The Death of a Song and Dance Man

I was once in conversation with a philosophical bride to be from Barrow-in-Furness. She was recounting the previous night's tales of excess. I was selling her a raspberry ripple. This is often how it works, I tell stories, people tell me theirs. I've no idea why they do, but it certainly helps to shift the ice cream. She was half-laughing, half crying as she told how her maid of honour had been caught in flagrante upon the plinth a statue of a civic notary. Her subsequent discussion with the local constabulary had taken a turn for the abusive and she was now banged up, it was touch and go as to whether she'd make it for the ceremony.

"Still" said the philosophical bride to be "I suppose it'll be a good story."

"In the end" I replied "All that's left of us is stories." She smiled at me and went on her way, thoughtfully licking her Raspberry Ripple.

So I should like, if adequately able, to tell you in brief the story of Alan Capstick, for many years the main draw of the Edgecombe Pavilion's Summer Season "It's The Real End of the Pier Show." He was a performer of rare ability to transcend the usual barriers of age or social class which sort jokes into categories, he was a man who made them all laugh, made them all cry, held them all in the palm of his hand, night after sold out night.

I say if I am able for a reason. I am unsure not only of my ability to do him justice but, of late, I am becoming less certain in my belief in the power of stories themselves. As a man who has held them as his stock-in-trade for more years than he cares to or, for that matter, is capable of remembering, this turning of the tides affords me a genuine disquiet. My son would call it a disturbance in the force, but that's not a phrase I'd use.

But I'll try to put my reservations aside for the moment, because this is important; even if I don't have many stories left in me, I need to make sure that I tell this one, because if all that becomes of us is stories then someone needs to get on with the telling, and if not me then who?

He'd always said that it was going to be his last season, but then, he'd said that every season for the last ten years. They're not what they were, of course, the variety shows; but then, you knew that already. You've probably got the town sketched out roughly in your head already: Fish and Chips, ice cream kiosks, families being slowly replaced by stag and hen parties down the years, faded posters peeling from the walls, a shadow only of it` glory days. You're not far wrong, either, so I won't waste your time or mine describing the place any further. If this were a different sort of story I'd spend on the drunks and the drug addicts, the hunched figures in doorways. But that wouldn't be the point. And whilst it's true that years ago I'd see Alan being driven to the stage doors in a Silver Roller, and it's also true that more recent seasons has seen him walking up, slightly slower and slightly greyer each year, it's still true that right up to his last performance it didn't matter which version of Alan turned up, when the lights went on and the band struck up his signature opening number "Hello Summer" he was, always, ineluctably, the same. That's the story that matters.

And there's quite enough reality knocking around elsewhere as it is. So let's leave it aside and concentrate for a moment on...

Showtime. Even if the last few audiences were a handful of people who'd stumbled in out of the sleet, showtime was always showtime, and the performance was the same, every time: from "Hello Summer" through his tap-routine to "The Ladies in the Park" before twenty minutes of stand up, half an hour of bingo calling and the closing medley of "Songs from the Shows" he'd hit every mark, every note and finish to the precise second, every time, before being in the bar of the Victoria Hotel at ten past eight, prompt, just as Frank, the barman, finished topping his pint of Best, with a nip of Bruichladdich on the side. Like clockwork, every night, with machine-tooled precision. Give them what they want and don't outstay your welcome, he always said

I want to tell it to you precisely as it was, because it doesn't do to let the story take over and run riot. If it did there'd be a redemptive reconciliation with his wife, Eileen, just before his final performance, and Lord knows that didn't happen, nor did he make it to the wedding of his daughter, not that he'd been invited. It was a heart attack that did for him, unsurprisingly enough. Maybe it would satisfy some sort of dramatic convention if he'd had it on stage, but dying during the act is just plain unprofessional and Alan was, to his fingertips, a pro. It was me that raised the alarm, as it happens, as I said, he was like clockwork, and so the moment he didn't walk past I beckoned over a bored looking bobby who was patrolling the promenade to assist any reveller menaced by gulls and told him that he'd better get round to Alan's place, sharpish.

He looked dubious, but it wasn't like he had anything else to do. They found Alan slumped by an occasional table. And that was that.

Thirty years I've worked this kiosk, and whilst I know the value of patter, of stories, I also know their worth. The don't pay the rent, it's the bubble-gum ice cream and novelty rock dildos (see, you were right about the hen parties) that do that. But what they do do is grease the wheels, they help to keep the show on the road, until eventually you run out of stories, and you run out of road, and what remains of you is the telling of them.

So whilst, I admit, it's not a very good story, it's still one that's worth telling. There won't be any more "It's the Real End of the Pier" shows. I've heard they're turning the pavilion into what they call a "Community Hub", whatever that means. Still, I'll be here for a while yet, I reckon. One scoop of butterscotch and one of vanilla? Very nice, that'll be two pounds ten, please.

Perfect scrambled eggs

I've said I'll make scrambled eggs for our breakfast, I've no idea why.

I didn't know you could cook, says Clare and to be honest, nor did I until this moment.

I've been having problems with my memory, lately. The sense that I'm living other lives at the same time.

Have you done this before asks Clare and she looks dubiously at me as I whisk the eggs. Of course I have I say feeling sure that I have,` I must have done, otherwise how else am I doing this now? Clare is too beautiful for words, so I never tell her how beautiful she is, this is a position that makes sense to me but has never made sense to her.

I don’t want to find out what would happen if I said it, is what.

I have read many books and seen many films where a beautiful woman has a loose strand of hair which her lover, or the person who will become her lover, tenderly brushes back from her face. Clare has a loose strand of hair and I step over to her and brush it back, and she looks at me with faint puzzlement saying it’s not like me. I return to my whisking. I enjoy watching the eggs become homogenous, watching the strands of white and yellow whirl together. I’m aware that Clare’s watching me and it feels like this is some sort of achievement, like I have somehow won something. She is too beautiful for words.

Toast pops from the toaster, it is the perfect golden shade. I slide butter into the pan, gently melting it so that it doesn't burn, I tip the eggs into the pan, slowly and gently, like I’ve done it before. I haven’t done it before. But clearly I have, many times, as the eggs are perfect. I keep the heat low, I draw them in from the sides of the pan, nothing sticks, nothing burns, they have a gentle wobble as I tip them onto the plate. I twist pepper onto them like it’s something I always do. The toast is perfect, Clare is perfect. Something’s not right.

The next morning she asks me to make them again and and I lie there looking at the ceiling and know, for certain, that I have never made scrambled eggs before in my life, and that I have no idea how to, I genuinely wouldn’t know where to start. I look at the ceiling and mourn the man that she thinks I am, and I mourn us, as I know now that whatever this was is over. There was a fragile bubble, a moment in time where I was someone who could do this sort of thing, but that moment is past.

It is a curious sensation. I pity Clare. I pity the woman I adore. I don’t have pity left over to spare for myself, obviously, this is all my fault. Well, part of me, anyway. I think back to yesterday, how it felt to cook for her, the sense of accomplishment, and I know for a fact that I’m incapable of doing it again. I can't remember what I did. There is then, a choice of about three strategies. I can try, fail, and attempt to be charming about it, but she’ll see my failure, and see through it at once and know me for what I am, a hopeless fraud, this much is certain. I don't think I could stand her contempt. I can explain that I can’t do it any more, make an excuse, a hurt wrist, maybe, no chance of whisking. But then maybe she’ll offer to whisk.

Or I could just wait until she goes to the bathroom, leave, and never come back or think about her ever again. I have managed to forget so much down the years, so many times, that this seems by far to be the simplest option.

I wonder how many relationships end this way, more than you’d imagine, I bet.

Begin Again

The taste of salt in my mouth.

Looking down, I see that it’s being whipped up from the sea, rising in flurries of spume from a choppy, inky surface which looks much closer than it did an eighth of a second ago. I’ve forgotten who I am again. I have a feeling that this keeps happening.

Let’s see. The chill of an early spring spray. Alan rings a bell. Alan….Tait?

I am Alan Tait. No, not right, Alan Tarrant? Aaron Tent. Abi Trent. Barry Trentham. Benny Tendon. Benji Tunstone. Terry Benzo, Larry Bonzo,Bonzo Dog. Barry Bungo. Harry Tailspoke. Lenny Bespoke. Perry Toothpaste. Perry Mason. A Mason? Am I a Mason? Seems unlikely.

I am running out of time. Ah.

Dick Dastardly. Howard Orange. Micky Quinn. Tom Raworth. Princess Michael of Kent. Matt Fallaize. Clare Goalby. F.W de Klerk. Graeme Swann. Grahame Greene. Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, John, Paul, George, Grub. I’m not Ringo, no-one’s Ringo. Not even Ringo’s Ringo. Bingo Bango, Gary Andrews Julie Andrews, Andrew Barber, Harry Palmer. Larry Calmer. Jerry Mulligan. Yes we can. Hannigan. Finnegan.
Finnegan!

Mmmm aaaaaa ddddd

Ah, it’s close.

(the sound a body makes when it hits a shingle beach from a height of 400ft)

(the stillness of the world the moment after, only a shudder from the sea, a Turnstone working the shoreline)
 

*
A bright light without my closed eyes. Registering as a sharp, painful red.

My head.

A voice.

“You were quite close, that time, Daniel, it was a definite improvement on your previous try, a touch gauche in the mid-teens, but you've definitely ironed out a couple of the more glaring flaws” (Daniel, of course, can’t imagine why I didn’t remember before. I am Daniel Finnegan. Man of means. Husband to Eleanor. Father of Joseph, Holly and Alice. Son of Thomas and Marie. Inept guitarist. Failed writer. Reasonably successful in advertising, to my own self-disgust. Five ten and a bit. Blue eyes. QPR fan. Dead, I’m fairly certain. I’m also fairly certain that I’ve been here before)

“Good?” I ask, it seems an appropriate response.

“Yes, good. Well, better” I feel faintly pleased, absurdly, I get the impression that I'm about to get a star put up on a wall-chart. The voice speaking is warm and authoritative, I feel better for pleasing it. My eyes are still tightly screwed shut. Presumably they haven’t yet got the message that I’m no longer hurtling towards a shingle beach. “I’ll be back shortly, Daniel, just try to relax, Mr McInnes will be along shortly and I’ll try to get back to you as soon as a I can, busy day today.”

There’s the sound of a door closing, with a fairly authoritative click, and as if that’s the signal they needed my eyes, blinkingly, open up.

It looks like a doctor’s surgery for the most part. The first thing I see is a coat-stand by the door, with a a tasteful looking black overcoat hanging from it. Matching hat, too, I see.There’s a desk, a couple of photo frames on it. I wander over and look at them, they’re the sort of photos that come in frames when it’s the frame for sale. Stock photos, a bland and generic sunset, a dog sticking out of a bucket. A Scotty, looks like. There's a desk jotter of the type that drugs companies hand out, but the script on it is indecipherable. In the corner of the room there’s a metal filing cabinet, stuffed with files, none of the doors are properly closed. I wander back to the couch I woke up on and stare at the window, it's blank outside.

So, to recap, this morning I, who I now realise to be Daniel Finnegan. Dan to his friends, Danny to his really good friends, woke up and realised that something catastrophic had gone wrong. I didn't know what, but it wasn't something I could analyse, I only knew, as surely as I knew I had hands and feet, that I was done, that was it for me. I drove to the coast and threw myself off a cliff. And now I'm here, wherever here is. I should be freaking out, but I'm not.

I suppose, on one level, it's nice to have an answer to the question, is this all there is? Apparently not, but, annoyingly, I rather feel that I already knew that. Like the pub quiz question that you get right just as they read the answer out. Of course, that was it all along.

I do wonder though, why I'm not more upset, why, for example, I haven't started worrying about the kids, or my wife, how this will affect them. Why aren't I worrying about that?

"Because you're an egotistical solipsist, Danny. But don't worry too much about it lad, most people are." A tall man, who I take to be Mr McInnes says. I didn't notice him come in. "You're coming along all right, but we've got a few goes yet to get rid of that part of you."

I look up into a broad, beaming and honest face, the sort of face that you can tell stuff to. He extends a hand and I grasp it, the handshake is firm, but not going for that knuckle -crusher that big types like him tend to favour, it feels weirdly reassuring.

"So" I ask him "what happens next?"