Still Standing: The Savage Years by Paul O'Grady Read Free Book Online Page B

the police are on your tail.’
    For once I was able to tell her the truth: that I wasn’t Public Enemy Number 1, I didn’t have Scotland Yard after me and the reason I was moving back ‘oop north’ was simply because living conditions were becoming intolerable in London, the unpredictable and lengthy hours that I was expected to commit to working for Camden Council were a bind and I desperately needed a change.
    ‘But why Yorkshire?’ she asked, making it sound as if Yorkshire was on the other side of the world.
    I told her I had the offer of a job and somewhere to live.
    ‘Doing what?’ She was still deeply suspicious.
    ‘Oh, working in pubs and clubs all over the place,’ I replied airily. It was after all near to the truth.
    ‘As what?’
    ‘Catering,’ I said without missing a beat, ignoring the image that flashed across my mind of me half naked on the dance floor of the Keighley Fun House stripping to ‘Fan-Tan-Fanny’.
    ‘Waiting on and working behind a bar, you mean,’ shesaid flatly, unable to hide the disappointment in her voice.
    ‘I’ll be able to come and see you more often,’ I said optimistically, as if that little drop of oil was going to restore calm to any potentially stormy waters.
    ‘Well, as long as you give me plenty of notice,’ she announced grandly. ‘I’m hardly ever in these days, if I’m not up at our Sheila’s or Brendan’s I’m at Mass or the Mothers’ Union. I’m an independent woman now, you know. I can go and come as I please, you can’t expect me to hang around waiting for a visitation from you.’
    I told her I’d ring her secretary and book an appointment.
    ‘You do that. Now you’d better get off the phone, this must be costing you a small fortune.’ My mother still thought in terms of trunk calls and considered the price of a phone call anywhere outside her immediate radius ruinous. ‘I’ll drop you a line, ta-ra.’
    After I’d been living in Slaithwaite for a couple of months and as we had no work booked in for the best part of a week, I took the opportunity to pay my mother a long overdue visit. Hush went down to London to buy wigs and I caught the train to Liverpool, taking the time during the journey to consider the pros and cons of telling her what I was really doing to earn a crust.
    I reasoned that turning up and then casually springing on her over a corned beef sandwich that I was part of a drag act might bring on a bit of a ‘light blue touchpaper and retire’ moment, but diluting it to cabaret act, a more acceptable title, I thought, might just soften the blow and reduce the risk of an explosion. There was no possibility of her ever coming to see me and if she wanted me to go into detail, which she more than likely would, I’d tell her I did comedy sketches and add,just to test the water, a little bit of drag. It might go down well with her, having a cabaret artiste as a son instead of a barman. After all, she hadn’t been overjoyed at the news that I was working in catering, showing utter contempt for what she considered to be ‘waiting on people’, a reminder of her days as an overworked, underpaid slave in domestic service. One thing I was certain of, though, was that breaking the news I was a drag queen would send her apoplectic. It would sound far too News of the World , a paper you didn’t dare bring into the house as she called it a pornographic rag and said the only thing in it you could believe was the date.
    No, if I’m going to say anything then best stick to the less subversive title of cabaret artiste, I told myself, putting it out of my mind for the moment and settling down to a bag of crisps and Titbits magazine.
    She’d obviously just got in as she was standing in the kitchen waiting for the kettle to boil and still wearing her headscarf.
    ‘Is that you, Paul?’ she shouted as I let myself in at the front door. ‘You’re just in time. D’you want a cup of coffee? And a ham roll?’
    It was nice to be home. I