My Mother My Mirror Read online

  8

  Troubled Teens

  When I was in my last year of the junior school at St Christopher’s, we moved house. I remember looking around some gorgeous old rectorys before we settled on the Old Vicarage in the village of Codicote near Welwyn Garden City. It was a huge great house. The front part was Victorian, with gracious, lofty rooms and tall windows with wooden shutters looking out over a lawn of Cumberland turf, which was springy underfoot.

  In the middle section the rooms were older and not quite so large; this part contained the main staircase and another little curving stair that led to two attic bedrooms. Once when some of the boards had been removed from the main stairs, we saw that at one time steps had led down into the back of the house, but it wasn’t clear where they had come from.

  The back dated from the 1600s and this was where the old kitchen had been. It was darker, with lower ceilings, and included the scullery, game parlour and cellar. There was still a row of bells in the back hallway with wires attached to call the servants to different parts of the house. My parents made one of the big front rooms into a kitchen cum living-room with AGA, sink, dresser and two tables, and this was where we spent most of our time.

  One of the main reasons we moved was that my parents couldn’t afford to send three children to St Christopher’s, which was a fee-paying school, and had heard good things about the schools in the Welwyn area. For a few months I got the train back to Letchworth on school days, then come September I started at the ‘Sir Frederick Osborne’ school in Welwyn Garden City. I hated it.

  Shelley had always riled against uniforms and authoritarianism and now I was in the thick of it, feeling completely miserable and out of place. I’m not going to write a lot about it because it was just depressing, and nothing much happened apart from me keeping myself to myself and waiting for the end of the day. I didn’t mind the lessons, in fact it was only really maths, physics and chemistry that I couldn’t get the hang of at all, but socially I was back feeling like a shy little girl. The buildings were modern and boxy, everyone wore grey and behaved like parts of a machine. The most horrible thing of all was violin lessons, because my teacher was a cruel tyrant, and I did actually tell her what hell she had put me through on my last day at school, but that was after dozens of periods in the sickroom and many, many hours of fear and dread, so really it was too late.

  My littlest sister Martha was born when I was nearly fourteen. By then I was pretty miserable. I remember the rest of the family dancing in the sitting-room, and feeling there was nothing in me that could possibly feel like dancing any more. She was so much younger than me that we didn’t make friends until much later, but she was a happy presence in the Codicote house for the four years before I left. Once again, although I was becoming more and more of a glum teenager, I do remember some nice things about the place where I lived.

  There were a pair of swings in the garden, officially belonging to the twins, and sometimes after school I would achieve some sense of freedom by swinging up and down for a long time as the sun set over the brick wall of the nursery opposite the house. I made up another song this time: “God” on the down-stroke, “Goes marching on,” on the up-stroke, “Never hindered, never stops... God” (swinging down) “Goes marching on... God who made the trees and flowers, God who made the sky, God who made the beautiful sunset, God made you and I... God, goes marching on...” And I would name everything I saw, and slowly feel more at ease and more a part of the world around me. It’s not that I was religious as such; my parents were agnostic and school offered a few hymns and prayers but didn’t force me to believe anything in particular. However I had an instinctive sense that there was something larger and more awesome than little me, and found it comforting in a simple, innocent sort of way to feel that life, personified as God, could be my friend.

  During this time my mother bought a cottage in Mid-Wales with money she had inherited. I enjoyed holidays there. Most days I would go off rambling on my own, climbing hills and making noble speeches to the sheep, finding woods and cairns and different pathways. I spent hours with my little pick-axe exploring the old mine workings, searching for lumps of galena, the cube-based lead ore, and for good specimens of quartz crystal, of which I gathered quite a collection.

  My attic bedroom in Codicote had become a bit like a museum. There was a glass cabinet full of seashells; a few of the fancy ones I had bought in shops, but most of them I had found on beaches. There were shelves of fossils and crystals and interesting stones. As much as possible I found out the names of things and neatly labelled them. I also collected matchbox covers, tea-cards, stamps... From time to time all these things were in perfect order; often they were in a state of mid-organization.

  Back in Wales, I had some good, companionable walks with Shelley in the wild hills, out of sight or sound of any civilization, while Carmen and the twins pottered around closer to the cottage. There were lakes and heather and red kites wheeling overhead, sometimes deserted farmhouses where sheep had come to die and left only their bones behind. Every so often we would come across a mine shaft on the side of a hill; some of them didn’t even have a fence around them, and they were hundreds of feet deep, reaching down into the old mines in the valley. We would throw stones down and listen to them clatter, thunk and echo until the sound became so faint we couldn’t hear it any more, or sometimes it would land with a thud or a splash very far away.

  We had a wonderful neighbour living in the farm just below us. Old Mrs Davies lived on her own, and over the years the animals had drifted into the house with her, so there were chickens perched on the old Welsh dresser along with valuable china ornaments, lambs on her bed, and dogs and cats everywhere. She seemed extremely strong and healthy. Sometimes she gave us a lamb to take care of for a few days, which the twins found particularly thrilling.

  And right down in the valley the beautiful river Ystwyth offered deep pools for swimming, warm grassy banks for picnics with wild raspberries growing nearby, a rushing gorge and a rocky plane with interesting quarry workings, until it eventually wound its way all the way to the coastal town of Aberystwyth, where we would shop for supplies and I would walk along the beach collecting pebbles that I kept in a sweet jar with water to keep the colours rich.

  Sometimes I feel as if I’m betraying my inner child – or the child that I was – by describing beautiful nature as if I was always able to appreciate it and feel close to it, when I have many memories of feeling very cut-off from everything, with my parents repeatedly telling me, “Look at that! Isn’t that lovely?!” and me thinking, “I don’t care if it’s lovely – I don’t know if it’s lovely – Nothing is lovely when I feel miserable – Stop telling me it’s lovely!!” It’s so true, the saying, ‘It’s never too late to have a happy childhood.’ The reason I can look back happily now is because I have done lots and lots of reflecting and counselling, screaming and crying, thinking and forgiving... and so when I think about it now, the happy times shine out, because I am looking through the eyes of the happy person I have become. So forgive me, little Andrea. I hope I say plenty to acknowledge your pain, as well as enjoying the healing process of celebrating the bits that really weren’t too bad!

  Those times in Wales remind me particularly of this, because I was entering that troubled in-between-childhood-and-adulthood time, and the dread of going back to school always loomed over me, getting worse and worse as the end of the holiday approached.

  My troubled thoughts at school did give rise to one very positive thing, and that was the rediscovery of writing as a way to express things that I dare not share with anyone else. I had always found it easier to write things down than to say them, and now with more and more thoughts about boys that seemed even more impossible to share with anyone else, a diary was the perfect solution. From somewhere I found a great big thick, hardback book with glossy pages, and on the front I stuck a postcard of a painting of naked women and cherubs drifting around God in a sensual feast. How I wish I had kept that bo
ok! I burnt it, along with letters to and from Anne and Jacky, and many subsequent diaries, during a ‘renounce the world, purify the past’ stage in my twenties. I would now love to know what was between the covers!

  I know I had a crush on a boy in my class called David – another small chap with a cheeky, confident spirit. Then there was a school production of ‘Hamlet’ and I was enormously taken with Robert Norton, who played Hamlet’s father. He was tall and dark, and often stood at the foot of the stairs doing prefect duty. Needless to say, I never dared approach him.

  But my social life wasn’t totally dry. I still went back to Letchworth at the weekends and spent time with my old school friends, and slowly it became less a matter of playing in their houses and more a matter of hanging around town, sitting in the Koffee-Kup and the Wimpy Bar eyeing up the opposite sex.

  Shyness was agonising. I thought I’d never get over it. I prayed and begged and worried and cried, and was just so scared. I probably made God all sorts of promises of what I would do if I could be released from it. In fact it has been a gradual process taking about fifty years, but there have definitely been milestones, and the Wimpy Bar was one of them. I was so frustrated: possible boyfriends were getting closer and closer and yet were a million miles away on the other side of my knotted tongue. I had such a strong reason to want to break out of myself, and then when I began to focus on one boy in particular, an even stronger reason. So at last I just forced myself to gabble: any old thing, just keep talking, keep making a noise. I had always despised small talk, from my little tower of lonely judgement, wishing that someone would talk to me in a real way, a way that reached me. Now suddenly I was chit-chatting for my life.

  After a couple of weeks of prattle still nobody had claimed me, so it seemed I had to overcome another hurdle. Gathering up all my courage, on the pavement outside Letchworth station, I rushed at Tom, threw my arms around him and held on tight, resting my head on his chest. He seemed bemused, but not displeased. We got the bus to Hitchin where we went for a drink at the ‘Red Hart’, and from then on we were boyfriend and girlfriend for the next three months.

  Tom was tall and Irish with long black boots, blue eyes and black hair down to his shoulders. We did lots of kissing and cuddling, and after I’d known him for a while I discovered that if I rubbed myself up and down on his swollen crotch for long enough something happened where I suddenly melted into an ecstatic bonding feeling. I’m not sure what happened for him. But in the end, despite the bonding, we got a bit bored with each other and decided to end it.

  For a week I thought I would never find another boyfriend, then at the Letchworth Youth Club Ronan asked me out. He was blond and slim and famed for his Mick Jagger imitation, which in those days was one of the surest ways to make a girl swoon. We went out for a while... I remember his parents had given him a shed in the garden that he filled with groovy posters and big cushions and loud records... but he wanted me to sleep with him and I didn’t feel ready, so in the end he found someone more willing.

  I had proved to myself that I could do it.... now what? My social life continued, but it all began to feel rather futile. Because Letchworth was ten miles away and buses didn’t always run at the times I needed them, my parents bought me a moped: a 49cc Puch Maxi. My friend Cathy had one exactly the same, and Maili from the village had a Honda 50. Together we would zoom from town to town seeking out the hottest social spots, or sometimes go to jumble sales and find clothes to repair and convert into party-wear. I found a wealth of Victorian night-dresses that I cut short and dyed in rich colours and then used as smocks, which were in fashion at the time. I had so many I was able to give a lot away as Christmas presents. I also made a voluminous orange and yellow tie-dye dress out of a sheet, and a purple batik duvet cover.

  One evening I went to a party in Letchworth. The usual crowd were there, and as usual I fancied one or two people who didn’t fancy me, and one or two others fancied me but I didn’t fancy them. I drank some wine then had a little smoke, which I shouldn’t have done because the combination always made me feel unwell. Sure enough, I threw up on the edge of the driveway, and feeling pretty fed-up, got back on my moped, wondering if there was anything more interesting going on anywhere else.

  I drove along with my hair streaming out behind me, not sure where I was going, then decided to head for Hitchin and find out who was at the Red Hart. Now that I had a destination in mind, I stopped for a moment to put on my helmet. Less than a minute later I came to a junction, and when the lights turned green I turned right, failing to see the motorbike coming straight at me from the opposite direction. Apparently I landed on my head on a manhole cover, but I knew nothing until I woke up in hospital the next day.

  For two or three days I just lay there, listening to the people around me, presuming I was upstairs. My left leg was in plaster, and my head hurt a lot. Were it not for that last-minute decision to put my helmet on, I would definitely have been dead. Presently I realized I was on the ground floor, and I began to pay more attention to people who came to see me; but before long I was getting worse again. The hospital routine didn’t suit me at all. I was badly concussed, and needed to sleep and sleep; instead they kept waking me up, anxious that I may slip into a coma. After a few days the inflammation in my spine was creeping dangerously close to my brain. It was then that my mother made a brave decision that almost certainly saved my life. Against the advice of the doctors, she took me home.

  For weeks I lay in a darkened bedroom, my leg raised, sleeping and sleeping and sleeping. I was a horrible patient: she didn’t get much reward for her tireless ministrations; and even when I was up and on my crutches, I was pretty depressed. So I am deeply thankful to her for saving me, in spite of myself. I can remember after a couple of weeks managing to switch on the radio and actually appreciate a bit of music. I don’t know what it was – nothing special – but just the ability to listen to it was wonderful. It was the beginning of coming back to life.

  Slowly, slowly I recovered. The break in my leg had been a green-stick fracture so it took months to mend. And my head had been hit at the back, causing my brain to lurch forward and sever my olfactory nerve, so that for a long time I couldn’t smell anything, and my food only tasted of salt, sweet, sour or bitter. Then one day the flavour of oranges came back, and very slowly other things began to return, though even today subtle tastes like bread tend to elude me.

  That Christmas I was able to go to parties again, helped by Cathy’s boyfriend Clive who carried me up steps and into the places I found it hard to reach on my crutches. Every so often I set myself back a bit by putting too much weight on my leg. But at last the plaster came off, to reveal a very pale, skinny limb, with an alarming growth of hair that had been thriving in the dark.

  9

  Virginity & LSD

  As soon as I was well enough, I began to attend Stevenage College of Further Education in order to do some ‘A’ levels. I sailed through English, and became very confused in French. But of course my main focus was on boys. A friend of mine called Alison from Welwyn also went there, and we soon discovered the rich pickings of the Graphic Art department, where lots of lovely shaggy young men with artistic tendencies hung out. Before long I was girlfriend to Dave, who was one of the older ones. He was twenty-three, and I was seventeen. He also had a car. This was the life! Every lunch time we went to a different pub in the Stevenage area and ate ploughman’s and drank lager or cider, sitting on benches outside in the sun. He kept wanting me to have sex, but I kept saying no.

  That summer there was a music festival at somewhere called ‘Bickershaw’. I never have been able to find it on the map; it was near Wigan Pier, up Lancashire way. We went in Dave’s car – lots of us no doubt, but I can’t remember who else – and it was there, in Dave’s tent, that I lost my virginity. It was a bit of an anti-climax after all this time, and I was surprised at all the ins and outs, having naively expected one ecstatic plunge and then for it all to have been over.

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sp; Now that we had been so close of course there was no going back, and I became very attached to Dave. He would come and stay with me in Codicote, in a bed curtained by Indian bedspreads to make a warm and cosy nest. By this time I was sleeping downstairs, and my room had French windows leading out into the garden. This made it ideal for night-time visitors, though my parents soon relented and let him come in by the front door.

  The room was full of my artistic creations: apart from my batik bedspread, there was a macramé lampshade and another one made from threaded maize, a delicate pyramid of blown eggs stuck together with glue, from our bantam chickens, and other eggs colourfully decorated with felt pen and painted with varnish. There was also a large knobbly flint that I drew on soon after an acid trip and looked rather amazing, some pieces of jewellery made from beads and silver wire, an embroidered felt bird, and a velvet patchwork bag. I loved to make beautiful things, and tried out every new method that I came across.

  Dave became slowly more withdrawn, and then he started getting completely out-of-his-head stoned: staggering around, unable to communicate properly at all. I became increasingly upset, and then he dumped me. Someone told me he had still been seeing his ex-wife and was attached to her and wanting to get back together with her. I wept buckets, and danced to ‘Substitute for another guy’, singing along loudly. I had never been heartbroken before; it was dreadful.

  As one last attempt at education I was sent next to Hitchin College of FE, where I tried some more ‘A’ levels. Sociology I could never quite grasp, history of art was a bit dull, art was enjoyable but I didn’t put much effort in, presuming that I was good enough, so I’m ashamed to say that I failed the exam. But I didn’t care very much; I had had enough of being educated. There were big questions looming on the horizon about who I was and what my life was for, and I knew that ‘A’ levels were not going to answer any of them.