Director's Cut (22 page)

They all looked at the faces in the room to make sure there had
been no infiltration and noticed that one or two of the more dodgy
customers were slipping quietly to the back.

Roger went on, “I don’t give a monkey’s fuck about the Queen or
her fucked-up family but I suppose we should feel sorry for them. It
must be a bind to be born knowing that you’d never have to do a day’s
graft in your life.”

The colonel seemed embarrassed and looked from left to right and
made a conscious effort to force his rigid shoulders – without the
flashes – to stand at ease.

Roger was on a roll and continued, “And I want the Muslims to
know they’re unwelcome.”

“They already do,” Albert said.

Nervous Sid’s face cracked into a dark question mark. He said,
“Don’t get it.”

Roger explained, “Think about it. The Muslims in this country call
themselves British, right? Well, if they’re British then I’m a fucking
Chinaman. Also, in one hit, I can lose the Scottish, the Irish and the
Welsh. Now that isn’t bad.”

Albert looked relieved and said, “I’m English.”

“No you’re not,” Roger said. “You’re a shonk. And when I change
the name you’re banned along with everyone else. Never trust a shonk,
mate. Turn your back on the fuckers and you’re likely to end up
crucified.”

The colonel said, “Jew boys caused us a lot of trouble in Palestine.
Fifty years later they’re still causing it.”

“They’re causing it in Westminster too.”

Albert looked saddened and his head began to shake, “An
unfortunate appearance I have, a larger nose than most, but a Jew that
does not make me.”

Roger said, “Maybe not, but I’ll guarantee what you haven’t got in
your trousers does. Listen son, the English hate being lied to. That’s
why we don’t like the Americans. We’ve seen your eyes when Sid
brings in one of his rings. They light up like a couple of Roman
candles. We can see them in the dark. Don’t come it with us. You
might just as well try and hide a Scouse accent. You’re more Jewish
than George Bush.”

Albert shook a flustered head. “George Bush isn’t Jewish.”
“Isn’t he? Isn’t he? Well, the way he hates the Arabs he fucking
well should be. But there’s something else about you, I’ve noticed, that
marks you out as a child of Israel – apart from your bowing down to
the golden calf, that is – you never smile. One day you’ll try it and
your fucking face will fall off.”

Someone muttered – it might have been the man who looked like a
double-glazing salesman but more likely it was Mr Lawrence, “It
sounds like a load of old
Cretan
Bull to me,” but the others didn’t get
it. They might have done had they been Greek.

Roger picked up a sign and began pinning it to the wall. It read: No
bad language or drug taking will be tolerated. No children under 25.
No trainers. No football shirts with the exception of Everton. White
South Africans welcome.

The last bit excited the colonel and it showed in his eyes but

surprisingly it didn’t bring any colour to his cheeks. He was tired and
he knew it. It wasn’t just age that had crept up on him, but life itself.
Or rather, it was this new age that had crept up, where values – oldfashioned
values – had been worn away. He wondered whether

winning the war had been worth it, particularly since Blair had come to
power. The gradual intrusion of faceless bureaucrats into his and
everyone’s life had been as imperceptible as it had been inexorable. It
had been a ‘
death of a thousand cuts’
. He was a slave in his own
country. It would have been easier had the Nazi storm troopers kicked
in his door for then he would have known the enemy. What Tony Blair
and his cronies had done was nothing less than treason. How he
wished to have those men in the sights of his old Lee-Enfield. The
Somme, wasn’t it? He had been there, hadn’t he? It was all so damned
hazy now, like Iwo Jima and My Lai. But how satisfying it would be to
put a 303 into Blair’s grinning gob.

It was yet another dawn of disillusionment and dishonour, yet
another cockcrow of contempt and another turning, in cold forgotten
graves, for glorious forefathers.

He grimaced.

Christ! One of those storm troopers had shot him.

His mouth opened wide and left his false teeth hovering. Poligrip
had not done the trick.

The stab of pain was deep.

He finished his drink, carefully placed his glass in the pool on the
bar and sagged gently to his knees. His bony misshapen fingers felt for
his medals and then clutched at his chest. He said, “Would someone be
kind enough to send for an ambulance?” and then he keeled over on to
his grey face.

Roger said, “If you're going to use the phone make sure you leave
the money.”

Nervous Sid said, “999 is fucking free.”

“Is it? Is it? Make sure Gordon Brown doesn't hear about that!”
Albert grunted, “The beer it must be.”

A bargirl dropped her filthy tea towel and burst into tears. Mr
Lawrence doubted her sincerity for, as the late colonel had often said,
women are good actors and can turn on emotion at the drop of a hat.
Even so, it was a fair turn, and he watched her wailing and sniffing
back her false tears. Eventually she gained enough composure to sob,
“It wasn’t the beer. He was drinking gin and tonic. Maybe he didn’t
exercise enough!”

And that had a few people, including the half-pint drinkers, raising
their various eyebrows. A heart attack was one thing, but the thought
of exercise was quite another.

Out of all that is bad comes an occasional good: lunch was extended. By the
time the ambulance arrived, and the stretcher with its bearers, the colonel's
medals had disappeared but Albert looked smugly satisfied, his chin beneath
the fall of limp grey hair jutted higher and his eyes, black beads, concentrated
on something on the ceiling. In each was the spark of a Roman candle.

It had been Albert who had leant over the colonel in what appeared to be an
attempt at the kiss of life. He had pulled back at the last moment feeling faint
at being so close to the ground, a sensation that

tall men often experience.

He arrived back at the shop in a frivolous mood. He took off his hat and aimed
at the hat stand and missed and his chortle could be heard on the pavement outside.
He had all but skipped to the counter before he stopped abruptly and turned
back to the window. There, with their backs to him, stood two splendid dummies,
life-size and life-like: Father Christmas and a female assistant. Santa Claus
carried a white sack overflowing with brightly wrapped presents and his assistant
wore a red cape, some kind of red bodice, black suspender belt and nylon stockings.

For a moment Mr Lawrence was open-mouthed.

They stood either side of the ballerinas. Artificial snow frosted the window
and covered the floor where they stood. The cold ivorycoloured skin of the mannequins
glowed red as did the snow, caught in the soft glow of red window lights that
blinked on and off. He wondered whether Santa's assistant went out in her underwear,
and whether she'd feel the cold, or whether M&S or Robot City were searching
for a missing mannequin complete with matching set.

Paul had crept back, like he had crept to the barber-shop, chancing that his
suitor was elsewhere.

During the afternoon Mr Lawrence had an accident with the guillotine, although
it wasn't entirely his fault. Had it been his left hand it would have been worse.
He was left-handed, as most first-rate artists were. It took him an hour to
stem the bleeding and, even then, a little blood seeped through the bandages.

The remainder of the shortened afternoon was spent in unpacking a crate of oriental
oils. It wasn't easy one-handed. Curiously, in the chest of fifty there were
half a dozen that caught his eye. By a different artist, signed Dyson, they
were good. Landscapes in a darker, subtle key; wild clouds and gentle hills,
wind blown and heathery, with just a post in the foreground, or a single spindly
tree. But the composition was excellent and the detail finely

observed.

He put the six aside, leaving the mystery for another time, for time had flown
and it was opening time. But there was something more than that tonight and
Mr Lawrence was quite excited. He'd invited Laura to the theatre. They were
meeting in The British.

Laura said, “What on earth have you done?”

“A little accident in the shop. Nothing much.”

“Such a big bandage for nothing much.”

“Does it really show?”

“The red does, Mr Lawrence. If you keep your hand bent down, then it won't show
so much.”

“Yes, I'll do that.”

“How awful about the colonel,” Laura said but she didn't seem too
upset. She was dressed in a very short navy-blue pleated skirt that drew
the eyes of the men in the room away from the bargirls, a white T-shirt
with Michael Winner's face on the front and a denim jacket. Unusually
for Laura there was plenty of navel on show, surprisingly flat navel at
that, for Luscious Laura was a shapely girl. Her hair was tied back
skullcap tight and a hint of make-up lightened her skin.

She pointed to Michael Winner's red face whose ears flapped
Charles-like on her breasts. “It's the only thing I've got with a theatre
connection,” she said. “What do you think?”

“I think he's a film director, or was. Now he writes about the
restaurants he's visited and he stars in silly advertisements. I've not
seen his films.”

Roger overheard, couldn't help himself, and cut in, “Best thing
about him was the bird he used to live with. But she left him. Can't
think of her name. But tasty. Although, having said that, one could
argue that
I’ll Never Forget What’s’Isname
was his best film. In fact it
was just short of a great film.”

The barber said, “I suppose you could, if you wanted to argue.
Frankly, whether you like that or
Death Wish
, he is now a has-been.
He hasn’t done a thing for years.”

Sid the Nerve showed up and put in, “At least he’s a has-been.
We – we’re a bunch of hasn’t-beens.”

“Mr Lawrence isn’t a hasn’t-been,” Laura said. “He’s a painter.”
Roger glanced at Mr Lawrence. “So is Bill Richards up the road
who paints the double-yellow lines on the road outside. But we’re
getting away from the point.
Death Wish
was a good film. I'm a great
believer in old-fashioned retribution. There's nothing finer than
revenge served on an empty stomach. It should be a basic human right.
Leave forgiveness to the sacrament of Penance – for you heathens,
that’s the confession. In that respect the Arabs have got it right.”
Mr Lawrence looked a treat in his best clothes. Apart from the
bandage. It tended to draw the eye.

Roger asked, “What happened to you?”

“A little accident with the guillotine. Nothing to worry about.”
“I'm not worried, mate. Just curious.”

In the corner Rasher's minders looked glum with nothing to do,
their half-empty pints looked flat, their cigarettes in the ashtray had
burned away leaving lengths of wasted ash.

Mr Lawrence glanced at his watch and said to Laura, “It's time to
go.”

And Luscious Laura put her arm through his and sashayed to the
door letting all and sundry know that she was going up in the world.
The art world. The theatre. She was on her way. So there.
They joined a chattering crowd passing beneath the life-size cut-out
greeting from Anthea Palmer into the theatre's optimistic foyer where
the smell of fresh paint still lingered.

Mr Lawrence hadn't been to the theatre since the 1971 revival
of
Showboat
, and it was an altogether new experience for Laura. Once
they
’
d settled in the darkened auditorium and the curtain went up she
sat transfixed, as though not believing her own eyes.

The people next to them glanced at the bandage and eased slightly
away.

After the show-stopping hits
‘We Need More Female Gynaecologists’
and
‘This isn't what Nye Bevan had in Mind
’
, about an hour into
the show, the routine which led to the intermission took place.

Anthea Palmer looked radiant in her underwear and high heels, just
as she'd done in a thousand newspaper photographs, snapped on the
beach in tiny bikini briefs, topless if possible and, if not, then a shot of
her behind. Behinds were definitely the thing, nowadays. She had a
passable voice too. She sang the song, the song from the show that
seemed to be heading for the Christmas number-one slot. It was played
non-stop on the radio.

Laura had been singing it as they made their way up the

Carrington's majestic steps.

Oh, Mr Lawrence, I think I love you

Oh, Mr Lawrence, I think you care...

Oh, Mr Lawrence, I think I love you

Oh, Mr Lawrence, we’re almost there...

The act finished and people moved to the various bars but Mr
Lawrence remained rooted to his seat. Laura shook him.

“What?”

“It's half-time, Mr Lawrence. It's time for a burger and a beverage.”
“My goodness, my dear. I was totally carried away.”

“They were singing about you, Mr Lawrence. Wasn't it good? It's
the best thing I've ever seen. All that cross-dressing. Just as well Paul
didn't come. It might have put ideas in his head.”

“Indeed,” Mr Lawrence said. “And he's got enough of those
already.”

What they didn't know as they sat enjoying the show, was that Paul
was in the audience too. Up in the gods, two rows from the back, he sat
utterly mesmerized, not knowing what time or day it was. He found the
idea of men in women's clothing more than just a little exciting.
There was an easiness about the paid for evening. A candle flickered
from an old bottle, the neck of which was gobbed with wax. Over her
crisp fried-prawn jhuri she told him that she was saving her money to
go to America and that her mother had found out about her 'sideline'
and had gone 'ape', threatening her with all kinds of harm, including
kicking her out of the house. None of it seemed to bother her for her
soft looks seldom hardened. That is not to say that her looks were
anything other than luscious but they maintained a gentle, yielding –
even compassionate – quality which all men, everywhere, found utterly
captivating. She was quite perfect, an Eve among Adams, at home and
at ease in this Indian Eden.