by Mary Portas
Sometimes, if I’m really careful, I can scrape together enough to buy Lawrence or Joe a secret treat – a cake or a bun that I know they will like. Occasionally I keep enough back to buy myself something too: a massive Scotch egg.
‘But what will you do if you don’t go to drama school?’ Tish asks.
‘Dunno.’
‘Mary! You’re sitting your A levels soon. There’s got to be something you want to do if you don’t get a place. What about becoming a paramedic?’
‘Are you joking, Tish? Can you imagine me in an overall rescuing people?’
‘Maybe not.’
I turn a page.
‘So what, then?’ Tish asks.
‘I don’t know!’
Tish goes quiet and I stare at the ceiling. All the plans I was constantly making before Mum died have been forgotten. The future seems so far away now. As well as applying to RADA, I’ve been for an interview at Goldsmiths, University of London, to do an English degree but wasn’t really sure why I was there as I sat answering the questions.
‘Do you smell something weird?’ Tish asks.
I bend over the bunk to see her scrabbling around the bed. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Trying to find whatever it is. There’s such a bad smell in here. It’s like something’s rotting.’
‘I can’t smell anything.’
‘Well, you must have a cold or something. It’s disgusting whatever it is.’
Tish screeches as she burrows under her pillow. ‘Mareeeeeeeee!’ she yells.
She holds up a Scotch egg covered with mould. It was tucked underneath her pillow. ‘What on earth is this?’
I look at her and start to smile. ‘Oh, shit!’ I say. ‘I must have forgotten it. I had to hide it from Dad. He’d only moan if he knew I’d spent ten pence on it. He’s such a tight git. I swear I don’t know how Mum ever put up with him.’
We look at each other and, without warning, after months of hush, our bedroom is suddenly filled again with the sound of laughter.
Aramis
‘What does he think he looks like?’ Tish cries, as she walks over to the buffet table.
We’re standing in the working men’s club where Dad’s pigeon mates meet. Dad got a deal on hiring it for my eighteenth, and Tish and I did the buffet. The table is heaving with prawn cocktail vol au vents, cheese and pineapple on sticks, sausage rolls and Twiglets. For afters there are iced rings, Tunnocks tea cakes and a huge cake.
Michael looks confused, Joe is crying with laughter and a mixture of awe and hysteria flits across Lawrence’s face as we watch Dad jive across the dance-floor. He is wearing brown flared trousers and a cream-and-brown striped shirt. His hair is slicked to his head with about three pots of Brylcreem. ‘Night Fever’ is playing. Our father suddenly can’t get enough of disco.
‘Get him off there!’ I hiss at Joe.
‘But look at the old man, Mary! He’s having the time of his life.’
Jean and Ruth walk up to us with smiles covering their faces.
‘You’ve done yourselves proud!’ Ruth exclaims. ‘What a party.’
‘Make him stop!’ I wail at her, as I point at Dad.
‘Go on, Mary! He’s having fun. It’s good to see him smile at last.’
I know it is. It’s just hard to keep up with the changes in him. One day Dad was sitting crying in the Front Room, the next he was like an excited teenager.
It had started when Phil told us about the Widows and Widowers Club in West Watford that his mum went to each Saturday night. ‘Your dad should try it,’ he’d said. ‘My mum loves it.’
‘That’d be perfect!’ Tish cried. ‘Dad used to like ballroom dancing when he was young, didn’t he? It’s been more than eight months. We’ve got to get him out of the house.’
Tish, Joe and I moved on him together when he was sitting watching Rising Damp one night.
‘Come on, Dad!’ we cajoled. ‘It’ll do you good.’
He grunted as he sat in front of the television.
‘You never know, you might enjoy it,’ we said.
He silently lit a Player’s.
We often wondered if Dad realized just how like Rigsby he was.
In the end, we persuaded him to give the club a go and he arrived home so happy after one too many pale ales that he fell off his chair in the living room as he told us about the night.
‘It was grand,’ he said. ‘Great music. Lots of people. Lovely to have a wee dance.’
We were delighted that he was having fun at last. We had no idea just how much, though, until we went to visit him in hospital following a long-awaited operation on his piles and found a very attractive woman called Bernadette sitting by his bed.
‘What do you think he’ll tell her he’s had done?’ I screeched with laughter, as we left. ‘Do you think he’ll take his rubber ring when they go for dinner?’
Bernadette didn’t last long but my father didn’t seem too worried. He suddenly had a new horizon and was going to make the most of it. Each Saturday night without fail, he got dressed in his best, slicked down his hair and headed off to see the other widows and widowers. It was good that he was enjoying himself again. I just wished he wasn’t doing it quite so publicly because my new boyfriend was due to turn up any minute.
John. Mead. Just those two words were enough to make my stomach roll. As the younger sister of two brothers I had been in the constant slipstream of their friends – some I had dated, others I had admired from afar – but none had turned into a serious boyfriend.
I met John when he came round to our house for one of the haircuts Joe did for his mates after work. With chestnut brown hair and hazel eyes, he walked in wearing a tank top, jeans and brogues, looking like a cross between Jimmy Percy from Sham 69 and Christopher Blake from Love for Lydia. The next time he came over, I made sure I was ready.
‘You’re a bit dressed up for a Monday night, aren’t you, Mary?’ Joe had said, with a laugh, as I teetered into the kitchen.
John and I didn’t talk much that night but I was determined to see him again and soon bumped into him at the New Penny where he asked me to dance to ‘Wishing On A Star’. After that, I turned up week after week, hoping for another glimpse of him.
‘What are you doing here again?’ Joe would moan.
‘Nothing!’ I’d say, as I scanned the dance-floor. ‘Now get us a drink, will you, Joe?’
But as much as I’d hoped John would phone me, I hadn’t heard a thing until a couple of weeks before my birthday when Jenny Xeri had come to tell me that I had a phone call as I was working at Boots one Saturday. Racing to the staff room, I’d picked up the receiver.
‘Mary?’ I heard John say. ‘I’m in a play tonight in Harrow. Would you like to come?’
One performance in, and I was convinced that we were destined to be the next Larry and Vivien after realizing that John loved drama as much as I did. After several nights out, I now wake up each morning pining for the moment when I will see John again.
‘He’s here!’ Tish hisses as we stand by the buffet table, and I look towards the door.
John’s face breaks into a smile as I wave at him.
‘Hello,’ he says. ‘Happy birthday! You look great.’
I’m wearing high-heeled clogs, a pale blue dress with a lace collar and a petticoat under the skirt. My hair has been cut into a plum-coloured crop. Joe decided I should go more punk but cut it too short. I cried for days but have taken to slathering myself with blue Rimmel eye shadow and pale pink lipstick to make up for it.
‘Thanks,’ I say breathlessly.
‘This is for you.’
John hands me a present and I rip it open. The Man-Machine by Kraftwerk. It’s another sign.
‘Do you like it?’ John asks.
‘I love it,’ I squeak.
The smell of Aramis fills the air as John bends down to kiss me. At last I understand what I’ve been listening to people sing about for years. I’m falling in love.
Ange
l Delight
I stare at the letter from RADA before shoving it into my satchel and closing the front door. The house is silent and Lawrence isn’t in the living room. I walk upstairs to his bedroom. He’s lying in bed. Still in the same place he was this morning when I left for school.
‘How are you feeling?’ I ask, as I sit down on his bed.
His face is pale and there are black shadows under his eyes. ‘Okay,’ he says.
‘Did you sleep all day?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Feel like getting up now?’
‘Dunno.’
‘Come on,’ I say. ‘I’ll go down and get tea on. Come and sit with me. I won’t make you peel the spuds or anything.’
He gives me a weak smile and I walk back downstairs. Lawrence has a lot of days like this now, days when he is so exhausted he can’t get out of bed after being up all night unable to sleep.
‘Time to get up!’ I say, on the mornings that he struggles. ‘You’re going to be late for school.’
Sometimes Joe and I manage to persuade him to get out of bed. But on other days we just can’t bring ourselves to make him as he tells us it feels as if something is pressing on his chest.
‘I can’t breathe properly,’ he says, when I sit down next to him. ‘I can’t get the air in.’
The more exhausted Lawrence gets, the worse his grades have become and now he dreads going into school. A few weeks ago, he brought home another letter from the headmaster telling Dad that he’d got drunk at school. Once again, I forged Dad’s signature and told him nothing about what had happened. He’d only shout and scream.
I put on the kettle, sit down at the kitchen table and get the letter out of my bag. After all this time and so many auditions, I’ve finally been offered a place at RADA. But I can’t leave home to study and I’d hardly be here even if I carried on living in Watford and only went to London for lectures and rehearsals. I can’t leave Lawrence. Not now. Mum didn’t have a choice but I do and, besides, I need him as much as he needs me. Lawrence and I are a unit. Together we have created our own way of being. However flawed. We are home and we are together.
How would I pay for all the extras that college in London would cost anyway? I can’t keep asking Michael, Joe and Tish for help. They already do enough for Lawrence and me – giving us money for clothes and going out, topping up my Boots wage and giving Lawrence a bit extra to the pay packet he gets for working as the car-park attendant at Clements.
I hate asking them. That’s why I pulled a fast one in Freeman, Hardy & Willis a few weeks ago after buying a pair of display shoes that had been bleached by the sun and were being sold at a discount. I took them back a few days later when a different shop assistant was working and she exchanged them for a new pair. But if I can’t even afford shoes, how am I going to pay for train tickets and meals, books and nights out?
Gulping down my tea, I hear my mother’s voice in my head: ‘You’re scared, Mary Newton. And when were you ever scared in your life?’
But the thing is, Mum: I am. And I’ve felt this way almost every minute since you left. It’s like the world went from Technicolor to grey and I never knew how free you made me until you weren’t here any more. Why else do you think I got into so much trouble? I knew that I always had you to catch me.
But now I’m afraid and all I want is for everyone to be okay. That’s why I cook and clean, look out for Lawrence and cover up for him. I want him to keep going without you, even though I know he’s finding it almost impossible. The rest of us are muddling through. There are moments when I see the sadness in Tish’s eyes, Joe’s and Michael’s too, but mostly we hide it from each other.
I have learned that grief is unlike any other emotion. Happiness, sadness, excitement and anger become moments that you remember only distantly when they are gone. But grief can suck you back into its chasm in a single moment. A sight, sound or smell is enough to make it wash over you as hollow as the first moment you ever felt it.
Lawrence was too young to lose you. Not a boy and not yet a man. He’s floating in between and I just have to watch over him for long enough to make sure that he will be okay.
I want you to be here again. I want it so much that sometimes the pain inside me is so strong I think of putting my head through a window to stop it. But you’re not and being on stage doesn’t feel the same any more. How can I pretend to be someone else when each day takes everything now?
So, yes, Mum. I’m scared. And I don’t want my world to change any more than it already has. If that means staying here and not going to RADA, finding a nine-to-five job that I can walk to and from, maybe bumping into Jean or Cathy on the way home or nipping in to see Dick and Bill, getting back in time for Lawrence, seeing John and keeping my world small enough to feel safe, then that is what I will do.
It was you who made me fearless.
Tish is the one who reminds me most of you. She chivvies me along, watches over me with Phil. They’re always taking me out and making sure I have fun. Joe, too. He is the one who makes me laugh and looks after me. Michael guides us all, keeping us in line. But the sum of these parts does not add up to you, and all I want is to keep everything the same as it is now because then I know I will cope. I am afraid I will not be able to if anything else changes.
Lawrence walks into the kitchen and sits down as I push the letter back into my bag.
‘You’re up!’ I say.
‘Yeh.’
‘About time too. You’ve got to go to school tomorrow, do you hear?’
‘Yeh.’
He looks at me, pale and exhausted.
‘I’m going to get tea on in a minute,’ I say. ‘But how about some Angel Delight first?’
He smiles as I walk over to the cupboard, lean down and pull out a couple of packets: strawberry for him and butterscotch for me. It is my brother’s favourite pudding.
Bosch radio
There are candles stuck in Chianti bottles, red chequered tablecloths and a foot creeping up my thigh. I’m sitting at a table of about twenty work colleagues having a meal in an Italian restaurant. Joe-from-Sales is sitting opposite me. He’s got greasy black hair, a kipper tie and a smile like the Joker’s. I long to tell him to fuck off. Instead I push back my chair so his stubby leg can’t reach any higher up mine. With a disgruntled look on his face, he digs into his prawn cocktail.
After absentmindedly sitting my A levels and leaving St Joan’s, I had got a job temping at a radio-parts warehouse on the Greycaine Industrial Estate. The work was repetitive and boring but at least I was earning more than at Boots and it was close to home.
‘Take the job!’ Dad had urged, when I told him that my boss Mr Bradford had offered me a permanent position soon after I’d started. ‘Begin at the bottom. Just like me. You could make a good job of that, Mary.’
‘But I don’t want to sell radios for the rest of my life.’
‘Too good for sales, are you?’
‘I don’t mean that. It’s just boring. People ring up about all these tiny parts and I don’t know what on earth they’re going on about.’
‘But it’s time you started keeping yourself. You’re eighteen. Who do you think is going to pay for you now? I’d left home by your age.’
Anger flared inside me as I looked at my father’s scowling face. ‘It’s not as if I’m costing you much!’
‘And what do you expect of me now? I was paying my own way by the time I was your age and so should you. You’ve got your A levels. You did okay. You can get a decent job. This is a good opportunity, Mary. Don’t waste it.’
‘What if I don’t want it?’
‘Well, you should. It’s a start.’
‘But I don’t want the job! It’s so bloody dull there.’
I stare down the table past the gaze of Joe-from-Sales and the chianti bottles. Jan-the-manageress is glaring at me from the opposite end. She’s so tiny you’d step on her if you weren’t looking, so pale and ginger that I swear she lights up at night. Smal
l and feral, she has these beady eyes that are on me in a flash if the sales guys come in for a chat.
‘All right, Mary!’ they say, as they perch on the side of my desk to talk about what was on television last night or which pub they’re going to this weekend.
‘Back to work!’ Jan shrieks, as she bustles up to us. ‘You’re far too easily distracted, Mary. Now, please concentrate for more than a minute.’
I can’t be stuck on a trading estate with Jan for ever. I don’t want to end up like her. She looks like she’s permanently sucking a lemon.
Mr Kipling French Fancies
Her ash blonde hair has been teased so much it looks like a crash helmet and is robustly held in position by a headband. She is wearing a cream skirt suit, pearl earrings, and her face is barely visible under a thick layer of foundation. My father’s new girlfriend looks like a hybrid of Mrs Slocombe and Barbara Cartland.
‘Hello, dee-aihs,’ she says, in a voice clipped somewhere between Bricket Wood and St Albans as she walks into the Front Room.
‘Won’t you sit down, Rebecca?’ Dad asks, as he leads the way in his best suit.
The five of us have been called to attend Saturday-afternoon tea. Sitting in a line on the sofa and living-room chairs, we watch as Dad wedges his hand firmly in the small of Rebecca’s back and she lowers herself slowly into the swivel chair.
‘Get something nice, won’t you?’ he said to me yesterday, as I stared in surprise at the five-pound note he thrust into my hand. ‘Cake and things. Scones maybe. And make some sandwiches, too.’
We’d heard from Phil’s mum, Joyce, that Dad had been dancing with one particular woman at the Widows and Widowers Club. But I thought it would be a glamorous young widow. What does Dad see in Rebecca? She looks so old and he is still a good-looking man. But then again what does she see in a gruff Belfast man who drives a Rover when she’d expect a Jaguar at least by the look of her?