Dear Fatty (23 page)

The second time you took my breath away with a suggestion was when I had been very ill with hepatitis A, remember, in about 1994 or so? I knew nothing about hepatitis until I
contracted
this vile version of it, and turned bright yellow and felt like my skin was on inside out, I was so raw. The sheets hurt me in the bed. It was awful. The local health-and-safety bods came to visit me with their clipboards to check what I’d eaten in the previous two weeks, since hepatitis A usually involves someone unhygienic preparing food without washing their hands. A better question would have been what
hadn’t
I eaten?! I’d been to restaurants, had sandwiches, eaten at home. It was impossible to identify a culprit and I was too weak to bother, I just wanted to be well again. I knew I was ill because I didn’t eat and that never,
ever
happens otherwise. I was just starting to feel a tiny bit stronger when you came to stay and nurse me better. I clearly remember the familiar smell of your lovely stew cooking downstairs and feeling hungry for the first time. I knew it would give me strength. You brought me a bowl and I struggled to sit upright in the bed. As I slurped away greedily at it, you plonked yourself down on the bed and said, very seriously, ‘Right, madam. Now you’re feeling a bit better, I want to know how you got hep A in the first place. Don’t shilly-shally about, tell me the truth, come on.’ First of all, I was shocked to hear you describing it as hep A, in such a knowing streetwise sort of fashion, but of course by this time you were working with a lot of drug addicts and you were quite au fait with street talk. Nevertheless, it was odd to hear it trip off your tongue so casually. I tried to explain about it being a kind of food poisoning but you were having none of it. ‘Oh come on, admit what you’ve been doing, we’re all grown-ups here. I know how you catch this, Dawn. Just say it.’ Say what? I didn’t know what you were referring to. Did you think I was a crack whore or using dirty needles or something?
What
?! And then you said it, the most remarkable thing you’ve ever said, and which I cannot ever forget. ‘You’ve been rimming, haven’t you? Admit it. Yes, you’ve been rimming. Rimming your own partner is bad enough Dawn, and very dangerous, but rimming strangers can lead to exactly this. A massive dose of hep A. You’ve only got yourself to blame. So, be sensible and just stop rimming in future. Now eat up your stew and I’ll rub your back for you.’ Oh. My. Actual. God.

My favourite faux pas of yours (sorry, Mum, but you
are
hilarious sometimes, and long may you continue to be!!) was when I managed to get great tickets to see Elton John perform on the Argyle ground at Home Park in Plymouth. Argyle hadn’t hosted a rock event before and the city was abuzz. I’d bought tickets for eight or so of us in the family and you were due to babysit for Jack, who was too young to go. Only as the hours crept by did I realise you were a bit put out about it. I saw the ol’ lemon lips setting in and asked you what was wrong, remember? You told me that you were sad not to be going, that you adored Elton John, that he was one of your favourite singers ever, that you would’ve loved to go. Cousin Keiren stepped up and heroically sacrificed his ticket for you in favour of an evening of fun with Jack instead, and a chance to show his auntie Roma how much he loved her. What a guy! I apologised for my oversight. ‘I didn’t know how much you loved Elton’s music,’ I ventured. ‘Yes,’ you replied, ‘he’s wonderful. My absolute favourite song of his is “Ben”. I love that one.’

After we’d all changed our pants from laugh damage, we explained that song was in fact Michael Jackson’s and we giggled all the way to the stadium. Just before the show we popped in
to
say hi to Elton, who is always the most genial of geniuses. I felt a daft amount of pride that he’d come to our stadium, and I wanted to show our support as a family. Sorry if I embarrassed you, Mum, but I just
had
to tell him what you’d said. It was worth the bruise on my ankle when you kicked me for doing it! When he was halfway through his blisteringly great set, Elton said loudly into his mike, ‘This one is for Dawn’s mum, Roma. Sorry it isn’t your favourite but maybe this will do instead. It’s “BEN … NIE AND THE JETS”!’ The song boomed out over our hallowed stadium, we winked at each other and sat back to lap it up. Thanks for all the laughs, Mum. I know they weren’t intentional but they were delightsome all the same.

‘Whose love remains the same? Your mother.’

Yay, yay and thrice yay to that …

PLEASE FIND BELOW
my completed application form to become a lifelong friend and loyal admirer of Liza Tarbuck. I hope my application meets with a favourable response. I await your reply with anticipation and a small bout of the belly flutters.

I KNEW YOU
were ill. I knew that. I didn’t know
how
ill. It turns out you and Mum were very clever at concealing any trouble from Gary and me. We have spoken about it, he and I, trying to think back and work out if we’d ever noticed anything amiss while we were growing up. Here’s what I know: I know you suffered dreadfully with migraines and often had to lie in a quiet dark room until you could see properly again, or until the punishing headaches and sickness had abated. I know that leaving the RAF and rejoining civvy street was extremely stressful for you. You’d been in the air force since you were a teenager, and forces life is so singularly regimented and controlled. You knew exactly what was expected of you there. You knew your projected career path and all its opportunities for promotion. Civilian life was full of uncertainties and responsibilities you weren’t used to. I think, as well, that you missed the camaraderie of the air force.

As the eldest son, you were expected to take over from Grandad at the newsagent in Ernesettle. I don’t know if you ever really wanted to; it didn’t occur to me to ask you. I know you adopted some more forward-thinking procedures in your running of the business, possibly changes that didn’t pan out quite the way you might have hoped. I know the constant barracking from customers about late papers (not your fault – there were endless train strikes back then) was difficult for you. You were used to being in charge in the air force, where your men didn’t answer
back
, where the only barracking came from higher ranks whose job it was to command you. Here you were, being taken to task over situations you could not affect or control. It seems that you spent a great deal of time and effort trying to implement standards of fairness and motivation among your staff and the paper boys, which of course in the RAF had been routine, taken care of and expected. But when you work for yourself the buck always stops with you, and only you. On top of this, you had the shadow of Grandad at your shoulder with whom this business had been so clearly identified, for so long. Everyone in Ernesettle knew him, they called him ‘Father’, and his stamp on that shop was indisputable. You were the new blood. Gentler and quieter. Traits that are often mistaken for weakness in business. I think it was difficult for you to pick up the baton and very difficult for him to relinquish it.

The grinding erosion of your energy, working those slavishly long hours, was evident. You aged a lot in a relatively short time. I remember you regularly leaving the house at around four in the morning and not returning until nine or ten at night. It didn’t help that, for a large chunk of your time at the shop, we lived 40 miles away in Cornwall and the long drive back and forth was wearing. On days when the whole family made the journey, say a Monday morning, the rest of us would sleep through the trip in sleeping bags on the floor in the back of the van, while you fought your exhaustion to stay awake and get us all there safely. That part of the stress was lessened when we moved to Old Ferry Road, in Saltash, closer to Plymouth, but the work hours were still ludicrously long.

There were issues with debt too. When you left the RAF you
assumed
the entire costs of the school fees and mortgage, which I know were beyond our means. I also know that, despite the money problems inside our own family, you were supporting other people, specifically your brother-in-law who needed help with his own newsagent’s in Devonport. I know that after a lot of agonising you eventually sold the Ernesettle shop, which must have been difficult for lots of reasons, and I know you started a business breeding rabbits! Why or how I
don’t
know, because I was in the States when most of this change took place. As always, I knew very little of the difficulties for two reasons: you were skilled at hiding them, and I was far too wrapped up in my own exciting world, utterly ignorant of any signs of your depression, which, I’m sure, is just as you would have wished.

Mum knew the financial situation was bad and had taken steps to avert a crisis. Mum is a problem solver, and made of strong stuff. You know that, you married her. Much as she would hate to admit it, I do think that when it comes to survival she is a chip off the old Grandma Lil block. Unlike Lil though, she would do anything to protect her nest and everything in it. When money was tight, Mum knew she had to find something other than the shop to sustain us. So, ever-resourceful, she did a bit of research and took herself off on a course to train to become a ‘canine beautician’. For a woman whose skill-base was in bookkeeping, this might have seemed a surprising choice. Not really. She loved and understood dogs, she was a hard worker, she was prepared to learn and she knew there was a gap in the market. While Mum was on her course to learn this bizarre trade, I remember you, Dad, locating and procuring a shop on Market Street in Plymouth – I think it was an ‘adult’ shop when you
leased
it – and turned it into ‘Felicity’s Pet Parlour’. Porn to poodles in one fell swoop! I remember how bloody furious Mum was when she found out what name you had registered it under. Felicity is her proper, Christian name but she absolutely hates it. She hates how pretentiously posh she thinks it sounds and how much it doesn’t suit her. She says it was an act of sadism by Lil. She
hates
it. So, of course we have always teased her by using it and for you to put the parlour in that name was a great gag, though perhaps a step too far. Phenomenal courage on your part there.

Once she recovered from the Felicity horror, she set about making the shop a success. Downstairs was a pet shop, selling all kinds of pet supplies; from the necessary, like food, to the novelty, like jewel-studded collars and leads for the more barking of the pooches and their owners. There was cat-wormer and budgie seed and flea powder and pigs’ ears and, of course, there was the livestock. We had parrots, some fish, occasional kittens, but mostly small rodents like gerbils and hamsters. I remember working in the shop in the holidays with Nicky or Nikki and having to sex the hamsters. Not
have
sex with them, that would just be silly and complicated, but rather, decide which gender they were when they were chosen by customers. Some little kids would spend all day choosing, with their noses pressed up against the cages, then rejecting, then rechoosing the perfect rodent chum. Of course, even though Mum had shown us how to do it (it seemed like it was the difference of one small flap of skin. Just like humans, really), we often did it wrong and sold Hattie Hamster to a little boy who called her Thor or Steve Austin or Hercules or Stan.

Upstairs, Mum had her parlour. ‘Parlour’ conjures up images
of
poofy striped pink chairs and beehive hairdos, ruched curtains and fluffy handbag dogs. It wasn’t like that at all, was it? There was a row of kennels, some big sinks and a central table where the drying and snipping took place. It was hot and smelly, and dangerous. Dogs generally don’t enjoy this process, so they try to kill you lest you dare to apply shampoo. I think they find it vaguely humiliating to stand in a sink, looking drenched and bedraggled. When they’re not wet, they are convinced their coats make them look big and tough, especially the chippy little ones, but when the water reveals their ratty scraggyness, all bravado and self-esteem swirl down the plug’ole along with the dirty doggy water. They become shivering wrecks trembling in fear of the imminent torture that is the dreaded hairdryer, and the worse torture that is the mockery they must endure when their doggy homies rib them about their visit to Felicity’s.