He excused himself from the company of the blind man and his brother and went in search of a lavatory. The toilet still had an overhead cistern and a chain with a china handle that said Pull. Back in time, he said to himself, as the water gurgled and frothed; I’ve travelled back in time. The 1973 calendar showed a picture of an old horse and cart.
Lights were on in Gladys Lee’s kitchen, which was next to the john. A sturdy woman of middle age dressed in something that might have been a caftan was bustling about among piles of china.
‘Were you after the coffee, dear?’ she called, as Billing’s head appeared round the door. ‘Won’t be long. You can lend a hand if you like. I can’t find where she’s put the bloody tray. There must be one somewhere.’
He wandered into the kitchen and, in studying the arrangements, took a look at his companion. She was amply designed; brightly painted, florally scented, with a florid way of smoking, as if believing the sleeves of her dress needed to be shaken every time she removed her cigarette from her mouth. Her short hair curled into horns which lay against either cheek. Billing was pleased to see her smoke. All the career women he knew in the States did so.
‘I’m Hugh Billing,’ he said.
‘Oh, so you’re Hugh Billing.’ She came forward loiteringly, having another puff and a shake. Her eyes were a dark blue and surrounded by freckles which made her, in Billing’s eyes, appear intelligent. ‘I’m Alice. I was looking after your mother, this last year or two. Now I’m helping Gladys out, just for today. It seems to be my role in life, so help me.’
They shook hands. As he exchanged a few words with her, Billing listened to her North Country accent, remembering it as if rediscovering a forgotten countryside. Complete with old horses and carts.
‘Your mother thought the world of you,’ said Alice, without a hint of reproof. ‘Have you written any more of them songs of yours lately?’
‘Not lately, no.’
‘I liked that “Side Show”. I’ve got a record of it at home, you know. You’re younger than I thought you were, just judging by your mother’s photos.’
A familiar sensation overcame Billing; like cramp, it made its presence known only when it had set in. She liked him. Fancied him. She wanted a little part of him. Even as he responded by making himself agreeable, he said to himself, ‘This is not for me and I am not interested. From now onwards, I want my life free of involvement.’
Hugh Billing roused the next morning to feel Alice’s heavy body against his. He lay there with his eyes shut, smelling her floral perfume. Wallflower, possibly. It was a movement of hers which had wakened him.
Evidently aware that he was awake, Alice turned and put an arm round him. But it was not sex that interested her this morning. She had a number of complaints to deliver, many of them centring on her landlady, Mrs Chivers, who was making her life unnecessarily difficult.
He listened without comment. He had enjoyed being in bed with this strange and affectionate woman. Sexual excitement had made her cheerful. This morning she needed to offload her woes, her afflictions, which she did in a businesslike way. Despite her conviction to the contrary, little in what she said marked her out as special; neither in her difficulties nor her response to them was there anything that revealed in her a unique essence. Nor did she treat him as in any way individual. He was simply there to be copulated and conversed with.
Gradually he ceased to listen, trying to wonder instead about the role of fornication in modern life, as he often did. Sometimes it led to revelation, to the discovery of a unique human being. That was always a miracle. More often, it was a cover for a rejection of more complex relationships. The number of women who enjoyed sex for its own sake, as men did, seemed on the increase, he thought; they were smoking more too. It was the Pill.
There he paused. He did not want Alice. She was possessing him beyond the call of duty: Mrs Chivers was no concern of his. He thought of all the women who had poured out their secrets to him over the years while he lay there, fondling them, having no secrets of his own he was prepared to offer in return.
Why was he so negative? Why had he not even a Mrs Chivers with her mean peeping-tom habits with which to respond? He was a blank sheet on which women scribbled their inner graffiti. Billing was not displeased with this striking image of himself.
He recalled his dead mother with sorrow. He had neglected her.
‘Did you get on well with my mother, Alice?’
A pause.
‘She liked to swank a bit, did your mother.’
Something in her voice chilled Billing.
‘I must get up. I’ve got a lot to do,’ he said, trying to think of something.
‘There’s a spare towel in the bathroom,’ Alice said, stoical before his abruptness.
Her washing facilities were barely adequate. He recalled with regret Ashley’s cosy little shower-room in her apartment in the Village. Not that he intended to go back to Ashley. He felt a kind of indifference rising in him and feared it. And he was tired of seeing Love Story.
As he washed, familiar music drifted to his ears. Alice was playing his old hit record ‘Side Show’ as she dressed.
Rinsing his face, he glanced up and saw in the mirror that she was looking round the door at him. Only her head and one shoulder appeared. In her eyes was a fixed stare. The stare did not alter when she saw Billing had noticed her. This failure of a human signal unnerved him. He stood motionless, glaring back at her in the mirror. Alice still gave no sign and simply withdrew her head after a while when the record stopped.
Billing buried his face in the towel. More than anything, he dreaded insanity. Insanity. The very word exercised a hypnotic effect on his faculties. He contrasted Alice’s cheerfulness of the night before with her dark mood, her suspicion of her landlady this morning. She had seemed normal enough, but … that stare … perhaps she was schizophrenic.
He had always feared that insanity might be catching. It was definitely time to move on.
Forty-four was an uncertain age for Billing. He recognised it as the age when men take to drink, divorce or homeopathy; but for Billing life had always contained the uncertain. His father, whom he had idolised, had died young, falling from a ladder while painting the guttering of their house. He remembered clutching his sister at the time and weeping – weeping a little more than he need have done, in order to try and impress upon her the solemnity of the event. He had wanted June to care more than she had seemed to do.
He had pursued music vigorously. In music he could drown out the tragedy. As an adolescent in the fifties he got work with small bands; jazz and dance. What he liked best was trad, although, in the early sixties, a lot of other things were happening which threatened trad. Billing wrote a number of compositions of his own and managed to get solo work in various clubs. He played piano. The manager of one club advised him that he should sing, to hold the audience’s attention. In something less than two hours, he wrote words to ‘Side Show’ – loose words, he felt, mocking, yet somehow affectionate about the world.
An agent who heard him sing and play brought Billing into a recording studio. Early in 1962, ‘Side Show’ became Number 1 on what was then still called the Hit Parade. Later in the year ‘Count to Zero’ rose to Number 2. A few months later ‘Crisis’ fared almost as well. Hugh Billing became part of the sixties.
‘Side Show’ remained in common memory and became a standard. He enjoyed no more successes, but the realisation slowly dawned that ‘Side Show’ was likely to pay his way through life. Provided he lived modestly, he need never work again. His manager had arranged an American Tour. He played in fifteen cities then headed for Denver where he had met a girl he liked. He never returned to England.