The doors swing apart and the music sounds and Kalpana comes out wearing a dark-blue suit. Maria’s eyes fill up again and she throws open her arms. Kalpana is taller than Maria and when they stand apart Maria points to her short hair. They hold hands and wipe away tears and the camera flashes to Dr Jagannadham clapping and nodding.
‘What are your early memories of our star?’ asks Mr Andrews.
‘She was just such a great friend to have,’ says Kalpana. ‘It was dead obvious from a young age that she was going to make it. We used to put on wee shows of our own in her mother’s kitchen. I couldny sing for toffee but Maria used to just blow people away with her great voice and her personality. Even before she was a star she was a star to us and it was such a privilege to be her friend.’
The audience applaud and Maria stands up and they hug each other before Kalpana walks over to the seats. A screen at the side of the studio set comes to life. ‘Here’s a message from sunny California,’ says Mr Andrews. A man appears on the screen: he looks like Dean Martin and has a suntan and to Maria he seems instantly kind and familiar.
‘Hello, Maria,’ he says. ‘It’s always been a regret of mine that we didn’t get to spend as much time together as I would have liked, but rest assured, honey, I’ve followed your wonderful career with such pride and admiration all these years. You’re a wonderful person and a real star. Everywhere I go I’m pleased to say you’re top of the world.’
‘He’s here tonight, flown in all the way from Beverly Hills. Your father and what a fan of yours.’
The doors swing apart and the man comes walking down with his arms open and a big American grin. He looks like a movie star and when he arrives in front of Maria he kisses her hand. She feels enfolded by him and he blows a kiss to Rosa and as he walks to his seat Maria’s hand is covering her mouth.
‘Maria Tambini,’ says Mr Andrews, ‘you were born in the town of Rothesay on the bonnie Scottish island of Bute on 10 April 1964. You grew up in the family café among Scottish-Italians and holiday-makers and at an early stage you showed a unique talent for singing. Even at school you stood apart. While your friends were following childish pursuits you were already rehearsing with your mother Rosa and attending dance classes. Was she a hard worker, mum?’
Rosa looks up and is smiling like someone who knows she belongs in this moment. ‘She always had great discipline,’ she says, ‘and she did without things just so’s she could improve as a performer. She always kept herself clean and tidy and up in her room at night she would sing herself to sleep. Our relationship was always the greatest: I knew that no matter what happened to Maria she would turn out to be a great person.’
The audience applaud. ‘There was always music in your childhood,’ says Mr Andrews, ‘and Italian songs and all the wonderful sweets that every child loves. You had a great friend in your Uncle Alfredo, whose barber shop was an early haunt of yours, and it was Alfredo who sent off your details to the great television talent show of the day, Opportunity Knocks.’
A voice came over. ‘And she exuded talent I tell you the way other kids breathe oxygen, and I mean that most sincerely, folks!’
‘The man who gave you your big break in showbusiness. Here he is: Mr Wonderful himself – Hughie Green!’
The music blares and Mr Green walks through with a lopsided grin and he does a little dance move as he walks towards Maria. He kisses her on both cheeks and winks at Mr Andrews before addressing the audience directly. ‘This lovely girl,’ he says, ‘was a powerhouse of talent from the minute I saw her. Just phenomenal. To think all that wonderful sound was coming out of that little girl. You know, I’d been around child performers all my career – I was one myself – but this girl has that special something you can’t quite put your finger on. And chatterbox! At the auditions, I remember her coming up after doing her number and she said, “Mr Green” – her wee Scottish voice – “is it okay if I go and speak to the other acts?” “Sweetie,” I said, “after singing like that, I think you should maybe just sit down and give your tonsils a rest.” But I mean this …’
Mr Green puts up his hand to encourage the audience.
‘MOST SINCERELY, FOLKS!’ they shout back.
‘… she is a credit to showbusiness and everyone in the industry admires and respects the young lady of talent that she has become. You deserve this, honey. Have a wonderful, wonderful evening.’
Mrs Gaskell comes on and speaks of the joy of having Maria to live with her in the early days. ‘She has always worked jolly hard,’ she says, ‘and it’s been such a tremendous delight to play a part in the career of someone so dedicated to the pursuit of excellence. I must say the industry thrives on what Maria has got, and so does the country! She’s very special. I only wish we had more of her to go round.’
Maria sits back in her chair and the evening becomes hazy with strange and reliable comforts. Morecambe and Wise appear and hold her up between them. Les Dawson comes on. The teachers from Italia Conti tell funny stories about her training. On the screen, Johnny Carson speaks from America and Billy Butlin comes out to talk about Maria’s wonderful summertime specials. Laughing and looking scrubbed, hair combed, wearing a T-shirt from one of Maria’s concerts, is Kevin Goss. ‘I’m really her official number one fan,’ he says, ‘and it’s great to love somebody like Maria and know that she really loves you.’
All the seats are filled on both sides of the studio. ‘You were the nation’s favourite for seven weeks on Opportunity Knocks,’ says Mr Andrews. ‘You had your own show and were a star in America before you were out of your teens. You have made records and television shows that have captured the imagination of millions of people who know that dreams can and will come true.’
Maria is a thousand points of light. The music is swelling and familiar and they all smile at her and soon the audience begin to clap and the cameras shift across the floor. Maria looks up at Mr Andrews and her eyes fill with tears. ‘I’ve been loved,’ she says.
‘Maria Tambini – This Is Your Life.’
He holds out the red book and everyone stands. Maria looks behind her at the swishing doors. Panic enters her eyes as she takes the red book from Mr Andrews but he can’t hear her. I’ve been loved,’ she says. ‘Where is Michael?’
She looks again at the doors and they are open but no one is there, just emptiness filled with studio light. The theme music of This Is Your Life is playing and she is guided out of her chair and she holds on to the red book, but over her shoulder she can see that no one else is coming through the doors. The camera closes in and she holds the book tightly and all the people come round her, they touch her and laugh and speak to her and she can see their faces looming but her voice is gone as she walks forward to the camera.
‘Maria.’
There is only white light in the room.
‘Maria! Maria. Come to bed.’
She was sitting at the window but now the living-room light was on and Michael was standing in pyjama bottoms at the door. ‘Come to bed, darling,’ he said. He came over and crouched down behind her and put his arms over her shoulders. She could smell the toothpaste from him; his skin was warm and soothing against her. ‘Michael,’ she said, ‘don’t leave me.’
There was nothing much of her sitting there. ‘Come on, lovely,’ he said, and kissed her neck, put his arms under her legs, and lifted her out of the chair. She lay her head under his chin as he carried her up to sleep. On the stairs, he stopped for a moment; her breathing was quiet, the hall was full of shadows, and outside he could hear a car’s engine starting up and he held Maria as the car disappeared up the road.
12
Michael
I thought she was gone that time. The bedroom upstairs had mirrors on every wall, and I lay her down on the bed; strange how incomprehension can gather at that time of night, Maria lying under the white sheets and me full of fear. I placed a chair in the middle of the room and sat watching. How had it come to this? Why? Maria lay there and all the words that usual
ly surrounded her, all the voices, my own words too, were finally stilled by her silence. She slept, she slept all night, my heart breaking, no mercy in the wallpaper or the cups and books by the bed, only the hours of the night growing terrible, my own mind defeated and full of thoughts about the past, and Maria asleep, down to her bones, my only love, and blind with victory.
The next morning was Sunday and the ambulance came and took her to Guy’s. The doctor said she was under five stone and beginning to hallucinate; she needed constant care, and they wanted to try a programme of treatment they run at Guy’s. I must admit, that morning I was nearly out of it with self-pity – why me? why this? – and the medical smells were disgusting. When the nurses were rigging up the drips and stuff, I went walking round and round the corridors and up and down stairs; one of the stairwells had a fire exit and I stared at the bar. I stared at it and Christ knows what I was thinking, but it was all too much that morning. All I ever wanted was her. All I really wanted. Near Eastbourne one day there was a burn with stones across it; she was laughing and her eyes were lovely I swear and one foot slipped into the water and her shoe was wet. We were both laughing so loud. I leaned back towards her over the stones and when I took her hand her skin was soft. She laughed at my crappy trainers. We could hear voices coming from across the grass so we got out of the burn and ran towards them, and no day was ordinary or lost when I was with her.
Tiny pieces of banana, inches of toast: that’s what it took. For weeks she drank wee sips of water, then I’d feed her, with no one coming or going to disturb us, the days just stretching into one another. We talked of things we’d never got to before: family things, current affairs, my time at university; it was a slow time but you felt walls were coming down, Maria began to reveal herself, getting over sadness and panic. She reached into herself over that time and saved her own life.
‘You are the half of me,’ she said.
I gave her a glass of water to keep her throat from becoming dry and said nothing. For so long she had looked like a woman in a wind-tunnel, her face wizened beyond her years, and now, day by day, her face emerged as the face of someone released from a terrible dream, and she was tired but also relaxed as I hadn’t seen her since I first knew her. ‘She was at her lowest point,’ the doctor said. ‘She can’t go back to that again.’
‘We’re not going back,’ I said.
She asked the nurse if she could have her own knife, fork and spoon, and put them in a drawer by the bed. ‘Trying,’ she said.
One of the days she asked me if people had really liked the songs she sang. ‘I think they did,’ I said.
‘They were all goodbye songs.’
‘Yes.’
‘From the beginning. Every one of them.’
She took the food too quickly in the first weeks and couldn’t keep it down. But then she forged a routine: cornflakes, semolina, banana, egg. She began to drink tea with a half-spoon of sugar in it. From the side of her bed at Guy’s you could look across the roofs to the Thames.
Egg, chicken, beef soup. She kept a few books by the bed and read them to suit herself. The Friendship Book by Francis Gay, Fodor’s Beginner’s Guide to Italian. ‘My mouth tastes of ink,’ she said.
She asked me to read to her in the evening and we read the same poems and things over and over. She said she liked my voice, and it was good, eventually, because she came to know the words herself and when I read the poems her lips would move. One night, I began to say the words and then reduced the sound of my voice, and Maria’s own voice came up in my place: she was saying the words herself.
She was cursing one day – she hated the food, or hated the need for it, yet she lifted the spoon. Her weight became more and more normal; her face filled out and her eyes glowed and filled their sockets at last. She said the static in her head was becoming less by the day; she was full of plans.
One large suitcase and a bag of books: that was all we needed and all we would take. We discussed everything in detail and I made plans in the daytime and we got excited the healthier she became and the more the doctor said ‘Soon’. She wanted to get rid of all her old dresses and shoes. ‘Nothing fits me and nothing is nice anyway,’ she said.
‘Come back to Shepherds Bush and see,’ I said.
‘No,’ she said.‘I’ll never be in that house again.’
The bedsit in Kensington was gone. I slept in Maria’s house and every night threw more of her things away. Sparkly tops and dresses covered in beads, painted shoes, and tons of make-up – half-squeezed tubes and trays of powder lying in plastic bags or wrapped in towels from seaside hotels. There were a few belongings I thought she must surely want: small frocks, dozens of pairs of children’s gloves. ‘Chuck them,’ she said. ‘All the things I would’ve kept are gone anyway.’
I think some of the local kids came round during the day and took stuff from the bins. The bins outside would be sitting differently from the way I’d left them, as if they’d been raked through, and when I looked properly, I noticed some of the black bags had gone altogether. ‘Doesn’t matter,’ I thought, but when I mentioned it to Maria she started crying and said she wasn’t feeling well. I stayed with her late that night. She was sleeping so I went down to the machine to get a coffee, but when I came back up she was standing in her nightdress at the window with her palms on the glass.
I took her back to bed. ‘Michael,’ she said, ‘I can’t wait to be out and I can’t wait to be away.’
‘The house is nearly empty,’ I said. ‘I bought a big suitcase. Just our essential stuff. Let me know if there’s anything else to pack.’
‘Nothing,’ she said.
I told her Alfredo sent his love and we’d speak to him soon.
‘Mrs Gaskell is arranging the rental of the house,’ I said. ‘She’ll put the money into your account.’
‘Did you tell her goodbye?’ she asked.
‘I did.’
‘Goodbye from me?’
‘Yes,’I said. I told her everything would be fine. ‘The office will handle whatever comes up. I gave Marion my work address. She said to tell you she was happy for you.’
Maria licked her lips and her eyes filled when I said that. She looked straight at me and her mouth was trembling. ‘Last night I had a dream about statues and lemons,’ she said. I told her to try and get some sleep. She leaned up, kissed me, and wiped her face. ‘Tomorrow,’ she said.
‘Tomorrow,’ I said.
I sat by the bed and looked out the window. I’m telling you, I would have made her better but I wouldn’t have changed any of these days. There wasn’t much for me in the world out there without her, and I realised it and still do: some of us only ever have one destination, to love someone, and the nights and difficult days can make you certain of it.
She kept some pain to herself. I know that. I asked her to explain some things but she shrugged it off and I let it go. But I remember that last night at Guy’s: while she was asleep, I put the last of her things into a bag, hair clasps, bracelets, stuff she might want. I opened a drawer of the bedside cabinet and found a pile of get-well cards, thirty or more, and I remember deciding to say nothing about them. I was always too much like that with Maria. I suppose I trusted we’d be leaving it all behind. I can still see the cards, each one with the same sort of picture, flowers or animals, and inside, scrawled in big letters, the same words. ‘Love Kevin’. ‘Love Kevin’. ‘Love Kevin’.
13
Kevin
Slike some people need you for life. They use nice soap and get their hair done all the time and then people just want to go and mess them up and get in their road. Every day some person comes out and tries to spoil them and seasy for me to just make sure they’re okay and that. Nine times out of ten a famous person is not being looked after properly and that’s a total liberty you know. People forget how hard it is for a girl to look like her photograph.
She was bigger than the lights at Blackpool. Always smiling she was and always happy to be looked at. I
’ve got tons of these photos but they’ve been left out in the sun or something and half of them are all faded now and I want to leave this dump and go. People can refuse to speak to you but slike I’ve worked it out and if they live in your heart they can only really die when you die. Salright that way.
Good weather outside. Snice night and you wouldn’t believe all the daffodils are up in the park already. It makes all the difference you know. Slike summer already. Nights like this we used to have sandwiches and cans of shandy for our dinner and the window would be open with people out laughing and playing rounders in the square. The telly would be on in that house and they would come through the kitchen and everybody was welcome. The ice-cream van outside, I can still hear the jingle. It was just like a nice family those times and the telly was good. Sall changed. Sall different. There’s nothing on the telly any more, sall rubbish and the thing just sits there gathering dust.
14
Tomorrow
‘You’re strong,’ said the doctor.
‘I feel I could run the marathon.’
‘Take your time. Is that not always the rule?’
‘But thank you. I feel good today.’
The nurse came along with a smile. ‘Early this morning there was a call for you, Maria. You were in the shower. Your uncle – Fred. Is that right?’
‘Alfredo.’
‘Yes. Quite a young man. He sounded nice. A bit confused. He asked when you were getting out and I think he was a bit surprised.’
Maria stiffened on the spot but in those seconds her fear began to change into anger. ‘Did he say anything else?’
‘No,’ said the nurse, ‘he was off the phone before I had a chance to say much, but I expect he’ll reach you at home anyway.’
Personality Page 34