Cliff Richard is being auctioned by Kik Lodge
Game
Cliff Richard, lot number 14, is standing on the rostrum in cream linen. The current bid, which is with a female in a fuchsia jumpsuit, is at £160. She has one of those bulbous-eyed dogs in her handbag, and by the way she raises her paddle, thinks the whole world works for her. Cliff Richard looks in her direction, then back at his shoes; brown, losing shine. My max is supposed to be £200 – that’s what I promised Pat – but the more I observe the fuchsia jumpsuit, the more I want Cliff Richard to be mine. When I raise my paddle, she turns around and clocks me. You will not be intimidated by the likes of her, I hear my dead mother say.
Set
Prior to the auction, my squash friend Pat says Cliff Richard is passé, and I lob the pink ball against the wall and remind him of 1996 Wimbledon, the euphoria Cliff Richard brought the masses in Centre Court when the match stopped due to rain, and he sang to keep people’s spirits up. Pat, dominating the T, says they weren’t the masses, my sweets, they were royals and B-list celebs. Plus, he’s been accused of things. Shut up, I say, he won the case. He’s reheated Elvis, Pat says, and what’s more, he’s not a musician. He is a musician, I say.
Pat delivers a rail shot and says look, sweets, he’s old, you’re going to have to spoon-feed him and wheel him around. I’m ready to care for someone now, I say, and think about my defunct mother and all the men I’ve never allowed in. Pat says get a pet, and for the love of God, stop buying keepsakes.
Match
Cliff Richard, lot number 14, sleeps on the bottom bunk in my flat as he needs easy access to the toilet facilities. He likes flushing the loo repeatedly. He also enjoys mixing tri-berry jam into his morning yoghurt. Humming in the shower. He’s not very much into squash and thinks it’s fucking stupid all that squeaking. I’m more of a tennis man myself, he says. At night, when I’ve tucked him in, he urges me to play some of the early tracks he sang with The Shadows. It’s a special moment, when the street is quiet and there’s no rumbling noise from the boiler. I switch on the star dispenser, and it projects the cosmos onto our bedroom walls. Around it goes, in sync with the turntable, lighting up a wooden Wilson hammered to the wall and all my mother’s silver trinkets; little things no-one loves anymore. If Cliff opens his eyes in the middle of the night, which he often does, both the stars and his LP are still turning, and they lullaby him back to sleep in no time. Dust and scratches, they go, crackle and hiss.
Kik Lodge is a short fiction writer from Devon, England, but she lives in France with a menagerie of kids, cats and rats. She might have had a thing about Cliff Richard once upon a time but doesn’t talk about it much.
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how can someone be this wonderfully inventive and make me — a person who does not chortle and giggle all that much, given the state of the universe — find myself out of breath from laughing. AND then re-reading to make sure i didn’t miss anything. if anything at all will save us all, it’s daily reminders of the absurdity of the human existence. thank you, thank you.