The Life of Lee (15 page)

I froze on the spot and began stammering. ‘I don’t, I mean, what? Did you? I better get … Muummmmmmm?’ She bent down, trying in vain to understand my Bristol pronunciation.

Suddenly, Mum was at my side. ‘Can I help you, love?’ Mum said, smiling at the woman. But I could tell Mum was giving this new face the once over.

‘Hello, I live across the way. I wondered if you would like a cup of tea.’

I knew what Mum was thinking. She would have normally said, ‘What? You think we can’t afford tea?’ But she didn’t. She thought on her feet, adjusted really quickly and put on a very odd, mock-posh voice. The effect was spoiled somewhat by her broad West Country accent.

‘Eeeoooww, thot’s verr neice awv you, thonk youu … Aaan ef there’s aneefine we caan do for yoo, yooo ownly
av to ask.’ Mum took the tray and nodded as if to say, ‘All right, now leave us alone.’

The poor woman looked confused. She stared blankly for a moment at Mum then down at me. Then, lost in thought, she turned and scuttled off back up the drive. The man mowing the lawn stopped and watched as the lady trotted across the road, back to her nicely kept house. Mum looked up and down the street. You could already see a few net curtains twitching in the windows. We were in a new place, but still had that same old feeling of being outsiders.

Let me tell you a bit about Billericay. It’s a small commuter town about fifty miles east of London on the way to the Victorian seaside town of Southend-on-Sea. Southend is the resort known for the annual influx of the work-hardened mass of London’s East Enders, keen to blow out the soot and smoke for a couple of days with some fresh sea air. After doing well for themselves, those same East Enders often choose to spill out of London to join the new start-up towns that orbit the capital like planets, swallowing up smaller villages in the process. Billericay is one of these.

It’s now part of Basildon, a newer, much bigger town. Because of its rail links to London, Billericay provides an easy option for City workers to settle within its relatively quiet suburbs. It offers local shops, badminton, bowls and dance classes, community centres and relatively decent schools. It’s a place where one can live out the British dream of the two point four children, the wife and, if you do well, perhaps the four-wheel drive which the people of Billericay love to wash and polish on the driveway of a Sunday – the car, I mean, not the wife.

I’ve always thought that this prim and proper ambience is why Mum never really felt comfortable in Billericay. She had just left the tell-it-like-it-is attitude of the Lawrence Weston Housing Estate. To have then been placed slap-bang in the middle of quiet suburbia discombobulated Mum. Goodbye to the afternoons spent nattering with the neighbours in our kitchen, keeping an eye out for trouble, people banging on your door for help all hours, the impromptu get-togethers, the fights and the break-ins – and hello to a nearly silent, empty, well-kept house with lots of cushions, trimmed hedges and the smell of freshly mown lawns. To her, an upfront, in-your-face woman, it must have initially been torture.

Anyway, after the well-meaning, tea-tray-bearing neighbour had left, I followed Mum into the kitchen, where Dad stood with arms folded, looking triumphant. He turned to Mum. ‘This is it, Shirl!’ he shouted, clearly excited. I smiled, revelling in his exuberant mood. ‘We’ve got our own house,’ he continued, punching the air.

‘Yeah, I’ve just met one of the neighbours,’ Mum said, hesitantly. I could tell she was concerned about it. I had the same sensation. I felt as though we didn’t belong. It was as if my sense of never fitting in had merely followed me from Bristol to Billericay.

But Dad was having none of it – for once, he obviously didn’t share our qualms. He broke into a loud laugh. ‘Yeah, well, wait till they get a load of us lot.’

Billericay, you can’t say you weren’t warned!

14. The Frisbee Flop Performed Without a Mat

Over the years, Wayne and I had developed a really good sense of recognizing and then quickly adapting to regional accents and behaviour. This skill manifested itself I suppose because we’d travelled around the country so much as kids. But also we seemed to have an uncanny ability to disappear into the background. If I’m honest, I’d always followed the lead of Wayne, who was and still is especially adept at reflecting like a human mirror what may be going on around him. Anyone who knows him will tell you that what he reflects back will be amplified. While tickling your funny bone, he’ll show up all the things that the locals have never noticed before and will always draw a laugh.

There’s a strange dynamic that goes on between Wayne and me. Wayne is a very funny bloke – everyone says it – but he’s the type who is funny in a group. Wayne’s the funny one, people tell me, you’re the quiet one. That’s how it works. I’ve always sat quietly in the corner with my mouth shut and been happy with my own thoughts, content to dream and fantasize about odd things.

Meanwhile, Wayne is much more open; he displays his humour there and then, and the bigger the crowd around him, the better. I wouldn’t think of standing in a pub, as
Wayne does, trying to make people laugh. I try so hard to fit in, I appear idiotic by always struggling to retain some normality. Unfortunately, the less I conform, the more neurosis I feel and the more things go wrong.

And yet, paradoxically, I don’t mind going on stage in front of an audience of thousands – an experience that, strangely enough, seems less scary than performing to my mates in a pub. If I can go over everything beforehand and rehearse what I shall say, then I don’t mind getting up on the stage in front of a large crowd. Somehow, then, I can understand what I have to do. It feels right to walk out onstage, if I’ve already rehearsed it in my head. I feel safer there than I do off in the so-called ‘real world’. Wayne, on the other hand, would never in a million years walk out onstage and tell jokes.

But in some respects we’re very similar. Like me, Wayne feels safer making people laugh; it gives him a sense of security, of acceptance, of belonging, where there has always been in both of our lives a sense of constant change and fear.

I’m with you, broth, I know. You’ve never said, but I know.

Why else would I attempt to stand up in front of twenty thousand people at the O2 Arena? It’s insecurity on a giant scale. Basically, I’m shouting, ‘Hello, my name is Lee. Would you be my friend, please? I ain’t got none.’

But I also think it’s a kind of test that I must pass. That’s all I’ve ever tried to do: to punish myself by taking this test. I have constantly told myself I’m not good enough and love to give myself a hard time. Sometimes, working so many hours, I’ve collapsed from exhaustion.
But I feel that’s OK because it hurts and that’s what I want. Trouble is, of course, that it’s not very nice for the ones around you, those who love you. But if it doesn’t hurt, then I don’t feel I’m doing it right.

I think this eagerness to please has been a driving force in my life – with mixed results. On the positive side, it has opened up many opportunities because of my willingness to take part. But on the flip side, because I’m afraid to say ‘No’ sometimes for fear of letting people down, it has got me into all sorts of trouble. If you’ve read the book thus far, you’ll know what I mean!

Anyway, as a child, it never took me long to blend into the background, as I’d try to avoid singling myself out as ‘Who’s the idiot?’ It would only be a matter of minutes before Wayne had already made friends at the local school. It usually took me a little longer because of my shyness and my eagerness to please. I’d try to merge into the nearest wall, while Wayne was the life and soul.

My mother is the same. She can fit in and make friends wherever she goes. Perhaps because she was adopted as a child and didn’t know who her parents were until she was a lot older, she learned from an early age to just blend in. But there is a difference with her. She can make friends very easily, but in equal measure she can make as many enemies. She has a very earthy, direct way about her which you either love or hate. She tells it like it is, and when the blood pulsing through her veins starts to boil, God help you! She is equally adept verbally or physically.

I knew something would happen on my first day at school in Billericay: it always did. I was eleven, so I was enrolled
in the junior school on the other side of town. I dreaded it, because I knew what was coming. I was introduced to the class as I had been on numerous previous occasions. It was always the same. I was brought in like a hostage and made to stand at the front of the class, while the head teacher stood next to me, giving it the softly spoken, concerned introduction. But the clincher would be when the head asked: ‘Lee, would you like to introduce yourself to the rest of the class?’ At that moment, he’d basically painted a target on my back. I was now the hare at the dog track, to be chased at break time.

It was a good job I had a big bush of fuzzy hair because it hid most of my face. It always looked like I was peering out the back end of a giant poodle or some rare breed of farmyard animal, but that was a good thing because, by that stage of the introduction, my face had gone a bright crimson colour. I nervously fiddled with the strap of my imitation-leather school satchel, emblazoned with my name on the front. Then I let out a little cough and, while still looking down at my skinny white knobbly legs, I said in a broad Bristolian twang to the bunch of Cockney kids in front of me: ‘’Aaargh roight, me name’s Lee. It’s gurt lush to be yer, like. Fanks fur aven I …’

For a few seconds, there was complete silence – even the teacher stared at me in disbelief. Then, and I knew it was coming, the whole class burst into uncontrollable laughter. Even the cut-out characters in the Harvest Festival picture on the back wall were killing themselves laughing.

Other kids always thought I was mucking about and putting a voice on. But they were soon convinced that
was indeed the way I spoke, and because of my West Country twang, they would then think it great fun to call me, ‘Farmer Giles’, or ‘Cow Pat’. This, of course, just magnified my sense of neurosis, of being different and self-conscious.

One effect of this neurosis was the fact that I would never go to the toilet at school. I’d go through all sorts of agonies rather than having to endure the embarrassment of using the school toilet. I would walk around the place with my head bowed and eyes directed at the floor. At break times, I would stand right out in the furthest corner of the playing field, mumbling descriptions to myself of what was around me and how I was feeling. Pacing up and down, I would repeat it over and over again, as if talking to a second party. ‘Just stay here where no one can see you. Not long now, Lee, before you can go home. What am I doing here? I want to go home.’ I was trapped in my own imagination, a destination I would seek out as a constant place of safety throughout my life.

Another form of self-defence was to say something without warning or let out a strange sound or voice, just out of the blue. I think I did that to throw the people around me, allowing things to take on a more anarchic, unpredictable mood and making them focus on that rather than on me. It was like chucking someone a curve ball.

In fact, that’s how I came to break a kid’s arm soon after starting school in Billericay. I’d arrived there two weeks previously, but already things had started to happen. It was like
The Omen
. One kid called me Inspector Clouseau, because everywhere I went havoc would ensue.
Let me just straighten something out: I never actually broke his arm personally – he did it himself. But if it hadn’t been for me, it would never have happened.

As I’ve mentioned, I would spend break times standing at the far corner of the playing field, muttering away to myself like a Bristolian Rain Man, ignoring the rest of the pupils who crowded the field.

One morning, at the aptly named break time, I had this burning desire to put my blazer over my head and run around like I was a superhero. I’d always wanted to be a superhero. I loved to do that at my last school – remember the X-ray specs? – but it had taken me ages to pluck up the courage.

So, instead, I just paced nervously up and down next to the wire fence, not wanting to make eye contact with anyone. All around me, there were groups of girls skipping, and boys with bed hair and one sock up and one sock down, playing football with a small tennis ball. Either that or they were imitating film fighting. There were the familiar, high-pitched screams and shouts of enthusiastic excitement you get from any playground packed with kids at break time. I so wanted to be a part of it, but didn’t dare join in.

‘Hoy, Farmer Giles.’

‘’Ere it comes,’ I thought. It was inevitable – it was only a question of when.

I’d thought if I could just make it through break time without anyone picking on me, it would be a first. The last school I was at, I hadn’t even entered the classroom before I’d trapped the teacher’s fingers in the door. So adamant and determined not to go to school was I, Mum
had offered to take me down to the class herself. However, as soon as the teacher opened the door and I set eyes on all those other kids, I flipped and tried to run.

But the teacher and my mum simultaneously rugby-tackled me. Mum grabbed my waist, while the teacher held my legs aloft. Together, they struggled to push me into the class head first. To the other kids, it must have looked like I was levitating into the room. Every now and then, my head would pop round the door. I would stop crying for a moment, stare at everyone and begin again. Then I seized the door handle and, as the teacher was using the door frame as leverage at the time, it slammed right on her fingers.

A lot of parents complained that their children came home repeating swear words they had heard from the teacher that day, so she was reprimanded for that. Plus, it severely hampered her maths teaching; for the next two weeks, when she tried counting out on her fingers, she couldn’t get past two. It was like being taught maths the Django Reinhardt way.

‘Farmer Giles?’ Yes, I’d heard that one before. It always meant the same thing: they’re coming over to test me out, to see what I’m all about. I turned round, and there were two of them: one a chubby kid with a helmet cut staring straight at me – he could have modelled Christmas puddings and resembled nothing so much as a fat penis. The other was a weasel boy giggling over Helmet Head’s shoulder like a demonic parrot.