If there was one thing Beryl prided herself on as a mother, it was her ability to handle a domestic crisis. Perhaps not mundane domestic crises, such as leaky taps, bee stings and tummy upsets. For that she would get her office to call a plumber or hand the kids over to a member of staff. But in terms of a
real
family crisis, like if one of her stepchildren was caught buying drugs after having inappropriate cosmetic surgery, for instance, and was subsequently engulfed in a media feeding frenzy which threatened to swamp the entire family franchise, Beryl was a mum in a million.
‘Where is she?’
‘At the precinct.’
‘She’s been
busted
?’
‘Maybe just a tad.’
‘Which precinct?’
‘Beverly Hills.’
Beryl breathed a small sigh of relief. Buying drugs in Beverly Hills was a very different thing to buying them in South Central.
‘Frank thinks it’ll be a caution pending social reports,’ Claude went on. Frank was the Blenheim family lawyer. ‘I called him first. He’s down there with her.’
‘You’re a star, Claude. Call him again, tell him Priscilla is not to leave until I get there to pick her up. Her mother needs to be there.’
‘Of course, Mrs Blenheim.’
Once more Beryl shouted at her driver. There was actually no need to shout as the Humvee had an intercom, but Beryl was naturally disposed towards ostentatious displays of authority.
‘Juan, you dozy tortoise! How long to Beverly Hills if you risk your licence?’
‘It’s clear heading back in, Mrs Blenheim, so forty-five minutes top.’
Beryl checked her watch. It was 11.03.
‘OK, then take it a little easy because I want to be pulling up outside the police precinct in
exactly
one hour.’
‘12.03. You got it.’
Beryl returned to her conversation with her PA.
‘Claude, call the networks. Tell them I have cancelled my UK trip and will be picking up Priscilla personally. I will arrive at the precinct at 12.03.’
‘I see where you’re coming from, Mrs Blenheim.’
Claude understood that Beryl was anxious to ensure that the promptness with which she was spreading her mother hen’s wings and ‘being there’ for her ‘troubled’ daughter would play live as breaking news midway through the top stories on the noon bulletin. ‘Next, call the Betty Ford Clinic, book Priscilla in as of this afternoon then release a statement in my name saying that Priscilla is actively seeking help to deal with her problem, which has been brought on as a result of media pressure and poor self-image. After that, call the
Larry King
office and get me and Serenity on to tonight’s show. They’re bound to bump someone for us, particularly now that Priscilla’s been busted.’
‘Will do. You got it.’
It all went like clockwork and exactly an hour later Beryl Blenheim was meeting her errant daughter on the steps of the Beverly Hills police station among a level of media frenzy that, twenty years before, would have been reserved for a visit from the president.
‘We got into this as a family and we will get through it as a family,’ Beryl said grimly from behind her dark glasses. ‘Priscilla fully realizes she needs help at this time to deal with her issues and to learn and to grow. She is reaching out and she will not reach out in vain. In closing I should like to thank the wonderful LAPD and everyone else for the support that we have received during this difficult time.’
A phalanx of security guards whom Claude had dispatched to the scene held the press back while mother and daughter clambered into the long black Humvee. Priscilla was not happy.
‘You might have let me say
something
, Dad,’ she griped.
‘Mum!’
‘It was my fucking bust after all.’
‘Oh, shut up. You’ve done
quite
enough already today, young lady, and
what
is with the new tits?’
‘At least I didn’t get a new dick.’
‘I am a transsexual. You are just a screwed-up teen.’
‘I needed something to give me back my confidence after my album.’
‘If you’re going to get a job done every time an album flops you’ll end up with the tits of a sperm whale.’
Beryl scrolled through the radio news stations. They all carried the story.
‘Priscilla Blenheim, stepdaughter of legendary British satanic rocker and transsexual Beryl née Blaster Blenheim, and star of Fox Network’s hit Osbournes-style reality show
The Blenheims
. . .’
‘Osbournes-
style
!’ Beryl shrieked. ‘We shit
all over
those lightweights. They don’t know what dysfunctional is!’
‘C’mon, Mom. We stole the idea from them.’
‘What? Like jerking off on the TV is something new? You think turning your life into a show is
original
? Did Jessica Simpson steal from
The Osbournes
? Did Tommy Lee? Did Britney? Everybody puts their life on TV, baby. We are so not the Osbournes.’
‘Yeah, maybe you’re right, Mom. For one thing, the Osbournes survived, they loved each other, they stayed together. I’m gonna divorce you the first chance I get.’
The radio reports continued to pump out the bad news.
‘Priscilla Blenheim caught on camera openly purchasing . . .’
‘You fucking idiot, Priscilla,’ Beryl snapped.
‘C’mon, Mom. One wrap of coke. What’s the big deal? You used to get your groupies to blow more than that up your ass with a straw.’
‘Now listen here! Firstly, it was different in the eighties. Secondly, when I was a man nobody expected me to act like a lady. But thirdly and most importantly, you are a member of a family. You have responsibilities.’
‘I just can’t believe you’re trying to kick my ass here, Dad!’
‘Mum!’
‘You and Mom get up at meetings every week and talk about how much shit you’ve done and you ain’t telling me you never bought off a street dealer.’
‘It is one thing buying coke in the street, it is quite another getting yourself caught
on camera
doing it.’
‘Everything I do is caught on camera. Maybe you forgot that.’
‘Don’t be a smart arse with me. You’re not too old to slap.’
‘Oh yeah, like I wouldn’t sue your fucking ass.’
‘Don’t mention my arse, it’s had quite enough to deal with recently and now you drag it into a mess like this. I am
working
! I am supposed to be on a plane to England.’
‘Nobody asked you to come and get me.’
‘You think I could let you handle this on your own?’
‘Mom’s here.’
‘Oh yeah. That would be great, wouldn’t it? Her wandering round saying a skip full of coke a day for thirty years never hurt her! I don’t think so. We have a new season upcoming!’
‘Everybody takes drugs.’
‘
Exactly
, Priscilla! It is not as if cocaine is hard to find in this town, yet
you
decide to buy it off some sleazoid in a parking lot.’
‘I wanted to find out what it felt like to be a normal kid.’
‘Oh, very funny. Well, let me tell you now, Priscilla. You are going straight into rehab to spend an
entire
fortnight getting in touch with yourself, growing, learning, taking time to heal and facing up to your issues.’
‘Two weeks!
But Dad!
’
‘
MUM!
Please do me the courtesy of respecting my gender change.’
‘All right,
Mom.
But I am not going back into rehab. I just got out.’
‘You are going back in . . .
And
when you come out you are going to volunteer for a downtown youth programme working with deprived kids!’
‘
Mom!
’
‘Priscilla, you have been
busted
. The cops have to decide whether to prosecute. You could be sent to Juvenile! Did I not just remind you
we have a new season upcoming
?’
‘You’ll get me off. Frank will get me off.’
‘
Not
without your cooperation, young lady. You’ll do your time and like it and thank your lucky stars you’re at Betty Ford getting carrot juice and a shiatsu massage instead of in prison having your muff munched by some giant lezzer whore who’s doing life for cutting the dicks off her tricks.’
‘You are
so
gross.’
Having deposited a very angry and reluctant Priscilla at the Betty Ford Clinic, Beryl returned to LA to continue to deal with what was a surprisingly negative media reaction. She had not expected this, for the Blenheims had made a career out of cheerful dysfunction. Both Serenity and Beryl openly confessed to decades of alcohol and drug abuse and the children made no secret of their pointless, slobbish, dilettante existence.
It was the reason people liked them.
‘I guess it’s kids and the drug thing,’ Larry King opined to Beryl when she and Serenity appeared on his cable chat show that night. ‘You know, Priscilla’s still very young and . . .’
‘Look, Larry,’ said a tearful Beryl, ‘I’ve had enough, I’ve really had enough. We do not deserve this and we do not have to take it. What normal family doesn’t have to deal with crap like this? But their daughters don’t get treated like criminals. And don’t forget, Larry, we
are
a normal family, just four people who love each other very much trying to get through all the crap families have to get through and we will be strong and positive, we
will
help Priscilla and we will learn and grow and heal together. In the meantime, I am appealing to the media to just back off and give us some space. Priscilla’s just a kid, for God’s sake. I’m just a mum. Serenity’s just a mum. We’re not perfect . . . who is? But we have a right to privacy just like anyone else. Don’t forget, Priscilla is also dealing with new breasts right now. It’s always an emotional time for a teenage girl to develop breasts and, well, our daughter is going through that for
the second time
.’
Larry looked as if he was about to cry. He turned to the camera. ‘So how about it, guys?’ he said, eyeing the lens sternly. ‘You all have kids. You know what it’s like, kids do dumb stuff and it’s Mom and Dad who have to pick up the pieces. So how about cutting Beryl and Serenity some slack here. Let’s back off and leave these people to learn and to grow and to heal, huh?’
After this appeal for privacy, the channel cut to a break featuring a trailer for the repeat run of
The Blenheims
, airing weeknights at ten.
Friend and Acquaintance
On the evening Beryl finally arrived in the UK, Rodney arrived in London also, having returned from a month’s golfing in Portugal. The following day all three judges were booked to do a pre-record day for the new season of
Chart Throb
and so, for the first time since the end of the previous series, they were all not only in the same country but in the same city. While Beryl went from studio to studio in her ongoing damage limitation exercise, Rodney dined with Calvin. The dinner had been booked at Rodney’s extremely heavy-handed insistence.
‘Just to map out some parameters for the new series,’ he had said over the phone.
‘What parameters?’ Calvin enquired when he could no longer avoid taking Rodney’s call and was trying to think how to get out of actually having to meet him.
‘The ones for the new series.’
‘But they’re the same as the last series.’
‘That may be the case but either way I should like to map them out.’
In the end even Calvin’s legendarily thick skin was not thick enough to withstand Rodney’s anguished entreaties. He was forced to sacrifice a precious evening he had hoped to spend with his wine merchant selecting purchases for a massive new cellar he had built on his Sussex estate, in order to meet up with his fellow judge.
‘Good to see you, mate,’ Rodney said as Calvin bustled in very late.
‘My driver couldn’t find the place,’ Calvin replied testily. ‘How, incidentally, did you?’
‘Oh, I always come here. My little secret. Avoids all that media shit. What I say is if you can’t find it then nor can the press, eh?’
Rodney had indeed deliberately booked a small and anonymous Soho restaurant for very good personal reasons. He’d had plenty of experience of being caught in media scrums with Calvin in which he had been virtually ignored and even elbowed out of the way as the press pursued his world-famous colleague. He was not going to put himself in that position by booking them a table at Nobu or the Ivy.
‘Whatever,’ Calvin replied. ‘Let’s order, shall we, lot of prep still to do for tomorrow.’
‘Of course, of course. Me too, very busy, tons of stuff going on.’
Calvin took up his menu and began to study it. Rodney, who had arrived about as early as Calvin had arrived late, had had ample time to read the menu some twenty or thirty times and so had made his choice. He was now forced to wait while Calvin read the entire menu carefully and then proceeded to try to negotiate with the waitress. In Calvin’s mind anything was better than talking to Rodney.