Dear Fatty

by Dawn French

  When you went back to work, I went back to school and showed off my ring to my American chums, who were utterly baffled and couldn’t work out why anyone would want to be married at 19 years old. No matter – I skipped along, continuing my American adventure, studying hard and playing hard. By this time I was included in the goings-on of an off-off-Broadway theatre company whose home was at the Church of the Heavenly Rest, close to the school. The school secretary, Molly Grose, was part of it and asked me to come along and help out. So, for the best part of a year, I was tea girl, lighting assistant, runner and general factotum for this company. It was not amateur, it was professional. The actors weren’t paid much, but they were good actors doing good work, serious plays and musicals alike. The hours were long but I loved being part of it and I had a proper apprenticeship, watching and learning how a play comes together, and being part of a backstage team.

  Sometimes, when I was in New York, I would be overcome with powerful, aching homesickness. My lovely friend Liz was good at noticing this and would quickly jump in with suggestions of a game of squash, or a swim, to have something physical to take my mind off it. One time we went swimming at a gym I hadn’t been to before. It was so typical of New York. The journey on the street offers a viewpoint that is impressive with all the grandeur of those mighty grey imposing buildings, but what you see outside belies the veritable hive of seething activity on the inside of every building. Like a honeycomb, each gigantic building holds thousands of other, smaller cells, where masses of people are doing masses of things. They are working and playing and shagging and sleeping and typing and getting their teeth fixed and getting their psyches fixed and getting hair plugs and cooking and eating and flower arranging and reading and … and everything people do. All manner of human stuff going on inside one mammoth skyscraper. Liz and I walked into the elevator and went up to something like the 34th floor. Out we trotted into the reception of the gym. We played squash, thwacking the ball about and sweating, more than 30 floors up from the earth. Then we went swimming. The pool was built to the very edges of the building, so that, in effect, the windows formed a see-through wall on two sides of the pool. I jumped in and swam underwater to the edge. Here I was, underwater with my hands on the glass, looking down on Manhattan from 34 floors up in the sky. For me that was a revelation. My brain couldn’t make sense of it, couldn’t understand it in any elemental way whatsoever, but my soul utterly devoured the moment, and the sense-memory is for ever etched on my mind. My world at that point was strange and wonderful and I wanted it to stay that way – I was determined to be open to many more of these inspiring moments.

  I ran out of money when I was in New York. I didn’t want to ask you for any, or my parents who really didn’t have any, so I had to come up with a plan. I decided to utilise the misguided American impression of a young Englishwoman travelling abroad. Friends of the families I stayed with often used to say that well-spoken young Englishwomen reminded them of Mary Poppins. So, I put an ad up on the staffroom noticeboard and sent word about that I would be willing to do some childcare at the weekends or babysitting in the evenings. The wording indicated that I was of the English-nanny variety by offering: ‘English nanny available for weekend childcare or babysitting.’ Not subtle. The response was amazing, and some weeks I would babysit every night. This was fine by me – it meant playing, watching TV, having free food, reading stories and getting paid. Just what I needed to survive beyond my meagre allowance. I looked after kids called Chandler Bigelow III, and Zorro, and Clymer, and Nancy. They were very different to English kids, more relaxed and proper little city dwellers. I earned tons of lolly and that meant I could complete my American trip by spending the last few months in LA, where I stayed with a crazy nurse on the ocean in Santa Monica.

  Just before I went there, though, was graduation day in New York, which was a big deal at Spence. All the girls had to attend, looking like virgins, in big white dresses. A quick call to Auntie May resulted in a simple V-neck (not too low!) cotton frock by return of post, thank God. Some of the girls had spent thousands on theirs. I suspect mine was made from whatever was on the floor of Auntie May’s cutting table, but it did the trick and we sat for our photo, pretty maids all in a row.

  At the end of that summer I returned home. I had missed my mum and dad very much and couldn’t wait to see them. They came to collect me at the airport and I was shocked by my dad’s appearance. He looked haggard and drawn. I knew he had been through the mill a bit since he’d had a nervous breakdown the year before. They were living in Saltash and I knew his business wasn’t going very well. He was also sporting a huge beard and moustache, which totally wrong-footed me. I had never seen him look so different. I’m so glad you met him, David. It was very important to me later, that you knew him and he knew you. I think my family were a bit concerned about our future together, especially my brother, who unlike me, blinded by pure love, knew that you and I were basically too incompatible. He knew me as a bit wild and he could see that you were much more strait-laced, so he worried. My dad, however, never expressed any specific doubts to me but did say that I should always follow my gut instincts and he advised me to take things slowly, which, of course, I didn’t. He liked you well enough though. I think he knew I was safe with you, which was true. I was safe. You would never be cruel to me or intentionally hurt me in any way. Safe isn’t it, though, for the long run, is it? Not for you, or me.

  I remember after Dad died, when I went to college in London and lived in a cramped room in a flat in Kensal Green, you left the navy. We wanted to be together more. We couldn’t bear the separation that navy life was always going to mean. I was bereft after my dad’s death and you were incredibly comforting. Then you landed that job with Lipton’s as a new young tea-taster with great future potential for rising up through the company. A proper company man. I think the headquarters were in Chertsey or somewhere and you were living in digs out there, so at last we were close by. Then they sent you to Calcutta. Of course they did. Duh. Tea comes from India.

  So I went to college and started to work out who I was, a sort of leftie hippy, and you went to work and discovered that you were a company man with right-wing tendencies. I was red and you were blue. It was doomed really. A hopeless mixture. In love and doomed.

  Dear Fatty,

  I’VE OFTEN TOLD you how fabulous the big beaches are in Cornwall. Not to say the little ones don’t also have their rock-pooly charms, but the big ones that stretch as far as the eye can see, like Polzeath or Watergate Bay, are awesome, with the spray hurtling off the massive crashing waves, and the sheer vastness of it all making you feel so small. I love it when I take very deep breaths till my lungs are bursting with salty, thick-as-clotted-cream air and I feel like I am half Dawn and half Cornwall. You must come and walk on the beach with me and we’ll take the dogs. The north coast is, of course, the wilder, with its strong Atlantic attack dragging along high winds and huge rolling waves for surfers. I spent quite a lot of my youth gazing out at the beautiful surfers, so distant they looked like toys tossed about in the swell. Even up close though, when they finally strode back up the beach, surfers are immensely attractive. Even the ugliest of fellows is quite dreamy when a summer of sun and salt have scrubbed him up.

  Anyway, anyway, anyway, a friend of mine, a young surfer in Newlyn, told me that he had an unfortunate incident last summer, when his cousin from Milton Keynes came to visit. The cousin hadn’t been out in the sun at all and certainly not on the beach, so he was as white as a milk bottle and rather shy and unconfident in his brand new Speedo swimming trunks. My friend told him that he needed to strut up and down the beach to attract the attentions of young ladies, and that it would really help if he were to put a potato in his Speedos, that this would undoubtedly rouse their interest. The cousin thought this was a bit strange. I think I would have concurred with that: I’ve never heard of that technique before. It must be a modern thing, among the youth. Anyway, anyway, anyway, the cousin did want to attrac
t young ladies so he apparently slipped a potato, a King Edward I think, not a new one, that would be silly, into his Speedos and off he went to the beach. It was a little bit cumbersome, as I’m sure you can imagine, but eventually he got the hang of it, and started parading up and down for all the pretty ladies to see. However, not one of them seemed at all interested and when the cousin returned to my friend, he said, ‘Sorry, mate, but this potato down the Speedos idea isn’t working, the girls aren’t remotely interested, in fact they seem repulsed.’ To which my friend was forced to retort, ‘I think you’ll find it will work much better, mate, if you put the potato down the FRONT of your Speedos.’ Can you believe that?

  Dear Mum,

  WHEN I WAS about eight, I bought you a present from an antique shop. It was a brass wall plaque. The man in the shop said it was original (yes, originally someone else’s). But anyway, it had a picture of an ancient granny in a rocking chair doing her knitting, and below that was a verse I still remember:

  Who is the one who ne’er finds fault,

  Who never seeks to blame?

  To whom you go when troubles come,

  Whose love remains the same?

  – Your mother.

  How ridiculously sentimental. How archaic and cheesy. How revolting. How true.

  Something I’ve always admired about you, Mum, is your ferocious independence. Only recently have you allowed any of us to properly do things for you. Perhaps retirement has given you permission to be more vulnerable? I don’t know, but I certainly do remember all the remarkable things you have managed to pull off on your own. I remember once returning home to Stoke in Plymouth to find a giant wardrobe in a different room. How had you moved it alone? Impossible. I think you’ve always regarded difficult and seemingly insurmountable problems as challenges, daring you to solve them. And you usually do, somehow.

  One day, about 12 or so years ago, you were due to arrive at our house in Berkshire because you had signed up to start a reflexology course you’d booked and paid for in London the next morning. When you arrived, I was surprised to see there were no side windows in your car. Someone had vandalised it the night before, and you hadn’t had an opportunity to get the windows replaced before your extremely windy journey up to us, on the motorway. You said that you had cleared the seat of shards of glass as best you could and sat on a newspaper for extra safety for the duration of the drive, intending to get the windows replaced when you reached ours.

  Once you’d had a cuppa and a chance to thaw out, you voiced a concern to me, and I could tell by the serious tone of voice that what you were about to say was difficult for you. I soon found out why. You told me you thought a splinter of glass might have, somehow, found its way into your fanny. You said you felt pain there, that you’d tried to find it, but you couldn’t see well enough to know how serious it was. You were worried, that if, indeed, it was serious, we ought to call the doc. If not, you could just apply some antiseptic cream and be done with it. You wanted to make it to your course first thing in the morning and you didn’t want any stupid shard of glass up your wazoo to prevent you going … stuff and nonsense … So, you explained, quite matter-of-factly, ‘I’m sorry, Moo, to have to ask you, you are the only one I can ask, but could you please have a quick peek and see if it’s anything to worry about? C’mon, let’s get it over with. No fussing. We’re all animals after all … come on.’ Throughout this whole exchange I fixed a wide, understanding smile on my face so as to appear sympathetic to your plight. Indeed, I genuinely was sympathetic, right up to the moment I realised what you were asking me. I kept smiling compassionately though, because I knew how very embarrassed you were, and I didn’t want to embarrass you further by showing my true feelings and screaming out loud in shuddering horror. The walk upstairs to the bathroom behind you took at least five years. You were quite spry, but I was slowly climbing the steps to the guillotine, smiling ever more weakly all the while. Once in the bathroom with the door safely locked, you whipped down your tights and pants in a trice, and quick as a flash, which it actually was, chattering all the time, as normally as a normal chatty thing, you bent over. What took place next was an exercise in the utmost trust, willing, intimacy, fear and pure love. I didn’t in a million years imagine that I would ever be required to furtle around in my own mother’s ladygarden and I can’t say that I enjoyed it, Mum, but d’you know what? – to my surprise I didn’t mind it either. There was something very civilised about it, about realising that all women are the same, really, gynaecologically. I thought I might be queasy or squeamish (y’know, a bit like you’re feeling right now), but NO. I found it comforting that I could be of use in such a practical way. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t recommend it as a hobby, but it dawned on me that, after all, I’d been there before, hadn’t I? – and it was all strangely familiar and perfunctory. Easy, really. We found the splinter, didn’t we? Removed it, dabbed on the cream and now you are a fully qualified reflexologist. Done and dusted.

  The second time you took my breath away with a suggestion was when I had been very ill with hepatitis A, remember, in about 1994 or so? I knew nothing about hepatitis until I contracted this vile version of it, and turned bright yellow and felt like my skin was on inside out, I was so raw. The sheets hurt me in the bed. It was awful. The local health-and-safety bods came to visit me with their clipboards to check what I’d eaten in the previous two weeks, since hepatitis A usually involves someone unhygienic preparing food without washing their hands. A better question would have been what hadn’t I eaten?! I’d been to restaurants, had sandwiches, eaten at home. It was impossible to identify a culprit and I was too weak to bother, I just wanted to be well again. I knew I was ill because I didn’t eat and that never, ever happens otherwise. I was just starting to feel a tiny bit stronger when you came to stay and nurse me better. I clearly remember the familiar smell of your lovely stew cooking downstairs and feeling hungry for the first time. I knew it would give me strength. You brought me a bowl and I struggled to sit upright in the bed. As I slurped away greedily at it, you plonked yourself down on the bed and said, very seriously, ‘Right, madam. Now you’re feeling a bit better, I want to know how you got hep A in the first place. Don’t shilly-shally about, tell me the truth, come on.’ First of all, I was shocked to hear you describing it as hep A, in such a knowing streetwise sort of fashion, but of course by this time you were working with a lot of drug addicts and you were quite au fait with street talk. Nevertheless, it was odd to hear it trip off your tongue so casually. I tried to explain about it being a kind of food poisoning but you were having none of it. ‘Oh come on, admit what you’ve been doing, we’re all grown-ups here. I know how you catch this, Dawn. Just say it.’ Say what? I didn’t know what you were referring to. Did you think I was a crack whore or using dirty needles or something? What?! And then you said it, the most remarkable thing you’ve ever said, and which I cannot ever forget. ‘You’ve been rimming, haven’t you? Admit it. Yes, you’ve been rimming. Rimming your own partner is bad enough Dawn, and very dangerous, but rimming strangers can lead to exactly this. A massive dose of hep A. You’ve only got yourself to blame. So, be sensible and just stop rimming in future. Now eat up your stew and I’ll rub your back for you.’ Oh. My. Actual. God.

  My favourite faux pas of yours (sorry, Mum, but you are hilarious sometimes, and long may you continue to be!!) was when I managed to get great tickets to see Elton John perform on the Argyle ground at Home Park in Plymouth. Argyle hadn’t hosted a rock event before and the city was abuzz. I’d bought tickets for eight or so of us in the family and you were due to babysit for Jack, who was too young to go. Only as the hours crept by did I realise you were a bit put out about it. I saw the ol’ lemon lips setting in and asked you what was wrong, remember? You told me that you were sad not to be going, that you adored Elton John, that he was one of your favourite singers ever, that you would’ve loved to go. Cousin Keiren stepped up and heroically sacrificed his ticket for you in favour of an evening of fun w
ith Jack instead, and a chance to show his auntie Roma how much he loved her. What a guy! I apologised for my oversight. ‘I didn’t know how much you loved Elton’s music,’ I ventured. ‘Yes,’ you replied, ‘he’s wonderful. My absolute favourite song of his is “Ben”. I love that one.’

  After we’d all changed our pants from laugh damage, we explained that song was in fact Michael Jackson’s and we giggled all the way to the stadium. Just before the show we popped in to say hi to Elton, who is always the most genial of geniuses. I felt a daft amount of pride that he’d come to our stadium, and I wanted to show our support as a family. Sorry if I embarrassed you, Mum, but I just had to tell him what you’d said. It was worth the bruise on my ankle when you kicked me for doing it! When he was halfway through his blisteringly great set, Elton said loudly into his mike, ‘This one is for Dawn’s mum, Roma. Sorry it isn’t your favourite but maybe this will do instead. It’s “BEN … NIE AND THE JETS”!’ The song boomed out over our hallowed stadium, we winked at each other and sat back to lap it up. Thanks for all the laughs, Mum. I know they weren’t intentional but they were delightsome all the same.

  ‘Whose love remains the same? Your mother.’

  Yay, yay and thrice yay to that …

  Dear Liza Tarbuck,

  PLEASE FIND BELOW my completed application form to become a lifelong friend and loyal admirer of Liza Tarbuck. I hope my application meets with a favourable response. I await your reply with anticipation and a small bout of the belly flutters.