A Young Man's Passage (10 page)

To which Sambo replied, ‘That ain’t chewing gum, honey chile, I just has de heavy cold.’

In the cartoon fantasy world we created, Millie Slut and Gay Lusac were glamorous superstars, often depicted in full colour clutching awards for ‘the worst LP of the year’, falling into the orchestra pit during disastrous world tours or simply proclaiming their own fabulousness while dissing their rivals, sometimes pleasuring themselves with cucumbers at the same time.

Meanwhile we did lots of extracurricular reading: Muriel Spark, Iris Murdoch, and Jane Austen, the gossipy nature of her novels being right up our street. When Father Edmund asked who had read any D.H. Lawrence novels and I replied, ‘Yes, all of them,’ he was horrified.

‘
All
of them? What, even . . .
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
?’ He was more horrified than impressed.

Off we went to more concerts: Lou Reed, Roxy Music and in particular Dana Gillespie. She had just been signed to Bowie’s Mainman label and was doing a series of gigs to promote her album
Weren’t Born A Man
. (‘Ooh what a drag I ain’t got a tail to wag.’) The cover featured Dana in stockings and suspenders, wearing a red basque and a feather boa. She was the original Mary Magdalene in
Jesus Christ Superstar!
and a former British waterskiing champion. She was fabulously buxom, reeked of jasmine oil and wore lots of Indian jewellery. We wrote to her and she replied, sending us each signed photos and stickers.

We went to lots of her gigs at places like Brunel University and the 100 Club in Oxford St. She sang her own fabulously raunchy songs with titles like ‘Get My Rocks Off’ and concluded each gig with a selection of old bordello songs such as ‘Organ Grinder’, or a voodoo song from New Orleans ‘I Walk on Gilded Splinters’.

She was also reasonably accessible. We got to chat to her afterwards, inhale her jasmine perfume, be photographed with her and get her autograph. Amazingly Nick once stayed the night at her ‘bunker’ in South Kensington, when he missed the last tube home. I was terribly jealous when I heard he’d snuggled up with Sneezy her Yorkshire terrier in the spare room, sleeping next to a guitar given to Dana by none other than David Bowie.

After one gig I nipped onto the stage and nicked the glass she’d been drinking from to add to the ‘shrine’ I’d created in my bedroom.

‘I always thought you were gay,’ she said recently. ‘You had the mannerisms.’

Indeed I did, but it wasn’t something I was ready to confront just yet. Dana was our icon. We had pictures of her in various states of undress on our bedroom walls. She was our icon, and in some senses our beard.

FROM ADMIRATION TO
aspiration is but a small step, and by the age of 14 Nick and I decided we were pop stars in the making. He was to be known as Nick Charles and I was Groupie Gypp. Until my father burnt it I wrote songs on the piano, but we both saved up for acoustic guitars and wrote dozens of songs each with just a handful of chords. I mastered A, E and G, but Nick rather surprised us both by playing the rather tricky B7. I even took guitar lessons with a clinically depressed woman called Wendy Beak who lived near Teddington Lock. Because of her condition she would only teach sad songs. Once ‘Smoke Gets In Your Eyes’ was learnt she wrote out the lyrics to ‘Somewhere Over The Rainbow’, except in her version it read:

Somewhere over the rainbow
,

Skies are grey
. . .

We were prolific songwriters, knocking out a couple of what we were sure were hit singles most nights, with titles such as ‘Hot Hands, Cold Heart’, ‘Boogie Down The Inside of Your Leg’ or the sacrilegious ‘Love On The Altar’.

We would each record our compositions separately on cassette, being as innovative as we could with our limited guitar skills, pitch pipes and maracas. We would then spend a Saturday afternoon having a ‘photo session’, which involved hogging the Woolworth’s photo booth in Richmond, wearing sunglasses and draping ourselves in colourful scarves. When Nick got a Polaroid camera for Christmas we were able to indulge our fantasy without suffering an angry queue of punters waiting to get their passport photos, impatient with the two girly schoolboys taking forever behind the grey curtain.

We would then design our ‘album’ cassette covers, agonising over the felt-tip graphics and title (
Eclipse
and
Sweet Touch
were two of mine, the latter featuring a bastardised snap of me moodily stroking Pao the cat). When we were both ready we would ‘release’ our new albums, which just meant that I handed mine to Nick and he handed his to me. But we did this with some reverence and then nervously awaited each other’s ‘review’, which was invariably favourable.

From time to time we’d put on concerts. We didn’t feature many of our own songs during these, preferring to sing along to the fuller sound of our favourite records. I’d wait till I knew everyone was going to be out for the evening, then I’d invite Nick over.

Keeping our choice of songs secret from each other, we’d push back the furniture in the lounge, create a lighting effect of some kind by redirecting the angle-poise lamp towards the ceiling, then decide who was going to go first. If it was me I’d leave Nick sitting in the lounge while I went upstairs to get ready, donning a little make-up, some costume jewellery and a pre-chosen item from Frankie’s wardrobe, most famously a purple feather waistcoat my sister had made herself for a party.

When I was transformed into Groupie Gypp, I’d call to Nick from the hallway, he’d start the first track and I’d make my dramatic entrance through the lounge door. I’d sing along to Aretha or Patti for half an hour, Nick would clap and whistle, then it would be Nick Charles’s turn to be the star. It was always necessary to keep half an ear cocked in case we heard the parents’ car on the driveway, in which case the performance had to be very suddenly aborted due to circumstances beyond our control.

Unfortunately my exertions one evening left the underarm feathers matted and sweaty and Frankie was understandably furious when party night arrived.

‘You’ve ruined it, wearing it to one of your bloody concerts!’ she accused me. I could hardly tell her I’d been giving a concert, not going to one.

We were totally convinced of our impending superstardom. Puffing on menthol cigarettes after our lounge gigs, we’d talk about ‘when’ not ‘if’ we were famous pop legends, even discussing our early retirements at the height of our careers.

‘I think I’ll go out on top and become a recluse.’

‘It’s important to break America first . . .’

Our careers as million-selling recording artistes imminent, we were more dismissive than ever of our peers, and our attitude didn’t endear us to them either.

One song we wrote, ‘Don’t Take The Juice’, was about life for us at St Benedict’s.

Don’t take the juice, boys
,

There’s no excuse, boys
.

I’m sorry if I seem to be cracked, boys
,

Sorry but there’s no money back, boys
.

We were called ‘queers’ and ‘homos’ every hour of the school day. We were pushed and shoved and hit over the head with books. The fact that the school staff turned a blind eye gave the real bullies in our midst the green light to continue.

‘You bring it on yourself, you know . . .’ a master said to me once.

The danger began each morning as soon as I got on the bus. Even sitting downstairs another boy from St Benedict’s might get on and take a seat behind me. Someone once set fire to the nylon lining of my coat, resulting in a very passable Joan of Arc impersonation. A brick flew past me, inches from my head, as I walked down Eaton Rise.

As we got older it was a thrill for younger boys to join in, having a go themselves at the odd couple, who in normal circumstances would be off-limits because of their age and size. We weren’t just the Nancy boys for our year, but for the whole school. We were famous, albeit in a dangerous form.

When Quentin Crisp’s
The Naked Civil Servant
came out, both as a book and a television play, Nick hennaed his hair and I bought a rinse-in sachet called ‘Winsome Wheat’, from Boots. Instead of calling us ‘Pinky and Perky’ or ‘Daffodil and Daisy’, we were both now addressed by the all-purpose ‘Quentin’. His persecution and passive acceptance of his lot struck a chord with us. When he said, ‘Life is a dash from cradle to grave across open country under heavy fire,’ we knew what he meant.

A new set of catchphrases was born, our favourite being: ‘Look at me! I am an effeminate homosexual for all the world to see!’

We did our best to emulate Crisp’s famous calmness when cornered by macho thugs, but didn’t always succeed. A nasty little runt, several years younger than us, had been following us around for days, calling us names and refusing to go away. Nick pulled a thin branch from a tree in the playground and gave him a frenzied whipping, not stopping even when he begged for mercy. Nick seemed as shocked as the runt. Afterwards we amused ourselves wondering how the porky little pig would explain the marks on his thighs to Mummy at bath-time.

The boys who had led me astray in the middle school were now my accusers. Strip Poker Boy less so, to be fair, and he pinched my bottom if no one was looking and breathed heavily behind me in the lunch queue, but there were no more sleepovers and there was no more poker. In fact, he was expelled from the upper school for refusing to take a beating that was, in his opinion and that of his parents, unjustified. He became a window cleaner, whistling at me one day as I alighted from the bus at Ealing Broadway.

I had no friends at all apart from Nick. If he was off school for any reason, I spoke to no one. I went to the reading room or the library during the lunch hour to pass the time and lie low.

Our lives were difficult but we enjoyed the celebrity status. We knew there was a more interesting world outside of St Benedict’s. Buoyed up by Muriel Spark and Quentin Crisp, we were just biding our time. We wore odd socks and too much Denim aftershave, mildly provocative acts but not something anyone could cane us for, we hoped.

‘Julian is always either languid or superior’ read my school report. Well, yes, I was.

When we were in the upper fifth, our division master was Father Edmund. An extraordinarily tall, thin monk, like something out of an El Greco painting, with black shiny hair and big wet lips, he was universally known as ‘Pole’.

One of the many school rules was that you weren’t allowed to enter any classroom other than your own. One lunchtime, Nick was waiting at the door of upper 5(2) for me to put some books away in my desk and carelessly placed half a foot over the forbidden threshold. Suddenly Pole loomed behind him. ‘What do you think you’re doing in there?’ he demanded. Of course, Nick explained that he was merely waiting for me and, of course, Pole was having none of it. Here was an opportunity to beat the gayness out of one of us at least. I heard and almost felt the four cracks of the cane Nick was dealt, even though Pole’s office was two flights up.

WHEN WE REACHED
the sixth form, our plans to take the music business by storm suddenly didn’t seem so far away. We had never sung our songs to anyone but each other, and we were very secretive about our catalogue of tapes. Nick could actually belt out a number with considerable gusto but I think we both knew my voice was, shall we say, unusual. But it was mind over matter. If I wanted it badly enough, it would happen. And if we were to be the next Hall and Oates then some progress had to be made before we left school.

We decided to combine our creative talents. I renamed myself Marvin Shark and together we called ourselves the Mind and Body Floor Show. Next we wanted backing singers, so we placed an advert in the
Melody Maker
that read: ‘Two funky black chicks wanted for blue-eyed soul band. Send demo tape and photo.’

I can’t remember how many replies we received but we ended up with Carmelita and Pauline. They were a scream, gorgeous girls with fantastic soulful voices and they screamed with laughter at our funny voices and mannerisms. But bringing outsiders into our private world was a risky business. The girls sat around Nick’s lounge patiently listening to our plans, but we were decidedly shifty when it came to rehearsing. Of course, they wanted to know what numbers exactly did we have in mind? Where were we going to perform them? I said I could arrange a gig at the long-neglected Rowing Club, but it never materialised. Amused but disillusioned, the girls had better things to do than commute to Ealing each weekend and humour two peculiar boys who were unable to deliver the goods they seemed so sure about. Carmelita and Pauline faded away, and with them the Mind and Body Floor Show.

But with the fortitude of youth and our undiminished faith in our own destiny, Nick and I simply changed tack: theatre – that was the thing!

The school play that year was to be
Romeo and Juliet
, and my old English teacher Mr Moore was in charge. Nick took on the role of Tybalt, Prince of Cats, and I, undaunted by the fight scene integral to the part, was to be Count Paris. It’s not usual to get a laugh on the line ‘Oh, I am slain!’ but I managed to.

After the dress rehearsal Mr Moore’s wife and second-in-command, an exotic Spanish lady called Conchita, took me aside and said, ‘Too much with the rouge, Julian! Too much rouge!’

Next up, as a stepping-stone to Hollywood, we joined the Strawberry Hill Players, a cosy unhurried organisation near Teddington, but rather like us they were all talk and no action. After a few evenings of tea and biscuits in the church hall, and just the occasional glance at the script of Wilde’s
Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime
, we decamped to Putney and the no-nonsense Group 64, a reputable amateur dramatic society run by the resident director Maurice. We were both cast in
A Man For All Seasons
. As Sir Richard Rich I had no less than three costume changes, while Signor Chapuis (Nick) was glamour personified in his black embroidered tunic and cloak.

Performing at last, dressing up and wearing make-up and being applauded for it, we felt we were on our way.