It was around this time that our latest nanny came to work for us and, like the others, she moved into the flat at the top of the house and brought her husband with her. She’s Spanish and is called Marina González, and her husband, who works as a waiter, is called Julio. He often gets back late at night and has to creep through the house and up the stairs. I think the Spanish must be much stricter with their children because quite early on Marina made it very clear that she wouldn’t put up with any cheekiness or bad behaviour from us. One night she decided to show us exactly what she meant by this. Mum and Dad were out and Marina was trying to get me and Tom to settle down and go to sleep. Every time she left our bedroom we would burst out laughing, and she would run back into the room shouting at us in Spanish. It didn’t do any good and just made us laugh more. In the end she got so angry that she reached for the nearest of us, which happened to be me, and pulled me out of bed by my ear. She dragged me off to the bathroom, locked me in and left me there crying hysterically until I fell asleep. After what must have been hours, Julio came in and carried me back to bed.
Marina would have certain mornings off, and now that Sue wasn’t working in the house, if one of us was off school Mum would have to take us with her to work. Mum’s a doctor in a health centre in Kentish Town, so going with her to work is very different from going with Dad. It’s pretty boring as we have to sit in an office and stamp prescription pads or help the receptionist put files back on the shelves. One day I convinced Mum I had a sore throat, so she took me to work with her and I was left in an office. From there I could see her talking to one of the other doctors, who was asking what was wrong with me. I saw Mum shaking her head and looking worried as she told the other doctor that I had an illness. Until that moment, I didn’t think I was sick at all. In fact, I just wanted a bit of time off school, but now it turned out I really was ill and it had a name. I felt the blood drain from my body. What if I never got better, or worse, died from it? Terrified and sitting in total silence, Mum drove me home and left me with Marina, who had come back from her morning off, and I went straight to bed to die. I was well enough to answer the phone when it rang, hoping that I’d get some sympathy from whoever was calling. As it happened, it was Dee and the conversation went something like this:
‘Hey, kiddo, I didn’t expect to find you home. No school? What’s wrong?’
‘I’m ill,’ I replied, ‘very ill in fact, and it’s got a name.’
‘Goddammit, poor guy, you sound OK to me, so what’s the name?’
‘Hypo-something-chondria,’ I replied, knowing that now I had a name for this disease I was going to get a lot more attention for it.
‘No shit,’ Dee snorted, ‘that’s bad. Well, we all get that sometimes. Hey, we’re having French toast and milk shakes later if you think it might help.’
‘I’d better not, I wouldn’t want anyone catching it,’ I said, trying not to cry.
I could hear her laughing at the other end of the phone as she put it down. I was a bit shocked that she thought my death from hypo-what-ever-it-was was so funny, but then I knew Dee could be cruel, even about people close to her dying. I didn’t go for French toast that day, but when I did, it was Dee who explained what hypochondria really was. She’d already told Nick and Gully about it, and on my next visit it had become the house joke. Even Freddie shouted from his study as I went past, ‘I thought you were dying of hypochondria!’
12
FANNY CON TUTTE
After years of doing plays Dad started directing operas as well, and has been taking me to watch his rehearsals. It’s so interesting seeing him work with the singers and hearing all the lovely music. I’ve heard some of it before on records, but never sung by people who are only standing a few feet away. Even when doing operas with all that beautiful music Dad still gets depressed and says his life is terrible and that he wishes he could be a doctor again so that people would take him seriously. I know that he’s always been tortured by his work, but it was usually because he was stuck in his study and not getting anywhere with his typing. He’s always saying to Mum or his friends how much he despises the theatre and everything that goes with it, and now he feels the same about opera too. I don’t know why he says this, because whenever I’ve seen him rehearsing he looks really happy, and he loves all the people he’s working with and they love him back.
I know that what he hates more than anything are the critics, who he calls ‘spineless shits’ or ‘poisonous invertebrates’. Sometimes when he answers the phone he says things like: ‘Hello, Home for Sick Critics, which one would you like to speak to?’ Then he pauses before saying, ‘Irving Wardle? No, sorry he’s dead, how about Sheridan Morley?’ I think it’s the critics that ruin everything for Dad. If the rehearsals are going well, he comes home at the end of the day and is so happy he says, ‘I think this is probably the best thing I’ve ever done’, and then when the play or opera opens he can’t wait to tell us about the bits he’s most proud of. Then the reviews come out, and it only takes one bad one and this dark cloud comes over the house and his life is over and he’s calling his agent to tell him to cancel everything he’s going to do in the future. He comes out of it eventually, so it’s a good thing his agent has learned to ignore him.
I’ve only been to a couple of rehearsals for Dad’s plays, and they aren’t nearly as much fun as his opera rehearsals. In the theatre there’s a lot of standing around with the actors thinking and having serious conversations. Then, when the acting starts, it’s hard to understand what they’re going on about. It’s even worse when it’s Shakespeare and they speak all that old English that sounds like gobbledygook. Opera is so much easier as they act and sing at the same time, and if you don’t understand what’s going on you can just listen to the music. They still do a lot of standing around talking to Dad, and he tells them what to do and where to go. But then he steps back, the conductor takes over, a piano starts playing and the singers sing, and it’s what I imagine it would be like if you believed in God and were about to enter heaven. I think going to Dad’s rehearsals is what made me interested in music.
Dad directed an opera called Così fan tutte and it’s my favourite. It’s by Mozart and is about two young men who think their girlfriends, given half the chance, will run off with someone else. Since he was rehearsing it in a hall in Primrose Hill, he took me out of school one morning so I could come and watch. At lunchtime we went to a restaurant with the conductor and some of the singers. The owner came over to talk to Dad and asked him how his rehearsals were going for Fanny Con Tutte. I don’t know if he realised he’d got the name wrong, but he looked very embarrassed when everyone laughed.
I got to know the opera really well after Dad bought me the record for my birthday. We have a record of another opera called La Traviata, which I also like. Mum listens to it a lot, especially when she’s reading a book on her own. The only thing is it makes her cry. I know it’s a sad story and the woman dies in the end, but seeing Mum cry always worries me. I don’t know if she’s crying because the story in the opera is sad or because something else has happened that I don’t know about. I don’t like to think there are things I don’t know about that make her cry.
Jeanie likes classical music too and now plays the piano really well, although she does like to practise in the middle of the night, when everyone has gone to bed. Mum and Dad say it drives them nuts because the sound of the piano coming up the chimney from the basement wakes them up. Before she plays anything nice, she starts with an hour of scales that go up and down, over and over again. I think it’s the scales that wake Mum and Dad up. When she finishes those, she plays something nice and calming like Bach’s Goldberg Variations. She plays that brilliantly, and it’s so lovely it would send anyone to sleep.
It’s not surprising Jeanie likes music so much. She has a cousin from Jamaica called Patsy who went to live with the Roebers for a while as their nanny. Patsy is married to a man called Stephen Preston, who plays the flute, likes classical mus
ic by Vivaldi and Bach and is in a small orchestra. When Jeanie isn’t playing her own music, she goes to the Wigmore Hall or Royal Festival Hall to see Stephen playing in his orchestra. I love going with her as we have a fun night out and I like that kind of music.
Jeanie’s not the only musical person in the family. Mum plays the flute really well, Tom plays the cello, and there’s me with my violin and oboe. Then there’s Dad: what surprises everyone about Dad directing operas is that he doesn’t play a musical instrument and can’t even read music. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him sing along to anything other than country music, and when he does that he can only do the twanging and whining noises. My grandfather Bob is a concert pianist and music teacher. He sometimes comes over and helps Jeanie with her piano-playing. He also tries to help me, but I don’t like it when he gets bossy about music and complains that I haven’t practised enough. I know he’s right, but I don’t like being told. He makes me get my oboe out after lunch and sits at our piano and plays along with me. He doesn’t smile, he just scowls and shakes his head when I get the notes wrong. Once he got so cross his false teeth fell out onto the piano keys when he was trying to tell me off. I thought that was hilarious, but he made me carry on playing – laughing and playing the oboe at the same time can be a bit tricky.
13
SON-OF-A-BITCH
Something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently is that I won’t be at Primrose Hill for much longer, and when I go to my next school I’ll be there until I’m 18, and that’s nearly grown up. I think a lot about what it will be like being a grown-up and all the things I’ll be able to do. I could leave home, get a job or even get married to someone I really like. I know I think about who I might marry quite a lot, but I also think about what I want do when I’m old enough to get a job. Only recently I wanted to be a farmer, and before that an airline pilot, and before that an astronaut. But whenever I tell Dad what I want to be he just laughs, shakes his head and tells me I should think seriously about being a doctor or a scientist like he had once been, and his father before that. I am not sure I want to be either of those, although I did once tell him I might like to be a surgeon. He got so excited by this news that he went off and got me all these fat books about it which I didn’t understand.
Tom has a job delivering newspapers before school for the newsagent in Inverness Street, but that’s just to earn a little money. Now he has his own money, which he adds to his pocket money and likes to show off about the things he can buy without having to ask Mum and Dad. I might try to do that when I’m 13, but I also like the idea of a Saturday job. I’d like to have my own money to do what I want with and I could save up for a racing bike, or make my train set even bigger.
School seemed to be going well, or at least I thought it was until Mum and Dad were called to have a talk with my teacher, Miss Appleby. When they got back from the school, Mum and Dad were very cross, but decided to save it until the morning, when they would have one of their ‘serious talks’ about what had happened. It was on my way down to breakfast the next morning that I was called into their bedroom. I walked up to the end of their bed and stood there fiddling with the corner of the bedspread. They had the sheet pulled up to their chins. They always do this when they’re trying to be serious and think they might laugh. It never works as the sheet starts shaking as they disappear behind it.
Mum came straight out with it – Miss Appleby had called them into the school because she was concerned about the bad language I’d been using.
‘Like what?’ I said.
It turned out Miss Appleby had a list she’d put together with some of the other teachers. On her list were ‘goddammit’ and ‘son-of-a-bitch’, and even ‘motherfucker’. I stood in silence, not quite sure how to respond, then Dad said he knew exactly who I’d picked these up from: ‘Dee bloody Ayer.’
‘Nick uses them too, pretty much all the time,’ I mumbled.
‘That’s hardly surprising, bearing in mind he lives with his mother and his foul-mouthed sister. The thing is, Dee comes from America, where this kind of language is very common, especially in films – even some good films.’
I tried to think of an answer that would impress Dad and make this less hard on both of us. ‘The Marx Brothers don’t speak like that and they’re from America.’ It was a risky tactic, as they’re Dad’s heroes. I’ve discovered that it’s always good to get something in about the Marx Brothers if you can.
Dad looked impressed. ‘Yes, that’s very true. But the Marx Brothers made those films a long time ago, when no one spoke like that. Well, certainly not in films.’
The sheet on Mum’s side of the bed had now gone up over her head and was shaking. I could hear her trying to say something to Dad, ‘I think Groucho might have said “son-of-a-bitch” in A Night at the Opera.’
‘Your mother seems to thinks Groucho might have used it once or twice; however, it’s highly unlikely Harpo did.’ It was Mum’s turn now, and she warned me that most of the people they knew would be shocked by my language and that I wouldn’t be invited to people’s houses, birthday parties or weekends away.
Dad finished off with ‘The bottom line is, you have to stop speaking like Dee or we will have to ban you from going over to the Ayers’ altogether.’
That wasn’t entirely the end of it as I was made to wash Mum and Dad’s car as a punishment. Since my telling-off, my use of American swear words has got a little better. I suppose if you spend as much time as I do with Dee you’re going to end up speaking like her, but I don’t think Mum and Dad would ever have banned me from seeing the Ayers.
Dee is definitely the worst of all the grown-ups I know when it comes to swearing. Keith McNally never swears, but he certainly likes to shock people. He’s back at Alan’s house and I’ve been going over to see him a lot. One evening he asked me to come over to help him get Miss Shepherd out of the house.
Earlier in the year Camden Council decided to put residents’ parking in the Crescent, and some men turned up one day and painted parking bays and yellow lines along the whole street. For the first time it looked like it was all over for Miss Shepherd and she would finally have to move on. As Alan had an empty driveway, she knocked on his door and asked if she could park her van there for a few weeks. It’s now been a few months and there is no sign of her ever leaving, so it looks like Alan is stuck with her van in his front garden.
He strung an electric cable from his house to her van so she could have electricity for a light and a radio. He told her that if he was away and no one else was there and it got too cold she could come into the house and watch the television and warm herself up. Although Keith was staying in the house, she was still letting herself in and making herself at home. What she liked best was to sit in Alan’s special chair, with the lever on the side that makes the back go down and the front lift up for your legs. When Keith came back from work, she was in the chair, watching a documentary about penguins. She still had her coat and headscarf on, and her legs were sticking straight out with a pair of old slippers on her feet. By the time I arrived, she was watching the news and shouting at the television because of something Harold Wilson was saying.
Miss Shepherd doesn’t like any of the children in the Crescent. Conrad once tried giving her some money he’d collected at school for starving children in Africa. He’d forgotten which day it had to be handed in, and when he did, Miss Appleby told him it was too late. Then he thought Miss Shepherd might need it, so he knocked on the van window and waited for her to stick her head out. When she did she shouted, ‘I haven’t got time for this, I’m a busy woman, what do you want?’ Miss Shepherd never likes to be seen to be given anything as then she thinks it’s ‘charity’, and charity is something the tramps get around the corner in Arlington House. She’ll happily accept things if she can make out it had been her idea in the first place then it doesn’t look like charity. Anna Haycraft is always trying to give her food, but even she gets shouted at and told to go away. The funny thing i
s Miss Shepherd will shout and make a fuss and tell you she doesn’t want something and then at the last minute grab it out of your hand. She then quickly winds the window up and disappears into the dark inside of her van like a fish grabbing something to eat on the surface of a lake.
With Miss Shepherd comfortably settled in Alan’s favourite chair, Keith stood in front of the television and asked her very nicely if she minded switching it off and going back to her van so he could get on and make his supper. It didn’t work. There was now a story on the news about President Ford visiting the Pope in Rome, and she was leaning to the side so she could see past Keith. Miss Shepherd is a Catholic and very keen on the Pope, so there was no way she was going to stop watching now. Then he tried talking very loudly to me, but that didn’t work either, and just made her shout at us to shut up. It was then that I remembered once seeing Alan’s electricity box in the cupboard under the stairs. Without saying anything I pointed to the cupboard. I opened the door and climbed in over the brooms and buckets and flicked the big red switch on the box. Along with the television, every light in the house went off. Keith lit a match and, holding it up to his face, walked over to Miss Shepherd. She was still looking at the television, waiting for it to come back on again.
‘Well, that’s that, Miss Shepherd. Another power cut I’m afraid. It’s the coal miners again, you know what they’re like.’
Gloucester Crescent Page 9
