by Dawn French
Boy oh boy, you play those axes and drum kit and piano keyboard like crazy and I can’t believe how good you are at singing simultaneously at the same time! I myself play a Framus bass guitar! I got it because the fretboard is very narrow and my hands are mega small! I’m getting better at it all the time! I used to practise by playing along with your album, but I found that a bit difficult so I swapped to copying Status Quo, which helps a lot since there are only three chords on that! I would one day like to put my own chick rock band together! Not sure what a good name would be! You’ve stolen the best one! In our country, I hope someone has bothered to tell you, fanny is quite a rude word for a woman’s minky! I believe that in your fair land of America it means bum! But not here, sisters, so watch out, mamas! Don’t invite anyone to pinch or slap your fanny cos you will regret it! I was thinking of what a good name could be for my band, following after you with such a strong female name! I’ve decided ‘Quim’ would be good! Like it? Hey, maybe when Quim are playing near you in California or Sacramento or wherever you live you could drop in an’ jam wiv us! Quim is always open to the godmothers of chick rock, the legendary Fanny! I love you so much! Thanks for being so ace! Rock on, you rock dolls!
Fanny rules forevva!
Beloved Billie,
IT IS MOTHER’S Day. I am on the last ever French and Saunders tour and I am in Manchester, so I am not with you. You are not with your mother and I am not with mine. That’s pretty much wrong. Three generations of wrong. I woke up this morning and thought it might potentially be a truly grim day but then I remembered that when your dad visited briefly to watch our first night in Blackpool on Friday, he stuffed a big brown envelope in my case and said, ‘Open that on Sunday.’ So I did. A card from you. A handmade card. Honestly my uttermost favouritest gift I ever get. Your dad does the same, always makes cards himself. You both have that fabulous desire to personalise. Top. I can tell you had little time to make this one, and I understand that, because you have just recently fallen in love and I know that is quite simply all-consuming. What a delicious distraction! I am astounded you remembered at all, considering everything that’s going on for you at the moment, during the maelstrom that is this strange age of 16. The words in your card are simple, ‘I couldn’t ask for a better mum. I love you so much …’ You cannot begin to know how gladly I read those words because I know what it costs you to write that.
I have had to stop writing here to have a little self-indulgent weep, as I allow the significance of your easy forgiveness for my absence, and the sheer warmth of your appreciation, to flood through me. I should be with you today. I don’t feel guilt about it, I just feel the pain of separation, which confirms for me how connected we are. That in itself is a kind of miracle considering what you and I regularly go through together, especially at the moment. Apparently it is quite usual for mums and daughters to war when the daughters are rampaging through their teens with all guns blazing. I suppose I knew that, but actually, I don’t remember much in the way of big shouting at my mum. Plenty of sulking and violent inner thoughts, but not outright raging. That’s what you do. You roar. You blast us with your bellowing. You insist that you are heard, and y’know what, Bill? Good for you. Be heard. Be loud. Get it out, whatever it is. I would far rather have eardrum-replacement surgery than have you bottling up all this boiling fury till you erupt like an emotional volcano in your adulthood.
You have a lot to feel furious about, so your anger is justified. Anybody who is adopted as a baby has the right to a fierce hurt. There is no more tragic and painful a rejection imaginable than by a mother to her newborn baby. You will probably wonder how on earth she could have looked at you, at the perfect beautiful tiny new you, and still make the decision to give you up. Surely any mother is so connected to the baby she has grown inside her for nine months, that to make that horrific decision would be impossible? Do you think perhaps you just weren’t perfect enough or beautiful enough for her to instantly adore you? Or maybe she was a dreadful, selfish or mad person who would never know how to show you love? Perhaps, worst of all, you are not lovable? How unthinkable.
The truth is, Billie, none of the above suppositions are real. Quite the opposite. The details of your adoption are private to you, and you know all about it as far as we know anything. There is nothing hidden from you, but there is part of it that will be hard for you to imagine at this point. This much I know: your birth mother did love you. Undeniably, enormously, as much as any mother has ever loved any baby. Or more, even. To infinity and beyond. Her heart is connected to your heart for ever and no one can cut that properly sacred thread. The pictures we have of you as a newborn are palpable proof of how hard that decision must have been for her, because you were the most wondrous baby. Fact.
It is a sort of unwritten law among kind humans to praise babies even when they look like shrivelled-up old constipated rhesus monkeys, because we all know a mammoth effort has just been made by a scared mum to push this big sack of potatoes out through a hole only big enough to accommodate a chip. She has nearly died in the effort, and we all want to be kind in respect of that, so we tell her that the fruit of her labours, her ugly baby, is gorgeous and bonny when quite often it is genuinely breathtakingly hideous!
This was not the case with you. The pictures show a bright-eyed beaming little face, with wide, open features and flawless caramel skin. Your mouth was a perfect, kissable little O with full, plumptious lips. The kind of ‘O’ that an Austen heroine exclaims when she’s feigning a prudish rejection of her suitor’s advances … Like ‘Oh, Mr Darcy – no, please refrain, oh oh’. Divine. Your dear little face was round and irresistibly cute with a ready grin and a winning twinkle from the off. You were marvellous, a perfect tiny wriggling example of one of God’s own masterpieces. A rare thing, an exquisite baby with unparalleled beauty. Your mother must have been instantly besotted. Everyone who ever saw you was. It was even a bit disconcerting how people were drawn to you. We often had a hard time reclaiming you from overzealous, cooing, smitten adorers. THAT’S how gorgeous you were. So, Bill, try to imagine how hard it was for her to look at you, at this splendid little shining thing, and to know she had to make what was probably the hardest choice of her life. The choice to give you a better life than she might have been able to, to put your interests before her own powerful maternal urges. Personally, I think that she did a mighty thing that day. She prized you above herself, above her own desires. That is a feat of love, Billie. Big, powerful, priceless love. Selfless love. LOVE.
I will always be thankful to her for having the enormous courage to make that decision because otherwise we would never have known you. We wouldn’t have had you, that splendid little spudling, in our lives. And although I often think about her grieving and how that must continue, I thank God daily for her choice. She is our link to you and we don’t forget that. Our little triangle has an invisible, important fourth side, which is constantly in my thoughts. I’m sure she must be in yours too. Especially on Mother’s Day. We are related to each other, all of us. In the spirit of that bond, I accept this card to a mother on her behalf too, because as a testament of her love for you, she gave you to me, to my keeping, and thus I am truly blessed. There is no greater love than that. You say, ‘I couldn’t ask for a better mum.’ And in the truest sense, you’re right. You couldn’t.
Thanks, Bill.
Dear Mum,
IT WAS 1973 and I was 16. As you know, I was obsessed with horror films and the most scary horror film ever, The Exorcist, was released that year. What a stir it caused! Do you remember watching the local news and seeing reports about the protests taking place outside the cinema where it was showing in Plymouth? I thought people had gone doobonkerslally. The St John Ambulance had set up there to deal with the potential hordes of people who would no doubt faint, or at the very least vomit, in response to this ‘truly evil’ film. There were representatives from many different religions objecting to it, local councillors, mothers’ groups, all manner of moral def
enders. It was crazy and of course served to make me all the more determined to see the film. Sorry to tell you, Mum, but I had managed to sneak under the radar into a few X-rated films before then; still I knew this one was going to be especially tough since so many people were keeping an eye on who came and went, and I didn’t have much faith in my sad attempts to look 18, which mainly consisted of wearing lipstick and slouching. You gave in quite early on when I begged you to take me. I think you knew I would go anyway come hell or high water, but Mum, I also know how little you would have wanted to see that film yourself. You worked such long hours and always had a long drive home down into Cornwall, so I appreciate the effort you made. Thing is, Mum, you see, I had to go. I HAD to see it! Maybe you thought that accompanying me was a lesser punishment than death by nagging. Anyway, we went together and because I was with an adult, in we swanned, past the barracking and jeering. You were, apparently, sacrificing your daughter to Satan’s power. Wow. Great. Lucifer, here I come, your willing handmaiden!
The tension was high inside the cinema and I was bursting with excitement and anticipation about the film. All the reports about it had been phenomenal. It was gruesome, vile and downright black, which was perfect.
I don’t think you and I had been to the pictures together since I was a little kid when we went to see Jerry Lewis or Elvis Presley or Disney films. I experienced the strange juxtaposition of feeling very grown up because I was about to witness an X-rated film, but also feeling decidedly junior because I was with you, my mum. My discomfort was exacerbated by the fact that the couple directly in front of us decided to eat each other’s faces off, and you started to mutter your disapproval of that. Then, the man next to them, in front of me, seemed to lose control of his head, it was lolling everywhere as if it were was attached to his shoulders with a Slinky. He was obviously off his cake in readiness for a truly trippy experience of this supposedly shocking and heinous movie. Your grumbling was now building from a low hum to an audible steady rant with occasional snaps at the man to ‘pull yourself together’ and ‘stop being so silly’. Drug addicts love being told off, don’t they …? By the time the lights went down, I was a strong beetroot hue, and wanted to be almost anywhere else. It didn’t help that the folk behind started to crinkle their sweet wrappers for which further admonishment from you was apparently necessary. Just when I thought the torture of mum-next-to-you-in-a-cinema-ness was over, there was fresh hell. Before the main film, there was a suitable short B movie. You must remember this?! Which buffoon was it that sat down and thought, ‘OK, the main film is a sinister and distressing voyage to the dark side, what shall we give them as a warm-up? Oh, I know, nude hippy dancing. Ideal.’ So here I was, in the dark, surrounded by freaks with you, annoyed and pumping away on the verbals, and we are presented with three naked hairy rejects from The Joy of Sex via Woodstock, who jumped about, wobbling their genitals for our delight and entertainment. By now the extent of your distaste was clear to the entire auditorium. I know you were embarrassed, both for yourself and for me, but times your embarrassment by infinity and that’s how I felt. Mercifully, the naked jangling was relatively short and at last the haranguing stopped, and we could relax into an hour and a half of soothing evil as we witnessed the noxious possession of an innocent child. Which was lovely.
As we left the cinema you picked up where you’d left off with plenty of ‘Well, honestly, what a load of old rubbish that was. Really. I can’t begin to understand why you like this sort of nonsense. It was just silly. Utterly unbelievable. Pointless’, all the way back up to school where you dropped me off with a kiss and ‘See you on Friday, Moo, night’.
You would think the running commentary and the damning review would help to dilute any fear that film might have instilled in me, but no, frankly. I had nightmares about it for months afterwards, which were unfortunate souvenirs. Nightmares to remind me of the nightmare that evening was.
I love you, Mum, but I’m not going to the pictures with you again. So there.
Dear David,
THANK GOODNESS WE didn’t get married. I thought we were a perfect match, a couple who complemented each other, like yin and yang, or Little and Large, or Jack Sprat and his missus, but on reflection, that was wishful thinking. Really, we were, and are, like chalk and cheese, and if we’re honest, they don’t go together, do they? I’ve never had a successful chalk-and-cheese sandwich, for instance.
This difference was all too evident when we met that afternoon a couple of years ago, for the first time in, ooh, nearly 30 years. We went for tea at what is, in my opinion, simply the best place to take tea in London, the conservatory in the Lanesborough Hotel at Hyde Park Corner, or, as I prefer to call it, my London office. I chose that place to meet because, firstly, they pride themselves in their amazing choice of fine teas and since you are a tea man by trade, I hoped you would feel comfortable with that. Secondly, the cakes are sublime. What better way to ease the awkwardness of a difficult reunion than with cake? ‘Cake is life’s great moderator. Cake is Kofi Annan.’ Who said that? Oh yes, me. Boy, did we need the mediatory benefits of cake that day. The purpose of our meeting was an apology, from you to me, for making the fundamental error of speaking to a hack about me. No friend or lover or family member had ever done that before, and I was truly shocked that you were so easily tricked by her artifice. She had failed to dupe any other beloved, but I guess you have little cause to be wary of sneaky press. Lucky you. Most people around me recognise the warning signs because I have endeavoured to advise people of the depths to which desperate journos of a particularly slimy ilk are prepared to plummet. Here was a woman writing about me, having never met me, resorting to intrusive tactics with, among others, the ladies who run the flower shop over the road from my house, and pestering the staff at my local salon where I get my legs de-fuzzed and used for mattress stuffing. Desperate measures really. All these people, however, took offence at her nosiness and didn’t cooperate. But for some reason I still don’t entirely understand, you decided to talk to her at length, giving her details of some particularly private moments between us. How very ungentlemanly of you. Were you caught off guard? Or were you flattered? Or what?! I was keen to hear why you had made this rather uncharacteristic choice. Within ten minutes of sitting down with you, I was reminded of a key aspect of your personality. You were annoyed that your accounts of our time together were so ill reported. You weren’t sorry at all. So, the fault lay entirely with the greedy, opportunist lout who apparently tricked you, not with you. Innocent ol’ loose-lips you. In the end, you didn’t apologise at all really. Yes, you were sorry, but sorry for yourself. Hmmmm. You were one part blameless to two parts patronising. As I say, thank goodness we didn’t get married …
The telling aspect about your account of our relationship is how very favourably you depict yourself. I’m not entirely surprised at your bending of the truth. I guess we all do this to some extent, remember our past selves with a rosy glow. Woe betide we should reflect on any decisions or actions and recognise moments of true cowardice or dismal failure or even regret. That would be something; to own up to and face our mistakes and shortcomings. I include myself in this department of flattering self-delusion. Writing this here book is, in itself, an exercise in trying to remember the truth of a moment rather than the edited highlights where I figure as the heroine. It’s so tempting and easy to cast oneself as a tad splendid, but ultimately that would be daft. Since it is so clearly not accurate.
It’s a pity that our reunion reminded me of a tricky aspect of our relationship because I remember so much of it with utter happiness. I think we met at a party in Liskeard, is that right? I must have been about 17 or 18 and you were about 21, 22. I was instantly attracted to you. Oh yes, that’s for picking cotton sure. You are a handsome man, David. Properly handsome. Flawless skin, twinkly pale eyes, a strong masculine jaw and the most heavenly mouth. The hands were a crucial factor – could they cup a 38DD? Yes, with ease. Then there was also your easy manner and sof
t Irish brogue. All systems go! Back then, you were a navy sub-lieutenant. You were recently out of Dartmouth and on HMS Hermes, if my memory serves me well. Being a Plymouth girl, I had heard plenty of racy stories about navy chaps, or ‘fish-heads’ as we called you. The navy regularly swarmed the streets of Plymouth on a Saturday night. I would avoid Union Street where the nightlife was a bit explosive, but I sometimes used to go to a club called, I think, the Yacht Club, down on the Barbican. The reason I can’t remember the name so well is that we gave it the nickname ‘GX’ – which stood for ‘Groin Exchange’ …! Dashing young navy officers like you frequented this club and so, when us local girls went there, we knew we would be batting away a fair amount of overeager groin activity. Plus, you guys were that bit older than the boys we usually dated, you were exotic visitors, and you had jobs and MG sports cars. We LOVED that!
You and I fell for each other pretty heavily and pretty quickly. You introduced me to your brother Ian and took me on my first visit to Ireland, to your home town, Belturbet in County Cavan, to meet your ma and pa. A tiny clue to our mismatch became evident even way back then. You insisted on buying me an outfit to meet your folks in. I suppressed my hurt and attempted to find the right thing. So, none of my clothes were suitable for the kind of girl your parents should meet, then? I suppose you wished I was a bit more sophisticated or something? My flares and cheesecloth tops weren’t right. So, for the love of you, I went shopping. It’s hard to shop for clothes when you don’t know who you’re supposed to be. I have had similar experiences since, when trying to choose costumes for a character I’m playing. The clothes provide vital clues to the person and it’s important to get it right. The mission back then was to find clothes that would earn me the parents’ approval. What are those clothes? Well, I look at the photos now, and apparently the perfect parent-meeting clothes are a white blouse with a Princess Di lacy collar, an A-line flowery skirt, matching bolero with trim and bows in the same floral fabric, tan tights and a good low court shoe. Or two. It seemed to work. Your parents were delightful and I think they sort of approved of me. Well, not really me, because they weren’t actually meeting me, they were meeting some strange clothes with a person inside trying desperately to be like the person who was wearing those strange clothes.