40 I plotted from the corner. How can I get past Mia, antagonise Pascale and get her away from the bed? Nothing else mattered. But all I could think of doing was to call her names. Mum taught us never to call each other names, especially regarding our physical appearance – a very good rule to teach siblings, I think. ‘Personal comments can never be taken back,’ she used to say. I never broke the rule, not until that night. Pascale did. She said my teeth were like the rocks in Nanny’s garden. Nanny had a rockery. (I got braces when I was in my forties and sorted them out.) I contemplated breaking Mum’s rule. What were rules now anyway? Pascale had already broken the rules, loads of them: how to treat your sister and niece at your mother’s deathbed, and not swearing over your dying mother, for a start. And I’d broken the rules by starting a fight and calling her a bitch. I launched into a stream of insults. Anything I could think of that would lacerate. I said things only a sister knows will pierce. Mum must have heard it all. Mia told me later that I didn’t look human when I was hissing insults at Pascale: ‘Your face was unrecognisable and your eyes went black like an animal.’ I went against my code of living, crossed the line. ‘You’re mad,’ said Pascale. She was right. I was mad. Completely insane. A deranged, murderous, certifiable, raging lunatic.
Diary of a Mad Housewife*
I opened Mum’s green bag. Inside, a bundle of tissuey yellowed papers covered in rows of faded grey type, held together with a rusted dressmaker’s pin, lay as crisp and undisturbed as a shroud, exactly like my father’s diary. Mum’s diary was also written between 1965 and 1967, recounted the last two years of their marriage and was to be used as evidence in the divorce. Pinned to the first page were two letters, one from her solicitor, Mr Shirley, to the county court, outlining my father’s character:
Mr Shirley Throughout the said marriage the petitioner, who is a man of selfish, jealous and quarrelsome disposition, has failed and neglected to show any affection or consideration for the respondent but has continually sought to dominate her and has succeeded in so doing. That at outset of said marriage the petitioner unreasonably refused to allow the child, David, of the respondent (by her previous marriage) to be a child of the family or to live with them and he thereby caused the respondent the utmost distress.
In the second letter, from my mother to Mr Shirley, she responded to his request for a detailed account of her marriage. He gave instructions to include ‘full particulars of the date, approximate time, and place of every occasion of sexual intercourse relied upon’.
Kathleen Dear Mr Shirley, I am going to write down the happenings of my marriage as you have asked me to – I am sorry I took so long but it all seemed so unreal. We had only moved into the new house less than three months when without my knowledge Lucien was applying to the council to sell it. I have been sent a letter from the solicitors saying he wants a divorce and it seems he has been planning it for this past year and not a word about it to me. During this time he and I were still having intercourse. It seems incredible. I can’t believe it.
We have been married 19 years.
Please, you must get me custody of the children. Nothing else matters – please help me – and them. I wouldn’t have a peaceful night if he had custody of them.
It wasn’t the house Mum wanted. Lucien was wrong about that. She wanted her children. She wanted us. I was pleased to read that. And how humiliating, having sex with your husband and later discovering that all the time he was plotting to divorce you. I’d stop speaking to a man who did that – although Mum said in her account that Lucien stopped speaking to her because she wouldn’t sign her £150 annuity over to him. (Again I’ve added some comments in italics to the diary excerpts.)
Kathleen During the war Lucien was transferred to the Free French Navy at the collapse of France. He rejected the authority of the Free French and after an awful lot of trouble he was jailed for a year in England during the war. He was demobbed in England at his own request as he would not go back to France. We met at the end of 1944 and married in 1949.
In June 1940, a year into the Second World War, France was defeated by Germany and divided into two zones, one half governed by the Nazis, the other half by the Vichy regime, an alliance between France and Germany. The British called this the ‘fall’ or ‘collapse’ of France. On 3 July 1940, the Royal Navy bombed a flotilla of French ships at Mers-el-Kébir (Operation Catapult) to prevent the French surrendering or loaning any of their fleet to the Germans. (The French had promised they wouldn’t give up their ships, but Churchill was not convinced.) The attack resulted in 1,297 deaths and 350 casualties among French servicemen, destroyed the fleet and aroused a deep hatred for the British within the French navy.
Two years later, in 1942, German forces attempted to seize a large fleet of French warships that were docked in the port of Toulon (Operation Lila). My father grew up in Toulon and was a sailor on a submarine during this attack. As they had promised the Allies, the French navy scuttled seventy-seven of its own ships to avoid them falling into German hands. The hulls burned on the sea for weeks. Lucien’s submarine ignored orders to scuttle and escaped, probably to Algiers. He told me that he ran up to the captain and screamed at him that they were all going to die. He was only a matelot breveté, the lowest rank of sailor; he probably got a slap. When the submarine was found the crew were offered the choice of going to jail in England or joining the Free French Navy and fighting the Germans under the leadership of General Charles de Gaulle. Because of the anti-British sentiment among French sailors, and because he was always one to harbour a grudge, Lucien refused to join de Gaulle and spent a year of the war in a British jail. He later reversed his decision and was released to join the Free French. By the end of the war he’d completely changed his mind and fallen in love with England. He desperately wanted to be perceived as English – he wouldn’t speak French at home so that his English improved – and became such an Anglophile that whenever he went back to France he annoyed his family by praising England all the time and denigrating France.
Kathleen We went to France to see Lucien’s family in 1963 [I was nine, Pascale was seven] as his mother hadn’t ever seen the children and was feeling old. Lucien would not tell the children it was their own grandmother, uncles and aunts we were visiting and he told me not to let them know. It made a very unhappy state of affairs as his mother felt it and queried whether the children knew. I lied and said yes as the children couldn’t speak French. He doesn’t tell people his real name is Lucien (he calls himself Albert in England) or that he is French. He never even got in touch with his mother after VE day [Victory in Europe Day, 8 May 1945] to let her know he was alive. She found him through the Red Cross Missing People’s Bureau.
Can you imagine going to visit your relatives and not being told they are your family? It was extremely awkward. We didn’t know how familiar to be with the people we met and stayed with, or why they were so friendly and affectionate towards us. (My parents never told us our father was French either – I didn’t notice he had an accent because I grew up with it.) All the lies and the fudging they must have employed to keep us in the dark.
On our journey down to the South of France we crossed Paris on a bus, transferring from the Gare du Nord station to the Gare de Lyon. We were all settled in our seats when an injured veteran with a crutch hobbled on, and an elderly woman shouted at Lucien for not giving up his seat – I think he was sitting in the seat reserved for the disabled. Instead of apologising and getting up, my father argued back. Mum told me later that he said he was in the Free French Navy during the war and unlike them, he’d done his bit for France. I remember him throwing out his arms to include everyone on the bus and shouting in English, ‘You’re all a bunch of bloody collaborators!’ I had no idea what he meant, Mum hadn’t used that word on me yet, but I could tell it was bad by the reaction. Pandemonium broke out and we dived off the bus at the next stop. Everyone was yelling, insulting us, even the driver. It was horrible. Why can’t Dad be normal? Why does he always g
et into trouble wherever he goes? We scurried down a side street. I kept looking behind me, terrified that the angry passengers would follow us and beat us up. Mum must have been scared too because she suggested we duck into a patisserie.
I had never seen such beautiful cakes before. There were no flat-topped Bakewell tarts studded with gummy glacé cherries in tinfoil trays, no round brown lumps dusted in dandruffy coconut, or chunks of Battenberg with lurid pink and yellow squares here. These shelves were filled with rows of soft, whipped, miniature pink mousses garnished with real strawberries, fat powdered doughnuts puffed up with creamy yellow custard and perfectly neat little chocolate cubes crowned with delicate toffee stars. We weren’t allowed any of these exciting cakes though. Mum bought us each a boring, flat, flaky brown thing instead. It looked like a large, squashed sausage roll. ‘It’s that or nothing,’ she said. Pascale and I were upset but hungry, so we agreed. Outside the shop I bit into my pastry, even though I didn’t like the look of it. To my amazement it tasted of sugar and butter and broke into flat little flakes which stuck to my lips. Inside this crispy sweet nest, a stick of hard, cool chocolate ran all the way down the middle, end to end. It was a pain au chocolat, the most delicious pastry I’d ever tasted. That’s when I decided that French people were not to be underestimated.
The little old French lady on the bus wasn’t scared of my big bullying father. She didn’t stay quiet when he shouted at her, she shouted back. The other passengers didn’t ignore the disturbance, turn their heads away and look out of the window like people at home would have done back then. They joined in and made their voices heard. And French cake shops, even ones hidden away down dark narrow alleyways, were filled with exquisite little cakes and ugly brown pastries hiding secret chocolate middles.
* A 1970 film starring Jane Fonda, based on Sue Kaufman’s 1967 book of the same name
41 Trapped in the corner, penned in by Mia, aching with frustration, I still wasn’t ready to give up. Any chance that came my way, I was all set to take advantage. Meanwhile, Pascale went on sitting, Mum went on sleeping and Vida went on watching. My moment came when Mia picked up a little Pyrex glass and poured some water from Mum’s plastic jug into it. I was concentrating so hard on her actions, I swear I could see every molecule of H2O as it streamed out of the spout and splashed and swirled around inside the glass. As she poured, Mia spoke to me in a soft, steady voice, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying for the blood rushing inside my head. I’d had an idea. She proffered the glass with a hesitant smile. I reached for it slowly so as not to spook her. I must not do anything to make her change her mind or doubt me in any way. I was sure my scheme was written all over my face. I raised the glass to my lips and took a sip. Mia smiled broadly, pleased with herself. ‘Thank you,’ I whispered, and smiled back gratefully. Then I swivelled round and chucked the contents of the glass in Pascale’s face. She reared back, eyes wide, face white and wet. I noted that not a drop had landed on Mum.
Pussy Riot
I’ve had a few altercations on buses myself. I take after my father in that respect. Or did the bold Parisian woman lodge in my brain as deeply as the French cakes when I was nine years old? The first time I ever saw a woman stand up to a man was on that French bus – Mum didn’t challenge my father in the early days.
Not long after moving to Hackney I went to Amnesty International in East London to hear the women from Pussy Riot discuss their experiences of protesting and prison. On the way home I was feeling militant. The bus was crowded and a man in his late twenties, about six foot two, beige corduroy jacket, floppy fringe, lounged across the last empty seat with his legs sprawled out so no one else could sit there. Lots of people were standing up, letting him get away with it, but I asked him to move his legs so I could sit down. ‘Excuse me?’ he said (here we go), meaning, Why the fuck are you talking to me, you silly woman? He was upper-class and supercilious. I asked him again to move his legs so I could sit down. ‘Excuse me?’ he repeated, with a wrinkled-up nose and a ‘You smell of shit’ expression. ‘You heard,’ I said in a nasty skinhead voice. That took him aback. The exchange went on like this for a while, with him not moving his legs and acting all superior as if I were so revolting and thick that he couldn’t understand what I was saying. When I called him a ‘posh twat’ he got out his phone and, with a snidey smile, tried to take my picture. I wasn’t having that. I wrestled him for the phone. Bit of a risk, but I was willing to take a punch for it. Things got quite physical. He didn’t get to take the picture.
Sometimes you mess with the wrong middle-aged woman.
He said he was going to call the police. A Saturday night in Hackney and Mr Six Foot Two was calling the police because a woman stood up to him. He must have been very unused to being challenged. He jumped up from the two seats he’d been occupying and pressed the red emergency button. I sat down. The bus stopped in the middle of the road, holding up the traffic, while the man dialled 999 and told the police, his voice slurred from alcohol, that he’d been assaulted by a woman. (I didn’t hit him, just prevented him from taking my picture.) The bus driver shouted at him to stop being a dick. The other passengers, Hackney locals, older men and women of all ages and races, had a go too. ‘The whole bus is attacking me now,’ he whined into the phone. I couldn’t believe the police stayed on the line so long – maybe it was his posh accent. They must have told him to piss off eventually because he hung up and the bus set off again.
There are more and more of us women out there who won’t be pushed around and will give back a lot more than was bargained for. You have to mean it though.
42 I could tell by her slumped posture that Pascale was beginning to weaken, but she wasn’t beaten and I was running out of ideas. All I had left was the empty glass. It was my last chance, I had to make a move before it was taken off me.
My arm went up. Vida’s head turned. Mia’s jaw dropped. The glass flew. It hit Pascale’s head and fell to the floor. I felt the vibrations travel up through my socks and into my feet. Silence. Pascale’s hand flew to her face. Here we go, a big fuss about nothing, bloody hypochondriac. A spot of blood appeared from under her fingers. I wasn’t expecting that. If I thought anything would happen, it was that one of those golfball-sized lumps would appear. More blood. I felt a twinge of remorse but checked myself. Hold firm. Don’t give in now. A trickle of red wended its way from Pascale’s hairline down to her cheek – not pouring, but definitely on the move.
Pascale looked over at Mia. ‘Are you going to do something about this?’
‘Yes.’ Mia’s voice was barely audible.
But I Lost It
O mother, mother!
What have you done?
Coriolanus to Volumnia. William
Shakespeare, Coriolanus, 1608
Sitting on the carpet, legs crossed, arse aching, my mother’s diary balanced on my knees, I read on as the light faded and the lamp post outside her bedroom window glowed pink, then orange. To set the scene, Mum started in 1937, when her elder sister, Ivy-Ann, introduced her to Gerry Mansfield, David’s father. He threatened to commit suicide if Mum didn’t marry him. She was eighteen and frightened. Mansfield was thirty-one and the first man she’d slept with. She married him and gave birth to David in 1939, when she was nineteen years old. It was the start of the Second World War. I’d always wondered what Mum did in the war, but whenever I asked her she’d intimate she was still a child. She said she refused to be evacuated and stayed at home with her parents. (She never told us her age. If we, or anyone else, ever asked, she’d say, ‘Over twenty-one.’ I only discovered her age a couple of years before she died, when a doctor asked when she was born and I was standing by the bed. Mum looked up at me, winced and said, ‘1919.’) She also said she wasn’t scared of the bombs and that after the first couple of attacks she didn’t bother going to the air-raid shelters any more.
After reading her diary I learned the truth. During the war Mum was in her early twenties and worked as a secretary. (I was
disappointed she wasn’t a code-breaker at Bletchley Park. I’d always imagined that was the reason for her reticence.) She lived with her mother, her father and her baby in North London, having separated from Gerry Mansfield. It was legitimate that Mum didn’t participate in active service as she had a young baby. I don’t think she lied about it because she was a coward. She was ashamed of having a baby and being separated from the father at twenty-one years of age. It’s probably true that she wasn’t scared of the bombs and didn’t go to the shelters. She was fearless and unsentimental. Or maybe she didn’t care if she lived or died. You’d think having a new baby would make you nervous and concerned for his and your safety, but one of the few times we talked about David she said, ‘I didn’t know what to do with the baby. I was just a silly child. I dressed him up, dandled him and played with him like a toy.’
I wish she’d been honest with me about her past, at least when I was older. It’s not as if I was a conventional daughter. Although, now I think about it, I also kept things about myself hidden from my daughter at the insistence of my husband – he said it would be a bad influence on her to know I’d been in a band and had lived an itinerant life, that I swore, had taken drugs and made sculptures of naked female bodies. This was fifty years after Mum’s first marriage and after I’d been in the Slits. It’s more difficult to make sense of why I was so cowed in the 1990s than why my mother was so secretive in the 1940s. Like her, I attempted to give the impression to Vida that I was a perfect person, had no complicated history and had never put a foot wrong in life. (What kind of a role model is that for a child?)
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