Black by Design

by Pauline Black

  Opening night was extraordinary. Everything came together and I had one of those curious out-of-body experiences that I get from time to time – not very often, or they would not be special. But I’m sure fellow actors will know what I am talking about – those moments when you can actually observe yourself uttering the lines or singing the songs as though somebody else has momentarily taken over your body. There is nothing more wonderful in the world for a performer than such moments. It is literally as if one is possessed. The performance seems effortless, with no hint of artifice, just a sense of rightness, in that it can be done no other way. One such moment happened on opening night when I was standing in a lonely spotlight singing ‘Strange Fruit’. I felt as though Billie Holiday had walked into my being and was mouthing the words of the song for the audience.

  Henry Goodman and me in All or Nothing at All, 1989

  The reviews were brilliant, even though the whole of the cast was carrying the unspeakable weight of having to be word-perfect on press night as two lawyers sat in the gods listening out for script inaccuracies or textual changes. With proper work on the script the production could have been brilliant, but as a cast we were left with an imperfect script which sometimes made the production feel like a one-legged person walking unaided.

  Lyn Gardner wrote in City Limits: ‘Pauline Black’s magical performance goes way beyond mere impersonation and she’s given exceptional support from the entire cast, but particularly Henry Goodman as her agent and Alan Cooke as soulmate, Lester Young. Nicolas Kent directs with customary flair.’

  Under the auspices of Nick Kent’s brilliant direction, I was nominated for the 1991 Time Out Award for best actress. No one could have been more surprised than me when onto the stage strode the satyr-like John Malkovich, who read out the list of nominees and then announced: ‘And the winner of best actress for 1990 for her performance as Billie Holiday in All or Nothing at All is…Pauline Black.’

  I think the whole cast should have been awarded a prize for their sense of support and camaraderie throughout. I’ve never worked with such wonderful people before or since, and I daresay I never will again. That is what made the production special and a fitting tribute to Lady Day. Thank you.

  As Billie Holiday: photo shoot for Vogue, 1989

  Suddenly I was on a roll; TV roles in the sitcom Shelley, cast as a cleaner, albeit an intelligent one, and The Bill (as a prostitute’s daughter) followed. Then Euston Films cast me as Lexie, the sexy secretary/receptionist in Shrinks, a new series for Channel 4 about a group of psychiatrists who ran a private psychiatric clinic in London. It ran for only one season. Its yuppie production values were much the same as a previous late ’80s Euston Films failure, Capital City, about the day-to-day running of an investment bank. It was now 1991, the heyday of yuppies and ‘loadsamoney’ lifestyles, but when the shenanigans of a bunch of overpaid private shrinks was paraded before the great British public they voted with the off switch on their TVs. Nobody was interested in rich people’s mental health and even the honeyed Scottish tones of Bill Paterson couldn’t save this turkey. By the way, a young Kate Winslet appeared in one of the episodes.

  I was naturally disappointed with the series demise, but also relieved that I could have a brief respite from a decade of mostly living out of a suitcase in a succession of friends’ flats. Terry was beginning to wonder whether he had a wife to share a home with at all. It was okay for me, I had constant interesting work to do, but Terry worked nine to five every day and came home to an empty house in the evening. After such a long time, something had to give in the relationship. One tumultuous row too many made up my mind, and I decided to have a rest and spend some much-needed time at home. Terry and I needed to reconnect with each other.

  A chance encounter with Neol Davies, who I hadn’t seen for seven years, also led to a musical reconnection. We tentatively began making music together in Neol’s newly acquired rehearsal space in the basement of Marks & Spencer in Coventry city centre. Our collaboration swiftly resulted in an acoustic duo appearance on the Jools Holland Show. Teaming up together again seemed like a no-brainer. Once it was known that we were back on the music scene, an agent asked us to join Buster’s All Stars, which was basically an assemblage of our old 2-Tone compatriots, Bad Manners. With no prior rehearsal, Neol and I did two shows with them, one in Aachen, Germany and the other in Nottingham, at the Rock City venue. It was after these two gigs that Bad Manners bassist Nick Welsh and keyboardist Martin Stewart hatched a plan to dissociate themselves and Bad Manners drummer Perry Melius from Buster Bloodvessel’s band. Understandably, having half your band nicked to re-form The Selecter did not go down well with Buster, but fortunately I was not privy to the crafty machinations that went on behind the scenes. The Selecter was reformed and after a one-day rehearsal at the Tic Toc Club in Coventry, we went out on the road and didn’t stop, except for brief line-up changes, for another fifteen years.

  I carried on acting for TV, film and theatre throughout this period, but I was back in my comfort zone, on stage belting out ska and reggae tunes. The dark matter had passed.

  THIRTEEN

  WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO DO?

  It was late June 1996 and as I stared at myself in the mirror admiring a black Prada jacket that I was trying on in the unflattering light of a fitting room on Sloane Street, I suddenly noticed that my face had gained nose-to-mouth lines, seemingly overnight. My discovery was hardly surprising. I was now forty-two years old. The tiresome fact was that I was growing older. I’d spent the last five years touring worldwide, since reforming The Selecter with Neol Davies. I had also racked up quite a few acting jobs on TV, most recently as a head teacher in a Liverpool comprehensive school alongside actor Christopher Ecclestone, in the Jimmy McGovern scripted Hearts and Minds. I’d even played a substantial part in a horror movie, The Funny Man, starring Christopher Lee, the year before. For the first time in my life I had enough money to open a deposit account. All this work had not made me rich, far from it, but I continued to create opportunities for work and I secretly prided myself on the fact that I had never had to go back to my day job as a radiographer.

  I had a party to go to that night and I felt like splashing some of my hard-earned cash on a snazzy jacket. I wasn’t looking forward to the party. It was a media shindig in a trendy warehouse somewhere in Hoxton. An agent had suggested that putting in an appearance might be beneficial for getting the band work. I wasn’t convinced, but had agreed to go along.

  I usually felt out of place at such events, particularly among the current crop of ‘bright young things’. These days House and Britpop music ruled the airwaves. Even the drugs had changed from what I was familiar with. Ecstasy was the current favourite, but I hated the ‘loved up’ feeling that it engendered. The one and only time that I had taken it, I embarrassed myself after a gig at the Melkweg in Amsterdam. Fortunately I was with a good friend who dragged me away from the young man who had become the object of my attentions. God knows what I’d been thinking. I had no intention of ever being counted among the ranks of that loony, perpetually grinning, bedroom-eyed breed again. What is it about being in a band that seems to stunt one’s personal growth? Perhaps the illusion of continuing youth hangs around a tad too long, like Miss Havisham’s wedding gown. I’d already seen plenty of my contemporaries ignominiously change their style and start wearing trousers ten sizes too big for them, or piercing their flesh with metal attachments or tattooing their skin to look as though they were still ‘really happening’ – still current. Forever relegated to the shelves of Apu’s store in The Simpsons.

  For the first time in my life, I had recently begun to feel at odds with my audience. Sure, the old stalwart skins and Mods were there, but they were now paunchier and greyer and tended to parade photos of their teenage kids in front of you, a constant reminder of how much time had passed. Luckily, the band now attracted a new crowd, New Agers, who gleefully packed out our gigs dressed in their trademark colourful, baggy, clown-like clothi
ng. Their seeming healthy disregard for either soap or deodorant made the olfactory experiences in the sweaty confines of small clubs particularly memorable. Don’t get me wrong, it was great to be accepted by a new generation’s sub-culture, and I still felt passionate about keeping the 2-Tone flame burning by recording and promoting new albums, but I found it impossible to identify with the new fashions as I grew older. As if to underline my antipathy to such stylistic frivolity, it was about this time that I started wearing only black clothes.

  A black palette suited me. Just as Johnny Cash sings in ‘The Man In Black’, there should always be a man upfront dressed in black to keep the rest of us ever mindful that there are plenty of people in this world ‘who are held back’. I don’t suppose he minded much if a woman got in on his fashion statement!

  That song struck a chord with me. I didn’t much like the ‘good ole boy’ status of country music. I loathed the right-wing politics and Bible thumping that went with a lot of it, but oddly enough, I did like Johnny Cash and what he stood for. He seemed to mine a deeper seam in the hillbilly countryside that kept his neck cool and pale, unlike his crowd-pleasing, boot-scooting contemporaries, who never delved below the surface into society’s darker underbelly and therefore scorched their necks red raw in the hot Tennessee sun.

  Wearing black clothes made a lot of sense on many levels, not just the philosophical. They didn’t show the dirt, were instantly slimming and, moreover, mornings were never subjected to that miserable quandary about what colour matched another when trying to dress in a hurry. In the ’90s, Prada produced the best black clothes in town.

  I bought the jacket and stepped out of the shop’s cool interior into the blazing hot sunshine of Knightsbridge. It was such a pleasant day, I decided to walk to Oxford Street via leafy Hyde Park rather than catch the Tube. I fancied a late lunch in Selfridges food hall. I enjoyed the walk, but the sun disappeared behind a huge black cloud by the time I got to Marble Arch. I was wearing only a sleeveless dress, and a chilly breeze was making me shiver as I reached Selfridges. The store’s air-conditioning was on full blast, which made me colder than ever. Needing to warm up, I raced up the escalators to the rather swish, second-floor ladies’ toilets in order to change into my new jacket. As I slipped it on and once again admired its finely cut proportions in the mirror, a middle-aged, smartly dressed blonde suddenly appeared in my peripheral vision. She addressed my reflection rather than myself and demanded in hysterical patrician tones: ‘Why don’t you do something useful and make sure the toilets are furnished with toilet paper on a regular basis.’

  I was struck by her use of the word ‘furnished’. It seemed such an incongruous word to best describe her access to something as functional as toilet paper. A smile began to form on my lips, which was cut short by her barked order: ‘Well, don’t just stand there, get me some.’

  My immediate impulse was to fly at her and knock her stupid head into the wall and not stop till she was dead. But I didn’t. Instead I looked at myself in my new piece of expensive finery and wondered how I could have been mistaken for the cleaner. Tears formed in my eyes and overflowed onto my hot cheeks. Not tears of rage but ones of bitterness and frustration. I wheeled around to face her and stared into her eyes: ‘What the fuck do I have to do, eh?’ I shouted.

  At first she looked at me uncomprehendingly. Then she looked nervously about her, suddenly aware of her potentially dangerous situation. She was alone with a black woman who was acting unpredictably. Her expertly made-up eyes refocused on me, skimming down my body, looking at me closely. A flicker of doubt stole across her face. A light sheen of sweat broke out on her smooth, botoxed brow. She suddenly realized her mistake. A burst of adrenalin spurred me on. I wanted to teach this bitch a lesson that she would never forget. ‘Do you think I’m here to clean the toilets?’

  The woman began to stutter a makeshift apology: ‘I’m sorry, I just thought…’

  ‘You just thought what? Eh? What did you think? Ah, there’s a black face, must be the cleaner? Well fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.’

  With every ‘fuck you’, I became a little louder, but also a little less powerful, until I ran out of my righteous energy and just sobbed unashamedly. The woman’s jaw dropped in astonishment. Her heavily rouged mouth exposed tiny, unnaturally white, pointed incisors. She resembled a vampire waiting to pounce. I grabbed my handbag and with as much dignity as I could muster, stumbled towards the exit.

  ‘Here, don’t forget your carrier bag,’ she called after me in a placatory manner, brandishing the white Prada bag that had contained my new jacket.

  ‘You fucking keep it,’ I shouted back and fled down the escalators, through the shop and out into the afternoon bustle of Oxford Street, only to find a thunderstorm raging. I ran in the direction of St Christopher’s Place, seeking a coffee shop that I hadn’t been in for years, but remembered fondly from the early ’80s. Mercifully it was still there and even better, empty. The rain on my face mingled with my tears. My jacket was soaked. I was a mess.

  Once ensconced in the back of the shop, with an ashtray, a Marlboro Light and a cappuccino, I retraced the events of the toilet battle royal. Why is it that after such a contretemps, it is so easy to think of innumerable one-liners and pithy retorts? I seethed with anger. My body felt hot and stifled. I unbuttoned my new jacket and draped it over the back of my chair to dry. It had seriously lost its shine since I had been mistaken for a janitor while wearing it! So much for Prada, I thought. Yet again, I realized that some white people in Britain still saw blacks as an amorphous mass of sub-humanity simply there to serve. If we were not doing that, then the only other times we were noticed was on the nightly news, usually rioting, raping, murdering, or best of all, conveniently starving to death or dying of Aids somewhere in Africa. Ralph Waldo Ellison had his finger on racist society’s pulse when he wrote the classic novel The Invisible Man. But that was in 1952. This was 1996.

  A strange malaise overcame me as I chain-smoked my way through the next hour and a half. It was as if my identity had been shattered into tiny pieces. I had no idea how I was going to piece my psyche’s tenuous mosaic together again. How could a chance encounter with a stranger bring me so low? Perhaps I should have stayed calm and pointed out her mistake, then accompanied her to find the person who was responsible for the cleanliness of the toilets? Of course that’s what I should have done, but my tenuous sense of self was not equipped with the necessary social skills to bring off such a feat after such a damning blow. I had never been taught those skills. Who could have taught me them? Certainly my adoptive parents would have been hard-pressed to provide me with such an education. Their only answer to my regular identity crises as a child had been to raise me like a little white girl, in the vain hope that nobody would ever notice the raging bull elephant in the room – my skin colour. Some chance!

  A shaft of late-afternoon sunlight cut through the gloomy aftermath of the storm and temporarily lit up my table. Simultaneously, a small voice in my head whispered: ‘You know what you have to do? Find your birth parents.’ Then my epiphany was gone.

  I noticed that the owner of the café, an avuncular Italian gentleman, who had cast concerned looks in my direction ever since my arrival, had finished bringing in the chairs and tables that had been on the pavement outside the café. He looked as though he was eager to close for the afternoon. I looked at my watch. It was 5.30 p.m. Where had the afternoon gone? I wiped my tear-stained cheeks with a red-checked paper napkin, put on my jacket, which had fortunately dried, and took my bill to the counter.

  ‘It will be all right,’ he said quietly, as he returned my change. His deep brown Mediterranean eyes twinkled.

  I smiled back at him. ‘Yes, I think it will be from now on.’

  ‘Nice jacket,’ he said. ‘Italian-made stuff always is.’

  FOURTEEN

  MISSION IMPOSSIBLE

  I abandoned all thoughts about going to the party after such an emotional day. I just wanted to get home as q
uickly as possible. To avoid the tube’s early evening crush, I walked to Euston station. I kept looking at passing black, white, brown, yellow and all-shades-in-between faces, thinking that any one of them might be a relative. The anonymity of swimming along Tottenham Court Road with this tide of humanity made me feel even more determined to seek out the shores of my real origins. I was still way out of my depth, but at least I wasn’t drowning any more.

  I placed a hasty call to Terry asking him to pick me up at Coventry station in an hour or so. When he expressed concern about my earlier than expected return, I just said, somewhat evasively, ‘There’s been a change of plan.’ Fortunately the train disappeared into a tunnel, cutting off any further communication. He didn’t call back. Next I placed a call to my songwriting partner, Selecter bassist and all-round musical linchpin Nick Welsh, telling him that he would have to go to the party on his own. He didn’t seem particularly bothered that I was pulling out. I offered no explanation.