Rick Wilson's The Man Who Would Be Elvis, part 4: Enter, Scotland's new rock-and-rule King

It was dizzying. Spotlights played on Roddy’s face, almost blinding him, as he heard Sam explain Krish’s absence to the audience – and present “the New King of Scotland...or Roddy the Body!”

Applause rose from a sea of faces with phones, and eyes lit up like stars; behind him a great rocking band and four glamorous backing singers, all below a huge screen showing his face in close-up like a movie star. He realised he had to deliver. And how...

“Hello, Edinburgh, ma ain home toon,” he said in an exaggerated Scots accent, to a big cheer, before changing to pure Deep South: “Even in his Las Vegas days, Elvis liked to recall his first days as a raw rocker. So if you don’t mind, ladies and gennelmen, I’m gonna start with Wear My Ring...”

To get a good view of his new man in action, Sam moved to the back of the auditorium. What he witnessed made him gasp. The voice was incredibly near to the original, the basso nearly-profundo phrases playing against the high tenor ones with stunning precision. But there was more. Roddy’s moves were immaculately similar to the King’s. The nervous leg shaking, the squatting, the judo kicks, the caressing of the mic. With each song, from Teddy Bear through There’s Always Me, the fans’ appreciation grew in volume.

Sam heard himself saying, “Ma good lord, Elvis lives.”

As Roddy hit his final note of My Way, amid a tsunami of tears and cheers, a line of red-faced women besieged the stage, shooting out imploring hands. He responded by throwing them faux silk scarves with a bullfighter’s flourish.

When the scarves were exhausted, Sam was back among the fans, in full voice.“Who wants to kiss Roddy?”

“Oh, shit,” said Roddy, and the expletive was thankfully drowned by the fuss.

Between fragments of My Way, he bowed to every offered mouth and tried to plant a kiss as lightly as possible. He must have been through 20 when the last one appeared. Was this a Muslim lady? She swept aside her face-and-head covering, and he coughed as he saw it was…Fiona! He stopped in mid-phrase to ask: “What are you doing here?”

“Not for a kiss anyway,” she said. “I just think we should talk.”

“Ok,” he managed, covering the mic, “better come backstage when we’re done.”

“Hya, honey,” he said, when she was brought to the room still marked “Krish”; he put down the guitar he’d been idly strumming. “Did you like my set?”

“It was OK, I suppose. But not my kind of...er, music, as you know.”

“Why come then?”

“Curiosity,” she said. “My nose was bothering me.”

“I suppose that explains the hibab? Or the hi, babe, as I like to put it.” He chuckled at his own witty wordplay; but she just kept half-smiling.

“I had to make it up myself,” she said, unpeeling the dark red scarf from her chin and head. “I’d intended to come incognito but, guess what, someone had removed my black wig. I wonder who that could have been?” She laughed a little, then added: “Anyway, I haven’t converted to Islam. Though you seem to have converted from ordinary guy to berserk fantasist. As I say, it’s not my cup of cultural tea.”

“You might like this then,” he said, digging a hand into a pocket of his white Bill Belew creation, and handing her a fat little beige envelope.

“What is it?” she asked, gripping her elegant fingers around it.

“A thousand smackers.”

“Pardon?” As her jaw dropped, Roddy looked to Sam, who returned a wink.

“From the boss, who says it’s just a down payment. For services to be rendered.”

“What services?”

“Accommodation.”

“Where? For who?”

Roddy pointed to the ‘Krish’ sign on the door. “For my predecessor.”

Her jaw dropped again. As did the envelope. Sam stepped in, picked it up, and intervened with: “Maybe I should explain, Mrs...can I call you Fiona?” She nodded.

“As Krish’s gonna be immobile for a couple of months, we thought it would be a smooth transition for him, from hospital – where you have an eye on him anyway – to your home, for that duration.”

“My home? Why my...our... home?”

“Well, Roddy tells me your daughter’s off to the Americas leaving her room unoccupied.”

“Are you crazy?”

“We reckoned it would be a win-win situation,” said Roddy. “As the promotion company doesn’t want to pay an expensive hotel for all that time, and we could use the kind of money they are prepared to spend. But it’s up to you.”

Sam clutched the envelope to his chest under a beatific smile. “Think of it, Fiona. Roddy’s out there making a grand a show, you’re holding the fort back here making an extra grand a month.”

He placed the envelope gently into her hands again, and she seemed to cautiously accept it. “This is just for one month,” he said. “There’ll be more, pro rata, for as long as the deal lasts. Can we count on you?”

Roddy smiled at his wife’s agony as she weighed it all up. Then she simply said: “You bastards!”

Tomorrow: Battle of the Elvises

The Man Who Would Be Elvis by Rick Wilson, published by [email protected], is available from Amazon at £6.99 here

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