The Devil Rides Out (39 page)

Vera was right, it was stupid to turn good money down and wearily I dragged myself into the bathroom for the second shave of the day. The skin on my face was going to resemble a quarter of corned beef at this rate.

The Dueragon Arms in Homerton was a famous East End pub that had once been run by Gay Travers, an East End legend in his own right.

‘I do hope you’re glamorous,’ Mae, the current landlady, whined as we introduced ourselves. ‘We had the Harlequeens on last night. Fan-tas-tic! Took the roof off. You should see their costumes, must’ve cost thousands, all those feathers and beads … Are yours anything like that? I mean after all with a name like the Glamazons you sort of expect something … well, glamorous, don’t you?’

‘We’re a mixture of comedy and glamour, luv. We’ve got some beautiful finale costumes,’ Joyce lied with authority. ‘Wait till you see them.’

Mae didn’t seem very impressed when eventually we trotted out in the fluorescent lime-green sateen fishtail dresses, in fact I think she visibly flinched from the glare.

‘Well, thank you very much,’ she said later, handing over the thirty-five quid fee in the dressing room. ‘Don’t be put off by the reaction, it’s a very nice little act you’ve got, a bit gay but very nice. It’s just that it’s not the sort of thing that appeals to my punters.’

Really? And here’s me thinking that we’d gone down all right.

‘He wants to watch he doesn’t get pleats in his tits,’ I snapped, shoving costumes into my case. It was obvious from her tone that we wouldn’t be invited back so I saw no reason to keep up an air of polite gentility. I was tired, hungry and growing more irritable by the second and this patronizing drivel was getting on my nerves. It seemed that if you wanted to please Mae you had to jiggle a pair of tits with a bunch of beads and feathers hanging out of your bum.

On the way home in the taxi after I’d dropped Joyce off I sat and thought about what Mae had said. She was right. She had only confirmed my own suspicions that the act was boring and if we were to carry on then it was time to up our game. Oh well, back to the drawing board.

The next morning I was up bright and early to look after a family of children who wanted to know why my face was covered in glitter, but seemed satisfied with my explanation that I’d been clearing out a cupboard and had an encounter with an extremely sparkly Christmas tree. Thankfully this job was more or less nine to five, leaving me available for all the work that would soon be pouring in for the Glamazons.

I was hopeless at ringing round the pubs for work. It felt like begging, particularly when it came to haggling over the fee with a landlord who had no idea who you were or what you were like, and if it had been left up to me the Glamazons would never have worked again. Eventually Joyce took charge and managed to fill a few dates in an otherwise empty diary.

I’ve read a few articles over the years about how the Royal Vauxhall Tavern was once a famous music hall where the likes of Marie Lloyd frequently performed, and even how Queen Victoria once paid a visit (hence the Royal) en route to the palace. Although it’s built on the site of what was the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens the tavern has no such romantic past, starting out as a humble lorry-drivers’ pub until the sixties, when the landlady jumped on the drag boom bandwagon and started putting on acts to entertain the mainly heterosexual working-class audience. It hadn’t changed much since then apart from the audience, who, while still being very working-class, were now mostly passengers on the lavender bus. Neither had the decor altered much over the years. I thought it was a dump. South London seemed like another country compared to Crouch End and I didn’t particularly care if I never set foot in the Vauxhall again. Little did I know that it was to become my spiritual home for over ten years and that in time I would learn to love every brick in the place.

‘Take it up with the management,’ Joyce would tell them, fighting me for space in the tiny mirror over the sink, ‘and shut the door please if you’re going to have a slash. We can see what you’ve had for your dinner.’

A further black spot on the Elly’s copy book was the reduction in fee. ‘We can’t afford to pay as much as our competitors as we are a much smaller establishment, but we can guarantee you regular bookings,’ the Annie Walker clone would say, smiling sweetly as she handed us our twenty-quid fee for the night.

It was in a record shop in King’s Cross called Mole Jazz that I first heard Brenda Lee’s unique recording of ‘Saved’ complete with the opening of ‘Bringing In The Sheaves’ – and had an epiphany. In a blaze of light I could see a vision in which both Joyce and I were dressed as Salvationists, me as the fallen woman newly reformed after a life of drink and debauchery and rejoicing that she’d been ‘Saved’ and Joyce bringing up the rear as the chorus, going hell for leather with a tambourine. I rushed home to make a tape.

I would come on in an old kimono and a wig full of rollers, clutching a gin bottle, to Phyllis Diller’s version of ‘One For My Baby And One More For The Road’ and at the denouement, when I eventually collapsed from a combination of grief and drink, Joyce would appear dressed in the uniform of the Salvation Army, complete with bonnet, to Julie Andrews’s rendition of the hoary old music-hall lament ‘She’s More To Be Pitied Than Censured’. Then I would join her in a uniform of my own for ‘Saved’. Perfect except for one thing. Just where does one go to get a Salvation Army outfit?

I left the children waiting in the large, airy reception while a squeaky-clean young male officer escorted me to a room upstairs. I felt the kids gave me the air of a Maria von Trapp and I nearly burst into a chorus of ‘I Have Confidence’ as I skipped up the stairs after Officer Squeaky Clean. The officer who interviewed me was sweeter than Snow White and gave me a selection of ancient uniforms to look through. I chose two of the largest, hoping they would fit us, and a couple of bonnets and left a donation of fifty quid that I hoped would atone for my sins.

Returning to the reception area, I found the children drinking orange juice and eating biscuits supplied by the saintly Officer Squeaky Clean. ‘You do a very good job,’ he told me kindly, which made me instantly feel like the biggest piece of shit that ever slid across a pavement.

I really do have the greatest admiration for the Salvation Army. I’ve seen at first hand the remarkable work they do and since that autumn afternoon in 1979 I’ve always made the odd donation. Once a Catholic, eh?

After a quick change I joined him in another of Chrissie’s five-minute creations: a set of pink chiffon moths’ wings attached to a tiny sequined bra from which two strategically placed tassels hung limply. Covering my crotch and my modesty was an oversized sequin butterfly fashioned out of an old pair of tights and a wire hanger, again with a tassel that swung between my legs. It would take a general anaesthetic to get me to put on something like that ‘costume’ today in private, never mind in public, but I didn’t give a damn then and even had the nerve to go out to a club in it afterwards.

John Gleason, the affable Irish landlord of the Nashville, liked to book two acts for his Wednesday night cabaret. It was a great pub to work in. The stage was huge and lit by a professional lighting rig and the dressing room, surprise, surprise, was a decent size and fit for human habitation. We shared the bill that night with a mime act called Stage Three: Jimmie, John and David, known in certain circles as Elsie, Connie and Miss Hush. Don’t ask.

Hush’s speciality was to strip to ‘Put The Blame On Mame’ dressed in a wig and costume identical to the iconic black satin one worn by Rita Hayworth in the film. He really was extraordinarily glamorous – he literally oozed glamour – and you’d never think that the big bloke in the checked shirt and jeans was the same person as the smouldering redhead slowly removing her shoulder-length glove on stage. Like Joyce, his bulk made him look curvy and voluptuous whereas I just looked like a long streak of piss.

Hush also spoke a different language. ‘I’m just going to the bar to collect the handbag’ translated as ‘I’m off to collect the night’s fee.’ Wigs were shyckles and an offer of ‘getting a nice bit of jarry down the screech at the latty’ meant ‘come to our house for your tea.’ Elsie spoke the same lingo only more fluently. He was the oldest of the trio, bossy and opinionated with a pronounced lisp, and referred to himself in the third person as ‘yer mother’.