Stage Mum

by Lisa Gee

  Two things made it feel doable. Having only one child meant I wouldn’t have to factor in any additional school pick-ups, swimming lessons, packed lunches and screaming tantrums. And I work freelance. All I really need to get on with whatever I’m working on is my laptop, a book or two and a small square of reasonably clean floor. Table and chair optional, wireless internet access desirable. But I could, in theory at least, beetle away at whatever I was being paid to do and still become a stage mother. Not that I expected to become one. But I could. If I had to.

  About twenty-five minutes after she’d gone in, Dora resurfaced.

  ‘How was it?’ I asked.

  ‘Great,’ she said. ‘I’m hungry.’

  ‘Was it fun?’

  ‘Yes. Can I have a packet of crisps and a muffin and a drink?’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Singing. Can we get some food now?’

  ‘Did you have to sing all the different parts? Did you have to sing by yourself? Were the other children nice? Were the grown-ups nice?’

  ‘Please can I have some crisps and a muffin and a drink?’

  Further grilling (over a muffin and a bottle of that disgusting with-a-hint-of-fruit-and-a-ton-of-aspartame water that Dora loves and that I feel guilty about allowing her to drink sometimes – I drew the line at crisps as well) revealed that everyone, children and adults, was nice, but she didn’t know anybody’s name, except that there were two people in there called Jo, one of whom had long curly hair and played the piano, that they’d all had to sing parts of ‘The Lonely Goatherd’ solo, although they’d yodelled in chorus, and that the youngest children had been asked which parts of the harmony in ‘The Sound of Music’ they wanted to sing.

  ‘You’ve done very well to get this far,’ I said

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I’m still hungry. Please can I have a packet of crisps?’

  There was no news for another week. Fortunately, we were all very busy. Dora had plenty of play-dates to keep her occupied over half-term and Laurie and I were hectic with work and wedding planning. As we were having a Jewish do (hence the rabbi and the bagels), I needed a veil – so that Laurie could do the traditional thing and, before the main ceremony, peek underneath it to check that he was getting hitched to the right woman. Or, at least, the one he expected to be marrying. Because of all the friends Dora had invited to be bridesmaids, it had to be a long one. Thank heavens for eBay. Then Dora and I popped down to Bournemouth for a couple of days to visit Lilli. She helped sew tiny gold beads on to my BEAUTIFUL VEIL PERFECT FOR YOUR WEDDING NEW COST £150! (£24.99 + postage) so it went with the dress I’d decided to wear: a tight-fitting, knee-length gold brocade vintage number that my maternal grandmother wore to my parents’ wedding.

  On our return to London, we heard.

  This is to let you know that Dora will be recalled for THE SOUND OF MUSIC but I have no other details such as dates at the moment. All such details will come by email or by post when I know.

  Best wishes,

  Jo

  Oh Gawd. What if the next round clashed with our honeymoon? Couldn’t cut that short just to take Dora to an audition. Not without an entry in the Guinness Book of Records for the shortest ever marriage, anyway. Still, it would be a pity for her to miss it, especially as she wasn’t coming with us. My dad would just have to take her: it was all his fault, after all. But what if the details were sent by post and the letter arrived while we were away and we didn’t get it in time? Or we got it in time for her to be there, but not in time for her to learn whatever it was she needed to learn beforehand?

  After several minutes of frantic agonising over what might possibly happen when, and what all the implications might be, it occurred to me that what I was actually feeling anxious about was getting married and that this recall business was fairly simple to manage. So I emailed Jo to check when it might possibly happen and she confirmed that the next round wouldn’t be during our honeymoon, but there was a chance that Dora would be needed the day we were due to arrive back. I gave her my mobile number just in case. Sorted.

  In the event, we managed to get through both wedding and honeymoon without any Sound of Music-related interruptions, although the beautiful veil perfect for my wedding slipped sideways as, accompanied by a herd of small, over-excited children and my father and sister, I did my supposed-to-be-dignified processional walk from the front door, round the side of my father’s house, to the chuppah – the canopy under which the wedding ceremony takes place. As the repeated attempts to secure the veil delayed my appearance by several minutes (the walk should have taken thirty seconds – we’re not talking a hike round Hampton Court here), the rabbi leant forward to Laurie and whispered, ‘Are you sure she’s coming?’ I spent the entire ceremony looking like I’d lost a fight with a net curtain and the rabbi concluded his description of Laurie with the words ‘and so we can only hope, Lisa, that you are a practical person’. Oh dear.

  Two days after Laurie and I returned from our romantic trip to Tuscany, most of which we spent in a basic wooden cabin on an idyllic seaside campsite, where I thrashed him at table football and we tried, but failed, to ride a tandem, Jo sent the following email

  Dear Dora

  We are delighted to be able to offer you a further recall.

  DATE:

  Monday, 26 June

  VENUE:

  Pineapple Langley Street Covent Garden

  TIME:

  2.05 p.m.

  Please bring – the music that you have already learnt.

  A piece of prose or a poem not longer than one min to be recited by heart.

  A school letter indicating support for participation in the show, not just the audition. I already have this from some children.

  Since our return, Dora had been skipping round chanting parts of one of Michael Rosen’s poems, ‘Don’t’, which, she told me, formed the basis of a playground game. As it involved being instructed not to pour gravy on a baby, put ants in pants or throw fruit at the computer, I quietly hoped that she and her friends weren’t acting out the rhyme too literally, using props or torturing any small insects. The children had discovered the poem in one of the books in the classroom, so, with the teacher’s permission, we borrowed it, and that afternoon I timed Dora reading it.

  It was the ideal length and, whilst not very Sound-of-Music-ish, suited Dora’s bouncy personality perfectly, which saved me the trouble of sourcing something that was both appropriate (where to start?) and that she wouldn’t turn her freckly little nose up at. Besides which, she had virtually memorised it already. As there were only five days until the next audition, why give us both extra work? I typed it up on my computer and printed it out for Dora to learn completely by heart, which, as she nearly knew it anyway, didn’t take long. Then Laurie, who’s done a bit of acting and drama teaching in his time, helped her add more expression at one or two points, and tone it down at a few others. I found myself thinking that ‘Don’t’ might be a bit different from the other children’s offerings in a way that could possibly give Dora the edge. The little internal dragon was unfurling its wings, mewling softly, blowing smoke rings and preparing itself for a fight. A nice, constrained middle-class kind of fight, naturally: one that would take place almost entirely inside me. The creature was, I realised, my inner stage mother. There are whole schools of therapy based on the idea that it’s important to embrace and express one’s inner child. Should I do that with my inner stage mother, or would the right thing be to ignore and suppress her? If that was the right thing to do, could I do it?

  I encouraged Dora to recite her poem a couple of times on the way in to Covent Garden, but pretty soon she’d had enough and told me to stop and I did what I was told. There were a lot of stairs at Pineapple, and a café, so while we were waiting (early again) I bought Dora an apple and a bottle of unflavoured water. I’d made sure to feed her before we left home on something with no milk or cheese or yoghurt in it, as I’d overheard someone at the last audition saying th
at they should avoid eating dairy before singing, because it could make them all mucusy. As instructed, we’d brought the music she’d learned, a copy of the poem and a letter of agreement from the school. ‘Hmmm,’ Mrs Kendall had frowned. ‘She’ll be in Year Two. Missing school in her SATs year. I’m not sure I approve.’ But after I’d explained that there were loads more rounds of auditions to go and hundreds of children still in the running, she’d signed a letter to say that the school was happy for Dora to be in the show. ‘You never know. She’s got this far. She might just be in with a chance.’ She smiled.

  I did manage not to stick my fingers in my ears and shout ‘LA LA LA LA LA LA’, but only just. ‘She might be in with a chance’ was the position I was trying to avoid coming round to. Not because I didn’t want Dora to get a part, but rather because I didn’t want to think about the possibility that it might happen. Although I might not be the most practical person in the world, I am emphatically – and by choice – not a fantasist. Having been obsessed with Champion the Wonder Horse, Dr Who and The New Avengers during my impressionable early years, by the age of eight I’d moved on from pretending to be a pony to daydreaming up an entire alternative existence in which I led a team of international troubleshooting detectives called the Black Cats. We wore black catsuits (well, this was the 1970s), flew speedily to trouble spots using personal helicopter-like transportation devices that strapped around our waists, and communicated via state-of-the-art walkie-talkie systems (mobile phones weren’t invented). In my daydreams I was lithe and athletic. This was in stark contrast to my usual painful clumsiness, which was so extreme that my mother sometimes wondered if I might have sustained minor brain damage affecting my motor skills when deprived of oxygen during the birth process. Eventually, finding the transition from dream life to real life too painful to negotiate on a regular basis, I chose to anchor myself in what passes for reality. It took more than a decade to reach that point and I could just as easily have gone the other way.

  Before I let Dora eat her apple or drink her water, I made sure we found the lady with the clipboard, made small talk, got Dora’s sticker and handed over the school letter. I tried to read what was on the clipboard to see if I could work out how many children they were seeing, and which parts they might be being considered for, but I couldn’t, although a G in front of Dora’s name could, I thought, stand for Gretl. Judging from the length of the list (many sheets of paper) and how crammed the café area was (there was only enough space at any of the picnic-style tables-and-benches to accommodate one buttock), there were still hundreds in the running.

  Fifteen minutes before her audition was due to start, Dora had eaten her apple and drunk about half her water. I suggested she save the rest for when she went in, and took her to the loo. She protested that she didn’t need to go, but I insisted. ‘You don’t want to have to run out of your audition.’ She pulled a face but complied. While I waited for her I asked another mum, who was brushing her daughter’s silky blonde hair, how old her child was. ‘She’s seven,’ she replied proudly, ‘but she sings like a ten-year-old.’

  ‘That’s nice,’ I said, feeling I ought to reciprocate in kind. But what should I tell her in return? ‘My daughter’s six but she sings like Shirley Bassey’? ‘My daughter is quite good at ballet’? ‘My daughter watches TV like a pro’? In the end I blurted out, ‘My daughter’s face is quite big, so she shows up well on stage.’ Which, along with her big voice, was something I’d noticed during school assemblies. The other mother looked slightly shocked.

  When I look at Dora I am, sometimes, silenced by her breathtakingly big-eyed, radiantly cheeky beauty. Of course I am. I’m her mother. I also think she’s very funny, even witty; clever; sometimes wise beyond her years, and talented in ways that often take me by surprise and leave me slightly in awe (though obviously I’d never let her know about the awe bit). But although I think she’s fantastic, I know, as her mother, it’s my job to think that. And it feels wrong to big her up to complete strangers. It’s almost like walking around wearing a t-shirt with ‘I’m brilliant, I am’ written on it in huge letters, then winking and pointing at it every time you catch someone’s eye. It’s not that I think we should all go around being demurely modest in a head-bowed, ribbons-and-bonnets don’t-show-your-ankles Victorian kind of way. I just wouldn’t expect anyone to believe me if I told them how brilliant my child was. For starters, I’m not convinced that any of us can achieve the detachment and perspective necessary to judge our children (or our parents, spouses or siblings for that matter) accurately. Nor do I think, in most circumstances, that we should even try. Which doesn’t mean that we should be blind to their faults or their talents, just that we should be aware of our proper and necessary bias.

  A few minutes later Dora’s name was called. I stuffed the sheet music and poem into her hands. She gave the music back, saying she didn’t need it, but took the poem. ‘Good luck!’ I called as she headed off. ‘Have fun.’ ‘I will,’ she shouted, skipping off without a backward glance as she was led off down a corridor, along with about fifteen other children.

  I don’t remember talking to anyone while I was waiting for her to come out again. I think I just stared at people, and eavesdropped. ‘I hardly got to say any of my poem,’ one girl from the previous group complained to her father. ‘One of the girls completely forgot the thing she’d learned,’ a boy told his mum quietly. ‘She cried.’ I tried not to think about whether Dora would remember her poem. I suspected she’d probably be quite good at reciting it – but what did I know? There was no predicting what might happen if conditions weren’t right. At the end of the ballet school show a year and a half ago – the one at which Dora had sung ‘Do-Re-Mi’ – there had been a slight incident. Carl-the-pianist had been so impressed by her singing that he’d suggested to Adele-the-teacher that Dora join with a couple of older girls to sing another solo – a short part of ABBA’s ‘Thank You For the Music’ – in the finale. All had gone swimmingly in rehearsal, but on the first of the two nights, disaster struck. A big girl accidentally sat so that her voluminous tutu settled itself over the microphone that Dora had been instructed to sing into. Unprepared for this eventuality, Dora didn’t know what to do, and consequently did nothing, except look distressed and uncomfortable. She felt awful, and so did I. The following night – the last – the problem was, happily, solved: one of the bigger girl singers held a microphone under Dora’s nose and started the singing with her.

  Dora bounced out of her audition bubblier than a can of shaken lemonade, which was quite scary, but more informative than usual. This time she couldn’t stop talking about what had happened, and needed no prompting whatsoever. She’d got all the way to the last stanza of her poem before they stopped her reciting, and had remembered to cross her eyes and stick out her tongue on the ‘Don’t pull faces’ line. ‘We played games,’ she told me excitedly. ‘We had to line up with the tallest at one end and the shortest at the other. We got that right. I was at one end,’ she added. ‘Then we had to line up again in order of who lives nearest and who lives most far away.’ She paused. ‘We had to work it all out by ourselves. I was on the end again. We got that wrong.’

  ‘Did any of the grown-ups say anything to you?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes. We all had to go up one at a time at the end and they said I was the loudest and clearest.’

  ‘In a good way?’

  I deserved Dora’s response: rolled eyes, raised eyebrows and a dismissive shrug. In fact, I deserved something louder and clearer. She hadn’t been told off for mucking about in class, shrieking at the library, or having a tantrum in the quiet coach of a train into which I had accidentally booked us. Of course being loud and clear in an audition was a good thing. It might mean, I thought, that she’d get another recall. This, on the one hand, would be another good thing. On the other, from what Jo had written in an earlier letter, it was likely that the auditions would continue through the summer. And would it be fair on Laurie if the process interfered
with our holiday plans? I could, I reckoned, possibly argue that as we’d already been on our honeymoon, it didn’t matter quite so much, but I wasn’t entirely sure whether that would be the right thing to do. What should my priorities be?

  There was also, on the new husband front, a decision to make about names. I had been married before – I was nineteen when we got hitched, we stayed together for ten years, split amicably and are still good friends – and had reverted to my maiden name after the divorce. I had also changed Dora’s surname to match mine when her father and I split up (am I difficult to live with?), and I wasn’t sure if it would be sensible to change either, or both our names again. Should we ditch our surname and take his? Should we go double-barrelled? Or should we save the hassle and expense of changing all the documentation and just stay as we were?

  A big envelope arrived four days later. It was Dora’s school sports day, and she was not happy.

  ‘I won’t win anything,’ she sobbed. ‘I don’t want to go.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter about winning. It’s about joining in and having fun.’

  ‘It’s not fun if you never win.’ Then she brightened up. ‘Perhaps I’ll come second in the potato-and-spoon race.’

  ‘I can’t run fast,’ I told her. ‘And it doesn’t matter. You’re good at lots of other things. You can’t be good at everything.’