Something to think about

Quotes: I've learned that no matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow. (Maya Angelou)..The destiny of every human being is decided by what goes on inside his skull when confronted by what goes on outside his skull. (Eric Berne).. Work while you work, play while you play - this is a basic rule of repressive self-discipline. (Theodor W. Adorno)

Sunday 7 June 2015

18 The Desert Song

If taking part in the chapel cantata is doing anything for me at all, then it is encouraging me to rise and shine in a rather less angelic way than Uncle Frank does.

Living next door to a school is also doing its bit. Since it has the only building with a proper stage and auditorium in the vicinity, travelling theatre groups invariably fill in gaps in their tours by doing one  or two night stands here.
These are announced in the local paper, and Mama is invariably against my seeing any of it because she has heard the Noel Coward song ‘Don’t put your daughter on the stage, Mrs Worthington’ and taken to heart the advice it proffers. Theatre changing rooms, I am told, are dens of iniquity not to be frequented by anyone of propriety. Mama claims to be an expert on such matters, though she has absolutely no experience to fall back on. Apart from that argument, going there could put silly ideas into my head.
Actually, my head is already full of silly ideas.
“But it’s only the school stage,” I argue vociferously.
“That doesn’t make any difference,” Mama replies. “Once you get under the influence of those evil people, there’s no telling where you might end.”
I hate this categorical condemnation of people she has never set eyes on. After all, she has let me go the cantata rehearsals, and if the people there aren’t iniquitous, then I’d like to know who is.
The problem with grownups is that they only see things from their point of view and only as it will affect them in the short or long run. If I end up at the bottom of the pit, where all the other theatre people apparently already are, then that will reflect back on her. I have to do things that will not take the skin off her nose. Seen from that aspect, singing in the chapel cantata is definitely more suitable than mixing with actors and their cronies.
No matter if Mrs Briggs, a former respected member of the nursing profession and now part-time and freelance cloakroom lady, secretly picks the pockets of any coats hanging in any cloakroom she happens to be guarding, only to blame whatever child is anywhere near if she is observed, saying she has merely confiscated the stolen item. She’s been doing it for years, and has never lost her respectability. Mama says it’s better than her continuing to smother elderly patients. As a potential scapegoat, I don’t share her view. If she smothered elderly patients, why isn’t she in prison?
No matter that the organist is carrying on (I believe that’s what it’s called) with Lucy Morton’s mum in the vestry while we are all in the organ loft practising changing costumes from being ordinary children to angels and back again. And she’s not the only mum he carries on with.
Messing around in the vestry or making children take the blame for your misdemeanours is Christian. Singing and dancing on a stage in front of a paying audience, some of whom, who are likely to be calling themselves Christians, but are according to Mama wayward,, is heathen. You don’t pay to watch people making a spectacle of themselves, Mama says. Dada, as usual, keeps his own counsel for the sake of a peaceful life, but he purses his lips and sends me telepathic messages saying not to take any notice of her.
Then, one day, the imminent arrival of quite a well-known troop of musical performers is announced on billboards and in the paper. They are going to perform an operetta called The Desert Song, and if can’t get to see it by fair means, I’ll do it by foul.
Knowing that Dada is really on my side but won’t be disloyal to Mama, I have to find a different solution to the cash-flow problem. My pocket money just isn’t enough to buy a ticket for one of the three performances on offer. Not being a thrifty person, I am unable to keep track of where my money goes, but even if I could, it would take me seven weeks without sweets to save up at sixpence a week and that would depend on my knowing that much ahead of time what I wanted it for.
I decide to ask Uncle Frank instead. Uncle Frank knows I am theatrical because always sing and dance for him when I visit him.
“It’s Mama’s birthday soon,” I explain, deceitfully. “I’ve seen a scarf I’d like to get her, but I haven’t got enough money saved up.”
“How much,” he asks, with a twinkle in his eye.
“Three and six,” I tell him, and the twinkle seems to get merrier. He isn’t feeling too bad at the moment, and so he smiles a bit more than usual.
“Well,” he says slowly. “if I didn’t know for certain that you wouldn’t tell me an untruth, I could swear that you were trying to wheedle the price of a front row ticket for the operetta tomorrow night.”
Caught in the act.
My last hope dashed, I turn round to leave the room so he won’t see my shame.
“Here you are,” he calls after me.
He counts out the coins into my hand.
“Your mother’s a bit too strict, in my opinion,” he explains. “Your father was here this morning to ask me to do something about a ticket for you because he doesn’t want to upset your mother by doing it himself. I phoned the booking office and they’re saving you one right in the middle of the front row, and it’s paid for, so you’ll have enough money to buy the scarf, too.”
I can’t believe my ears.
“I don’t know what bee your mother’s got in her bonnet,” he adds. “Somehow she’s got the wrong end of the stick. There’s nothing wrong with travelling theatre groups. It’s their work, just like being a butcher was mine. You go there and enjoy yourself., but make sure you come and tell me all about it, young lady.”
“Yes, of course. Thank you, thank you...” I stammer.
If kissing had been customary in our family, I would have kissed him.
Do angels like being kissed?
Back in my bedroom, I hide the money in my pencil case, and walk on air for the rest of the day. If only Dada or Uncle Frank were well enough to go with me. But Uncle Frank stopped going anywhere much after Auntie Sylvia died, and Dada doesn’t go anywhere hot and crowded because of his coughing.
Next day, I ponder on how I can get out of the house without being seen by Mama. I can’t even risk discussing the theatre visit with Dada, because walls have ears in our house. I decide to plead a headache and go to bed very early, hoping Mama won’t get suspicious, seeing as I don’t usually offer to go to bed before seven, or at any other time for that matter. If I put a stool outside my window, I can climb out unseen and get to the school hall via the fence and playing-field. I position a stool from the garage on the way home and manage to smuggle my good shoes and warm coat into my room, and am bracing myself for my fictitious early night when Dada calls me into the sitting room. Mama is busy making the tea in the kitchen and listening to the news on the Home Service.
“You just go out the front door with this,” he says in a stage whisper, folding a sheet of paper and putting it into an envelope together with another three and six for my ticket. “It’s for Uncle Frank, and it’s a list of all the people who were on the Christmas bonus scheme last year. He’s waiting for it, so Mama won’t be surprised.”
“But the ticket is paid for, Uncle Frank told me,” I stammer, feeling quite embarrassed at the sudden windfall.
 “That’s all right,” he goes on in a normal whisper. “He will have phoned the bank and arranged something. Take the money out, go to school and collect your ticket at the door.” He crosses my palm with an extra sixpence. I can’t tell him now about the extra money from Uncle Frank, but I will when I get home.
I can’t disguise my excitement and relief, either. I won’t have to climb out of the window and run across the soggy field after all. I won’t have to sit all evening in wet shoes and catch my death.
“I’ll clear it up with your mother. There’s not much she can do after the event, now is there?”
“Won’t she come and fetch me out?” I ask, dreading just that.
“Of course not. You know your mother Once the deed is done, your mother will be angry but resigned. She’d like to go herself, but she’s said so many bad things about theatre people that she’s afraid of losing face.”
I can well understand that. Grownups cut off their tongues to spite their faces sometimes.
“She wouldn’t want to make a fool of herself in front of people she knows, and there are bound to be plenty of them in the audience.”
If Dada had known what a profound impression this theatre experience was going to make on me, maybe he wouldn’t have collaborated with Uncle Frank to make it possible.
But he did, and now here I am, standing in the queue for my reserved ticket.
Presently I am being ushered down the centre aisle by the lady from the newsagent’s where I buy my sweets on a Saturday and having my seat pointed out to me. I have only had to pay two shillings because I am so small, which means I got another one and six back, making me really rich. I now have one and six and Dada’s sixpence and three and six to spend on refreshments in the interval plus the three and six from Uncle Frank. I spend threepence on a programme that has all the words of the songs in it and a packet of toffees to keep the wolf from the door.
It’s easy to forget that this is our school hall, because it now has dimmed house-lights, and the red velvet curtain, which is usually tied back with string, has been pulled across the stage, behind which there is the audible activity of final preparations for curtain up. Between me in the first row and the school platform stage there are music stands and chairs for the orchestra, and very soon they all come in carrying their instruments and start making a terrible row getting their music started. Nobody has warned me about this. Let’s hope they play a bit better when they’ve been going for a bit.
The performance is indescribably magical and enthralling, being way beyond my wildest dreams of what happens on theatre stages. The orchestra plays tunefully after all, and the actors dance, sing and orate their way through the epic, which takes place somewhere very hot with a lot of red floodlights, the heat and light of which stretch out to me in the front row. I cannot take my eyes off the leading man, who is called Red Skelton, and wears a flowing scarlet cloak that he swishes around as he marches across the stage, now singing to the lady of his heart, now fighting the enemy, now facing me eye to eye and assuring me that all will be well.
To be honest, I don’t really catch the story, because everyone bursts into song at critical moments, when they should probably have been doing something more practical, and I have a little difficulty in believing that you can tap-dance like they do on desert sand. But that doesn’t matter. My first real theatrical experience at first hand is filled with a magic that I have never experienced before or since. This is the place I want to be, riding against all odds through the makeshift desert with Red Skelton in his scarlet cloak, singing about love and happiness, then bowing modestly to the ovations and mouthing ‘thank you, thank you’ and beating my heart to the first row. I, too, want to give pleasure to thousands, but most of all I want to lose myself, exchange my ordinary self for someone with alluring qualities such as beauty, charm and courage.
The stage lights are so bright that they dazzle me and make it difficult to see into the dark of the auditorium behind me. But I hear a familiar little cough and know that Mama is at the back somewhere, making sure I can’t see her. That is one of the many moments when I wish she would share my love of magic and make-believe. But she never does, not to her dying day.
I have to be asked to leave at the end. Mama has long since taken flight, of course. The magic of the evening has overwhelmed me. I am transported into Red Skelton land and am reluctant to return to reality. Nearly everyone else has gone home. A cleaner is collecting sweet papers and giving the floor a hasty going over with a damp mop, ready for school assembly next morning. I walk the few yards home in a reverie. Life will never be the same again. I have been elevated to a place pretty near to where the angels dwell.
Dada opens the door. Mama has gone to bed with a migraine, he explains. That means she will be out of action for at least 24 hours. It is her way of coping with insurmountable problems and not having to face the truth. Her programme lies on the hat shelf. It is sort of hidden from view, but I can see it through the wooden slats making up the shelf. I don’t comment, not even to Dada.  
Next day Dada has to get me and my brother up for school. He makes us something to eat when we get home again. Still in a state of enchantment, I venture to ask him if I can play theatre in the garage. Mama isn’t able to frown and forbid, so Dada says I can. Straight after tea we go into the garage and fasten an old washing line from one side to the other. Then we hang a long curtain from the black-out during the war over it, thus dividing off the back of the garage as a stage. Next day, I get some school chums to come home with me and we start where Red Skelton left off, eventually drawing our audience from willing onlookers who pay in sweets and conkers for the privilege of watching our antics.
Whatever Mama may think of my theatre project, she never mentions it, and never asks about The Desert Song. It is her way of pretending it never happened. Maybe it is not her intention, but she makes me feel guilty and sad. Not guilty and sad enough to give up the idea of theatre as a way of life, mind you.
As far as Mama is concerned, nothing has changed. She never confessed to being at the musical performance and she doesn’t notice the excitement growing in me as I think of all the wonderful performances I will give one day.
But then, being the daughter of Mama is hardly what you’d call straightforward.
A few days later I sneak down to Woolworth’s and buy her a woolly scarf from the money left over from the Red Skelton, and being a reformed character after my conversion to the professional theatre, I confess to Uncle Frank that I have spent his money on a scarf for Mama, but I want to pay him back a penny a week. That will leave me enough for a sweet or two.

Mama wears the scarf every day.

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