Spectacles

by Sue Perkins

  My dad, under duress, came to the opening night and promptly fell asleep. Mum woke him every hour or so – ‘to avoid him getting pressure sores’ – whereupon he’d bellow, so the whole auditorium could hear, ‘Bloody hell – is it still going?’

  Some two hours into the play my character met her tragic end. My sister, eight at the time, was the only one of my family remotely moved by my death scene. As I extravagantly wheezed my way into the afterlife (screw you, Karen Flanders) Michelle shouted out from the audience, ‘Daddy! Susan’s dead!’

  Dad woke in an instant.

  ‘Thank God. Does that mean we can we go now, Ann?’

  I learned two things from this experience. Firstly, I wasn’t cut out to be a proper actor. Secondly, when your co-star, a seventeen-year-old boy, says he wants to drive you to the woods for a walk, he doesn’t really mean a walk.

  Next on the list, after Tolkien and Ibsen, came Bizet’s Carmen, a four-act tragic opera with full orchestra and vast cast. We didn’t have a full orchestra; we had our brilliant music teacher Lora on an old out-of-tune piano. We didn’t have a vast cast, so we joined forces with the neighbouring boys’ school (who also didn’t have an orchestra).

  Of course, it didn’t matter that there was no band. We weren’t doing it for that. We were in the show because we were going to meet boys. Real, actual boys. Essentially this production was a 1980s Tinder, with arias.

  The show was the passion project of a man called Roland, an unspeakably glamorous Italian teacher with olive skin and slicked-back hair. I imagine he wore pomade. Even though I have no idea what pomade was or is, it’s exactly the type of unguent he would have smeared himself with. Roland had all the zeal of Alec Guinness’s character in The Bridge on the River Kwai – creating a doomed edifice to reflect his own inner glory, dragging a pack of disinterested kids with him. It didn’t matter to Roland that none of us could really sing or play an instrument or speak French. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that we gave it a go – and that was enough.

  The boys and girls rehearsed separately for the first few weeks. We girls were mainly playing prostitutes, if memory serves – although we decided, tacitly, that we would play these prostitutes as kids who had Latin lessons, wore uniforms and were terrified of touching boys. I like to think it was a novel and refreshing take on the classic trope. If I thought we seemed uncomfortable, it was nothing in comparison to the lads. Instead of playing football, they found themselves being squeezed into gold bolero jackets, mouthing some homoerotic badinage about smuggling.

  A fortnight before the show the two schools came together for rehearsals. The boys flooded into the school hall, and we gasped and giggled as their energies met ours. Lora thumped away at the piano, and Roland barked things in Italian, like ‘Staccato’ or ‘Lento, lento’. We had no idea what he was talking about but were surfing a sea of hormones, so details like that didn’t bother us.

  And then he walked in. Late. Scruffy. Laughing.

  Rob.

  It was love at first sight – at least for me. Now I look back on it, he didn’t so much as glance in my general direction, so it’s fair to say Cupid didn’t strike us with his arrow at the same time. Maybe the arrow went through me and clipped him a bit as it exited – collateral damage – so it took a while for him to notice I even existed. Who knows? Love is strange, and all you can do is go where it takes you with a modicum of grace and gratitude.

  Rob was like Tom Cruise, only visible without an electron microscope. He had an unruly mop of black hair and stooped slightly, the way that tall men do when they are kind and self-aware enough to realize they are taking up too much space.

  Our relationship proceeded like most other relationships do when you’re that age. We met in car parks and drank cider. We sat for hours until our sciatics thrummed with cold, chatting and snogging. We broke up at parties after litres of Southern Comfort. We got back together after more Southern Comfort and woke together on floors, wrapped around each other, forgetting that there’d ever been a cross word. We dragged family and friends into dramas that burned themselves to nothing in a heartbeat. Yet it worked. It worked for over five years. I had no idea why.

  In my last year of college we drifted apart into sharper versions of ourselves. Rob went away to Florida to work. I was supposed to go out and visit in the holidays, but the night before I was due to fly he called me and said he didn’t want me there. He wouldn’t say why. He sounded small. Far away. Much further than the 4,594 miles that lay between us.

  I flew out anyway.

  For the first night we were close. Intimate. The next day he seemed choked, like something invisible had him by the throat. On the third day he cried and then fell into a silence. On the fourth day he started talking. And talking. And talking.

  It turned out that Rob was having a breakdown. It turned out that Rob thought he might be gay. It turned out that Rob had cheated on me.

  The last time I truly recall us being together, as a couple at least, was in 1991, at our HIV test in a humid sexual health clinic in Florida. A video on the dangers of pubic lice was playing in the background, a monotonous voice-over laid on top of some crude animations of genital critters.

  A big Southern mamma filed her nails and sang tunelessly into the hot, static air.

  Take the ribbon from your hair

  Shake it loose and let it fall.

  I sat on the porch as the receptionist typed up my notes. Tip tap, tip tap. The sun cowered behind the low-rises in the distance. The cicadas began to own the night.

  Time to grow up.

  High Days and Holidays

  As a child my summers were spent freewheeling the pavements on my bike or loitering on corners trying to master the art of blowing bubblegum. Occasionally, if I wanted an extra adrenalin rush, I’d mix it up a bit and opt for a spot of low-level shoplifting. I only ever worked the small-time con – I left the big stuff to the pros – in fact my thieving ambitions didn’t ever stretch much beyond the odd Yorkie bar, Sherbet Dip Dab or packet of sugar cigarettes. But damn, I was good. Real slick. I had perfected what I believed to be a fail-safe, as well as highly original, technique. I would take my brother David to the newsagents with me. He was young and cute and therefore beyond reproach. I would make him wear his heavy-duty parka come rain or shine, and I would secrete the stolen items in his fur hood. Then we would walk out of the shop bold as brass.

  David was basically a cocoa mule – a kind of Klepto-Kenny from South Park. It was the perfect scenario – my hands were clean, his hood was full. What on earth could go wrong?

  On the way home I’d pick the chocolate bars out from the folds of fur lining and eat them. Occasionally, he’d hear me munching, look up at me sweetly and ask, ‘Chocolate! Where did that come from?’

  ‘It fell from the sky,’ I’d answer, and break him off a chunk by way of a reward.

  ‘I’m really, really hot, Suzy. Can I take my coat off now? Please?’

  As so often happens in these situations, I became a victim of my own success. I got cocky. I pushed my luck, started playing with the big boys – family packs, large Toblerones and my ultimate nemesis, the Terry’s Chocolate Orange. You see, unlike a Caramac or a Milky Way, a Chocolate Orange doesn’t nestle discreetly in the fake fur of a parka hood. No. It sticks out like a sore orange. A sore Chocolate Orange.

  In retrospect, I got a few things wrong. Firstly, and most importantly, it never occurred to me to actually buy anything in the shop. A kid in a sweet shop not buying sweets – I mean, repeatedly not buying sweets – was only ever going to arouse suspicion.

  One particular afternoon, as Klepto-Kenny and myself made our casual bid for f
reedom, the light was suddenly blotted out. Mr Wesson, the shopkeeper, was standing in the doorway, barring our exit.

  ‘Now then, I think you might be leaving with some things you haven’t paid for …’

  It’s in these testing moments you truly know what you’re made of. It transpires I am made of the yellowest custard of cowardliness, with a slight back note of chicken.

  ‘It’s him!’ I squealed, pointing at David. At that moment, as I stared at my brother accusingly, I realized just how much I had overdone it. His hood resembled a bulging Santa sack, stuffed full of confectionery. So much so that the weight of it was pulling the whole coat back, causing the fabric around his neck to choke him a little.

  ‘What? What?’ squeaked David, his larynx crushed by the weight of a dozen Bounties and a box of Milk Tray.

  ‘Now let’s have a look here then,’ hissed Mr Wesson, delving into David’s hood and producing fistfuls of contraband. David was visibly confused; on the one hand traumatized that a burly stranger was rootling around in his coat, on the other, relieved that his airways were now becoming clearer.

  ‘Well, I have no idea how those got there,’ I asserted, followed by an accusatory ‘David, what have you done?’

  David began to wail – one of those soundless wails, all cartoon tonsil wagging. Boulevards of green snot appeared under his nose.

  I wondered how bad it could get. There would be a custodial sentence, of course, but for how long? Weeks? Months? A year? But Mr Wesson was way more vengeful than that. He did something far worse than call the police. He demanded I went home and told my mum – my mum – and that the three of us returned to the shop to see him.

  I remember the slow plod home – David, silent save the odd pained gulp and viscous sniff. My mind was racing. How the hell could I get out of this one?

  I let myself in and wandered upstairs. I could hear her in the bath.

  Me:

  Mum …?

  The occasional splosh. Faint humming.

  Me:

  Mum …?

  Mum:

  What is it?

  Me:

  Mr Wesson wants to talk to you …

  Mum:

  Why?

  Me:

  It was an accident. You see, some sweets, accidentally –

  Mum didn’t hang around to hear the rest. She leaped out of the water like Glenn Close at the end of Fatal Attraction. There was a blur of wet dugs and blind rage as she launched towards me. Game over.

  One thwacked arse, a trip back to Mr Wesson and a thousand public apologies later, I returned home. Then my mum told my dad. Another thwacked arse and a thousand apologies later, things calmed down.

  That evening Mum was busy cooking dinner. The reassuring reek of fried onions and grilled cheese floated from under the kitchen door.

  ‘Susan! Hang up your brother’s coat and come and sit down for tea, please,’ she shouted.

  I bent over to pick up the anorak. As I stood upright, there was a rustle as a Twix, hitherto hidden undetected in a fold of the hood, worked its way loose and fell to the floor.

  Revenge is sweet.

  We didn’t go abroad as kids. Abroad was a dangerous place, which my mum would often mutter about.

  ‘Felicity went to Tenerife and came out in terrible hives after going in the pool.’

  ‘Did you hear about Muriel? I don’t think her stomach will ever be the same after that mussels incident in Majorca.’

  My childhood holidays were brutal one-day affairs that invariably involved the pebbled beaches and sub-zero waters of ‘summertime’ Brighton as their endgame. Mum and Dad shared a loathing of traffic and a love of driving in the pitch black, so we would leave at the crack of dawn, around 5.30 a.m. There we’d be, deep in REM, when we were plucked from our beds and bundled into the car barely conscious. It was essentially a kidnap with a holiday twist.

  ‘Dad …’ I’d mumble, my mouth still furry with sleep, ‘why’s it so early?’

  ‘We want to miss the traffic.’

  ‘I’ve made sandwiches,’ said Mum, by way of placation, brandishing a wonky Marmite doorstop.

  Even at that young age there were two key points I wanted to raise. Sadly, I was always too shattered. Let me now, as an adult, make them …

  Firstly – and this one’s for you, Dad – we lived in Croydon. Croydon is a mere forty-three miles from Brighton. We didn’t need to leave at 5.30 to get there in good time. Next up, Mum, this one’s for you. My digestive system, it’s fair to say, has evolved into a fairly robust beast. But no one, no one on this planet wants to eat Nimble bread slathered in yeast paste AT DAWN.

  By 5.33 a.m. we’d be bundled into the back seat and Dad would start the Austin Princess, which would rumble into life just loudly enough to mask the screams of the neighbours it had by now woken from their slumbers. A strong petrol reek filled the car.

  Dad:

  [cheery] We’re off!

  Mum:

  Bert! [Screaming] MIND THE SIDES!

  Mum and Dad never had a lot of cash, but my God they were wizards on a budget. It’s fair to say that for them the Age of Austerity began at birth and will only truly end once I’ve taken full responsibility for them in their dotage. Then it’ll be the full Werther’s Original all the way, guys. Mum was born into the culture of make do and mend and has never quite left it. Dad, for his part, was unnaturally good at saving, and so, between them, they would occasionally have enough funds to embark on

  MAJOR WORKS.

  Every few years or so Dad would announce that he was ‘doing something to the house’. This filled us with terror. Dad’s only contribution to the canon of interior design was to insist on bright swirly carpets everywhere. Ev-er-y-wh-ere – including up the side of the bath. Rad, eh? Eat your heart out, Kelly Hoppen.

  When Mum and Dad embarked on

  MAJOR WORKS

  disaster was never far behind.

  One year they decided to spend all their savings repainting the exterior of the house.

  Mum:

  I want it white

  Dad:

  White is boring

  Mum:

  It’s traditional!

  Dad:

  I don’t like traditional. I’m not traditional. I hate tradition!

  So they decided to get some swatches. So far, so reasonable. Paint swatches, however, are notoriously misleading, due to the fact they are

  Printed facsimiles that don’t always bear much relation to the actual colour you’ll get from the tin.

  Are usually about one centimetre long and three centimetres wide, so it’s very hard to work out how a larger area might look.

  What happens with ‘normal’ people is that they pick a couple of swatches, then buy a tester pot, then paint a largish section of wall so they can gauge how the colour works within the environment.

  Not my parents.

  Mum and Dad waited for a nice rainy day, just as dusk was falling, to look through the swatches. The perfect light, you’ll agree, in which to make a large-scale paint decision.

  Dad:

  [giving a cursory glance, before returning to the football] I like that one.

  Mum:

  Oh, Bert! It’s white!

  Dad:

  No, it bloody isn�
�t!

  Mum:

  You said you didn’t want white.

  Dad:

  It isn’t white!

  Mum:

  Have a look at it!

  Dad:

  You’re bloody blind, woman! It’s not white! It’s whiteish …

  The clue was in the ‘ish’. We should have known. Ish! You never trust an ‘ish’. You don’t go with an ‘ish’. You don’t let a sleeping ‘ish’ lie. This much I have learned.

  So the masonry paint was bought, dozens upon dozens of litres of the stuff. No tester pots, no trial runs – they just flat-out went for it.

  I remember coming home from school with Mum that afternoon. I remember turning the corner and being met by the sight of our house. Our nice, discreet little house was discreet no more. The formerly shy, shabby 1930s nonentity was suddenly and shockingly transformed into something you might find at Disney World, or in the grounds of a Victorian stately home whose owner had been driven to folly by the ravages of tertiary syphilis.

  Even Mum stopped talking for a split second. As if on cue, Dad appeared from around the side of the house.

  Dad:

  [cheerily] What do you think?

  Mum:

  Oh, Bert! BERT!

  Dad:

  What?

  Mum:

  It’s pink!

  Dad: