scarily clever. She was reading Ulysses and Finnegans Wake ‘for fun’ during the summer holidays. She would have been appalled by the show at the Palace.
Crystal was cleverer than Emily gave her credit for, cleverer than she gave herself credit for. For example, she played a mean, albeit reluctant, game of chess, although she was always making out that she was thick. And you had to be pretty savvy to digest (as it were) all that science about ‘clean eating’. Sometimes she sounded as if she had a degree in advanced nutrition. ‘You see the thing about B12, Harry, is that …’ and so on. Harry thought she was ‘hiding her light under a bushel’ – that was what Miss Dangerfield had said about Harry to his parents at last term’s PTA.
‘Miss Dangerfield’s bush,’ his father grinned when he came home. ‘That would be a sight for sore eyes.’ His father could be horribly crude sometimes. He seemed to think it would make a man of Harry.
‘And is that what you want to be, pet?’ Bunny asked. ‘To be a man? Because, believe me, it’s not all it’s cut out to be.’
‘How about Polly Esther?’ Harry suggested to Bunny (he was on a roll). ‘Or Aunty Rhinum? Phyllis Tyne! That’s a good one. It would suit you, Bunny, being a Geordie.’
(‘You seem very into the whole drag thing, Harry,’ Emily said. ‘You should beware of cultural appropriation.’ Which was definitely something she’d got from Miss Dangerfield.)
From Barclay Jack’s dressing room came the sound of something crashing to the floor, followed by the man himself roaring with anger.
Bunny pointed her cigarette at the dressing-room door and said, ‘Has that bastard been giving you trouble again?’
Harry shrugged. ‘It’s all right.’
‘He’s raging ’cos he’s not on the telly any more,’ Bunny said. ‘Plus he’s a fat cunt.’
If Harry’s father heard Bunny use language like that he would probably deck him. His dad used terrible language himself, as bad as anything that came out of Bunny’s plumped-up lips, but that didn’t seem to count. He had standards for other people, especially Harry. ‘It’s about bettering yourself,’ he said. ‘Do what I say, not what I do.’ Harry hoped his father never came across Bunny. He couldn’t imagine them in the same room together.
Harry knocked again on Barclay Jack’s door and shouted, ‘Two minutes, Mr Jack!’
‘Well, if he does give you trouble,’ Bunny said, as they listened to the expletive-fuelled response from Barclay Jack, ‘just mention Bridlington to him.’
‘Bridlington?’ Harry asked. ‘What happened in Bridlington?’
‘Never you mind, pet. You know what they say – what happens in Brid stays in Brid. If you’re lucky, that is.’
The lights went down on a couple of singers – husband and wife – who had once been the (failed, needless to say) UK entry to Eurovision. Jesus, Barclay thought, it was like stepping back in time. Well, it was stepping back in time – they were billed as a ‘Blast from the Past’, aka the dregs of Seventies and Eighties TV. Good decades for Barclay then, but not necessarily now. There were chorus girls kicking their legs up and a ventriloquist whose ‘doll’ was a chicken (Clucky) and who used to inhabit the soul-destroying corridors of kids’ TV. A glitter band that had been – literally – a one-hit wonder and who had been touring in revival shows for the last forty years on the strength of it. A magician who had once had a regular guest spot on something on TV – a magazine programme? Cilla Black? Esther Rantzen? Barclay couldn’t remember. Neither could the magician. Everyone thought he was dead. (‘Me too,’ the magician said.)
And, of course, bloody Bunny Hopps fannying around like a third-rate pantomime dame. It was enough to make a man puke. The theatre was trying to make it into a family show, but they’d been forced by the powers-that-be to put a warning out before the interval that parents with children in the audience should use their discretion about allowing them to stay for the second half as Barclay Jack was ‘somewhat risqué’. Management had asked him to ‘tone it down’ for the matinées. Fucking cheeky buggers. He didn’t bother, he knew they wouldn’t be back. The whole show, the whole season, was written off as something from the Dark Ages. As was Barclay himself.
He’d risen. He’d fallen. He used to be on television all the time, he’d won an ‘audience choice’ award. He’d received hundreds of fan letters a week, compèred Saturday