Waiting for Kate Bush (34 page)

In which it was someone’s bright idea to get him to sing Elton John’s ‘Candle In The Wind’, the original, not the one revised decades later for Princess Diana. He sat on a stool to do so. His forehead and upper lip glistened with sweat. The judges agreed he’d made no connection with the song, and had, moreover, seemed awfully nervous. When the
cruellest of the judges said he’d rather listen to stereo components being removed from Styrofoam all day, Huw actually burst into embarrassed tears. It was wonderful, wonderful television. He first told the judges that he was sorry, and then told the camera the same thing. The public loved him for it, and voted him through to the next round.

In which he sang Tina Turner’s ‘River Deep, Mountain High’ with great forcefulness, but without gesticulating in a way the judges liked. All four of them talked about how a powerful voice wasn’t nearly enough. One hoping for a career in pop had to know how to move well on stage. The public continued to like him, though, and voted him through to the next round.

In which, singing a song popularised decades before by one of the celebrity judges, he seemed preoccupied with the little dance routine the
Lab
’s resident movement expert had devised for him, and sang in a voice that was a mere shadow of the one that had got him out of Cardiff. The judges didn’t think the dance routine was really Huw, and wondered what had happened to his once-mighty voice. “But last week,” Huw blurted, “you ignored my singing and told me I had to concentrate on moving better.” For which outburst he was rewarded with a stern lecture on not thinking, at this stage in his career, assuming he’d go on to have one, that he knew more than the judges, with their combined however-many-it-was years in The Industry. But the public seemed to appreciate his sticking up for himself, and voted him through to the next round.

In which he looked like someone who only hours before had escaped religious extremists who’d held him hostage for two years in isolation. He had bags under his eyes. Apparently he’d resumed smoking, and was up to 60 a day. Smoking so much left him little time for eating, and he reportedly weighed half a stone less than at the beginning of the competition. He’d broken up with his girlfriend of four years over the telephone. He was subject now to outbursts of unprovoked weeping.

He was said to worship Robbie Williams, and had been granted permission to sing one of his hero’s anthems of self-loathing in this round. He stood perfectly still, his hands an inverted V above the microphone. At first, he sounded as though too heavily drugged for inflection. But then, around eight bars into the song, he seemed to awake. His voice regained its early power. There could be no accusing him this time of not connecting with the material, which he sang as though he’d written it. But then, halfway through, he abruptly stopped singing, and looked around as though he had no idea where or who he was. The director
called for a close-up just in time for us to see the first two tears escape his eyes. And then the dam broke. He fell to his knees sobbing, pounding the stage, then banging his forehead against it until the little Scots compere and two of the other contestants could lift him to his feet. It was fantastic television.

“Well,” mused the first judge, a former one hit wonder turned vocal coach with eccentric hairdo, “I don’t think anyone can say Huw didn’t make an emotional connection this time. But in Our Business, half a song just doesn’t get the job done.”

The second judge, the cruellest, the disapproving father figure, the one who was forever accusing contestants who had hit every note of singing out of tune (years heading a big record company’s sales force had apparently rendered his sense of pitch more acute than other people’s) pointed out that only the strong survive in This Business. The third pointed out that the beginning of Huw’s performance had seemed pretty tentative. It was exactly that acumen, I thought, that was responsible for her having got her job as PA to the managing director of one of the big record companies – that acumen and her very large breasts and long legs.

How cynical I was becoming in my old age.

The last judge, the far less good-looking of the brother-sister-and-cousin act who’d had several deeply annoying worldwide hits 25 years before, reminded us that she had liked Huw’s voice from the very beginning, but agreed that there’d been something dissatisfying about his performance this time.

Around the time I repatriated to the United Kingdom, jokes having to do with David Beckham’s very low native intelligence had been very popular. It had occurred to me that in comparison to this judge, Beckham was Dr. Stephen Hawking.

There was an endless commercial break during which the public’s votes for their favourite contestants were tabulated. The little Scot reminded us that the programme’s policy was not to reveal the actual proportion of the popular vote the various contestants had received each week. But the show’s producers had authorised him to reveal that Huw had just got more votes than any other contestant ever, and the show was in its second season.

He was coaxed back on stage looking like a deer in headlights. “Well, big guy,” the little Scot asked him, “how does it feel to have got more votes from the public than any other contestant ever?”

Huw’s forehead was glistening again. His lip was quivering. The veins in his neck protruded. He looked around, seeming to recognise
nothing, not the judges, not the set, not the other contestants. “I want to go home,” he said, very quietly. “I don’t want to do this anymore. I want to go home.”

The director gave us quick close-ups of the other contestants. There wasn’t a dry eye among them. Then we saw the judges. The disapproving father figure was rolling his eyes with contempt.

And then, as Huw put his big brickie hands around the cheeky Scot’s neck and lifted the little Scot off his feet, the director cut back to them. It was like the worst, most chaotic
Jerry Springer
show you’d ever seen, times ten. Everyone was shouting. Huw and the little Scot disappeared beneath a deluge of other contestants and cameramen and stagehands and several members of one of the contestants’ support group. It might have been the most exciting television I’d ever seen.

O
NCE
Fab Lab
was over, I hoped Mrs. Cavanaugh would visit, and that she would wear the lace corset she’d worn the first night. It got later and later, though, and there was no trace of her. I didn’t phone Nicola on her mobile for fear she’d let Tarquin answer it out of spite, and didn’t phone her landline for fear of having to make small talk with the mountain of flesh. I went downstairs. There was no one in the kitchen. I got myself a cold can of Budweiser and a bag of grilled lamb-flavoured miniature poppadoms and took them into the lounge, where I found Mrs. Cavanaugh watching
Megastar
with Mr. Chumaraswamy. I’d forgotten it was on. “Come in, Mr. Herskovits,” Mrs. Cavanaugh bade me, not very convincingly. “Cathy’s going to be on later, and all the contestants have to sing one of Kate’s songs this week.”

“Well,” I said, “only if I’m not interrupting anything.”

Mr. Chumaraswamy giggled in embarrassment at the mere thought. Mrs. Cavanaugh kept her eyes on the screen. I sat down between them and offered each a poppadom in turn. The house rule was that snacks were for anyone who fancied them, so there was no real reason for Mr. Chumaraswamy to thank me, though I suppose it was more for the thought than for the actual poppadom. “Not for me, thanks,” Mrs. Cavanaugh said without looking at me. “I only like the prawn-flavoured ones.” If that was some sort of code, it was a code not known to me.

The blind boy who’d been imitating Mariah Carey when I came in, never letting us forget how virtuosic he was, finished ‘Rubberband Girl’, a strange choice on many levels, and an enormous fat girl was led before the judges, so nervous you could see her bounteous flab quivering. She sang ‘Oh England My Lionheart’, as I imagined they’d all wanted to, presupposing the judges’ patriotism, hoping for their gentleness. She was very good.

The former assistant to Shania Twain’s make-up artist yawned, drummed on the table before him with a pencil, leaned back, and put
his head in his clasped hands. “Well, Beulah,” he said, “it isn’t your voice that’s going to hold you back. Your voice is really quite good.” Beulah quaked with fear. “It’s that you’re monstrously, repulsively overweight. When was the last time you saw someone your size on
Top Of The Pops?
Can you remember?”

She was a brave girl, Beulah. She wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of bursting into tears of shame. But the effort to control her voice made her speech very slow. “I was encouraged to audition,” she said. “The producers. They said they specifically wanted larger people this time, people with disabil …”

“Larger?” the former assistant to Shania Twain’s make-up artist interrupted. “I think you passed ‘larger’ around 10 stone ago, didn’t you? I think titanic might be a better word for you.” The long-lapsed disco dolly, beside him, buried her face in her arms on the table before her, but not before letting the camera see the playfully censorious look she gave the former assistant to Shania Twain’s make-up artist, that irrepressible scamp. The record company publicist judge chimed in. “Beulah, let’s say you were booked to perform at the London Palladium, just for instance. How do you suppose they’d get you on stage? They’d have to use a crane!”

“Why are they having a go?” Mrs. Cavanaugh marvelled, as though new to the show. “I thought she was a corker.”

“I did too,” agreed Mr. Chumaraswamy, “but these judges are experts, Aibheann.”

Mr. Chumaraswamy got to call her by her first name?

There wasn’t time for further debate, for here, looking frighteningly fragile, came Cathy, singing ‘You’re The One’ from
The Red Shoes
, and singing it to break your heart, meaning every syllable (even the many solipsistically obscure ones), every note, ending it with an agonised shriek that made the memory of Kate’s on the original recording seem mildly distressed. She was only mesmerising.

It was going to be a tough one for the judges, as the former disco dolly, who knew only what she reckoned she was meant to like, had to comment first. She studied the former assistant to Shania Twain’s make-up artist’s body language at length, trying to divine his own reaction, before she finally blurted, “I thought it was good.” Seeing that the former assistant to Shania Twain’s make-up artist didn’t roll his eyes, she added, “smashing, in fact.”

The record company publicist judge pronounced himself impressed. Finally it was the former assistant to Shania Twain’s make-up artist’s turn. “I’m afraid I have to disagree,” he said in that way of his, and
Cathy looked even more than usual as though she might faint. “I didn’t think she was very good at all.” There was wholesale gasping among the studio audience, and among the three of us on Mrs. Cavanaugh’s sofa as well.

You could, as I did, think of the former assistant to Shania Twain’s make-up artist as a truly woeful human being, a sadist and a charlatan, but there could be no faulting his timing, as, just before the peasants came for him with pitchforks and torches, he added, “I thought she was bloody spectacular. An obvious superstar. If she doesn’t starve herself to death, she’ll be the next Sinéad O’Connor. You can take that to the bank.”

I couldn’t tell if Cathy’s tears, as she collapsed to her knees, were tears of anguish or joy. It was much easier to determine that her mother’s, had she cried any, would have been the former. “We’re deep in the shite now,” Mrs. Cavanaugh said, “well and truly fecked.”

“But how can you say such a thing, Aibheann?” Mr. Chumaraswamy marvelled. “They loved her.”

“And their love will destroy her. And me. And her brothers. Do you not read the newspapers, Seetharaman? Do you not watch the news? Some animals eat their young. The Brits eat their celebrities, devour ’em. Have you not noticed Kate living in virtual seclusion the past decade? Did you not see the mobs of gossip maggots out in the road the other night? Oh, sweet Jesus in the manger. We’re fecked, I tell you.”

“Think of the money, though,” Mr. Chumaraswamy protested. “She’ll be able to afford the care of top specialists.”

“If, as that judge says, she doesn’t starve herself to death before she even gets to the finals. Do you know what her managers told her? That she’s too fat to be a pop star at the moment. Do you know the effect that has on a girl like my Cathy? They’ll kill her, those two.

“Fecked, I tell you. Well and truly fecked.”

“They won’t kill her if I have anything to say about it,” I heard myself declare. If I hadn’t known the speaker, I might have believed it, as Mr. Chumaraswamy seemed to do. “Oh, bless your heart, Mr. Herskovits,” he said. “That’s so kind of you!” The intensely dubious look Mrs. Cavanaugh gave me was more what I deserved. But the look I returned said only that I’d be waiting for her upstairs.

She kept me waiting for the better (or, actually, worse) part of an hour, and wasn’t wearing her corset for me, as I’d hoped. In fact, she hadn’t changed since I’d left her in the lounge. She seemed preoccupied.

I told her I’d despaired of her coming up at all. She said she hadn’t wanted to be rude to Mr. Chumaraswamy, who might not have shown it, but had a broken heart of his own. His IT consultancy seemed to be on its last legs. People seemed to want to consult only glamorous Sri Lankan women about IT matters lately. He’d discovered that his wife had been involved for months in an arranged affair. “In his culture,” Mrs. Cavanaugh said in response to the look on my face, “there’s apparently such a thing as an arranged affair for people who get fed up with their arranged marriages. I hadn’t known that either.”

I could feel my inner four-year-old clawing his way to the top in spite of the fact that even at that age I was ravaging my own fingernails. I pointed out that she seemed to have a lot of sympathy for Mr. Chumaraswamy. I wondered if it had occurred to her that I might have needed some. I wondered also if she knew how disappointed I was to see her in the same clothes she’d worn to sympathise with Mr. Chumaraswamy.