They spotted him straight away. Massive suitcases – no big surprise. They marched confidently towards him. They looked almost alarmingly strong and healthy and for a second he thought they were going to attack him, but then the taller one said, ‘Hello, Mr Price?’
‘Nah, I’m Mr Price’s representative.’ Like the Pope was God’s representative on earth, he thought. ‘Call me Andy, love. Welcome to the UK.’
A Panda Walks into a Bar
‘And I said to her, I’m only looking for your inner woman, love!’ Barclay Jack was in full flow on the stage.
‘Christ, he’s disgusting,’ Ronnie said. Reggie and Ronnie were standing at the back of the stalls, waiting for the matinée to finish.
‘Yeah,’ Reggie agreed. ‘The guy’s a Neanderthal. Sadly, they all seem to love him. The women particularly. That’s the depressing part.’ Reggie sometimes wondered if a day would ever go by when she wasn’t disappointed in people. She supposed that would be utopia, and utopias, like revolutions, never worked. (‘Not yet,’ Dr Hunter said.) Perhaps there was somewhere far away from here where it was different. New Zealand, perhaps. (Why don’t you come, Reggie? Come for a visit. You might even think about getting a job here. It would be nice to live near Dr Hunter, to watch her son Gabriel growing up.) Upholding justice was a righteous act, but you may as well be Canute trying to stop the tide coming in. (Was that a historical fact? It seemed unlikely.)
‘What do a road and a woman have in common?’ Barclay hollered. ‘You in the front row,’ he said, gesturing at a woman in a red top. ‘Yes, I’m talking to you, love. You’d better close your legs or you’ll get a through draught.’
‘I can see children in the audience,’ Reggie said. She sighed. ‘How much longer has this got to go?’
‘Not long, I think,’ Ronnie said. ‘Ten minutes or so.’
Although he had been flagged during the original inquiry, Barclay Jack had been discounted at the time. Bassani’s and Carmody’s positions in the community had meant that they had rubbed shoulders with a lot of entertainers over the years – Ken Dodd, Max Bygraves, the Chuckle Brothers – none of whom had come under any kind of suspicion. Carmody used to throw a big summer-season party and invite all the stars who were in town. It was a lavish affair, there was some cine film of one of the parties that Ronnie and Reggie had watched. Bassani’s home movies, apparently – the pair of them judging a Bonny Baby competition and some kind of beauty pageant with the women in one-piece bathing-suits. Everyone laughing. Barclay Jack was in one shot at the summer party, drink in one hand, cigarette in the other, leering at the camera. He was just one more person (‘Man,’ Ronnie amended, ‘one more man’) who had been mentioned in the endlessly bifurcating fractal that was Operation Villette. Another piece in the jigsaw, another brick in the wall.
‘Gender fluid, that’s what I call it!’ Barclay Jack shouted another punchline to the gods. Reggie had tuned out some time ago.
‘You’ve got to laugh,’ Ronnie deadpanned.
Of course, there had been rumours about him down the years, even, once, a raid on his home – despite his noisy embrace of all things northern, Barclay Jack actually lived on the South Coast. He had ceased to be successful a long time ago and yet here he was, larger than life, rouged and primped and prancing around on the stage telling jokes that should have made any self-respecting woman – or indeed a person of either gender or any in between – squeamish with the incorrectness of it all. That was his attraction, of course, he got to say things people usually only thought, although now that there was the internet, a web of hatred and vitriol, you might have thought that comedians like Barclay Jack would have lost their appeal.
‘We could probably arrest him on several accounts right now,’ Reggie mused.
‘Not worth the calories,’ Ronnie said.
‘Because they both have manholes!’ Barclay Jack bawled. ‘Anyone in the audience from Scunthorpe?’ he continued relentlessly. A man somewhere in the circle responded in a belligerent manner and Barclay Jack said, ‘So you’re the one that put the cunt in Scunthorpe, are you?’ There was a moment’s delay while the audience processed the joke and then the whole place screamed with delight.
‘“Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it,”’ Reggie murmured.
‘Eh?’ Ronnie said.
‘It’s nothing to be alarmed by, Mr Jack,’ Reggie