That's Another Story: The Autobiography Page 18

  On the afternoon of the first performance I was in charge of the sound cues and sat to the side of the little stage with a small cassette player at the ready, in full view of the audience. With a sign from Mrs Forbes who was standing at the other side of the stage, also in full view of the audience, I pressed the play button. Mrs Forbes’s sign, although she was a matter of feet from me, was achieved by stretching her arm straight up towards the ceiling and waving it slowly from side to side as if she were on a crowded beach and needed to be seen, which consequently drew all eyes towards me.

  My first cue was a beautiful rendition of ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’, which in turn was the cue for Mary and Joseph to enter, which they did, trudging wearily across the stage. Then after another huge wave from Mrs Forbes on the far side, with the audience’s heads swivelling Wimbledon-like from her to me, I faded the music out and the narration began. This was read by one of the eleven-year-olds, describing how Mary and Joseph had walked for miles, Mary heavy with child, and how they had battled through the wind and the snow. This was my next cue, but instead of the sound of a howling gale, out from the little cassette, loud and clear, came instead the sound of pouring rain, accompanied by great claps of thunder. Mary and Joseph stopped in their tracks and looked helplessly towards Mrs Forbes, who was now standing opposite, doing big winding actions with her hand, interspersed with dragging her forefinger across her throat.

  Now in panic mode, I tried to fast-forward the tape and, squeaking and squealing, Disney-like, it whizzed on to what I hoped was the next cue, but when I pressed the play button, blaring out into the hall came a police siren. People were beginning to whisper and giggle, at which Mrs Forbes’s winding action now went up a notch, into a rotating blur of overdrive. I then decided that perhaps rewind was the best course of action and whizzed the tape backwards, randomly stopping and inwardly begging the gods to make something sensible come out, but no, this time we were treated to gunshots and the galloping of horses.

  However, Mary and Joseph, who had been glued to the spot since the thunderstorm had set in, decided to do a bit of improvising and on hearing the shots Joseph threw Mary to the ground, causing her to let out what sounded like a rather real scream. Covering her with his cowl, he proceeded to hold the unseen gunmen at bay and pick them off one at a time with his staff, which, miraculously, had turned into a rifle. Now Mrs Forbes was fairly whipping her hand across her throat, so much so that I feared she might do herself damage. I pressed stop, plunging us into a sudden and much appreciated silence. Everyone froze, Mrs Forbes, with her hand across her throat, looking as if she were striking an old-fashioned photographic pose, and nobody spoke. Joseph made one more half-hearted popping sound, directing a last shot at the enemy. Silence again. No one moved. Then from underneath the cowl Mary yelped, ‘Ow! You’re on my hair!’ And Joseph, raising his eyes to heaven, shifted.

  Just as Mrs Forbes was about to come to the rescue, the narrator said, ‘And Joseph killed every one of those muggers, and they went on their way towards Bethlehem.’ And then as a little nudge to Mary, who was still under the cowl, and Joseph, who still had his eye out for stray ‘muggers’, ‘They went on their way to Bethlehem!’

  My second and final teaching practice, in the third year, was a very different experience altogether. It was to take place at a girls’ secondary school, which pleased me because of its close proximity to my bedsit. I was teaching all years except the sixth form and, almost without exception, the bottom streams. On my first day, I was just sitting down for lunch in the canteen with the girls when an altercation started at the next table, gradually attracting the attention of everyone around. A male teacher, a man in his mid-forties, was asking a girl to leave as she was in the wrong sitting and she was refusing to go. Suddenly, a towering girl, probably about six feet tall, appeared seemingly from nowhere and, squaring up to this poor bloke, said, ‘You lay one finger on her and you got me to deal with!’

  He tried to ignore her and carried on, in a calm, quiet voice, trying to reason with the girl who wouldn’t go. Eventually he made the mistake of touching her lightly on the arm, whereupon the Amazon launched a shocking attack, hurling punches and kicks, and lashing out at his face with great curled talons painted blood-red. Girls and staff alike were standing open-mouthed as the two of them became locked in a fierce struggle in which his shirt was ripped from button to armpit and her blouse was torn open, sending buttons flying, Incredible Hulk style, in all directions and revealing a bright-red bra beneath.

  They fell to the floor, the girl viciously grabbing at the man’s face and hair. Some people began to cheer and egg them on, while others got up on to the benches to get a better view. They were right next to a set of stone steps and, suddenly rolling over and over, they began to tumble down them. Every time she was on top as they rolled, she would grab his hair and bang his head with a sickening thud on the stone step. This finally stopped when they hit the bottom and for a few seconds they lay there without moving. Then the girl stood up and, with a half-hearted attempt at adjusting her clothing, she swaggered off, complaining about a broken nail as she went. The teacher got slowly and unsteadily to his feet and stood there for a moment, stunned and ashen-faced, his hands trembling, staring at the floor, his hair, which had been neatly combed flat, now standing up in messy, spiky clumps. There was a trickle of blood from his nose, which had dripped on to his shirt, his lip was cut and he had bitten his tongue. When at last I could speak, I turned to the teacher standing next to me and said, ‘Please, tell me I won’t be teaching her.’

  Fortunately, I wasn’t. The police were called in, which resulted in her exclusion, but I was given what they referred to as ‘the Easter leavers’. These were girls who were not going to stay on and do their GCEs or CSEs, but would instead leave at Easter, some of them aged just fifteen. This meant that they had absolutely no incentive to learn and therefore no interest whatsoever in any form of schoolwork. I knew that if I was going to survive this, I had to get them on my side. So the night before my first lesson with them, I wrote my script.

  The next day, I went in and told them how I was on teaching practice and my every move was being watched, so I needed their help. I asked them to each get out their Shakespeare textbook and have it open on the desk as if we might be discussing it, should the teacher that was monitoring me walk past and look through the window. It was a gamble on my part but one that paid off because they thought the whole subterfuge was a gas. I then assured them that we wouldn’t in fact be studying Shakespeare because I knew very little about it and what I really liked in terms of Drama was modern stuff about real people’s lives. That was it; from then on we were friends.

  We talked, very casually, with girls sitting on top of their desks and lounging about with their feet up on chairs. This normally frowned-upon informality was a battle I was prepared to forgo in exchange for their participation and interest. One girl kept watch; every time a teacher came down the corridor our lookout would alert us, and the girls would jump down behind their desks, burying their heads in their Shakespeares. We discussed everything, from their feelings about being ‘left to rot’, as one girl so aptly put it, because they weren’t academic, to abortion and racism, and we started off with the fight in the canteen.

  ‘Did anyone see that fight in the canteen? Blimey! What was all that about?’

  And they were off. Should teachers be allowed to manhandle pupils? Should men be allowed to teach in a single-sex school? Was there a racist element, with the girl involved being black and the teacher being white? How do black girls view white men in authority? What constitutes assault? How are teachers meant to keep control? Every time they got loud, I’d ask them to pipe down, reiterating the fact that I would be in trouble with the teacher if she heard the noise and as most of them were in constant trouble with the teachers, they were totally with me.

  After a week or so I got them to act out some of the topics that we were discussing. Mother-daughter relationships is the topic that
has stayed with me. A small black girl, looking much younger than her years, improvised a situation between a mother and a daughter, and brought in elements that had obviously come from her own life, living in a one-bedroom flat with her mother who was a prostitute and drug addict. It was some of the most honest, raw and moving acting I have seen to date.

  These girls weren’t going to get their GCEs but they were highly intelligent, articulate and passionate once they engaged. I became hugely fond of them and felt that I had shared real intimacy with them in these classes, brought about by the power of Drama. They could express their fears and hopes through it and it promoted discussion and understanding of some of the bewildering elements of their lives. And I, personally, learnt that Drama was concerned with more than just being an actor and acting lines off a page. It was therapeutic, cathartic; it helped to develop emotional intelligence and the use of language and communication skills; it was educational for both performer and audience alike. I think, if taught moderately well, it is a vital part of a healthy education, and it is sadly and foolishly neglected today.

  12

  ‘Can We Still Go on the Honeymoon?’ - Breaking Up

  DT and I had decided that we would marry in Bristol, where he was studying for his MA, in the summer of 1973. Everyone was thrilled; my mother approved and he had bought me a gorgeous antique engagement ring, set with three vibrant turquoise stones. One night, just three weeks before the wedding day, on one of his weekend visits to Manchester, I shot up in bed in the middle of the night, filled with only one, very certain thought.

  ‘Oh, DT ... I’m so sorry!’ I couldn’t get out any more than that. I was paralysed by gulps and sobs.

  ‘What? What is it, love?’ He sat up and put his arm around me.

  Eventually I managed, ‘I can’t get married. I’m just not ready. There’s too much of life to do first. I just can’t!’

  And I knew it to be right because the relief was enormous, as if something had been surgically removed, something that I hadn’t even registered as being a problem, but now that it was gone I was light as air.

  But I loved DT and hurting him was painful.

  ‘Look, DT, I just really, really can’t do this. I don’t want us to split up . . . Let’s just carry on as we are. I just don’t want to get married.’ And finally, he stopped asking why.

  We lay there in silence and then, ‘DT? Can we still go on the honeymoon?’

  Well, we were going to Lisbon and I couldn’t give that up, and neither could he.

  I wasn’t looking forward to telling my mother, thinking she would feel let down in some way and be critical of me, seeing my decision as irresponsible, but to my surprise she said, ‘Well, thank God you found out that it wasn’t right now and not after you’d got married.’ And then, perfectly timed, ‘So you weren’t pregnant then?’

  A couple of months later we did go off on our ‘honeymoon’, staying in a pension in Lisbon for only a couple of nights, then hitch-hiking north and stopping where we were dropped in a little fishing village just south of Oporto. With no accommodation booked, we had to go and enquire in various shops, restaurants and bars as to where we might stay. At the last minute, just as the sun was going down, in a tiny grocery store we were given the address of the local doctor who, it seemed, had a room that he occasionally let out to tourists. It was an attic room up in the eaves of the family house with a ceiling that sloped down to the floor on both sides. There was very little space because, besides the bed, it was used for storage and contained lots of boxes and cases, etc., but it was perfectly adequate.

  We spent the days reading, lying on the beach sunbathing, watching the fishermen bringing in their catch and mending their huge nets spread out on the sand, and eating freshly caught sardines that were barbecued right there at the water’s edge by the fishermen’s wives. Our evenings were passed in the caf’s and bars, and we only returned to our room late at night in order to sleep.

  One night, after we had been there three or four days, I was awoken by a creaking sound and on opening my eyes was met by the creepy sight of a shadowy figure moving slowly about the room. I was paralysed with fright and didn’t even nudge DT who was dead to the world; instead I buried my head under the covers. At long last the creaking of floorboards ceased and a peek from beneath the sheets reassured me that the figure had gone. I gradually slid into a fitful sleep. The next day I was convinced I had seen a ghost and endured much teasing from DT on the subject, but I knew what I had seen and felt very spooked. The following two nights I slept very lightly, making up for it by falling into a coma on the beach the next day. There was no repetition of the event on either of those nights, although two or three times I awoke, thinking I could hear something, but on each occasion there was nothing there and the shadowy figure did not materialise.

  On our last night we got back to our room with the intention of making an early start in the morning. We were hitching back to Lisbon for another two or three days before returning home, so we decided to pack up our things before getting into bed. I had lost a flip-flop and was on all-fours looking for it under our bed when from somewhere close behind me came what sounded like a low, gravelly snarl. Instantly hitting my head on the bedstead, as if in a daft comedy sketch, I screeched and stood, backing away towards the door. At that moment, DT returned from downstairs, where he had been paying the doctor for our stay.

  ‘Bloody hell, DT, there’s something living in here.’

  ‘What? What is it?’

  ‘I just heard it clear as day. It was growling.’

  ‘What? Where?’

  ‘I don’t know but I think it came from behind there!’

  Opposite our bed, running along the bottom half of the sloping roof, was an old, thick, green curtain on a length of saggy curtain wire. I had looked behind it when we first moved in and there were just some cardboard boxes, a pile of towels, a basket of clothes-pegs and a heap of old clothing. DT moved towards it on tiptoe, pulling a cartoon expression of angst by stretching his mouth wide from corner to corner, baring his teeth and making big scared eyes. Just as he bent down in order to peep inside, there was, somewhat comic in its timing, a long-drawn-out, rippling fart. He jumped up and fell back on to the bed.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’

  We stared for a moment as a sulphurous odour filled the little room. I turned to DT.

  ‘Well, don’t look at me!’

  ‘Oh my God, DT, I’m scared! What is it?’

  ‘I don’t know. Do you think it’s human?’

  We were now talking in Albert Hall-sized stage whispers.

  ‘I don’t know. I haven’t smelt anything like that since Grandma sat on the sofa and ate a raw potato, so I suppose it might be. Oh God, I’m scared.’

  DT gingerly started to get up off the bed, accompanied by a discordant, dull twanging from its springs.

  ‘Shhhh!’

  ‘Shhhhhh!’

  Then, taking a deep breath in, and with one hand covering his nose and mouth against the acrid stench that still hung in the air, he slowly, with the very tips of his thumb and forefinger, his pinkie lifted, teacup-style, began to pull the curtain back. The room itself was not well lit and the space down behind the curtain was in virtual darkness. I crept forward and we both peered into the gloom until our eyes became accustomed to it. There seemed to be a dark, hunched shape on the ground and we could hear it breathing, deep and slumberous. I edged closer until I was able to see not only that it was indeed human but that I recognised the set of its profile.

  On one or two occasions when we had popped back to the room during the day, we had passed an ancient woman on our way up the steps to our attic. She was coming down, clutching linen that she had stripped from the bed, and was dressed in the classic widow’s garb of long black skirt and shawl. She was apparently the doctor’s mother and never spoke a word to us in passing, and yet there she was, a set of rosary beads wrapped around her hand as she slept, sharing our room! She must have got up at dawn before
we woke and gone to bed while we were out in the evening. I guess it was her room, but the doctor saw a chance to make a little extra cash and had shoved her behind the curtain. We went into hysterics, thinking about our lovemaking on the previous nights and wondering whether she had lain there, listening, and perhaps getting a bit of a kick from what she heard.

  ‘She must get up really early in the morning, I suppose.’

  ‘Well, we’ll be chatting in the queue for the bathroom tomorrow, then.’

  I slept soundly that night. At least I did after DT opened a small window in the roof.

  DT and I split up for good the following year, going through a wistful little ceremony where we divided up our few domestic acquisitions. I can see them laid out on the floor of my bedsit, with DT and me looking sadly down at them. In the middle of the little heap were the two square camping tins that we had used in France and on our trip to Turkey; I handed them to him, unable to make eye contact. There was a motley set of cutlery, a cheap plastic pedal bin, a plastic plate rack and a washing-up bowl to match. We focused our pain on the washing-up bowl, which, if not exactly fought over, was definitely the subject of some discussion, although, on the other hand, not enough of a discussion to prevent us from being good friends thereafter.

  13

  Life at The Everyman - Liverpool

  We did major productions at the Manchester Polytechnic. In the first year we put on a play that I’d never heard of, although that wasn’t saying much, titled The Dark of the Moon by William Berney and Howard Richardson. It was a strange piece set in the Appalachian Mountains and based on a European folk song, ‘The Ballad of Barbara Allen’. I suppose it was chosen because it had a huge cast of characters and although it wasn’t a musical members of the cast were required to sing. I played the dark witch and can remember little about the experience, except that we put it on in the studio theatre, which in fact was a derelict church with holes in the roof through which rain fell and pigeons shat on a regular basis. A mop often had to be employed before a class or a rehearsal could take place, and buckets placed here and there were a regular feature, as was the sound of raindrops drip-drip-dripping into them.