by Terry Ronald
We’ve always lived two doors down from my nan, which was ace when me and Chrissy were kids as we had two immense houses to tear around in instead of just one, and we loved being so close to her and my grandad. For some strange reason, and completely out of the blue, I find myself thinking about the people who lived in between our two houses years ago, Joan and Bette. They had a hairdresser’s on the main road, Lordship Lane, and they took care of their old dad, Bernie. I remember Joan and Bette always looking very ‘fifties’, with crimson lipstick, stalwartly lacquered, film-star hair and smart grey high-waisted slacks; Bernie had those sea-captain’s whiskers, and gave Chrissy and me Merry Maid chocolate toffees. We’d all be out in our back gardens on bright Saturday mornings: me, waiting for my grandad to take me shopping in the high street; Joan and Bette, fussing over their roses; Bernie, sitting in a deckchair puffing on his pipe. I think of all that as I pass by tonight – I don’t usually. Maybe it’s because the bouquet of my nan’s thick mince and macaroni is even more mouth-watering than usual. Or perhaps it isn’t, but it seems that way. Everything seems enhanced this evening. Right, somehow. Just what the doctor ordered. I think I know the reason for this and I should keep it a secret: it’s both superb and terrifying all at once. But I really need to think about it, process it. The thing is … today, for the very first time … I think I might have fallen in love! I think I might have accidentally, and very carelessly, fallen in love with the captain of the fifth-year football team.
Two
Casting Aspersions
It had all started this morning when Frances Bassey and I dashed out of the teeming rain and all but barrelled into the lower assembly hall of Dog Kennel Road Secondary Modern with a romp of thirty-five or so other expectant pupils, all keyed up to hear the definitive cast list for the school’s autumn production of Lionel Bart’s musical version of Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist. The final round of auditions had been held on Monday, the first day of the new autumn term, and I’d been surprised, stunned in fact, at just how many kids had decided to thrust themselves forth as prospective performers: I suspect that a good half of them only wanted to be involved because of the number of lessons one can potentially abscond from during the latter stages of rehearsals, especially if one had landed a principal role, which I dearly hoped I had. Besides that, every pupil from the fourth year up was expected, nay compelled, to take part in at least one after-school activity, and the only other half-decent option (if you didn’t count football, rugby or some other filthy sport, which I bloody well don’t) was the organizing and running of the reliably dreadful bi-monthly inter-school disco. Mr Peacock, our nice Head of English, had formed an American college-style debating society at the beginning of last year for students who, like me, were more inspired by words and intelligent discussion than dashing around a muddy field. I must say I’d been very enthusiastic about that at first, but, as it turned out, it was very scantily attended and ended up with just me and a girl from the Upper Sixth in thick glasses shouting at one another in the library about which one of Charlie’s Angels, we felt, had the most intellectual wherewithal and which one wore the nicest tops. So that was the end of that.
Anyway, there we all were, sopping wet and keen as mustard in the cavernous old Victorian school hall, noisily dragging petrol-blue plastic chairs across the gleaming polished parquet and vying for a spot next to one of the bulky old-fashioned radiators so we might dry ourselves. Frances Bassey and me pulled our chairs as near to the foot of the stage as we could, both anxious to discover who had been chosen for all the most coveted roles after Monday’s auditions, and find out precisely how the autumn production was going to take shape this year.
Now, I must point out to you that there is a fair amount of pressure this term for the school’s drama department to ‘get it right’, as it were, particularly after last Easter’s debacle when Marcia Tubbert – one of the Lower Sixth girls – was picked to play the lead in the spring play. Marcia was renowned for being a violent playground bully, not to mention a bigoted and highly accomplished shoplifter who had been banned from virtually every Asian mini-mart in the vicinity of the school. These particulars – along with her self-tattooed knuckles – did not make her an especially popular choice for the part of Joan of Arc in the Dog Kennel Road school’s seemingly brave but ultimately foolhardy rendering of George Bernard Shaw’s St Joan. On opening night, pandemonium had ensued when, in the audience, several parents of Marcia’s past victims started hollering things at the stage during the trial scene. ‘I’ve got a pack of Swan Vesta in my handbag if you’re stuck for something to light the fire’, one disgruntled mother called out, rattling a box of matches. ‘Chuck a bit of white spirit on her, she’ll go up a damn sight quicker,’ somebody else had suggested rowdily – that sort of affair.
When, at the theoretically gripping climax of the production, poor Joan is led away to be burnt at the stake, there was virtual rapture from the audience and a standing ovation for the guards that carted her off. So Miss Jibbs, who had been, by and large, in charge of all things dramatic within the school, was consequently asked if she would kindly set aside her somewhat radical plans to have a crack at Hedda Gabler – the Rock Opera for the time being, in favour of fresh blood. Hence the significance of this term’s upcoming theatrical extravaganza.
Hamish McClarnon, our drama teacher, who is, exotically, both Scottish and a homosexual, breezed into the hall waving a lilac ring binder and yelling, ‘OK! OK! Calm yourselves, calm yourselves, my young and nascent thespians! Simmer down, now.’
Moist adolescence shook off the rain and hurriedly settled as Hamish, nattily clad as always, took to the stage with a bound and held aloft the all-important cast sheet, poised, flamboyantly, to read aloud. Frances tossed me an excited sideways glance as she ripped the see-through rain bonnet off her brand-new wet-look curls.
‘I bet you’re going to get one of the main parts,’ she said breathlessly, ‘what with your lovely singing voice.’
I shrugged my shoulders, but I was hoping against hope: it was all I could think about, to be honest.
‘Who knows?’ I said nonchalantly. ‘I’m not really that fussed either way.’
Then Hamish addressed the hall again, his grand tone hushing the kids like it always did.
‘Now! I have te say, it were tough this year. Oliver! is not an easy show te cast, particularly with the shortage of girls we have here in the school.’
Ours is an all-boys’ school, essentially, though merged with a neighbouring girls’ school at sixth-form level. Even then, the so-called fairer sex are fairly thin on the ground, as most of the young ladies of Camberwell High (an establishment my Auntie Val had recently described as ‘full of scabby whores’) have failed to cotton on to the benefits of further education – principally, one suspected, because a glittering career in smoking outside the Wimpy Bar and shoplifting talcum powder gift sets from Jones & Higgins undoubtedly beckoned.
‘So!’ Hamish went on, discarding a chunky lemon polo neck, ‘I’ve had to be creative with the casting as ye can imagine, due mainly to the fact that none of the girls seem to be able te carry a tune in a pink bucket.’
‘Oy, sir! I can bloody sing!’ yelled Frances, sticking her hand in the air. ‘My mum says I’ve the look of a young Gladys Knight.’
‘Yes, well, pardon me, Frances,’ Hamish snapped back, ‘but having the look of a young Gladys is not quite the same as having the voice of a young Gladys, is it? Te be honest, hen, the first time I heard ye sing I thought someone had run over the school ferret. No, I’m afraid I can’t offer you any major role, darlin’.’
Frances put her hand in her lap and turned out her bottom lip comically – she does make me giggle. I think that’s why she’s always been my very best friend: she makes me laugh, and she’s never backwards in coming forwards. I decided to shout up.
‘Sir! She’s the prettiest girl in the Lower Sixth. I hope it’s not cos she’s black!’
Mr McClarnon looked cross a
nd slammed his ring binder down on top of the piano. ‘Shut it, Starr!’ he said. ‘Half the kids in the school are black, and some o’ them can sing. I’m basing ma decision on what’s best for the play – not on race, and not even on sex as it turns out. Now, do ye want te hear this cast list or not?’
We all fell silent as Mr McClarnon took a seat, crossed his legs, and began to read the list aloud; then squeals of delight pricked the air as he announced the names of students and their allotted parts in the production: Mr Bumble, Oliver, Mrs Sowerberry, Toby Crackit. One by one he reeled them off.
‘Sonia Barker!’ Hamish cried, running his heavily ringed hand through his thick ginger wedge-cut hair. ‘Now, I’m going to offer you the part of Bet. What do you think te that, dear?’
Sonia, a shrivelled, unkempt girl perched behind Frances and me, lifted her copiously mascaraed eyes off her copy of Smash Hits only momentarily.
‘Yes, sir!’ she sighed, looking as miserable as sin.
‘I can definitely visualize you as a fifteen-year-old Georgian streetwalker, dear,’ Hamish told her. ‘But whether you can rally yourself sufficiently te hold down four or five choruses of “Oom Pah Pah” is yet to be discovered. However, I’m throwing prudence te the wind, all things considered, on this spectacular, so we’ll give you a whirl, hen.’
‘Yes, sir!’ Sonia sighed again, returning to her magazine.
‘You see, I could have done that part,’ Frances hissed at me. ‘She’s only here so she can bunk off double maths, and she looks like Patti Smith’s mother.’
I nodded, only half listening, as Hamish continued.
‘David Starr!’
I sat bolt upright and prayed quietly to myself: Fagin. I had to get Fagin. There weren’t many parts left, and I was almost sixteen and far too lanky for the Artful Dodger, surely. And I couldn’t possibly have been shoved in the chorus, could I? No. No. The degradation of that would be too much to bear. Too much! I’d not even be able to set foot in the school again, let alone on to the stage. I held my breath.
‘David, I thought your audition piece was very, very good on the whole,’ Hamish smiled, ‘though I must say, I did wonder if Kate Bush’s “Wuthering Heights” might have been a tad overambitious, particularly with the dance routine. Nonetheless, you’ve a stunning wee voice, and after much thought I’ve decided that you’re the only one here who can do the part justice.’
Yes? Yes?
‘So, David, you’ll be playing the part of Nancy!’
‘Oh!’
Well, I hadn’t been expecting that.
‘How brilliant!’ Frances yelped. ‘How completely and utterly brilliant.’
‘Yes,’ I nodded, slightly dumbfounded. ‘How … brilliant.’
I wasn’t entirely sure how I felt about it. I was tantamount to staggered, if you want the truth. Yes, we quite often had boys playing female parts in our school productions – it was a case of needs must in a predominantly male environment – but, as far as I was concerned, Nancy was an icon, and had the show’s paramount and most dazzling number – ‘As Long As He Needs Me’ – so there was a heck of a lot to think about. I mean, which rendition of the song would I do, for example – the Shirley Bassey or the Judy Garland? I’m very fond of both! And what does one do, outfit-wise? I would, for instance, favour a plunge neckline, something slightly Nell Gwynn-ish; but could a fifteen-year-old schoolboy credibly pull that look off? I just didn’t know. And bosom. What do I do about a bosom?
‘Oh! For fuck’s sake, sir!’
A voice from the back of the hall: the odious but brutally handsome Jason Lancaster, whose dreadful family have, for as long as I can remember, resided in my street at number eight, a mere seven houses from my own. Jason loathed me, pegging me as the school sissy and therefore fair game, and my stomach lurched at the very sound of his scornful tone.
‘Isn’t Starr bent enough already?’ he called out. ‘You don’t want to make him any more of a pansy, sir, he’ll explode!’
He and his cronies’ spiteful laughter clattered around the lower hall, kicking off a domino effect of ruthless mirth. My face flushed and burned suddenly, eyes smarting. And although I grinned valiantly, I felt as though my guts had once again been ripped out. Why me? Why the fuck was it always me they singled out for their infantile malevolence? Was it just because I studied hard and handed my homework in on time, or because I hated football and didn’t want to play? Was it because I’d lovingly put together and dutifully handed out the Dog Kennel Road school newspaper every fortnight for a year and a half before the headmaster banned it for being semi-revolutionary? Was it perhaps because I had a vocabulary of more than fourteen words and I preferred Kate Bush to Thin Lizzy? Yes. It was all of those things, and much, much more. I sank low into my chair, making myself as small as I could, and then I caught a glimpse of Frances, her eyes flashing pity at me.
‘Just ignore him, David,’ she advised sweetly, touching my arm.
As if I could. I knew Frances understood all too well, though.
‘They don’t bother me,’ I lied to her. ‘They’re a bunch of dense wankers.’
Jason was evidently not going to give up.
‘He’s already a Nancy, sir!’ he bawled across the assembly hall.
More hysteria. Hamish McClarnon slowly stood up, visibly fuming, and I turned around in time to see Jason’s mouth shut like a trap: as if he knew, suddenly, that he’d crossed the line. Hamish raised an ominous ringed finger.
‘Lancaster, you don’t use words like “bent” in front of me, boy, or anywhere, come te that. You know as well as everyone else in this room ma rule on that, son. I’ll tell ye, it’s more than your life is worth, which, let’s face it, isn’t all that much te begin with. Now shut ye mouth, or leave. Do ye understand me?’
Jason looked down at his feet with a tight smirk, rain still glistening on his quarter-inch crop.
‘Sorry, sir! I didn’t mean you, sir,’ he mumbled.
‘I’ll bet!’ Hamish said. ‘But I don’t care who you’re talkin’ te, I don’t want te hear that rubbish in my classroom or anywhere else, is that clear?’
‘Sir!’
‘Anyway, you’ll be on props duty, Lancaster, for this show, if you’re te be involved at all, understood?’
‘Yes, sir!’
Hamish McClarnon was, pretty much, my hero. I don’t imagine for one moment that he was the first homosexual I’d ever encountered, but he was certainly the most ebullient and self-assured. He’d arrived at the Dog Kennel Road Secondary Modern last January in a flurry of pastel knitwear, and had made his mark with some swiftness. He was one of what us kids might call the ‘lefty’ brigade of teachers in the school: a small but evolving assemblage of staff who wore jeans and badges with political slogans; and, unlike some of the Christian Conservative contingent, fronted by our very own headmaster, treated us like young adults rather than silly children. In our very first drama lesson with him he had told the assembled class, with a hand’s flourish, that he was, in fact, an openly gay man – one of a very small handful within the Inner London Education Authority, apparently – and proud of it. The ensuing sniggers and attempts at jeering were cut mercilessly short by Hamish, who, in no uncertain terms, informed the culprits and their would-be aficionados that there were to be no such anti-gay or homophobic shenanigans anywhere even approaching his earshot, and that the same went for racism. Further to that, were there any breach of this rule, chastisement would be prompt and severe.
The punishments that Hamish had gone on to delineate were wide-ranging and far-reaching. They included regular and protracted silent detentions or being put on report, where teachers sign a form, drearily commenting on your behaviour, at the end of every single lesson; even suspension wasn’t out of the question. However, the jewel in Mr McClarnon’s castigation crown, as far as I was concerned, was the threat of being banned for the rest of term from taking part in all after-school sports, including football: both practice and matches. This, of course, horri
fied Jason Lancaster, who naively saw himself as the next fucking Kevin Keegan, and his similarly sporty pals; and they left me alone, on the whole, during Mr McClarnon’s classes, despite the unpleasantness of today.
As last term progressed, a small group of us older kids – including Frances and myself – had started to actually socialize with Hamish and some of the other like-minded teachers, including Mr Peacock and Miss Jibbs, outside school. We went on theatre trips to An Inspector Calls and Hello, Dolly, and to the Rock Against Racism gig at the Alexandra Palace. We even went to the Palmerston pub with them on a few occasions, which is just far enough away from the school not to get caught supping lager shandies by the less enlightened teachers. Then, during the summer holiday just gone, Frances and me were invited to Hamish’s flat for supper, with Mr Peacock and his wife, Annie. We had something vegetarian and drank Sainsbury’s vin rouge, and then we listened to Marlene Dietrich and smoked a joint – it was very sophisticated to my mind, and Frances and I had been thrilled. The thing, though, that impressed me about Hamish the most was that he didn’t seem to give a fuck what people thought about him being ‘one of them’, as my nan might say – a homosexual. It was someone else’s problem as far as he was concerned, and that, to me, was gob-smacking: the idea of admitting thoughts like that even to myself, let alone divulging them to another living soul, made me want to hughie. But Hamish was seemingly fearless.