Hard Going (30 page)

‘It was hard to make a living, though, and eventually Steve and I decided to try Australia. I had nothing to stay in England for. I did think about contacting my parents before I left, but I thought they wouldn't really care, so I just went.'

In Sydney the burlesque scene was really taking off. Drag acts, following the success of
Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
, were all the rage, and Danny discovered he had a talent for that sort of thing that would be likely to earn him a better living than straight theatre.

‘And it has,' he said. ‘I've not made a fortune but I've got by all right.'

He moved on from Steve, but made other friends, and had quite a following in the burlesque world. He was happy. Then about a year ago the death of his partner of five years had left him feeling restless and a bit lost. He'd decided to come back to London. He'd got a cabaret job easily enough, and this little flat; and, lonely, had started to wonder about his parents, particularly his father, whom he had always felt had more sympathy for him than his mother.

‘By then I felt sure that he'd have come round eventually if I'd given him the chance. I wasn't so sure about Mum, but I'd always felt closer to Dad. In any case, it was a long time ago, and attitudes have changed a lot. So I decided to get in touch and see what happened.'

‘How did you find him?' Slider asked.

‘Well, it wasn't easy. I didn't know at the time, but he'd given up his practice and sort of gone into hiding, and Mum had remarried and moved. I couldn't find either of them, and after a bit I was sort of in despair about it. And just as I was thinking of giving it up, I saw him.'

It wasn't as much of a coincidence as it might have seemed. Living as he was in the heart of theatreland, he had taken to going to see plays again, rekindling his love of the legitimate stage. He had been queuing for the box office at the Gielgud to get a ticket for Diana Chambers in
Hay Fever
when he had seen Miss Chambers herself heading down to the stage door accompanied by a tall, distinguished figure who was unmistakably his father. He had abandoned the queue and followed. They had gone in by the time he got there, but he asked the stage doorkeeper if that had indeed been Lionel Bygod with Miss Chambers.

‘Well, of course, I know how to get talking to backstage people,' Danny said. ‘He didn't mind telling me it
was
Dad, said he knew everybody and was often there, so I asked if he would give him a note next time he saw him. I didn't have paper and envelope, but I did have a handbill in my pocket from the Gaiety, with my picture on the front, and I thought I might as well take the bull by the horns, if there was ever going to be a chance of honesty between us. So I wrote on the back something like, “This is me. I'm sorry I ran away. I really want to see you again.” And hoped for the best.'

Nothing happened for a bit. ‘I thought they hadn't passed on my note. Then I thought he still didn't want to see me. Then I thought it was a bit feeble to give up after just one try, so I was going to write another note, a proper one, and take it down there. And that night when I was doing my set, I looked out and there he was. My father. Sitting at a table, watching me. It was the weirdest thing I've ever done, go through my Danielle LaMartine act with my dad watching. I don't know how I got through it. But at the end he applauded, and when I looked at him, he smiled and nodded. So I knew it was all right.'

H
e got up abruptly and walked to the window, his bony shoulders hunched, his fists stuffed in his pockets. The wet sky was like dirty dishrags. The traffic was slowing in afternoon density and there was no more swishing, but you could hear the engine sounds quite clearly. The window was large and single glazed, and Slider noticed there were no curtains. Living here you would not be separated from the world outside, any more than a pigeon on the window ledge.

‘I shared a dressing room, I couldn't take him there,' Danny said. ‘In the corridor between the loos and the fire exit – that's where I first talked to my dad. He cried. It was awful. I'd never seen him cry. He kept saying he was sorry – he was so, so sorry.'

He stopped. Slider said, ‘Do you want to take a moment?'

Danny took out a handkerchief and blew his nose briskly, and turned back to them, his eyes a little pink now, his eyelashes endearingly wet. ‘No, I'm all right.' He folded his arms across his chest, tucking his hands under armpits for comfort. ‘I want to talk about it. There's no-one I can tell except you.'

‘Go on, then,' Slider said encouragingly.

Danny took a breath and resumed. ‘He said it was all his fault. He said he'd searched for me, gone all over London, the theatres and bars and the gay scene. That was brave of him,' he commented in parenthesis. ‘But of course, he didn't know where I'd gone. He just assumed I'd have gone to ground in London.'

‘People mostly do,' Slider agreed.

That night, after Danny's last set, they had gone to a gastropub nearby that stayed open late, and in the privacy conferred by the press and noise of a crowd of young people having an expensive good time, they had talked. ‘We had so much to catch up on. I told him about my life, he told me about his.'

‘Did he tell you about the Roxwell case?' Atherton asked.

Danny nodded solemnly. ‘God, yes. That must have been awful for him. And it was because of me, in a way, that he took it in the first place. After I ran away, he started doing a lot more
pro bono
work, and especially defending people that everyone was against. He said it was a way of trying to make it up to me, because he should have stood up for me and he didn't. I understood, sort of. But I said to him, my life's been fine, you don't need to feel sorry for me. It's you that's suffered, really. I told him that I felt bad because all those years he must have been wondering if I was all right, and not knowing if I was alive or dead. He sort of nodded, and he took out his wallet and showed me a photo of me he had in there.'

Danny reached down and picked up something from the bedside cabinet and offered it to Slider. It was of a skinny, fair-haired boy of about ten in swimming trunks, grinning and sun-squinted, clutching a bucket and spade, with a blowy English beach for background.

‘He gave it to you?' Slider said. It must have been the one Diana Chambers mentioned. So that was why they hadn't found it in his wallet.

Danny nodded. ‘He said he didn't need it any more. It makes me want to cry to think he'd been carrying it around all these years.'

They'd talked until late, tentatively finding each other again. Bygod had told him of the worsening relations with June, how they'd split up, how she was now with a new man.

‘Did you contact your mother?' Slider asked.

He shook his head. ‘I thought about it, but Dad said she still feels the same about – you know, people like me. She hasn't softened at all. And he said the bloke she's with is a bit of a rough diamond, not the sort to welcome a gay tranny drag queen as a stepson. So I didn't. He says she's all right, she's happy in her way, so I reckon it's better to leave sleeping dogs lie, really.' He brooded a moment. ‘We were never close. It was Dad I thought about all those years, him I missed. And reading between the lines, she's been pretty shitty to him, one way and another. I mean, leaving him in the middle of all that Roxwell business, just when he needed support the most …'

‘Did he tell you about Diana Chambers?' Atherton asked.

Danny sat again on the edge of the bed, his hands under his thighs, and shook his hair back from his face. He looked like Princess Di, Atherton thought.

‘Yes,' he said. ‘But that was after he and Mum spilt up.'

‘I didn't mean it as a criticism,' Atherton said. ‘What did you think about it?'

‘I thought, “Good old Dad!” He told me it had to be a big secret, because she's married to Al Head, the director. She never wanted a divorce, so there was no question of them getting married, but from the way he talked she's his big love. I'm glad for him. And of course she's a fantastic actress.'

This last obviously conferred extra kudos on his father. He had obviously forgotten, absorbed in his narrative, that his father was dead. His earlier words,
There's no-one I can tell except you
, revealed a loneliness that put this little room, which was really quite snug in its way, into a new light. He had come home to find his father, called from his new world by the pull of an older love, and what did he have now? A tiny room in the most indifferent city in the world, an underground job in the most transitory of professions, and all the life-building to do again, from the bottom. The effort, Slider thought, would sicken in prospect.

They had parted in the street after closing time, Danny seeing his father into a taxi before walking home. A couple of days later they had met again, this time Lionel coming in the late morning to his flat, where they had sat and talked until Danny was due at the club. The third meeting was again for a drink after work, though they hadn't spoken for long that time. Danny was tired, and Lionel had seemed a bit low, out of sorts.

‘But when he was leaving, he said next time we met, he was taking me out to lunch. And he asked me to dress up – he said he wanted to walk into a restaurant with a beautiful woman on his arm.'

‘How did you feel about that?' Slider asked.

Danny shrugged, with a faint smile. ‘Oh, I didn't mind, really, though it was a bit weird, I mean, him being my dad and all. I think he was trying to show me he completely accepted me. You know, my life and my job and everything. He didn't need to – I knew he was all right with it. But he was so keen on it, said he wanted me to be the way I really was when I was with him, so I said okay rather than argue any more. So we made the date for Tuesday, at the La Florida. It had to be somewhere round here, because my first set was at half past three that day.'

Atherton sat up. ‘So you're saying, when you met last Tuesday, that was only the fourth time you'd seen him?'

Danny nodded. He chewed his lip and his eyes filled with tears again. ‘It's only been two weeks. All those years apart – and now he's gone! I thought we'd have – we'd have more time.' He fumbled out his handkerchief again.

Atherton gave Slider look that said,
Now do we tell him?
which Slider ignored.

‘Tell me about that lunch,' he said.

Bygod had started out cheerful, almost light-hearted in manner, and had tried to charm Danny into a similar mood. But Danny, already feeling slightly awkward at being with his father in his women's clothes, sensed something in the wind, and the lunch had got off to a sticky start. A glass or two of wine, and the kind attentions of a very sloe-eyed waiter who had obviously clocked him, had relaxed him a little, upon which Bygod had said he had something to tell him.

‘It's serious, but I don't want you to be sad about it, because I'm not,' he'd said.

Then he told Danny that he had cancer, and that there was nothing to be done about it. Danny had been stricken dumb at the news, but Bygod had gone on talking, talking, easing him through the first shock.

He said, ‘Everyone has to die some time, and I'm not afraid. I've done everything I wanted to do with my life, and I'm just marking time now. I'm ready to go.'

Danny, trying not to cry, had said, ‘But I'm not ready to let you go.'

And Bygod said, ‘The only sad thing about it is that we've only just met again, and I'd have liked to have had more time with you. But we've a few months yet, and we'll make the most of them. We mustn't waste any of our time together regretting the past or being afraid of the future.'

The speech, Slider guessed, had been carefully chosen in advance, by a man who knew, personally and professionally, about the power of words. That Danny could now remember them and repeat them proved their worth.

Then he'd said that he had changed his will and was leaving the bulk of his estate to Danny.

‘I said, “I don't want to hear about that,” but he said, “You must. You may not care about money now, but you will some day.” And then he asked me if I didn't have some pet ambition that money would help with.'

‘And do you?' Slider asked.

He gave the faint, troubled smile again. ‘As a matter of fact, I do. And telling him about it helped me to get through the next half hour without breaking down, which I suppose is why he asked.'

‘What is it – your ambition?' Atherton asked.

‘I'd like to open a place of my own, a club – but not round here, not in Soho, and not in a cellar. Maybe Earl's Court or Notting Hill, somewhere like that. A smart place where nice gay couples can come and eat and watch the cabaret, maybe dance.' He shrugged. ‘I've been thinking about it for a long time, but of course there was no way in the world I'd ever get that sort of money together. But I used to have fun planning the acts and thinking how I'd decorate the place and so on. I know someone back in Sydney who'd come and be my chef …' There was almost a glow in his face as he thought about it. ‘Dad got me talking about it, and when I finally ran down he said, “There you are, then. Money
is
worth having after all. You'll be able to make your dream come true.” He said, “Maybe you'll call it Bygod's,” and he smiled. And I said –' the tears welled again – ‘I said it was a good name for a club.'

There was a pause while he mopped up. Then Slider said, ‘So your father said he had actually made out the will? Or was he just talking about doing it?'

‘No, he said he'd done it. He said he'd left something to Diana, and some bequests to charity, but most of it to me. He said when it was all done and dusted and the tax paid, I ought to end up with enough to set up my club – maybe one and a half million.' He shook his head. ‘Of course, I've always known the old man had money, but I never realized it was that much.' He lapsed into a brooding silence.