Goodnight Steve McQueen

Goodnight Steve McQueen by Louise Wener

Goodnight Steve McQueen

Louise Wener

Goodnight Steve McQueen

FLAME

Hodder & Stoughton

Copyright (c) 2002. by Louise Wener

First published in Great Britain in 2.002. by Hodder and Stoughton A division of Hodder Headline

The right of Louise Wener to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A Flame Book

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library isbn o 340 82029 2

Typeset in Sabon by Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

Polmont, Stirlingshire

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St. Ives pic

Hodder and Stoughton

A division of Hodder Headline

Copyright (c) 2,002 by Louise Wener

First published in Great Britain in 2.002 by Hodder and Stoughton A division of Hodder Headline

The right of Louise Wener to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A Flame Book

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library isbn o 340 82029 z

Typeset in Sabon by Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

Polmont, Stirlingshire

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St. Ives pk

Hodder and Stoughton

A division of Hodder Headline

For Andy.

Thanks for permission to quote from “Bad Harmony’ Written by: Frank Black Published by: Spime Songs (BMI)

can’t help thinking I would have done rather well.

o you remember the quiz show Winner Takes All? It had a top prize of one thousand pounds. They kept it in a Perspex display case. A thousand crisp green notes. Right there. Right under your nose, and it was real money as well, not like those cheques they wave about on Who Wants to be a Millionaire?. I can’t remember anyone winning it, though. Not ever. Most of the contestants seemed happy with fifty quid and a slap on the back from Liza Tarbuck’s dad: a weekend for two in Blackpool if they were lucky. And you knew it would rain the whole time they were there. And you knew Peter from Wilmslow was secretly gay so he’d have to take Beryl his arthritic nan instead of Rita his imaginary wife. And you knew he wouldn’t be able to go backstage and have his picture taken with the Nolan Sisters after all, because he’d have to be back at the Grand Palace B&B before the ten o’clock curfew.

Thanks, Tarby. Thanks very much.

I mean, what a con. Talk about massaging the truth. It should have been called Loser Takes All. It should have been called No-HopeRubbishHairCrapJobNo-ProspectsLousyBoyfriend-Loser Takes All.

My name is Steve McQueen and I’m a very bitter man. What on earth were they thinking of, calling me Steve? Didn’t they realise it would ruin me? Didn’t they know I’d be tortured? Didn’t they understand it would be impossible for me to live up to? Did they hell. It was my mum’s fault, of course, she was obsessed with him. The only reason she married my dad in the first place was because of the name. It didn’t matter that he was a geography teacher. It didn’t matter that he was bald at the age of eighteen, fat at the age of twenty-two and dead at the age of thirty-three and a half. Mum had what she’d always wanted. She’d married herself a genuine McQueen.

I was three years old when my father died he had a heart attack on a field trip to an ox-bow lake and for a long time I actually thought Steve McQueen was my real dad. I remember my mum sitting me down to watch The Towering Inferno when I was five spooning down my second helping of Heinz spaghetti hoops and feeling really proud. We both clapped at the end. What a guy. He’d even managed to save Fred Astaire and the cat. What a guy. What a dad.

There were pictures of him all over the house. Steve driving his Porsche 917 from Le Mans, Steve flying through the air in his 1968 Mustang from Bullitt, Steve being chased by Nazis in The Great Escape, and a giant scrapbook filled with press cuttings that she kept in a bruised leather suitcase under her bed.

“Who’s this?” I said, flicking through her scrapbook one afternoon. “Who is this?”

“It’s All McGraw, the lady out of Love Story.”

“What’s Love Story?”

“Oh, it’s so sad. Oh, I don’t think I can talk about it. Not without crying.”

And off she went, off to fetch a hankie from the dressing table drawer, and all I could think was, Why is Dad doing that? What is Dad doing kissing All McGraw?

I suppose things were OK to begin with. I was a great-looking child. I looked like the Milky Bar Kid only cuter: white blond hair, wire-rimmed spectacles and the cheekiest, wide-mouthed, gap-toothed grin you’ve ever seen.

She was dead proud of me. I could tell she thought there was hope: that I might grow up to be a movie star or a

Formula i driver or a teenage multimillionaire, and for a few precious years (apart from finding out that my dad was a dead geography teacher instead of an A-list Hollywood star) I was blissfully happy.

I brought home crayon drawings of racing cars and Mum stuck them on the fridge next to her collection of Steve McQueen quotes. I built models of doomed Apollo rockets out of corn flake packets and Mum put them on the sideboard next to her picture of Steve McQueen’s house: 2.7 Oakmont Drive, Brentwood, California we knew the address by heart. I collected model motorcycles, built planes out of balsa wood and elastic bands, and I even went to martial arts classes on account of my namesake being a third-dan black belt in karate. I was rather good at it. I won the club’s under-tens trophy in 1979. It was a great year. The same year I won a Blue Peter badge for my papier-mache Shep.

And then it all went wrong.

“What’s this?” I said, pointing to an angry red lump on my forehead. “What is this?”

“Acne.”

“What’s acne?”

“Oh. It’s so awful. I don’t think I can talk about it. Have you been masturbating, Steve McQueen?”

Of course I’d been masturbating. I was thirteen years old. My life was one long shower. I was the cleanest teenager in the whole of Woodford Wells. I masturbated so much I worried that my cock would spontaneously combust from all the friction (spontaneous combustion was very big in the eighties), and anyway it was supposed to make you go blind, not cover your face in deep-pile acne vulgaris. I didn’t wank again for almost three years. I didn’t dare.

I tried everything I could think of. I gave up chocolate, stopped drinking milk, painted my skin with foul-smelling potions that made my skin peel like a sun-baked onion, but nothing did any good. Every morning I’d wake up in a pool of nocturnal emissions, half my face stuck to the brushed-nylon pillowcase, desperate for a wank and a bowl of Coco Pops, hoping against hope that nothing had grown in the night, but it always had. There they were, regular as clockwork: a brand-new crop of festering, pus-laden fumaroles, steaming on the side of my once perfect cheeks.

She thought they were disgusting. My own mother. I can still remember the look on her face when she realised I’d have scars. It’s the same look she had when I told her they were remaking The Thomas Crown Affair with Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo.

“It won’t be the same,” she said quietly. “It just won’t be the same.”

Needless to say my teenage years were hell. My friends called me Moony on account of my lunar-landscaped face and my enemies of which there were many called me twat. I did have a girlfriend, though: Vivian Ducksford. She was fifteen years old with eyes the colour of sucked Black Jacks, and it was common knowledge that she let boys finger her for chips in the local swimming baths. It was only a matter of time before I plucked up the courage and took my turn.

“You shouldn’t be doing this, Vivian,” I said, eyes half closed from a crop of particularly livid st yes “Everyone thinks you’re a slag.”

“I’m not a slag. I’m mature for my age.” This was true. She had bigger tits than my mum. “Yeah, but, em… everyone thinks you’re a slag.” “Are you going to have a go or what? I want chips afterwards, though. You got enough money for chips, right?”

I certainly did. I had fifty pence stuffed tightly into the toes of my changing room socks. I even had enough for an ice cream if she’d wanted one.

“No ice cream, just chips. Get it? Just chips.”

“Right then, chips you say. Best get on with it, then.”

For as long as I live I’ll never know what possessed me to try and do it underwater. I mean, what was I thinking of? Maybe it was because I could hold my breath for a full minute and a half (Houdini was a very big influence on me in those days). Maybe I thought I’d get a better view. Either way it was a complete disaster. I couldn’t find my way into her Speedo. I remember tugging and tugging at the elastic round her leg but it just wouldn’t give. I think I must have touched something hairy at one point, but by then my lungs were about to explode and all I can remember is surfacing in a fit of panic; light headed from the lack of oxygen, mouth filled with water and bits of old plasters, right thigh cramping from the giant st iffy between my legs, and it was all I could do not to pass out there and then. It was a good job I didn’t. Not only would I have quite likely drowned, I’d also have missed out on Vivian’s kind words of encouragement:

“What are you doing, you wanker?” “Sorry, sorry, I didn’t … I couldn’t … I can’t breathe.” “What were you trying to touch me arse for? Fuckin’ poofter, are you? Wait till I tell everyone what you done.”

“Vivian… wait, I got lost… I got… I’m not a poofter.” Vivian wasn’t listening. She’d already hoisted herself on to the side of the pool: belly flat to the wall, long arms dripping water on to the verruca-ridden tiles, contempt pouring from the back of her shiny, seal-haired head. And then she mumbled something under her breath. It took me almost five minutes to work out what it was.

“Loser,” she said. “You’re a loser, Steve McQueen.”

Alison calls me at 2.30.

“You’re up, then?”

“Of course I’m up. What do you mean, “You’re up, then?”. I’m up!”

“Yeah, wouldn’t want to miss any of Supermarket Sweep, would you?”

“I’m not watching Supermarket Sweep. I’m writing a song.”

“Well listen, I’m going to be home a bit later than I thought, so go without me. I’ll try and catch you at the pub later. All Bar One, right?”

“No, Harringay Arms. We’re all going to the Harringay Arms.”

I hear her sigh at the end of the line.

“All right then,” I say, ‘you win, we’ll go to All Bar One.”

“Right, I’ll see you there, some time after nine.”

“Great, see you there.”

“Oh, and don’t drink all of my Bacardi Breezers. I’ll want one when I get home.”

I finish my lime Bacardi Breezer, put down my cornflakes and mute Dale Winton for a moment. Even with the sound off I can tell that Jane from the Midlands doesn’t realise the creme fraiche is more expensive than the Blu Loo, and I’d usually shout something pithy and incisive at the screen at this point, but Alison’s call has me worried.

Alison and I have been together almost five years now and it’s probably fair to say that things aren’t going as well as they might be. She’s always working late, at least a couple of times a week, and she seems distant, you know, a bit distracted. Maybe it’s because I’ve never had a proper job, maybe it’s because I’m a waste-of-space musician. Maybe it’s because I get up at midday, eat my breakfast in front of Supermarket Sweep and drink all of her Bacardi Breezers before she gets home. Maybe she’s just gone off me.

“Maybe she’s having an affair.”

“She is not having an affair. Jesus, what makes you say that? I mean, what do you want to go and say a thing like that for? We’re just going through a bad patch, that’s all.”

Vince sips his Staropramen. Bad patch. That’s what he said before Liz left him. Just going through a bit of a bad patch, mate. Haven’t had sex for three months. Haven’t had sex for six months. Haven’t had a blow-job for the best part of a year. She’s left you, hasn’t she Vince? Yes mate, she’s left me.