Wendy found her mother’s laugh coming out of her. Raucous and unexpected, welling out of her at the hoariest, most obvious dirty jokes. The old comic was quite blue. Every punchline had something to do with arses and cock, tits and what he called ‘Aunty Marys’. He winked and goggled as if he was being suggestive, but there was no suggestion in it. It was all up-front. Act One ended in a long, circuitous, almost punchline-less joke about giraffes in Edinburgh Zoo. Then he whirled off stage, limping slightly.
A dumpy woman in a spangling black dress came on to fill the interval. She sat at the piano and did them ‘Send in the Clowns’ and the sprightly pensioners raced for the bar.
Uncle Pat had some trouble getting out of their row. The seats wouldn’t flap up to let him past and he realised he’d left his painkillers at home. He was wincing.
“Do you want to go home?”
He shook his head tersely.
All through the second act sweat ran freely down Billy Franks’ face, ruining his mascara, his purple eyeshadow. His fluffed-up, dyed-black hair started to flatten. It was soaked and his face was a ghastly, streaky colour. Beside Wendy, Uncle Pat was sweating too, his laughter punctuated by gasps.
Near midnight Billy Franks gave it up and sent his audience home at the height of their laughter. Wendy was relieved: she could get her uncle home.
“We’re going round the back,” he said. “To meet him.”
The dressing room’s walls were white painted breezeblocks. It was in the cellar, and a whole lot less glamorous than Wendy had expected. A spray of irises were on a table and Billy Franks’ comedy suit and shirt were slumped on a chair. The man himself sat flabby and white at his mirror, cold-creaming his face clean. He looked around. “A young lady!” and grasped a golden dressing gown, which he pulled on unhurriedly, staring at the pair of them. “It’s you, isn’t it, Pat?” he asked with a beam of pleasure, quite different to his onstage smile.
The two old men embraced, full of their own aches and pains. Pat said, “This is my niece.”
Billy winked broadly. “Oh, right.” As if it was in his act.
Uncle Pat laughed. “It is, really. Wendy.”
“A lovely lady,” said Billy, and turned back to his mirror. “I was terrible tonight, wasn’t I?”
“You were marvellous,” Wendy said.
“Thank you, but no. I’m putting one over on the audience. I’m exploiting their good natures. They laugh, thinking my gaps and mistakes are part of the show. They’re not, you know.”
“Aren’t you tired of this?” Uncle Pat said. “Week in, week out?”
“Have to, pal. Tax trouble. I never took myself off to retire in Spain. I made all the wrong choices. In the Eighties I should have got myself a big fat lucrative quiz show like all the others did, or I should have retired gracefully to somewhere hot. But I didn’t. And here I am slugging it out still. Same old rotten material.”
“A bit dirtier, though,” said Uncle Pat.
“I know.” Billy looked almost ashamed. “Had to move with the times, eh? It’s my alternative phase. Good, eh?”
Wendy was embarrassed. Billy was talking about something that was new fifteen, twenty years ago. And ‘Alternative Comedy’ was something he thought of as just blue but pretending it wasn’t. To him it was a disruption of comic tradition and one that had kept him off the telly and spoiled his career. Later that night, drunk and maudlin, he told them of his bitterness about comedy moving to telly and if you weren’t on the telly you were cheap and unfunny. “And telly was full of the right faces. All these young’uns with university degrees, all political and proper. Children. Well,” he gave wink. “My face didn’t fit, did it, loves?”
They were having dinner in an Italian restaurant across the road from the theatre. It was deserted, but it kept open late for them. Billy seemed to know the ponderous manager, who brought their dishes himself. They ordered everything and while Wendy set to work ravenously, Billy and Pat ate little. Billy talked and twiddled a whole basil leaf in his yellow fingers.
“I had a film part, though. My breakthrough. Did you see it? Blink and you’d see me.”
“What was it?” Uncle Pat said.
“Carry On Down The Pit in 1984. One of their last Carry On’s. Can you imagine? A farce about the miner’s strike. I did a cameo—recogniseable only to the cognoscenti of the avant-garde comedy fringe. Singing with my little ukulele, with a yellow helmet on my head.”
“I’ve seen it,” said Wendy, hoping she had.
“I did a number with Brenda Soobie. Lovely girl. She must be about sixty now. We were covered in coal dust.”
“Colin will have the video, definitely,” said Wendy. “He loves Brenda Soobie.”
“Everyone loves her,” said Billy morosely.
They were the only customers in the place. The manager lifted the lid on the piano and picked out a tune. He looked across at them and Billy smiled. He reached under the table for his dirty-looking ukelele and wandered across.
“Listen,” Uncle Pat told Wendy.
Billy sang in Italian. A long, complicated song, accompanying himself softly.
When he finished they clapped loudly and he bowed.
Outside he told Pat, “You’re not well, are you?”
“Not long for this world, Billy.”
Billy didn’t say anything.
“I’m waiting to jump.”
“I’ll get us a cab,”
