Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys.

by Viv Albertine

  I stopped what I was doing and went to have a look. Standing in the kitchen doorway I gaped open-mouthed at them. Tears poured down my face and ran into my mouth, as I drank in this extraordinary sight. I was so happy and so scared, scared that I would never see such a wonderful thing again.

  I never did.

  Four hours later I’m lying in the dark, listening. I can tell from the noises coming from the kitchen that Mum is angrier than usual and I know why. After everybody left, me or my sister, I can’t remember which, said something that irritated Dad, just something silly, but he flipped.

  ‘Go and get the belt.’

  This happens a lot. I go to the cellar, open the door – no need to switch the light bulb on, I know this ritual by heart – and unhook the brown leather belt from a nail banged into the bare brick wall. As I breathe in the brick and coal dust, my throat tightens. Then I walk back to Dad, trailing the buckle along the floor behind me, letting it bang and clunk against the furniture. This act of defiance makes him even angrier. I hand the belt over. He tells me to turn round with my back to him and hits me three times across the back of my bare legs. It’s my sister’s turn next. We howl with the unfairness and the pain of it all. We cry as loud as we can, hoping Mum will stop him or the neighbours will hear us and come round and tell him off or have him sent to prison. But no one interferes once you’ve shut the front door of your home. The house next door could be in a different country for all they care.

  Dad orders us to our bedroom as extra punishment. It’s always freezing in there. As soon as he’s gone, we root around in the bedside-table drawer, find an old biro and draw around each other’s swollen red welts in blue ink, so even when the marks heal, the squiggly blue outlines will be a record of what he did. We promise each other: we’ll never wash the biro off and we’ll draw over the outlines every day. Our homemade tattoos will be permanent reminders – to him and to us – of what a bully he is. Yep, we’ll show him.

  A bit later Dad comes in to see us. We’re sitting on our beds drawing, having got over the worst of the pain and the tears. He cries and hugs us, tells us he’s sorry and asks us to forgive him.

  ‘Yes, we forgive you, Daddy!’ we chorus.

  We have to forgive him, we’ve got to see him every day, life’s going to be even more uncomfortable if we don’t forgive him; it’s a matter of survival. We just want everything to be all right, or seem to be all right. Mum calls out that tea’s ready, Dad tells us to wash off the silly biro and come and sit at the table.

  We leave a few blue traces behind on our red skin on purpose, not enough to get him worked up again but enough to salvage our pride, then troop into the tiny steamed-up kitchen to eat stew: lumps on our plates, lumps in our throats, red eyes, red legs. Dad makes a joke and we laugh to please him, then we all chomp away in silence. When no one’s looking, I spit the chewed-up meat into my hand to flush down the toilet later. The radio’s on, the theme tune of Sing Something Simple with the Swingle Singers seeps into the room, the vocal harmonies – sweet and sickly – pour out into the air and fill up the silences.

  I still can’t stand the sound of those 1950s harmonies – like a drink you got drunk on as a teenager, just the smell of it brings back the nausea.

  6 YOU CAN’T DO THAT

  1964

  I’m at my babysitter Kristina’s house, my first time in a big girl’s room. There are no dolls or teddy bears anywhere. On her bed is a ‘gonk’, a round red cushion with a long black felt fringe, no mouth, big feet. Her bedspread is purple and she’s painted her furniture purple too. In the middle of the floor is a record player, a neat little box covered in white leatherette, it looks a bit like a vanity case. Flat paper squares with circles cut out of the middle are scattered around the floor. Kristina opens the lid of the record player and takes a shiny liquorice-black disc out of one of the wrappers, puts it onto the central spindle and carefully lowers a plastic arm onto the grooves. There’s a scratching sound. I have no idea what’s going to happen next.

  Boys’ voices leap out of the little speaker – ‘Can’t buy me love!’ No warning. No introduction. Straight into the room. It’s the Beatles.

  I don’t move a muscle whilst the song plays. I don’t want to miss one second of it. I listen with every fibre of my being. The voices are so alive. I love that they don’t finish the word love – they give up on it halfway through and turn it into a grunt. The song careens along, only stopping once for a scream. I know what that scream means: Wake up! We’ve arrived! We’re changing the world! I feel as if I’ve jammed my finger into an electricity socket, every part of me is fizzing.

  When the song finishes, Kristina turns the record over – What’s she doing? – and plays the B-side, ‘You Can’t Do That’.

  This song pierces my heart, and I don’t think it will ever heal. John Lennon’s voice is so close, so real, it’s like he’s in the room. He has a normal boy’s voice, no high-falutin’ warbling or smoothed-out, creamy harmonies like the stuff Mum and Dad listen to on the radio. He uses everyday language to tell me, his girlfriend, to stop messing around. I can feel his pain, I can hear it in his raspy voice; he can’t hide it. He seesaws between bravado and vulnerability, trying to act cool but occasionally losing control. And it’s all my fault. It makes me feel so powerful, affecting a boy this way – it’s intoxicating. I ache to tell him, I’m so sorry I hurt you, John, I’ll never do it again. I have a funny feeling between my legs, it feels good. I play the song over and over again for an hour until Kristina can’t stand it any more and takes me home.

  I already know ‘You Can’t Do That’ by heart and sing it to myself as I trail my hand along the privet hedges, pulling off the leaves and digging my thumbnail into the rubbery green flesh every time I get to the chorus, ‘Ooooh, you can’t do that!’ I can still hear John Lennon’s voice in my head. Not a scary rumble like my dad’s, but familiar and approachable, a bit nasal, like mine. That’s it! He’s like me, except a boy. Through tree-lined streets, past the terraced houses, I float, catching glimpses of those other, happier, families through the illuminated squares of their little brick boxes. But today I’m not jealous, I’m not looking in windows for comfort any more. Under lamp posts and cherry trees I glide, stepping on the cracks between the paving stones and squashing pink blossom under my Clarks sandals – I no longer have time for childish things. Until today I thought life was always going to be made up of sad, angry grown-ups, dreary music, stewed meat, boiled vegetables, church and school. Now everything’s changed: I’ve found the meaning of life, hidden in the grooves of a flat black plastic disc. I promise myself I will get to that new world, but I don’t know how to make it happen. What, or who, could possibly help me get closer to that parallel universe? I look up and down the street as if someone might pop out of a doorway and whisk me away, but all I can see are houses, houses, houses, stretching off into infinity. I feel sick. I hate them.

  7 CHIC

  1965

  It’s a Sunday afternoon, I have long, straight, light brown hair and a fringe tickling my eyelashes. I’m wearing a purple corduroy mini skirt, my grey school jumper, knee-length white socks and black school shoes. I am eleven years old and my dad and I are walking along Muswell Hill Broadway, past the Wimpy Bar, where I always stop and look longingly at the faded, greenish photos of Wimpy burgers and chips in the window. I’ve only been in there once. I loved everything about it. The red plastic chairs all joined together, the plain white tiled walls, which look so modern and clean compared to my home. The chips, so thin there’s no room for any potato inside, just crispy golden sticks. The rubbery meat of the burger, I liked that it wasn’t like real meat, didn’t look like part of an animal. My teeth bounced off the brown disc in a very satisfying way. It was like eating a toy, made-up and fun. Fantasy food. Perfect for a picky eater like me, uniform, bland, no surprises.

  Next we pass the toyshop, where I choose my Christmas present every year, and the school-uniform shop, where we buy the maroon skirt
, yellow blouse and grey jumper every September. Muswell Hill is my universe. Today we’ve been to Cherry Tree Woods to play on the swings and Dad has bought me a Jackie comic. I feel relaxed with him for the first time in ages, I slip my arm through his and say:

  ‘Daddy, I want to be a pop singer when I grow up.’

  There, it’s out, I’ve dared to voice my dream, to say it out loud. Dad is the only adult I know who has some interest in music, even if it is Petula Clark, and now I’ve told him, I’ve taken the first step towards making my dream real. Dad will know what to do, how to get me started, point me in the right direction.

  ‘You’re not chic enough.’

  I don’t know what the word chic means but I know what he means. I understand from the tone of his voice that I’m having ideas about myself that are way above my looks, capabilities and charms, and I believe him. He must be right, he’s my father.

  Dad and I walk along in silence. I think, He didn’t ask me if I can sing – but obviously that doesn’t matter. I’m just not chic enough.

  8 JOHN AND YOKO

  I grew up with John Lennon at my side, like a big brother. When I first heard him sing, I had no idea what he looked like, what he wore, that there was a group of cool-looking guys in the band with him: nothing. The music and the words said it all.

  Year by year, he unfolded to me, and he did not disappoint. He just went on getting better and better. He kept changing his clothes and hair, experimented with drugs, spiritual enlightenment, religion and psychology, and the music got more sophisticated, record by record. Then he met Yoko Ono. At last there was a girl in my life who intrigued and inspired me. The English press hated Yoko, but I was fascinated by her and so were my friends. We thought she was fantastic. She wore a white mini dress and white knee-length boots to her wedding. I read her book, Grapefruit, she had ideas that I had never encountered before; her thoughts and her concepts were like mind-altering drugs to me. A poem would consist of one word. Simple doodles were art. Her philosophical statements and instructions made me think differently about how to live my life. I liked that the Beatles – well, John and Paul (who was with Jane Asher then) – dated women with ideas, who had interesting faces and strong personalities (the Stones were all dating dazzling beauties). When John and Yoko took their clothes off for the Two Virgins picture, their sweet, normal bodies all naked and wobbly were shocking because they were so imperfect. It was an especially brave move for Yoko; her body was dissected and derided by the press. But I got it. At last, a girl being interesting and brave.

  I thought John was funny, clever and wise. The only problem with him being my muse was that he was so open about his emotions – he wrote and talked about his mother, Yoko, even his aunt, all the time, acknowledging how important women were in his life – so I assumed all boys were like this – and to my huge disappointment, almost none of them were or are.

  9 GONE

  1965

  My mother, sister and I arrive back home on a Saturday afternoon in late August after staying with my aunty for two weeks. Mum and I dump our plastic bags and rucksacks in the hall whilst my sister races upstairs to say hello to Dad. We hear her charging in and out of rooms and banging doors: she’s very excited, it’s the first time we’ve been away for years. Then her voice, a little panicky, shouts from the top of the stairs:

  ‘He’s gone!’

  I run up, Mum follows, all three of us stand staring at the door to my father’s study, which is always kept locked, but today is hanging open. We are never allowed in there, so it takes us a moment to shuffle forward and peep round the door. His precious study is completely empty. The wooden desk with sharp corners he made, the turquoise Anglepoise lamp, the books on engineering, the ties hanging on the back of the door, all gone. We walk back into the hallway and look around. Pictures have disappeared from the walls, the big trunk with all the photographs has vanished, and gradually we realise loads of stuff is missing – it feels like a robbery. My sister and I look at Mum, waiting for her to make sense of it. We have no doubt she will make sense of it: she makes sense of everything.

  ‘Oh thank goodness for that, he’s gone,’ she says, smiling. ‘What a relief.’

  My sister and I laugh nervously. We are not convinced. We don’t take our eyes off Mum’s face for a second, looking for a flicker of doubt in her expression. When we’re sure that she’s OK, we relax and agree, yes, it’s great that the big hairy nuisance has gone. It’s all perfectly normal and right. Let’s go and make a cup of tea!

  Mum must have been so shocked to discover Dad had done a bunk – even if things were going badly, it’s never nice to be deserted. I wonder how much self-control and acting (mothers are very underrated actors) it took for her to quickly arrange her features into a composed expression and modify her voice so she sounded calm and reassuring. Or maybe it was all planned? Maybe it was arranged that we’d go away for two weeks whilst Dad packed up and left. When I ask Mum she refuses to talk about it. I don’t want to upset her, so I’ll just have to live with the not knowing.

  10 THE KINKS

  The Kinks were a guiding light to me when I was young. I went to the same schools as them, junior, secondary and art school. As I went into Year One of secondary school at eleven years old, the bassist Pete Quaife’s younger brother was just leaving, so there was quite a big age gap, but I followed in their wake, and I was very aware of every move they made ahead of me.

  Everyone in Muswell Hill seemed to have a vague connection to them, even my mum. She worked at Crouch End library and Dave Davies’s girlfriend – a beautiful natural blonde – worked there too. Mum used to come home with tales of how volatile Dave was.

  In junior school I’d ask the teachers, ‘Did you teach them? What were they like? Do you think you might have any of their old exercise books at home?’ I was extremely curious, much more so than I was in any lessons. I didn’t aspire to be a musician – there wasn’t that equality at the time, it was inconceivable that a girl could cross over into male territory and be in a band.

  When I got to secondary school, people were much more interested in them: the older boys dressed like them, long hair in side or front partings, very low-cut hipster trousers – we called them bumsters – and stack-heeled boots. The young male teachers dressed like that too. To Muswell Hill kids, the Kinks were heroes, they came from the same place as us and they made something of themselves.

  11 SHIT AND BLOOD

  Shitting and bleeding. Always had a problem with shit and blood. The English love to talk about shitting, so other nationalities can skip this bit. Also any potential boyfriend, anyone who fancies me, please skip this bit too.

  When I was four I started school, a year earlier than normal, I don’t know why. Everyone in the class was a year older than me – a couple of years later I had to be kept back a year to be with my own age group. I kicked and screamed from the moment my mother and I reached the school gate, all the way through the corridors, to the door of my classroom. Every morning I did this, because I was scared: I didn’t want to leave my sister and my mother. It was too soon, I was traumatised, but I couldn’t express this in any way except through tears.

  Because I was so young and so shy, I was too nervous to put my hand up and ask to be excused to go to the lavatory during class, so after trying to hold it in as long as possible, I did it in my pants. The choice between raising my hand and my voice whilst the teacher was talking or quietly soiling myself was not an easy one, but I chose the option I could bear. I was such a baby that I didn’t think anyone would notice. This happened often. When I got home, Mum would be sympathetic, clean me up and give me a cuddle – except one day she didn’t. This time she was cross; there was no sympathy, she stormed out to the garden, picked up a rough stick and scraped the poo off my bum and legs, telling me that she’d had enough. That scraping really hurt my legs, my pride and my feelings. I never did it again.

  I was a hypersensitive child – always watching and listening out for people�
��s moods and their fluctuations – and a small thing like the anticipation of school every morning would set me off with diarrhoea, right up until I was sixteen. I wasn’t bullied at school, thank god, it was just that tiny little things made me anxious, like if someone was walking behind me as I walked in – I was self-conscious, it made my gait stiffen and I couldn’t walk properly, that sort of thing.

  My period started the day before my thirteenth birthday. I went ballistic. I howled like a banshee, I shouted, I slammed doors – I was furious, crazed, ranting and murderous for days. This thing that had happened to me was totally unacceptable. I hated it, I didn’t want it, but I had no control over it. I couldn’t bear to live if it meant going through life bleeding every month and being weak and compromised. It was so unfair.

  I went on creating a scene every time I had a period for the next four years until they only appeared a couple of times a year. I don’t know if this was the triumph of my will over my body, or if it would have happened anyway. I thought my cycle was affected because I was so traumatised. I still went mad every time it showed up, even though it wasn’t that often. Having periods changed my personality: from the first one onwards I was resentful and angry inside, I felt cheated and I knew to the core of my being that life was unfair and boys had it easier than girls. A burning ball of anger and rebelliousness started to grow within me. It’s fuelled a lot of my work.

  As I got older and started having sex, I would anxiously be looking for blood to come instead of wishing it away. Eventually I went on the pill, but was hopelessly undisciplined and always forgetting it. After the pill, I had the coil (it was called a Copper 7). I could feel it wedged there inside me at the top of my cervix. It hurt. I hobbled around for months, because I couldn’t be bothered to sort it out and I thought maybe this was what it was supposed to feel like. About a year later I went to the Marie Stopes Clinic in Soho – you could ask for a female doctor there – and they removed it. The doctor said it had become dislodged. I felt a wave of relief pass through my whole body as soon as the coil was removed, like I was returning to normal, the first time I’d felt like myself for a year.