Dear Fatty

by Dawn French

  Meanwhile, David and I would be invited to posh dinners inside lavish homes with dozens of servants providing for our every need. Or there would be more bloody balls – Caledonian balls with only white people there, and again I never quite looked or felt or was the part. The part of a company wife, quietly supporting her upwardly mobile company man of a husband. Who was I? Who was he? Where was the spirited young Irish lad I had known? He was certainly highly prized by the company and I was often told by his colleagues that he was tipped for great things. I was proud of him, for him, but Dad, I didn’t belong. So, this final unmarried visit to Sri Lanka mattered. We would arrange the teaching job I was going to take, we would hire staff together, we would hang out with all the people who would be our friends for the next couple of years. I would be a tea-taster’s wife.

  As always, I was very excited on the plane, I couldn’t wait to see him. We were good together physically and I always looked forward to that part of each reunion the most, to genuinely reconnecting in the most basic primal sense. Sorry, Dad, too much information. But honestly, each time we were apart, the lust grew stronger, it was our shared mutual need, and a big priority. When the plane landed, all the passengers headed into the airport, and as soon as I’d gone through passport control I saw him, on the other side of the glass, waving at me, while I waited for my luggage. There he was, my handsome fiancé whom I missed so much – there – at last – he was. So why was I feeling nothing? Why was my heart not pounding out of my chest as it usually did? Come on, heart, wake up! There he is, smiling and waving, we’ve waited for this – come on! I did the waving-back thing but something was wrong, Dad, terribly wrong.

  We reached the house; it was beautiful and colourful and hot. We drank tea, amazing, well-chosen, well-mixed, top-quality tea, we chattered, and we went to bed. I felt totally numb. Nothing was right, it was all very, very wrong. Something was missing. Everything was missing. What had happened? We slept, uneasily. We went to his club the next day. He introduced me to his new buddies. Other tea men, businessmen, nurses, wives, my future friends. I felt as if I was drowning.

  That evening, with two more weeks of the holiday to go, we finally talked the way we should have talked for the past year. We spoke about so much, about how different our lives now were, how we had grown apart and changed into people neither of us really recognised, how we were political polar opposites, how much he loved the ex-pat life and how little I did, how much I disliked our his ’n’ hers scuba-diving kit, how it made me feel ‘owned’. All this was reasonable and understandable. Then, and only then, after all that, he told me he was sleeping with a nurse he’d met there. A nurse? One of the nurses he’d introduced me to at the club yesterday? Yes, he said. So, you’re shagging someone else and she’s allowed to inspect me? I asked if anyone else knew about it. Yes, he finally admitted. It seemed everyone knew. So he had taken me to meet a group of people who all knew my fate? It was just me, miles from home, miles from my friends, who didn’t know? Why didn’t he tell me before, stop me from coming? Was that what I was feeling at the airport? Did I sense then that it was over? And if so, was I just sensing that it was over for me, or for us? Did I subconsciously suspect? Or was the love just … gone? On both sides? I had no answers to any of this but I knew I had to get away.

  I was back at the airport the very next day, and after a tearful farewell and a weepy flight home, I ran into the arms of a love I could depend upon, my brother, who took me back to his flat in London and listened to me blub on about the injustice of it all for days until he gently reminded me, mid-rant, that I had already known it wasn’t going to work out. I had known, really, but refused to face it. It was better for everyone that it ended now, before the wedding. He was right of course. I called Fatty and she came. She was the only other one I talked to at that point, until I could work my way through it and steel myself to call the various parents to explain what had happened.

  David and I met again briefly a few months later, when I returned the ring, and a few bits ’n’ bobs of his old kit. I was afraid that when I opened the door to greet him I might be revisited by a rush of the familiar old love and realise we had made a huge mistake, but no. There was, instead, a rush of nostalgia, a tender remembrance of the younger, happier times, but we both knew it was right to have ended it.

  So. That was over. I had been at college for three years, turning away from every possible opportunity of big sex fun with a bucketful of delish fellow students. Now I had a single term to catch up. Wahey!

  Dear Dad,

  OTHER THAN MY friend Scottie, no one on the acting course at Central spoke to me, or to any of us teachers. They refused to make eye contact, let alone converse. I think they believed they might catch something off us. And indeed they might have. Manners for instance.

  Annoyingly, their iciness made them all the more enigmatic, and there was a definite elite of blessed, golden, chosen ones. They were, on the whole, good-looking, usually blond and quite fit. Thoroughbreds really. We used to refer to them as the shampoo brigade, because their hair was always so perfect. There was one in particular who I thought was divine – I used to see him skulking about being moody and interesting. The foyer of the college was the actors’ main posing arena – it was directly outside the cafeteria, thus commanding a captive audience – they would throw interesting shapes against the wall while perusing their timetables and various notices concerning chlamydia check-ups and student-union functions. My particular darling, whom I shall refer to as the ‘Golden One’, was quite brooding and James Dean-ish. He was a good actor, I saw him in various plays at the Embassy, the theatre at the centre of the college, a beautiful but wounded old place. For some preposterous reason, we, the teachers, were not allowed into the theatre at any time except to watch the actors performing their plays, when they actively encouraged us in because they needed an audience. All of our productions took place in the studio spaces, which were fab but just not as exciting as the proper proscenium-arch grandness of the Embassy, the forbidden Embassy. The most memorable play that I saw the Golden One in was Bill Morrison’s Flying Blind, where he spent a deal of time naked. Yep, I saw that play several times, each night occupying a seat in the auditorium closer and closer to the front … I wanted to get a really good look at the … play.

  One day, I was having coffee in Marianne’s little cafeteria where I could see the goings-on in the foyer. The Golden One was there doing expert leaning against the noticeboards. He was alone. The rest of the shampoo herd were obviously grazing elsewhere. This was unusual, he was unguarded and vulnerable, so I decided to seize the moment, to pick him off. We had been attending the same college for nearly three years and as yet he hadn’t even cast a glance in my direction. If I didn’t take action now, college would be over and all hope gone. Plus, I was newly single and misguidedly emboldened. I wasn’t entirely stupid, however; I knew I couldn’t compete with the beauty of the girls at the vanguard of the shampoo brigade, but I had something else to offer. My sparkling wit, surely? In that instant, I decided to embark on Operation Flirt by winning him over with a flurry of hilarity – the romance would surely follow later. I stood up and crossed the foyer. He foolishly had his back to me, so he had no time to see me approach and consequently attempt a speedy escape. He was caught unawares. I advanced upon him in all my beige corduroy splendour, deciding that my opening gambit would be, ‘Hi. Hello there. Yes it’s me, I’m talking to you at last after three years. I bet you can’t believe your luck, eh? You must be so frustrated that you know nothing about me. Well, that agony stops right here, right now, and you, mister, are gonna know everything you’ve ever wanted to know and more about me, Dawn Roma French … Right, I’m going to start at the very beginning, stop me when you’re in love …’ By this time, my plan, if I had one, was that he would at least be smiling if not downright chuckling but … nope … nothing. He looked genuinely afraid and was backing up towards the wall, which meant I had to continue with the gag until he got it. He will get i
t eventually … won’t he? So I valiantly soldiered on. ‘So, um, right, I was born in Holyhead in 1957, and luckily for my mother, I was a baby …’ Nope, nothing. Carry on. ‘I was a chunky child, bold in nature, a real rusk-taker …’ He’s right up against the wall now and looks like he’s got a bad smell in his nostrils. Don’t give up, keep going. ‘You will probably be keen to know exactly what inoculations I’ve had, well …’ And on. And on. Still no response except clearly utter revulsion, and the unmistakable squeaking of leather belt on wall as he tried to slide away. I had to persevere – you know me, Dad, I’m nothing if not tenacious! I think after about six minutes of solid talking, and a tiny bit of physical restraint, I had reached as far as infants school, and was about to launch in to the junior-school years and regale him with many hilarious anecdotes about that, when suddenly the bell rang indicating the start of the next class. I was momentarily startled and the Golden One grabbed the opportunity to run, run like a hunted fox, for his life, off up the corridor to his Tumbling class and out of my life for ever.

  Or so I thought. Cut to about three years later. I was in a queue at the bank in Swiss Cottage. I was still banking there although I had long since left the area. I was inching my way slowly towards the front of the queue when out of the blue I heard my name pierce the stuffy quiet. ‘Dawn! God, darling, how great to see you!’ I turned round and it was him, the Golden One, advancing upon me with his arms wide open, gathering me up like a precious thing and giving me a huge, effusive, loving bear hug. I found myself in a situation I would have given good money to be in just a few years earlier. Now I’m not saying that things changed so completely and so utterly because I was by then working with the Comic Strip making eight films a year and we were always casting. No, I’m not saying that. But. It was odd.

  And here’s another odd thing. The same man, who had spurned me, was, shockingly, struck by lightning. Actual, real lightning. On his head. From God. Y’know, God, who I would later come to be the first female showbiz representative of on earth? Now, Dad, I’m not saying that it’s very unwise for any man to ever actively resist my charms. But it is weird, isn’t it?!

  Dear BF,

  HOW THE KNOB did we get away with calling ourselves teachers? I still see people now, grown women with children, especially in the Camden Town area, who shout after me, ‘Miss French!’ A clanking reminder of an extraordinary year you and I spent teaching at Parliament Hill School for Girls. 1980/81, wasn’t it? Dear Lord, we were both just out of ‘school’ ourselves.

  Parliament Hill. A big girls’ comprehensive between Camden and Highgate, set in beautiful grounds backing on to fields, with William Ellis boys’ school right next door. Huge and well equipped, (Parliament Hill that is, not the boys), it was a massive education machine stuffed with boisterous, confident kids and dedicated staff. I was a bit intimidated by how sprawling it was, but it helped that I’d had my final teaching practice there, so it was more of a natural progression than getting a new job in an entirely unfamiliar school. My teaching practice before that had been up the road at a big co-ed comp called Ackland Burley which had one of the most inspirational dance/drama departments in the country, so I had hoped Parly would be the same.

  Well, it wasn’t quite, was it? There was a small basement studio – that bit was good – but the staffroom for our department was in the old toilets next door. Our cupboards were toilet stalls, with toilets still there. We balanced files on washbasins and we made a little seating area under the mirrors at the end. This attempt at cosiness was sort of futile since every uttered word pinged back at us from the mostly cracked tiles on the walls and floor. It was a cold, damp, smelly, depressing place wasn’t it? I think the atmosphere had slowly eroded the head of the drama department’s enthusiasm for the subject and she wasn’t coping so well. She had some ill health and I was quite often thrust into her position. Me, the rookie newby twit, in charge of all the O-level, CSE and A-level drama courses, about which I knew nada. Thank God you came in part-time, to help with this frightening situation. You really helped me out Babe, and into the bargain we had an opportunity to spend more time together, cementing our friendship even further, united in fear and confusion. Quite often, I would spend the evening learning the theory I was teaching the next day from the course textbooks. I was about two pages ahead of my students at any one time. And what students! The older A-level kids were bright and inquisitive and quite a challenge – after all, I was only four or five years older than them. I spent the entire time bluffing that I was dead assured and supremely in control. For most of the time I worked with them, I was really wishing we could abandon the studying and gossip about telly and boyfriends. The O-level and CSE groups were the main ones we taught together. What a hoot! Once we could get them into the studio we could have great sessions. But getting them there wasn’t so easy. Parly had a culture of repeated truancy among certain groups of students. It wasn’t unusual for me to go scouting about in the fields or the shops or even to their homes to herd them in like a sheepdog. I felt that if I could just gather them up, I would at least have a fair chance of persuading them to stay. I had to throw in the towel eventually when it turned out I was spending more time on the prowl than in the studio teaching. Of course, what I later realised was that if the classes could be fun, or interesting enough, word would spread and the attendance figures would rise anyway. I learned this from the completely fab PE department where I found two mad but inspirational teachers, Rosie and Gill, employing this technique: Connect with the kids properly and they will slowly come to respect you and turn up regularly. For drama classes, like PE, teamwork is crucial – there’s no production if there’s no cast, there are no exam pieces without groups working together, and there’s no ‘group’ without people. Many would fail if a few let them down, so it was my dearest wish to get the full complement of kids into the studio as often as possible, and enable them to feel a sense of achievement when their group pieces were well received.

  I know we both found that the actual work, when they turned up, was mindblowing. I very quickly had to put all my middle-class ideas of what would make a good dilemma for a drama group to tackle away in the bottom drawer marked ‘shit ideas’. These kids had real-life dilemmas to draw upon, the likes of which I couldn’t begin to imagine. Issues to do with race, religion, weapons, drugs, bullying and abuse were way out of my experience, and yours. We stood agog while a kaleidoscope of their real lives was revealed to us. They put my lesson plans to shame. The biggest ‘dilemma’ I had written on my teaching suggestion cards was: ‘The council is planning on putting a motorway through our village. What are we going to do?’ What village? What motorway? Everything we planned was utter bollocks, and pretty much irrelevant. Some of the kids suggested their own dilemmas, like, ‘How do you stop your mother shooting up in front of your younger brother and sister?’ or, ‘My dad beat me up till I passed out, but I don’t want him to be taken away otherwise me and my sister will go into care.’ The classes often turned into a kind of group therapy where the kids gave each other advice, and they were the ones who really knew what advice, much better than us. So it was proper drama, real-life drama, being talked about and acted upon right there in front of us. Slowly the drama space became a place where kids would come to hang out at lunchtime and after school; they would offer to help clear away or whatever, just as a chance to talk a bit more. It was then that I realised they were using it as a sanctuary and that we could sometimes be more useful to them as a safe place than as a drama studio. Not all the kids did this of course, but the few who needed to are the ones I remember so clearly.

  The younger classes, the 11- and 12-year-olds, were my absolute favourites. They had only recently arrived at ‘big’ school and hadn’t learned yet to be ‘cool’ and suppress their excitement for the subject. Their imaginations were bursting, and since there were no awful exams to stunt their enjoyment, they would trip down the stairs like a herd of happy gazelles with their new shoes clacking like hooves on the
stone steps. They found it hard to keep still or listen, but when they did we had fantastic adventures, didn’t we? I don’t think either of us needs much encouragement to play, and in these early school years, before the tyranny of the constant assessment begins, the play aspect is what’s important.

  I do remember getting it wrong a couple of times, though. Once, we were doing a big improvisation about Captain Cook discovering Australia, a voyage of adventure on the high seas, on a big old ship built from chairs and tables in the studio. We had lookouts, and someone at the helm (a plastic hula hoop) and tots of rum (Vimto) and sailors cooking (chopped lettuce) in the galley and sails (sheets) being hoisted and pirates and all sorts. It was quite a project and took me some effort to keep my eye on everything that was happening. One particular kid was selected to be keel-hauled as punishment by her bosun for not coiling the ropes properly. We had talked before about what this involved, dropping her over the side and dragging her under the hull (canteen tables) at the widest part of the ship, where she could scrape off the barnacles on the way. So, we tied a rope round her middle and put her over the side, which, in effect, meant jumping off a chair and then scrabbling under the tables. I was distracted at that point by someone in the crow’s nest shouting out she’d seen land ahoy! We all busied ourselves getting our galleon into port where I noticed our keel-haul victim sitting, arms and legs crossed, very cross indeed, under the table. I realised we had abandoned her at a crucial moment and tried to encourage my deckhands to ‘Quick, pull her up, pull her up, me hearties!’ But she sat resolutely still. ‘No point,’ she said glumly. ‘I’ve drowned. And you’ll have to tell my mum.’

  Another time we did a term-long project about space travel, working out what we would need to bring, how long we were to be away, what our mission would be, what our spacesuits would look like, what we’d write in our farewell letters to our families, how we’d build our rocket, and so on. The last lesson of term was our lift-off day, signifying the end of the project. The kids had worked really hard on it, making costumes, painting the set, etc. The class was due after lunch and during the break I was summoned to the staffroom door where a little 11-year-old was in floods of tears. ‘What’s up?’ I asked. ‘I can’t go. I just can’t. I don’t want to leave my mummy and daddy and my newts. Someone else can have my spacesuit. Take someone else instead …’ It was a good lesson for me. Kids develop their imaginary awareness at different ages. The whole class understood that what we were doing was pretend, except one little mite who was a tiny bit less mature than the others, and who had spent the whole term dreading this moment and felt guilty about bottling out of genuine space travel … What a bloody coward.