The Devil Rides Out by Paul O'Grady Page A

break the news to Diane. Jean wasn’t very happy at my leaving, nor was Molly, and had I known that my going would upset them so much I might have been tempted to stay.
    Diane was surprisingly philosophical at the news that I was off again but wondered what I was going to do for a living down there. Chris had told me over the phone, in all seriousness, that if I ever considered stripping as a way of earning a living then he knew of an agent he could have a word with who booked male strippers for the pubs.
    ‘You don’t have to go all the way,’ he added as an incentive, ‘or be hung like a horse.’
    I considered the offer for all of a second. An image of me swishing around the altar of St Joseph’s as an altar boy to the imaginary beat of a kettledrum and a blaring trumpet sprang to mind. Here was the chance to do it for real, but I knew that I’d be laughed off the stage if I started to get’em off. Revealing my skinny, pasty white frame to a paying crowd was out of the question; I’d rather be horsewhipped than take my clothes off in public, or so I thought at the time. I didn’t know my attitude towards appearing on stage barely clothed was about to change.
Sharon, now four months old, still screamed like the banshee if she suspected that I was about to go anywhere near her, let alone, horror of horrors, attempt to pick her up. I suspected I wouldn’t be missed. In fact, as soon as the whistle was blown at Lime Street Station and my train pulled out, she’d probably get the bunting out and hang it round her cot.
    I said goodbye to friends and lovers and went up to see the aunties before I left. ‘Trust you to get things arse about face’ was Aunty Chrissie’s only comment on my situation. ‘Aren’t you supposed to bugger off to London before the courts get you? Not the other way round?’
    Aunty Anne adopted her priest’s housekeeper voice and an enfeebled manner and hinted darkly that she hoped she’d see me next time I was home, if she were spared, that is, but I was not to hold my breath.
    ‘Jesus, is she in one of her “one foot in the grave” moods? Take no notice of her,’ Aunty Chrissie snorted, rooting around in her purse. ‘Here, take this ten bob and buy yourself some chips from Billy Lamb’s and get a fishcake for the Grim Reaper here, she’s getting on my bloody nerves.’
    I was going to miss my sister’s kids. The latest addition to the family was only a few weeks younger than Sharon and I questioned myself as to why I could feel such affection for my nephew but not for my own flesh and blood. I began to agree with my mother that I was indeed ‘odd’.
    My mother insisted on coming over with me to Lime Street to see me off on the train. She was unusually solicitous as she said goodbye to me on the platform.
    ‘Look after yourself, son, and for God’s sake be a good lad and try and keep away from any trouble, eh?’
I kissed her and boarded the train quickly so she wouldn’t see my eyes welling up. I waved at her from the open window of the door as she stood on the platform watching the train pull out until finally she vanished from sight, then I popped into the toilet for a quick cry before I found my seat.

CHAPTER 3

In Which I’m Introduced to the Finer Art of Drag Artistry …
    C HRIS AND BILLY’S FLAT WAS ABOVE A NEWSAGENT’S SHOP IN Formosa Street, Maida Vale. It was a shrine to every female star who ever graced the stage and silver screen. Movie posters and photographs of their idols adorned every wall. They kept a rabbit in a hutch at the bottom of their bed and a couple of cats. One of them, a petulant Siamese, was known as ‘the Baby’, not due to the urge to satisfy any latent yearnings they may have had for fatherhood but because that’s what Madame Rose called Baby June in the musical Gypsy . Like me they were devotees of Gypsy , but on reflection I doubt they were so keen on the soundtrack after I’d been there for a while as I played it every chance I