Dear Fatty (33 page)

We have been good counsel for each other through many phases, I think. There have been so many times where you have been the one who says the key, opinion-changing, intelligent thing which provides the pivotal moment. The start of the new thinking process. The change of the mindset. When Len and I went through a rough patch, I talked endlessly with my mum, my BF, Fatty, my brother, all of whom were supportive and helpful, in so many ways. But
you
were the one who spoke to me about what forgiveness really means. How it isn’t something
you
withhold for power purposes if you truly love someone, about what a weight it is, how much lighter you feel the more of it you give away. Give it freely, you said. Not recklessly, make sure to learn from what’s happened, but don’t amass a backlog of fury because it will kill you. Be generous and understanding and kind. That’s what you told me. Don’t judge, just heal. Help each other to heal. It was the only thing that made sense to me. It was right, and good advice. You also reminded me of what a remarkable man he is, just at the moment I could have tipped myself, for an inviting wallow, into a vat of Len faults. You nipped that in the bud, which was a tad frustrating at the time. We all enjoy a good self-pitying moan, don’t we? But you knew it wouldn’t help and would only serve to extend the unforgiving time. The dangerous time in any conflict where one person takes a higher ground from which to do their superior judging. A waste of crucial time when both of us needed to be together, equally, making decisions about how to move on. You reminded me how much Len loves me and you cited literally hundreds of instances when you had witnessed that love. Again, of course, you had noticed the small things, the detail, the numerous subtle gestures, as much as the showy overtures of which there had also been many down through the years. You drew a picture for me of a man I adore, a family I belong in, a world I’ve invested my life in. Then it was obvious that I should fight to keep it and make it stronger. To concentrate on the important stuff and to ignore the crap. And that’s what I did.

We continually share a lot about our kids, you and I, and help each other by reminding ourselves that we are benevolent, well-meaning women just trying to do some good parenting in the
face
of the frightening tsunami that is teenagehood. On many occasions, we have come to agree that teenagers are selfish little buggers who are, for all their faults, the fundamental point of our lives, the basic underpinning of our reason for being here.
They
are what has made us different and better.
They
are the leaven that has raised us up from being the selfish big buggers we were before they came along! Shit – we realise they are vital and amazing, and we
have
to be annoyed by them because any minute now they will be gone. If we still over-loved them like it was easy to do when they were teeny, the inevitable separation would be so traumatic we would surely collapse and die from utter grief. This way, their behaviour forces us to create a distance, to slacken the ties and allow the disconnection. Let it happen now, so that the eventual uncoupling is gentler, not so much of a heartbreaking tear. They will still be moored to us, just by a long, long, long, long rope.

We often spoke of how much we would love to work together. Work together properly, that is. We had already had a few little jaunts, like the time Fatty and I appeared in your video for ‘Love Letters’ and when I shook my tailfeather on your ‘Whispering Your Name’ video. One of my greatest thrills was coming onstage with you at the Albert Hall and shoogling around you like a demented eejit. (I am your comedy dancing puppet, use me as you will, any time.) But as well as all these daft times, we wanted to find a proper opportunity to work together, didn’t we? On reflection I’ve got a feeling that we were simply taking a rather circuitous route towards the basic fact that we wanted more time together. We could have booked a holiday for God’s sake, but instead we embarked upon an extraordinary
adventure
which resulted in us both appearing in a West End play called
Smaller
.

Do you remember the brief? We wanted to commission a piece from a tip-top writer, something that gave us both a chance to flex our muscles (if only we had muscles … I haven’t had sight of a muscle on this Mr Bumble-ly spherical body I live in for years!), and operate slightly outside the ol’ comfort zones. You had done a bit of acting when you did
Chicago
and I had never done any proper singing, and was unlikely to start tormenting an audience with that this late in the day. We knew that the play had to mean something and, without being pretentious, it had to speak to people our age about the complex nature of the relationships women have inside a family. This was a recurring theme in our history and an area we had foraged about in before, fully aware that it was hazardous, stony ground.

To begin with, we imagined it would be a two-hander. Simple and stark. Very early on I called Kathy Burke, my great friend and the most knowledgeable person I know about new writers. She always has her ear to the ground for formidable new talent. Her first instinct was the person we eventually approached, Carmel Morgan, who was part of the award-winning writing team propelling
Coronation Street
towards top plaudits at the time. Kath is a
Corrie
addict, and said that every time Carmel’s name was on the credits, the episode was extra muscular, that she seemed bold and unafraid, and properly funny. So, I met up with Carmel, who, by the way, wins the prize for best swearer I’ve ever met. What a potty mouth. Top. She told me straight away that she had an idea for a play that had been brewing for years, involving two women, a mother and a daughter. The
mother
, whose life was becoming slowly ‘smaller’, was in the grip of a powerful degenerative disease, and the play explored the claustrophobic relationship between the mother and her daughter, the carer. Carmel suggested that she could well add a sister into the mix, your part, and that would bring another dimension she hadn’t considered before. Plus you would be providing the music for this play. Not a musical but, rather, a play with music. This meant that you had to write songs specifically for the piece. Songs that would inform the play, and would combine with Carmel’s words to give it a raw emotional thrust. Songs that your character would, naturally, sing. I know it takes you time to write and I know it was a tall order, but Alla, the songs you brought to that first rehearsal were unbefeckinlievable. The best I had heard you sing or write for ages.

To begin with, I was reticent about asking Kathy to direct. She has a powerful, clear idea of the work she likes to do, and I know she often likes to be involved in the initial development of an idea, so I feared that this project might be too advanced already for her to want to be a part of it. I called her and reminded her that Carmel had been her suggestion. Both of us were delighted when Kath agreed to oversee the writing process and direct the play.

And so we all started on an equal footing of shared risk and overwhelming excitement. Kathy is a careful and thorough director, who encouraged us to sit and talk about the play for a whole week or more before we got to our feet. By that time we had June Watson on board to play the mother, we had classes on lifting a disabled person, we learned about the wasting disease our mother character had, and we talked endlessly about the
confines
and the freedoms of this explosive triangular relationship. I watched Kathy slowly and surely convince you that you could act by making you aware of the natural skills you have, and your powerful presence onstage. She winkled you out of your shell of self-doubt with such maternal care. And sometimes, like all good mothers, she was strict with you, with us, insistent that we face our worst fears and deal with them in what was a truly emotional roller coaster of a play.

I remember the day we realised that there was need of an extra song. A really important song that you would sing in the funeral scene when finally the two warring sisters are united in grief for their dead mother. Initially we had thought the music in that part of the play would be something that already existed, some Bach or perhaps a liturgical chant. Kathy knew instinctively it would be better if it was original. Your face on realising that you had to write another song was a study in frustration and fear. It was the very thing you had asked us not to do. To put you under pressure to write a song quickly. You left on the Friday with an air of grump to propel you into the weekend. On the Monday you played us the Catholic funeral hymn you had written in two days, with your buddy Pete Glenister. Alla, that was one of the most splendid moments of my life. What talent. The hymn, a quiet then soaring paean of exquisite love and beauty, a gift from a daughter to a mother, and most importantly a holy and sacred song, reduced me to tears every night I stood next to you and heard it.

I had one other blissful moment like that with you. Do you remember when we went to Jamaica on holiday? You and Malcom and me and Len. What a laugh. Splashing about in the pool
noticing
our tits were the same size as our husbands’ bums, scoring some wacky baccy in the local market and putting it in our tea only to realise it was sage or some such herb; being flirted with on the beach by Rastas calling us their ‘heavy babes’ and trying to mate with us. Then, most clearly of all, I remember when we went on a lazy raft trip. Len and me in front. You and Malcom on the raft behind. We floated aimlessly down the river in the gorgeous sizzling heat. All was calm and silence till you were taken with an irresistible urge to sing. You sang out, clear and strong, filling the air with magic. I couldn’t see you but I could hear you, your beautiful voice, direct from God, providing the soundtrack to a heavenly, perfect moment.

I knew then that, as you often tell me, I would always ‘love the bones of you’.

GREETINGS. AS SOME
of you may already know, I am writing a book, a kind of memoir, in the form of letters. It will be much like an album, I think, offering glimpses, snapshots if you like, that define and describe my life. I cannot conceive of such a book without reference to you, to us, to our highly clandestine society. However, I am, of course, mindful of our strict code of honour, and the need for discretion at all times. I intend to include a photo of us in our very first club outfits, taken at one of our gatherings in about 2002, I think. We do, of course, have new uniforms now, which will
not
appear. I will, without question, adhere to our confidentiality agreement and I will block out the faces of each member so that no identities will be disclosed. It is my utmost intention to preserve the integrity, secrecy and infrastructure of our organisation. I will not, repeat NOT, be revealing details of our passwords, handshakes, colour-coded livery or group rituals – especially not the one involving an axe and a carton of fake blood. I will not be disclosing the ingredients of our secret beverage and I will not be recounting
anything
of our exploits together on this continent or any other where we may, or may not, have met. Like any true Susan, I promise that our assignations and our purpose will follow me to the grave. This I swear on the life of my fluffy kitten heels. If you
object
to my suggestion, please let me know in the usual way, being careful at all times that you are not followed, or bugged.

Specialis infinitas, pinas coladas,

Dawn Susan

REALLY, THIS BOOK
should be called
Dear Len
and simply be one big long love letter to you. It’s hard to know how to sum up everything I want to say to you in one letter. We have been married for 24 years now, and we were together a couple of years before that, so half of my whole life is you. You. You. Obviously there are things I can’t and won’t write about in these pages because we both, but especially you, are quite rightly very private about our life together, but when I think hard about who you are to me, and what I really want to say to you, it is, essentially, thank you.

THANK YOU for filling out the all-purpose, multiple-choice questionnaire I devised for you when we first met. This helped me to ascertain whether you really wanted to eschew all opportunities of bendy dancer girlfriends and go out with a Weeble such as me. It also told me whether you could take a joke or not. You could.

THANK YOU for getting down on your hands and knees and helping me to trim the carpet at Gaynor’s very clean flat with nail scissors (all I had) when you had stepped in the cat-litter tray and walked the poo round the whole flat, and she was due home in 20 minutes.

THANK YOU for doing 86 astonishingly accurate impressions of different famous people saying Happy New Year to me on New Year’s Eve, and for knowing that, for some reason, New Year makes me gloomy, and I needed cheering up.

THANK YOU for being the kind of person who fell for the lady in the shop’s patter and therefore bought the most expensive ring with which to propose. Thank you for wrapping it in six increasingly bigger boxes for added surprise. Thank you for not having a suitable face to go with the moment, so twitching like a demented Disney rabbit in anticipation. Thank you for not minding in the least that the ring has spent 24 years in a safe because it is beyond hideous.

THANK YOU for not chucking me when I took you to a romantic place I told you was ‘magical’ which turned out to be an old railway carriage set into the dunes on a beach in Cornwall where we were both very cold because it was winter. You kept a huge sheepskin coat on, inside and out. Thank you for making good jokes about not using the loo when stationary. Thank you for patting my back when we spent most of the week vomiting because we ate the stew my mum had cooked, which we had left in the sun on the back shelf of the car, and then refroze. Which was the wrong thing to do. We both threw up from both ends for days and it wasn’t pretty or romantic or even slightly ‘magical’. Thank you for still kissing me after seeing sick in my hair.