Now it was serious.
Chapter Nine
BLUE HOLE TO BABIES
It was all Jacques Cousteau’s fault. The great diver concocted a list of his favourite dive sites in the world – many of which he himself had discovered – and obliged divers to seek them out for ever after. That is why I found myself, in 2008, with five other advanced divers on an inflatable rubber boat, poised above a bottomless sea chimney off the coast of Belize. The Blue Hole of Belize was Cousteau’s second favourite dive in the world, but it was one of my scariest. ‘This will be a negative entry,’ announced our guide, meaning that we should deflate our dive jackets so we could plummet fast the second we hit the water. ‘You must descend to one hundred and thirty feet as quickly as you possibly can.’ The sooner we reached the famous, deep caves in this eerie chasm, the longer we’d have to explore them. Even so, because of the depth and the need to ascend very slowly, the most we’d have down there would be around four minutes.
I checked my equipment and nodded to my dive buddy. ‘One, two, three . . .’ We synchronized our flip into the foaming sea and forced ourselves downwards as fast as our breathing cavities would allow. This was no time to delay at the surface and equalization had to be rapid. Oh God, it was murky. Visibility was far worse than I had imagined, and once we reached a hundred feet I became aware of being ‘showered on’ by weird white particles. Even with my powerful underwater flashlight I could barely see the massive stalactites and stalagmites the ancient caverns were known for. I remember thinking, ‘Cousteau actually loved THIS?’
That’s the same question I was just about to ask you . . .
Hmmm, well, actually, yes. It was rather like visiting Stonehenge – an ancient and curious monument that cannot entirely be explained (although geologists think the hole was part of an underwater cave system whose ceiling collapsed). Part of its allure is the fact that the site has become a part of diving folklore as a weird and wonderful Mecca for extreme divers. I suppose you have to be a diver to understand . . . but let’s cut to the end of the dive. The four minute warning was upon me. I could barely see my trusty dive computer, but it was beeping like crazy to prompt immediate action. And there were thumbs up signs all around me that had only one meaning: time to ascend. We began slowly. Having descended so deep, our climb had to be painfully slow. Did everyone have enough air to get to the surface? It’s easy to lose concentration or get panicky and expend more air than expected at that depth. ‘Must stay calm and alert,’ I had told myself.
I more or less managed that until I saw the first bull shark. Oh no! Not only did I have to ascend extremely slowly, but I’d be surrounded by these mothers (literally – they all seemed to be pregnant) the entire way. I love being in the water with most sharks, and feel safe with them because I know they are unlikely to attack. But bulls are an exception. ‘I don’t trust them,’ our guide had warned.
‘Breathe,’ I told myself. ‘You cannot afford to panic.’ Just then I caught sight of my buddy who was so wigged by the bulls his breathing had become dangerously shallow. I swam closer and took his hand. ‘OK?’ I made the universal divers’ sign. He returned it, tentatively, then as an afterthought wobbled his other hand to sign that he was shaky. I watched our bubbles; there are two sizes, and one must never ascend faster than the smaller ones. My main concern was our safety stop – a necessary, five-minute stationary period at fifteen feet. My buddy was not going to like that. Desperate to get to the safety of the boat, he looked decidedly antsy when the group stopped ascending and began to count down. Now there was nothing to do but hang about there, trying to maintain the same depth and, at the same time, avoid becoming a shark’s lunch.
Suddenly I remembered that, a couple of nights before, my buddy and I had tried salsa dancing in a mainland bar. I grinned cheekily at him (well, as far as one can grin with a face full of breathing equipment), faced him, and took his right hand. I began to shake my shoulders, then used his arm to complete a slow turn, ducking under it salsa-style. He got the idea and pulled me towards him, rocking me backwards and forwards then turning me again. Now he was starting to relax. Eventually, the rest of the group was at it too, ducking and weaving while the bull sharks eyed us with benign curiosity.
It did the trick; it took our minds off a perceived danger about which we could do nothing, and relaxed us so there was less danger anyway. Experts say sharks are sensitive to human mood changes, or more accurately, the changes in the water’s ph levels that occur when our mood is altered – and it’s best to stay very calm. Yeah, like I said, ‘Dancing saves lives.’ But, thinking back, I’m not really sure why those circling bulls seemed annoyed at first. Perhaps this was just a bad time to be around them, with little ones on the way; after my own three pregnancies, I know just how they felt.
I mostly loved being pregnant. For a start, it was a licence to eat. Feeling fantastically free from the pressure of maintaining a ‘TV weight’, I ate and ate and ate – not realizing I was bingeing excessively and putting myself at risk of pregnancy complications. I grew absolutely enormous, but I was happy.
It’s a terrible idea to have a baby with a comedy god. At a time when the focus ought to be on you and the urgency of your caesarean (‘watermelon-removal’), there was Billy sucking up all the attention and causing mirth among people who, ideally, needed to keep their hands nice and steady. That behaviour of his was on top of his shocking announcement, just days before my due date, that at birth he himself had been nearly ten pounds. Yowie! I called my obstetrician forthwith and pleaded for a Caesarean. Fortunately, he had already decided I’d have one, because Daisy was both enormous and upside down. Whew! At that time, the usual Glaswegian paternal behaviour would have been to disappear to the pub when the first labour pains struck, but Billy’s devotion – and probably his curiosity – led him to be at my side throughout the process.
‘I’ve seen your bladder,’ he announced later, in a smug, slightly creepy, sort of way. Apparently there was a rather dodgy moment during the operation, when he came close to passing out and had to be helped from the surgery but, all in all, he did rather well – well, if you discount the fact that, cradling our newborn child, he followed the surgical team to their changing room and did twenty minutes of comedy for them while I waited furiously, lying captive on a gurney in a corridor.
I was terribly worried about leaving hospital. There was a whole posse of photographers waiting outside. Would my baby be in danger? The men might crowd us, chase us. I had already felt physically threatened by the ‘pack’ on many occasions. Or would Billy lose his temper with them again and retaliate violently? I needn’t have worried. A few flashes and well-wishes, and we were on our way home.
As new parents, we were in heaven. Welcoming Daisy into the world was thrilling, and my intense maternal feelings of love and care for her were soon flooding through me. Given the ambiguity about mothering I’d picked up though my childhood experiences, I had worried about whether I’d ever be a good mum . . .
Well, that’s understandable, given your relationship with your own mother . . .
Yes, but actually I bonded very quickly with my new little person. And Billy was an attentive father – taking his turn at nappy-changing and helping me to get the rest I needed. He sang Daisy to sleep – usually to Ry Cooder’s ‘Little Sister’ – and invented something called ‘Sleepy-toes’, a kind of improvised poem that has never failed to transport a baby into the Land of Nod.
You seem surprised . . .
Well, Billy already had two children, Jamie and Cara, who were still living with their mother in Scotland. I met them fairly early in my relationship with Billy. They were delightful, shy, Scottish children; although, naturally, they were troubled by their parents’ divorce. I met them outside Drury Lane Theatre when I was in Pirates of Penzance. Billy had brought them to a matinee and I can’t imagine what they thought of me at the time. I remember that my hair was short and spiky (chopped for a cover of Cosmopolitan magazine) and I seem to
remember I was wearing leopard-print stretch trousers and a T-shirt that said ‘Fuck Art – Let’s Dance!’ Perhaps it was not the best introduction to a future stepmother but I can’t be sure because, to this day, I have not managed to get anything concrete out of Jamie and Cara about what impression I made. But I quickly came to adore them both, although I was very concerned about all the upheaval in their lives – some of it due to me.
You have feelings of guilt?
Well, yes. I mean, it was all pretty messy. And public. And, unfortunately, the children were dealing with a number of other, significant problems, although it took me and Billy a while to discover exactly what those were. Jamie, it turned out, had not attended school for nearly a year, and Cara was miserable for a multitude of reasons connected with the fact that Billy’s ex-wife Iris was struggling herself. Challenged by alcohol addiction, depression and a hoarding disorder, she was unable to care for herself properly, let alone her children. Just before Daisy was born, Billy and I decided to seek custody of Cara and Jamie, a process that was enormously stressful for all concerned – and, again, not the smoothest when it involves a comedy god. At one point, a court reporter was detailed to sit in our house, watch our family interaction, and interview everyone. There was a heart-stopping moment when Cara, questioned about her father’s style of disciplining, mischievously repeated his jokey line: ‘He always says he’ll thrash me within an inch of my miserable life!’ See what I mean? If you can help it, stay away from comedians. They just cause endless trouble.
But, fortunately, the official had a sense of humour, and recommended that Billy be granted custody, with regular visits granted to their mother. I felt terribly sorry for Iris, and did my best to get her some help. She entered treatment for a very short period, but failed to improve. The children saw her only sporadically after that. She eventually moved to Spain, became estranged from her children, and struggled greatly with her psychological problems right up until her death in 2010.
Her children, though, thrived in new schools in London. We had bought a converted fish factory in Fulham, and they moved in. Pink and green striped couches, red spiral staircase, wacky pottery everywhere – that became our sanctuary and we tried to create normality for them. Normality? Who am I trying to kid? Well, it was a crazy kind of ‘normal’. At least they had a routine and attended school. In summer we had picnics in the enclosed courtyard, drove to Cornwall for minibreaks, and gazed at shooting stars on Hampstead Heath . . . More or less ordinary? Well, if you discount things like the fact that our answerphone always contained hate messages because I’d done a greeting that was a perfect Margaret Thatcher voice: ‘I’d like to take this opportunity to tell you all that we’re not at home . . . Do kindly call back later. And if that’s you, Denis, please pick up a tart on the way home – preferably a little Spanish one . . . You like those swarthy temptresses don’t you?’
Right from the start, I really adored Jamie and Cara, but I was conscious that I was a rather wacky stepmum. I do know I was caring and nurturing, though – they really brought out that side of me, as did Billy. And Daisy, of course. But notes would go to school teachers on my stationery, which contained a cartoon of a couple sitting at home in their living room. The woman says to the man: ‘Shouldn’t you be out having your name linked with Pamela Stephenson?’
Then there was the pretty constant doorstepping by freelance journalists and others. Billy had developed all kinds of anti-pap strategies, none of them very successful. He once thumped one with a long French loaf he was bringing home for tea, although after that we didn’t really feel like eating it. But that did put a whole new spin on the club sandwich.
Instead of edible weaponry, I preferred to use wigs and costumes to disguise myself as, say, an elderly lady. I enjoyed walking right past packs of newshounds without arousing any suspicion whatsoever. Once or twice we both donned Arab robes to be anonymous while attending a public event – the Alternative Miss World for example. We really craved privacy, especially early on, because we didn’t want Cara and Jamie to be confronted with pictures of us together that might have unkind captions attached. After Billy and I both appeared in the Secret Policeman’s Ball comedy concert, I attempted to put the paparazzi off the scent by exiting the theatre with Eric Clapton, but that didn’t work and they were soon badgering Billy for a picture. It’s never wise to confront a Glaswegian. ‘You better put some Vaseline on that camera,’ Billy warned one photographer, ‘’cos it’s going up your arse.’ Another time he smashed a man’s camera and there was a subsequent court case and the forking out of cash to replace the broken equipment. Things got to the point where I had to have a conversation with Billy about trying to be calm and avoid conflict. But, understandably, he became particularly incensed by press intrusion when the children were present. We both particularly resented the fact that Cara and Jamie had been accosted by journalists while walking around their village in Scotland.
When Daisy arrived, Cara and Jamie cooed over her too, and my concerns about whether I was up to creating a happy ‘blended family’ began to evaporate. Billy and I were finally starting to settle down – as far as that was possible for two comedians. Frankly, being a two-comedian family was a lot less useful than having matching Hondas. But Cara and Jamie travelled with one or both of us whenever necessary, and they particularly seemed to love coming to New York when I was engaged for a season as a cast member on Saturday Night Live. Now I was trying to be a good mum, while at the same time about to do the toughest job of my entire career. Saturday Night Live, or SNL as it’s known, was the most famous and popular TV sketch comedy show in the United States at that time. It was a little like Not The Nine O’Clock News, except that it was broadcast live by NBC in front of a studio audience in Studio 8H on floors 8 and 9 of ‘30 Rock’ – the GE Building at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in Manhattan. It had – and still has – a kind of cult following; if having thirty-six million viewers per week could ever be considered cultish. When I joined the show in 1984 it had already been on air for ten years and had produced major film stars, such as Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Chevy Chase and John Belushi. Back then, the show was already legendary, but it’s still popular and has now spanned three decades.
Each episode is hosted by a famous guest (during my season these included Jesse Jackson, Tina Turner, Ringo Starr and Eddie Murphy) and a major band. Yet SNL has struggled to stay on the air for so long – it’s had a volatile history of producer, writer and cast changes. When I came on the scene, its creator Lorne Michaels had departed, and the show had been sliding downhill to terrible reviews under Jean Doumanian. She was fired after a performer (Charles Rocket) said ‘Fuck’ on live TV, and Dick Ebersol took over. For the new season, he brought in some established stars: Billy Crystal and Martin Short joined Christopher Guest, Harry Shearer, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Mary Gross, Jim Belushi, Rich Hall, Gary Kroeger and me, and we did our best to turn the show into a hit once more. We were successful.
But with the pressure of a live show every week, very little time to prepare and rehearse, we were all under enormous stress. Each cast member was given an office on the 17th floor. Mine was a lovely corner one that I put to good use as a feeding station for Daisy. I needed a refuge. In those days, SNL had a drug culture. In light of this, the late John Belushi’s untimely demise became very understandable to me. Mood-altering substances came up to the 17th floor in pizza boxes, then doors would be closed to anyone who was not part of the ‘inner sanctum’. Yet again, I was an outsider, and not only because I didn’t take drugs. Being female was not the issue – Julia and Mary were also in the cast, and America already had a strong legacy of funny women. No, I was culturally an outsider. I knew little about American society and history – at that time I felt I barely spoke the same language. One of the most humiliating early moments was being cast as an electoral officer during the presidential elections and having to post coloured flags on different states as they were called out. Where on earth was Arkansas, and why was it pronounced as
if it had a ‘w’ on the end? If only I’d taken Geography at school instead of Latin!
This was not a team as NTNON had been, with producers working hard to create cohesion. Rather, people seemed to be deliberately pitted against each other. Just being a cast member did not mean one automatically made it into the show each week. If you did not find a place in a sketch – or write one yourself – you could be going home after the first readthrough. The competition was intense – and not just between performers. Writers were jostling to place their sketches, too, and they favoured writing for the established American stars because they were less likely to be bumped. I began to write as much as possible, but realized that firstly, I was ill-equipped to come up with American satire, and secondly, I was damned if I did and damned if I didn’t. If I wrote a sketch that made it into the show, that might be perceived as an affront to the writing team, who might then fail to write for me the following week. If I did not write for myself, others might not either and I’d be out of the show. It was brutal.
Again, you found yourself in a situation where not only were you an outsider, but you were risking rejection in a very intense manner . . .
No kidding. And, there was no rest. As a mother of a new baby, I found that particularly difficult. I mean, I was actually relieved to be away from the UK – in a place where I was not so well known – but it was a bit like ‘out of the frying pan, into the fire’. As soon as Saturday’s show was over, we had to start trying to come up with material for the coming week. By the end of Tuesday, all written work was supposed to be in, and there was a terrifying read-through for around fifty people on Wednesdays. Then selected sketches were rehearsed and blocked. After Saturday’s dress rehearsal nearly half the planned sketches were cut, and then the live show kicked off at 11pm with what was known as a ‘cold opening’, where one of the performers would break character in the middle of the first sketch and announce into camera: ‘Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night!’
The Varnished Untruth Page 17