Nanny Downer replied in her broad Belfast accent, ‘Do I fucking look alright, Patsy? Look at me! I’ve got a dress I could swim in and half of my face is burnt.’ She was sunburnt on half her body – we had strategically left her in the sun to burn on the diagonal. Her glasses had slid to the end of her nose and they were misty, with beads of water obscuring her vision.
‘What are you trying to do, kill an old lady?’ At this point she burst into a heavy belly laugh, which Mum and I caught and joined in with.
Whenever Nanny Downer laughed and tried to speak at the same time, she might as well have been speaking Swahili to the rest of us. Only Mum and my aunties could understand her at that point – it’s something you had to be brought up with. Her laughter was powerful and rich, and swept everyone along with it: her life was full of such extremes and her laughter seemed to sit comfortably with the tragedy that had marked much of it.
Thank God Nanny Downer got back in touch with us because the holiday before, when Mum and Dad went off to one of the Costas on an all-inclusive, we were sent to bleeding Christian camp for a week. I say a week, but the whole process took a lot longer. You see, to go to Christian camp, you had to go to Sunday School and it’s not as if you could just pop in the week before. Oh no, I don’t know exactly how long you had to go before, but I know that we went for a whole year.
Dad is an atheist, Mum isn’t bothered either way, and not one of us had been christened. You can imagine what that would have been like, with Dad’s spelling. Christ knows what names we would have ended up with. But in fairness to Mum and Dad, half the Goldingham estate was at Christian club, or Sunday school, or whatever they called it back then. All the parents had clocked on to the fact that they could get a week away from the kids and wouldn’t have to pay for the holiday.
No, we had to pay for it! Every Sunday morning, pretending we were interested in the Bible, just because we were going to get a free holiday. In saying that, we all had a lot of fun at Sunday School and on our free camping – yes, camping – holiday. Mind you, everything with me was camp; I didn’t need a tent and five other boys to share it with, but that’s what we got.
There were no mixed tents there – family or not, we were strictly segregated. There was a lot of singing around the camp fire too – I still remember one of the songs:
No, you never get to heaven,
In a baked bean tin,
No, you never get to heaven,
In a baked bean tin,
No, you never get to heaven in a baked bean tin,
’Cos a baked bean tin has got baked beans in.
We used to sing the same song about a Playtex bra as well. It didn’t make much sense to me then and it still doesn’t now.
Even at that age, it wasn’t what I would have called glamorous. Not that I had experienced true glamour back then, but I had been to Butlin’s. It was at Butlin’s that I won my first talent competition, unaware that I had entered it. I just heard the music and I followed it, wandering off from my parents into the ballroom. I started doing my high kicks, my cartwheels and my roly-polies.
I was only about five and when Mum and Dad finally found me, along with five Redcoats and the camp security, Mum was beside herself and close to having another one of her nervous breakdowns. It was something she eventually got used to: wherever there was music and a crowd, I could always be found in the middle of the action, mincing like a maniac.
2
Me and Mr Whippy
We made so many new friends when we arrived in Braintree! Next door to us lived the Sherlocks – Jonathan, Kim, Kerry, Julia, Simon and Tara. Then the Joneses at number three – Sharon, Michelle, Paul and Wayne. Then Gary Smith, just around the back, with his older brother Smudger (everyone fancied him). Don’t get me wrong, he was cute, but I never fancied him. At the tender age of five, I had a thing for Mr Whippy, the ice-cream man. Don’t ask me why – maybe it’s because he gave me extra sauce and nuts on my 99 ice-cream, but there was something about him that captivated me.
Whenever his ice-cream van was around, I would have to go and speak to him, even if Mum couldn’t afford to buy me an ice-cream that evening. He always made me feel special and spoke to me as an adult, not the little kid I was. He was very gentle and kind – there was nothing untoward with Mr Whippy. Now, I don’t know if this was possible, but I fancied him. Yes, at five years old, I think I fancied Mr Whippy. Can you believe I never found out his name – my first love and I don’t know his name! Maybe someone who knows Mr Whippy, who used to come to Goldingham Drive circa ’75–’85, could let me know.
I can still see his face now: he had beautiful, thick, jet-black shiny hair, with a side parting and he was always perfectly groomed. Even though he was freshly shaved, he still had that shadow – you know what I mean, that type. He had the deepest chocolate-brown eyes and the longest lashes I had ever seen on a man. Believe me, I’d seen some lashes – you should have seen some of the falsies Mum used to wear in the Seventies. Whenever she was out, I would have them on more than once.
Anyway, back to Mr Whippy, whose lips were soft and full; he had the most beautiful smile and white teeth that made the five-year-old me melt. A five-year-old who didn’t even know the word gay, so don’t talk to me about nature and nurture. Let’s get one thing straight – I came screaming out of that womb, high kicking and dancing.
I SUPPOSE there were advantages to being the only boy, even though Dad jokes now and says he had four girls. Having your own bedroom in a three-bedroom house, with two sisters in one and your parents in the other is great when you are a teenager: you can shut the door and knock one out whenever you want.
But at five years old, when I was used to sharing a room with my two older sisters, Rennie and Tania, and having someone to speak to, or just knowing someone was there when I went to sleep, I felt lonely and afraid of the dark in my own room. I remember the silence, which we never had in London, where I was used to the sound of cars and people.
I slept in an MFI box-bed – I say box-bed, but I ended up sleeping in the drawers. It was one of those beds that had the chest of drawers underneath, with a bit of cheap plywood separating the mattress from the drawers, so I fell straight through and ended up in the top drawer alongside my Spiderman and Superman polyester pants. I remember literally sweating my bollocks off in those pants and if you didn’t shake and got a dribble of wee in them, they would keep the smell. There I am, back on wee again! Let’s get off the wee and back on to poor, poor, lonely me, alone at night in my room. I’ll tell you what I used to do – I would climb out of bed (or my top drawer) and crawl on all-fours to my sisters’ room next door to mine, holding my breath so they wouldn’t hear me breathe.
This was Tania and Rennie, as Kelly hadn’t arrived yet. When Kelly arrived, my relationship with Mum changed – and not for the better, in my eyes. I used to love the times when Mum and I were together on our own. I don’t know if everyone feels like this, but I can remember at a young age what it was like to have to share her with the rest of the family. I loved it when my sisters went to school and Dad went to work, and it was just Mum and me left in the house, after I had been to playschool. Rennie and Tania were already doing full days at infant school.
I remember following her around wherever she went, and I loved sitting and watching her putting on her make-up. Mum always made an effort – she never left the house without doing her hair and her make-up. To me, she was the most beautiful woman ever. I used to compare her to other women, even at that young age, and thinking that they were not the same as my mum – no make-up, hair not done. When she would pick me up from playschool, at Goldingham Hall, about two minutes from home, to me she would stand out from the other mums because she always looked so good.
I was very proud to see Mum every day after playschool, then we would go home and she would make lunch. We sat and talked – don’t ask me what about – we would just talk. Then we would lay on the sofa together in spoons and watch the afternoon film or The Sullivans. I remember that feeling of security