Look Back in Hunger Page 5

  In the middle of the night I woke with a start and what felt like a cold hand clutching at my heart and promptly fell out of bed. It was pitch black, so I staggered to where I thought the door was and found my way out into the hall. Up above me, with a ghostly light above her head, was Kitty Fisher. Well, I wasn’t staying around, either to see what she would do or to save my brothers. With a squeal, I legged it down the stairs, out through the front door and across two gardens to the safety of our house. My brothers slept on oblivious and when I returned the next day to see if they had been murdered by the ghost, I was taken up the stairs and shown a big portrait of a woman on the wall with a light over it. Voilà, one ghost.

  Whether this was responsible for my parallel career as a scaredy-cat, I don’t know, but I have remained utterly averse to darkness and the horrors contained in it. During my university years, I once watched an appallingly scary film called Black Christmas with Jane (she of sprout curry fame) and so terrified were we after it had finished, we slept in the same bed with the light on all night. A vivid imagination is a complete curse in circumstances like this and I trace it all back to that bloody Fisher woman in my childhood.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ANORAK BULLFIGHTING

  Eventually—at my mum’s behest, I’m sure—we left behind the old house in the middle of nowhere and moved slap-bang into the centre of the village of Benenden, to a white weatherboard house at a crossroads, next door to the butcher’s shop.

  At this point my dad was working as a lecturer up in London, so he was commuting on the train every day. This meant that he was out of the house from roughly seven till seven, and so it was a relief, I think, for my mum to be in the village, where at least she could pop out and talk to people other than two charmingly bonkers posh old ladies.

  This was when my dad came to be known as ‘Old Man Brand’, even though he was only in his thirties. He acquired this title because diagonally opposite the house was a sort of memorial/shelter thing that attracted some local bikers and general layabouts of an evening to share a can of beer, and my dad spent some considerable time shooing them off in a fairly vocal way. Although they never fought back like the ‘gypsies’ at St Mary’s Platt, it was a familiar scene as my father left the house to remonstrate with the gang in a politely threatening manner.

  At that time my mum and dad owned a pair of Renault cars, both of which were notoriously difficult to start in the winter. Thankfully, the crossroads were at the top of a hill, so almost every morning when it was cold the ritual of pushing both cars to the top of the hill and jump-starting them on the way down was a familiar one. For some reason, they never let us kids have a go.

  School continued to be good fun, although the gruesome prospect of growing up was never far away. One day a somewhat precocious girl called Hannah showed me a pair of pants with a towelling gusset she was wearing and explained that this was because it wouldn’t be long until she and all us other girls would have ‘blood coming out of our bottoms’.

  Well, I was appalled by this and refused to believe it, allowing this piece of unpleasant information to sink to the back of my mind.

  Boy/girl relationships encroached at an early age. When I was about eight, a male student teacher taught at our primary school for a while and some of the girls seemed mighty excited by his presence. He used to give the girls a ride on his bike, and the aforementioned siren Hannah was always first in the queue, doing what I think was eight-year-old flirting. I wasn’t in the slightest bit interested and would always decline his offers of a ride.

  I’ve always been crap at flirting. It’s always made me feel slightly queasy watching other women flirt, as it’s not a language I’ve ever really been conversant in. Having two brothers and, I suppose, being a ‘tomboy’ (what a lot of people would consider a trainee lesbian), it didn’t seem like a satisfactory method of communicating with males to me. I’d rather have hit them with a stick or made them laugh.

  One of my best friends at primary school just happened to be the daughter of someone involved with the local church. This meant that I felt compelled to go every week, because she did. Apart from Harvest Festival, when some good hymns were sung, church wasn’t really my cup of tea. The language seemed archaic, the sermons were coma-inducing, and a lot of the so-called Christians in church didn’t seem to me to be very Christian elsewhere. I suppose I had developed a view of Jesus as a bit of a social worker/socialist and the last thing some of the church-goers seemed to be was altruistic. I tried to work out a way of going without actually being there. Princess Anne was in the choir for a short while and as I had already developed republican tendencies, I didn’t fancy that. Finally, I alighted upon the perfect solution: bell-ringing. This would mean I’d have to be out of the main body of the church and could avoid the rest of the service, as we didn’t finish until seconds before it started.

  Bell-ringing is hard work and quite dangerous. I won’t go into the finer details of it here, because you may slip into a coma, but suffice it to say, it’s not just about pulling a rope with a fluffy bit on it.

  Someone, I can’t remember who, regaled us with tales of some hapless bell-ringer breaking his back on the ceiling of the bell-ringing chamber, so I was wary at first. When I started to relax a bit, that, of course, was the best time to play a trick on me. We were in the process of ‘bringing the bells down’ one day (or was it ‘up’? I never could remember) when one of the younger bell-ringers (most of them were about ninety) said very casually to me, ‘Hold this a minute, will you?’

  Without thinking or looking, I stuck my hand out to grab the rope and found myself being propelled upwards at an alarming rate. How high I went, I really couldn’t say, but in my mind it was about twenty feet. Through my head ran the story of the bell-ringer with the broken back but, serendipitously, before I could find out whether I was to be Broken Back Number Two, I instinctively let go and plummeted to the floor, sustaining just a sprained ankle and a red face at having let myself be fooled. Everyone pissed themselves laughing apart from a few sensible elders who remonstrated with the young joker about the potential danger he had put me in.

  The cynicism I felt at an early age about the church and its representatives was amplified by the behaviour of my friend’s father, who seemed to me to be batting for the other side (religiously, not sexually). It felt to me as if he was taking every opportunity to humiliate me. Once at a party, when we were playing Blind Man’s Buff, he poked me and took the piss, to the great amusement of my peers, and once, amazingly, during my first communion, when I took the wafer, he called me a ‘greedy little girl’. I was shocked. Did God really sanction this sort of comment at such an important moment? I was sure that he didn’t.

  One of my favourite pastimes when I was about eight or nine was a version of bullfighting. There was an open area at the top of the village green called Hilly Fields (yes, sometimes they’re not very imaginative in the country) and I used to go up there with a friend and try to bullfight the heifers. I had a red anorak which sufficed for waving at them and although I didn’t realise it at the time, the reason they ran at us was more out of curiosity than the red-rag-to-a-bull thing. Of course, we would start running away screaming almost immediately and were never in danger of being gored, mainly because they didn’t have any horns.

  The version I play of this these days, if I’m walking across a field of young cattle, I like to think of as ‘Bullock Roulette’, which involves trying to get past them (sneaking or running) without being surrounded. My dear Uncle Les used to say that if you stand still they will screech to a halt just before several tons of flesh and bone slam into you. I was never able to quite trust him on that.

  My Uncle Les was a lovely Herefordshire man, one of the most, if not the most, charming and delightful men I’ve ever met. Versed in the ways of the country, he was originally a farmer and after that he managed an estate for a posh bloke. A fount of knowledge on country matters and always accompanied by a faithful Labrador, he’d be strid
ing through the forest or skirting the edge of a field in his wellies. But along with the rugged exterior of beard, sun-reddened skin and horny hands, he was such a gentle, softly spoken, sweet-natured person. One evening he took me to watch badger cubs playing in the early evening.

  Village sport was always a big deal when I was a kid, but revolved mainly around the male of the species. My brothers both played football and were that breed of Manchester United fan who’s never set foot in Manchester. I was encouraged to support West Ham, which I was happy to do, because my hero was the blond and endlessly wholesome Bobby Moore. Every time they lost, which wasn’t infrequently, I would be smacked about a bit or teased to the point where I had to slap them around a bit. Girls weren’t encouraged to play football at the time. I suspect if we’d tried we would have been incarcerated in a wicker man and ignited. I spent a lot of time, therefore, watching my brothers play football and my dad play cricket. My poor old dad had a singularly unsuccessful cricket career, only playing twice for the village team. On one occasion he was out for a duck and on the other a golden duck.

  I’m at the sort of age when the saying ‘Do you remember where you were when JFK was shot?’ applies. This has since been replaced for some by Princess Diana. Strangely, I can remember where I was when Bobby Kennedy was shot—watching my brothers play football at the rec, or recreation ground to give it its full title—but not JFK. In case you are interested: Princess Diana—in a motel on the M1, on my way to compete in a rally-driving event.

  Yes, rather foolishly, in my late thirties, I took up rally driving. I had always liked driving fast, especially round London, and found myself revving up at traffic lights if ever I was next to a likely-looking lad in something powerful. I got my international licence through a series of rallies all over the country with John, who was my tour manager at the time. He was a very fast driver too. The only drawback for me was having to wear a ridiculous Michelin Man rally suit, in which I did actually look like a Michelin Man who’d had a sex change. And you couldn’t go for a piss in it without taking the whole thing off. It is these minor details which destroy promising careers in so many fields, I am sure.

  Over the years, cars have been a source of pain and joy. I haven’t owned many and they have ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous. Starting off with a baked-bean can on wheels (more later), I have driven two Fiat Pandas and an Uno. I ran some poor little kid over in the Panda, when she ran straight out in front of me on a steep hill in Camberwell. She looked about eight and her head hit the wing mirror. I immediately leapt out of the car to see if she was OK but she was either so shocked or I was so frightening that she legged it and I couldn’t catch her. Made me very proud to know I couldn’t run faster than an eight-year-old.

  I briefly dabbled in crime in the village of Benenden.

  Firstly, my best friend Linda and I were caught by the local bobby cycling down a lane, two on a bike. As he didn’t really have much to do, I presume, he made rather a big deal of it, stopping us, lecturing us and, if I remember rightly, writing something down in a notebook with the obligatory stubby pencil that doesn’t work unless it’s licked several times. We listened patiently to his monologue, waited for him to cycle off round the corner and immediately got back on and continued our journey. Unfortunately, he had the measure of us and had obviously decided to see whether we’d obeyed him or not. He sneaked up behind us to redeliver his lecture at double the volume. As soon as the words ‘tell your parent’ were ejected from his mouth we knew we were in trouble, being kids who were more scared of our parents than a policeman. Is that a good thing? I presume so, unless your parents are criminals trying to lure you into a life of crime. In fact, I don’t think he did tell our parents, wisely deciding that the threat was enough to scare the daylights out of us.

  My second crime involved stealing some sweets from the village post office. Temptation became too much when I realised I’d spent all my pocket money and was forced, while others purchased Fruit Salads and the like, to stand and watch without getting satisfaction. So I took the risk and grabbed a handful when I thought the shopkeeper wasn’t looking. She, however, possessed the unsettling physiological power of 360-degree vision and, to my horror, I was stopped on the way out of the shop. This time I’m afraid my parents were involved, despite my attempts to persuade her that it wouldn’t happen again and therefore we could just forget about it. I suspect the degree of reaction I got from my parents (excessive) was more to do with the embarrassment I’d caused than the seriousness of the crime. Suffice it to say, they didn’t seem proud of my skills.

  Since then I don’t think I’ve committed any serious crime, apart from perhaps some very grave fashion faux pas.

  The rest of my primary school days were filled with navy-panted sports days, muddy shenanigans in various wooded settings, Brownies (not brownies, I don’t think those delicious offerings had made it over from America by that point), church fetes, sunny days, snow, playing and living a life untouched by the horrors of the world.

  And there were, of course, holidays and visits to the seaside. By that point both sets of grandparents lived by the sea, my dad’s parents in Hastings and my mum’s parents at Selsey Bill. So there were many days spent on the beach in cloudy, windy weather, stabbing at the pebbles with a spade and being tormented by wasps.

  My major memory of Hastings is my granddad standing on a breakwater in his swimming trunks shouting, ‘Watch this, kids!’, diving in, hitting his head on a rock and coming up out of the murky green sea with an enormous cut on his head. We all tried not to laugh at first, but when we realised he was going to be OK, we laughed a lot.

  Holidays were mainly taken in England. We spent one summer, although it could have been winter it was so cold, in Snowdonia and one day my dad and I decided to scale Snowdon. My brothers wimped out for some reason I can’t recall. So we set off with very little except some water, my dad reassuring me that there was a café at the top where we could have a good old stuff. On our way up, we heard a long and chilling scream and subsequently discovered someone had fallen and been killed, a terrible experience I couldn’t get out of my mind for months.

  The horrors of the world did occasionally surface, when my brothers and I discovered where my parents hid magazines and papers considered to be too painful/violent/rude for the consumption of children, but I kind of wish we hadn’t. Holding all that off for as long as possible would have been the preferred option.

  CHAPTER SIX

  DISGUSTING OF TUNBRIDGE WELLS

  So I left primary school behind, but not with a heavy heart, because I was excited about going to big school. I had passed my eleven plus, that ancient exam which we had in the old days that weeded out the brighter kids. Unfortunately, our nearest grammar school was twenty-five miles away in Tunbridge Wells and involved a two-hour journey each way. My mum and dad didn’t want me to sit on a bus for four hours a day, so they arranged for me to go to the local comprehensive, a mere five miles or so away.

  I started at this school and settled in well until an incident occurred which changed the way I felt about the place.

  Before I started secondary school I had been learning to play the violin. At the time it was a bit of a chore. I had also learned to play the piano. My Grandma Grace, my dad’s mum, had been pretty musical and could bash out a few well-known tunes on the piano, and my dad had learned the violin at school and toured with the school orchestra, so it seemed natural that I learned to play instruments as well. My dad’s old violin would occasionally be brought out and sawed away at. The problem with a violin is that unless you are Yehudi Menuhin (for older readers) or Vanessa Mae (for younger ones) the playing of the violin alone, without any accompaniment, is not a pleasant experience. It sounds hideous to my ears and something that should only be done in front of relatives you would quite like to go home early.

  So although I did like music, and I loved some of the classical stuff my dad played on Sunday mornings, I knew I could never aspire to it, so i
t was all a bit depressing. I had had piano lessons in the nearby town with a white-haired old lady called Miss Blount, and although she was pleasant, she didn’t fire me up with the requisite passion to be a brilliant pianist. I plonked away at ‘Greensleeves ‘and the like, and I’m sure it was only my parents who stood there proudly while I faltered through stuff. Everyone else who was forced to listen to it probably couldn’t wait to escape.

  My brother Matt was the musical one, but at the first opportunity he moved off the piano and taught himself to play the guitar. Later on, when he lived in Germany, he was in a band for a long time that looked like T-Rex after a spell in the trenches. He never made it as a pop star, which is the fantasy of all teenage boys, but he is one of those people who can pick up a guitar and knock out a few tunes you can sing to, which is a useful skill.

  Anyway, back to the incident. Unbeknownst to me, the staff at my new school, wanting to get more kids to take up instruments, had plotted with my violin teacher a way of demonstrating the joy of learning music. I turned up at school one day with my violin for a lesson, only to be told I was playing in assembly in front of the whole school. I could have done with a TARDIS at this point, as the prospect filled me with horror, and, true to expectations, it went as badly as it possibly could. I shook, I sweated, I went bright red and I sawed away at the bloody violin producing a sound that grated worse than white noise. The audience, on the other hand, shuffled their feet, giggled, snorted, yawned and blew the occasional raspberry, the subtext of which was ‘You uppity, talentless, show-offy, middle-class little twat.’ I was mortified and wondered if I could ever walk among them again with my head up. To punish my teacher for this abasement, I gave up the violin and stood fast against his pleas to reconsider.