by Nick Frost
I once had a big fight with Chris, my baby’s momma, soon to be ex-wife, a good loyal woman and the best mother you could ever wish to meet. It erupted from a misunderstanding and a lack of emotional flexibility on both sides. I decided to take my frustration out on the thick, unyielding stone walls of our rented casa. I swing a giant right around, and immediately I connect with the wall I hear the sound of a man striking an oven-ready chicken with a heavy lump hammer, an explosion, the sound of bones snapping inside a fatty shroud of meat.
Pulling the hand away the first thing I note is my little finger’s hanging off, hanging free, halfway down my palm like an unused Swingball. I automatically grab it and crunch it back into the position it should be in. It lolls free again preferring its new home midway down my paw. This is really bad. I pull it once more and an ice cold sweat begins to leak into my eyes. I rush slightly. Chris goes to bed. I set the dislocated finger back in position, I can feel the fractures clack together, before finally the snapped pieces marry and the finger stays put. Thank god. I pray that perhaps it’s only dislocated. Tomorrow we start shooting. It really couldn’t have come at a worse time.
I take a roll of thick gaffer tape and secure the finger with roll upon roll of sticky fabric. Perfect. Perhaps I can attend my 9 a.m. tennis lesson after all. I never make that lesson. I wake up in the spare room at 3 a.m. heaving with pain. My hand is the size and colour of a well-used griddle pan; the tape is buried in the fat, swollen meat of what used to be my hand. What a fucking idiot. If you’re ever so angry you want to punch something, punch the air or a man of feathers, don’t punch walls. If you watch the film Paul carefully you can see the character I play, Clive Gollings, is left-handed.
While Dad struggled to free his arm, Mum saw her chance to finish him off. She picked up a giant crystal ashtray, the type which was de rigueur in the late seventies, square, heartless and angled to fuck, and smashed it over his head. I think he’s dead, at least he looks dead. He’s actually slumped unconscious, hanging out of the door. At some point an ambulance is called. Not by me. I feel neighbours may have intervened, Elsie and Harry maybe. I sat, wide-eyed with fright, banana in hand, feeling terribly guilty. Why was I guilty?
I remember Dad telling a joke when he got home about the tetanus injection he’d had at the hospital. The nurse says to Dad:
‘This shouldn’t hurt, it’s only a little prick’, to which he responds:
‘It may only be a little prick to you, love, but it’s all I’ve got’. He booms his lovely, wheezy laugh out, grimacing as he feels a twinge of pain from his fucked-up hand. That was the kind of person my dad was. Even at his lowest ebb he always had a shitty joke or pun to hand. What a trouper.
So Dad loved his puns and his lame wordplay. I was always more into the physical comedy. I’ll give you an example from back then. One Christmas when we lived in Redbridge, we were sitting chatting and laughing round the table after one of Mum’s big beautiful Christmas dinners (she was a great cook). Mandy, my neighbour, and her family were there and I started flirting outrageously in a boyish kind of way. It peaked when I picked up a jar of pickled beetroot and pretended to drink from it. The jar had no lid. Me, the white tablecloth and our fine mint-green carpet were doused in litres of bright red juice and balls of earth fruit.
***
I still love a beer but I can’t hide from the fact that alcohol, more specifically alcoholism, seemed to tear at and ravage my family like a coyote with a hen carcass. I see more and more of its casualties the older I get.
As a child, though, I’m completely unaware that this isn’t normal. The flip between someone who likes a drink and someone who has a terrible problem is often difficult to pinpoint, even for them. As a young boy I didn’t notice it happening. I didn’t see it, such was the sophistication of its cloaking device
I had an inkling things weren’t perfect. I’d even summon up the courage every now and again to say something to Mum, but I was immediately cut down and told off. It was none of my business, she used to say. But it was my business. I understood my place in the family hierarchy pretty early on though, so I’d shut the fuck up.
The way I describe my parents in this book, particularly later on, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was a terribly dysfunctional, co-dependent relationship. Which it was. At least at the end. To get to that point though where Mum looks after Dad after his collapse and Dad looks after Mum for the ten years it took her to finally drink herself to death, that takes groundwork. Years and years of groundwork and the laying of foundations of trust and a shit load of love. Mum and Dad were completely in love for as long as I could remember which made what came later all the harder to stomach. They were so romantic. Dad was a flowers-and-notes kind of guy which was great because Mum was a flowers-and-notes kind of gal.
With them holed up in a pub most of the weekend – something Dad grew to hate but due to his loyalty to Mum would never challenge – it meant I was allowed to rent any VHS film I wanted to watch at home. For a young, gore-hungry boy such as myself this usually meant The Hills Have Eyes (the original), The Shining, I Spit On Your Grave, Poltergeist, The Howling, American Werewolf in London, Alien, The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue, etc. I remember me and my big sister Debbie giggling loudly one afternoon watching the credits to Dario Argento’s Suspiria. We howled when we saw the soundtrack was by a band called Goblin.
I became numb to the images I saw, they were gore-filled and exciting. I liked it. I imagined everyone would feel the same. I showed The Exorcist to a mate of mine once, we were both eleven or so; he ran off thirty-five minutes in, muttering something about hearing his mum calling. Poor lad hardly slept a wink for a week. The screaming. We didn’t play much together again after that. Shame.
***
When I first became aware of my mum she was a bookkeeper of sorts, but I never remember her keeping any books. Before that she worked in an electrical shop called Stanwoods, that’s where she met Dad; he was some kind of manager and I guess with smiles and laughter and flirting they fell in love.
Dad had been married before to a lady who I think had suffered a terrible breakdown of some kind. Nowadays, the things that blighted that poor woman would have a name. From what my dad told me it sounded like a form of extreme OCD. Back then, sadly, such a malady was nameless. It was just something that ended a marriage. Dad had two daughters from his first marriage. They’re my half-sisters. He bloody loved those girls.
She had a problem with my dad’s new relationship with the woman I’d eventually pop out of. I completely get it. When Mum got pregnant it was too much for her to cope with. Shit happened and it got ugly. Soon after this she took her kids – Dad’s kids, their kids – and moved to New Zealand. I understand it was what she needed to do. I’m not sure my dad did though, not then anyway. Over the years he suffered from not being with his girls. Having a child now myself I can only imagine what that feels like. I don’t hold any kind of grudge against her in any way, shape or form. But it was a sadness he kept to himself. I’ve met her many times since and she is absolutely lovely, a warm caring mother and grandmother. Being under a terrific amount of pressure and losing love and face and dignity can make people, good people, any people, stumble.
***
After keeping books – again, no idea what this means – Mum worked at The Napier, a pub in Ilford. I remember getting a bus to the pub after school and sitting on a crate underneath the bar waiting for her to finish. I’d eat crisps and drink bottles of Coke through a flimsy paper straw which would collapse if over-sucked. I remember watching her flirt with the old regulars; she was the classic brassy barmaid, perfectly adapted to cope with pervy pissheads, she was quick, funny and tough. The punters loved her.
At the time I was attending St Peter and St Pauls Junior School in Ilford. It was a nice school but I do remember some turmoil. I didn’t like it. The first week was a real nightmare. Poor Mum. I was a real mummy’s boy and she doted on me something crazy. Mum had to drag me into s
chool. When it was time for her to leave I kicked up the biggest fuss. It was like I was possessed. There was a red cage that wrapped around the staircase in the school so kids couldn’t commit suicide I guess. I hung on to that cage like a demented ape for an hour a day for the first week screaming, while Mum and assorted teachers tried to prise me off, convincing me to stay. I did not want her to go. My little boy’s a bit like that now. Still I’m stronger than him so I’m ready for the fight. I think I’ll bring a small lever and work on his fingers one by one until he’s finally off and in school. I imagine me and Chris will need a deep coffee after this.
I don’t know why I always hated going to school as much as I did – maybe the rules, being told what to do. I mean I came to like aspects of it, but generally school could’ve sucked my dong.
I think the beginnings of my current life as an actor started here. Getting off school by pretending to be dangerously ill takes skill, courage and commitment.
I had a lovely little technique where I’d take the thermometer Mum was using to check my temperature and rub it hard with my tongue, and blow hot air on the mercury-filled bulb. Anything to get it over the golden number, 101 degrees F.
The sickness gig was very to and fro with Mum, she’d threaten to call the doctor out, I’d say I was fine, and that it was just a bug etc. She always came round to my way of thinking. I was good, often interrupting a conversation with a round of coughing and dry heaves. I’d lie on the sofa pretending to be ill. It was a Bifa-worthy performance. Utterly compelling.
My enjoyment of Jamie’s Magic Torch however was one day rudely interrupted by a brusque knock on the front door.
As a fake sickman there are times when you need to deeply immerse yourself in a role. Factors need to be considered. What do I have? What is the timeline for said viral infection? How sick am I? Last time we spoke how sick was I? Have I become dramatically worse? Am I feeling slightly better? What’s the longest possible time I can eke this out for? Getting sick on a Wednesday means I will not be back at school till the following Monday. Come Friday at 4 p.m., I’d be feeling much better. The answers to the above questions give you the level of illness you need to pitch. It’s pretty simple really. Stay in character. Commit.
This was a Wednesday and as such I was in the grip of a nasty Asian ape flu that had been going round.
In response to the door knocking I pulled my blankets up and moaned, as if deep in a Bronte-esque, soaked-by-rain-on-a dark-heath-fever-induced daymare. I moaned, brilliant touch.
‘MUM!!! DOOR!!!’
I could hear Mum talking to someone, I strained to hear snippets of a conversation: ‘Thanks for coming . . . He’s in here.’
I shut my eyes, and moan, shivering, so cold, so sick. The only way a human would be as sick as I was pretending to be was if he/she had eaten a rotten monkey-brain omelette in the central market in Liberia, West Africa. I hadn’t.
My arms contorted in spasm and I woke with a start. Too much. Too big. Hammy performance. I opened my eyes to see our GP standing there. Tit bags. She actually called the doctor. I’m ruined.
The doctor, a big man, towers over me. Tough it out. Commit. You’re one of the best poorly child actors in Europe.
‘Has this child been to Liberia in the last ten days?’
‘No.’
Maybe I’d pitched my performance just right after all.
The doctor takes my blood pressure and temperature, he listens to my chest with his stethoscope. I can see my smug mum behind him, smiling. She’s called my bluff, what a dick.
Doctor’s brow furrows, I drop out of character for a second, he sees this. He tuts and shakes his head. Mum and I lock eyes briefly. I pretend to get suddenly very cold.
The doctor slowly pulls his bookish, half-moon glasses from his noble Hippocratic face. (He didn’t wear glasses.) He fixes my mum with a hard stare and barks out these words, ‘Mrs Frost, would you be so kind as to call an ambulance please?’
I suddenly feel a lot better. Is this part of Mum’s bluff? No, she is rooted and white as a sheet. This is actually happening. I’m actually sick. The doctor has diagnosed a potentially dangerous heart murmur; my dream of being a deep sea diver hunting for booty now lies in tatters. I was in hospital for three weeks. I never pretended to be sick again.
As the school ‘postman’ I went to church every day and afterwards I would pick up the letters and take them to the office (in hindsight I’m not sure why the school couldn’t have just got the letters sent directly to the school and not via the church).
This was before Thatcher took away our milk. We drank a lot of milk in little bottles with blue straws, played a lot of crab-football. At the age of six or so we were called into the music room and all given an instrument to learn. I was so happy when they decided to give me a shiny trumpet like Miles Davis. So happy.
After several weeks of struggling with this shiny knot of brass the Head of Music called me and my mum into his office. He talked to Mum as if I wasn’t there. He told her my lips were too big and I would never make the grade for a trumpeter. What. The. Fuck. Had this dick never heard of Satchmo? He took the trumpet out of my hands – pulled it out of my hands – and as I grasped at the thin air that used to contain a trumpet he stuck a trombone into my hands. He gave me a trombone. Apart from the tuba, it ranks as the fattest sounding of all instruments. If a tuba wasn’t available and someone needed to soundtrack a mega-fatty struggling down the street with a big bucket of chicken, the trombone would be the instrument they’d use.
My stubborn streak – cheers Mum – surfaced at school one lunchtime. For whatever reason, although I suspect I may have been showing off a bit, I decide to get three portions of jam roly poly and custard, all piled high in one bowl. My friends laugh as I prod at the jammy suet. The bell rings and I make to leave. I’m stopped at the door by the lunch monitor.
‘You’re not leaving that.’
‘But I don’t want it.’
‘Then why did you get so much?’
‘Dunno.’
‘You’re going to sit down and finish it.’
‘But I can’t eat any more.’
‘I don’t care. Sit down please.’
I was giving some major attitude in front of my homies. Fuck this dude. I sat down. The teacher plopped the pile of stodge in front of me.
‘When you finish this bowl you can leave.’
‘I’m not eating it.’
‘We’ll see.’
‘We will see. I’m not eating it.’
‘You will.’
‘I won’t.’
And I didn’t. I sat there from one o’clock until half-past four, when my mum was forced to come and get me. She was not happy. She was fine with me, but she wasn’t happy with them forcing a little boy to miss a whole afternoon of lessons to try and prove a point. It was great having a woman like Mum on my side.
Paul Eaton was my best friend at the time; notable others include Sean Creagan and a kid called Peter who dipped toast into tea – it used to make me heave. I had my first kiss with a lovely Irish girl called Patricia Dugan, she had a shiny black wedge like Pam Ayres’s. Rachel Cosgrave was the fittest girl in school; she had two different-coloured eyes – one blue, one green. It was amazing. I’d never seen anything like it. (Except for Dave Bowie.)
Around about this time Pope John Paul the Second got shot. Being a Catholic school it was a really big deal. We were asked/made to write ‘get well soon’ letters. Being a young funnyman I decided to include a joke. Poor bloke got shot for Christsakes, I thought he’d need a laugh. Off they went, my letter one of among thousands of well wishes from young Catholics all over the world.
A month later a letter plopped through our letterbox. The envelope was like nothing I’d never seen before. White, padded, rich smelling. Embossed on the front of the letter was the cross keys of the seal of Vatican City. WTF. My hands trembled as I opened the letter carefully. It was from the effin Pope! Actually from his personal secretary to be fa
ir but close enough. It said the Pope was happy I had written to him and my joke had made him laugh! Holy (literally) shit.
My other best friend was a fiery loonie called Vincent Heggarty. He had an older brother called Brendan, who much later would become a really good friend and help me make my important choice to escape the UK to live in Israel.
That though was ten years away. At this point I was just his little brother’s mate and he’d spend his time shooting us with an air rifle loaded with phlegm and tin-foil wrapped needles. Disgusting and painful.
They lived in Seven Kings near Ilford. One night when I stayed over in Vincent’s hot, packed, Irish house all hell broke loose. We heard it floating up through the floorboards; someone had died. I think this was the first time I was exposed to grief, Irish grief at that. Drinking, singing, crying, laughing, anger. This really affected me as a little boy, I cried my eyes out, although I wasn’t sure why.
There are only fragments of memories about that school and my time there. Dad started working with Dennis Bennett, his old school friend, at Comida Contracts, a company that designed and manufactured high-end office furniture. He began when the company was tiny, first as a driver and then as a trainee upholsterer. He gradually worked his way up, eventually becoming managing director, hence the Jaguar XJS V12 (metallic mint paint, cream leather interior).
We got to the point in our lives back then, through Dad’s hard work, hard work that bordered on the workaholic, where we had the chance to move away from the mean streets of Dagenham. Mum and Dad found a lovely double-fronted, three-bedroom house with a massive garden in Redbridge, Essex – 27 Babbacombe Gardens.
I was nervous, all my friends were going on to Canon Palmer, a secondary school in Ilford, and I was going to a place called Beal High School in Redbridge. I never saw anyone from my old school again more or less. That chapter closed and I was forced to move forward.
The new house was a two-minute walk away from the new school, which was nice. The place in Dagenham had been two buses and a long walk away from school; 27 Babbacombe was a real palace compared to our box-like and very terraced Dagenham house. For fun recently I looked it up on Zoopla. Two things struck me: one, I didn’t remember it looking like that at all. My brain has completely made up a view of that place that the Zoopla image doesn’t match, and two, it was pretty bloomin’ cheap. (Relatively.) I seem to remember it was some kind of mansion. But no, it can be picked up for £400k.