Читать книгу To Be Someone - Ian Stone - Страница 14

The campaign to go and see a Jam gig live continued throughout 1977 without success. I bitched and moaned to my mother but she wasn’t having it. To punish her for not letting me get my way, I behaved so badly and had so many tantrums that I almost certainly proved her point about being too young. I wasn’t rebellious enough to disobey her and just go anyway. I preferred to stay in and be moody. I was feeling very sorry for myself and I must have been horrible to be with. When I wasn’t glowering at her or monosyllabically grunting in her general direction I retreated to my room, turned up the first album to maximum volume and played the songs over and over again just to annoy her. She must have known them almost as well as I did. I figured I might wear her down. I suppose I did in the end.

Music for me back then was about getting a quick fix of energy, a three-minute hit of adrenalin that would temporarily distract me from the humdrum reality of life. There were songs on In The City about love and dancing and being young; they always hit the spot. I loved the finality of ‘I’ve Changed my Address’ and Rick’s drumming on the Batman theme. I bopped about to ‘Art School’. The whole thing felt so alive.

But the title track was a new experience for me. Later on in life I heard Elvis Costello and Bob Dylan and Billy Bragg singing political songs, but at fourteen hearing a song which talked about social change turned on a light in my head. I knew that Paul was political and I’m sure a lot of working-class kids got their first insight into politics listening to this album.

The lyrics on ‘Away from the Numbers’ explored the idea of breaking away and taking control and freeing your mind and soul. I was well up for that but how I was going to make that happen, I had not the first clue. I had a terrible haircut, a big nose, no independent financial means and very little in the way of social skills. Who was going to let me break away and have control of anything?

Paul seemed to have such fierce individualism; I had nowhere near that level of conviction in anything. I wouldn’t go as far as to say that I was an idiot, but I had very few in the way of independent thoughts. My world revolved around needs or emotions. Hungry, angry, miserable, tired, that sort of thing. Other than that, I had vague notions and ideas which, with careful nurturing, might have turned into solid opinions, but they were subject to change at the merest hint of argument on the part of someone who knew better. Or even someone who didn’t. It would’ve been comforting to know that everyone I hung out with was feeling much the same way that I did.

I realise now that becoming a fan of Paul Weller and The Jam was my first real attempt to try and define myself. To consciously distance myself from my parents. To say, ‘This is who I am and this is what I believe in.’ The fact that all I really believed in was what Paul Weller told me to believe in was neither here nor there. Before The Jam, I tagged along with this and that group or fad but aside from Arsenal, nothing really captured my imagination. Now I had something to hold on to. Something that my parents couldn’t understand and actively disliked. Something that wasn’t nice. I knew as soon as I heard the first album that it was what I’d been waiting for. Someone not much older than me who seemed to have got their act together. There was hope after all.

But only after I got out of the house. Home was chaotic at best and toxic at worst. I was living with my parents Ken and Helena, and my sister Beverley. My parents hated each other and stayed out of each other’s way whenever possible. Beverley was six-and-a-half years younger than me. Being a teenage boy, I had very little in common with her. My mum stayed in the bedroom, my father in the lounge, Beverley in her room and me in mine. We were four strangers living in the same house. (I read recently that Paul Weller had a sister and there was a similar age gap and he didn’t have much to do with her. I felt a little frisson of kinship when I heard that.)

I kept away as much as I could. I even stayed later at school just so I wouldn’t have to go home. I tried to get detentions so I could have an extra hour away.

‘I think that’s enough, Stone’.

‘We haven’t done the full hour, Sir’.

My mother can be a funny woman although this became less apparent the more time she spent with Ken. She once went into a shop that sold nuts and asked them if the raisin shop was nearby. She had a nice line in sarcasm. As the marriage deteriorated, we saw less of this side of her.

I understand why my mother got married. She came from a religious family, so it was expected she’d get hitched as soon as possible. She said she was frightened of being left on the shelf although, as she was nineteen-years-old, she may have had a few more years before she withered away. She said that she was concerned that being the last of her siblings to get married, she may well be left with the task of looking after her elderly parents. These are all perfectly valid reasons to get married. Just not to my father.

Ken was born a baby, graduated to early childhood and decided that, emotionally, that was far enough. His thinking was along the lines of ‘I have control of my bowels, what else does one need?’ He was assisted in this first of all by my grandmother Cissie who indulged his every whim and thought the sun shined out of his arse. Although it’s difficult to know how she could tell seeing as he never got off it. And then by my mother, who was too fearful of being alone to tell him to grow up and maybe help around the house once in a blue moon. With their assistance (and one or two other female members of the Stone family), he’s managed to go through his entire life without ever doing anything that he didn’t want to do. He’s never cooked a meal, never cleaned up, never done any DIY. He changed one nappy and he still talks about it to this day. ‘Your sister’s done a packet,’ he regularly says (often at dinner when Beverley is sitting at the table), referring to an occasion almost fifty years ago when my sister had filled a nappy. ‘An absolute packet,’ he’d stress just so we knew how much shit he’d actually had to deal with. My mother had, for the only time in Beverley’s early childhood, left Ken with the responsibility of looking after her and it traumatised him for life. He’s eighty-seven this year and is the singularly most useless adult I’ve ever known. Beverley described him as a great dad and a terrible father and husband. Everyone else thinks he’s a legend. They never had to live with him, or needed him to do anything for them.

My parents got married in November 1958 and went to Bournemouth for their honeymoon. On the Friday night, my dad turned to my mum. ‘I’ve got something for you,’ he said. ‘It’s a surprise.’ I guess any newly married bride would like to hear a sentence like that from their husband. She may have imagined new clothes or perhaps even tickets to a big show. What she almost certainly did not imagine was that on the Saturday afternoon, my father, as a surprise that, let’s face it, would endear him to any woman, produced two tickets for Bournemouth versus Brentford at Dean Court in the English fourth division. I imagine it was a pretty big surprise. According to historical weather data, it was a very cold but mercifully dry day. I’d like to think that as they were on honeymoon, my dad splashed out on a couple of seats, but it’s perfectly possible that three days after she got married, my mother found herself standing on an open terrace in the freezing cold watching two teams she’d never heard of playing a game she hated. And that may well have been the high point of the relationship.

My mother is no angel. She has been known to be demanding. But only by people who’ve met her. Being demanding is a fairly typical*6 character trait when it comes to Jewish mothers and it’s accepted in lieu of other more positive attributes. But it’s not useful when you’re married to a man as inured and impervious to demands as my father. My mother demanded, my father completely ignored her. There were a lot of arguments and very few laughs.

My mum felt trapped. By 1977, she was smoking way more than she used to and possibly drinking as well. I knew things weren’t going well in the marriage. One only had to listen to the way my parents spoke to each other to realise that any love they may have felt for each other had long gone. Living with my father cannot have been easy. My mum was working a full time job and doing all the household chores whilst her partner got in from work, sat down on his arse, and demanded dinner. This might have caused some simmering feelings of resentment.

My mother started talking about divorce. The volume and frequency of the arguments had increased and it felt, to her at least, like the only way forward. My dad was having none of it. Aside from being regularly screamed at, he was living a cushy life. He would sit in his chair reading the paper while my mum cleaned around him. At dinner time, she’d bring his meals to him. He never offered to help, never thanked her, never even looked at her.

He used to nervously pull his lip. I don’t know what he had to be nervous about. Possibly the fact that one evening, my mum would down tools, never cook for him again and he’d slowly starve to death. My mother hated him pulling his lip. She started to fixate on it.

‘Don’t pull your lip,’ she’d scream at him. He’d stop pulling his lip for a short while and then do it again. She’d leave the table in disgust.

By the end, they weren’t communicating at all. My mum would see him in his favourite chair and call him.

‘Oy.’

He wouldn’t respond.

‘Oy,’ she’d say again, only louder.

He’d look up.

‘I need you over here.’

‘I’m doing something,’ he’d say. He wasn’t doing anything. He was reading the paper.

‘But I need you over here.’

He’d reluctantly move his backside and come over.

‘What is it?’ he’d say

‘Fuck off!’

He looked like he was going to hit her. ‘No, you fuck off!’

He’d go back to his chair and she’d laugh bitterly.

That was how they spoke to each other most of the time. As far back as I could recall, I’d never heard them use each other’s first names. I was at a family party when I was eighteen and someone called my mother from across the room.

‘Helena.’

I remember thinking, ‘Oh yes, that’s right . . . it’s Helena.’

*

In the end it all got too much at home and my mother took an overdose of tablets and tried to commit suicide. I knew my mum was taking tablets ‘for her nerves’. Everything got ‘on them’. My father obviously. My grandmother when she took his side (so, every time). Me when I argued with her, or when I played The Jam too loudly. She was forever popping pills. I just thought that’s what adults did. I guess she just cracked one afternoon. I was in my room listening to music when I heard a commotion in the hall. I came out and saw a blue light flashing outside. Two men emerged from my mother’s room guiding a bed on wheels through the front door. My mother was on the bed. She was out cold. One of the men saw me as he went past and gave me a look of pity. I can still see it now.

Nowadays, if a trauma like that befell a family, one would hope that a wide range of health care professionals would get involved. Social workers and mental health practitioners and perhaps drug dependency counsellors would swing into action and provide all manner of assistance and support. Back then, while my mum may well have got some help at the hospital she was taken to, no one said anything to me. I probably could’ve used a chat about the whole episode but I didn’t know how to bring it up or even whether I should. My dad never mentioned it and I went back to school the next morning.

It was thought best that I should go and live with my Aunt Irene in Redbridge in Essex for a couple of weeks. I certainly wasn’t capable of looking after myself and if it had been left to my dad to feed me, I’d have starved to death. I’m not sure who was looking after Beverley but I think she was shipped off somewhere as well. I have no idea who looked after my father. He was less capable of looking after himself than my sister and she was only seven.

My aunt Irene also never talked about what had happened. The adults in my family seemed to think that my mother’s attempted suicide was best dealt with by not acknowledging it at all. In truth, I didn’t mind being in Irene’s house. It was very neat and tidy and it smelt clean. There was a baby grand piano in the lounge and a lot of books. Irene was married to a gentle and very sweet Canadian guy called Alvin. He told me jokes to try and cheer me up. They might have been funny in Canada. My cousins, David and Barry, were a little older than me but I got on with both of them. It was an OK place to hang out for a few weeks. No one was shouting at anyone else and the food was great. My aunt made amazing chicken soup. She kept asking me if I was fine. I was fine. I liked chicken soup. The journey to school took a bit longer but I didn’t care. I’d have been happy to move in indefinitely but at some point, adults decided that it was time for me to go back to West Hendon.

Home was a more subdued place when I got back. No one spoke about what my mother had tried to do but there was a little less shouting and screaming, at least for a few months. I now realise that my mother was monumentally stoned on anti-depressants. I also now realise that I could’ve used a few myself.

Things didn’t improve. The arguments slowly got going again. My dad was incredibly angry that my mother had tried to kill herself. Mainly, he was angry with the fact that for once, he wasn’t the centre of attention. This changed soon after. At the time, he was working at the Post Office sorting depot at Mount Pleasant in King’s Cross. One afternoon, he didn’t fancy going back in after lunch. Most people would’ve gone to their boss, told them they were sick and taken the rest of the day off. My father went to a phone box and, in a Northern Irish accent which to this day he point blank refuses to do in front of me no matter how much I beg, called in a bomb threat. This was in the days when phoned-in bomb threats were the IRA’s preferred method of warning the public. They had to be taken seriously, even if, as in this case, the supposed IRA bombers accent was the most suspect thing about him. Thirty thousand workers spilled onto the street and a major search took place. Nothing was found of course. I guess it’s difficult to locate a dodgy looking parcel in a sorting office. My dad got the afternoon off.

The first we knew about all this was late one night when my mum and I were sitting at home watching the film Gyspy on TV. We were starting to wonder where my dad had got to when there was a knock at the front door.

I was despatched. ‘Could you see who that is, luv?’

Standing in the doorway, filling it really, was a massive policeman. I thought about the poster in my room.

‘Is your mother in, son?’ he asked.

‘Yeah. What’s going on? Is it my dad?’

‘Just get your mother,’ he said.

The way he said it, I honestly thought my dad was dead. The policeman must have seen something on my face.

‘He’s fine, son. Just get your mother’.

I went to get my mum and she went to the front door. I heard snatches of the conversation.

‘He’s what?’ and ‘For fuck’s sake.’

Two minutes later, she came back into the living room.

‘Your father’s been arrested,’ said my Mother. This was one of the more surprising moments of my life. Ken was a difficult man, and for my mother a nightmare to live with, but I’d never envisaged him as a criminal. He was a child trapped in a man’s body.

‘What for?’

‘Terrorism offences,’ said my mother and I couldn’t have been more astonished if she’d said that he’d be trying to foment a revolution in Latin America. Che Kenneth. I went to ask for more details but my mother held up her hand as if to say, ‘I can’t talk about it anymore’. There wasn’t much we could do at that point so we watched the rest of the film.*7

Over the years, I tried to speak to him about it but he always changed the subject. Even to someone as preternaturally immune to shame as my father, this episode was a bit embarrassing. But as time has passed and it’s been established that this was a minor blip in an otherwise crime-free life, he’s been more willing to open up.

‘You were really unlucky to get caught the first time you did it,’ I said to him recently.

‘Oh no, it wasn’t the first time,’ he said laughing. ‘I did it ten or twelve times. And I wasn’t the only one.’ (To this day, I’m not sure if he was joking). No wonder Britain was struggling in the late 1970s. The threat of terrorism was real enough without idiots phoning in non-existent bomb scares just to get the afternoon off. If you had trouble receiving your post around that time, this may have been a factor. In fact, I think it’s fair to say that my father and his workshy mates were a small part of the reason why Margaret Thatcher got elected. I can only apologise.

He told me that he had a bomb threat routine. I guess when you do something as often as my dad phoned in bomb threats, it becomes routine. He’d work in the morning in his normal fashion. At least as normally as anyone who was planning an act of terrorism can do. He’d then go off for his lunch, find a phone box, phone the office and say there was a bomb planted somewhere in the building and they had fifteen minutes to get out. I asked him why he did it.

‘I wanted to spend more time with your mother and sister,’ he said.

I seriously doubted this. Beverley was at school and even if he did want to spend more time with my mother, she certainly didn’t want to spend any more time with him.

‘Did you go home then?’ I asked him.

‘Sometimes,’ he said. ‘But on a Friday, I’d go to the pub. They had strippers on.’

This was news to me. Up to this point, I never knew that my mum and sister were stripping. I mentioned this to him. He didn’t laugh.

‘I was under a lot of pressure,’ he said.

He told me that he got caught because the Post Office, annoyed at the disruption and cost of thirty-thousand people spilling onto the streets twice a week while they looked for non-existent suspect packages, decided to act. They suspected that it might be employees trying to skive off work, so they posted lookouts around the local phone boxes, and put two and two together. He was nabbed after one phone call, marched back to the office and arrested. He confessed without much of a struggle.

‘I was sacked on the spot as well,’ he said sounding somewhat surprised.

While he was on bail, the atmosphere at home got even worse. He didn’t have a job so he was contributing basically nothing to the household. My mum couldn’t even look at him. He went up in court a couple of months later and, with the help of my auntie Irene acting as a character witness, somehow got away with a suspended sentence. I think my mum was disappointed he wasn’t sentenced to death by firing squad.

*6 Universal

*7 I went to see a West End revival of Gypsy. They sang ‘You’ve gotta have a gimmick’ and I was instantly transported back to that night.