Christmas At Leo's - Memoirs Of A Houseboy (12 page)

I put the ring back in the envelope and picked up a slim square box, the kind you give CD’s in as a gift. It had a note pasted on the front:
my dad’s favourite song is on the enclosed album of Scottish folk songs. It’s called The Hills of Ardmorn. I loved listening to him singing it. I’ve written down the words for you. He sang with such feeling. I know you will too.

Folk song. I pulled a face. I wasn’t much of a folkie in general. Singing with a finger stuck in my lug and adding an O onto the end of every other word didn’t appeal much to me-o. I’d never heard of the song. Still, on the bright side, at least it wasn’t ‘Danny Boy.’

I couldn’t bring myself to actually look at the CD. Instead I dipped into the box again and withdrew another envelope at random, reading mum’s neat script:
Gilli and Lee, age ten, Cherry Tree Holiday Park.
She had added a footnote:
I was so upset to have missed this, Gilli. I would have loved to be there to see and hear you. I had to be content with these few photos and a description of how wonderful you were from Lee’s parents.

I had a memory flashback of such intensity it made me feel disoriented. I didn’t need to look at the photos in the envelope. I could see, hear, and smell the event itself. The nebulous feeling I’d experienced at mum’s house the day before crystallised. I knew what it was and from where it originated. Shoving the lid back on the box, I fled the den.

My heart was hammering so hard I fancied it might wake up the men folk as I crept around the dark bedroom locating running shorts, a top and socks. All went well, until I closed my sock drawer and the damn thing juddered. There was a movement from the bed. I held my breath and waited for a voice to demand what the hell I was doing sneaking around like a thief in the night. It didn’t come. I stood for a few moments and then left the room.

I dressed downstairs, got my running shoes from the hall cupboard, disabled the alarm and let myself out into the cold darkness of Christmas Eve morning.

I didn’t waste time warming up, or opening the drive gates. The buggers creaked liked something out of a horror film. They needed oiling. I scaled them, dropping down onto the pavement beyond and launching straight into a run. I ran hard and fast, as if Ryan Pitt and his cronies were on my heels, baying threats to kill me.

I tried to outrun the memory provoked by mum’s note, and the feeling it had brought. It kept pace with me. My feet pounded paths and roads, my breath steaming in the frosty air. I had no sense of my present surroundings. Memory overtook me. The footsteps I could hear echoing up at me belonged to my ten year old self.

The summer I was ten was the summer after mum married Frank. They decided, Frank decided, it was time to cash in on a delayed honeymoon. They booked to go to Minorca for ten days, without me. I was packed off to Lee’s house. Usually I loved spending time at Lee’s house, but I wasn’t happy about it that summer, though I pretended to be.

Mum and Frank jetted off to bake under the Mediterranean sun. Lee’s parents packed Lee, Dave and me into their ancient banger and drove us away to a Butlins inspired holiday camp for a week of fun and frolics. Lee’s sister Carol opted out. She was in her later-teens and beginning to break away from the family unit to be more independent.

The camp we were heading for was called Cherry Tree Holiday Park and boasted luxury chalets for discerning holidaymakers. It was down in Norfolk, a long drive from where we lived. Lee’s dad’s car had a cassette player in it and he made good use of it on the drive down, playing a host of his beloved golden oldie songs.

Lee, Dave and I sat in the back of the car pulling faces and giggling as his mam and dad sang along to their favourite tunes. A track by The Everly Brothers called
‘Let It Be Me’
brought forth a romantic reminiscence. They’d had it played at their wedding. Lee’s mum touched his dad’s leg and gave him a ‘special’ look, which made Lee and Dave make gagging motions. I didn’t join in their silliness. For some reason the look made me feel odd and uncomfortable. I didn’t understand it, but I’d seen similar looks pass between my mother and Frank. I didn’t like it. I felt shut out.

We reached our destination. The luxury two-bedroom chalet we were appointed turned out to be a glorified wooden hut infused with an odour of damp. Lee’s mum wasn’t impressed. We all had to wait outside while she cleaned it to a standard she found acceptable.

There was plenty to keep kids occupied on the site. There was a pool and a play park, miniature golf, a sand area and lots of organised activities in the Park’s clubhouse. One of the activities towards the end of our week’s stay was a children’s talent contest. Park visitors were informed of it on arrival with parents being encouraged to encourage their children to enter. It was a cunning way of keeping kids occupied by practising for it. There were cash prizes for the three best acts.

Lee’s dad turned music manager. He wanted me, Dave and Lee to enter the contest as a singing group, me on lead with Lee and Dave as backing singers. Dave refused. He wanted to enter the contest as a solo act, impressing the judges with his keepy-uppy skills with a football. Undaunted Lee’s dad decided Lee and I could enter as a singing duo. The only problem was that Lee couldn’t hold a tune in a bucket. Lee’s mum had an idea. She bought toy guitars from the site gift shop and persuaded us to enter the contest as The Everly Brothers. Lee could lip synch, while I sang and we both pretended to play guitar.

Lee’s dad chose
‘Let It Be Me’
as the simplest song to learn both by way of lyrics and melody. Being a seasoned choirboy I picked the song up easily enough just by listening to it.

The big night arrived. Lee’s mum bought some fancy white paper doilies and used them to make mock lace bibs and cuffs to sew on our shirts in imitation of the frilly shirts worn by the Everly Bros on the cover of their greatest hits cassette. She felt if we looked the part we’d play the part all the better.

Poor Dave failed to impress the judges with his keepy-uppy skills. Nerves got the better of him and he could barely keep the ball in the air for more than a few seconds. In a fit of temper, he booted the ball off stage and into the audience. His act was over. His mum was mortified and made his dad go collect him from the side of the stage. He wanted to join our act, but was told no. The Ev’s were a duo not a bloody trio. He’d had his chance at stardom and fluffed it. He sulked all night, as only an eight year old can do.

All in all, the acts on offer were pretty dire. I don’t think anyone was expecting much when Lee and I trundled on stage with our plastic guitars. The acts before us had been a girl who forgot the words to the Kylie Minogue song she was singing, a budding magician who bungled his card trick and two boys performing as PJ and Duncan who broke off singing to have a scrap when one tried to upstage the other. It put Dave’s tantrum in the shade.

I wasn’t nervous, not as such. I’d sung solo in the choir a few times and had a trick up my sleeve to deal with nerves. I closed my eyes so I couldn’t see the audience.

‘
Let It Be Me’
is a simple song in its way, easy to sing. It suited my young voice. As I sang I was aware of a swelling tide of sadness within me. The words made my heart ache. I didn’t understand them in any real sense. I had no notion or experience of the kind of love they were expressing. I was interpreting the lyrics from my own child’s perspective of what was going on in my small life at the time.

Looking back, I can see my tenth summer was where the process of estrangement between my mother and I really began to take a hold. She had a new life with Frank from which I felt excluded. Her going to Spain without me felt like abandonment. It was compounded by the first conscious stirrings of my sexuality.

There was a boy in the class above me (I was attracted to older men, even then) who made my tummy go funny when I looked at him. I’d often walk past his house in the hope of seeing him in his front garden. I felt all light and happy if he smiled at me. He made me want to be silly and showy offy in the way Lee got silly and showy offy when he was around girls sometimes. Afterwards though, I’d feel bad, as if I’d done something wrong, something dirty. Instinct told me that what I felt didn’t fit in with the imposed view of normality. I didn’t know I was homosexual as such. I wasn’t familiar with the word. I just knew I was different.

As I reached the end of the song, sadness gave way to another emotion. It overwhelmed me. Tears began to pour down my face as I sang the closing chorus. I wasn’t the only one to cry. There was barely a dry eye in the house. Lee and I got the only standing ovation of the night. We won first prize, no doubt aided by my ‘aw’ factor tears. Lee’s parents were ecstatic, especially his dad. He jokingly called us the new Everly’s, while snapping photos of us in true paparazzi style.

I was pleased with the applause, praise, plastic trophy, and of course the money, but the painful feeling I’d experienced on stage remained with me. At ten years old I didn’t have the grown up language to express and understand what I was feeling. It was just a painful feeling. I’d sung a plea not to be lonely, but that’s exactly what I was. I’d felt lonely in some measure all my life, but more so after mum married Frank. My budding awareness of my sexuality made me lonelier still.

‘
Let It Be Me’
is about finding true love. Some part of me knew that finding love was going to be harder for me than for my straight brothers and sisters. They had an automatic entitlement and social approval. The first sweet and innocent stirrings of love are beautiful, or should be. My first sweet stirrings were tarnished with fear and guilt.

When I came away from Cherry Tree Holiday Park I was aware of uncomfortable changes taking place within me and around me. Home was different. Mum was different. I was different. I didn’t fit anymore.

In giving me news about her ‘family’ Christmas my mother had unwittingly confirmed my feelings of being an outsider. It resurrected the sense of searing loneliness I’d experienced the summer I was an Everly Brother, but had no words for. That’s why I couldn’t name it at first. I was too locked into feeling it with my child aspect.

I had a mini revelation. No matter how long my mother lived, we would never recover the close relationship we’d shared before Frank came on the scene. It was one of the things I’d sensed that tenth summer. I had been mourning a phase of life I instinctively knew was over, and at the same time fearing what lay ahead.

Now a new kind of loneliness loomed on the horizon, that of being the last living member of a family. Okay, my grandmother was alive, but she had never been part of my family life. To all intents and purposes mum was my only family and soon she’d be gone. All I’d have by way of connection to her was a cardboard box full of memories. She’d coffined those aspects of her life pertaining to me in anticipation of her own coffining. Her death would confirm the irretrievable passing of that safe part of my life when I’d been innocent and unaware of anything other than what cartoons were on the telly.

The stitch I’d been trying to ignore got so bad I had to stop. Clutching a hand to my side, I bent over, gasping and panting, dripping sweat and tears onto the ground in front of me. IEM (irrational emotional me) had taken control of the ship and fucking wrecked it, as per usual. Had I been a real ship I’d have been towed off for scrap.

It took me a good few minutes to pull myself together and take stock of my surroundings. I was at least four miles from home, and bloody knackered thanks to the pace I’d set. It started to rain hard. Wonderful. Straightening up, I gritted my teeth and started jogging in a homeward direction.

Chapter Five - Daddy Takes Charge

By the time I reached home, it was properly light and the rain had slowed to a drizzle. The drive gates were wide open and pinned back, so the men folk were up. I lurched through the front door. I’d been listened out for. They both materialised in the hall like a double act, but not a comedy one. They both had frowns on display.

“God’s sake, boy. Look at the state of you.”

“Where have you been, honey?”

I was wet, cold, tired and strung out. Their irritable concern served only to irritate me.

“Isn’t it obvious?” I slicked back my dripping hair, wiped my wet face with my wet forearm and then bent down to undo my shoes. “I’ve been out.”

Shane issued a brisk rebuke. “Watch your manners. You had no business going out this morning, and without your phone. You’re a menace for going out without it. I told Leo we’d be at his place before lunchtime. You haven’t got anything packed yet.”

The reminder about Leo was the perfect springboard for my temper. It took a running jump and exploded in a shower of F bombs.

“For fuck’s fucking sake!” I kicked off my shoes. “Get off my fucking back. It’s not like we’re moving fucking house is it. It won’t take a fucking minute to throw some things in a fucking case. I’ll go and do it now.”

I launched up the stairs, charged across the landing and slammed open the bedroom door, storming into the closet to get out the cases.

I expected Shane to come charging straight after me, but he didn’t. I snatched up a couple of black leather travel bags, and took them into the bedroom, flinging them on the unmade bed. My temper bubble suddenly popped, leaving me light-headed and shaky. My clothes felt like ice wraps on my body. I pushed a hand through my hair, mentally chastising myself for being an idiot.