8

SHOW BUSINESS?

ALL RIGHT, I KNOW WHAT YOU’RE THINKING. YOU’RE THINKING,

Show business? He wants to get into show business? What’s all that about? He might have the power to do literally anything, but he wants to get into show business!

But you have to understand, I didn’t know anything for certain. Not then. It had yet to be proven whether the process could be reversed. Whether I could actually make things happen.

And you learn things in show business: self-confidence, how to project, timing, stagecraft, how to put yourself across to people.

And it’s a good bird-puller too.

And let’s face it, this is my life story and I haven’t got my leg over once yet. In fact, apart from my mum, who only got the briefest of mentions, there hasn’t been a single woman in this at all.

And that’s not healthy.

I was fifteen, my loins were stirring.

‘This is Julie,’ said my Uncle Brian. ‘She’ll show you the ropes.’

They were nice ropes. And between sessions, when she taught me tap and ballet, Julie let me tie her up with them.

Things were looking up already.

Julie taught me escapology.

Things weren’t really looking up.

‘You haven’t been in for a while,’ said Fangio as I entered Fangio’s Bar. ‘Word is you’ve turned in your trench coat and taken to treading the boards.’

‘Watch this trick,’ I told him. ‘Now you see it, now you don’t.’ ‘I’ve seen that one before,’ he replied. ‘But all right, I give up, what did you do with the Statue of Liberty?’

‘It’s right here.’

‘Very clever.’ And it was.

‘Care for some chewing fat?’

‘Don’t mind if I do.’

Fangio passed me over the plate, then that look came into his eye once more. I’d seen that look before. I’d seen it the last time he’d given it to me.

‘What does that look mean?’ I asked him.

‘It means there’s been some guy in here asking for you,’ he said, tipping me the wink.

‘A promoter?’ I tipped the wink back at him. Word was probably already out on the street regarding the talents I was daily acquiring. I could already juggle six sprouts, mime being trapped inside a phone booth and sin g ‘Orange Claw Hammer’ with a spectacular emphasis on the cherry phosphate line.

‘Looked more like a Fed to me,’ said Fangio. ‘He left his card.’ He passed me the item in question. It was a questionable item. I questioned it. ‘Is this the item?’ (I questioned.)

‘You’ve lost me,’ said Fangio.

I examined the card.

Mr J Smith

Department 23

Ministry of Serendipity

Mornington Crescent

It rang a bell somewhere.

‘Is that last orders?’ somebody asked.

‘Not that bell,’ said Fangio.

I further examined the card. This card felt bad. Well, not the card as such, but something about it. Something felt bad. Something smelt bad. Smelt very bad. Smelt very very bad. Smelt— ‘Get a grip,’ said Fangio. ‘It’s only a piece of card.’ ‘Something about this smells bad,’ I told him.

‘I dropped it in the slops pail. Give me a break.’

‘You know,’ I told Fangio, ‘although I’m dead keen on show business, what with it being a potential fanny-magnet and everything, I like being a private detective best. You get to stand about in bars and talk a load of old toot. That’s what I call having a good time.’[19]

‘You might one day have to solve a case.

‘Yeah, that could be hairy.’

‘A hairy case? Surely that would be a sporran.

The bar went silent. I looked up at the clock. It was twenty to nine. Have you ever noticed that when the conversation suddenly stops, it’s always either twenty to something or twenty past something?

No?

Well, it must be me then.

‘The Ministry of Serendipity,’ I said. ‘I wonder what that’s all about.’

‘Possibly some weird parapsychological unit,’ said Fangio, tipping me yet another wink. ‘And Department 23. 23 is an illuminati number.’

‘In the TV series, Tony Hancock lived at number 23 Railway Cuttings,’ I said (knowledgeably).

‘And Mornington Crescent is a railway station,’ said Fangio (perceptively).

‘Ooooooooooo-weeeeeeee-ooooooooo,’ chorused the patrons about the bar (tunelessly).

‘So did this J. Smith guy say anything?’ I asked (enquiringly).

‘He said he wanted to book you for the Christmas staff party,’ said Fangio (cop-out-endingly).

‘We’ll take that booking,’ said my Uncle Brian, who had entered the bar (surreptitiously). ‘And why all the adjectives in brackets?’

‘It’s a private eye thing,’ I told him (genreistically).

‘Yes, well, we have to go. You’re on in eighteen minutes.’

‘Got a gig?’ asked Fangio.

‘Why do you think I’m wearing the gold lamé catsuit?’

Fangio made the face that says, Listen, just because I’ve never seen you with a girlfriend, doesn’t mean to say I think you’re a pou— ‘How dare you!’ I said, striking that face with my fist.

‘My face never said that,’ complained the fat boy from the floor. But I didn’t hear him, because Uncle Brian and I were off to the gig.

We didn’t take the free bus. We took the limo. Well, you have to, first impressions are everything. Come on like a superstar and they’ll treat you like a superstar. After all, as Uncle Brian had explained, nobody really knows anything. So they’ll believe what they think they see.

Small Dave drove the limo. As he was too short to see over the dashboard, Uncle Brian gave directions. I sat in the back chewing my fingernails and repeating the cherry phosphate line over and over to myself with ever-increasing spectacular emphasis. This was to be my night. My big night. I wasn’t going to blow it.

As the limo weaved to and fro across the road, passing through red lights and scattering pedestrians before it, I felt good inside, nervous certainly, but good. I would achieve great things. I would become a superstar. I would pull birds. Lots of birds. Lots and lots of birds. I wouldn’t fail. I couldn’t fail.

Of course, if I’d known then how things would turn out, I wouldn’t have gone. I’d have stayed in the bar and talked toot.

But I didn’t know.

I didn’t know what horrors lay in store.

And.

And, well.

And, well, listen. I can’t talk about this here. It demands a chapter to itself. Quite a long chapter. But a significant one. It’s the next one. I can’t talk any more now. I have to take another tablet and get some sleep.

But I do want to say just this, IT WASN’T MY FAULT.