Dear Fatty (6 page)

From what I can gather, Lil didn’t seem to have a single maternal bone in her body. This did not prevent her from having more children: my mum Roma, Terry, Owen and Michael. She seems to have regarded her kids as either troublesome pests or domestics, except her first-born, Wendy, who was prized, protected and praised. When my mum talks about her childhood, she describes
herself
as ‘the scrubber’ of the family, meaning, I hope, the cleaner. Their upbringing was pretty tempestuous with Lil dishing out physical and verbal abuse in equal measure. They learned to dodge her and it seems none of them could wait to leave home. But those stories are for them to tell, I can only recount
my
experience of Lil. By the time the grandchildren came along Lil had mellowed a bit. She could hold forth when in her cups and she could often be a complete selfish pain in the arse, but I loved how uncontrolled and tough she was. She was sly, and never short of a con or two, always on the lookout for a way to make a few bob, at whatever cost. At some point she had worked on a stall in the Pannier Market, a beautiful, light, airy covered market in Plymouth. She knew all the stallholders back then, both reputable and otherwise. There used to be a big trade in second-hand jewellery and she knew how and where to get a good deal. On one occasion, I had need of her skills in this murky area.

I was about 15 and a friend of mine from school, Patsy Ritchie, had invited me to come home with her to Gibraltar for the holidays. Her dad was very high up in the medical arm of the navy, a surgeon captain, and was stationed there. Patsy had been telling all of us about the quantity and quality of dreamy boys in Gibraltar, when all the navy kids returned home for the holidays, and she wanted me to come and share in the rich pickings. I desperately wanted to go, but didn’t have the funds and my parents didn’t have enough cash to spare. So my dad struck a deal with me: if I did a paper round for him for a month, he would pay my wages and then double it to make up the required amount. I can’t remember exactly how much it was, but I
do
remember that
however
hard I worked on the paper round, I fell short by £40 even with Dad’s help. Time was running out to buy a ticket, and mindful of the certainty that all the best Gibraltar boys would be cherry-picked if I didn’t hurry up, I felt hopeless. Mum noticed how sad I was and came up with a brilliant, generous solution. She went and furtled about in the attic for a while and returned with a flat velvet box. She explained that inside was a set of jewellery which she had never liked – they were pearls and she had always superstitiously believed that they bring bad luck. However, she felt guilty about owning such beautiful jewellery and disliking it so much, so she was glad to give it to me as a sort of task. My mission, should I choose to accept it, was to take the jewellery to the market and get the best possible price for it. She said I would certainly be able to get £40 but that I should barter, vigorously. OK. Off I went to the market, feeling a bit nervous about the whole dealing issue but determined to make the cash.

As I entered the vast hall, who should pop up from nowhere like an elderly Rumpelstiltskin, but Lil. She was curious as to why I was there, we went for coffee and I explained my predicament. She asked me how much I needed. ‘Forty quid,’ I told her, ‘or more.’ She took the box with the pearls from me and told me to leave it up to her, that this was, after all, her world, that she knew all the tricks and would undoubtedly do a better deal than I ever could with my middle-class wimpy sales technique. She was, of course, absolutely right, so I sat tight nursing another revolting Nescafé until she returned, smirking, ten minutes later. ‘Who’s your favourite gran?’ she said as she sat down and triumphantly counted out the tenners on the table. One, two, three, four – great, that’s my target. Then, oh God, here comes
more
– five,
six
. £60! I couldn’t believe it. What a result! Big victory hugs all round, more coffees and some celebratory dough cakes too, which I happily paid for, oh and some bread and cakes for her to take home for later. Of course, my pleasure.

Feeling delighted and a bit smug, I went straight to Mum to show her my winnings. She asked how I’d done and when I told her about the £60 she didn’t look as pleased as I’d hoped. She asked which stall I’d decided to sell to and I explained about meeting Lil and letting her do the dirty deed. She grabbed my hand muttering things like ‘I’ll kill her’ and ‘canny old cow’ and other, ruder, grumblings under her breath. Within minutes, we were at my gran’s flat in Rendle Street and Mum marched me in, demanding that Lil give me the rest of the dosh. ‘
Rest
of it?! Eh?!’ Lil looked a bit sheepish and eventually relented and reached into her handbag. Then laid three more tenners on the table. I was aghast. Mum said, ‘And the rest …!’ Eventually there was £100 on the table. I was speechless. She had done a deal for £160, but she had decided to pocket £100 of it as a sort of commission. As far as she was concerned, I had what I needed and a bit extra, and she had something out of it too. She didn’t see it as my mum did – nicking money from your own grandchild! – not at all. My mum had known all along the pearls were worth a lot; she wanted me to have the experience of finding that out and doing a good deal for myself; she hadn’t anticipated Evil Granny interfering. I always kept my eye on Lil after that day. She was quick. Very quick. And slippery.

Lil loved to have a good time. A drink, a song, some darts and a fight would be the perfect evening for her. Any chance to put on a rabbit-skin fur coat,
lots
of lairy bling, a big gash of red lipstick
and
some click-clacky shoes was all right with her. She was a Beryl Cook painting come to life. She took me to arcades and pubs and bookies. I got drunk, I caught nits, I occasionally walked home on my own when she was too pissed to remember I was with her. It was never dull.

When her marriage broke down, she moved in to the council flat in Rendle Street where my two great-uncles lived, her brothers, Bill and Jim. Both had been badly injured in the war serving with the Royal Devonshires. Uncle Bill was still in terrible shock from the unspeakable sights he had seen in Belsen. Uncle Jim had to have a full-body skin graft and lost several fingers, when he was the last off the roof of a bombed building in Greenland. He was the sergeant and, thus, final man to go down a precarious rope which burnt and snapped, plunging him, on fire, to the ground where his legs and ankles broke. When he was at the field hospital, they had set his legs wrong and covered his burns in sticking plaster which took months to soak off when he returned to England, where his legs had to be broken again and reset. In later life, he was the projectionist at the Plaza cinema in the Barbican while Uncle Bill built submarines in the dockyard and slowly contracted the asbestosis which eventually killed him, although no one would admit it. Neither of these lovely old guys had married and I always found it touching that they slept, Morecombe and Wise-like, in the same big bed just like they had as young lads, trusting only in their loyalty to each other. This meant, however, that there was a spare room and Lil wasted no time foisting herself upon them and somehow convincing them that they needed her to look after them. They were managing perfectly well on their own and surely they’d suffered enough?
Not
only did she decide they needed this service but she also demanded payment for it! An extortionate pecuniary arrangement was set up, and those poor brothers were stuck with their monstrous sister, charging
them
for living in
their
home. Another brilliant coup for Lil.

It was during Lil’s time at this flat that another elderly relative, the previously mentioned Aunt Fan, came to live out her final days with them. She spent most of the time in bed in Lil’s room. She was a gentle, sweet lady who we all loved, and even Lil softened to care for her in those last weeks. Aunt Fan died in the room that I was later to share with Lil when I spent weekends there from boarding school because Mum and Dad lived a long way away. One weekend with Marjorie (ahh, lovely) and the next with Lil (eeeek!), on the pull-out camp bed at the bottom of the actual bed where Aunt Fan had JUST DIED! This spooked me out badly and I could never get to sleep until Lil came to bed. I gradually got used to Lil’s mysterious nighttime routine …

It’s only now I understand that this strange behaviour was probably the curse of the truly alcoholic. The need to top up with GIN (not water) halfway through the night in order to survive without the shakes.

Much later on, after Bill and Jim had died and there had been an alarming chip-fat fire incident in yet another flat she lived in, Mum organised for Lil to move to an amazing sheltered housing flat in Devonport where she was very happy. A warden at the end of the corridor, big buttons to press for attention (perfect for an accomplished attention-seeker), regular bingo and a view of the Hoe and the Sound beyond. It was in this flat that Lil mounted her final evil assault. She decided to spend her time making endless stuffed woollen toys for us, the next generation, to torture
our
children with. I have hundreds of them, all ugly and truly frightening – hobgoblins and pixies and nasty bug-eyed Santas. My daughter recoiled every year as she unwrapped yet another knitted gargoyle. Lil was famous in family circles for giving the worst
ever
presents. One Christmas she put all previous years in the shade by giving us each a special ornament: a plastic yule log with two robins perched on it, made from mushrooms. MUSHROOMS! Gotta hand it to you, Lil, you are the undisputed champ. No one did worse presents than you, nor ever will …

When my career kicked off a bit in the eighties and occasionally a picture of me, or me and Fatty, turned up in a magazine, Lil would cut it out, mount it on card or frame it, and display it in a corner of her flat I liked to refer to as the ‘temple’. After I married Len, his visage occasionally turned up there too, among the reverential display. Other cousins’ graduation photos and
wedding
pictures and new baby photos were relegated to a tiny sideboard while more and more room was devoted to the expansion of the temple department. Once, after coming to see me perform in Plymouth, she demanded I sign a 4 x 6 publicity photo to her as follows: ‘To my darling grandma, I love you
so
much, thank you for everything, from your devoted granddaughter, Dawn French xx.’ This too was then placed at the temple altar. I tried several times to dismantle the temple since it caused me untold embarrassment and was beginning to send trouble ripples through the family, who were rightly furious. But she wasn’t having it, and it would be up again the next day. Woe betide any visitor who might come in and
not
know I was related to her.

But y’know, even after all the weird and bad stuff she did, I was really sad when she died. I felt like a mould had been broken, probably for the best, but nevertheless we wouldn’t witness its like again. In her curious way, she loved me very much and I loved her, but it was the kind of love you only show when you’ve got your full armour on, just in case of unpredictable attack.

At her funeral, I sat behind her offspring, my mum and my uncles all in a row. She had done much, mostly carelessly, to divide and harm them in her life but here they were, temporarily united in her death. Much as I reckon none of them had a proper parent in her, I think they all recognised that she was a true survivor and a larger-than-life ballsy dame. So, just wanted to say: ‘To my darling grandma, I love you
so
much, thank you for everything, from your devoted granddaughter, Dawn French xx.’ I think she’d like that.

So, you see, these two women have had a massive influence on me. Two entirely different extremes, two entirely different
legacies
. And I am grateful to both because without either of these opposing powerful forces, I don’t think I would stop to balance things up as often as I do. It may frustrate me, but it’s just the way I am.

WHEN I WAS
about six and your dad was about eight, only a couple of years younger than you are now – we went with our mum and dad to live on a hot island in the Mediterranean called Cyprus. Our dad, your grandad, who sadly you never met (you would have loved him, and boy would he have loved you), worked for the Royal Air Force and his bosses sent him to live over there for a few years. At the time we arrived, a frightening war was taking place on the island to do with the people who live there called Cypriots wanting their country to be separate from Great Britain. There was also some fighting between the two different types of people who lived there, the Turks and the Greeks, who had a long history of disliking each other, so all in all it was pretty scary.

The first house we lived in was in a place called Nicosia, which is in the north of the island. The house was big and painted white and pink with iron railings round the balconies. There was an older house next door where a Greek family lived and we all became friends. The mother of the family was called Androniki and she was very loud and bossy but very kind to us. She never stopped kissing me and your dad – you can imagine how much he liked that!
NOT!
This lovely lady always used to call me Haravghi Moo instead of Dawn. She explained that the Haravghi bit is the Greek for dawn, as in the sunrise at the start of the day, and the little ‘Moo’ bit on the end of the name was in fact ‘Mou’ and is the way Greek people call you darling, or sweetheart. So,
all
the time I lived in Cyprus, our family called me ‘Haravghi Mou’, which slowly changed to just the plain old ‘Moo’ that you will have often heard your dad call me. At least, I
hope
that’s why he’s calling me that. If we find out that he’s just being rude, I will need you to kick him hard on the shins for me. I’ll show you how. I’m an expert at torturing your dad physically. Stick with me, kid, and I’ll teach you how to do it mentally one day, and then he will be overpowered and the French kingdom will be yours, all yours, ha ha! (Do loud evil cackling here, Jack.)