In Search of Mary
Authors: Bee Rowlatt
In Search of Mary
The Mother of All Journeys
B
EE
R
OWLATT
ALMA BOOKS LTD
Hogarth House
32–34 Paradise Road
Richmond
Surrey TW9 1SE
United Kingdom
First published by Alma Books Limited in 2015
© Bee Rowlatt, 2015
Bee Rowlatt asserts her moral right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
ISBN
: 978-1-84688-378-1
eBook
ISBN
: 978-1-84688-385-9
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not be resold, lent, hired out or otherwise circulated without the express prior consent of the publisher.
CONTENTS
“I Feel Myself Unequal to the Task”
“In a Little Boat upon the Ocean”
“To Achieve That Moral Improvement within Half a Century”
Allons enfants de la matrie, le jour de gloire est arrivé
The Rainbow-Brick Road from Interconnectedness to Juicy Nubs
I’ve Drunk of These Cups and I’m Walking away
“Acquire Sufficient Fortitude to Pursue Your Own Happiness”
FOR JUSTIN:
MY OTHER HALF, MY BEST MATE,
MY LOVE
In Search of Mary
The Mother of All Journeys
Advertisement prefacing
Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark
:
The writing travels, or memoirs, has ever been a pleasant employment; for vanity or sensibility always renders it interesting. In writing these desultory letters, I found I could not avoid being continually the first person – “the little hero of each tale”. I tried to correct this fault, if it be one, for they were designed for publication; but in proportion as I arranged my thoughts, my letter, I found, became stiff and affected: I, therefore, determined to let my remarks and reflections flow unrestrained, as I perceived I could not give a just description of what I saw but by relating the effect different objects had produced on my mind and feelings whilst the impression was still fresh.
A person has a right, I have sometimes thought, when amused by a witty or interesting egoist, to talk of himself when he can win on our attention by acquiring our affection. Whether I deserve to rank amongst this privileged number, my readers alone can judge – and I give them leave to shut the book, if they do not wish to become better acquainted with me.
My plan was simply to endeavour to give a just view of the present state of the countries I have passed through, as far as I could obtain information during so short a residence; avoiding those details which, without being very useful to travellers who follow the same route, appear very insipid to those who only accompany you in their chair.
– Mary Wollstonecraft, 1796
Me too.
– Bee Rowlatt, 2015
PART ONE
Chapter One
There’s Something about Mary
I’m nineteen, and Paul and Nello are arranging my thong. It’s white diamante. We’re backstage in a corridor – dancers and musicians are rushing by in both directions. They yank it higher up my bum, chatting across me about my body shape and how I got on in rehearsals:
“She can’t do round kicks either, not high enough anyway.”
“Well yes, too balletic maybe?”
“Exactly – well, it’s not fucking
Swan Lake
, is it.”
It really isn’t
Swan Lake
. Nello is the entertainment boss at the Isla del Lago Theatre, and Paul is the captain of our troupe. Nello has a bright-black bubble perm and wanders around singing in an open towelling robe and patent shoes. Paul has bouffant hair and a face weathered by sarcasm. And he’s taken against me and my offending balletic arms. “Are you a
virgin
?” he sneers. I’m being heaved around like a farm animal, on my second day as a showgirl.
I’m scrabbling at the lower slopes of a steep learning curve. After years of dance training, this is my first ever professional gig. It follows a series of bizarre and innocence-murdering auditions. I’d trail down to London from my hometown of York, following little adverts in the back of
The Stage
newspaper. Some jobs were legit, others were not. It took a while to learn to decipher them. At one audition in London’s prestigious Pineapple Studios, we were shown a routine and made to repeat it again and again. After each performance a handful of girls were told to leave. An hour later I was still in, and my fear began to be tempered with a growing sense of triumph. But then the auditioner shouted: “OK girls, it’s a topless job. So get them out or leave.” Most of the girls obediently peeled down their leotards to reveal their breasts. A few of us walked out. I slowly made my way back to Victoria Coach Station in tears, vowing not to tell my mum.
But finally I’ve landed a proper job, and here I am. It hasn’t got off to the best of starts though. On my arrival, after watching the show, I go backstage into the dressing room to meet my new colleagues. I am met by the reflection of around a dozen almost naked women, staring at me in the large mirrors. Mirrors with – great joy – those light bulbs all around. Sequinned showgirl costumes and headdresses are strewn about like a disco-goddess crime scene. The dancers are still in full stage make-up, with the most enormous eyelashes. They look like those scary dolls with swivelling eyeballs that snap open and shut.
“This is Bee,” sighs Paul.
“Hi!” I say brightly, and then, to my very own horror: “I’m, er, taking a year out before university.”
The entire row of eyelashes snaps back to the mirrors, as every single one of the dancers blanks me. Anguished pause. They, like everyone else, hate students. And I’ve just dissed their profession as some kind of gap-year jollity. I stand there for quite a long time. Will any of them ever talk to me again?
And I don’t even know how to wear a thong properly. Hence these two, wrenching it up between my buttocks and adjusting me around it. The white diamante bra, the wired backpack with streams of huge feather boas bursting out, and the tiara – these are all very good indeed. And the thong, well, I’ll get there. But the silver high heels are a problem. I can’t dance in them. From the safety of my hometown and the old dance studios where I spent the hours around school, I’ve fallen into a parallel universe. Somewhere that is not what it looks from the outside. Somewhere glittery, but very very hard.
I may still be a teenager, but I consider myself pretty worldly – and a feminist to boot. I’ve got good A Levels and an inspirational mother. I enjoyed a quirky childhood of books and no Barbies. I’ve done all kinds of other jobs, and can clear a pub at last orders quicker than most. I propelled myself into this world to satisfy my desire to be a dancer, a proper real dancer. The dream of so many young girls. My childhood dream of my future self. And
this
is what it’s about?
After a week of rehearsals, I’m still hopeless. I cannot dance in those heels. If you’ve spent years training with your centre of gravity in one place, that’s hard to change. I keep toppling back. I hate the silver shoes, and kick them off after every rehearsal to examine the day’s blisters. My first night gets closer, and one of the dancers, a tall blonde called Debbie, takes me to one side. She warns me in the kindest possible way to keep the shoes on at all times: the gossip is that I may well get sacked and flown back home. The silver shoes go straight back on.
The day of my first show comes and I get furious diarrhoea, an unhappy condition for someone in a small white thong. The
fear is so paralysing that I can’t eat, and pass the hours praying that I will somehow die on my way to the theatre. Then they’d all be sad and say, “You know, she could’ve done OK at dancing in heels if she’d only survived that tragic lorry crash.”
But I don’t get squashed on my way to the theatre. I put on unfeasible quantities of make-up with shaking hands and warm up. The music comes up, we’re backstage, the lights come up – and out I burst. Huge feathers and all. Complete panic ensues. The intervening years have kindly blurred this moment: my mind doesn’t want to go there. But if I force it, I can see myself lurching around like a hallucinating goat, bumping into other dancers. They are screaming at me, maybe instructions, maybe to get out the fucking way. This is one of the worst memories that I own inside my head. From deep within this agony, I catch sight of the other troupe from the flamenco show. They’re watching the whole thing from the wings, eyes wide in delighted horror.
Somehow I survive. Nello says he’ll give me a second chance if I work on my high kicks and improve by the next night. I hide from Paul, the jaded captain. Debbie, the tall blonde, comes and gives me a hug, saying she was so scared in her first show she’d been made to stand and pretend to be a tree. She turns out to be a saviour, known to all as Aunty Debbie. Aunty Debbie’s been in the business since she was fifteen, but is now the oldest of the dancers and is completely ancient. She’s at least twenty-four.
Things get better quickly. I learn about “weigh day”, how to keep sweat out of your eyelash glue and how to keep tampon strings invisible during the high kicks. I learn to sleep during the day, not to get suntan lines, not to eat or drink before the
show and never, not ever, to get in the way of the principal dancer during a quick change. I move victoriously into a little bedsit flat of my very own, with half a kitchen and a balcony where my diamante laundry hangs out to dry. When I finally nail those pirouettes and round kicks in high heels, I’m there.
