Dear Fatty (21 page)

You were always a natty dresser, with classic, conservative taste. A proper young man. I guess the navy expected a certain standard. I quite liked it actually, you always appeared to be a man of reckoning, definitely in charge, with ambition and a plan. I don’t think I did it on purpose, but I do remember constantly trying to puncture the air of slightly smug confidence you exuded. To reach in and find the exciting, impetuous you I felt sure you were hiding. In fact, I think on reflection, I was plainly attempting to just change you into a more suitable boyfriend. At one stage I even persuaded you to wear dungarees and sandals and, bless you, however much you must have loathed it, you did! If I was you, I wouldn’t forgive me for that, ever.

Costumes notwithstanding, we managed to have a lovely time together. I have such happy memories of driving trips in England and Ireland, staying at funny little B&Bs and enjoying calling
ourselves
Mr and Mrs Smyth. Because that’s who you properly are. Mr Smyth. I remember lots of romantic suppers and robust political debates (another clue!) while we both worked out who we were, and what we thought. I remember skinny-dipping at night, on Slapton Sands, in Devon. Oh, and thinking about beaches and the sea, of course I remember the most important moment of all …

I was 18 when you and I were planning to go camping in Cornwall, by the sea. I told my mother you were supplying the tent. She was silent for a moment, then she said, ‘Don’t you mean tentS?’ And I said, ‘No, tenT.’ And that was it, I was telling my mum what was about to happen, giving her a warning shot across the bows. She didn’t like it. Back then she was quite strict about such matters and would often tell me: ‘Under my roof, it’s my rules.’ Fair dos. But this wasn’t going to be under her roof, this was going to be under your canvas. The canvas of one, single, naughty tent, giving grown-up privacy and delicious cover to two randy young people fit to burst with desire for each other. A young man who had waited patiently, with great restraint and respect, and an anxious, excited young woman finally ready to be cherry-picked!

We drove down to the beach in your car, with the venue for the main event, the tent, packed in the boot. I had waited for this day, I had imagined it and dreamt it. Now it was here and we were en route to it. To ‘it’. ‘It’ was going to happen. Tonight. In that tent. I wanted it to. We had decided. You were calm and masterful about the whole thing – after all, you’d done it before. I sat and watched you put petrol in the car at the garage. I couldn’t believe you could be so casual and normal on such a
momentous
day. After all, SEX was going to happen. Within hours. Y’know,
SEX
. With genitals and everything! I was going to have proper sex for the first time ever, and you were putting petrol in the car, your hand on the pump,
filling up
the car. The imagery made me giddy. The excitement of it all was too much for me, and instead of erotically enjoying the palpable anticipation, I decided to counteract it, to dissipate the tension, as I always have done and always do, by talking. Happy talk. Non-stop. Industrial-strength talking. Jokes, stories, anecdotes, more jokes, other people’s anecdotes, items in the news, family gossip, football scores, list of favourite names, pop-chart info … ANYTHING. I didn’t stop talking for the two-hour journey. I didn’t stop talking while we put the tent up, in fact I talked more, faster, when I saw it, the
actual
arena, the scene of the imminent crime, the pleasure pavilion, the sinning site. Oh Christ, I was going to be doing sex in
that
, very soon. In that tent. We decided to go to the pub. Well, you decided. I don’t think it was for Dutch courage. It was for sedation, for me. By now I was in a total spin, chattering chattering away, a hundred to the dozen. Keep talking. Lots of inane jokes. Don’t draw breath. Keep fluttering and twittering and sputtering. I had St Vitus’s dance of the mouth, I did not miss a beat, I was utterly hysterical with apprehension. I effervesced myself into a manic, frothy, verbal vortex until, finally, the effects of the several gin and tonics started to take control. It didn’t stop me babbling, but at least I was also breathing now. Slowing down from a yapping gallop to a gentle verbal trot. And breathe. And relax … Nope, I can’t. We walked back to the tent. I was still jabbering. We undressed. Still blethering, ha ha, ‘Here’s another funny thing, anyway! …’ You laid me
down
… ha ha – here we go – it’s going to happen – oh God – I kept making jokes, ‘We’ve made it to the foothills, sir, shall we rest at base camp one?’ Ha ha, ‘Ready, steady, GO!’ Ha ha, ‘God bless her and all who sail in her!’ Ha ha, ‘Houston, we have lift-off …’ Ha ha, ‘Is it in yet?’ Ha! Ha!

You took my face in your hands and said, ‘Just …
please
… Dawn … It’s time to shush now.’ ‘Yes but, ha ha …’ ‘No,
shush
.’ And then you shut me up with a kiss, and you opened me up with a touch so exquisite and gentle and careful, I felt myself actually swell and bloom.

The next morning we woke and, still sleepy, we clambered out of the fuggy tent and silently walked hand in hand over the dunes and into the sea. Oh, the beautiful beauty of it. I was finally quietened by it, by the bigness of it all. We laughed and shared muted intimate mutterings. We played in the sea. I was new and definitely different. I felt sort of glossy. Loved. I hope you remember it this same way – it’s so clear in my head. The noise and then the quiet. Splendid.

Soon after this in September 1976, and while I was still utterly besotted with you, I went to America for a year and you went off to sea on your bloody big huge big boat. I won a scholarship with the English-Speaking Union, through all the debating and public-speaking competitions Miss Abbott had encouraged me to take part in at school. In the final round of the competition, our local politician, Michael Foot, seconded my attempt and voted for me to win. As you know, I did, and winning meant an exchange year. Twelve American students were going to come from the US to study in British schools and I was to be one of the twelve British students going to America. You and I were to be separated, for
quite
some time, and I dreaded that part. The American scholarship part, however, was AMAZING. When the application form came through for me to fill out my choices of where I would ideally like to be placed in the States, I chose locations like Texas (got huge burgers) and Colorado (might meet John Denver) and Montana (horse riding on Western saddles and more horse kissing). Stunning open country, that’s what I wanted. Fresh air. Of course,
my
placement, when it came through, was New York. Manhattan. At that point in my life I had not yet lived in a city and had absolutely no desire to. I couldn’t think of anything
worse
than Manhattan, which, to me, was surely the set of
Kojak
? A place where you would DEFINITELY get murdered. On a regular basis. It was going to be all concrete and crowds and cabs and I didn’t like any of that. I was furious that I had been sent to the most exciting city in the world …

My year in New York was, of course, unbelievably fab. I missed you very much and wrote to you every other day and I still have your letters back to me. They chart our relationship during that thrilling year. They come from many different ports and navy bases and they are a gauge of how your attitude to navy life was rapidly changing. You speak of getting out, of getting a job, of us being together more. I sense a rather concerned interest in the experiences I was having that year. Perhaps you were a little anxious that we might grow apart, that I was having too good a time? Well, yes, I WAS having too good a time …

For the first time ever, I was alone in a different country. I was nervous about how I was going to cope in this big bustling city and so I employed a technique which still serves me well today. I imagined myself as someone who relished new exciting opportunities,
who
was utterly unafraid and perpetually optimistic. It was a kind of reinvention. Everyone I met was new. These people didn’t know me, there was no shared history, so I could be anything or anyone I wanted to be. My theory was that if I
behaved
like a confident, cheerful person, eventually I would buy it myself, and become that. I always had traces of strength somewhere inside me, it wasn’t fake, it was just a way of summoning my courage to the fore and not letting any creeping self-doubt hinder my adventures. This method worked then, and it works now. I tell myself that I am the sort of person who can open a one-woman play in the West End, so I do. I am the sort of person who has several companies, so I do. I am the sort of person who WRITES A BOOK! So I do. It’s a process of having faith in the self you don’t quite know you are yet, if you see what I mean. Believing that you will find the strength, the means somehow, and trusting in that, although your legs are like jelly. You can still walk on them and you will find the bones as you walk. Yes, that’s it. The further I walk, the stronger I become. So unlike the real lived life, where the further you walk the more your hips hurt.

When I first arrived in New York that September, the heat was blistering. I hadn’t anticipated that at all, and I was sweating in my new bought-specially-for-the-trip red mohair polo neck. The first family who had agreed to put me up were the O’Neils, who had a daughter about my age – she’d just gone to college so they had a spare room in their apartment and were kind enough to let me stay. I had never been inside an apartment or even a flat before, let alone on the posh Upper East Side. There was a doorman, six heavy locks on the door and I had a compact little bedroom looking in on the central well of the block, which was
mainly
a pigeon toilet. I had
my own bathroom
for the first time ever. It was tiny, but it was perfect, and the family were kind and welcoming. They had a son, Martin, who was a couple of years younger than me and delightfully shy. He blushed every time we spoke, but we persevered and eventually we could speak without any awkwardness or redness whatsoever and he became a good pal. On the first night, hot in my woolly jumper and fazed by the jet lag, I sat down for supper with my new family and was shocked to be served, as a starter,
SALAD
. This wasn’t salad as I knew it. Salad, according to my mum’s way, was a huge plate with two tiny lettuce leaves entirely masked by heaps of chicken, boiled eggs, coleslaw, tomatoes, cheese, beetroot, onions, spring onions, corned beef, any other onions and onions. With lashings of salad cream. But here, in America, a salad was some green leaves, with vinegar (?) and oil (??) drizzled on top, and on a small plate, on its own! After successfully disguising my salad shock, we ate our main meal, a tasty hotpot thing, and chatted. Soon, it was time for bed and as I left the table, I remarked that I had an early start at my new school in the morning and no alarm clock so I wondered if it might be possible for Mr O’Neil to knock me up in the morning? He practically fell off his chair sputtering into his coffee. Apparently ‘knock me up’ meant something entirely different in the States, and he was more than a little surprised by the request. Luckily we all had a good laugh and thus began my year in New York, with a customary faux pas.

I attended the Spence School, a highly academic private girls’ school on the East Side, and, in effect, repeated my last year of school again, but in the American system. It was
so
different to my recent experience of A levels. Instead of taking three quite
focused
and advanced subjects, I was taking five different subjects each term, including American literature and anthropology and art history and photography. It was bloody amazing! The facilities at the school were breathtaking and the staff were funny and friendly. The canteen was phenomenal – no more one choice, eat it or starve, oh no, this was a buffet where you could
choose
! Wow! That canteen gave me the first of many satisfying encounters with the wonder that is tuna mayonnaise. And bagels. And pizza in single slices. And pastrami. And pickled gherkins. And potato salad. And … Well, basically, food. I got fat very quickly in New York. There was something new and remarkable to taste EVERY DAY! Plus Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. Invented surely by angels?!

Anyway, apart from food, the best thing about that year was the people who looked out for me and let me live in their homes. The Butler family and the Slussers, and the Wallers whose daughters were at school with me and who made it their priority to give me a great time. They took me
everywhere
. We went on boat trips and sightseeing tours to art galleries, shops, museums, the theatre, movies, skiing trips in Vermont, and holidays by lakes to see the fall in New England. There were parties and Halloween and Thanksgiving and Independence Day and St Patrick’s Day celebrations. All new, all exciting. I went to Yale with Winnie, a girl in my class, on a three-day college visit to see if this was where she wanted to study. For the first time ever, I was the only white person in a hall full of hundreds of black students going through the process of positive discrimination and minority admissions. I was brought up to speed very quickly about the situation for black students in Ivy League colleges, which was both
shocking
and hopeful. I had a week in Washington DC living with a clever writer who made it her mission to familiarise me with US politics and culture. A crash course I was so privileged to have. Back in New York, I heard opera, I saw ballet, I skated on ice under the magnificent Rockefeller Center, I window-shopped at Tiffany’s, I went to delis, and Saks, and ball games and I wore a baseball cap. It couldn’t have been more Yank.

Some of the best fun was had when my Uncle Mike, who was a professor of American history at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, came to visit me in NY. He took me down to the Village to hear Stan Getz in a smoky jazz club, and to see the Andrew Wyeth exhibition and out to Ellis Island to see the Statue of Liberty and to understand how New York had evolved, with all the tired immigrants arriving by boat with one suitcase each. He explained how families were divided and quarantined and how so many didn’t survive the port authorities’ strict process. He knew it was important for me to understand America a bit and not just eat pizza. He conceded that pizza, however, is an important factor … After all, as Thomas Hughes tells us in
Tom Brown’s Schooldays
, ‘Life isn’t all beer and skittles; but beer and skittles, or something better of the same sort [pizza, surely?], must form a good part of every Englishman’s education.’ Hear, hear.