They fuck you up, your mum and dad August 24, 2006
Posted by Spiralskies in : A215 stuff, Journal, Writing Bits , trackbackOn the stage, standing still and looking straight ahead as we’d been told, we were ready to sing our first song, ‘Doing the Lambeth Walk’. In the hall of the small parish primary school, the parents were crammed in, sitting uncomfortably in tiny plastic chairs. They were all dressed up for the occasion, overcoats folded on their laps, proud dads giving a last-minute thumbs-up for luck while the mums chattered, their voices mingling. It was hot. All the different perfumes made the hall smell different to how it usually did. We were doing an Old Tyme Music Hall. Dressed as a Pearly Queen, covered in sequins with my lips and cheeks smeared with red Rimmel lipstick, I felt really excited. Not only was I playing a solo verse on the glockenspiel in ‘Little Donkey’ at the end but I had the lead role in ‘Albert and the Lion’. I was the smallest in the class, perfect to hide behind the lion after he’d ’swallered the little lad ‘ole! We had a new boy in the school from Lancashire who could read the poem in the proper accent. I was so excited, even though I had to wear a horrible flat cap that made my head itchy.
The lights were switched off and we launched into the first song. I couldn’t concentrate. I was still glancing as often as possible at the door at the end of the hall, opposite the huge artificial Christmas tree. The red lights gave just enough light to see that neither of my parents had come.
Angela’s mum told me at the end that I’d been brilliant as Albert and the music teacher said I’d played well as she drove me back in her tiny yellow Fiat. I didn’t answer her; I could feel prickling at the back of my nose and wanted to get to bed so that I could cry. I had hoped so much that Mum and Dad would be there that it had become like a film playing over and over in my mind - they would rush in at the last minute with special smiles that said ‘look, we managed to get here to show we love you’. But they hadn’t come. While I sobbed in my unfamiliar bed in the foster home Mum was in London, in hospital. They thought she might die. Crying into the pillow so that no one would hear me, I wished she would.
Ten years later and I’m still scanning the audience for my mother. I’m in the pit of the Jersey Opera House, dressed entirely in black and waiting for the amber light to come on in the wings to show that the show’s about to start. My stomach is in knots, despite the two hefty vodkas I’ve been bought in the bar. Anticipation fills the theatre, coming at me in waves from all angles. I hate it; I’m so nervous. No, that’s not true. I love it, more than anything. But how will I play my flute when I can hardly breathe? It’s the opening night of ‘Carmen’. The dress rehearsal had been awful: forgotten lines, a drunk violinist and Carmen actually vomiting on the stage due to apparent food poisoning. But the excitement, the nerves, the neat shots of adrenalin bouncing off the cracked and peeling walls were incredible as I’d come in through the stage door an hour ago, enveloping me like a warm but rotting blanket. Despite the luxurious chandelier-lit theatre, backstage is a dump.
‘Christ, you need a pre-show course of antibiotics if you want to come out of there alive’, quips the oboe player.
Of course, the problem with living on an island of this size means you literally know your audience - and they know you. Jersey, Channel Islands, affectionately referred to by its locals as ‘90,000 alcoholics clinging to a rock’. Pretty accurate, I’d say.
So, here we are, opening night at the Opera House, the hoi polloi gathered in their finest fake fur coats and Swarovski jewellery. It’s a funny mix for this show: professional actors (ok, one has-been soap star), some semi-professional but unheard of actors and the usual am-dram luvvies. This isn’t my first professional show but, no matter how many I do, I’m always nervous. I really never thought I’d be good enough to do shows like this and had simply stopped thinking about it, along with my dreams of being a famous ballerina or singer in a chart-topping pop group. No point getting ideas above your station, my mother always said, be realistic and you won’t end up disappointed.
Where was she? She’d seemed quite pleased when I gave her the free tickets but her two allocated seats sat empty. She didn’t usually bother with concerts or shows I was playing in but I thought she’d enjoy this. The lights began to dim and we launched into the rousing overture. Oh, sod her.
As I suspected, the reason she hadn’t come was because she didn’t have anything to wear.
‘I’m not having people look down their noses at me’, she’d often spat.
That was certainly an excuse I’d heard plenty of times before; it was why we gave up going to church, why she didn’t go to parents’ evenings or sports days and definitely why we were never allowed to have friends over to play. We couldn’t have friends who were poor because ‘people will think we’re just as bad as them’ and we couldn’t have friends with nice houses because they would be ‘looking around and thinking things’. Our house was actually very normal; a touch small for two adults and four kids but hardly on a council estate with smashed windows or burnt out cars. It never occurred to me that Mum might be a bit mad. I was ashamed of her, yes, but only in the same way that all teenagers were ashamed of their parents.
Admittedly, we didn’t have much money but, in the 1970s, none of my friends had much or went on luxurious holidays. Well, none except Angela Goodbody, my best friend since primary school. She’d been to Kenya, Australia, Sri Lanka - wonderfully exotic places that sounded further away to me than the moon. This, however, was simply because her father worked for British Airways so they only paid 10 per cent of flight prices. God, my mother hated the Goodbodys more than anyone.
‘Who does he think he is, strutting about in his uniform? He’s only a bloody steward - a glorified waitress! And her, Mrs Bloody Peabody.’
This was the usual tirade generated by my regular announcements that I was off to Angela’s to practise our flutes. I generally counted myself lucky that my friends’ mums were happy for me to be a permanent fixture at their houses. I was best off out of the way. School trips were my favourite way of escaping, especially with the school orchestra. We had a week in Belgium planned and had been practising like mad. Letters were sent to parents with a list of clothing and essentials we would need. It was going to be expensive. So my mother did what any other rational parent would have done. She phoned the school to ‘discuss the matter’.
I was called out of my Maths lesson and instructed to go to the music room where Mr Platts wanted to talk to me. His face thundererous, I could tell something serious was about to happen. I’d seen him lose his temper before with the lazy or stupid kids in the class and my stomach churned.
‘What lies have you been telling your mother?’ he roared. His face was almost the colour of beetroot, the saggy bits under his eyes white. I was too terrified to speak. I looked at him gormlessly.
‘I want to know NOW why your mother has been on the phone accusing me of being unsuitable to take away a group of girls’. He looked as if he might explode and I wondered whether anyone in the nearby science labs could hear him bellowing at me.
Confrontation was never my thing but I was furious as I slammed through the front door after school. Rather than tell the school that she simply couldn’t afford to send me on the trip, she had gone mad, telling the headteacher that Mr Platts was nothing but a pervert, a disgusting man who shouldn’t be allowed to work with girls at all. Brilliant. She’d officially accused my treasured music teacher of being a sex maniac rather than have anyone ‘look down their nose at her’. She was seriously mental.
I wonder if the poem’s right: ‘They fuck you up, your mum and dad’
I think, on balance, I escaped relatively unscathed and even stopped wishing her dead many years ago. She actually brought my son to one of my concerts once too. Perhaps I’ll even miss her when she’s gone.
This be the Verse, Philip Larkin
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