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When I reached out
And most of all when you touched my hand outside the Wimpy Bar
And then you were gone
Were you sad then?
We’ve just turned onto the A38, onto the Devon Expressway. The trees are now too far apart to touch each other. If you look out of your window to the left you’ll see Dartmoor in the distance. There’s a jack-knifed artic and traffic backed up behind it over on the right, London and the North are up ahead and Jarvis Ham is in the seat behind. He’s reading The Stage newspaper. He’s taken his shoes off again.
These shoes:
The Devon Expressway. It sounds a bit sci-fi doesn’t it, like it’s a monorail across the moon or something.
It isn’t.
The A38 is a major English trunk road that runs for 292 miles from Bodmin in Cornwall to Mansfield in Nottinghamshire and the Devon Expressway is a forty-two-mile stretch of the A38 between Plymouth and Exeter. It’s not important.
‘Actors wanted,’ Jarvis says, reading out loud from The Stage (the newspaper, he’s not on a stage – God forbid). ‘To be represented by an exciting new agency and personal management company.’
‘You know those things are always a con. They just want your money.’
‘Okay,’ Jarvis said and scanned the ads again. ‘Lookalikes wanted then. Who do I look like?’
‘Whom,’ I said.
‘Okay. Whom do I look like?’
I looked at Jarvis in my rear-view mirror: my Jarvis-view mirror.
‘How about Elvis?’ he said.
I looked at his balloon head and his baby face. His rainbow coloured hair and bright red hospital radio DJ glasses.
‘Maybe if he was still alive.’
‘What?’
‘Who knows what direction he would have gone in,’ I said, ‘if he’d lived. The fourth age of Elvis.’
‘What?’ Jarvis said.
‘After Young, Movie and Vegas Elvis.’
I looked at his face in the mirror again. ‘Objects in the rear-view mirror may appear closer than they are’ it said on a transfer at the bottom of the mirror. Jarvis looked up from his newspaper.
‘Do you think he’s really dead?’ he said.
‘Huh?’
‘Elvis. Do you think he’s really dead or that he faked his death?’
‘No. He’s dead, definitely dead. The King is dead,’ I said. ‘Or on the moon.’
‘That didn’t happen.’
‘Pardon?’
‘The moon landing,’ Jarvis said.
‘Landings.’
‘What?’
‘Landings. There’ve been six manned moon landings.’
‘Really? Six?’
‘Yep.’
‘They didn’t happen,’ Jarvis said in a way that told me there could be no argument about it. ‘For a million pounds,’ he said. ‘Would you fake your own death?’
‘I sometimes think I already have.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘I don’t know Jarvis. I just said it. Thought it would sound clever. Surely you have to be famous to properly fake your own death anyway.’
‘If you were famous then, for a million pounds would you fake your own death?’
‘If I was famous I probably wouldn’t need the money.’
Jarvis hated it when I didn’t take his games seriously. I looked at his balloon head inflating in the rear-view mirror and to avoid it bursting and ruining my freshly valeted car seats with Jarvis brains, I decided to play along.
Sort of.
‘There’s no way Elvis faked his death,’ I said. ‘Apart from the fact that he surely would have picked a more heroic cause of death than sitting on a toilet eating a peanut butter sandwich if he had faked it, apart from that, if Elvis was still alive he would have said something by now just to put a stop to all the people impersonating him, especially the shit ones, which is nearly all of them. Did you know – and I’m making some of the facts up because I can’t remember them – but there are around one hundred thousand Elvis impersonators in the world. There were only a hundred and something at the time of Elvis’s death. If this rate of Elvis growth carries on, by 2019 a third of the world’s population will be Elvis impersonators.’
‘Are you just saying this to sound clever as well?’
‘No, it’s true.’
‘Well, anyway,’ Jarvis said, but didn’t finish what he was going to say and went back to reading the job ads in The Stage.
You know how some people desperately want to get into the music business and so they get a job in a record shop? Or how actors work in call centres selling boiler maintenance cover and serve cocktails on roller skates wearing a tight t-shirt with no bra because it’s good acting experience? I mean: have you looked at the acting job ads in The Stage lately? Those are the only vacancies you’ll find there. Croupiers wanted for cruise ships, strippers and pole dancers needed urgently. Six pages of vacancies for door-to-door mobile phone salespeople and high street charity muggers, and maybe one acting job, that’s unpaid and has already gone.
In 1993 Jarvis got a job demonstrating – and mostly crashing – remote controlled helicopters into the floor of a toyshop and making unrecognisable balloon animals in the hope that it would be his big break into acting, one small step onto the yellow brick road that would eventually lead him to being presented with a real version of this piece of misspelled tacky plastic:
Jarvis had it made for himself at Southamleys toyshop when he was working there as Devon’s worst toy demonstrater – it was in the old actor’s suitcase. The job ad from The Stage was in the shoebox. There was also a 1986 Charles and Diana Fifth Royal Wedding Anniversary Diary in the shoebox, where I found the next series of diary entries. At last, a bit of love interest.
Because the diary is for the wrong year all the days of the week are wrong.
JARVIS GETS A GIRLFRIEND
MONDAY SATURDAY NOVEMBER 8th 1986 1993
After a boring amount of time spent working in the most boring job in the whole boring world something happened that wasn’t boring. There’s a new girl who works in the food hall at the garden centre. And she looks like Diana. (Lunch = fish fingers, chips and peas)
THURSDAY TUESDAY NOVEMBER 11th 1986 1993
I stood in the longer queue at the food hall yesterday because the girl who looks like Diana was working on that till. The queue was so slow I nearly didn’t have time to eat my lunch. (Lasagne)
MONDAY SATURDAY NOVEMBER 15th 1986 1993
Some schoolboys came into the shop today and stole the helicopter I was flying. They just snatched it out of the air and ran away with it. The manager called the police but they didn’t catch them. The funny thing is they won’t be able to fly the helicopter because I still had the remote control, ha ha ha.
WEDNESDAY MONDAY NOVEMBER 17th 1986 1993
Chose the slow and long Diana lunch queue again. (Some pasta dish or other)
THURSDAY TUESDAY NOVEMBER 18th 1986 1993
Today those schoolboys came back and stole the remote control.
FRIDAY WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 19th 1986 1993
I think the name badge of the girl who looks like Diana says Jennifer Fer. I didn’t want to look too long in case she thought I was a sex pervert. (Fish cakes)
SATURDAY THURSDAY NOVEMBER 20th 1986 1993
Jennifer Fer (that’s definitely her name) (Shepherd’s pie and a banana milkshake) (Not together)
SUNDAY FRIDAY NOVEMBER 21st 1986 1993
Helping Dad in the teahouse today because Mum is ill. Kept thinking about Jennifer Fer.
MONDAY SATURDAY NOVEMBER 22nd 1986 1993
No Jennifer Fer in the food hall today.
TUESDAY SUNDAY NOVEMBER 23rd 1986 1993
Still no Jennifer Fer.
Uh oh, another poem.
TUESDAY SUNDAY NOVEMBER 23rd 1986 1993
Jennifer
Jennifer
Jennifer Fer
Jennifer
Jennifer
Jennifer Fer
Obviously a work in progress.
WEDNESDAY MONDAY NOVEMBER 24th 1986 1993
Jennifer is back! (Mushroom stroganoff)
THURSDAY TUESDAY NOVEMBER 25th 1986 1993
Jennifer gave me an extra roast potato with my lunch today. She had tinsel in her hair. And extra gravy (Not in her hair) (On my plate) (ha ha). After work I went to watch a local DJ switching on the Christmas lights in the village. They’d built a small tower from scaffolding and he stood on a platform on top of the tower next to a lady from the council and together they pulled (or pushed) a switch and the lights came on. It was rubbish. I wish Jennifer Fer was there though. One day I will have to come back by aeroplane from Hollywood or somewhere to turn on the Christmas lights in my old village. Maybe Jennifer Fer will be with me. But maybe she’ll be called Jennifer Ham then.
FRIDAY WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 26th 1986 1993
Jennifer sat at the same table as me on her coffee break. There were lots of other emptier tables she could have sat at instead. So it must have been her deliberate choice. She said hello and I said hello but then I had to say goodbye straight away as I was going to be late back at work. She smelled of Fruit Salad chews. (Can’t remember what I ate)
SATURDAY THURSDAY NOVEMBER 27th 1986 1993
At lunchtime someone set off the fire alarm in the food hall and we had to all go and stand outside until the fire brigade came. When we were outside Jennifer Fer came up to me and asked me what my name was and where I worked and things like that. I told her I demonstrated model helicopters at the toyshop next door, although I was really an actor and it was good practice for performing for the public. (Sausages, green beans and potatoes) ((Left to go cold on table during fire alarm)) (((It wasn’t me who set off the alarm just so I could talk to Jennifer Fer))) ((((Although it would have been a brilliant idea if it had been))))
SUNDAY FRIDAY NOVEMBER 28th 1986 1993
Helping Dad again. Dropped a trifle and Dad started to cry a bit. I think it’s because Mum is ill. Kept thinking about Jennifer.
TUESDAY SUNDAY NOVEMBER 30th 1986 1993
ST ANDREW’S DAY
Jennifer came and watched me fly helicopters.
WEDNESDAY MONDAY DECEMBER 1st 1986 1993
I was in the lunch queue and Jennifer Fer pinched and punched me for the first of the month. (Shepherd’s pie)
THURSDAY TUESDAY DECEMBER 2nd 1986 1993
I’m taking Jennifer out on Friday!! (Baked potato and coleslaw)
‘Could we have a table by the window please?’ Jarvis had asked the rather handsome young waiter when he came in through the restaurant doors with Jennifer Fer as though he was some Hollywood big shot and it was a packed out exclusive and impossible to get a table in sort of restaurant.
It wasn’t.
