not have on their person in case they ever got knocked down or run over.
‘Are you showing me these for a reason?’ he asked.
‘To help patient relax,’ Aye answered.
‘Well, that’s the last thing they’re going to do.’
Why started to massage Sid’s big toes very gently, while Aye held his head up so he could see the Chinese French postcards without having to lift his arms in the air. The pictures were of hands and things. Sid recognized Why by the ring on her finger. After looking at the pictures twice through, Aye took them from him and let his head fall back hard on the table, which made his Adam’s apple bounce up and down fast enough to make cider. Why was now massaging the back of his knees. Aye put the pictures back in the folder and put them on the tray. She then picked up a tin of Johnson’s baby powder and powdered him with it, as if it was a salt-cellar and he was a chip. Aye and Why were now standing either side of his shoulders. The lights started to dim on their own. Sid wondered, Am I being watched? Am I part of room 70′s French lesson? He tried to look round for an eye hole but, from his position, could not see one. Powder and hands were everywhere. At one stage he thought he felt five hands, but he dismissed that thought.
‘Please—you have name?’ Aye smiled.
‘Er … Dick.’
‘Dick. Very nice name.’ Why said shyly, ‘You have number two name?’
‘Barton.’
‘Dick Barton. Velly nicee name,’ Aye said, with a resounding slap.
This woman must be the worst actress in the world, Sid thought. The nearest she’d ever been to the East was Ley Ons, the Chinese Restaurant in Wardour Street, and, as far as 69 was concerned, that was the special fried rice on the menu.
Powder was now settling. Another hard slap.
‘Please vill you turn ofer.’
That was the third accent she’d used. Sid did as she commanded just in case she said, ‘Ve have vays of making you turn ofer.’ Forget Edward G. Robinson, Sid thought, as Why tried to walk up and down his spine. But keep an eye out for Curt Jürgens rushing in to tell us all that the Allies have invaded France and the Führer is insane.
‘Over again, please.’
Sid turned, but a little too quickly, before Why could get off the table. She landed on the floor flat on her hot cross bun. Why came out with some language that Sid had only heard once before, when a red-hot rivet had landed on the inside of a ship-builder’s leather apron.
‘Sorry,’ Sid said and got up to try to help Why off the floor. As he did this the lights started to get dimmer. The room was now almost dark, obviously from some timing device. Why put out her hand to grab what was, she thought, Sid’s helping hand, but Sid’s helping hands were under both of her arms. Sid let out a scream that would have sent both Edward G. Robinson and Curt Jürgens running out of the room.
By this time Aye was making her way round to both of them, when, on cue, the room went into complete darkness. Aye tripped over Why’s legs and fell with arms outstretched. Nature being what it is, self-preservation took over, and she held on to the first thing she grabbed. Sid let out yet another scream.
The music got louder and faster. There was a knock on the rice planter and a female voice shouted, ‘Are you all right, Doreen? Doreen, Stella, are you all right?’
‘Switch the bleeding light on,’ Doreen or Stella shouted.
The lights slowly came up. The rice planter was once more in his painful broken position and Sid saw what he took to be Madame La Rochelle standing in the doorway with the eleven-foot negro, both naked.
‘Shut that door,’ one of the girls shouted.
What a great catch phrase, Sid thought. I must remember that.
Madame La Rochelle shut that door. The rice planter must have been in agony. Sid, Doreen and Stella were still on the floor.
Sid laughed painfully. ‘Well, at least it’s been different. Original, even. Stella?’
‘Yes?’
‘How do you feel?’
‘All right.’
‘Probably more shock than anything,’ Sid grinned. He stood up. ‘Well, Doreen,’ he asked. ‘Do I get a refund, or do we do a deal?’
‘Refund?’ She said the word as if she had just heard it for the first time, as in ‘Me Tarzan—You Refund’.
‘Well, it was you who had the thrills. Both of you grabbed me by the orchestras.’
‘Orchestras?’ they chorused.
‘Yes. Orchestra stalls. Now do I get a refund? Let’s say half, or do I tell the police you both tried to rape me?’
All three were standing up. Stella, Doreen and Sid.
‘No refund,’ said Doreen.
‘Okay then,’ Sid mused, ‘we carry on where we left off.’
All three smiled. Doreen nodded, Stella rubbed her bruises and Sid said, ‘Lights, music, action. Doreen?’
‘Yes.’
‘Don’t keep doing that. It doesn’t help,’ Sid said in the darkness.
April, 1976
Sid’s way of earning a living was, to say the least, hard. The idea of his job was to entertain the people, who had paid sometimes £3.50, sometimes £15 per person, for what was loosely called dinner. Dancing was thrown in, rowdies were thrown out and, now and again, dinner was thrown up. Gambling, if permitted, was always kept well away from the entertainment because the management did not like the audience to hear the cheers of a man who had just won seventy quid, or the screams of a man who had just lost seven hundred quid, although they were less against the cheers than the screams. If the star name was big, so was the business; if the star name was not big, neither was the business. Service was normally slow but what’s the rush anyway. The waiters were mainly foreign, the waitresses were usually British and the customer was often hungry. Invariably the room was dark; only the staff could see their way around because God has given all nightclub waiters special eyes. The toilets were sometimes as far away, or so it felt, as the next town. The sound system was the nearest thing to all the bombs falling on London during the last war condensed into two and a half hours approximately.
Sid’s job was to come out on to a small platform or stage and try to tell you how much, thanks to him, you were going to enjoy yourselves. The nightclub audience is not prudish but it will not laugh at a dirty joke unless it is filthy. So the comic feels that he has to gear his material to that audience for safety, the safety of his job. No one is going to pay a comic good money if the laughs are not there, so laughs have got to be found and the safest way is the oldest way—give them what they want. That maxim still applies, from the shows at Las
