My Story

by Jo Malone

  My abiding memory of Tracey as a child is that of an over-exuberant, impish dynamo who would drive me to the edge of frustration before flashing an irresistible, cheeky grin. She was needier of Mum’s attention than I, and seemed to act out more than I ever did. I don’t know whether she required more attention as the second child but, I’ll say this about my parents, they were even-handed with their love, ensuring there was no favouritism or imbalance. They were also hugely protective. Mum especially. Almost overprotective . . .

  Other children in the street played outside to their heart’s content, running free, allowed to wander off down the street to the local green and wherever else, as long as they were back home at a certain hour. Not us. Mum didn’t want us out of sight, so the front garden wall, about eight bricks high, was our strictly enforced boundary. Even as the eldest, I wasn’t allowed to go beyond that point. All I could do was sit there, or watch from my bedroom window as classmates bombed around on their bikes and rollerskates. The only other option was for those kids to come play with me in the garden.

  ‘Why can’t I go play outside?’ I’d ask.

  ‘Because I say so!’ Mum would say.

  Our only concession was when the ice-cream man trundled down the road in his van and Mum allowed me and Tracey to run out and buy a 10p cornet, on the condition that we came straight back. Even then, she never took her eyes off us, watching from the front door or top window. The odd thing about this rule was that, while I couldn’t play in the road with friends directly outside our house, I was allowed to walk on my own to infant school, from the age of seven, down the road and around the corner. I can only guess that Mum didn’t think much could happen en route to school, whereas larking about with kids in the neighbourhood knew no bounds. Either way, I learned to love the freedom of that ten-minute dawdle, even if I remained watchful of the time.

  ‘Why aren’t you ever allowed to come and play?’ a girl once asked.

  ‘I’m just not allowed,’ I said, matter-of-factly.

  Mum’s concern about our safety wasn’t only restricted to outside the house. Every night – every single night – when Tracey and I were about to go to sleep, she would look under our beds and check inside the wardrobes.

  ‘Why you doing that, Mum?’ I asked.

  ‘Just in case anyone has come through the window and is hiding.’

  She said it as though this was a probability; that this was what every parent did. Mum couldn’t rest until her compulsion to check our environment had been calmed. I became so used to it that I would have probably double-checked myself had she ever forgotten the drill. I saw nothing odd in this at the time, but it obviously speaks to a neurosis – a deep anxiety that entertained the irrational notion of strangers climbing in through windows. Even in winter. And so it follows that if we weren’t safe in our home, there was no way we were safe when playing out in the street.

  I didn’t really care what the other children in the street thought, though. I had one best friend, Dawn Cossar, and she’d often be round at ours, or we’d be at hers having tea – her mum was sometimes our child minder in my early years. In my eyes, as long as Tracey and Dawn were around, I saw nothing negative about my restricted boundaries.

  Other friends probably thought our street curfew was weird but Mum redeemed herself by hosting the best game-filled parties for my birthday, inviting as many school friends as the house would take, and festooning the living room with balloons and banners. Dad also came into his own, gathering my classmates into a cross-legged circle where he’d wow them with a card trick or a sleight of hand that miraculously produced a penny from behind someone’s ear.

  He was a brilliant magician and a long-time member of the Magic Circle, inspired by his ‘friend’ and comedic magician Ali Bongo, who would go on to have his own BBC series, Ali Bongo’s Cartoon Carnival. Dad would practise on relatives by tucking a cigarette into a clenched fist, then pulling it out from inside someone’s ear. (On Mum’s instruction, he soon stopped doing that when one cousin started stuffing cigarettes down his own earhole.)

  At my parties, I’d note the disbelief on my friends’ faces as he produced a missing ace of spades or queen of hearts. I felt proud that Dad was the one everyone went home raving about. He’d be the talk of the class on Monday mornings, too. My parents went all out to make birthdays special. The same can be said about our Christmases.

  Dad virtually turned our front room into Santa’s grotto. As well as a masterfully decorated, real tree, the entire ceiling would be covered with colourful foil garlands, and each wall festooned with tinsel. Mum cut her tights in half and they became our makeshift stockings hanging over the fireplace. When Dad had finished wrapping the tree in multi-coloured lights, he’d sit with me in the dark, in front of the roaring coal fire, and hold me as we marvelled at how twinkly everything was. To me, our tree dazzled with a hundred jewels and it felt like every ounce of Christmas spirit had been squeezed into our four walls, to bursting point. And then there were the smells: the fresh pine, the box of sticky, sweet dates, and Dad’s festive drink – a snowball.

  No matter how tight things were financially, my parents constantly delivered a magical, happy Christmas – it’s why it remains my favourite time of year. Don’t ask me how they afforded it but, without fail, we woke to a generous amount of presents. We never went short in that regard. But one year, as we sat at the bottom of the stairs full of anticipation, raring to burst into the living room and tear open our gifts, Mum prepared us for the fact, that ‘This year, we’re having a Swedish Christmas!’ The hyped tone of her voice suggested this was going to be a real treat, even if we had no idea where Sweden was.

  I must have been nine, Tracey four. Mum slowly opened the door and our presents came into view . . . unwrapped and fully visible. My pile was to the right of the fire: a wooden cot with a doll, a Waddingtons board game and a bottle of perfume whose name escapes me. Christmas done and dusted in one glimpse. My heart sank. If this was what Swedish kids faced every year, I felt sorry for them, I thought. Without any element of reveal, our bubble was well and truly punctured. For reasons that were not made clear, it turned out that Mum and Dad hadn’t had the time to wrap our last-minute gifts. Something was off between them even if we didn’t know what. But while Tracey and I concealed our crushing disappointment – we had been taught to be grateful no matter what we received – we were not to be outdone.

  As Mum prepared the turkey, we held our own impromptu ‘take two’ – wrapping and Sellotaping our gifts in newspaper before taking turns to open them, one by one, on the stairs. We did what we had seen our parents do: we improvised. We made do. We handled life’s unexpected events without complaint.

  One Friday evening, when I was about six, and Tracey eighteen months, Mum and Dad disappeared into the kitchen for a hushed, serious-sounding conversation. Within the hour, they joined us in front of the television and our evening resumed as normal. It wasn’t until the next day that I thought something strange was going on.

  Dad was upstairs getting ready when Mum dropped us off at Maureen’s, with no explanation other than a promise to pick us up at the end of the day. I knew they were headed somewhere fancy because she was wearing Joy by Jean Patou.

  The next thing I knew, after a day of baking and playing games, Mum and Dad walked in to collect us, faces beaming with happiness. She was wearing a beautiful silk suit with pearls in her ears and high heels on her feet; he looked every inch the refined gentleman in a dark suit, white shirt and royal navy tie. Their mood definitely felt upbeat and, when we arrived home, Dad nipped out for a Chinese takeaway – a sure sign that they were celebrating something. A Chinese meal was a ‘treat’ reserved for special occasions.

  Mum and Dad never mentioned a word about where they had been or what they had done, and it didn’t seem to matter – they were cuddled up on the sofa, laughing like love-struck teenagers. I didn’t want to go to bed that night. I didn’t want the day to end. And I’ll forever remember that evenin
g for how happy the entire house felt.

  It would be another four decades before I learned the truth about that day, as relayed by Mum’s sister, my Aunty Dot, long after my parents had passed. ‘That was when they came back from the registry office after getting married,’ she said.

  And then she unfurled another secret from the past. ‘Your dad’s name, before he was known as “Andy Malone”, was originally Frank,’ she said. (She provided his original surname, too, but I don’t think it serves anyone to detail it here.)

  That was how I found out that Dad had been someone else in a life that preceded us, making sense of the limited stories from his years in Scotland – a period he clearly wished to box away and not revisit. For that reason, I will respect his wishes. Suffice it to say that this revelation, as surprising as it was, didn’t make me question him in any way. It felt like a piece of information so distant, and from another time, that it couldn’t touch us. Then and now, it really didn’t matter to me whether he was Andy or Frank because, whatever his past and whatever his business, he was, quite simply, Dad, and nothing could diminish who he was to me in childhood.

  As a family, we couldn’t afford too many day trips or activities that required an admission ticket, so Dad often got creative to keep us entertained. One afternoon, I arrived home from school to find that he’d built Tracey and me a den in the living room. Most kids do that kind of thing, but Dad had constructed it on his own, commandeering airers and chairs for the three walls, before draping them in bed sheets and using a duvet for the roof. One side was left open, facing the fireplace. ‘And in there,’ he said, ‘is where you are going to have your dinner tonight!’

  Dad was a brilliant chef, even if he did insist on using every tin, utensil and piece of cutlery, leaving the kitchen in a right state. Mum didn’t love cooking, probably because she got easily distracted. I lost count of the times she left the chicken or roast potatoes in the oven, wandered off to see a neighbour, realised the time and rushed back only to find dinner was ruined. Rustling up a meat and two veg dinner was something Dad could do with his eyes closed, but his specialty was ‘stovies’, a dish he’d inherited from Scotland, using leftovers from a Sunday roast. Together with cheese and onion turnovers and Spam fritters, these were ideal for a family short on money. We had a serving hatch that opened into the living room and, with a dramatic flourish, he’d pull open the doors, poke his head through and yell, ‘STOVIES ARE READY!’

  His smile – at the hatch, before bed, or first thing in the morning – reassured us that everything was all right with the world. But when that smile slipped, I knew something was up. He smoked like a chimney at the best of times, but he inhaled more deeply when stressed, breathing it into his lungs as if each breath calmed him.

  He made his own roll-ups and had that craft down to a fine art: sliding a tiny sheet of Rizla paper along his tongue before packing it with Golden Virginia tobacco, then rolling it between his thumbs and forefingers, in ten seconds flat. If it wasn’t a cigarette in his hand, it was a deck of cards, which he constantly shuffled in two different ways – the overhand chop-chop-chop, or the riffling of two halves to merge into one.

  One night, he sat in his armchair and lit up, and I knew he was off in his own world, lost in his thoughts. I found out what was wrong a few days later – he had been laid off from the architects’ firm near Charing Cross. I can’t remember if this was Harold Wilson’s Britain or whether Edward Heath had become prime minister, but a skilled and clever man had been turfed on to the unemployment heap at a time when jobs and opportunity were few and far between. Mum and Dad hadn’t seen it coming, and I don’t think my parents knew how they were going to cope.

  THREE

  As I arrived home from school, I pushed open the door to be greeted by the flinty whiff of sulphur, as if an indoor firework had gone off. Mum and Tracey were out somewhere, so I knew Dad was home alone. I called out his name from the bottom of the stairs.

  ‘In here!’ he shouted.

  I found him standing in the middle of the living room, surrounded by cardboard boxes, pieces of paper, and all sorts of tools, including a saw.

  ‘What’s that burnt popcorn smell?’ I asked, frowning.

  Dad took my enquiry as an invitation. ‘Wait until you see this!’ he said. He bent down, picked up a magic wand, fiddled with its end, and extended it outward. ‘Go on, touch the tip!’

  As soon as my finger made contact, the white tip crackled and sparked. I yelped and jumped back. Dad’s eyes lit up. His latest home-made magic trick was a triumph. This, as far as he was concerned, meant another productive day at ‘the office’ and, in the circumstances, his buoyant mood was a good thing.

  Dad would be unemployed for a good couple of years, so magic became one of the creative ways he attempted to earn a crust, combining his skilled hands with a lifetime’s knowledge from inside the Magic Circle. When word spread locally about his hobby, he started to land bookings for birthday parties, which was why he was honing his act and devising new tricks. This proactive response to his unemployment was typical Dad – he always found a way to adapt or bounce back. Rather than becoming a victim to a bad situation, he would try to turn it around. I did admire how he rolled up his sleeves and turned a hobby into an income, however minor his magician’s earnings may have been.

  The tables had turned in our house. Mum, forced back to work due to Dad’s unemployment, was now the main breadwinner after landing a job as a manicurist for Revlon, encouraging women to have ‘matching lips and fingertips’, as the ad campaigns said. Once home, she’d open her own box of tricks – a red and gold case that contained a collection of lipsticks and nail enamels, from Orange Sherbet and Fatal Apple Red, to Persian Melon and Blase Apricot. In my eyes, Mum worked with magic, too.

  According to different relatives, she was ‘the best manicurist they had’, which surprised no one because Mum had a charisma, a great sense of humour and an ability to get along with almost anyone. With the job came the importance of image, and she never looked anything other than exceptionally well put together – hair pristine, fingernails perfect, shoes shiny. A walking, elegant advertisement for Revlon.

  Dad was rarely up when she left for work, struggling to get out of bed to face another unstructured day. When he did rise, he soon got busy and turned the garden shed into a magician’s den, creating a little workspace for the tricks he’d make. The ones that stick in my mind are the metal linking rings that mysteriously separated; a wooden box – painted black with big red dots – that had a false bottom in order to conceal a white rabbit; and a wand that drooped when he fed a hidden rope through its centre. And it wasn’t only props he stored, he had magic pets, too – one dove and nine rabbits.

  The dove, which had clipped wings to prevent her flying away, was kept in a cage in the living room. When home from school, I’d let her out and she’d perch on my shoulder and accompany me throughout the house: to the toilet, into my bedroom as I read a book, and on the sofa while watching TV. We called her Suki and she used to brush her head up and down my neck, quietly cooing in my ear. When she knew I was settling in for a long night in front of the TV, she hopped down to nest on top of the sofa. When I got up, she jumped back on to my shoulder, responding to me like our golden Labrador, Shandy. For the year we had Suki, she was my constant companion and Dad’s star act, along with his nine Netherland Dwarf bunnies – the smallest breed of rabbit, which made them the ideal size to be pulled out of a black hat.

  We kept them in a long hutch that ran down one side of the garden. One of them, Spanky, became my pet and followed me around almost as much as Suki. Keeping an eye on Spanky was my job; keeping an eye on the other eight was Dad’s, which he seemed to forget one day when they escaped and started marauding across a neighbour’s garden.

  We were woken one Saturday morning by frantic banging on our front door. The woman from three doors down was almost hyperventilating as she yelled, ‘YOUR SODDING DOG AND RABBITS ARE IN MY GARDEN!’ The next
thing I knew, I was in my pyjamas and slippers running around her back garden with Dad, trying to round them up. Shandy had burrowed under our fence and bolted for freedom, followed by what must have looked like the cast of Watership Down. What a caper that proved to be, shepherding nine rabbits, using a cardboard box and a sheet of chicken wire as a guiding device. Once they were captured, Dad started making profuse apologies to our neighbour about the trampled flower beds when I noticed Shandy in the woman’s house, in the living room, doing a number two on the carpet. I screamed. The woman turned around and screamed even louder. And Dad cursed like a sailor.

  His magic seemed to leave a mess everywhere, and it drove Mum, and me, nuts because he didn’t restrict his trick-making to the shed; he preferred to bring his DIY skills inside, where he had more room to spread out and rehearse. But that meant that our living room was often filled with his boxes, instructions, and bits and bobs – what Mum called his ‘tut’. Sometimes, there would be nails, pieces of plastic, and wood shavings left on the carpet around the dinner table, because he’d been sawing away, making last-minute adjustments. I’d be the one running around with a Hoover, clearing up after him, because mess made me anxious. I also rearranged the airing cupboard in Mum and Dad’s room, placing the sheets and towels in neatly folded stacks and rows. I swear that Dad’s constant ‘tut’ made me a little obsessive compulsive! Not only was I a fastidious child naturally, but I wanted everything to be tidy for when Mum walked in the door, otherwise she’d have a go at him. I’d do anything I could to avoid friction. Since Dad had lost his job, their arguments were a little too frequent for my liking – a situation not helped by his continued gambling.