At My Mother's Knee (19 page)

She had one of those 1950s swimsuits that could stand up on
its own. It had enormous conical breasts, with deep, deep cups
that could have provided accommodation for a pair of six-month-old
twins. It was made of a rubberized fabric that smelt
peculiar, and it covered the hips and ended just above the
thigh. For as long as I could remember, it had lived in the
bottom of the bathroom cupboard. I used to enjoy taking it out
now and then and jumping on the huge tits from the end of the
bath to see if I could collapse them. The lining had yellowed
with age and I only ever saw her wear this relic once. For some
reason she'd thrown caution to the wind and, varicose veins or
not, had decided to take to the waters of the Mersey one
Saturday afternoon while we were at New Brighton 'beach'.

She seemed to be enjoying herself, splashing about and floating
on her back, until a dead dog, minus its fur, bumped into
her. Needless to say she never went in that 'dirty, filthy, stinking
sewer' again and neither did any of us. I would content
myself with collecting some of the many used condoms, or
'tonkeys' as me and my mates called them, that littered the
shore, picking them up on the end of a stick and putting them
in my bucket. Occasionally I'd hang them from the ends of the
handlebars on my bike. That went down well with the aunties.

'Molly!' Aunty Anne would shriek. 'That dirty little mare
has got a couple of D U R E X trailing off his handlebars,'
she'd say, spelling out the word Durex in the voice reserved for
describing terminal diseases and unnatural practices.

My dad was terrified of water and never went near it if he
could help it, which was unfortunate for him when he found
himself taking part in the Normandy landings. He nearly died
of fright as he made his way to shore from the boat. The other
men swam but my dad walked on tiptoe holding his rifle high above his head, and silently thanked God that he was lanky. So
I received no encouragement from my parents to learn how to
swim and apart from one lesson from my sister at New
Brighton baths I seemed doomed to remain on dry land.

I didn't really grasp the rudiments of swimming until I was
way into my thirties, and even then it wasn't what you could
call 'proper' swimming. I got over my fears after a lot of determined
practice in shallow water, attempting, at first, just a very
slow doggy-paddle. I progressed after a period of five years to
slightly deeper water. At first I could only manage my slow
crawl if my head was underwater; if I dared to raise it I sank
like a stone. And as for speed and distance, well, think of a
blind, geriatric, arthritic old turtle with three flippers missing
and a lead weight attached to its neck struggling through the
water and you'll be half right. It wasn't until fairly recently that
I mastered the mystery that was swimming.

Now you can't get me out of the water. I love swimming and
there's something very satisfying in the knowledge that I'm
self-taught. I'm not half bad, I'm proud to tell you, but just in
case Mark Spitz or Duncan Goodhew is reading this I'd better
reassure them that I won't be inheriting their respective crowns
just yet.

The first time I dared to take to the water was on Australia's
Great Barrier Reef
. I'd been working over there and had taken
a trip to Queensland with my manager,
Murphy
, when the
three-month tour of comedy festivals, some good, some lousy,
had finally ended.

It was a glorious holiday. The weather was beautiful and we
did everything from night-walking in the rainforest and riding
across stretches of deserted beach to a trip on a cruiser out on
to the reef. However, one thing I didn't do, couldn't do, was go
in the ocean. I'd inherited my dad's hydrophobia; as far as we
were concerned, the sea was something you stared at from the
safety of the shore or sailed across to Ireland. That was fine. I loved the sea as long as I was on it and not in it and, just like
my dad, I gave swimming pools a very wide berth; I was forever
looking uneasily over my shoulder if I had to stand near
one, expecting someone to rush up and push me in 'for a
laugh'. Ha bloody ha.

But as I stood alone on the deck of that cruiser, jealously
watching every last passenger on the boat swimming below me
in the beautifully clear waters of the Great Barrier Reef, with
its coral gardens and tropical fish, my guts ached with envy
and I realized there and then that something had to be done. I
had to get in there with them.

Armed with snorkel, mask and lifejacket, I gingerly climbed
down the ladder at the side of the boat and tentatively lowered
myself into the water. It was a while before I dared let go of
the rung I was clinging on to, white-knuckled, in case I sank
to the bottom. At last it dawned on me that the lifejacket
actually served its purpose and made sinking impossible. I was
in seventh heaven as I floated in the warm clear water by the
side of the boat like a bit of old driftwood. It was ab-so-lutely
fucking brilliant! I found myself singing 'Beautiful Briny' from
Disney's
Bedknobs and Broomsticks
. Life didn't get better
than this.

Gaining confidence, I gradually built up the courage to put
the mask on, position the snorkel and lower my face cautiously
into the water. It was a revelation. Fish of all shapes and sizes
in every colour of the spectrum swam around and below me,
quite unperturbed by my clumsy presence, darting swiftly
through the coral like quick bursts and flashes of forked lighting.
This was a world I'd never witnessed at first hand before,
an uncharted and terrifying territory that I had conquered my
fears to explore. Wasn't I just the cleverest person in the world!
At that moment I could have climbed Everest if I'd chosen to.

I carefully started to move my arms and legs, and found to
my delight that I could propel myself through the water. I was swimming! Oh, dear Mother of Christ, look at me, Paul
O'Grady who can't add up, swimming. My heart sang with
happiness. I was dipping under the water, moving faster and
faster. This was bliss. Look at the fish, look at the shafts of sunlight
shining from above through the arches of the pink coral.
I was drunk with the beauty of it all.

And then, suddenly, my dream was shattered. Coming
towards me in the water was something that struck terror into
my heart. Not a shark or one of those killer jellyfish peculiar
to Oz, but something far worse. Something that was more than
capable of capsizing a neophyte swimmer like myself, something
noisy and unpredictable, thrashing about and causing me
to rock from side to side and lose what little control I had in
that great, deep, suddenly once again terrifying water. It was a
shoal of Japanese schoolchildren. I reared my head out of the
water like the deadly Kraken of Norse mythology and lashed
out with my arms and legs to try to disperse them. If the odd
slap or kick helped to encourage them to change course then
so be it. Finally, just to make sure that they got the message
that this Portuguese man-of-war was not to be messed with, I
spat out my snorkel and roared at the top of my lungs, 'FUCK
OFF!'

To quote my mother, bad language is the riposte of the
inarticulate. I fully realize this, but there are times when it does
come in very handy, and that was one of them. I don't know if
they understood me but they certainly moved away from me
sharpish, like startled minnows in the path of a malevolent
pike, shouting remarks in Japanese as they swam back to their
boat. Apart from sushi and karaoke my Japanese is extremely
limited, but I've a good idea that what they were saying was
something along the lines of 'Piss off, you miserable old fart'.

To my surprise I was actually quite far out over the reef; the
cruiser was a fair distance away. I also seemed to be the only
person left in the water. I hadn't realized how long I'd been absorbed in my newly acquired skill. Someone was waving
from the deck. It was Murphy. As I slowly propelled myself
towards the boat I could see his expression change from one of
anxiety to admiration. He helped me up from the ladder on to
the deck.

'Well done,' he said, genuinely delighted that I'd taken the
plunge. 'Although I'd ditch the yellow lifejacket if I were you,'
he added. 'You looked a bit like a coeliac's turd the way you
were floating in the water.'

My mother's headmistress, a kindly but firm old nun who went
by the fearsome moniker of
Mother Mary Cleophas
, realized
my mother's potential and encouraged her to work harder. She
was more than delighted when my mum won a scholarship to
Holt Hill Convent, the best Catholic girls' grammar school on
the Wirral. It was not to be; Aunty Poll saw to that. She considered
education
a waste of time for a working-class girl.
Circumstances such as my mother's didn't allow the luxury of
further schooling and she couldn't expect to live on Aunty
Poll's charity for ever. No, she must earn her keep. Education
was for the upper classes; what use would it be to my mother?
Far better she left school and went straight into a good, steady
job in
domestic service
. Aunty Poll firmly believed that Jack
was not as good as his master and would be far better off
tugging his forelock and knowing his place in the social
pecking order. Education filled a girl's head with dangerous
nonsense and gave her ideas above her station, which always
led to trouble.

Despite Mother Mary's pleading my mother's case, Aunty
Poll stood firm and at the end of term my bitterly disappointed
ma was packed off to a life in service. She was keen that the
same fate should not befall me.

I did well at St Joseph's. Apart from arithmetic I was a fairly
competent and enthusiastic scholar, according to my old school reports. I remember winning an Easter egg in a class raffle. I
sat there willing it to be me as Miss Bolger drew a name from
the cardboard box.

'And the winner is . . . Paul O'Grady.' An electric shock ran
through me when she called out my name, although I was confident
even before she did so that I had won the much-prized
Cadbury's egg. I'd so arrogantly assured myself that it was
mine for the taking that the gods looking down must have
decided there and then that this attitude was something to be
nipped in the bud. I've never won a bloody raffle since.

Although I enjoyed school I wasn't keen to let my parents
think that. I told my mother that nobody would play with me
and I used to stand alone in the school yard at playtime. She
told me years later that she would come down to the school
during the break and hide behind one of the pillars of the gate
to watch me playing happily and loudly with a gang of kids.
Why I said what I did I don't know. Yes I do. Who am I kidding?
I was playing for the sympathy card, trying to get back
into her good books after I'd run away on my first afternoon
at school.

I'd reminded Miss Bolger that it was nearly time for
Watch
with Mother
. Monday was Picture Book and I wasn't missing
that for anything.

'
Watch with Mother
?' she said, blinking at me over the
glasses hanging off the end of her sharp little nose. 'There's
none of that here, dear. This is school. We don't watch
television
here, and besides, you're a big boy now. Time to put
Watch with Mother
away.'

Was she out of her mind? Time to put
Watch with Mother
away? I wasn't having any of that, and so when the Bolger
wasn't looking I put my coat on and went home.

Franny didn't see me go. He didn't have a telly and was blissfully
unaware of the potent pulling power of Andy Pandy and
co. Besides, he was tired after eating two dinners, mine as well as his own, plus the seconds he'd gone up for, so he had curled
up in his seat and gone to sleep with his head on the desk like
the dormouse.

When my absence was eventually noticed, a search party
was sent out. Even the headmaster got in on the act and drove
to my mother's to see if I was there. At the time my ma was
being treated to the delights of a
home perm
by Mrs
Long's
daughter, Jean
, who was training to be a hairdresser. ('Our
Jean's training to be a beautician. She's going to get a job on
the liners. You can go anywhere in the world if you know how
to set hair.') She wasn't best pleased to meet my headmaster
sitting as she was in the middle of the room on a kitchen chair
in her bra, her eyes streaming from the smell of the ammonia,
her hair in pin curls and papers, with only a plastic pacamac
over her bare shoulders to conceal her modesty. On hearing the
news my mother instantly panicked and ran out of the house
to look for me, her pacamac flapping behind her, and her hair
wound into tight pin curls so that her head resembled a plate
of winkles. She wouldn't have looked out of place on a
Blackpool hen night. All she needed was an L plate on her
back. She hurtled up the back entry with the headmaster and
Jean in hot pursuit, followed by half the neighbourhood, who
had instantly picked up on the jungle tom-toms that something
was amiss.

Meanwhile, I was enjoying the walk home. I'd crossed two
main roads safely thanks to the Gospel According to Tufty of
which I was a devoted disciple, being a fully paid-up member
of the
Tufty Club
. (Look Right, Look Left, Look Right Again.
I still do it today.) On arriving home to an empty house, I let
myself in and settled down for my weekly dose of Vera
McKechnie and her Picture Book.

It was Mary next door who discovered me and shouted up
the entry 'I've found him!' causing a chain reaction of 'He's
been found' around the back streets of Tranmere. My distraught mother returned home, supported bodily by a
couple of neighbours, and flung herself on me with all the
passion of Serafina from
The Rose Tattoo
.

'Oh, my Christ, I thought you'd been abducted,' she wailed,
but her anguish quickly turned to anger when she remembered
that she'd run across Holt Road in her bra and her home perm
solution was probably rotting the hair from her scalp by the
very roots. She shook me vigorously, like a maraca. 'You
naughty, wicked child,' she shouted (she would probably have
gone for a stronger and more colourful invective, but my headmaster
was there), 'don't you ever do that again, d'ya hear me?
I nearly had a heart attack.'