Still Standing: The Savage Years (36 page)

I’d have liked to stay for a few days at my mother’s. We had the car and could’ve taken her for ‘little spins’ to far-flung places that she loved like Parkgate and Bidston Hill, coming back with a boot full of leaf mould for her roses. Instead, as time was short we took her up to Landican Cemetery to visit my father’s grave, taking the ‘nice’ route through the country lanes and quieter roads.

I watched her wipe my father’s headstone down with a damp cloth she’d brought with her, wrapped in a carrier bag so it wouldn’t leak in her handbag.

‘Your name will be on here one day, son, I’m afraid,’ she said, scraping furiously at a bit of bird shit with a nail file. ‘Underneath mine.’

‘It will not,’ I said. ‘I’m not having bottom billing and my name hidden behind a pot of chrysanths.’

‘What do you want then? A bloody big neon sign with an arrow of flashing lights pointing to your name, saying here
lies Paul O’Grady? You’ll be wanting a one-armed bandit for a headstone next. It’s Landican, not Las Vegas, you’ll get what you’re given, my lad, and be grateful you’re not lying in a pauper’s grave.’

After we’d dropped her off and said goodbye, Murphy said in the car on the way to Manchester, ‘I see where you get it from now, you’re like two peas in a pod – only with one difference.’

‘What’s that?’ I asked.

‘She’s smart and you’re dumb. Tell her about
The Bill
, she’ll be over the moon. It’s not her who’s the prejudiced party here, it’s you, so tell her and be done with it. She’s going to find out anyway. Tell her.’

Each time I’d worked Nottingham it had been a disaster and I was beginning to believe that our association was jinxed. The first time I went up there to work for a promoter who was holding a one-nighter in a club, he failed to turn up, and after I’d stood outside the locked club for a couple of hours with the waiting crowd I gave up and went home. My return visit left me with a massive bill to have the car repaired. After we’d left it parked in the city centre someone had fancied a dance on the roof and the bonnet. And my third visit I’ll never forget.

‘If you’re there, Paul, please give us a ring back as soon as poss. Ta. Oh, it’s Neil by the way.’

When we got home there were a lot of messages on my answerphone from members of my family and I grew increasingly worried as I sat on the arm of the sofa listening to them.

‘Paul, where are you? It’s Mo, ring me, will you.’

Beep.

‘Paul, it’s Aunty Anne here, give us a ring as soon as you get this message, will you, love.’

Beep.

‘Hiya, Paul. It’s Sheila, we’re still in Ireland, give us a ring.’

Despite it being three in the morning I rang my cousin Maureen, lighting a fag and bracing myself.

‘I’ve got some bad news, love,’ she said quietly. ‘It’s your mam. She passed away earlier this evening.’

Everything suddenly stopped still. It was as if the pause button on the video of my life had been pushed and I stood there motionless, my mouth open, unable to speak, the blood pounding in my ears as I held the receiver in my hand.

‘Paul, are you there, love? Paul?’ I could hear my cousin shouting at the other end of the line. ‘Paul …’

Murphy drove me to Euston to catch the first train to Liverpool. I sat and stared out of the window through dead eyes as a rain-soaked London slowly came to life in the grey of the early morning. I felt detached from everything around me, an outsider looking in at a world I was no longer part of. My world was dark, a silent barren planet, drifting slowly in an orbit out of sync with everyone else’s.

The man waiting at the traffic lights, pulling a face against the slight drizzle that had started to fall and looking at his watch impatiently, why was he in such a hurry? What was the point in rushing? We all get there in the end. Go home, go back to bed, enjoy your life, sod ’em, I wanted to shout, it can all wait.

On the train, which was mercifully almost empty, I went over the information Maureen had given me again and again in my head. Mam had felt unwell in the morning and despite her protestations, as is the family tradition, Aunty Annie had rung a doctor, who had wanted her to go into hospital. She refused, claiming there was nothing wrong with her and
she’d be fine after a little sleep. In the late afternoon Aunty Anne lay on one bed in my nephew’s room reading aloud from the
Liverpool Echo
to my mother, who was propped up on pillows in my other nephew’s bed.

‘It was a scented candle that caused that fire in Sarah Ferguson’s house, Molly,’ she said, raising her glasses and squinting at the print, the paper held almost at the tip of her nose. ‘She’s moved back in the royal lodge with Andrew, I wonder what’s going on there?’

‘That Fergie makes me bloody sick,’ my mother replied, and on that note closed her eyes and went to sleep for ever.

I went to see her at the undertaker’s to say goodbye. It had been less than six weeks since we’d stood at my father’s grave and I’d watched her fussing over the headstone with a wet rag, and now here she was lying in a box in a pale pink bed-jacket with a slight smile on her contented face, finally at peace.

At first I half expected her to open one eye and ask me what the bloody hell I thought I was up to, waking her up at this hour of the night. She really did look as if she was sleeping and it wasn’t until I touched her hand and felt how cold it was that the message sank in.

We had a chat, or rather I did all the talking and she listened, which made a change. I told her all about Lily Savage and what I’d been up to these past few years, speaking freely and honestly as I should’ve done when I’d had the opportunity. She took it very well considering, but somewhere up in the heavens I could imagine her saying to my father, ‘He’s a dark horse, that one, Paddy, I knew he was bloody up to something.’

In the period leading up to the funeral I got Murphy to drive around Birkenhead and to places that were once important to me, taking pictures with a camera I’d bought in Grange Road. I found solace in revisiting my past, taking photographs of my old schools and all the places where I’d once worked and played, to capture them on film and take them back to London with me, clinging on to whatever took me back to when life was uncomplicated, to a time when the biggest decision I’d have to make was whether to wear the jeans or the flares for a night out on the tiles in Liverpool and if I’d be able to cadge the money off my mother to get there.

Now there’d be no more borrowing from the club books hidden under the cushions on the sofa or being asked what I wanted for my tea or told to get myself down to confession. Twenty-three Holly Grove was silent.

In the week preceding the funeral I had five dates booked in clubs around the north which I refused to cancel. Even though I was wandering around in a trance, I found that the hour on stage gave me temporary respite from the desolation I was feeling.

Pat and Breda came up for the funeral, as did Vera and Frank Clarke and Peter Turner. Old neighbours from the Lowther Street days surfaced in their black funeral coats and headscarves and the Union of Catholic Mothers turned out in force. Following the funeral tea at the Lauries Club, we moved on to my cousin John’s house and sat in the garden silently drinking as Vera Lalley went through her entire repertoire of emotional ballads. To speak or, even worse, laugh during this impromptu recital would be tantamount to sacrilege. Vera would stop mid-flow and fix the offender with a glare that could peel paint before continuing where she’d left off once she was satisfied that they were suitably
chastened. I was extremely fond of Vera and kept in touch with her by letter until her death, always sending her a ‘couple of bob’ at Christmas that, as she told me, she spent on boiled ham and a bottle of Bell’s whisky.

Two days after the funeral I filmed my first scene on
The Bill
with Tony Scannell. All this was new to me and I didn’t see the point in pretending I was a seasoned pro, familiar with working in front of a camera, so I wasn’t shy about asking for advice. Everyone was extremely helpful and considerate. Tony was great to work with, as was Chris Ellison, who played the fearsome Burnside and was the complete opposite of his on-screen character.

Tony invited me to his dressing room to discuss the relationship between Roach and Roxanne. It was obvious from the script that the beaten-up tranny and the tough but damaged detective had known each other for years and that at one time their relationship might have been a bit more than just a professional one. We decided to play it along the same lines as Jimmy Cagney and his moll and this peculiar relationship between the cop and the tranny must have worked as I was asked back later in the year, the first guest player to repeat a role.

I didn’t tell anyone that my mother had just died. People tend to pussyfoot around you if they know that you’ve recently had a bereavement and either overtly make a fuss of you or go out of their way to avoid you.
The Bill
came at the right time, allowing me to forget recent events while I was working on it.

Murphy collected me in the car after the first day’s filming to drive me to Manchester to work the No. 1 Club, run by the irrepressible Jeff Bibby and one of Murphy’s and my favourite
venues. Jeff was very sympathetic and had got me a huge bunch of flowers which I gave to my sister, not telling her of course where they’d come from. We stayed at Holly Grove as I was working in Stoke-on-Trent the next night, followed by the New Penny in Leeds on the Sunday evening.

It seemed as if it were business as usual. I was gobby and lively on stage and managed to argue with Murphy with as much gusto as before, but inside I was numb. To describe oneself as feeling numb inside is a bit of a cliché, but it’s only after experiencing it that you realize it’s the perfect way to describe how you feel when you’re sat alone in the silence of a darkened room, still wearing your outdoor clothes, incapable of thought or even motivating yourself to get up and put the lights on or make a cup of tea. I was to remain numb for some time.

I didn’t want to leave Holly Grove or see it returned to the landlord. For all the years that they’d lived there, from that very first day when my dad had declared proudly to his young wife, ‘Here it is, Moll, a home of our own and with an indoor lav and a bathroom as well,’ it had never really been theirs. It was a rented property. At the letting agents in Liverpool I applied to take over the tenancy.

‘Had your mother lived there long?’ the understanding young lad behind the counter asked.

‘Over forty years,’ I replied flatly. I left with a new rent book. I was now the sole tenant of Holly Grove. The landlord offered to sell it to me for £9,000, a three-bedroom house with a garden and fabulous views over the Mersey. It was badly in need of complete renovation and it meant so much to me.

I didn’t have nine grand. That was a fortune and I couldn’t
imagine getting my hands on it, as even though I was out working nearly every night I wasn’t earning much and my overheads were high, particularly when it came to costumes. As Dolly Parton said, it costs a lot of money to look cheap. A loan from a bank was out of the question as I had and still have a mortal fear of debt.

I kept Holly Grove for a few months, using it as a base for when I was working the clubs in the north. It was strange to see Lily’s wig defiantly sat on the kitchen table and I could hear my mother now …

‘Paul, there’s some big blonde woman’s head on the table. What have you been up to this time? You haven’t been decapitating prozzies, have you?’

My friend John Addy from the Gemini Club was throwing a party for his birthday at the beautiful Armathwaite Hall in the Lake District and he’d booked me as the surprise cabaret. Among the guests there were Barbara Windsor, Su Pollard and Beryl Reid. After I’d done my bit in the drawing room, dragging Beryl up to sing a song with me, I stood chatting to one of the guests who seemed preoccupied and slightly agitated.

‘Am I getting on your nerves?’ I asked.

‘No, not at all,’ he replied, ‘I’m grateful for the company. You see, my wife has just been found dead in the billiard room.’

‘You’re joking?’

‘No,’ he went on. ‘She was found strangled with one of her own silk stockings, a bad show all round really.’

A bad show all round?

I went and sat next to Barbara in the bar. ‘There’s a fellah out there who says his wife’s just been strangled in the billiard room.’

‘That’s two so far,’ she said casually. ‘There was a corpse on the main landing this afternoon.’

‘Who was it?’ She was taking this remarkably well, not seeming the least bit concerned that people were dropping like flies.

‘I wonder who’ll be next?’ she said, giggling. ‘It might be me, might even be you.’

This wasn’t a birthday party, it was a ruse to get us all here and bump us off one by one, Agatha Christie style. Suddenly a strange woman stood up in the middle of the room and announced, ‘I know who did it. I know who killed Mrs Potheringay.’

‘Really, dear?’ Beryl Reid said cheerily. ‘Who?’

‘It was—’

Before she could go any further a gunshot rang out and she dropped to the floor dead, and once everyone had recovered from the shock they started to cheer and applaud. The penny finally dropped: a group of actors had been hired to host a murder mystery weekend and very convincing they were too.

I sat next to Beryl at lunch the following day and she was very liberal with the brandy, applying a fresh coat of lipstick after each course until by the time the cheese and biscuits came it was up to her nostrils.

Not used to drinking in the afternoon, especially brandy, I felt courageous enough to tell the great lady gallantly, ‘Beryl, you’ve got a gob to rival Bette Davis.’

‘Have I, darling? Put it right for me, will you,’ she said, handing me a napkin and sitting expectantly like a small child with jam around her mouth for me to wipe it off.

I went to visit her at her lovely little house on the Thames shaped like a honeypot. I spent a memorable hour, during which she recounted part of a sketch she’d performed as
Marlene of the Midlands, a character I had loved as a child.