Stage Mum

by Lisa Gee

  But, being six, by ten o’clock at night she was over the top and exhausted. So she quickly settled into the routine of coming out of the Palladium, climbing into the car and babbling out her news which was, in line with Emily Dickinson’s famous dictum, generally told slant. Because I was really curious to know, I would gently ask a couple of questions, trying to tease out exactly what she was talking about. This would exasperate her (why didn’t I get it from her first telling, which was, to her mind, completely clear?) and provoke a brief but intense tantrum, at the conclusion of which she’d pass out. When we arrived home I was usually able to find a parking place pretty close to the house, but even so, I couldn’t carry her from the car to her bed, so I had to wake her up again. She often lost it and, frankly, who could blame her?

  I was also pretty tired by this point, but usually managed to stay calm, and not do anything to up the ante. Even so, it was hard to get the right balance – and I can’t claim that I always did – and to judge when and where to draw the line. It’s easy to see why children who do this kind of thing can end up being over-indulged. Even though Dora was having the time of her life, I certainly felt there were moments when I needed to compensate for the pressure she was undoubtedly under: moments when I let behaviour that in other circumstances would have been completely unacceptable pass without comment, because she was so far past her sell-by date that there was no point trying to discipline her and I didn’t really feel it was her fault anyway. There were, however, also moments when – like any child – she took full advantage of the extra latitude she was allowed.

  Although the kids were now being taken out to restaurants to eat between sessions, we were asked to send them in on the Saturday of the technical rehearsals with a packed tea, as they still had so much to get through. As The Sound of Music was a period piece, Jo warned us, the boys would, one by one, be whisked off to the wigs department for a short back and sides. There was still a possibility that the girls who didn’t have one might need to have a fringe cut in. If Dora had to have one, I’d have to grin and bear it, but I really hoped she wouldn’t. I didn’t fancy going through that annoying, hairclip-laden process of growing it out over the next year.

  On the Saturday, Jo also reminded us that although it was all very exciting, the theatre was a place of work. She’d had a couple of complaints about the children’s behaviour. Could we please, she asked, ‘remind the older ones to set an example and the younger ones to do their best to listen’. And wished/instructed us to have ‘a restful weekend’.

  It wasn’t only the children that hadn’t been behaving. My previously reliable iBook had, for the past couple of weeks, also been playing up: freezing in a way that the operating system was, according to the marketing blurb, supposed to prevent. So, sadly, because Laurie was out entertaining other children, Dora was forced to give up part of her restful Sunday and accompany me to Brent Cross Shopping Centre, where someone at the Apple Store, whose job title was ‘genius’, would use technical brilliance to stun me by fixing my computer within the twenty-minute time slot the Apple website had allotted me.

  The sign in the window said, ‘At 4 p.m. today, Julie Andrews Edwards will be signing copies of her new children’s book The Great American Mousical.’

  We had parked up with minutes to spare before my 1.30 appointment and I’d made Dora run out of the multistorey car park into the shopping centre and walk down the escalator to ensure that we’d arrive not on time, but a bit early. She had complained, with some justification. As we sped up to W.H. Smith, I noticed a couple of queue control barriers outside and a few people sitting by the shop window, waiting. Must be a celebrity book signing, I thought, skidding to a halt to investigate, even though I suspected either Jamie Oliver or Jordan, neither of whom were of the remotest interest.

  But I was wrong.

  I blinked. Julie Andrews? At Brent Cross Shopping Centre? This afternoon? Now, I’m not usually remotely interested in meeting famous people, and wouldn’t go out of my way to do so. But there are exceptions – and right then, with Dora about to be in The Sound of Music, Julie Andrews was definitely one of them.

  ‘Do you want to stay and say hello to Julie Andrews?’

  ‘Who’s Julieandrews?’

  ‘Maria in The Sound of Music film, Mary Poppins in Mary Poppins. And in The Princess Diaries.’

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘She’ll be here. At four o’clock. We’ll have to buy her book.’

  ‘Can we do it now?’

  ‘No. I have to get my computer fixed first. Besides which, I don’t want to sit in a queue for over two hours just to get a book signed.’

  ‘I want to.’

  ‘Well, I have to get my computer fixed.’

  ‘Awww.’

  We reached the Apple Store and I hopped on to one of the high stools at the Genius Bar and told someone I was there. Dora struggled up on to the stool next to mine and watched while I got my computer out. A couple of minutes later, my name was called, and a Genius with a crew cut and a goatee beard took my computer and listened while I told him what was wrong. Then he pressed a couple of keys on my computer that I should have been able to press by myself and said, ‘I think that should do it. If it doesn’t, bring it in again. All I had to do was empty the and then clear the .’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  I’m usually fairly on the ball where computers are concerned, and if there hadn’t been someone tugging at my sleeve asking whether it was time to go and see Julieandrews yet, and telling me she was bored and hungry, I might have been able to make sense of what the ‘’ and ‘’ were so that I’d be able to empty and clear them myself in the future should the need ever arise. I was also rather hoping that it would take a bit longer to fix the laptop, so we wouldn’t have as long to wait in the Julie Andrews signing queue: I don’t enjoy window-shopping at the best of times, let alone with a bored six-year-old in tow asking repeatedly whether we could go and meet Julieandrews yet and demanding a good reason for my refusal to buy her a bag of chocolate-coated brazil nuts. Or almonds. Or raisins. She wasn’t fussy.

  So I stuffed my laptop into my backpack and we moseyed on back to W.H. Smith. Here, I bought two copies of The Great American Mousical and, as Dora wanted to start queuing straight away, and I couldn’t think of anything better to do, a cheap Barbie colouring book that came with four felt-tip pens, The Observer, a packet of crisps and two bottles of water. We took our places in the queue, after I’d read a notice that informed us that we could only have one book per person signed and that Ms Andrews Edwards wouldn’t do dedications, just sign her name. ‘How many books do you have?’ asked the man from Smith’s who was patrolling the queue, before giving us two pink raffle tickets: Ms Andrews Edwards was only going to sign 200 books, so we all had to be numbered.

  ‘Can we see her soon?’

  ‘No. We have to wait for almost two hours. Why don’t you colour in one of these pictures and give it to her? You could write her a letter too, if you like.’ I wanted to read my newspaper.

  Dora set to colouring in with a level of enthusiasm that would have been appropriate if she hadn’t been planning to hand the result to Julie Andrews: i.e. not very much. Although entirely capable of doing so, she didn’t bother to keep inside the lines, or pay much attention to whether the colours she was using were appropriate to the Barbie body-part she was applying them to. I couldn’t entirely blame her. Maybe colouring in does enhance the development of hand–eye coordination, but it has always struck me as a singularly futile activity, one designed merely to absorb little girls’ attention and stop them bothering their parents. Which would be okay if it actually worked, but it doesn’t, because it’s boring.

  When Dora had finished her desultory colouring, she started writing a note to Julie Andrews on the picture. ‘Hello Julie Andrews,’ she scrawled, in thick black, largely illegible felt-tip. ‘I’m going to be Gretil in The Sownd of Myoosick at the Paladyum. I hop you are well, love Dora.’

 
; I’ve finished,’ she announced, ripping the sheet carelessly out of the book and crumpling it slightly. ‘Can we see her now?’

  ‘Have some crisps,’ I said. ‘Do another picture.’

  ‘How much longer do we have to wait?’

  ‘Another hour and a half.’

  ‘I’m bored. Can we go back to the shop and get something else to do?’

  ‘No.’

  I turned back to my newspaper. I was quite enjoying sitting on the floor outside Smith’s with nothing much to do. Dora was semi-occupied with her colouring and her crisps. I browsed the paper and flicked through The Great American Mousical. It looked sweet and rather jolly and the illustrations were very cute indeed. At the end of the story there was ‘A Glossary of Theatrical Terms’ which I thought might come in handy over the next few weeks. I read Julie Andrews Edwards’s biography on the flyleaf. ‘While she is perhaps best known,’ it ran, ‘for her performances in Mary Poppins, The Sound of Music and The Princess Diaries, she has also been an author of children’s books for over thirty years.’ I didn’t know that. Above her biography was a photograph, in which she looked as perfect as ever, wearing a pink sweater and looking sensibly, grown-uply beautiful. Beneath her biography was a brief paragraph about Emma Walton Hamilton: ‘Julie Andrews’s daughter as well as her coauthor’, and then another about Tony Walton, the illustrator, Emma’s father.

  I started wondering about what she’d be like in person and whether we should tell her about what Dora was doing. Given that we’d have, at my reckoning, about thirty seconds in her company, would it be rude to mention it: ‘Hello, Julie Andrews, how are you, my daughter’s going to be in The Sound of Music. Thank you for signing our book. Bye.’ Or should we just say hello quietly, smile mysteriously, and hope she had enough time and interest plus a degree in cryptography with which to decipher Dora’s note? Or would that be silly? Would it actually be doing the right thing to tell her? And why was I devoting so much time to thinking about the rights and wrongs of the situation when it mattered so little?

  ‘How much longer?’

  ‘Not long now. Look, the people at the front of the queue have started to go in.’

  ‘What numbers have we got?’

  I handed her the tickets, and told her to hold them carefully. ‘If we lose them, we can’t get in. We have to give them to that man at the door. Give me your colouring book and pens,’ I added, trying simultaneously to fold my newspaper and pick up two bottles of water, an empty crisp packet, two copies of The Great American Mousical and my backpack in a quixotic effort to avoid holding up the queue. There was now a sizeable gap between us and the people in front as the queue was moving at the speed of a highly efficient production line. With a final effort, I managed to stuff everything into my backpack and, beckoning Dora, we caught up. Then I realised that I shouldn’t have put the books in there, as we needed to keep them out for signing. So I struggled down into the bottom of the bag, where they were nestling happily underneath everything else, and pulled them out, only just preventing newspaper, bottles, crisp packet and computer from cascading to the floor. Then for a moment I panicked, thinking I’d dropped, packed or accidentally eaten the pink raffle tickets.

  ‘I’ve got them, Mummy,’ Dora said calmly, holding them up for me to see as I looked round wildly and broke out in a sweat.

  ‘Well done,’ I said, trying to zip up my backpack.

  A couple of minutes later, we’d handed in our raffle tickets and were at the front of the queue. The staff had constructed a little booth for Julie Andrews to sit in, so she was shielded from view. Only the person whose book she was signing and the next in line could see her. There was a small and rather jolly man assisting, making sure only one person went up at a time, with their book open on the right page. He beckoned Dora over. She looked up at me and I nodded. She walked up to the table where Ms Andrews Edwards was sitting, looking exactly like her photograph, quietly beautiful, skin flawlessly unlined, smiling, hair elegant. She said ‘hello’ to Dora. In reply, Dora held out a felt-tippy hand and proffered the picture she’d coloured.

  ‘Is that for me?’ Julie Andrews asked.

  Dora nodded.

  ‘“Hello Julie Andrews”,’ read Julie Andrews, smiling, then she put the picture down.

  Dora smiled and said nothing.

  Julie Andrews signed Dora’s book.

  She didn’t tell her, I thought. I looked at the organising man quizzically. He nodded. I went over.

  ‘She’s going to be in The Sound of Music at the Palladium,’ I announced, without slipping in anything polite and civilised first like, say, ‘hello’, or ‘how are you’, or ‘I’m really looking forward to reading your book’.

  ‘Are you?’ Julie Andrews asked Dora.

  Dora nodded.

  ‘Who are you going to be?’ Julie Andrews asked Dora

  Dora fidgeted.

  ‘Gretl,’ I said, proudly.

  ‘You’ll be perfect,’ said Julie Andrews, smiling sweetly into Dora’s eyes, and quickly signing her name in the book I’d put in front of her.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Dora.

  We left.

  I cringed all the way back to the car and for most of the rest of the day. And then some more in quiet moments during the following weeks. Oh no: Julie Andrews must have thought I’d tracked her down, queued up and bought the books just so I could tell her that my daughter was going to be in The Sound of Music. It was all wrong. It was an accident. I shouldn’t have said anything except ‘hello’, ‘how are you’ and ‘thank you’. I should have just smiled mysteriously. The cool thing to do would have been to meet Julie Andrews and not tell her that my daughter was going to be in The Sound of Music. It would, I thought, have been all right if Dora hadn’t suddenly gone uncharacteristically tongue-tied and had excitedly blurted it out herself. That would have been sweet. But she hadn’t, and I had opened my big mouth, allowing my inner stage mother to pop out, clear her throat gently, bat her heavily mascara’d eyelashes and declaim. Must acquire more self-control, I thought. Must develop sense of dignity. Must not think too much about developing sense of dignity after what happened that time when I was eighteen and running to the station in Brighton chanting to myself ‘I must be more dignified, I must be more dignified’, only to skid in some dog poo and end up sitting in it.

  ‘Julie Andrews is nice,’ said Dora.

  Dora was named after my beloved maternal grandmother, Dorothy. I’d hoped and prayed for a little girl I could name after her, but didn’t want to give my baby exactly that name. Dorothy just sounded too grown-up for a wriggly bundle of noise and smiles, and although I loved the diminutives my grandmother answered to – Dot, Dottie, Dolly or Dee – they didn’t feel like the sort of thing that should appear on a birth certificate. Whilst I was pregnant, I’d come across the name Dora when writing about Hartley Coleridge (Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s son, also a poet) and his relationship with the Wordsworths: it was William Wordsworth’s daughter’s name. Also, her father Steve’s mum was called Doreen (though, hating the name, she shortened it to Dee), and calling our daughter Dora would honour her. It felt gentle, soft-sounding and easy for a small child to learn to say and, eventually, spell. It was uncommon, but not outlandish. Even though Dora is already a diminutive of Dorothy, she could still choose to call herself Dot, Dottie or Dolly, if she so wished. The name is originally Greek and means ‘a gift of God’. I’d waited a long time for her to arrive, and she is.

  Dora was born and named some time before the children’s programme Dora the Explorer hit British TV screens. She enjoyed the programme, identified with her namesake and counted proudly to ten in Spanish along with her. What she didn’t enjoy, however, when she got slightly older, was being called Dora the Explorer by kids at school. Even though I could understand how annoying the constant repetition could be – especially once she’d grown out of the show’s target demographic – it struck me as being way up at the friendly end of the playground name-calling spectrum.<
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  During the breaks at the technical rehearsals, some of the other Sound of Music kids started doing it too. Dora didn’t find this quite as annoying as at school, partly because the Sound of Music kids did it, over dinner, in perfect multi-part harmony, which sounded much nicer: ‘Dora, Dora, Dora the Explorer, -orer, -orer’, they’d serenade her, barber-shop-quartet-style. It sounded like the kind of exercise Dora told me they had to do for vocal warm-ups, both at the beginning of rehearsals and then, later, before the shows. They had to sing tongue-twisters – ‘Red lorry, yellow lorry’, ‘Six thick thistle sticks’ and ‘Licky sticky toffee pudding’ (that was my favourite, for obvious dessert-related reasons) up and down the scale, getting faster and faster and also ‘Rubber duck, rubber duck, rubber duck, duck, duck’ to the tune of the William Tell Overture. They were also supposed to practise them at home, which Dora did diligently, in the back of the car, any time we went anywhere. She also made me do it sometimes – ‘Come on, Mummy, you have to!’ – which I couldn’t. Six thick thistle sticks seemed to be the hardest. Those ‘th’ sounds did it for me every time.

  Dora was enjoying being taken out for dinner. The kids went to Garfunkels, where she always plumped for spaghetti bolognaise, to the Plaza – where they could choose from a variety of exciting and unhealthy junk food options – and, very occasionally, to Wagamama. It meant she could eat and drink the kinds of things she wasn’t often allowed at home, but very sensibly and well-behavedly (although mostly, she recently informed me, because she doesn’t like it) stayed off the Coke, which she’s not allowed. Dora does not need caffeine.