by Mary Portas
Bill’s just chatted to a woman with bleached blonde hair who’s with the group and suggested that they can meet after the show.
‘Dirty bastard,’ says Steve Jones. ‘Dirty fucker.’
With a cry of disgust, my mother strides towards the television.
‘Turn it off!’ she shrieks. ‘Turn it OFF!’
‘But, Muuuum!’
In desperation, she pulls the socket out of the wall and the TV goes black.
‘I will not have that filth in my house!’ she yells, before storming off to the kitchen.
I look at my brothers and smile. The Sex Pistols are amazing.
BaByliss hot brush
Am I in love with Kate Jackson? I wonder, as I fold my hair into the BaByliss. And if I am, then does it mean I’m a Lebanese?
Steam rises as I pull the tongs, determined to get a flick into my dead straight hair.
The first woman I felt like this about was Kiki Dee. But there aren’t many lesbians in Watford so I’m really not sure what one looks like. Besides, I’ve enjoyed my romances with Sean, Stephen, Neil and Ian. None of them was serious but I liked the dates and kisses on the front seat of their cars until Mum appeared on the porch at midnight to put out the milk bottles. To avoid this, I now get my dates to drop me off down the road. It had worked a treat until Paul Craddock asked me to go for a drink when I was on a night out at the Artichoke in Croxley Green.
Paul was nineteen, his dad played golf and his brother’s girlfriend looked like Julie Christie, all long blonde hair and even longer tanned legs. I had to look my best on our date. Going through Joe’s wardrobe while he was out at work, I spied a silver blue mohair cardigan that he’d just bought from Lui, Watford’s only designer boutique. Joe was doing so well in hairdressing that he could afford all the best gear but would never let me borrow any of it.
I couldn’t wear the cardigan on the sly, though, because Mum did all our washing and would spot it. So, instead of putting it on, I hid it on the porch before we all sat down for tea. Angela had come over before she and Tish went out. Michael’s friend, Mick, was also there and Joe had brought home Kevin Gilmartin. It was always the same on Saturday nights – all of us plus extra – digging into whatever Mum had cooked before heading out to different places and meeting up for last orders at the same pub.
Ten of us squeezed into the living room as Mum bustled in and out with the dishes, and I necked my supper eagerly, anticipating Paul’s arrival in his Ford Cortina. At eight o’clock, I retrieved the hidden cardigan from the porch after dousing myself in Blasé and walked down the road to meet him.
Paul took me to the Boot in Sarratt where I finally relaxed, knowing we’d never bump into Joe. It was almost midnight when I walked back up the path to the house. None of us had a key because Mum always left the back door unlocked and a piece of paper on the kitchen table with our names listed on it. We had to cross off our own when we got in so she could check we were all safely home, and the last in locked up.
But as I walked into the back garden, I saw the light on. Joe must be home. He’d be having a cup of tea with Michael or something. I decided to hoist myself in through the Front Room window but, one leg in and one leg out, an old man walking up the street mistook me for a burglar and started shouting as I climbed through the window.
‘Whatcha doin’?’ he yelled. ‘Breakin’ in, are ya?’
‘It’s my house!’ I called, before hurling the rest of myself inside and landing on the carpet.
As the man outside screamed that he was going to call the police, I looked up to see Joe staring at me. He’d been sitting on the sofa listening to music in the dark.
‘You are a joke, Mary!’ he snarled, as he spotted his cardigan. ‘And who the hell is that nutter shouting outside?’
Joe made sure I didn’t touch his wardrobe again, and after a few dates my romance with Paul Craddock fizzled out.
I sigh as I pull the tongs out of my hair and the tiny bit of flick I’ve managed to get into it immediately starts to drop. My hair is constantly frustrating me but boyfriends don’t. I’m having too much fun to be sitting next to the same guy at the Odeon each weekend, eating popcorn and holding hands. And I don’t really care if I’m a Lebanese or not either. All I am sure of, as I watch Kate Jackson high-kicking in her white flares on Charlie’s Angels, is that she has the best hair on the planet.
Kerrygold butter 2
Boys arrived at St Joan’s in my lower-sixth year when the grammar-school system changed. Suddenly there were Toms and Christophers running around, as well as a new headmaster called Mr Cartmell, who was going to do a year’s handover with Sister St James. Testosterone was in the air and everything was different.
I’d chosen English, art and sociology as A levels but academics still didn’t interest me much. The only thing I continued to really thrive at was performing under Mr Harold’s guidance. Getting home after performances, I’d sit down with Mum at the kitchen table as I told her all about the plays.
I knew she was pleased I’d found something I loved but I still didn’t dare tell my parents about my theatre ambitions. Mr Harold had found out about drama schools for me – the Central School of Speech and Drama, LAMDA and RADA – and I was determined to apply. But I wasn’t sure how Mum and Dad would react. Dancing, music and acting were hobbies, not real jobs. Dad would probably hit the roof and Mum would worry that it wasn’t steady enough. What kid from Watford became an actor?
Still, though, I threw everything into performing, and when we decided to raise money for charity I got all my classmates together to put on a pop show. After selling tickets, the whole of the school trooped in to see us. Stephanie Elsie came on as Alvin Stardust, while Debbie Hunt, Angela Walmsley and Heidi Ginger belted out the Three Degrees. Cathy Lipscombe danced across the stage as the leader of Pan’s People, with Geraldine, Shirley, Margaret and Lorraine behind her, gyrating to Supertramp, and Margaret Woodhead got the unfortunate job of impersonating Noddy Holder. I dressed up as Jimmy Savile with a cigar in my hand. I’d spent hours watching him on Top of the Pops and was only too pleased to put on a tracksuit to impersonate the man who was then loved by millions.
The show was a massive success and, after realizing that I could unite my classmates in a shared cause, I decided to put myself up in the vote for next year’s head girl. I wasn’t the most obvious choice – not top of the class or the best behaved – but I’d proved that I could get people working together and the Queen had just celebrated her Silver Jubilee so I fancied being a bit of a leader too.
The vote was done a couple of weeks before the end of the summer term and I was soon called into Mr Cartmell’s office.
‘Hello, Mary,’ he said, as I sat down in front of him.
Surely I must have won. As far as I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong for at least a month.
‘I don’t know you very well yet because our paths haven’t crossed,’ Mr Cartmell said. ‘But I wanted to let you know that you’ve been voted head girl.’
My face broke into a broad smile.
‘You should be very proud that you’ve been chosen because it means that you’re liked and respected by your friends. It’s a job they think you can do.’
Then he shifted nervously in his seat. ‘But I’m afraid that we cannot act on this vote because some of the teachers feel that you are not responsible enough to hold the position of head girl,’ he said.
‘What do you mean? I won the vote. I got the job.’
‘I know, Mary. But some members of staff do not think you are suitable for the job and have vetoed the vote. They will not agree to you becoming head girl. I’m very sorry.’
Without saying a word, I got up and left the office, pushing down my tears as I walked home. But they started to flow the moment I got inside the house and found Mum in the kitchen, buttering bread.
‘What’s happened?’ she said, as I walked in and threw my bag onto the table.
‘I was voted head girl but Mr Cartmell told me
I can’t do it,’ I sobbed.
‘Whatever do you mean?’
‘He said that some of the teachers were against it. They don’t think I’m suitable.’
Mum wrapped her arms around me as she covered my head in kisses. ‘Oh, darling,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry.’ She held me close as she spoke in a quiet voice. ‘More fool them. They don’t know what they’ve missed.’
‘Do you really think so?’
‘Yes, I do. You might be a bit of a handful, Mary, but you’ve got a big heart.’
‘Have I?’
‘Yes. But the thing about life is that sometimes your face just doesn’t fit and it’s not a failing of yours but the people around you.’ She chucked me tenderly under the chin. ‘Now dry your tears.’
Mum got a plate out of the cupboard and put a couple of slices of bread on it. The butter was extra thick. ‘That should cheer you up now,’ she said, with a smile.
R White’s lemonade 2
‘Mum’s in bed,’ Michael said, as I walked into the house a few days later. ‘But I can’t get an appointment with the doctor until tomorrow.’
‘What’s wrong with her?’
‘I don’t know. She says it’s her head but she’s not making proper sense. The doctor is full tonight. He said to bring her down in the morning.’
‘But Mum’s never ill.’
‘I know. That’s why I want the doctor to see her.’
‘Where’s Dad?’
‘Work. He said he’d be home by seven.’
Mum was lying on her bed as I walked in to see her. She looked pale and feverish, mumbling a string of almost silent words that I couldn’t understand.
‘Mum?’ I said. ‘Are you okay?’
She clutched at her temples.
‘Is it a bad headache, Mum?’ I asked. ‘Why don’t I go down to the shop and get you some lemonade? Will that make you feel better?’
She stared at me, her eyes focusing on mine for a moment. ‘What’s lemonade?’ she said.
‘What do you mean, Mum? Lemonade! Lem-o-nade.’
Her eyes slid away from mine as she started to mutter again.
‘Mum?’ I said. ‘You’d like a glass, wouldn’t you? I’ll walk down to the shop and buy a bottle. You love lemonade. It’s your favourite.’
But she didn’t reply. Instead she just kept muttering to herself and fear solidified like ice inside me as I looked at her.
Camel coat
The doctor’s glasses are so thick they make his eyes look like frogspawn.
‘How long has your mother been unwell?’ he barks.
‘Since yesterday. She says it’s her head and her neck is aching too.’
Why did he make us come here? Mum has only ever called a doctor to our house once in all the years we’ve been in Watford. She’d never bother the GP for no good reason so why couldn’t he just visit us at home?
Mum is wearing her best camel coat but her hair is sticking up in tufts. She’ll be so angry when she knows I let her go out looking like this. The trouble is, this doctor doesn’t know Mum because the GP who looked after us for years has retired and she hasn’t met his replacement properly.
‘Let me know what he says,’ Dad had said, as he left for work earlier. ‘It’s a busy day and there’s no one to cover me. Tell the doctor that she was pointing up at the ceiling last night. Nearly scared the life out of me. I can’t get any sense out of her.’
What could it be? I’d wondered, as I helped Mum get dressed. Maybe she was delirious. I knew that one of Joe’s friends had seen pink elephants climbing up the wall once when he was ill.
‘So it’s your head, is it, Mrs Newton?’ the doctor says to Mum, as she sits quietly in front of him.
I wish he knew her, understood that she usually talks nineteen to the dozen, not the gobbledegook she’s mumbling now.
‘Make Joe pork chops,’ she’d muttered, as I helped her get dressed. ‘Make Joe pork chops.’
‘Course I will.’
‘Tish. Postcard. Postcard.’
‘What do you mean, Mum? She’ll send one but she’s only been gone a few days. It will take a while to get here.’
Tish had gone on holiday to Spain with Marie the week before and I’d wished I was going with her as I watched her pack.
‘It’ll be your turn soon,’ Mum had said to me, as she helped Tish, layering tissue paper between her clothes to make sure they weren’t too creased. ‘Next year you’ll be eighteen and then we’ll think about letting you loose on the Continent.’
With a frown on his face, the doctor listens to Mum’s heart and takes her temperature. Then he shines a light into her eyes and sits back down at his desk.
‘I think your mother is going through the change,’ he says, as he looks at Michael and me. ‘Women can get a little down at times like this. Depressed and erratic. Do you understand what I mean?’
One of Mum’s cousins suffered with her nerves. It had got so bad that she didn’t even recognize her own family and had had to go to hospital. Does the doctor mean that this is what’s happening to Mum? But she’s never been up and down in her moods. She’s always steady, always there.
‘I’m going to give your mother a prescription for some anti-depressants,’ the doctor tells us. ‘I want you to take her home and make sure she doesn’t stay in bed. It will do her no good to be hiding away. She needs to be up and out. Women can suffer when they are going through the menopause but you mustn’t let her wallow in it.’
He looks at us. ‘A couple of weeks or so and she’ll be back to normal. Just make sure she takes her medication.’
His words ring in my head as we walk Mum back to the car. Two weeks. Just two weeks.
Milk of Magnesia
‘The doctor knows what he’s talking about,’ Dad says, as he sits at the kitchen table. ‘Your mother will be fine soon enough.’
‘But she’s getting worse,’ Michael says. ‘You didn’t see her this afternoon. I think we should take her back to see the doctor.’
‘Well, it’s too late tonight. Let’s see how she is in the morning, shall we? She’ll be upset if she thinks we made a fuss over nothing. You only saw the doctor yesterday.’
Dad gulps down a spoon of Milk of Magnesia and sighs. ‘Now let me get on with this paperwork, will you? I’ve got to get it done tonight.’
I think of the day when I was about six and Eric Kettle brought Dad staggering home from work. His stomach ulcer had burst and he’d been taken straight into hospital.
‘You’re working too hard!’ Mum had told him, as we sat by his bedside.
‘Stop your worrying, Theresa,’ Dad had replied. ‘I’ll be right again soon enough. I’ve got to earn a wage, now, haven’t I?’
He was back at his desk within days.
‘The doctor knows what he’s doing,’ Dad says to us. ‘Let him do his job. You only saw him yesterday. Let the pills do their work.’
But if he had seen Mum earlier today then maybe he wouldn’t be so sure. Michael and I had taken her for a walk just as the doctor had told us to but she was too weak to go far. We took her home and left her sitting in the Front Room while we went to make a cup of tea. But coming back, we found Mum crouching down behind the swivel chair, scratching at the fabric and mumbling.
I keep thinking about what we’re going to tell her when she’s better. Mum will be angry that we took her out when she wasn’t herself. But we’ve got to do what the doctor says. I know her cousin got better after she went into hospital but I don’t want Mum going somewhere with strangers. I want her here with us. We’ll look after her and we won’t tell her anything about how she’s been when she gets better. We’ll just say she wasn’t quite herself for a few days.
‘Will Mum be all right?’ Lawrence had asked me, after Michael and I had got her back to bed.
Joe’s just given him a great new haircut and at fourteen he’s beginning to grow up. But suddenly Lawrence looked so small and frightened as he stood in front of me.
&n
bsp; ‘Course she will!’ I said. ‘She’s going to be fine.’
But I’m afraid, too. It’s as if the horizon has tilted. I don’t understand what is happening. Have we done this to Mum? Have all the years of looking after us tired her out?
I leave Dad doing his books and go upstairs. Mum is lying still and quiet, mumbling every now and again as I lie down on the bed next to her.
‘“Hail Mary,”’ I whisper, as I hug her. ‘“Full of grace. The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus. Holy Mary. Mother of God. Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen. Hail Mary. Full of grace. The Lord …”’
Mum starts to say the words with me. Full sentences.
‘“Hail Mary,”’ she says. ‘“Full of grace.”’
Her voice is clear. God is looking after her. I know He is. Mum is going to be fine. Together we whisper the words of the rosary as the last rays of light seep out of the summer night’s sky.
But the next morning she is no better.
‘I’m ringing for an ambulance,’ Michael says. ‘This isn’t right. She’s been like this for three days now and I’m not going back to that doctor.’
There were no blue lights or racing speeds when the ambulance arrived. Michael phoned Dad to tell him what was happening and got into his car to follow the ambulance while I climbed inside it with Mum. It was only when she was pushed into Casualty that the world turned upside down.
‘What drugs has she had?’ a young doctor yelled at me, as he looked at Mum. ‘What drugs has she had? How long has she been like this?’