'I didn't tell her much at all darling!' Sharon's on the phone being contrite which is about as rare as Boris Johnson being humble so I allowed her space to backpedal. I'd admonished her for telling Sarah about Tickler's overtures since Sarah is the over-excited filly you confide in when you want the whole world and his wife to know what you're up to.
'I just said that you were the obvious candidate to get the ball rolling!'
'Why am I the obvious candidate?'
'You flashed your pecs with the man, aka Jerome Jackson, in "Jericho" did you not?’
'Sharon, men didn't have over-developed pectoral muscles in the 1970s. It wasn't deemed necessary. I'll show you some photos if you want.'
'No dear, I haven't had my breakfast yet.'
Sharon had phoned me after apparently receiving a panicked phone call from Tickler imploring her not to let anyone - anyone! - know he was touting his memoirs unless they had been sworn to secrecy on the pain of death. It seemed there had already been gossip around the hallowed halls of the politicians' whorehouse, aka House of Commons, but then there's more rumours and tittle tattle in that place than there is sperm in a bull elephant's ejaculate. So if nothing more concrete arises it'll soon be forgotten.
Even so, I passed on the same message about absolute confidentiality to Kieran and Sarah. Kieran is particularly vehement as far as Tickler is concerned because he doesn't want to lose him. He smells dinero like a great white shark smells blood, though the latter's infinitely more cuddly and charismatic. Tickler held some of the great offices of State plus he debuted in 1997 with phoney Tony and Kieran's creaming in his pants about a seven figure sum.
'That would depend entirely on the gossip and the marketing,' Sharon said the next time we were on the phone. 'Not a chance of that figure unless Tickler's ready to reveal something hitherto undisclosed.'
'Showmey Romey.'
'What?'
'Show me what you got Jerome. Give us your secrets. His nickname was Showmey. All one word.''
'Showmey?' As if Sharon can't get her head round the epithet.
'He acquired it during "Jericho". On account of Romey - Jerome - having the predisposition to walk backstage from the toilets to his dressing room divested of the bottom half of his attire.'
'Letting it all hang out as it were?' Sharon didn't sound that surprised
'Butt-naked, as the expression goes. And there was a lot to hang out. He claimed that the leather trousers wardrobe had given him made him sweat too much. And if the women could walk around topless why couldn't he show all by walking around bottomless?'
Sharon whelped with what sounded like delight. 'Can you imagine that happening today?'
'No. And I don't suppose he wants to be reminded of it.'
'Nor how he got into politics in the first place.' Sharon's voice suddenly sounded distant and hurt.
'I'm sorry Sharon.' I heard her draw breath on the other end of the line. 'I didn't know you didn't know,' I added as if I was composing a bad song lyric.
'It was common knowledge in the industry about my dad Ant, but why would I have known anything about that specifically? I was a child.'
'Thought you might have heard when you were older.'
'It never came up.' It's a strange old world. I'm supposed to be gently taking Sharon to task for betraying confidences, but it's me who's feeling guilty. 'I started SKA in 1991. The next year dad recommended Tickler as a client. He'd given up musical theatre and wanted a different agent.'
'You had no idea even then?'
'I was puzzled as to why dad recommended him. He had all the acting charisma of a bad drama teacher.'
'Just like Justin Trudeau then. No coincidence that they have the same initials. There is a God after all.'
'I presumed dad wanted to help him because they had a common interest in saving the Labour Party.'
'What, by making it more conservative and right wing?' I scoffed into the phone receiver.
'No-one knew it was the way things were going back then. Anyway I got him a bit of TV work but through dad he was getting more and more involved in politics. After dad was made a life peer in '93 I hardly saw Jerome again.'
'And then he was elected an MP in '97. When I heard I'd have fallen off my bike - if I'd had one.'
Tickler wasn't really a friend and after 'Jericho' I never ran into him again. Besides, my acting career ground to a halt pretty soon after that and I was working with Pattie by 1982. When Sharon mentioned Tickler three weeks ago it was like a past life suddenly flashed before me: a dream I'd forgotten I had.
I knew Sharon's dad before I knew he was Sharon's dad, if you get my meaning. In fact I worked with him (in a lowly capacity) the same year Sharon was born. When Sharon mooted she was starting an actor's agency I had no idea her parents were theatre royalty, her dad a knight and her mother a dame. Those sort of characters I only encountered in pantomime every bloody Christmas. (Oh how I hate that genre.) It was weeks before Sharon revealed her dad was (Sir) Michael Ronson. (Later to become Lord Ronson. Some aberration from John Major I believe.) And of course you could have knocked me down with a feather because I vaguely knew him. So when Tickler's name came up three weeks ago I had no idea what Sharon knew about her father's history and what she didn't. Hence my faux pas. (More of that later. Yes, I'm a tease, I know.)
'You wouldn't mention it to Tickler?' said Sharon, puncturing my reminiscences.
'Crikey no. He'd be horrified.'
'Hang on a minute Ant - '
I hear some mutterings in the background and then finally Sharon shouting something like 'Genevieve, do what it bloody takes!' off mic as it were. And then she's back.
'Sorry Ant, Veevee's been off sick and isolating. Been chaos around here.'
'Your very own Thomas Moore.'
'Yes Ant, I know you think she's a diplomat and I'm not.'
'Don't tell me it was Covid?'
'No, she just had a positive test.'
'Why'd she get tested?'
'It was a condition of entry into "Lister's".'
Lister's is a predominantly gay nightclub off the King's Road.
'So much for non-compliance amongst the LBQ-and-whatever fraternity then. But she wasn't ill?'
'Nope, just another case.'
'Do you remember a time when a "case'' implied a need for medical intervention? You weren't a "case" unless you needed a doctor. The only epidemic presently in this country (and, no it's not a pandemic) is people staying off work because they are being told they're ill even when they're not. Bloody hell, even AIDS didn't shut down theatres - and AIDS was a death sentence in the 1980s - but a poxy flu can stop the world.'
'Bit more than the flu.'
'No it's not Sharon. There was a massive flu epidemic in 68, 69 and not even a bus stopped running. In fact in the States they had Woodstock. I looked it up when all this bulshit started. 80,000 deaths in the UK. Funnily enough when I went back to check those statistics again a couple of months later Google had revised it to 30,000. That's when I really knew something strange was going on and that censorship was alive and well in the free world.''
'Well if anyone could give you a ringside insight into the childish machinations of government logic it'd be Tickler.'
'And I said I'd rather fellate an ungulate.'
I'm not sure Sharon got my vocabulary there as she looked at me rather curiously before asking:.'What was he like? In "Jericho?" '
'Tickler?'
'Yeah.'
'About six stone lighter and something of an Adonis.'
'I thought that was you.'
'I was more Dionysus.'
'What, pretty and licentious with it?'
'So it's been said,' I muttered underplaying my vanity since I know full well these days I wouldn't undress in front of three blind mice.
'Musical theatre in the seventies: mostly all cod pieces, cleavage and concubines wasn't it?'
'You could add clitorises to your alliteration to labour the point.'
'Except you'd need bloody powerful opera glasses to notice. But come on, half the West End was flesh shows back then.'
' "Jericho" was at the end of the seventies when I was about twenty eight. It was pretty tame compared to what else was out there. I did a six month stint in Hair when I was twenty one and even then I was taking my clothes off every night.'
'Perish the thought.'
'I'm bloody well going to show you photos of me in my late twenties.'
'I knew you when you were forty Ant, I get the gist.'
'Yeah, and I'm seventy now. Most of my co-actors from Hair will be flat flabby grandparents - if they're still alive. A testament to the impermanence of the flesh.'
'No full frontal In "Jericho" then?'
'It was a bad rip-off of Superstar and had a couple of nice songs in it, that's all. If you really wanted a biological display of genitalia you looked for a show with a double entendre in the title - "Let My People Come" - or a pun - "Oh Calcutta" - which is a play on the French "Oh quel cul t'as", and roughly translates as "What a lovely arse you have." It contained the memorable line "Makes Hair look like The Sound of Music'' and featured a veritable forest of genital whiskery onstage. If you'd shaved it all you could have probably stuffed a mattress. Ironic since pornography in the UK was illegal back then and now, in this prurient age, is available to anyone with a computer. A ticket to "Jericho" was the equivalent of going to Sunday School in those days.'
'Even so Showmey - ' there was a hint of disdain in her voice as she uttered his sobriquet ' - didn't miss an opportunity to flash his johnson to the chorus line.'
'Until I had a word with him. It was Katie who complained.'
'Your Katie?'
I nodded. 'That's where we met. In "Jericho". Best thighs in the chorus line.'
'Did you say things like that back then? Hadn't Germaine Greer and feminism made you wicked men see the error of your ways?'
'You might not say it, but no-one policed your thoughts then like they do today. Besides, the chorus line didn't care.'
‘How did Katie complain?’
'She went to the Company Manager and said that if Romey didn't wear pants to house his trouser snake backstage she was going to solder bells onto it and then he'd know why some people call it a dingaling. I think that's when I fell in love with her. She was only twenty.'
'You said it was you who had a word with him. Jerome.'
'That's because the Company Manager came to me and asked. He didn't want to confront Romey himself because they'd had a quick knee trembler behind the Jordan River the night before. The backdrop that is. Romey wasn't choosy, he was happy either side of the street.'
'I'm surprised someone didn't dig it up when he went into politics. I mean the press weren't so compliant back in '97. They weren't the nodding lapdogs of Westminster like they are now.'
'Because what happens in theatre stays in theatre - generally. And most people are decent and forgiving about people's past transgressions. They don't want to ruin other people's lives despite what Twitter might have you think or the MSM might say. Seeing people's bits was par for the course. Okay, in the West End you'd have your own dressing room - or share one - but in smaller theatres the entire cast, male and female, all shared the same changing space.'
'So why are you so indignant about shared or mixed gender changing rooms and toilets in public spaces now?'
'Because we had a choice. We wanted to be actors and so we put up with the conditions. I doubt fifteen year-old Nancy in Liverpool going to see "The Day The Music Didn't Die" and needing to pee in the interval wants to have the hairy-arsed stagehand Sven with his over-sized dongle ogling her from the next cubicle. But they're not giving her a choice.'
'What happens in theatre stays in theatre?'
'There were loads of scandals back then that never saw the light of day.'
'The press knew about my dad.'
'Your dad was a knight of the realm! Gielgud got done for soliciting but it never became public knowledge. It never went "viral". Newspapers were reluctant to publish without evidence, and there were no digital cameras back then, no social media. No bloody instagram. Most of what the press got hold of was only hearsay.'
'My kids don't understand what pre-digital even means.'
'I remember a film in the mid seventies, "The Man Who Fell to Earth" which featured David Bowie as an alien trying to save his planet. I don't recall much about it but there was a camera featured which had self-developing film. Basically a digital camera. And I thought to myself, that could never happen. That really is science fiction. And here we are today…'
Sharon announced down the phone as if she was introducing me on stage: 'Anthony Eastwood, the world's leading Luddite.'
'No, I'm not!' I was suddenly indignant. 'I think digital technology is wonderful, but I struggle to see why some poxy thick footballer's wife has millions of followers on Instagram. Why are we so addicted to gossip when a bit of Socrates can brighten your day?' Sharon snickered. 'Yes, I was joking and I'm a snob. But the point of the anecdote about the Bowie film is that things we thought were impossible can happen. That gives me hope. Despite the moronic pronouncements of world leaders - no exceptions.'
'Good, glad you're optimistic. So when are you meeting him? Tickler?'
'I have to ring him to confirm tomorrow. But I really don't want to do it Sharon.'
'Yes, I know, you'd rather be having oral sex with a horned animal in the Kalahari.'
'Do rhinos live in the Kalahari?'
'I don't know. Poetic licence. Look, you amaze me. You think Pattie's death was suspicious, Tickler has been a minister of state for - '
'What's the connection?"
Sharon uttered the sort of exasperation usually reserved for the drunk who's dropped your dope down the toilet after trying to roll one joint too many. 'Just remind me why you chose to go to Notso!'
'Well…' I tailed off, embarrassed at my timidity regarding Tickler.
'Because you didn't believe Pattie killed herself and you were intrigued about a midnight meeting between Kieran and her since they allegedly didn't speak to each other.'
'Sort of.'
'You said your aim was to ingratiate yourself with him. Have you? '
'Not so much. Told him he should wear a condom on his head yesterday.'
‘What?’
'I thought that since he was behaving like a dick he might as well look like one.'
'For pity's sake - '
'You know me Sharon, shoot first and ask questions later. The verbal equivalent of premature ejaculation.'
'Reflected in your physical disposition?'
'Now, now.' Even at my age my vanity goes on sulking safari when someone's casting aspersions on my virility, despite it being a complete work of fiction nowadays. But this is how Sharon gets when she's exasperated
'We think there's intrigue, don't we? Eh? We hear that Martin's been freaked since Pattie asked him to do something for her.'
'Allegedly asked to do something for her. Pamela could have made it up. He denies it. He didn't seem at all freaked at The Espanola.'
'Maybe that's because he turned up drunk.'
‘The only thing that bothered him was Tessa doing a Blackbeard on his girlfriend.'
'Blackbeard?'
'Pirating her.'
'I thought for a second you were talking about a sexual deviancy I'd never heard of.'
'Wouldn't put it past Tessa.'
'Can we talk about Tessa another time?'
'I still need to find him an agent. And I know it can't be Tessa. I've just negotiated with Kieran regarding Martin ghosting Tickler. Kieran's conceded but he still doesn't want Notso to represent him. He said he'd done it as a last magnanimous gesture but I think it's to keep Martin and his chaos off his back. Hence me suggesting he adorned his head with a prophylactic.'
'What's Martin said?'
'I haven't told him yet. We're not speaking since he got us thrown out of The Espanola.'
'How'd he manage that?'
'When asked by the owner if we were enjoying our meal Martin replied that he could hardly do so in an establishment where they thought Vermicelli was an Italian renaissance artist.'
'Very droll. It's not even an Italian restaurant.'
'Explaining details to a drunk is about as effective as teaching sign language to the blind. Anyway we haven't spoken since and I don't know why I'm still sticking up for him. '
'Do you believe him when he says Pamela's lying?'
'I don't know.'
'Well I don't. Why should she invent something like that? There's some sort of intrigue and subterfuge going on. So why don't you want to meet Tickler?'
'Well because we have history. And why the hell would there be a connection between Pattie and Tickler?'
'That's for you to find out.'
'There won't be one!'
'You said her death was suspicious.'
'Yeah, but not suspicious in a political sense.'
'If the police are insisting on suicide then there's possibly a cover-up.'
'But not that high up.'
'How do you know? Martin is wanting to interview Jacques Bunot isn't he?'
'For general research he said.'
'My Aunt Fanny! For god's sake, Pattie represented some of the greatest minds belonging to some of the greatest writers in the country. Governments have always been frightened of writers, journalists (well, back in the good old days), artists. All those young revolutionaries and radicals. That's why they dole out honours in this country. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Bring the troublemakers in from the cold and offer them knighthoods. You think Pattie was up to something - '
'But - '
'And Tickler might be a useful source!'
'And he might not!'
'Why are you so resistant?'
'Because I don't really want to renew our acquaintance.' I didn't want to tell her why.
'Is that so? What happened to butch Anthony I-take-on-all-comers Eastwood? I sometimes wonder whether putting your back out in your frog-eye when we were fumbling for a bit of rumpy-pumpy was an excuse because, for all your bravado, you couldn't actually get it up.'
I spluttered and probably went crimson at that point. Not that it mattered since there was no-one with me to witness it. 'If you remember it was the great British Bobby that scuppered our impending ecstasy,' I protested.'
'Excuses, excuses! They came because you screamed your little head off!'
I knew Sharon - one of my dearest friends - was goading me. She was probably, also, grinning on the other end of the line. But I rose to the bait, as I do. Just like the poor buggers who took the white feathers from idiotic women in the Great War. In a world which holds straight, white, elderly, masculine (even though I say so myself) men in disdain it looked like I was going to have to play my part for the cause.