A Young Man's Passage (13 page)

We were terribly exclusive, guarding our ‘area’ in the refectory with all the enthusiasm of Nicholas van Hoogstraten. Others were welcome to visit, such as Janine, a pretty, ringleted girl, all long skirts and lace shawls. (She turned up in tears once because a Jamaican woman had stopped her as she walked through Deptford Market with her Asian boyfriend and told her, ‘Pork and beef don’t mix . . .’) Stephanie, luxurious of hair and buxom as a Rubens nude, contributed a kind of rustic Diana Dors glamour. There were a couple of Steves, one who wore military jackets all the time and would clearly have been happier at Sandhurst. When Linda asked him for a cigarette one day he made the unfortunate response, ‘I’m sorry, I’m down to my last seven.’ Steve McNicholas was funny and delightful, but thought better of uni life and left to form a band called Pookiesnackenburger. Later he co-created
Stomp!
, the innovative stage show where young men in vests make a lot of noise with dustbins. Chantal was a cashmere sweater and pearls kind of gal, destined to fall victim to one of my early attempts at audience humiliation.

We soon took over the Drama Society. No one else got a look-in. We hijacked the annual budget for the culmination of our ambitions at that time: a fully staged production of Coward’s
Private Lives
, to run for a full week in the main theatre. Directed by Neen and starring Linda and myself in the roles of Amanda and Elyot. Family and friends came to watch.

Dear M and D,

It’s been one surprise after another. After your
grande
arrival on Wednesday, when I was taking my make-up off yesterday I had a message that Noreen was downstairs. I told her about the show when I rang her at Christmas and she remembered the dates. Such a surprise as I haven’t seen her for ages. Hasn’t changed, mind you, still wistful and old-fashioned, but it was nice to see her. We had nearly a full house last night so it should be packed out tonight. The record player broke, so we had to improvise our way out of that. My nerves vanished after the first act and I really enjoyed myself. I recorded it too. I wonder who will turn up to surprise me tonight?

Went out to dinner with Linda’s shoplifting cousin after the show last night. (She’s in court this morning.) It was very embarrassing but highly amusing. She complained about the wine and the price of everything then demanded breast of chicken and nothing else in her curry! But she did pay the bill – with some very suspicious-looking luncheon vouchers.

No more news really. It was lovely to see you all.

Be home soon as you know,

Love Julian

Emboldened by this success we decided college life needed a bit of light relief, so we staged a series of lunchtime cabaret shows called
Camping on a Shoestring
. Again the stars would be Linda and me, and Neen would produce. What others thought of our shameless ambitions and relentless self-promotion I don’t know, but there was no stopping us. We booked the coffee bar for a week, renamed it ‘Nina’s Nooky’ and set about putting some sketches together. There was an advert in the
Stage
selling ‘100 music hall gags’, ‘100 drag queen gags’ and, intriguingly, ‘100 ad libs and heckler stoppers’ for £2 per assortment, so we sent off for them. Most of them weren’t very funny, but we got one or two gems such as: ‘My father was a boxer . . . and my mother was a cocker spaniel.’ And: ‘Who did your hair for you? Was it the council?’

Then in a dusty old shop in the backstreets of Soho, we found a pile about four feet high of Victorian musical monologues and humorous songs. They were dated and sentimental, occasionally even offensive: ‘Wot’s De Good Ob Grousin’? (An Old Nigger’s Philosophy)’ being just one example, but we found a few that were definitely worth a spin: ‘I May Not Be Clever But I’m Clean!’ sounded like a winner, as did ‘I Wonder If My Mother Ever Knew?’ and ‘The Man With The Swollen Head’.

The show started with Linda and me dressed as two cleaning ladies called Glad and May. The agony of their domestic drudgery was made bearable because they at last had a captive audience.

‘Hello, I’m Glad and I’m glad to be here.’

‘And I’m May and I may be glad to be here!’

We were loud and anarchic and had a number of catchphrases: ‘I’m human, you’re human, everybody is human’, and ‘It’s uncanny and unnatural’.

‘We used to work in a factory. Monkeys could have done the work we was doing – hairy monkeys covered in hair – then one day in walked Lionel Fart. He took one look at me – one look was all it took – and he said, “You, May, have got something that not every woman has got.” And Glad had a little bit herself, tucked away within. Anyway, he whipped it out, there and then – he whipped his tape recorder out, and it was next stop Hollywood.’

At a given moment we’d whip off our headscarves and Oxfam coats (mine was primrose yellow, Glad’s was hot pink) and underneath we were Amanda and Elyot once more, but a Vaudeville version. As ridiculously posh as Glad and May were common, we over-enunciated horribly: ‘I’ve nehever lohoved hany hwun helse for han hinstant!’

Although we can’t sing we then launched into ‘Someday I’ll Find You’ and some of the musical monologues found in Soho.

Stephanie was allowed a show-stopping impersonation of ‘Carmen’, the Spanish tea lady from the refectory. (She would give us cut-price biscuits if the supervisor Olive wasn’t looking.) To the tune of ‘Don’t Cry For Me Argentina’ she sang: ‘Don’t cry for me, pretty lady, the truth is, it isn’t worth it, they say it cost fifteen and a half, I charge you twelve and a half, you don’t tell no one, you don’t tell Olive!’

Glad and May returned after Steph’s spot for the highlight of the show, the Handbag Competition. Linda would say, ‘Do you know, May, I feel like a rummage . . .’ which was our cue to dive into the audience and secure a bag each before they could be lifted to safety. ‘There’s a prize for who’s got the most interesting handbag . . .’ we told the audience before a callous and unrestrained autopsy of the contents.

It was a lot of studenty nonsense really, but these lunchtime shows were a hit so it was a natural progression for us to move on to
An Evening With Glad and May
, in which we were somewhat grander. ‘Both of us have gifts bestowed upon us by powers beyond the realms of your limited imaginations. Glad’s mother was a spiritualist, her father was a comedian – she’s a happy medium.’

Somewhat influenced by Dame Edna Everage and Bette Midler, we called ourselves ‘Housewives Extraordinaire’, and got our friend Simon ‘Hunky’ Hughes to interview us as ‘Michael Parkinbox’.

As May, I had a troublesome son called Janice.

‘I was just tidying his room the other day, Glad, and I wasn’t prying – but I’d just rolled back the carpet when I found . . . this! A suspender belt. It’s uncanny.’

‘And unnatural,’ added Glad.

‘It came as a shock when I’d just forced the lock

Of the wardrobe and out fell the gear.

There was lipstick and rouge and a dress that was huge,

And earrings, one for each ear.

He must look a sight, I thought, dressed up at night,

So that’s where he goes after tea.

While I finish the grub and Ken’s gone to the pub,

He’s upstairs looking prettier than me!’

We seemed to have a penchant for comic rhymes. Glad’s husband, Vick, had recently expired after a nasty cough and cold. (‘Towards the end he was known as “Vick the nasal spray”.’) Being vegetarian she buried him somewhere leafy and green: the cabbage patch. She spared no expense and on his gravestone was the following inscription:

Vick was vegetarian,

I thought him such a hoot.

He used to nibble nuts

And he liked a bit of fruit.

We didn’t rehearse a great deal, and when we did we just made each other laugh. I’m quite sure much of the act was funny only to ourselves. We enjoyed being reckless and making it up as we went along. It was an antidote to all the ‘proper’ plays we were involved with, and with each other there, we had no fear of being lost for words. Mostly, everyone waited for the handbag competition, a hit-and-miss but rather daring bit of improvisation. I hooked out Chantal’s handbag on one occasion and read the entries for her diary that week. Unfortunately I shared with everyone the news that she had visited the doctor on the Wednesday with itchy nipples. Chantal never spoke to me again. Do hope the problem has cleared up by now.

Linda and Neen were both a year older than me, and wiser in every sense. I had just left my sheltered, suburban life in Teddington. Linda had a council flat in Deptford and Neen shared a house in Clapham where everyone had half a shelf in the fridge and adhered to a cleaning rota stuck on the back of a door. Both had boyfriends, past and present. Slowly I absorbed their feminist ideals, left-wing politics and sense of style. My carefully ironed shirts and colour-coordinated tank tops, ‘loon’ trousers and slip-on shoes would not do. My hair was worn in a carefully blow-dried sweep with a fetching side-parting. I don’t remember a specific makeover but if Linda shrieked and Neen hooted when I arrived at college I knew I’d made a mistake. Slowly I transformed, finding collarless granddad shirts in thrift shops, braces, baggy trousers and boots. I had two favourite T-shirts, one with a big picture of Hilda Ogden, the other featuring Bet Lynch.

‘Let’s bleach your hair,’ said Linda one day and I let her. She produced a packet of Born Blonde and set to work, not allowing me to see the results until she’d finished. Every few minutes she’d poke around under the cap and say ‘Nothing’s happening’. The last time she looked her eyes widened and she rushed me into the bathroom to shampoo the bleach out.

‘Oh Jules! Jules!’ she said with horror when I’d towelled myself dry. Only then was I given access to the mirror. The result was a garish mix of sunset orange streaked with primrose yellow. We both collapsed in mortified hysterics.

‘Get me a bottle of gin!’ I said when I could speak, and Linda rushed out to the off-licence. (I’d got a taste for cheap gin that term.) It didn’t seem so bad when I was drunk, but it was. You do occasionally see teenage boys at bus stops with frightful hair that is clearly the result of a similar home-bleaching experiment. I went around for months like that. Linda laughed every time she saw me. I broke the news of my look to my parents by letter:

Now we come to the little matter of my hair. I enclose the photograph to let you become accustomed to the change before I descend on Wiltshire
au
flesh. I think the village shop and the priest should be given prior notice but we’ll let the rest discover for themselves. Oh, what a mistake it is. I collapsed in a heap on the bathroom floor when I saw it and venturing out has become a major ordeal. The refectory came to quite a standstill this morning.

I couldn’t see my friends – I just heard them screaming!

However, it won’t last for ever and when I’m old and grey

I may be glad I did such an outrageous thing.

We went on pro-abortion marches, discussed whether or not all men were potential rapists and loathed Margaret Thatcher. Once I went with Linda to a meeting of the SWP, although I was rather bored by the comrades. One night at a party I was handed a joint. Forgetting my promise to my mother, I took it. After a few puffs I fainted, and when I came round was sure I’d had a terrible accident.

‘Get me some trousers!’ was all I said, repeatedly.

FOR MY SECOND
year as a resident at Blackheath Rise I shared a bedroom with Steve, who wasn’t half as much fun as Nick had been. Although he never vomited in my fruit bowl, he snored. Not just heavy breathing and the occasional snort but a proper foghorn, window-rattling snore.

‘Steve! You’re snoring!’ I used to say every few minutes. He was most apologetic and took to bringing his boots over to my bedside before retiring so I could throw them at him when it all got too much. Since I aimed for his head with some success, he devised a new method: gaffer-taping a boot to the end of a broom handle so I could prod him out of his slumbers a little less violently.