Wooden Heart

Wooden Heart.

Derek worked hard not to be himself. His hip swivels needed to be fluid, unforced. He practised on the raised platform of the loading bay before his co-workers arrived in the morning. Itchy with the beat, fingers of his right hand spread to hold back an enthusiastic audience, he slid his pelvis sideways and dipped his knees.

An uneventful journey into the factory also left time for a ballad or two in the corner by the big doors. The echo there gave him confidence. It smoothed out his vibrato on the high notes in Are You Lonesome Tonight, added richness to chorus of Love Me Tender. He enjoyed The Voice in these moments, it sounded big, big enough for a big world.

Even though he was in his forties he had a full head of hair. He didn’t wear a shiny nylon wig like most of the competition. A rinse of black vegetable dye and a bouffant quiff and he was available to rock. He kept his own sideburns long. That way nothing could come unglued and caterpillar-like in the sweatier moments of An American Trilogy, his big finale. Las Vegas Comes to Luton was the tag line on his poster. He thought of it one evening as he cycled home in the rain.

Derek wasn’t an Elvis fan. He preferred the light operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan and Franz Lehar. He wasn't even a singer. Nevertheless, his old stage gear of dinner jacket and trousers had gone from the back of the door in the spare room. A spangled jump suit hung there instead; buckled and bell-bottomed, zippered and caped, tight as a frankfurter in its skin. There had been more birthdays on the calendar in the kitchen than bookings for his ventriloquist act. The scene has moved on, the pubs and clubs told him. We’re looking for tribute artists. The King and Judy Garland do the best business.

Derek chose the one who wore the lowest heels. Now, at least, it didn’t matter if his mouth moved.

He housed his forsaken doll (never "dummy") in the shed at the bottom of the garden. Bradshaw had a large head made of painted pine. His cheeks were red and he wore a bow tie. He had a paunch, a corporation, with a watch-chain stretched across it. A thick cigar poked from between the knuckles of one fist. His wife and children didn’t want Bradshaw in the house because he gave off an odour of stale beer and mould. They also found him scary. Derek’s youngest daughter Charity refused to even look at the doll. She told her father that Bradshaw worried her by staring at her and pretending to be real. "What does he want?" she asked.

Derek's family watched TV in the evening. They often forgot he was in the room. A bubble of silence and invisibility glistened around his chair. It burst in a shimmer the moment he stood. From the kitchen, Bradshaw’s complaints drew him out the back door and down the garden path.

If anyone came to the shed and overheard the two of them, Derek explained he was honing his voice throwing skills. He didn’t tell them the truth. His conversations with Bradshaw were a comfort.

Unlike Derek, Bradshaw was an angry man, his persona contemptuous of others and unforgiving. "I see right through the lot of them," he’d say in his thin squeaky voice, "I know what’s going on behind their smiles." He had a long list of people he thought were idiots. Elvis came near the top.

The stage would be dark at the start of Derek’s performance. He’d maintain a pose in the shadows, his shoulders hunched, face turned in profile and the microphone held low like a six-gun. A baby spot would be cued to the backing tape. When the light snapped on and Jailhouse Rock began, boom, Derek came to life, the stage, the glasses on the tables, every breast and buttock in the venue trembling to the beat. Nothing could stop the music; nothing could stop Derek.

He’d tried to describe the thrill to Bradshaw. "I’m like the little figure in a music box," he told the doll, who, as always, looked unimpressed, "they lift the lid and off I go, arms and legs moving, hips swivelling, head bobbing. The Voice comes from somewhere and fills up the space inside me."