by Alan Cumming
SATURDAY 29TH MAY 2010
I woke up the next morning with a hangover. I had gone out with the crew in Bristol the night before, and lots of beer and hardly any water was partaken of. Everyone it seemed was up for a big night. I was sharing one of the most revelatory and mind-blowing weeks of my life with relative strangers, but even so, these men and women were almost as emotionally invested in my granddad’s story as I was. It made for a good amount of camaraderie, and certainly gave me a chance to forget about everything else going on in my life at that moment.
We drove back to London on Saturday morning and I thought about all I had learned about Tommy Darling. I decided my grandfather was still Tommy to me. He may have been Tam to David and to the men who looked up to him in his battalion, but I knew his secrets, and he would remain forever Tommy. Tommy was a great, respected, and decorated soldier, but also a daredevil, a cheeky chap, and in search of something. Was it family? Was it thrills? Maybe it was both. It was certainly belonging. And I understood that. I also understood how events or circumstances could cascade out of control and your entire ability to deal with the present can be lost.
When we reached London we headed for a street just off Piccadilly where, in a very stuffy military officer’s club, I was to see yet another historian. Rob Liman was going to tell me about Tommy Darling’s life after the war.
I learned from Rob that after his stint in the hospital at Deolali, Tommy Darling returned to duty in India for the remaining months of the war. In 1945 he returned to Britain to visit his wife and family. But that was the last time they would ever see him.
He was made an officer and stayed in the army for four more years, working in an administrative role in Germany and the UK, close to his family and yet never visiting home. Earlier in the week I had seen, on one of the many documents that had been presented to me, a contact address for Tommy Darling during a period of leave he had from the army, in St. Albans. This was puzzling. My granny and my mum and uncles were hundreds of miles away at the top of Scotland. Why had my grandfather lived in St. Albans? Why did he never go home?
I also knew that my granddad had ended his life in Malaysia, formerly Malaya, working for the Malayan police force, but why he had taken a job so far away from home was also a mystery. Rob, a dashing, natty, signet-ring-wearing military type, was dying to explain why.
My grandfather had seen a flyer advertising jobs as lieutenants in the Malaysian police force. He was attracted to the chance to see more of the world, to reclaim some of the excitement of war. He was still a young man, with years ahead of him.
“It just so happens,” Rob said, “that we have managed to find a copy of his application form.”
He handed it to me and I began to read aloud.
“‘Surname: Darling. Christian name: Thomas. Whether single, married, or a widower: Ma—’”
I looked along to the end of the line and was completely shocked.
Tommy Darling’s answer to his marital status was “Married (Separated).”
What did that mean?
“Separated!” I repeated. “Why does my mum not know that?”
Immediately I thought of my having to call Mary Darling, who had been so eager for any tidbit I had sent her over the last week. Now I would be the one to tell her that her parents were, in fact, separated when her father went to Malaysia.
Rob said nothing. The room was silent except for my breathing. I took a deep breath and sighed it out.
“Well, that makes sense,” I eventually said.
This was why Tommy Darling had never returned to Scotland. This was why he had gone halfway around the world, disappearing forever.
Rob went on to tell me that the issue of soldiers being separated from their wives and families back home was a big concern during the war. There was a lot of talk about how this affected the morale of the men at the front.
The next line of the form revealed another clue to the mystery. When asked for the number of his children, Tommy had written three. Two sons and one daughter. But he had three sons. My uncle Raymond was the youngest child and was not mentioned on this form. Maybe he was born after this? But no, I knew he had been born in 1942, and Tommy Darling had filled in this application form I was now reading seven years later, in 1949. They were separated, and Raymond was not listed as being the son of Tommy Darling . . . It all came into focus.
I looked up at Elizabeth, the director, who was looking back at me apologetically. Immediately I knew.
“So Raymond was not his son?” I asked incredulously. “My gran had a child out of wedlock?”
The parallels of our two stories were running unnervingly closer and closer.
“There was no name listed under Father on Raymond’s birth certificate,” Elizabeth said softly.
I have now discovered something that my granny did, unbeknownst to her daughter. This is the very same daughter who, according to my father at least, had done exactly the same thing. Honestly, I was too shocked to form words. I let Rob do all the talking.
He told me that Tommy Darling continued sending money back home, but never once visited. By the time he filled in this application form for the job in Malaysia, the one I was holding, he hadn’t seen his children for almost four years.
I joked with Rob that every time he opened his mouth I was afraid there would be some new family revelation. I wasn’t sure I could handle another one.
There was no way of knowing exactly when my grandparents had split up, or even if my granny’s pregnancy with my uncle Raymond was the cause of it. Perhaps they had parted amicably, beforehand. There certainly doesn’t seem to have been any record of animosity between them, in either the letters and papers that the researchers unearthed or in the legacy of how he was perceived in my family. But whatever the circumstances, they can only have added to Tommy Darling’s isolation and his feelings of loss and dispossession. After he left the army he made a new life for himself in St. Albans, working in an auto and motorcycle parts shop, but less than a year later he gave it all up and entered a war zone once more. Clearly he was drawn to the drama of battle. Civilian life didn’t suit him, certainly not once his marriage had ended and his wife had moved on.
So Tommy Darling was a lifelong soldier? Maybe the horrors he had encountered in his career were so ingrained in him that he could no longer function unless he had access to their potential.
But whatever the reasoning, he was about to walk into the middle of the most brutal of colonial wars.
{Courtesy of iStock, ©studiocasper.}
Malaya, or Malaysia as it is now known, was bordered to the north by Thailand and in turn is just a bridge’s distance north of the island of Singapore. It had been part of the British Empire since the early nineteenth century, and its huge rubber and tin resources made it a hugely valuable asset to the UK.
But after the Second World War, Malaya saw growing unrest as its economy suffered, and soon the Malayan National Liberation Army, the military arm of the Malayan Communist Party, began a campaign to disrupt British trade in an attempt to overthrow its colonial rule. In 1948 three European plantation managers were murdered and what became known as the Malayan Emergency began. (Actually the Malayans called it the “Anti-British National Liberation War,” but the rubber and tin companies used the term “emergency” because they would not have been able to claim for any losses from Lloyds of London had the term “war” been used. Cheeky, right?)
In order to fight back at the guerrillas and allow the rubber plantations to continue production, the British government set up villages to house their workers, protected by barbed wire fences and accessible only through checkpoints. But not only were the workers protected, these villages also ensured that the Communist insurgents were cut off from them, and from any food or supplies they might try to pass on. Nearly half a million people were forced to move into these villages, and though many were happy to be protected from the guerrillas, there were also many who were secretly Communist sympathizers.
> So as if the threat of execution from irate young Communist vigilantes was not enough, Tommy Darling would also have to constantly look over his shoulder in case of attack from the very people he was paid to protect—the Malayan workers.
Tommy was in an incredibly difficult, dangerous situation. He had to win the confidence of the locals so that they wouldn’t betray him to the Maoists. He also had to protect these very same people from constant threat of insurgent attack. Many British officers who went to Malaya were killed.
So was this how Tommy Darling met his fate? Was the “shooting accident” my mother spoke of a military euphemism for some bleak, bloody political sacrifice?
What was even more galling to think was that a mere seven months after taking up his post in Malaya, Tommy Darling would be dead, at only thirty-five years of age.
This was the point of the story where I had been warned that Rob could say no more. The next week of filming, commencing in a month’s time, would take me to Malaysia, where I would find out the truth about my granddad’s death.
I said my good-byes to the crew and decided to walk home through Soho to my flat, in an attempt to clear my head. I had invited a few friends to come over for a little party that night and I just needed some time alone to let everything sink in before I donned the facade of normality that I needed to wear for the evening.
What I couldn’t stop thinking about was the similarities between the story that was unfolding on TV and the real one I was experiencing off camera. Both my mother and my grandmother had a child out of wedlock. I could understand how dented Tommy Darling must have been at receiving that news because I had received such news just days before myself—though Tommy and I had very different perspectives. I was the child of such a union. Tommy was the scorned husband.
On a more visceral level, I realized we had both suffered from a form of post-traumatic stress disorder. We both had gone under, slipped through the net for a while, and we both perhaps enjoyed the thrill of danger and excitement because we had at one time cheated death, or quivered at the very edge between it and life.
I got home and broke down in tears. I was totally exhausted. This week had been the most insane of my entire life. Now, for the first time since this all started, I was able to let go and breathe a sigh of relief because I knew I wouldn’t have to gird my loins for any more revelations, at least for a day or two. The DNA test results would arrive back in London the following week, but by then I would be in Cape Town filming that miniseries. Tomorrow I would call my mum and tell her about her parents’ separation and Raymond’s birth certificate, but for tonight, at least, I was a free man. And tonight, as though the showbiz gods could tell that I needed levity and sparkle and wacky Euro froth, was the night of the Eurovision Song Contest!!
Most Americans of course have never heard of this great institution, and I can only feel sorry for them. I know this because I spent almost all my down time between takes in the movie Spy Kids playing Eurovision trivia with Antonio Banderas, much to the bemusement of the crew in Austin, Texas. They looked at us as though we were members of a cult, and in a way, we are. It’s somewhat daunting to try to convey the enormity of this program and the far-reaching and intense magic spell it weaves across the European diaspora, but I will try. First of all, anyone who has ever seen it will never be the same again. In terms of its place in the cultural zeitgeist it is the Oscars and the Super Bowl combined. It is untouchable and awful at the same time. It is part of every European’s pop DNA, it is a rite of passage, a touchstone, and eventually it transcends its awful shallow shininess to become a communal nostalgic shrine to which we make our annual drunken pilgrimages. It’s like Christmas or Thanksgiving but without the family feuds and with a pretty racy bpm. We grew up with it, and we will almost certainly die with it, or perhaps from it. It gave us ABBA, people!! Celine Dion won in 1988, representing Switzerland!!
Simply put, each year all the countries of Europe come together and each offers up a tacky pop song, sometimes in broken English, sometimes in the indigenous language, previously chosen by their respective publics via the Song for Europe competitions. Think American Idol, X factor, et al., and you have only half grasped the joy and the horror. Then one night in May, the final takes place in the previous year’s winning country, and basically all of Europe comes to a standstill. I say Europe, but for some reason I have never been able to fathom (and it’s Eurovision, so logic is not part of the equation), Israel enters and has actually won several times.
I have often thought that if Americans were more exposed to this wonder there would not only be a huge surge in their understanding of British wit and irony, but they would perhaps be able to appreciate without shame the value of a good old-fashioned tacky pop song. I feel my American friends are so very worried about seeming gauche or vulgar when it comes to pop music. It’s only when certain styles of music are placed within the ironic context of retro that Americans can fully enjoy them. We Europeans have never had that problem. Sometimes the lowest common denominator is a positive thing, and people can bond over their love of pop trash.
As we prepared for the party, and the stress of my genealogical maelstrom slowly trickled away, I began to worry that perhaps the Eurovision Song Contest had changed. I had often tried to describe to Grant just how monumental a cultural institution it was, but we’d never been in the UK together when it was on so I had never fully succeeded. YouTube clips are all very well, but they don’t allow for the sense of occasion, the sense of international rivalry, the tension of the juries’ pronouncements, and the sheer joy of hearing bad pronunciation of English over a Europoppy beat.
Perhaps I was over-romanticizing its surreal qualities. Perhaps Europe had become more sophisticated in its musical tastes, and tonight’s great expectations would fall a little flat.
I needn’t have worried. It was a vintage year. For example, Armenia’s entry was a haunting power ballad entitled “Apricot Stone,” about . . . apricot stones!
During Spain’s rendition of “Algo Pequenito” (“Something Tiny”) there was a stage invasion and a man in a funny hat ran on and joined in with the dancers who were dressed as clowns and dolls. Had it not been for the bouncers racing onstage to remove him I doubt the rest of Europe would have realized this was not rehearsed, but because of this insult to their finely honed performance, something unprecedented happened and Spain was allowed to perform again at the end of the contest! Perhaps they shouldn’t have, though, as sadly this double exposure did little to help their fortunes and they ended up in fifteenth place.
My personal favorite was the Belarus entry, “Butterflies,” which, two-thirds of the way through, perfectly blended the aural and visual when butterfly wings sprouted from the backs of the three female band members’ gowns just as the song edged up a dutiful semitone and one of the boys started a Mariah Carey–style cadenza.
Who knew that it would take the Eurovision Song Contest to make me level, to balance the week I had endured, to allow me to revivify my spirit and feel I could take on whatever demons were soon destined to cross my path?
MONDAY 31ST MAY 2010
I landed in Cape Town early after flying through the night from London. It was such a relief to be back at work, to have something else to think about.
The previous afternoon I had called my mum and told her the news about her parents having separated and her brother Raymond not being Tommy Darling’s son. She admitted that she was not entirely shocked by the news, which gave me some comfort, I suppose. Over the years she had entertained many possibilities of why her father hadn’t been around, and rumors had long circulated within the family about her brother.
“It’s just good to know the truth, though, isn’t it, Alan?” she said. “To have everything cleared up.”
“Yes, I really think it is, Mum,” I replied. There was another truth that I knew would be good for me to hear. The results of the DNA test were due in a few days. The wait was killing me. Going back to work and having a compl
ete change of scene was probably the best thing for me. After I spoke to Mum, and said my good-byes to Grant, who was returning to New York, I left for Heathrow and my next few weeks in South Africa.
I love long flights. The feeling of being completely unreachable is something I savor, and the limbolike state of being, having departed but not arrived, somehow allows me to catch up with myself, to regroup and check in. It’s a little contrary to think that I look forward to careering through the skies in a metal-fatigued box in order to gain some feeling of inner calm, but that’s the way I roll.
But there are other ways my emotions are thrown into flux at thirty-nine thousand feet. Films I would never otherwise have watched suddenly seem very alluring and then render me a weeping wreck. Around that time I remember they all tended to have Sandra Bullock in them. I cry a lot on planes. This flight was no exception.
I was returning to South Africa because I was in the middle of shooting a miniseries for British television called The Runaway, based on the novel by Martina Cole. It was set in London’s seedy Soho streets in the sixties and seventies, and I played Desrae, a transvestite who runs the Peppermint nightclub, and who takes in the eponymous runaway and becomes her matriarchal figure. Desrae was a survivor, literally, for there were more than a few gangland shoot-outs peppered throughout the six episodes (including one that ended with my Italian gangster boyfriend being gunned down, and dying in my arms!) and she also was a really kind, dignified person. In sharp contrast to the way most trans people are depicted on-screen, Desrae was a very positive role model. That was what made me want to do the series, as well as the fact that I had just joined the cast of The Good Wife and had spent the previous few months in a suit playing an uptight politico named Eli Gold. Desrae seemed a nice contrast. I traded the suit for stilettos, happily.