by Paul O'Grady
I was flattered but above all surprised that she wanted me to stay and for a brief moment considered changing my mind. However, wild horses couldn’t have got me to apologize to the loathsome Tate and besides, Littlehampton beckoned.
‘What will you do?’ she asked.
I thought for a moment before confidently announcing, ‘I’m going on the stage.’
She couldn’t have been more surprised if I’d hit her in the face with a large, fresh trout.
‘Well really!’ was all she could say, as if I’d said a dirty word.
The staff had a whip-round and bought me a silver nugget on a chain and we had a leaving do that ended in the usual drunken carnage. Some of my boys cried when I left, waving at me forlornly from the window with red eyes and wobbling lower lips as I walked away up Meols Drive, holding back the tears myself. I started to panic, indecisive as always, wondering if I’d made the right decision. What the hell was I going to do in Littlehampton with someone I wasn’t even sure I liked? It had been hard work at the Conny Home but I was fond of the kids and there was great camaraderie among the staff. I was going to miss those Saturday nights when, rather than go home and then have to come in again at the crack of dawn the next morning, I’d stay with Eileen and Janet or Jane and Ged in their rented flats nearby and spend the night talking. We did a lot of talking through the night and when it was our turn to sleep in at the home we’d sit up most of the night in the staff room, smoking like chimneys and drinking endless cups of tea, chewing the cud until the night sister came along and asked us if we knew what beds were for.
Just before I left the home, a summer fête was held in the gardens at the back of the building. There was the usual tat – hoop-la, guess how many sweets in a jar, a lucky dip – and when asked by Mrs Dickie if I would like to do something theatrical to help raise funds I volunteered my services as a fortuneteller and offered to read the tarot cards. I could no more read the tarot than I could hieroglyphics but it beat making a fool of myself singing ‘What Are We Going To Do With Uncle Arthur?’ Besides, I’d have to be pissed before I’d do that in public.
‘We’ll erect a tent,’ Mrs Dickie said, ‘and charge fifty pence a reading, or is that too excessive? I wonder if you need a licence to tell fortunes? I don’t suppose anyone will mind providing you don’t predict anything too alarming. You won’t, will you?’
On the day of the fête I did roaring business, sat in my tent behind a little card table dressed in my brand new cream double-breasted suit, made for me out of Norman’s birthday money by a tailor who had a tiny shop across the road from the Magistrates’ Courts, and an elaborate scarf borrowed from Angela wrapped around my head and held at the back with a nappy pin as a makeshift turban.
I had quite a queue and surprisingly my readings seemed to make sense to a lot of my gullible customers. Perhaps I have the gift, I seriously wondered, seeing a career as a fortuneteller in Blackpool beckoning until Angela brought me down to earth by telling me that desperate people will believe anything. My bubble burst, I took her for a tour around the home and she was shocked and saddened by what she saw, finding it impersonal and sterile.
It was interesting to see the home through an outsider’s eyes. In my three years there I had become as institutionalized as the children and had learned to accept the rigid routine and stark surroundings without questioning. It’s a different story these days. I believe the children now have their own rooms and live in an informal and happy environment. Some of the old staff are still working there. Give those girls a medal!
One of the customers in my fortunetelling tent was Tate. He had contempt stamped all over the face that probably he told himself was devilishly handsome every day in the mirror.
‘Have you seen what you look like?’ he scoffed. ‘Go on then, Gypsy Rose, seeing as it’s for a good cause. I don’t approve of fortunetellers, particularly blatantly fraudulent ones like you, but I’ll show willing and go along with it.’
‘Fifty pence please.’ I held my hand out.
‘Well, what do you see in the cards then?’
Oh, I wanted to take the cards and shove them up his arse, but I resisted the temptation. Instead I studied the spread I’d laid out in front of me intently, with what I hoped was a professional air.
‘Well, come on then, tell me what they say,’ he mocked.
‘You have no future left. It’s all used up,’ I said solemnly, handing him back his fifty pence and quoting a line from Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil: ‘Now please leave.’ I had the satisfaction of seeing him slightly unnerved by this and, as time would tell, my prediction proved to be more than accurate.
In 1997/98 a number of people alleged that they had been sexually abused while living at the home as children. Four male members of staff were put on trial and given lengthy prison sentences: an 81-year-old man, two members of the Christian group the Crusaders, and Greg Tate. Jane, one of the housemothers I was friendly with during my time at the home, rang to tell me.
My initial reaction was sheer disbelief followed by guilt. How could I not have known that the sexual molestation of children was taking place on a daily basis under my very nose? Why didn’t the children tell me? I felt that I’d let them all down.
Jane felt very much the same but offered an explanation. ‘Did you know anything about paedophiles?’
‘No.’ I’d never heard the word in the seventies. I knew about dirty old men, I’d had dealings with one when I was a paper boy flogging the Liverpool Echo around St Catherine’s Hospital. A male nurse had attempted a feeble grope, for which he received a kick in the balls.
‘Did any of the senior staff ever tell you to keep your eyes out for sexual abuse?’
‘No.’
‘Were you trained to spot it?’
‘Not at all, it was never mentioned and anyway at that time I would’ve refused to believe that any adult was capable of molesting a small child, let alone a disabled one.’
It was an unthinkable act and I put my ignorance down to lack of training and youthful naivety, not being much older than some of the boys myself. To abuse a vulnerable child in your care is one of the most heinous of crimes. To abuse a mentally and physically handicapped child is incomprehensible and unforgivable. I hope the other cons in prison are giving them a rough ride.
On 12 July Norman came up to Liverpool to bring me down to Littlehampton. The Orange Lodge was marching through town and Vera and I, fuelled by a few scoops in the Lisbon, stood on the edge of the pavement in Moorfields watching the parade go past. We couldn’t help getting stirred up by the rousing pipe and drum bands and clapped and cheered like mad things.
‘Thank Christ me mother’s not here to see me,’ Vera said. ‘This would put her in hospital.’
‘Thank God mine isn’t here to see me either,’ I replied wryly, ‘as I’d be the one in hospital.’
I went and met Norman at the St George’s Hotel. Although I was going off into the sunset to live with him in a couple of days I couldn’t wait to get away from him and go back out with Vera, so I told him a cock-and-bull story about having to visit the family to say goodbye and made my excuses and a hollow promise to return later on. I never did. Liverpool was buzzing that night, lots of ships in dock meant lots of activity and we hooked up with a gang of Greek sailors in Paco’s, got very drunk and went on to a restaurant with them. Vera vanished into the night; I don’t know what happened to him, nor for that matter does he. I can vividly recall waking up the next morning in a cabin on a German tanker with a second engineer called Vulcan but how I got there is anyone’s guess.
The next evening Norman took me, Vera, Angela and another friend called David (known as ‘Ruth’ because he was proper and Ruth seemed a proper name) for dinner at the swankiest eatery in town, the Tower, now the home of a radio station. It was very chic with a revolving restaurant that afforded the lucky diner a panoramic view of Merseyside and beyond. It really was a truly magnificent outlook, unless of course you suffered from vertigo
as Norman did. Then you’d just throw up, which Norman also did. Vera found it a bit confusing when he staggered out of the toilet in the central column only to find that our table had vanished. This was his first posh restaurant. He was shy and clumsy until he’d had a few drinks, and was beside himself with shame when he mistook his fingerbowl for a clear soup and drank it.
Why was I going to live in a place called Littlehampton with someone I hardly knew who optimistically believed we’d enjoy a life of domestic harmony? Poor Norman, he was not only barking up the wrong tree, he was in the wrong bloody forest.
Despite my misgivings, the following afternoon I was on the train bound for Euston with eight carrier bags of LPs and a suitcase full of books, clothes and the new suit. In the middle of a cheese and chutney sandwich, Norman gave me a ring: a sapphire and diamond girly engagement ring that made my skin crawl as he slipped it on. What the hell was I thinking of? I wanted to throw it in his face, pull the communication cord and leg it back to Liverpool.
*
If Madame Arcati had ridden up Littlehampton high street on her bike or Miss Marple were to be found buying stamps in the post office I wouldn’t’ve been the least surprised. To my eyes Littlehampton was akin to a graveyard in the sun. My heart sank as I was shown into my new home, a modest ground-floor flat with a tiny garden, not exactly the smart beachside Riviera-style apartment that I’d been led to believe I’d be living in. Nor was Norman a genuine lord, he’d bought the title. Oh dear, all that glitters … He also ran ice-cream kiosks on the seafront which thankfully meant he was out for most of the day.
I mooched about the town window-shopping, although the contents of the wool shop and Burton’s hardly set my pulse racing. To help pass the time I wrote letters to friends and family every day which Norman would offer to post, though not before he read them himself. I only found this out months later when I wondered why Vera’s address and then everyone else’s were in his handwriting on the envelopes. His phone was on a party line, which meant his closest friend could listen in on any of my calls and then report back to Norman anything interesting she might have picked up.
I had nothing in common with his friends, a dull group of middle-aged married couples who adored Norman and viewed me with suspicion. Oh, the torture of those pretentious little dinner parties that they held and the mindless small talk that had me inwardly screaming behind my fixed grin.
Norman was a political animal. In the early sixties he’d been the leader of the Littlehampton branch of the Hunt Saboteurs Association and had been arrested for feeding the hounds to distract them and bound over to keep the peace for two years. The HSA wrote to him forbidding him to get involved in any further activity, insisting that he kept to the terms of his sentence. This annoyed Norman and, feeling slighted, he changed tack and became pro-hunting overnight out of spite. He rode with a hunt, giving the press ample ammunition to ridicule the HSA, Norman himself declaring from his mount that they were nothing more than ‘incompetent amateurs’ until his horse, sensible creature, threw him into a thorn bush.
As a professional referee he’d bravely ‘come out’ to the FA and despite the homophobic slant was secretly delighted with the coverage that he received in the Sunday rags. It was a big deal to publicly come out back then, to stick your hand up and say, ‘Yes, I’m a gay man and proud of it.’ The macho world of football was not an arena generally known for its tolerance towards gays. Norman rose above the hate mail and dog turds through his letterbox and ignored the sick chants and abuse from the moronic fans on the terraces and lived his life, and for that he was a hero.
The Littlehampton branch of the CHE (Campaign for Homosexual Equality) met once a month in Norman’s flat. I mistakenly thought that it was going to be an excuse for a party, even an orgy, but apart from a couple of good-looking ones with a twinkle in their eye they were an intense lot on the whole and it seemed to me that all they did was sit around drinking tea and moaning.
One afternoon when I was feeling particularly low in the self-worth department after a futile session job hunting around town (I’d quickly realized that being ‘kept’ wasn’t all it was cracked up to be), I wandered into a performance of ‘Old Tyme Music Hall’ on the marina to escape a sudden shower. It was pretty dire as they often are but the mainly elderly audience lapped it up, singing along lustily to ‘My Old Man’. One of the turns sang ‘I’m Only A Bird In A Gilded Cage’ and despite hearing my aunty Chrissie’s voice mocking that she’d seen ‘better turns in an eye’ I could relate to the corny old lyrics. They suited my melancholic mood and seemed to sum up my situation. Here I was, homesick and alone, broken-winged, just like the tragic heroine of the song that was being crucified on stage by the fat lady with the parasol and floppy hat (to show she was meant to be Victorian) in a quavering soprano voice that shook the fillings in your teeth and scared the seagulls off the roof.
Returning to the flat, I told Norman that I wanted to go home because I was bored to tears with having no job, no friends and nothing to do. His response was to send for the cavalry in the form of Vera and to throw a big party. A padded envelope containing the train fare to Liverpool was sent up to Vera, who ironed his jeans dry immediately and caught the next train down.
Vera’s arrival in the peaceful little town coincided with a parade of bands and floats down the high street. I don’t know what the occasion was but we pretended it was in Vera’s honour and after a swift half in the pub marched along with the band as they played ‘Before The Parade Passes By’. Oh, it was good to see Vera again. Norman was also delighted to see Vera, for he believed whatever made me happy made him happy; however, he wouldn’t be feeling quite so benevolent towards him after his forthcoming 1920s-themed party. With someone of my own age and interests to hang around with, Littlehampton became a different place. Suddenly life was a holiday.
Norman gave us twenty quid to spend at the funfair. There was a ride called the Mad Mouse, a decrepit old wooden roller coaster that I half expected to collapse as the tiny little car containing Vera and me zigzagged violently around the extremely narrow track, darting backwards and forwards. This made Vera jerk his head back hard into my nose, and my screams of pain and Vera’s squawks from the blows to the back of his neck from me could be heard all over Sussex. When we took a high-powered speedboat ride out to sea, I sat up front. Vera sat at the back, quite contented until a gigantic wave hit him straight in the face knocking his glasses off. ‘Look at that poor girl at the back,’ said the woman next to me. ‘She’s soaked right through to the bone.’
Predictably the 1920s party resulted in drunken carnage. The guest list was mainly made up of elderly ladies in homemade flapper outfits acting in what they considered a decadent manner (cigarettes in holders and a couple of shaky Charleston moves while twirling beads) and their geriatric beaus, self-conscious in rented tuxedos or fancy-dress-shop military uniforms. The flat was beginning to look like the court of Vulgaria in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Norman, as Fred Astaire, was dressed in top hat and tails whilst I’d come as the Depression in collarless shirt, baggy pants and braces with a cloth cap and dirty face. Vera came as himself, his only concession to the twenties a sequined headband with a battered turquoise feather stuck haphazardly in the side.
The evening started pleasantly enough, but soon degenerated into a free-for-all. Through the glass panels of the bathroom door I could see the silhouettes of two people, one of whom I recognized as Vera. Forcing the door (no Herculean display of strength as it was only secured by a little catch), I caught Vera, roaring drunk, with a member of the CHE in flagrante delicto. There was a bit of a commotion, resulting in an outraged Vera fleeing the bathroom but not before seizing the chance to push me over a Calor gas heater and down a flight of stairs into the cellar. Once the bluebirds had stopped flying repeatedly around my head and the tweeting was over, I gave chase with one aim in mind – to kill Vera. We charged through the party, scattering the glitterati of Littlehampton in our wake until I finally cornered him
in the tiny garden by jumping on him. I also brought down two genteel matrons dressed as Andrews Sisters and all the fairy lights in the tree above. Remarkably, even though he’d done a double somersault over two collapsible chairs, Vera never spilt a single drop of the large vodka tonic that he was clutching.
Later, in the early hours of the morning after the guests had finally gone home, I wandered into the bedroom to find Vera and Norman both blind drunk, having a little fumble on the bed.
‘Oh, you’re so soft,’ Norman moaned in the dark, caressing Vera.
‘Aye, she must be to be giving you a nosh,’ I scoffed and went to sleep on the sofa. I wasn’t bothered in the slightest, in fact I was secretly delighted as it meant that I now had something on Norman. I fell asleep relishing the prospect of playing Norman at his own game and giving him a taste of the injured martyr act.
I was woken in the morning by a contrite and very hungover Vera bearing a cup of tea as a peace offering and proposing to put my favourite album, Shirley MacLaine Live At The Palace, on the record player. Norman had got up early and gone to work and when he came home later in the day I gave him the deeply wronged and injured treatment, which he totally disregarded, going about his business as if nothing had happened. Regretfully Vera went home the next day and, at Norman’s suggestion, I started work in one of his ice-cream huts on the seafront. It was an undemanding and fairly pleasant job that I shared with a number of different young women. My favourite was a feisty student who took me back to her parents’ house one afternoon to show me their microwave oven as I’d never seen one before and was desperate to witness this miracle in action. After watching it scramble eggs we ended up in bed together. Me and the girl, not the microwave.
‘I’m living with a fellah and I’m supposed to be gay yet I’m in bed with you, so what does that make me?’ I asked her later.
‘A very confused young man,’ she replied, taking a pull on her ciggy.
