Little Me

by Matt Lucas

  I noticed a year or so before Howard was due to leave our primary school, Aylward, that the conversation had turned to where he’d go next. I had assumed he (and eventually I) would attend either a local comprehensive or JFS – the Jewish Free School.

  Our parents, like many of their friends, were keen for us to have opportunities they felt they had been denied. Neither of them had been to university. In fact, although my father had passed the entrance exam at a top school, he was informed that there wasn’t actually a place for him as they had already filled their quota of Jews.

  Howard had been for extra tuition with Mrs Madeley who lived, conveniently, on the way home from school, and I subsequently did the same. Although I would generally prefer to come straight home after school and park myself in front of the telly for the rest of the night, I didn’t actually mind the extra workload Mrs Madeley gave me. We were rarely given homework at primary school and I enjoyed the extra stimulation. Also, Mrs Madeley was nice. I know that sounds like a small detail, but I always worked harder for teachers who were just nice.

  At the age of eleven I took entrance exams for John Lyon School, University College School, City of London and Habs. Everyone told me that John Lyon was the easiest of the bunch. Well, I failed that.

  I actually took the exam for University College School twice – a year early ‘just to see’ and then again when I was the right age. My overriding memory is of having a tumultuous head cold and only one tissue, and having to blow my nose constantly and then wring the tissue out again. I can’t recall if I got round to answering any questions.

  I passed the exam for City of London School but failed the interview when, ironically, the teacher conducting it had a cold himself and seemed more interested in the contents of his tissue than anything I had to say.

  The scene was set, then, for me to go to JFS.

  Plusses?

  It’s a state school so it wouldn’t cost my family anything.

  Darren and Barbra – my dad’s girlfriend’s kids – went there.

  And you got to leave early in the winter, so that you could get home before the Sabbath came in (i.e. before sunset).

  Minuses?

  It was in Camden, which meant a fifteen-minute walk to the bus stop, a ten-minute bus ride, a twenty-five-minute Tube ride, and then a further walk to the school. As an eleven-year-old I found the prospect daunting. Folklore had it that kids from other local schools would beat the crap out of you if they saw you in your bright blue uniform.

  All boys had to wear a kippah – the small, round skull cap. Having no hair meant that mine would invariably slide off with the slightest head movement, and even if I stood still and it stayed on, I looked like the Pope, which wasn’t very Jewish.

  And they taught Hebrew. I already took Hebrew classes on a Sunday morning and was soon to start them on a Tuesday evening, in preparation for my bar mitzvah. I hated Hebrew. I thought it was impossible to learn and I was amazed that even people from the Bible – who had no distractions like Grange Hill or Teletext – could speak it.

  The remaining exam was for Haberdashers’ – the best school of the lot, I was repeatedly told – so no one held out much hope. I let my friends know that I was probably going to JFS – or Joe’s Fish Shop, as Darren and Barbra called it.

  There was no entrance exam but my mum and dad still had to take me to JFS for an interview. Despite having been told that it was a cinch to get into – unlike the other schools, it taught pupils at all different academic levels – I still got quite a grilling, as the teachers stressed that hard work and application was expected of all pupils.

  As we left, my mum made it clear that she was surprisingly impressed by the place. ‘Weeeeell, that wasn’t quite the cakewalk you were expecting, was it?’

  No, it wasn’t. Because I didn’t know what a cakewalk was. I still don’t. In fact I’ve never heard anyone even use that expression before or since, and that includes my mum. But if a cakewalk means a walk where they give you a slice of gateau at the end, I’m in.

  Anyway, somehow I passed the exam for Haberdashers’. This meant I was to go in for an interview.

  I told the English teacher that I was an avid reader of John Buchan novels, which was a lie that one of my better-read friends had suggested I tell.

  I informed the Maths teacher that I wasn’t the best at the subject, but that I was very keen to learn.

  The first half of the previous sentence was true.

  When a letter arrived notifying me that I had won a place there, the family’s jaws dropped. This was not expected. Imagine Kevin the Gerbil getting into Oxford to study Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry. It was about as likely as that.

  Two other boys from my primary school had also got in, but one of them couldn’t afford to go. My parents couldn’t afford for me or my brother to go either, but my grandma paid for him and I was eligible for an ‘assisted place’.

  The snob in me was delighted. And I was really pleased for my parents, my mum in particular. It is one of the great pleasures in life for any Jewish mother to be able to kvell, to shep nachas – to feel happy and proud. Anyone who could tell their friends that their son – both of their sons, noch – were at Haberdashers’ … well, we were as good as a doctor and a lawyer already.

  Haberdashers’ was a wonderful school, everyone told me, not just because of the great teachers but because of the marvellous facilities. Boy, did people go on and on about these marvellous facilities (I’ve put them in italics because that’s how people said it). There was a swimming pool, a music school with syu-perb acoustics, thanks to these giant mushroom-like objects that hung from the ceiling, designed by the man who’d done the same thing at the Royal Albert Hall. There was a brand new one-million-pound sports hall – no one ever just said ‘sports hall’ – with cricketing practice nets and a weights room. There was an all-weather sports pitch, with an expensive gravel-like surface, perfect for those freezing-cold winters. There was a dedicated Drama Studio, a separate Art and Design Centre, endless playing fields, a cricket pavilion, an athletics track, a room full of BBC Model B computers, a lake with swans … the list was endless and it was all set in over one hundred acres of lush green-belt countryside. It was as impressive a sight – and site – as you can imagine.

  What I had also been told repeatedly – but hadn’t really truly considered – was that everyone at Haberdashers’ was very very clever and the workload was immense.

  ‘You are the top five per cent, the cream,’ the stiff, stern Junior School Head Mr Wilson informed us, as we assembled in the main hall on that first morning.

  He was right. Except about me. With the exception of English, I was stumped by the contents of the school syllabus. Physics, German, Chemistry, Geography, Biology – all of it. I couldn’t understand what anyone was going on about at any point. I would write notes copiously during lessons and do my best to remember them, but I had no idea what anything actually meant.

  I didn’t so much fall behind as miss the race entirely.

  I wasn’t just overwhelmed by the high expectations placed upon us, I was also intimidated by the confidence and ease exhibited by some of my classmates, many of whom had already spent four years being moulded, tweaked and polished at the Habs prep school.

  New to me also was the unrelenting formality, the poshness of it all. It was so strange and manufactured, so disconnected from the outside world that I’d come from and so much importance seemed to be given to it. I didn’t understand the purpose of it all. Why did I need a fountain pen and why must I write in black ink and not blue? Why did I have to stand up when a teacher entered the room and wait to be allowed to sit down again? Why did no one call me by my first name? Not even my friends.

  And why was everyone so damn competitive?

  Every time there was an exam, it wasn’t enough for those who did well to be happy for themselves, they also seemed to delight in everyone else’s failure. Results were displayed in the corridors for all to see and I
was usually informed by some boy or other of my low marks mid-waddle, long before I’d arrived at the noticeboard.

  ‘Lucas, you got thirty-eight per cent,’ someone would yell. Eventually, when the crowd cleared, I’d study the results myself. I never started at the top, always the bottom. I would find my name much sooner.

  This place wasn’t for me.

  I was already struggling with my studies and distracted by my parents’ acrimonious separation, which had left me heartbroken. I was not prepared for what would follow.

  One Saturday morning, early in 1986. I was still eleven and in my second term at Habs. I was watching TV at home when my father popped by to see me. He’d moved about twenty minutes away and would try and visit on the weekend, usually while Mum was at work.

  We chatted as usual and then, just before he headed off, he mentioned to me that he had a court case coming up in a few days. It was something to do with the business he used to own, that had since closed down.

  I asked him if he was going to win some money.

  ‘No, actually, it’s some other people who say I owe them money.’

  He seemed pretty relaxed about it and told me that he didn’t believe they had a case. The conversation was brief. As he left, I pondered on it for a minute or two, and then forgot all about it.

  A couple of weeks later and the weekend came and went. I hadn’t seen Dad that particular Saturday but it hadn’t really registered with me. I’d spoken to him a few days earlier on the phone. I didn’t see him every single weekend, as sometimes he was working.

  I came home from Hebrew classes as usual on the Tuesday evening to find a tense, heavy atmosphere at home. My mum was there, with Grandma Margot. Howard was sitting in the morning room – a rather grand name for what was just an extension that led from the kitchen – and I went in there as usual, ready to watch Grange Hill before starting my homework.

  Mum and Grandma came in and sat me down. They had something to tell me.

  ‘We’ve already spoken to Howard,’ said Mum. I looked over. His brow was furrowed. He didn’t meet my gaze.

  ‘Do you know,’ she continued, slowly and nervously, ‘what happens when people do bad things?’

  Huh? What on earth was she going on about? Why was she talking to me like I was five?

  ‘I have some bad news. I’m afraid to tell you your father’s gone to prison.’

  Tears. Many tears. Many many tears. Shock. Sadness. Humiliation. Above all, concern for him.

  My dad. My poor father.

  We were a middle-class suburban Jewish family. I did not know of anyone who had been to prison. I had no frame of reference.

  I watched Grange Hill, did some homework, pushed some food around the plate and went to bed in a daze.

  The next morning Mum drove me into school. I was crying. One of the other boys in my class noted this.

  ‘Why are you crying, Lucas? Did Darren Lewis beat you up?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Why are you crying then?’

  A small crowd gathered. I couldn’t speak.

  ‘Darren Lewis beat him up. Why did you beat him up, Lewis?’

  Lewis shrugged.

  Meanwhile my mother went to speak to my housemaster, who summoned me to see him at morning break. As I sat in his office shellshocked, he addressed me in that posh matter-of-fact English stiff-upper-lip way.

  ‘Well … Matthew … I’ve heard your news. You’re not the first boy it’s happened to in this school and you won’t be the last, I’m sure. My advice to you is not to tell any of the other boys. You know what they can be like. Any problems, see me.’

  My father John Lucas was sentenced to nine months in prison for fraud, with the possibility of three months off for good behaviour. He was sharing a cell with a heroin addict in Wandsworth, the crumbling Victorian shithole that train robber Ronnie Biggs had escaped from. I wondered if my dad might be able to do the same. He wouldn’t allow us to visit him there, but he sent me and Howard a remorseful letter in which he imagined we must be disappointed in him.

  He couldn’t have been further from the truth.

  My dad was my hero. I loved him dearly, still do. He was kind to us, warm and funny. He was loved by many. When he died, over four hundred people came to the funeral. He was no career criminal. In the mid-eighties he made a stupid mistake, borrowed some money in an attempt to save his ailing business. He hoped to pay it back, but his debts spiralled and he wasn’t able to. I can’t argue that that shouldn’t involve a prison sentence, but I didn’t and don’t think any less of him. He was human. Humans err. I do little else.

  After ten days he managed to engineer a move to Spring Hill open prison and a few weeks later, our application to visit him was accepted. My dad had been dating a lady called Andie, who was recently widowed. Many would not have stood by him, but she did. She was to take us to see him, along with her kids and also Grandma Margot. Andie was only a recent addition to our lives and I can understand my mum wanting someone else to join us, though how glad my dad was to see his former motherin-law is something I’m less sure of.

  We arrived at the prison and waited with various other families until we were taken to the canteen. There, sat at a table, was my dad.

  He was tired. He was ashamed.

  And he was wigless!

  WHAT?!

  It was the first time – apart from that brief moment in the bathroom when he had pulled his wig back a little to show me – that I had seen him like this. He had some hair at the back and, having not yet seen the prison barber, wild, wavy wisps growing out of the sides of his head. He joked that he looked like a mad professor. And that broke the ice.

  We talked less about his life and more about ours. He wanted to know how we were doing at school and how the Arsenal were getting on. Andie’s son Darren told him about a funny new show on BBC One that had just started, called Dear John. He sang the theme tune in a loud falsetto voice and we all laughed.

  We would go to visit Dad every few weeks. I did my best not to tell people at school what had happened, but I couldn’t help confiding in one or two, as people were wondering why I had become so withdrawn. Soon the whole class knew, but not all of the teachers. One afternoon in the large locker room, with the whole year gathered, my biology teacher – who also picked the cross-country team – was loudly bemoaning the lack of pupils who were willing to turn up at a weekend and represent the school. His particular bugbear was the Jewish boys, because they had a ready-made excuse not to come in and compete.

  ‘You, Lucas. You can come in and run on Saturday.’

  ‘Um, I can’t, sir,’ I replied, in panic.

  Such a response from a first-year pupil to a master was not generally welcomed. We were to do as we were told.

  ‘Why not?!’ snapped Sir, bristling.

  ‘He’s Jewish,’ offered someone.

  ‘Well, you don’t wear one of the little hats, do you?’ he replied, as if that meant I wasn’t. ‘You’ll come in on Saturday. It’ll do you good.’

  I waited for the room to clear, before telling him quietly that I was visiting my father on Saturday.

  ‘Can’t you see him another day?’

  Oh, for fuck’s sake!

  ‘Mr Yeabsley can explain,’ I mumbled, shuffling away as the tears started to roll.

  Spring Hill prison didn’t look to me like a prison at all. It looked more like a fifties holiday camp, more Hi-de-Hi! than Porridge. My dad told us this was because it was an open prison, where many of the inmates were either petty offenders or were at the end of long sentences. He could, if he wanted, walk right out of the gate. Nobody would stop him, but when they caught up with him – and they would – he’d be sent straight back to a much tougher unit.

  But one day, in the middle of his sentence, he did leave. It was an authorised exit – something to do with the divorce, I think – which required him to go in person to central London, to meet with some lawyers and attend a hearing.

  My brother and I
took the day off school so that we could see him afterwards for lunch. We caught up with him, as arranged, in a restaurant in a large department store, where he was waiting for us, accompanied by a prison officer. The officer greeted us, and in an act of great kindness, because he didn’t have to, he went to sit at another table nearby, leaving us alone with our father.

  Our father was here with us – not in prison – but here, now, in this shop, at this table, like normal. We’re eating a meal, like normal. He’s checking my manners, like normal, telling me not to interrupt when Howard is talking, and not to eat with my mouth open. We’re having chicken. We’re having ice cream. We’re Dad and Howard and Matthew and we’re just out for a meal. It could be any day, any moment.

  But this moment, in those six godawful months – and I’m crying as I write this, as I remember this moment – was the greatest moment I ever got to spend with him. If I could ever see my father again, I would see him there.

  Half an hour, or an hour later, the officer reappeared. It would be a long journey back for them to Aylesbury. We watched them go.

  In the summer, after six interminable months inside, John Lucas was released from Spring Hill prison and E.T. was re-released in the cinema. Dad took us one evening. I’d seen it many times before, though only on pirate video. In a year of many tears, I cried again when E.T. went home, even though I knew it was going to happen.

  By the end of the first year at Habs, my academic results had been so worrying that my future at the school was in the balance. In the first term of the second year I was therefore put ‘on report’, meaning that I had a timetable card which had to be signed by the teacher at the end of each lesson, denoting how well I had applied myself. It was an indignity afforded to perhaps one or two members of each school year, and one that felt so public, such a topic of interest and amusement amongst my classmates, that I might just as well have gone to school in only my underpants like in all those dreams I still have (it’s okay, my therapist knows).