Читать книгу Real Life - Marsha Hunt - Страница 6

Co Wicklow

Ireland

Wednesday, November 15, 1995

My dear Karis,

It’s 4 am. Can’t sleep. I’m in the middle of writing the new introduction to my autobiography and I keep thinking about things that were happening when I wrote it. Ten years have slipped by and a lot has changed. For one thing, you’re 25 and living in San Francisco whereas I’ve just moved to Ireland to be with Alan after completing my fourth book.

Although I’m pleased that Real Life is being republished, I dread the prospect of it giving journalists an excuse to ask about Mick. They hate to believe that we’ve been on friendly terms for years and that you have a good relationship with him, but nonetheless, I’m glad that through Real Life I had a chance to explain what had happened between us, because the details of the good times and the trials seem less real and less relevant with each passing year. It’s odd to think that you are already older than I was when your father and I were lovers and even older than I was when I gave birth to you at 24.

In 1985 when people heard that I’d been commissioned to write my autobiography, some said I was too young at 39. But by then I’d already had three careers, been a single parent and lived on three continents. Not to mention having survived the legal battles with Mick and the humiliating experience of dealing with his lawyers and the press. Writing this book changed my life. I had to recreate events and recall circumstances which were far more disturbing than I had admitted that they were when I’d actually experienced them. So by the time I’d completed my final draft, I was both stronger and weaker because of self-examination. I’ve had more than my share of luck and adventure and being identified as an icon of the 60s hasn’t stopped me from adventuring. But I’ve always believed that what made my life worth writing about was that as a woman and an African American my experiences reflected the changes in how we were perceived. Had I been born ten years earlier for instance, my years in rock bands could have never happened and rather than being hailed as a single parent I would have been tagged an ‘unwed mother’.

No doubt you laugh at my referring to myself as an African American because you know how I hate that label and resent the way that we Americans descended from slaves have had a name change far too often. Coloured. Negro. Black. And now African American which is not only a mouthful but relates us to a continent that for at least four generations our family has had no experience of. All I know of Africa is what I’ve read, been told or learned about through the media. But then who am I to complain when I had the audacity in Real Life to try to coin a label for us of my own. Melangian now seems an absurd word, but then who stuck us with African American and don’t we have a say in the matter?

Nonetheless when I was asked if I wanted to rewrite the autiobiography I declined, although I cringe when I see the word Melangian pop up. My pomposity is embarrassing but it should remain on the record. Real Life was my first attempt at writing a book and having written two novels and this most recent non-fiction, I could only make a mess of trying to adjust my first.

In 1985 I doubt that anybody would have believed that I would write another book. A review in Time Out said the one thing my readers would be certain of is that I would never write again and my editor for Real Life moaned, ‘How can you want to write when it takes you so long!’ She’d come to our flat on Marlborough Place and watched my slow pecking at a manual typewriter. I have to admit that there have been thousands of instances while I’ve been labouring over subsequent books when I’ve wondered if she didn’t have a point.

I didn’t become a weeper until I became a writer and it’s hard to tell whether it’s the craft which drives me to tears or the characters that I write about that I’m forced to live with daily. On the other hand the isolation I’ve imposed upon myself so that I could churn books out might make a lot of people emotional. Friends couldn’t understand why I moved to Folkestone in 1986 and then slipped off to a remote house in France in 1989. But I can hear myself telling them ‘I have to be alone to write.’ It also gave me the time and space to recreate myself as an author without anybody to challenge me with ‘But you’re a singer …’ or ‘But you’re an actress …’ or ‘You’re that girl from Hair who had Mick Jagger’s baby …’ Thank God I’ve never allowed other people’s perceptions of me to stop me from living my life, because I’d now probably be a bag lady toting tatty plastic carriers full of Hair press clippings circa 1969.

No doubt you think it’s crazy that I’ve now moved to the Irish countryside but this is no more bizarre than your buying a house in San Francisco, within a few miles of the very place I deserted when I tromped off for a European adventure nearly thirty years ago. But when I encouraged you to go to an American university so you could shed some of your public school ways, how could I foresee that you’d make the States your home? It seems these days that you see more of your father than you see of me. But I’m glad that you’re happy and surrounded by some of the friends you made at Yale.

By the way, thanks for Fed-Exing those set dressings to me in time for my performance of Joy last week. They arrived two hours before the play was starting and to see that little yellow party dress hanging on stage brought back endless memories of two summers ago when we got together in France to adapt my novel and prepare me to perform it at the Edinburgh Festival. God that was fun wasn’t it - like old times with just the two of us. I can still hear you asking me the first time I cried in rehearsal, ‘Mum, are you all right?’ So that I had to step out of my character to say, ‘I’m fine Miss Karis … just acting.’

I hope you’ll stage Joy in San Francisco, because there must be scores of older black actresses needing a good role, and if you can direct me, you can direct anybody.

I was sure last Monday that I’d forget my lines but somehow they came back to me. And at the end of my performance I was tempted to tell the audience, ‘My daughter produced and directed me in this play at last year’s Edinburgh Festival’ but I was scared it would reek of a mother’s pride. After 30 years in Britain you’d think some English modesty would have rubbed off on me, but it still feels unnatural … Speaking of which, next February 28th will mark the anniversary of my arrival in London from Berkeley. I’m not one for parties but maybe I should have one to coincide with the publication of Repossessing Ernestine which comes out two weeks earlier. Have you read the uncorrected proof yet? I think you should since you keep popping up in it. That picture Stefan sent me of you in France will be included amongst the photographs. Everybody says you look lovely.

It seems unbelievable that I finally finished writing Ernestine’s story. It’s taken four years in all from the beginning of my quest to find her, and it seems like a light year ago when I rang you at Yale to say, ‘Somebody claims that they’ve spotted my grandmother in Memphis’ and you told me I had to go see her and even beat me to it. Fifty-two years in a mental ward and still standing. What’s sad is that she’s not compos mentis enough to read her own story.

Anyway, Miss Karis, it’s now 6am and raining hard. I’m alone because Alan’s away working. The house is spectacularly quiet. So much so that I can hear the sound of the felt tip I’m writing with scratching on the page. A lot of people would hate this silence but I thrive on it after the years of being in France on my own … I have to keep reminding myself that I’m in Ireland, because unless I go into town, it seems I could be anywhere. The country’s like that somehow, especially when I’m indoors. But as soon as I hit Dublin I think, ‘Lord, woman, how have you ended up in Ireland!’ Of course Alan’s the answer and thank goodness he didn’t live somewhere weird. I love this house and there’s something in the air which says that I’m being afforded another new beginning.

I hope you don’t mind that this book has been republished. It’s not supposed to dredge up old wounds but merely stands as an account of the first thirty-nine years of my life. Thank you immensely for your part in it and trust that if I had to live it all again, I wouldn’t have missed you for the world.

I send endless hugs and love, Mama