard.

Susan had long gone. She'd turned up unexpectedly one
night at the club and caught me being more than friendly with
one of the customers, a girl who lived in Rock Ferry and who
just happened to work in the same building as her. I was back
to being single again and for want of something to do of an
evening I'd started going back to the odd CHE meeting. It was
beginning to bore me as it was all talk, talk, talk and not
enough action for my liking, but to show willing I'd agree
to run off a few leaflets for the first big conference to be
held in Morecambe on the roneo machine at work, when the
secretary, who watched over it like a guard dog, was out at
lunch.

None of the CHE lot were scene queens, and rarely if ever
went to the gay pubs and clubs in town. This left me feeling
very frustrated and wishing I had the bottle to go in on my
own, but I didn't so that was that.

It was time for another change of employment. I applied for
a job in the
Liverpool Magistrates Court
as a trainee court
clerk. If I was to get the job I'd start in the court collecting
office before moving on to the dizzy heights of the courts
themselves. My mother was delighted when I was successful
and couldn't wait to drop that one next time she was in Eileen
Henshaw's shop.

'That's right, clerk of the court, he's the one who sits
underneath the magistrate and advises him,' she'd say grandly.
'Is that ham fresh?'

And so life went on.

I met Steve coming out of the courts after my interview.

'They finally caught you then?' he shouted after me as I
walked down Dale Street. He was wearing his uniform. It was
the first time I'd ever seen him in it and it was quite a surprise.
He looked as if he was in fancy dress.

'D'ya fancy me dressed like this then?' he asked.

'No,' I replied, 'you look like a music-hall comic.' I didn't find a copper's uniform possessing of any aphrodisiacal
qualities whatsoever, quite the opposite in fact. It served only
to remind me of the swaggering great shit I'd had the
misfortune to encounter back in Virginia Water.

Steve agreed to take me to the clubs if I agreed to go out
with him again. I did and a date was set for Friday night. I
immediately started planning what I was going to wear and
was as nervous and excited as any deb about to attend her
coming-out ball.

The great day finally dawned. I rushed home from work and
started getting ready as soon as I got in. I was meeting Steve at
James Street station at nine o'clock and that gave me less than
three hours. Better get a move on . . . I spent a lot of time
getting ready to go out when I was a teenager; it's a five-minute
swill and brush-up these days.

'Where the bloody hell are you going to, all tarted up like a
pox doctor's clerk?' my mother shouted after me as I charged
down the stairs and out the front door, leaving a trail of Musk
behind me. 'Pooh, and what's that you're wearing, you smell
like a tart at a christening.'

'Goodnight, Mam, won't be late.'

Our first port of call was the
Lisbon, an old subterranean
pub
on Victoria Street. You entered through a pair of swing
doors and descended to the bar down a set of small but
perfectly formed marble stairs. Dolly Levi's arrival at the
Harmonia Gardens was re-enacted at least twice a night on
these stairs. The ceiling, stained a muddy yellow by a layer of
nicotine, was covered in highly elaborate and ornately carved
plasterwork. It was a fairly large space with Arts and Craftsstyle
wooden tables and chairs dotted about that matched the
oak panelling, and the walls had intimate little booths with
leather seating set into them.

The place was packed to the rafters. Over the noise of the
jukebox and the sheer volume of conversation I heard a solitary male voice at the bar shouting out for two large gins
and a pale ale, and from somewhere over in the corner a
woman laughed hysterically. It was everything that a Victorian
gin palace should be. Ornate brass lamps shed their warm,
golden glow on the engraved mirrors behind the bar and
caught the bevelled edges of the glass so that the light flickered
and danced, and the atmosphere was heavy with cigarette
smoke and the all-pervading smell of beer. It was loud, bawdy
and lairy. I stood by the jukebox trying to look inconspicuous
as Steve fought his way to the bar. To be on the safe side I kept
looking straight ahead, pretending to be totally preoccupied
with Suzi Quatro, who was belting out 'Devil Gate Drive' on
the jukebox. Out of the corner of my eye I saw two strange
creatures making their way purposefully through the crowd in
my direction. Thankfully it wasn't me they were after but the
middle-aged man stood next to me.

'Don't I know you from somewhere?' the smaller and
scrawnier of the two asked the bemused feller, who obviously
didn't have a clue who either of them was. 'I'm sure I
do . . . Get us half a lager while I think on,' he added, pushing
the older man towards the bar. He was quite an operator, hard
as nails, with a tough little face set in a permanent scowl and
a mass of coarse badly bleached hair that looked like the stuffing
from the back of an exploded horsehair sofa. He was
wearing a T-shirt with the word 'Girl' spelt out in multicoloured
lettering on the front.

'This is me mate Francessss,' he said, drawing out the s's
through tight, pinched lips, inclining his head ingratiatingly as
he dragged his companion forward to be presented.

Frances was smartly dressed in a black sweater and white
shirt, the enormous cuffs of which he'd turned out over the
sleeve. His black flares were severely pressed, the toecaps of his
white platform boots peeked out from underneath and his
clothes looked like they had been literally sprayed on. He was poker-thin with a pronounced stutter and moved like a
snake.

'I'll have half a laaar. Half a laaar . . . half a—'

'She'll have half a lager, won't you, girl, same as your
sssissster
Penny
,' his friend said, jumping in.

I stood there listening to them, horrified that they were calling
each other by women's names and referring to each other
as 'she' and 'girl'. There was no way that I was going to be
known by a woman's name, I vowed, willing Steve to hurry up
with the drinks.