by Simon Doonan
Uncle Ken did not make eye contact easily. He had a strange habit, when addressed, of focusing his gaze on one’s upper forehead. If you wanted to look him in the eyes, you were obliged to stand on tiptoes. This worked for only so long. After a while his gaze would ascend once more, obliging one to fetch a stepladder or throw in the towel.
“How was lunch?” said my mum, little knowing that an incomprehensibly dreadful and unforgettably nasty series of events was about to take place. Straining to get into his field of vision, she stood on tiptoes and repeated the question.
“Hello. . . . Yes. . . . Betty. . . . Thanksverymuch,” Ken replied incomprehensibly and raised his gaze.
From my vantage point, everything then seemed to go into slow motion and to cut, cut, cut in a cinematic frenzy. It was all very reminiscent of that scene in The Birds when Tippi Hedren observes the unfolding mayhem from a phone booth. I was Tippi.
Scene one: Uncle Ken takes a long drag on his hand-rolled ciggie and exhales in a wheezy rush. Cut.
Just at that moment, Hawo, the ailing cat, walks into the frame. Cut.
Betty rises from the dining room table and heads toward the kitchen with an armload of dishes, addressing the cat on the way with a “Hello, Hawo!” Cut.
Close-up on Uncle Ken’s feet. Cut.
Soundtrack builds.
Hawo looks at Uncle Ken.
Close-up on dilating cat’s pupil.
Hawo walks calmly toward Uncle Ken.
Hawo stares malevolently at Uncle Ken’s shoes.
Hawo vomits on Uncle Ken’s shoes.
The actual vomiting takes several seconds, but Uncle Ken is too out of it on horse pill tranquilizers to do anything other than stare blankly and continue to enjoy his raggedy homemade cigarette.
Cut to Betty who, oblivious to the unfolding drama, lights a fag, pours herself another glass of Château Doonan, and sets about washing the dishes.
Cut back to Ken. Maybe it’s that hastily gobbled lunch, or maybe it’s the fact that his feet are now covered in foul-smelling cat vomit, or both, but Uncle Ken starts to go a bit green. He stares at the vomit, and the vomit stares back.
Uncle Ken suddenly stands bolt upright (handheld camera). He has a wild, confused look about him. He lurches out of the dining room and into the kitchen, toward the sink. He elbows Betty out of the way and vomits into the sink full of dishes.
Holding her fag in her bright-orange-rubber-glove-covered right hand, Betty stares out the window. It’s hard to read her expression. Cigarette ash falls.
“The almond tree needs pruning. The branches are hitting the buses again. Better be getting back to work,” says Terry and departs.
Fade to black.
* * *
It was then, after the cat vomit episode, that I became utterly convinced I would end up just like Ken, doomed to a life of deranged misery. I knew that schizophrenia was hereditary. I had read all about it in one of the moderately glossy current-affairs magazines which came gratis with our Sunday newspapers. Now I could clearly see my future unspooling before me in a grim montage of hallucinations, electric shock treatments, and nicotine.
My life was already beginning to unravel, just like one of Ken’s horrible-smelling cigarettes. I had failed the entry examination for the grammar school. Even Biddie had managed to get into the bloody grammar school! It was now official: I was an idiot. What was the difference between an idiot and a lunatic? Not a lot.
It was hard to feel bubbly and jazzed about my future. I would probably stay at the idiot school until I turned sixteen. After that, if I had not already gone bonkers, I would get a job at the Huntley & Palmers biscuit factory. I would work there until I fell into some heavy machinery or went mad or both.
I would wish away the remainder of my days staring at people’s foreheads with nothing to look forward to except the occasional deluge of cat vomit.
* * *
Salvation appeared in an unexpected form.
One day, while crawling round the floor of my parents’ incredibly untidy bedroom in search of Hawo, I happened upon the very meaning of Life, or so I thought at the time.
Next to my mother’s bed I found a copy of a swanky magazine called Nova. On the cover was a picture of a ravishingly brittle, glamorous Italian socialite.
“Principessa Pignatelli plucks each hair off her legs with tweezers,” read the cheeky headline. “With that dedication and £5,348 a year to spare, you too might make ninth on the best-dressed lists.”
I took the magazine to my room. Snuggling excitedly onto my bed, I began to read and reread the intoxicating editorial about Principessa Pignatelli. A vain fashion junkie, Luciana Pignatelli crisscrossed the globe, traveling with a vast wardrobe of Valentino couture, ankle weights, and eight or nine hairpieces. She resided in a glamorous, floor-pillow-strewn Roman palazzo. She was one of the Beautiful People.
Oblivious to the viciously sardonic tone of the editorial, I instantly developed an infatuated identification with the jetsetting Luciana. I was particularly impressed by her beauty tips: “She splashes the insides of her thighs with cold water and never puts her breasts in hot water because it makes them sag.” The regimental order and glamour of her life contrasted sharply with the tawdriness and unpredictability of my own. I became obsessed.
I could not imagine any Uncle Kens daring to vomit into her sink while she was doing her dishes. If she got up to pee in the night, I was sure nobody leapt into the corridor, as my grandmother Narg frequently did, and accused her of being a streetwalker.
She was the anti-Narg and the un-Ken.
On first reading, the principessa’s world seemed depressingly remote.
Italy seemed such a long way away. The only place we ever traveled to was strife-torn Belfast to check in on my belligerent grandpa.
As I splashed the insides of my thighs with cold water, I thought about the Beautiful People. I did not care how far away they were, I would find them and befriend them.
And soon, very soon, they would like me enough to pretend that I was one of them.
CHAPTER 5
EYEBALLS
I once took my blind aunt Phyllis out for a walk and fractured her skull.
She wasn’t really my aunt. Phyllis was one of a gaggle of women, friends of Betty and Terry, whom we referred to as aunt.
There was Auntie Iris with the tunnel curls, whose attractive Polish husband had lost both legs in the war to frostbite. And heavily perfumed Aunt Toni with the gravelly voice. She wore loud charm bracelets, tempestuous gypsy blouses, and tiered dirndl skirts with petticoats underneath. Like Uncle Ken, Aunt Toni rolled her own cigarettes, except she used a little machine. Hers were much tidier. She walked with a glamorous limp and a fancy cane because of a motorcycle accident.
And let’s not forget Betty’s favorite, Auntie Muriel, her childhood pal. She worked as a street cop in Northern Ireland. Auntie Muriel was living proof that you can wear red lipstick with a uniform and still be intimidating.
By contrast, there was gushy Aunt Sheila. She was more femmy and helpless than Aunt Muriel, as evidenced by the fact that she once broke her finger putting on her girdle.
Of all these ladies, Aunt Phyllis was my favorite. Paradoxically, she was the only one whose skull I fractured.
* * *
I vividly remember the day that Phyllis blew into our lives, like a lonely, disintegrating tumbleweed.
One afternoon in the late 1950s, I skipped home from primary school to find a forlorn-looking woman in a gray suit sitting in our living room. Though she was only in her thirties, her crumpled posture gave her the appearance of an old lady.
It was obvious that she was depressed, and even more obvious that she was blind. Helen Keller could have seen that she was blind. Some sightless people wear dark glasses to shield those around them from the drama of their handicap. Not Phyllis. She did not conceal her blindness with chic little sunglasses like Jane Wyman in Magnificent Obsession. Everyone could see that Phyllis Robinson’s eyes
were missing. She had no eyeballs, and she did not care who knew it. In their place were two rather startling sunken pits.
Her accessories? A small rhinestone daisy lapel brooch, a sturdy handbag, a battered leather suitcase, and a large female Labrador wearing a well-worn white leather harness.
My sister and I fell upon this beautiful golden beast, hugging her and playing with her massive silky ears.
“Phyllis and Lassie are going to be staying with us for a couple of weeks,” declaimed Betty by way of explanation. She lit up a Woodbine cigarette and shot my sister and me a look that discouraged the asking of moronic questions, adding, “Just until she gets back on her feet, of course.”
As we played with Lassie’s ears, twisting them into Austrian braided hairdos on the top of her head and making her look like a canine Hofbrau waitress, we had no idea that Phyllis was destined to stay for ten years, outlasting Uncle Ken, my crazy grandmother Narg, and many of the other lodgers.
Though Betty was a tough-talking broad who professed to loathe do-gooders, she regularly found herself unable to resist the impulse to reach out and give a fellow human being a helping hand. Phyllis was in need of help.
“We have to take good care of her—she’s addicted to purple hearts,” explained Betty in a hushed but matter-of-fact tone while Phyllis unpacked her meager possessions. These notorious pills were the preferred downers of the 1950s. Phyllis’s addiction was causing her to lose her hair and parts of her mind. Betty had decided to rescue her.
Phyllis and Betty had only recently become friends. They had bonded while working for the same employers, a highly eccentric former White Russian prince and princess. This regal couple had been teenagers at the time of the revolution. Back in Russia they had lived in a luxurious, magical world of tinkly sleigh rides, Fabergé eggs, gilded samovars, and fur-trimmed Dostoyevsky couture. And now, in an unbelievably perverse, excruciatingly cruel plot twist—probably one of the cruelest in the history of mankind—fate had plonked the royals down in Reading, our hometown, the least glamorous, dreariest place in the whole of Europe.
I have no idea how or why they ended up in the county of Berkshire, but I can tell you that the prince and princess faced the harsh economic realities of their new and appallingly lackluster life with verve and creativity. The one thing they knew about was dogs. They had grown up surrounded by snow-white borzois and perfumed Afghans. They utilized their canine familiarities in the worthy task of training guide dogs for the blind, gaining a considerable notoriety in this field.
The guide dog business boomed. Paperwork proliferated. They hired stenographers like Phyllis and Betty from the local temp agency, Phyllis first and then Betty.
Once the women were in their clutches, the White Russians commanded Betty and Phyllis to perform all kinds of nonsecretarial tasks, like hedge clipping, food serving, bath running, and toilet unblocking.
Adding to this eccentric working environment was the princess’s pet monkey, who swung from the light fixtures, pooping on Betty and Phyllis, and taunting the lovely Lassie.
Betty adored the insane diversity of this experience. She talked ceaselessly and hilariously of the trials and tribulations of working for “Ivan and Yvonne the Terrible.” She did a brilliant impersonation of the theatrical princess, duplicating a tone of voice which quivered and shook with tortured regret: “I remember vashink my hairs wiz tventy-four eggs effry mornink while ze peasants outside ze palace were starfink.”
Phyllis’s situation was far more complex. She was lodging full-time with the deposed nobles. Out of the blue, she developed a schoolgirl crush on the handsome prince. She became lovesick and wan. Her doctor—eager to write prescriptions for the latest antidepressants—prescribed purple hearts and more purple hearts. By the time Betty arrived, Phyllis was already knocking them back à la Neely O’Hara.2
One day the princess smelled a rat and gave Phyllis her marching orders. Distraught, Phyllis threw herself on Betty’s mercy. Before you could sing “Come On-a My House,” Betty had offered her beleaguered pal a room chez nous.
Aunt Phyllis was installed in the one remaining space in our rambling, leaky red-brick Edwardian house. Her room was a windowless garret with a sloping ceiling on the top floor. It was freezing in the winter and boiling hot in the summer. Features included a nonopening skylight, a nonfunctioning fireplace, and an appropriately rock-bottom rent.
Despite her grim accommodations, Phyllis flourished. Under Betty’s supervision, she put on weight, kicked the purple hearts, and learned to laugh again. A vigorous and not unattractive brunette rose from the ashes. It was a symbiotic arrangement: Betty now enjoyed the benefits of a live-in best friend and coconspirator.
The 1960s arrived, and Phyllis and Betty embraced the concept of health food. They became ardent followers of the world’s first granola guru, a Swiss bloke named Gayelord Hauser. Henceforth, every phrase uttered by Betty and Phyllis invariably contained the words Gayelord Hauser.
“Well, according to Gayelord Hauser, white sugar is white death.”
“Some chocolate cake? Just a thin slice. Don’t tell Gayelord Hauser!”
On Saturdays, Phyllis and Betty would set out for the local health food store—improbably named The High—and stock up on wheat germ, molasses, brewer’s yeast, and anything else Gayelord Hauser was endorsing that particular week in his syndicated column.
An employee at The High convinced Betty that the key to health was growing your own greenery. In no time we had large plastic trays of sprouting bean shoots covering the sideboard in our dining room. Betty often tended them while enjoying a cigarette.
Thanks to Betty and Gayelord, the crumpled, depressed Phyllis morphed into a healthy, vibrant, singular being. She turned out to be more like a naughty big sister than an aunt.
The new Phyllis was an eccentric, courageous woman who made a mockery of her congenital handicap. Phyllis laughed when she walked into doorframes or stepped in Lassie’s poo. Blindness was a total gas! She loved to tell us about the time she exited a train on the wrong side, falling onto the tracks in a heap, avec chien.
The new Phyllis was also wildly unconventional. Her handicap afforded her a marginalized status, of which she now took full advantage. One day she came home in fits of laughter: she had, she explained, just returned from a very conventional tea party. One of the ladies present had an unruly dog. Exasperated, Phyllis had grabbed the dog and bitten it on the snout. With one nip she had subdued the dog and scared the hell out of the refined attendees.
Betty loved the new Phyllis. She was in heaven. She now had a chum with whom to cackle, someone to offset the psychotic ravings of our other lodgers.
The relationship between Betty and Phyllis was far more than that of landlady and lodger: they were two wildly opinionated broads who loved nothing more than an emotionally charged debate. Self-sacrificing, proud to be British, always ready for a verbal tussle, Phyllis was incapable of capitulating. Betty was similarly committed to her own worldview, and equally nationalistic and feisty. Every night, the two would argue intensely with each other—over a bottle or two of banana-peel Château Doonan—mostly about what the English, i.e., Phyllis, had supposedly done to the non-English, i.e., Betty.
According to Betty, not only did the English lack a sense of fun but they were also completely and utterly devoid of imagination, flair, and originality. They were, without exception, small-minded and stingy, and knew nothing about glamour. When they were poor they were pathetic, bitter, and put-upon. Give them money or power and they became cruel, imperialist, hypocritical, and grandiose. And if you doubted it, which one tended not to with Betty, she had a million examples, historic and contemporary, to prove her theses. Phyllis had no recourse but to defend herself and her country against grievous charges.
Their often incomprehensible and heated debates usually ended with Betty singing the national anthem and imitating the queen, while Phyllis screamed “Rubbish!” with extra rolled r’s.
* * *
&nbs
p; My sister and I would never have dreamt of fighting with Aunt Phyllis. We worshiped and revered her. Every evening, we would accompany her to the Slope, a sharply angled public meadow where Lassie could run free. Here we would walk for hours with our favorite lodger, guiding her around piles of other dogs’ poop. For some horrid reason, my memories of the dog poop on the Slope are very much intact. Much of it was white. I have no idea why. White dog poop seems to be a thing of the past. Maybe someday it will come back into style.
It was while returning from the poop-covered Slope that I fractured Phyllis’s skull.
I was leading her down the street. We were chatting. She was correcting my pronunciation. All the kids at my rough, tough little school dropped their h’s and t’s. I was picking up the habit.
“You sound dreadfully common. There’s an h in front of horrible, you know!” said Phyllis, castigating me at the top of her voice, thereby unwittingly castigating anyone common who was within earshot.
As we came toward a lamppost, I elected to skip around it, à la Gene Kelly in Singin’ in the Rain. I assumed that Phyllis would make a corresponding move in the opposite direction. We would rehook our arms as soon as the obstacle had passed between us and continue on our merry way.
But Phyllis was blind.
So Phyllis kept walking, and then Phyllis smashed straight into the lamppost.
Her skull cracked into the forged steel post, making a sound which lives in the audio archives of my brain even unto this very day. It’s filed under “Cranial Destruction—Sound Effects.” If I were to Google the incident in my own brain, I would probably type in something like “horribly shameful guilty skull crunching.”
The gonging noise echoed up and down the street. People stared at me reproachfully: “You’ve killed a blind woman,” they seemed to say.
Phyllis swayed, groaning softly. I was about to ask her if she was “seeing stars.” Fortunately I thought better of it.
