Becoming Nancy

by Terry Ronald

  A kick in the mouth left me slumped outside the French room, and there ended a delightful morning. Parfait!

  At long last my train slows into Brighton, and now it is dark. The twitching, laughing man has got off somewhere without me noticing – or perhaps he in fact threw himself from the moving train in despair at the sustained babbling from the two cartoonish middle-aged women who are, of course, still rattling on as we draw into the station.

  I grab my Gola bag from the rack above me and shuffle past them, then stepping off the train and eventually on to a rainy street, I realize that my plan of ‘having a little wander’ before heading for Mr McClarnon’s flat mightn’t have been a wise one. It is teeming down, and I’m all confused about directions now it’s turned dark. I am also both ravenous and dehydrated, not to mention drained from the day’s cataclysmic events and the excessively lengthy and exasperating train journey. And, of course, I’m sporting a singularly unfetching fat lip, courtesy of the lovely Jason. So instead I start to trudge in what I believe is the general direction towards Mr McClarnon’s place, face smarting as the fat raindrops slap my war wounds.

  I can smell the sea air now, and it takes me back to the beanos we went on with the club when I was a kid: a coachload of us there’d be – all the grown-ups drinking and singing and telling filthy jokes along the way to whichever seaside town we were about to invade. We’d actually come here to Brighton a fair few times – it would be of a Sunday or a bank holiday – and my grandad would take me on the rides along the pier and on the front. Mum and Aunt Val were always dressed up really nice, and they’d take Chrissy and me to buy chips while Dad and his mates played on the machines in the arcade. Then, if we behaved, and it was warm enough, we’d sit and eat our chips on the beach and then we’d go for a paddle, with Nan and Grandad holding Chrissy’s hand cos she was scared of the waves.

  There was never any rain then, I don’t think, or at least there hadn’t seemed to be, looking back – I think it was always sunny. Different today. When we’d go back home on the coach, there’d be a gang of us kids who would all sit together on the back seat, singing along to my tape recorder and the songs I’d recorded off the Top Twenty on a Sunday evening: The Sweet, Gary Glitter or The Bay City Rollers. How the weather’s changed now.

  I turn, utterly drenched, into another street, and as I walk I attempt to map out in my mind how I’m going to lay this all out to Hamish when I get there – all this new stuff, and the old; where I’m going to actually start with it all. But the more I think about it, the more mixed up and disorderly it all becomes in my head, so I just give up and plough forward up a rather steep and unfamiliar street, and wonder what on earth Hamish will say when he sees me at his front door. I can’t smell the sea any more.

  Twenty-two

  Spilling the Beans

  ‘Are you shittin’ me wi’ this?’ is what Hamish actually says as he swings open his apartment door, dressed in what I would, in all probability, describe as a polyester-knit muumuu. ‘What the hell are ye doin’ here, David? And what in God’s name have ye done te ye face?’

  I step boldly through the door and into the hall.

  ‘It’s all over for me there,’ I say, affording him my very best Sarah Bernhardt: lifting up my bruised chin and closing my eyes. ‘Those people are dead to me now.’

  When I open my eyes again, Hamish is glowering at me, his brow furrowed in several profound trenches.

  ‘Do your parents know you’re here?’

  He ushers me further into the hallway and then straight up the stairs.

  ‘It’s eight o’clock at night, will they not be expecting you for ye tea?’

  ‘I wanted to get some food when I got to Brighton, but I hadn’t really got enough money,’ I blurt breathlessly, reaching the top of the stairs and stepping into the small living room to the right of me. ‘And then I got lost. I thought you lived over a betting shop, sir, but I couldn’t find it.’

  ‘Bookies has closed ages back,’ Hamish says, relieving me of my bomber jacket and then shaking the rain off it and hanging it over the partly open door. ‘It’s a hairdresser’s now. And don’t call me sir outside school – it’s Hamish.’

  ‘Well, I knocked on about fourteen doors, Hamish,’ I laugh, flopping down on to a beanbag. ‘Then I finally found you.’

  ‘Yes … you have, and what I want te know is, why? Why are ye here, David?’

  Hamish is peering at me hard, and I’m still not sure quite how to begin.

  ‘Well, let me get ye somethin’ te drink, anyway,’ he says. ‘A glass o’ Sainsbury’s red do ya, will it?’

  And he finally smiles, cracking his frown.

  ‘It will,’ I say.

  Hamish trots off to the kitchen and I sink into my beanbag, contemplating the lyric to ‘Sing If You’re Glad To Be Gay’, which is currently playing on the stereo, and perusing the posters of Che Guevara and Barbara Cook on the wall above the undersized dining table. A poster heralding the opening of a 1971 university production of Bertolt Brecht’s Life of Galileo takes pride of place above the comfy-looking but down-at-heel sofa; directed by Hamish McClarnon, it affirms modestly at the bottom. The room is lit with a soft, orange-coloured bulb and a couple of orange candles, and it feels warm and out of harm’s reach. When Hamish reappears, he is carrying two plates of spaghetti bolognese and two large tumblers of red wine on a tray.

  ‘Here, ye said ye was hungry. I made it maself.’

  ‘Thanks, I’m really starving!’

  And I eat quickly and greedily, nourishing and refuelling my drained carcass, preparing to impart to Mr McClarnon every last thought and feeling – the whole confused cauldron – everything, in fact, about my eventful and desolately putrid day … and perhaps even more besides … perhaps … Oh, what the hell, here goes …

  One of the orange candles has burned almost completely down, and Hamish is looking at me from the sofa with a strange otherworldly gaze as I conclude my heart-rending diatribe. He lifts his glass slowly to his mouth and sips at his wine, then he rests it on the low, dark-wood coffee table.

  ‘This Marty character: he could be in a lot of trouble if this came out. He could go te prison for that, ye know. You’re well under twenty-one and he’s …’

  ‘Twenty-seven,’ I whisper.

  ‘Is that what you want?’ Hamish says softly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Do ye want to report this, or tell ye parents?’

  ‘No!’ I say, suddenly shocked at the implication. ‘I don’t want that, sir – I mean Hamish. Marty’s an idiot, but it wasn’t his entire fault. I did kind of fancy him, and he didn’t exactly force me. If I’d wanted to stop I could have … I guess.’

  ‘You don’t sound so positive,’ Hamish says. ‘And anyway, he should know better, David; he’s an adult. Mind you, what am I goin’ on about? Think of the deep crevice o’ crap I’d be in if the school found out I’d been encouragin’ the two o’ you – Maxie and yourself – in a relationship of the sort you’ve been havin’: two barely sixteen-year-old boys, for Christ’s sake – ma pupils. It doesn’t even bear thinkin’ about. I guess we should all know better.’

  ‘No!’ I shout, jumping up from the beanbag and slopping red wine everywhere. ‘It’s them that should know better – everyone else! Fucking hell, Hamish! Half the boys in my class are shagging their girlfriends but no one gives a shit about that. No one bleats on about corruption or innocent boys not knowing their own mind then, do they? No, they get a pat on the back from their dads while people like me get sent to a fucking shrink.’

  Hamish is nodding.

  ‘It would be funny if it weren’t so sick,’ he says. ‘But at your age the law isn’t on your side, pet. It just isn’t.’

  ‘I don’t want to report Marty, anyway,’ I say, sitting back down. ‘I don’t care about Marty. I don’t care two fucks about Marty. I only care about Maxie … and Frances too. I’ve been such a cunt to her.’

  Hamish pours me another half-glass of
wine.

  ‘Yes, well, that’s a very sexist term, David, appropriate though it may sometimes feel, so can we not use that particular word?’

  ‘Sorry!’

  ‘You’ll make it up with Frances,’ he says. ‘That’s the easy part, but what about Jason Lancaster? What te do wi’ him?’ He looks sickened as he speaks. ‘I thought that boy was turnin’ over a new leaf – he promised me he was – hence me givin’ him the part in the play. Surely we have te do somethin’ about that. I’ll not have that sort of anti-gay violent shit go on in any school I teach at.’

  ‘I’d rather you just let that go too, Hamish,’ I say, looking down. ‘Really I would.’

  Hamish looks bewildered, and he shrugs and holds out his hands like a comedy Jewish mother.

  ‘But why? Why leave it? And why does the boy hate ye so much?’

  I let out a small but sufficiently ironic chortle, and I smile at Hamish over the glow of the remaining candle.

  ‘It’s not me he hates, Hamish,’ I say, ‘it’s himself. When he looks at me – batty boy David Starr – he sees himself, sees what he might well turn out to be.’

  ‘Go on,’ Hamish says, intrigued and leaning forward.

  And so at long, long last I spill the beans.

  On a winter’s evening the previous year, when my mother and father were ensconced at the Lordship Lane Working Men’s Club, I’d answered a knock at our back gate. It was reasonably dark, and when I drew back the big bolt and peered outside I was somewhat taken aback to discover Jason Lancaster there, grinning and apprehensive, that immorally beautiful face lustrous and cherry-red.

  ‘I need a favour, Starr,’ he’d snapped austerely, shoving his way into the alley that led to our back garden, and I fell back against the wall with the force of him.

  ‘A favour?’

  I was on full alert. What on earth could Jason possibly want from me? He barely spoke to me unless it was to communicate some sort of slur or abuse. This was just weird!

  Jason continued softly, but with exigency. ‘Remember when you snogged Sonia Barker outside the mini-mart a couple of months back?’ he said.

  I did remember – how could I not? It had been the day after my fifteenth birthday, and long before love, and Maxie, and coming out. There’d been a group of us, including Jason, and I’d been dared and goaded into kissing a girl, namely Sonia (who, though renowned for putting it about, was not one of the world’s top beauties) for a full minute – with tongues.

  ‘Go on, prove you’re not a queer,’ Jason had said at the time. ‘Kiss her, and stick your finger inside her knickers – ’ave a good feel.’

  My sister Chrissy and Abigail Henson had also been present, and I remember, even then, Abigail suggesting that it be her I snogged and not Sonia, who according to Abigail had communicable mouth ulcers and terribly grubby fingernails, which, she felt, put the girl out of the running. But Jason had insisted.

  ‘No, it ’as to be Sonia.’

  And as Sonia herself didn’t really seem to have any sort of chunter about the proposal at hand, then Sonia it was. I must confess that I didn’t, for the most part, enjoy it, but after I’d politely enquired what was in it for me, it turned out there was a yellow vinyl copy of Blondie’s ‘Picture This’ up for grabs, and an opportunity, at least, I supposed, to institute some impression of masculinity amongst my peers, which at the time seemed de rigueur. Frances Bassey, also present, had subsequently described the whole incident as freakish beyond credence, but there it was.

  ‘Yes, Jason, I remember kissing Sonia. What about it?’ I enquired, justly cautious, as he leaned against our fence.

  Jason’s cigarette glowed as he drew on it nervously, allowing me a fleeting shufti of coffee eyes and sandy, close-shaved hair.

  ‘You looked like you knew what you was doing,’ he said.

  ‘Did I?’

  He nodded slowly, and then he looked me up and down as if I might be something from another world.

  ‘I need you to show me how to do it properly, Starr,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m taking Sonia ice-skating tomorrow and she’s dead experienced, ain’t she? And she said you were an all right kisser, and I don’t wanna look a twat, do I? I mean … I don’t … I haven’t ever … I haven’t really ever …’

  Jason trailed off as I frantically tried to absorb and collate the connotations of his proposition and, indeed, ascertain what precisely he was asking of me.

  ‘You want us to kiss?’ I finally suggested uneasily, hoping against hope that he wasn’t about to smash me in the face. ‘You want me to give you some sort of tonsil-hockey tutorial?’

  He blinked at me, twice. I said, ‘Is this a joke?’

  ‘If you fucking tell anyone, I’ll break your arms,’ Jason said.

  And with very little further ado, he dropped his cigarette and moved so perilously close to me that there was nothing to do but kiss him. I did it fast – because I thought I might faint if I didn’t – and I had no clue at the time why I wanted to kiss him anyway – he was a boy, for God’s sake – but I did … I really did. I stumbled upon his mouth: it was hot and sweet, and eager. I felt somewhat confused because he smelled and tasted like something I’d been waiting for, and there was none of the expected inelegance in his kiss: it was tender, no fumbling. Jason sent his hands over my back until he held me firm – kissed me deep. In turn, I slipped my arms under the back of his blazer and shirt and on to his warm skin, pulling him closer. He let out a tiny gasp. And we kissed, and we kissed, and I felt … significant.

  I remember my cheeks on that chilly evening, damp with tears by the time the penny dropped, by the time it had all fallen, finally, into place. A lifetime’s conundrum packed with years of random sensations, emotions and events suddenly unravelled to reveal a blindingly flawless truth. Yes – Billy Blue from The High Chaparral who always gave me butterflies; the lads, wet from swimming; my Aunt Val shouting out from the landing, ‘David, are you wearin’ my bleedin’ amber necklace again?’ Even my grandad’s Kathy Kirby LPs seemed to make perfect sense at last. Turns out I hadn’t wanted to fuck Lindsay Wagner after all – I’d just wanted to be The Bionic Woman. It was all there, really, plain as day – aligned with that moment, and that kiss: a true and bona fide awakening, if you will. As I held Jason in my arms against the bricks of our alleyway, I thought about this revelation, what it might mean, and I resolved then and there to lock it tightly away in the box whence it came, terrified in the knowledge that sooner rather than later the box would almost certainly come flying open again, sending its volatile and clandestine contents tumbling about me for all humanity to witness. And I wasn’t ready for that. Not then.

  ‘I think I’ll be able to handle Sonia Barker now,’ Jason had smiled afterwards, pausing superciliously before a parting consideration. ‘And there really is no point in blabbing, cos no one would believe you, Starr, you know that, don’t you. I matter at school, you see. You don’t matter at all.’

  ‘He never really spoke to me again,’ I tell Hamish forlornly. ‘Unless you count bender or shirt-lifter.’

  Hamish’s mouth is wide open.

  ‘And so you knew then?’ he said, and I nodded.

  ‘When I first saw Maxie that day in the hall,’ I said, ‘it just sort of compounded it, I suppose. I thought I was confused, but I really already knew. I knew thanks to Jason bloody Lancaster, and that is why he hates me so much – because of one stupid kiss, and Jason said I didn’t matter anyway, so I …’

  There’s suddenly an awful lot going on in my head and, though I try to foil them, I can feel tears falling, unexpectedly, unwanted and swift.

  ‘If you don’t mind, Hamish,’ I say through soft sobs, ‘I’d rather not unearth any of this stuff. I can deal with a couple of bruises and a fat lip – I just want to forget it all.’

  ‘Oh, David!’ Hamish says quietly. ‘You do matter, you know. You matter very much; don’t ever let anyone tell you that you don’t. Just remember –
the rest of the world’s wrong and we’re right, OK?’

  I’m nodding.

  ‘I must say,’ he laughs gently, ‘I wasn’t expecting all this tonight, but I’m glad ye finally got it off ye chest. Now, have a wee drop o’ wine and I’ll fetch ye a Kleenex … man-size.’

  I throw back what’s left in my glass like a bar-room connoisseur, and suddenly I feel like someone has lifted a small rhinoceros from the top of my head. Hamish is back and holding out a tissue with one hand and the telephone receiver with the other.

  ‘Who am I calling?’ I ask, knowing the answer.

  ‘You’re calling your parents to tell them where ye are; then tomorrow I’m drivin’ ye back te London. We’ve got a show te put on.’

  ‘OK!’

  ‘And then,’ Hamish says, rubbing his hands together excitedly, ‘we’re gonna stay up late and watch some Bette Davis on BBC2 – have you seen any Bette Davis films, David?’

  ‘I don’t think so, no.’

  ‘Och! Well, you’re in for a real treat. It’s a double bill: All About Eve and The Man Who Came to Dinner. She’s the greatest actress that’s ever lived, David. I think you’re gonna love her!’

  ‘Cool!’ I smile, and I feel genuinely brighter. I mean, let’s face it, if Hamish McClarnon can be as wise and as brilliant a gay man as he clearly is, and manage to promenade through life having a damn good time – then so can bloody well I!

  ‘Oh, and one more thing, David?’ Hamish says.

  He is smiling mischievously as I gather myself and dial home.

  ‘What, Hamish?’

  ‘Do you know how te roll a decent joint?’

  I’m seated beneath a hairdryer in a 1960s-style hair salon full of middle-aged women and pensioners with hair rinses of blue, emerald and mauve. Most are reading magazines, and a couple of them are sipping hot beverages. There is a ghostly carpet of dry ice covering every inch of the floor. As I lean forward in my chair and look to my right, there seems to be an unending line of hairdryer-adorned ladies, all cross-legged, and all reading the same issue of Woman’s Realm, and I can hear the eerie sound of organ chords along with the thumping heartbeat of tom-toms coming from nowhere in particular. Anyway, sitting next to me on my left is Debbie Harry, which hardly surprises me any more, to be honest. She flips up the front of her hairdryer, emerging with a huge magenta beehive and a dress made completely from mirrors, which, when the light hits it, blinds me completely, causing me to recoil violently and squint.