The Generation Game

by Sophie Duffy

  Lucas and I have had a heart-to-heart. He quite obviously doesn’t approve of my snog with Christopher Bennett or my first over-indulgence of alcohol. If Lucas were here he would also be a Grammar Boy, but he would shine above the likes of Christopher Bennett. He would be the proud owner of that crisp five pound note. He would be a responsible citizen. A studious student. A rock for me to lean on. But he isn’t here. He is a headstone. A memory. A speck of stardust.

  The music has stopped. The Bone Yard is in darkness. I’m not scared. It is a safe place. All the people here are dead. I’m not scared of the dead. It is the living that does all the hurting. (This is some years before Michael Jackson’s Thriller and the possibility of zombies.)

  I make a bed for myself, a nest, curled up like Andy, next to Lucas in the uncut grass. The smell of soil and dry leaves. An owl tooting in a tree nearby. I could stay here all night. I am so tired, I can’t move. When I do move, my head hurts, the cells fizzing from alco-pear-drops.

  ‘Goodnight, Lucas.’

  Much later. A bright light in my face. Is it Heaven? Will I see Lucas dressed up to the nines in his white robe, his feather wings folded neatly behind him, his halo polished and gleaming?

  ‘‘Ello, ‘ello, what’ve we got here, then?’

  Oh dear. It is like an episode of Dixon of Dock Green, a kindly officer of the law, trying to ascertain if I have a home to go to.

  ‘Yes,’ I tell him, politely. ‘I live at Bob’s News.’

  ‘Ah,’ he says, bending in a plié Toni would be proud of, his whiskered face inches from my own. ‘You’d be Bob’s daughter, then.’

  ‘Yes, sir, that’s me,’ I say. ‘Bob’s daughter.’

  Well, you shouldn’t argue with a man in uniform.

  Later, in my own bed, my warm, dry, comfy bed, I know I’ll never get to sleep. The tiredness – and the after-effects of the Pomagne – evaporated the moment that torch beamed in my face. And now the Cavalier is laughing at me in the way that Cavaliers do – haughty, flouncy and not really laughing at all. I am an idiot. I had my first kiss with Christopher Bennett and then fell asleep at the grave of the boy who should’ve had that honour.

  Still, the Queen must be proud of her subjects. She’s had a whole lot of riotous, jubilant behaviour going on up and down her land, all over the kingdom, and far across the oceans, from Botswana to Jamaica, from Australia to Canada, all in the name of her twenty-five years as our Queen. I’m not so sure what she’d make of my own conduct.

  Bob isn’t too impressed. He’s had the whole street out looking for me once they’d packed up and swept up and realised I was nowhere to be seen. But he doesn’t show it. He just says a quiet thank you to the policeman and gives me a hug. As he holds me in his arms I pray he can’t smell anything illicit clinging to my woolly tank top or my hedge-backwards hair.

  I can smell something on him though. He reeks. Not of cider or bitter or Pina Coladas. But of desperation and… yes, something else, something much stronger: Love.

  Bob is my father. Bob loves me.

  Summer comes and goes as do the grockles and the hosepipe bans. It has been a time of bright celebration for our Queen, the last days of loyalty and innocence, only dimmed by the advent of the Sex Pistols banging on about a fascist regime. But on August 16th the Queen is eclipsed by the passing of the King. Elvis is dead. Half of Torquay is thrown into despair. There are tributes everywhere; his songs on the radio in every shop you go into; his white cat suit and big sunglasses on the telly every time you switch it on. The other half of Torquay are less bothered. They spend their Saturday nights down the town in the new discotheques that have sprung up with glitter balls and lit-up dance floors. There is a new king on the block: John Travolta, King of the Disco. Times, they are a-changing.

  Well, they are certainly going to in our neck of the woods. It appears that Bob and Wink were wrong to be pessimistic on that Saturday evening over the prawn balls; the BBC didn’t turn them down. It has taken a while but sometime the following year, a letter arrives from a research assistant, inviting Wink and her son to come to London for an audition. Apparently it isn’t the end of The Generation Game. There is to be a new host, Larry Grayson and a new assistant, Isla St Clair. Bob has to find a new suit, a new name, and a whole new persona if he is to have his fifteen minutes of Fame and if Wink is to have her cuddly toy.

  2006

  I thought Adrian/Daddy would venture back again today but he hasn’t bothered. And your grandmother hasn’t bothered to come either. Not Helena. She is still unaware that she is now a granny (ha!). No, your other grandmother. Adrian’s mother. The old mother-in-law-hippopotamus-dragon. So we’ll have to make do with our own company. For now. Until I get up the nerve to call for reinforcements.

  Right now I could do with an ice cream. Yes, an ice cream. Not your Haagen-Dazs or your Ben and Jerry’s, but a proper Devon cornet with a dollop of clotted cream and a flake perched on the top. Or a Mr Whippy from the van on the front. Greensleeves and Mind That Child. Being pushed around the harbour in my Silver Cross chariot, watching my windmill spin, the seagulls dive-bombing the pensioners, Helena above me, strutting with that pout, that tilt, those heels, those beautiful eyes fixed on the horizon, across the bay and over the seas.

  Helena. Grandmother, Grandma, Granny, Gran, Nanny, Nana, Nan.

  She should be here.

  Chapter Ten: 1978

  Gladiators

  Times they are indeed a-changing. It isn’t just the cultural manifestations of the Punk Rockers or of the Discotheques; the Winter of Discontent is beckoning. But despite the prospect of overflowing dustbins and funeral parlours, it is an exciting winter as far as I am concerned. Bob and Wink by some fluke of Fate have wangled their way through the audition and so we are completely absorbed with preparations for the forthcoming game show. What little spare time is left over is spent playing with matches during the frequent power cuts. (Bob could well have been an arsonist in a former life, perhaps Guy Fawkes or the French chap who built the funeral pyre for Joan of Arc. I’ve seen the film with Ingrid Bergman and it doesn’t make happy viewing.)

  Our preparations mainly involve testing Wink’s memory which is probably the part of her that works the best. ‘Things can always be improved,’ she says, eyeing up Bob’s hairline. Every day after school I set up a tea tray with twenty small items borrowed from the shop for her failing eyes to scan briefly before covering it over with one of her (rather grey) tea towels. Then she has to reel off the items she can remember (‘a pencil sharpener! a packet of Rizlas!’). She is becoming proficient and we are all confident that if she gets to the fabled conveyor belt we’ll be coming home with a car load. The problem is getting her to this coveted position. She’s been struggling to walk lately and pooh-poohs the idea of a wheel chair. How will she manage plate-spinning or other such dexterous activities?

  ‘I’ll smash all the plates,’ Wink complains.

  ‘That’s the whole point,’ Linda says. (Linda is cynically postmodern before her time.)

  Most of the neighbourhood know about Bob and Wink’s impending rise to stardom and every last one of its residents, it seems, is keen to be involved in their training. Mr Taylor (of the first class knobbly knees) has a part-time job as a pottery teacher at the technical college where he has access to a wheel. He offers to take Wink there for a spin. She comes back beaming, showing off her creation to anyone she comes into contact with. It looks like some kind of nuclear meltdown but it is a priceless work of art as far as Wink is concerned and takes pride of place over the gas fire in her front room.

  Miss Goddard from number nine does amateur dramatics and teaches Bob and Wink about voice projection – not that Wink needs any encouragement but Bob’s cough-voice certainly requires attention. They disappear inside the murky depths of Miss Goddard’s house – unchanged since the war – and spend an afternoon reciting Kipling and Longfellow.

  ‘Bugger Hiawatha,’ Wink says, on her return home. ‘Give me Pam Ayres any day.’<
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  Then there is Christopher Bennett. Christopher Bennett has a secret talent that he’s been hiding under his big mop of hair and from the likes of me. Christopher Bennett can ballroom dance! When Wink gleans this information from Christopher’s gran who lets it slip at the bingo, she grabs hold of him and will not let go until he promises to impart some of his skill to her. You’d think that Wink could already do her Ginger Rogers bit, being a member of the generation that frequented tea dances and the like. But she can’t. She has two (not very useful) left feet and is unable to tell the difference between a foxtrot and a quickstep.

  Christopher agrees to help out but at a cost. He won’t charge for his tutoring but he knows how to get what he wants. Christopher is now thirteen and legally allowed to earn some money. To my indignation he manages to manipulate Bob into offering him a job as a paperboy. I’ve wanted this job for myself but unfortunately I won’t officially be a teenager until the summer. Christopher is a good actor and can be pleasant when he wants to be so I shouldn’t blame Bob for his gullibility though, it has to be said, this is probably his worst character defect. I toy with the idea of informing Bob of his new recruit’s Republican tendencies but I opt to keep quiet as he might delve into the how’s and why’s of my knowledge of this. I don’t particularly want to be reminded of that evening. However, it means I have to keep out of the way in the early mornings in case I come into Christopher’s stratosphere. I don’t really mind. Now I am virtually a teenager, I love my bed and can spend whole days at a time in it, wrapped up inside my new continental quilt that Wink ordered me from one of Bob’s Sunday Telegraph colour supplements. ‘Seeing as you’ve got no-one to make up your bed for you.’ (She means well).

  So between Mr Taylor, Miss Goddard and Christopher Bennett, Wink and her new son, Bob, are as ready as they’ll ever be.

  One chilly November day, the long-awaited trip to BBC Television Centre is at last about to commence. The hotel has been booked, our bags packed, a London A to Z purchased, and Bob’s new suit pressed. Linda and I will make up the entourage and the four of us set off at the crack of dawn in Linda’s Austin Maxi. She’s been delegated to drive as Bob’s nerves are in shreds and he would be a hazard on the M4, besides the fact that his Ford Cortina is on its last legs. Linda, being a stationery rep and a former stock car racing enthusiast, grasps every opportunity to put her Highway Code to the test. She is especially keen to tackle the legendary North Circular (for which we will have to make a slight detour), as she’s heard all about its challenging obstacles and hurdles from fellow reps. Linda is all for challenging obstacles and hurdles and puts me in mind of her namesake, Lynda Carter a.k.a. Wonder Woman.

  After a hearty and heart-stopping breakfast at the Gordano services outside Bristol, we pass the smoke clouds and metal monsters of Avonmouth, the Severn Bridge in the distance, the aircraft hangars at Filton, and head down the M4. I haven’t been to London since I left it twelve years ago with Helena, a small bundle in a yellow shawl.

  London: a place that conjures up so many faces, so many associations, so much of my history that didn’t happen in Devon. A mystical place of otherness, of family, of Helena, of Auntie Nina and Lucas, my grandparents, the Changing of the Guard, the Planetarium, Special Lists, the Queen, Bruce and Anthea, Larry and Isla.

  It is hard to tell where London begins. The fields gradually disappear and the landscape takes on a different colour. No more red earth, no more sea, no more narrow lanes and high hedges, brambles hitting the car and deer peering at you through the trees. Instead we find ourselves driving past sprawls of towns and high rises, the traffic slowing as the roads begin to clog up with cars, people everywhere, shops and buses and noise and greyness. Presumably this is now London, though there is no welcoming sign anywhere to be seen like the one we have in Devon with the picture of the ship and the caption: WELCOME TO DEVON. TAKE A BREAK. TIREDNESS CAN KILL.

  The streets are quite clearly not paved with gold (obviously), but are instead scattered with rubbish (though nothing like the debris which we would be witnessing if we were to make this journey in a couple of months time with the bin men out on strike). But I am taken aback by the pockets of bleakness, the dirty buildings, the closed-down markets and soggy paper spilling across the pavements. I half expect to see Ralph McTell’s old man wandering about with his worn-out shoes.

  Despite this abundance of trash (as I like to think Helena would call it after all those years in North America), I am surprised to see so many trees and parks tangled throughout the city. So much green mixed in with the grey. Helena used to tell me about the park where she lived, where her nanny took her sometimes to feed the ducks. Dulwich Park with its famous rhododendrons and boating lake. Is that near here? It is hard to imagine nannies wheeling babies past rhododendrons in Acton.

  Linda is in her element. Bob is wielding the A to Z to no great effect but this isn’t a problem for Linda who was possibly a cabbie in a former life because she manages to cut up the Granadas and the Capris and the Jags and the Mercs, moving in and out of lanes like she is on a slalom run. Her eyes dart between the road and her mirrors, her hands gripping the wheel so her knuckles are bony. She sings along to Radio One quite unashamedly, as if she were Patty (who’s been left, with a little help from Lugsy, to run the shop and keep her vigilant eye on the paperboys who are all in love with her – none as much as the deluded Christopher Bennett).

  Wink and I sit side by side in the back, contemplating all our other lives. The one Wink left behind when her husband died. The one I could have had if Helena hadn’t decided to leave the capital and move to the sticks…

  … I must’ve drifted off because suddenly the engine has stopped and we’ve been plunged into darkness. It takes me a few disorientated seconds to work out that we are in an underground car park belonging to the hotel.

  ‘This is it,’ Linda announces dramatically as if our whole lives have been building up to this moment – which is quite possibly true in Wink’s case.

  Bob hauls Wink out of the Maxi.

  ‘Come on, Mother,’ he says. ‘Let’s get you settled in.’

  And the look she gives him is enough in itself to make the trip worthwhile. If she had her stick to hand she might well use it imaginatively.

  The hotel compares favourably to the only hotel I am familiar with, the Rainbow in Torquay where Cheryl and I go swimming. In fact, as far as I am concerned, this hotel is a palace because we don’t have to pay for it and because there is such a thing as a mini-bar in each of the inter-connecting bedrooms and also – the height of sophistication – an avocado bidet in the en-suite (I am already learning a whole host of new words) where Bob gives his feet a thorough wash with the doll-sized complimentary soap (that would be perfect for Mandy Denning).

  Wink and I are to share a twin room, Bob and Linda a risqué double. Bob is spending a duplicitous couple of days, not only posing as Wink’s son (well, son-in-law, it has been decided, as this avoids the problem of them not sharing a surname), but also as Linda’s husband (which means she’s had to change her surname temporarily, as she isn’t as liberal as she likes to make out).

  Once we’ve unpacked and freshened up, we make our way downstairs to the lobby where we meet the three other couples – and their entourages – taking part in the show. The other contestants all look really nervous. But not as nervous as Bob (who knows he is a fake son) or Wink (who knows she has to convince the powers that be that she is the picture of health and not likely to flake out on prime time television). Everyone makes rubbish small talk and laughs too much.

  Then two researchers appear with their clipboards and trendy London clothes and whisk the couples off in order to run them through tomorrow’s proceedings. The rest of us – a collection of sons and daughters, wives and mothers, brothers and lovers – are left, redundant and forsaken, to entertain ourselves.

  ‘Sod it,’ Linda mutters to me. ‘Let’s go out.’

  I shrug because I’m not sure what she wants me to say
to this, but that doesn’t put Linda off as she is (ahead of her time once again) not for turning.

  ‘We’re in London, Philippa. Where do you want to go?’

  ‘The Changing of the Guard?’

  ‘We’ve missed it.’

  ‘Madame Tussaud’s?’

  ‘Too late.’

  ‘Alright, then… the Underground.’

  ‘The Underground? Where to?’

  ‘Nowhere. I just want to go on the Underground.’

  The only public transport we have in Torquay is the odd bus, the train line to Exeter and the funicular railway down to Babbacombe beach so I know I shouldn’t pass up this opportunity.

  Before either of us wobble, we stride out into the fresh dusk and head for the nearest tube station. I am very excited by this excursion into the subterranean world of our capital city. I love the long, long wooden escalators and the smell of smoke and hot bodies. I love the posters and the buskers and the maps. I love the static crackle of the tracks in the moments before the train emerged like a worm from its hole. The whoosh of warm air that hits you in the face. The swish of the doors and the holding on for dear life to the hand straps, still warm from somebody else’s hand. Somebody you might cross paths with at some other moment in time, and never even know it. (But that’s London for you.)

  ‘Have you had enough yet, Philippa?’ Linda asks, after several stops. She is sitting next to a rather smelly tramp (possibly another one of Ralph McTell’s) and is relieved when I suggest we go back to the hotel for some tea.

  ‘Supper,’ Linda corrects me.

  I decide Linda is quite possibly a snob.

  The two trendy researchers have gone. The contestants are swapping their life stories in the dining room and hardly notice our arrival, except for Bob who gives me a diluted smile before turning his attention to Linda, squeezing her hand so tight she gives a little yelp.