The Fandom of the Operator

18

I didn’t make it to bed that night. I’d meant to go down to the telephone exchange and take some dictation from Vlad the Impaler. But, frankly, I was sick of listening to him going on and on about the battles he’d won by superior strategies and how the world had him all wrong about being such a bad-bottomed blackguard and everything. And so much of what he was telling me didn’t tie up with my own researches into his life that I’d been doing at the Memorial Library.

Vlad wasn’t telling me all of the truth, and I could see some scholarly script editor going through my manuscript and rubbishing it as grossly inaccurate. I began to pray very hard at night that someone really famous and loved by everyone would die soon and then I could get straight onto them and come up with a big fresh biography that everybody would like to read. Marc Bolan, perhaps, or Groucho Marx, or even Elvis.

But I couldn’t see any of them dying in the nineteen seventies. And I began to worry that I might not make the millions I had been hoping for.

Barry’s hopes, however, were high. For in the fullness of time, which in his case filled to the brim within six months, I found myself attending the launch party for his “biography” of P.P. Penrose: P.P. Penrose: The Man Who Was Lazlo Woodbine.

The launch was to be held at Mr Penrose’s favourite London night club. Which he had written into many of his books as Fangio’s bar, Lazlo Woodbine’s favourite hangout. Where he ate hot pastrami on rye, drank bottles of Bud and talked toot with Fangio, the fat boy barman. The club had changed its name now, as it was under new management. But I was still thrilled at the prospect of treading in the footsteps of the legend. Maybe going up to the bar and ordering a hot pastrami on rye and a bottle of Bud, as Laz would have done. And talking a lot of old toot, as Laz did on so many memorable occasions.

I had been meaning to go to the night club for ages. Not just because of its associations with P.P. Penrose, but because the new management it was under was none other than that of Harry, my brother-in-law, who now answered to the name of Peter. And most successfully too.

Sandra took an age to get changed and made up. She still dressed in black. Even though it was nearly five months since Count Otto had met with his tragic demise. I felt it right that she should continue to wear black, black being the colour of mourning as well as the name of the one being mourned. It was a constant reminder. I felt it was fitting.

I waited patiently while Sandra did all the things that she had to do. I wanted her to look her best for the book launch. And I knew that getting her to look her best took a bit of time.

Sandra required considerable care and attention nowadays.

Considerable maintenance, in fact.

She was no longer the same fiery, feisty, sassy Sandra who had returned from that holiday in Camber Sands. This was a far more subdued Sandra. A well-behaved Sandra. A Sandra who didn’t answer back any more. A Sandra who did what she was told. A Sandra who never left the house without me and only then by the back door and at night. She had been severely traumatized by the sudden death of Count Otto, and although she was now in my care I knew that she would never again be the same person that she had once been.

I myself was bearing up well. It’s a tragic thing when someone you care deeply about dies. It can really mess you up. But you have to muddle through and get on with life, don’t you? Life being so full of surprises and everything.

Not that I missed Otto, you understand.

I didn’t grieve for Count Otto.

Oh no, Otto had got what was coming to him. He had messed about with what was mine and he had paid the price. According to the note he left behind, it was suicide. And the note was genuine. It was written in his own hand and handwriting experts attested to this. The long and rambling account he had written confirmed that a madness had come upon him during the final month of his life. He became a creature obsessed. He eschewed good food and dined on drink alone. He developed strange compulsions. He would spend hour upon end sniffing swatches of tweed in the gents’ outfitters. He became prone to outbursts of uncontrollable laughter. He bethought himself a Zulu king and dressed in robes befitting. He became obsessed with the idea that an invisible Chinaman called Frank was broadcasting lines of Milton directly into his brain.

And so Count Otto had taken out his father’s Luger and blown off the top of his head with it.

Tragic.

But more tragic was the fact that the count had not died alone. The voices in his head had apparently decreed that he should make a human sacrifice before he took his own life.

And this is where, in the previous chapter, I mentioned that things didn’t work out exactly as I had planned. The voice of Frank definitely ordered the count to sacrifice Eric, the landlord of the Golden Dawn. I know this for a fact, because I was the voice of Frank. As I had been to my daddy all those years before. And I know what, through voodoo magic, I said to Count Otto. But obviously in his confused state of mind he misheard what I said and sacrificed someone else entirely.

Which was why I had to do some grieving. Which is why I said that it’s a tragic thing when someone you care deeply about dies. Because the person that Count Otto sacrificed meant a lot to me.

After all, that someone was my wife, Sandra.

Which was why she required so much maintenance nowadays.

Because using the spell I had used upon P.P. Penrose I had raised Sandra from the dead. Being careful that I didn’t make the same mistake as I had with Mr Penrose. I’d dug Sandra out of her grave and brought her home before she’d returned to life.

Or at least to a state of reanimation.

Because, in all honesty, you could hardly say that Sandra was alive any more. She was “undead”, that’s about the best you could say. And, frankly, that was flattering her. When I say that she required a lot of maintenance, I’m not kidding you at all. Bits of Sandra kept falling off and she didn’t smell like a breath of spring. But she did what she was told, or commanded, because he who raises the zombie has total command of it, and there were no more problems with our sex life. Other than for the occasional maggot, but I kept her dusted down with Keating’s Powder.

I was happy with Sandra now. And I know that had she been able to form entire sentences, she would certainly have said that she was happy with me.

I’m sure.

“How are you doing, darling?” I called through the bedroom door. “Do you need any help with your legs?”

I heard grunting, and a dull and uninspired thump.

“Leg fall off again,” called Sandra, whose husky tones reminded me of the now legendary Tor Johnson. “Need glue.”

“Coming, dearest.” And I went to her assistance. “We really must hurry a little – a cab is picking us up.”

“Lion cub?” said Sandra, as I helped her with her leg.

“Cab, not cub,” I said. “Remind me to poke a pencil in your ears. I think they’re clogged up with pus again.”

“Thank you, Masser Gary,” said Sandra, as I got her looking presentable. “Sandra love Masser Gary. Masser Gary love Sandra?”

“Masser Gary love Sandra very much,” I said. “Now get a shift on, or I’ll confiscate your head again.”

I do say that by the time we’d finished, Sandra looked pretty good. She’d have passed for living any day of the week. Except, of course, Tuesdays. And when the cab came to pick us up and whip us off to the world-famous night club, I knew that it was going to be a night to remember.

Which, of course, it was.

I don’t know about you, but I love dressing up. I’ve always been something of a dandy and I see nothing wrong in that. If you’ve got it, flaunt it. And if you haven’t got it, then at least you can make the effort, so the fact that you haven’t got it isn’t so glaringly obvious.

Clothes maketh the man, so said the Bard of Brentford. And I’ll tell you this, I looked pretty damn fab dressed in the height of seventies fashion. High stacked shoes with double snood gambolbars and trussed tiebacks of the purple persuasion. A triple-breasted suit cut from Boleskine tweed (as favoured by Mr Penrose, though of course the style was different when he cut a dash as the Best Dressed Man of nineteen thirty-three). A kipper tie, made from a real kipper, dipped in aspic and with flounced modulations on the soft underbelly that glittered against my shirt of quilted fablon. I looked the business and I did feel sure that one day soon I would actually be the business.

If only someone really famous would hurry up and die.

Over my dazzling ensemble I wore a trenchcoat and fedora, in homage to Lazlo Woodbine. Sandra wore a trenchcoat and a fedora too. All invited guests were required to do so. And of course we wore our masks.

The masks were Barry’s idea. He had to maintain anonymity. The book was published under the name that Mr Penrose had given to him, Macgillicudy Val Der Mar. But Barry didn’t dare to be seen. So he’d come up with the idea that everyone should wear masks. Which suited me fine, as I didn’t want my picture in the paper. Nor Sandra’s: questions might be asked if Sandra was seen again in the flesh. They might well be asked by Harry, who was Peter now. So Sandra and I and Barry were all better off in our masks.

I wore an elegant domino in black-and-white check. Sandra wore a rather fetching facsimile of Roy Rogers’ Trigger.

Well, she wasn’t really up to impersonating ponies any more and I thought she looked good in it. Both masks had nice big mouth holes, so that we could talk and drink and stuff our faces with expensive food, which was what you did at such functions.

At a little after nine of the summery evening clock the cabbie drew us to a halt outside “Peter’s” night club.

Now, I don’t know what gets into cabbies. They seem to live in a world of their own. They take you (eventually) to where you want to go, by a route picturesque and circuitous, and then they charge you some fabulous sum and expect you to pay up without a fuss. And then if you do make a fuss they become surly and make threats about calling the police.

When our cabbie disclosed to me the extent of his charges, I counselled him that he should drive us on a little bit and park up a quiet side road, so I could “deal with the matter”.

Which I did.

Peter’s night club looked simply splendid. It was very posh, with lots of flashing light bulbs on the front. They were very nice flashing light bulbs. Mostly PR177s, although I noted several XP701s and a couple of DD109s. I really knew my bulbs by then. I took a pride in it. Knowledge being power and all that.

The bouncer looked like a right sissy boy to me. He was tall and thin and certainly didn’t look as if he knew how to handle himself. I showed him our gilt-edged invitations.

“Got any drugs?” he asked, as he frisked me.

“No,” I said.

“Good,” he replied. “Pass on, sir.”

“‘Pass on, sir’?” I said. “Do you mean to tell me that you’re not going to try and sell me any drugs?”

“Certainly not, sir,” said the skinny boy bouncer. “This is not that kind of night club. Now, pass on, sir, while I frisk this spastic with the horse’s-head mask.”

“Spastic?” I said. “That’s no spastic, that’s my, er, sister.”

“So sorry, sir,” said the skinny boy. “But her left leg is – how shall I put this? – a bit funny. The foot facing backwards and everything.”

“Ah,” said I. And I corrected Sandra’s foot.

The sissy boy reached out his hands to frisk Sandra, then thought better of it and waved her on. And so we entered the night club.

And we were greeted at once by Harry/Peter. “Greetings,” he said. “And welcome.”

“Good grief,” I said. “Harry, you’ve changed.”

“Who’s saying that to me?” asked Harry/Peter.

I lifted the chin of my mask.

“Gary,” said Harry/Peter. “Good to see you. I haven’t seen you since Sandra’s funeral. Are you doing OK?”

“I’m fine,” I said. “You know, bearing up. But look at you. You’re all slim and stylishly dressed and what about that haircut.”

“It’s a mullet,” said Harry/Peter. “The very acme of style. And as style never dates I shall be keeping it for the rest of my life.”

“And all power to your elbow,” I said.

“And are you still working at the telephone exchange?”

“Job for life,” I said. “And still loving every minute of it.”

“Well, good for you. Go in and mingle. I have to greet guests. Here comes the Sultan of Brunei. See you later.”

I led Sandra into the glittering bowels of the world-famous night club.

Barry sat at a table signing copies of his book. He wore upon his head a paper bag with two eye-holes and a mouth cut out. The ironic wit of this disguise wasn’t lost upon me.

I jumped the queue and tipped him the wink. “How’s it going?” I asked.

“Who are you?” asked Barry.

I lifted the chin of my mask. “And who are you?” I asked.

Oh, how we laughed.

Barry signed me a freebee.

“I shall treasure this,” I said. And then a thought suddenly crossed my mind and I leaned towards Barry.

“Barry,” I said, “a thought has just crossed my mind. If you’re here, who’s manning the bulb booth?”

“My brother Larry. He’s my twin brother, so no one will know the difference.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “Drinks later?”

“Sure thing,” said Barry. “By the way, who’s the spastic? Is she with you?”

“See you later at the bar,” I said.

Now, I don’t know whether you’ve ever been in Harry’s/Peter’s world-famous night club. Probably not, if you’re poor, or just working class, which accounts for most of us, but I do have to tell you that it’s rather swish.

There’s lots of chrome and marble and black shiny stuff and lots and lots of women. Beautiful women, and most of those women have hardly any clothes on.

I looked all around and about, at the place and at the women, and I thought to myself, this is for me. This is the life-style that is for me. The life-style I was born to. Oscar Wilde once said that every man reaches his true station in life, whether it is above or below the one he was originally born into. And old Oscar knew what he was talking about. And not just because he was a homo.

I knew instinctively that this was for me. This was where I belonged.

“Masser Gary buy Sandra drink?” asked my lady wife, the late Mrs Cheese.

“Indeed,” I said to her. “I’ll get you a cocktail.”

I ordered Sandra a Horse’s Neck – well, it went with her horse’s head. I was impressed that this time it didn’t come out of the drip tray and it had a cherry and a sunshade and a sparkler on the top.

The barman told me the price of it and I laughed politely in his face. “I’m with Mr Val Der Mar,” I told him. “A close personal friend. The drinks are on his publisher tonight.”

“Fair enough,” said the barman. “I was only trying it on. I’m saving up for a motorbike.”

“Stick to fiddling the till,” I told him. “A bottle of Bud for me and a hot pastrami on rye.”

The barman served me with a bottle of Bud. “The hot pastrami is off,” he said. “Irani terrorists broke into the fridge and liberated the last jar we had.”

“I hate it when that happens,” I said. “I once had a pot of fish paste liberated from my kitchen cupboard by members of Black September.”

“Horrid,” said the barman. “My mum was shopping in Asda and had her pension book nicked out of her handbag by Islamic Jihad.”

“Bad luck,” I said. “Weathermen ate my hamster.”

“Isn’t it always the way?” said the barman. “But you’ll have to pardon me, sir, because much as I’d love to go on talking toot with you regarding the crimes committed upon you and yours and me and mine by extreme fundamentalist groups and terrorist organizations and the distress that these crimes have wrought upon you and yours and me and mine, frankly, I can’t be arsed. And as I see Mr Jeff Beck up at the end of the bar calling out to get served, I think I’ll go and do the business. If you know what I mean, and I’m sure that you do.”

“Fair enough,” I said to him. “I hope you die of cancer.”

“Thank you, sir. And if I might be so bold as to mention it, your girlfriend’s left hand is weeping into the stuffed olives. Kindly tell her to remove it, or I’ll be forced to call the sissy boy bouncer, who will politely eject you from the premises.”

“I hope it really hurts when you’re dying,” I said.

“Thank you, sir. Coming, Mr Beck.”

I lifted Sandra’s hand from the olive bowl and folded its fingers around her Horse’s Neck. “Enjoy,” I told her.

“Thank you, Masser Gary,” said Sandra.

“Just call me ‘master’,” I said. “Master Gary makes me sound like a schoolboy.”

“Cheers, masser,” said Sandra, pouring her drink into the vicinity of her mouth.

“I think we should mingle,” I said to her. “There’s lots of famous people here and as I mean to be very rich very soon I want to get used to mingling with rich and famous people. I can get in a bit of practice tonight.”

“Masser,” said Sandra.

“Sandra?” said I.

“Masser, everyone wear mask tonight, yes?”

“Yes,” I told her. “Everyone wear mask, yes.”

“So how come barman recognize Mr Jeff Beck and Harry recognize Sultan of Brunei?”

“Ah,” I said.

“And how come you know lots of rich and famous people be here, if all wear masks?”

“I’ll confiscate your head again if you try to get too smarty-pantsed,” I said to Sandra. “Rich and famous people are still recognizable no matter whether they’re wearing masks or not. It’s only in stupid films like Superman where Clark Kent can put on a pair of glasses and comb his hair differently and not be recognized.”

“Clark Kent is Superman?” said Sandra.

“Shut up and drink your drink,” I said to Sandra.

“Drink all finished. Most of it go down cleavage.”

“Go and speak to Olivia Newton John,” I said, pointing towards the instantly recognizable pint-sized diva. “I’ll mingle on my own.”

And so I mingled. I mingled with the rich and famous. They’d all turned out for the occasion. Because that’s what they do, turn out for occasions. First nights, film premieres, fashion shows, “audience with” evenings. All those events are peopled with the rich and famous. Nonentities need not apply. Because, let’s face it, the rich and famous have to have somewhere to go. Something to do. If they didn’t, then they’d just have to stay at home watching the TV like the rest of us. So the rich and famous go to “do’s” where they’re on the guest list. It’s a very small world and the same rich and famous meet the other same rich and famous again and again. In fact, that’s all they ever meet. Which is why they have affairs and intermarry and divorce and do it all again. In the same little circle. And it’s a tiny little circle. There are two hundred and twenty-three of them. You can look them up and count them if you don’t believe me. There will always be, at any one time in history, exactly two hundred and twenty-three rich and famous people alive and all going to the same places at the same time in the world. Why? I just don’t know, but there it is.

Most of them turned up for Barry’s book launch that night. And I mingled with as many as I possibly could.

But I didn’t have any idea at the time where this mingling was going to lead me and I certainly wasn’t expecting the evening to end in the way that it did.

Which was not a pleasing way.

Although it was certainly different.