The Varnished Untruth (22 page)

By the time
Superman III
premiered, I was pregnant with Daisy. Billy accompanied me to the red carpet event in London and Zandra Rhodes lent me a lovely dress, which I mistakenly wore back to front. Told you I was a fashion idiot. Billy and I had been having a bit of fun – crazy nights partying at Tramp, the famous members-only nightclub in Jermyn Street run by Johnny Gold, or at Legends nightclub with people like Julian Lennon and some of the New Romantic bands that were around at the time, such as Duran Duran, Ultravox, Spandau Ballet, Culture Club. I even remember, erm, removing some of my clothing under the table at Legends in the presence of a paparazzo. What was I thinking? At least I got some comedy out of it: ‘People have the wrong idea about me,’ I complained. ‘The other day I was having a meal in a restaurant and the waitress said “Would you like the wine before or after you undress?”’

When we were out and about in public, Billy and I used to play a game. If someone asked us both for an autograph we would subtly fight to grab the page and write far more than necessary – ‘Love and cuddles, and may the bluebird of happiness shit all over your birthday cake’ – and in such large letters that the other could barely find space on the paper, and had to squash his or her name in between ‘best’ and ‘wishes’. If only one of us was recognized, the other would crow openly, to the embarrassment of the other – and the fan. Once someone approached me before Billy, but I discovered my little song of triumph was premature. ‘I was just wondering,’ said the woman, ‘what’s Sting like?’

When interviewers asked: ‘Do you and Billy help each other with work?’ I’d answer: ‘Hinder, actually. We either steal jokes from each other, or sell lines in return for sexual favours.’ Oh yes, I was deliberately provocative, probably trying to control the situation in a paradoxical fashion. ‘You appear to seek publicity . . .’ they’d say. ‘No,’ I’d reply, ‘I never do anything deliberately for publicity. I went out the other night and was met in the foyer by a barrage of photographers. Now, I didn’t mind, but it really startled my tiger.’ I’d follow that up with: ‘No seriously, I like being in the papers. It saves writing home.’ Yeah, I know . . . Billy’s a lot funnier.

But I behaved defensively because I was really finding it very uncomfortable to be so much in the public eye. The press interest was unbearable at this point. I didn’t know how to handle it. I was probably making a lot of mistakes, but it was painful to be misunderstood, misrepresented and attacked. I hated meeting new people because I always felt they’d already formed an opinion of me that was shaped by the tabloids. The final straw was a photo of me looking very pregnant with a story about how this once beautiful young woman was now a big lump. I was incensed. It wasn’t just insulting to me, it disrespected all women. My developing maternal instincts were telling me I needed to protect not only myself, but especially my future child from this kind of life. Billy seemed to be handling it just fine, but I felt like we needed to run away. Our lives simply had to change, because we were about to be parents.

Now it was serious.

Chapter Nine

B
LUE
H
OLE TO
B
ABIES

It was all Jacques Cousteau’s fault. The great diver concocted a list of his favourite dive sites in the world – many of which he himself had discovered – and obliged divers to seek them out for ever after. That is why I found myself, in 2008, with five other advanced divers on an inflatable rubber boat, poised above a bottomless sea chimney off the coast of Belize. The Blue Hole of Belize was Cousteau’s second favourite dive in the world, but it was one of my scariest. ‘This will be a negative entry,’ announced our guide, meaning that we should deflate our dive jackets so we could plummet fast the second we hit the water. ‘You must descend to one hundred and thirty feet as quickly as you possibly can.’ The sooner we reached the famous, deep caves in this eerie chasm, the longer we’d have to explore them. Even so, because of the depth and the need to ascend very slowly, the most we’d have down there would be around four minutes.

I checked my equipment and nodded to my dive buddy. ‘One, two, three . . .’ We synchronized our flip into the foaming sea and forced ourselves downwards as fast as our breathing cavities would allow. This was no time to delay at the surface and equalization had to be rapid. Oh God, it was murky. Visibility was far worse than I had imagined, and once we reached a hundred feet I became aware of being ‘showered on’ by weird white particles. Even with my powerful underwater flashlight I could barely see the massive stalactites and stalagmites the ancient caverns were known for. I remember thinking, ‘Cousteau actually loved THIS?’

That’s the same question I was just about to ask you . . .

Hmmm, well, actually, yes. It was rather like visiting Stonehenge – an ancient and curious monument that cannot entirely be explained (although geologists think the hole was part of an underwater cave system whose ceiling collapsed). Part of its allure is the fact that the site has become a part of diving folklore as a weird and wonderful Mecca for extreme divers. I suppose you have to be a diver to understand . . . but let’s cut to the end of the dive. The four minute warning was upon me. I could barely see my trusty dive computer, but it was beeping like crazy to prompt immediate action. And there were thumbs up signs all around me that had only one meaning: time to ascend. We began slowly. Having descended so deep, our climb had to be painfully slow. Did everyone have enough air to get to the surface? It’s easy to lose concentration or get panicky and expend more air than expected at that depth. ‘Must stay calm and alert,’ I had told myself.

I more or less managed that until I saw the first bull shark. Oh no! Not only did I have to ascend extremely slowly, but I’d be surrounded by these mothers (literally – they all seemed to be pregnant) the entire way. I love being in the water with most sharks, and feel safe with them because I know they are unlikely to attack. But bulls are an exception. ‘I don’t trust them,’ our guide had warned.

‘Breathe,’ I told myself. ‘You cannot afford to panic.’ Just then I caught sight of my buddy who was so wigged by the bulls his breathing had become dangerously shallow. I swam closer and took his hand. ‘OK?’ I made the universal divers’ sign. He returned it, tentatively, then as an afterthought wobbled his other hand to sign that he was shaky. I watched our bubbles; there are two sizes, and one must never ascend faster than the smaller ones. My main concern was our safety stop – a necessary, five-minute stationary period at fifteen feet. My buddy was not going to like that. Desperate to get to the safety of the boat, he looked decidedly antsy when the group stopped ascending and began to count down. Now there was nothing to do but hang about there, trying to maintain the same depth and, at the same time, avoid becoming a shark’s lunch.

Suddenly I remembered that, a couple of nights before, my buddy and I had tried salsa dancing in a mainland bar. I grinned cheekily at him (well, as far as one can grin with a face full of breathing equipment), faced him, and took his right hand. I began to shake my shoulders, then used his arm to complete a slow turn, ducking under it salsa-style. He got the idea and pulled me towards him, rocking me backwards and forwards then turning me again. Now he was starting to relax. Eventually, the rest of the group was at it too, ducking and weaving while the bull sharks eyed us with benign curiosity.

It did the trick; it took our minds off a perceived danger about which we could do nothing, and relaxed us so there was less danger anyway. Experts say sharks are sensitive to human mood changes, or more accurately, the changes in the water’s ph levels that occur when our mood is altered – and it’s best to stay very calm. Yeah, like I said, ‘Dancing saves lives.’ But, thinking back, I’m not really sure why those circling bulls seemed annoyed at first. Perhaps this was just a bad time to be around them, with little ones on the way; after my own three pregnancies, I know just how they felt.

I mostly loved being pregnant. For a start, it was a licence to eat. Feeling fantastically free from the pressure of maintaining a ‘TV weight’, I ate and ate and ate – not realizing I was bingeing excessively and putting myself at risk of pregnancy complications. I grew absolutely enormous, but I was happy.

It’s a terrible idea to have a baby with a comedy god. At a time when the focus ought to be on you and the urgency of your caesarean (‘watermelon-removal’), there was Billy sucking up all the attention and causing mirth among people who, ideally, needed to keep their hands nice and steady. That behaviour of his was on top of his shocking announcement, just days before my due date, that at birth he himself had been nearly ten pounds. Yowie! I called my obstetrician forthwith and pleaded for a Caesarean. Fortunately, he had already decided I’d have one, because Daisy was both enormous and upside down. Whew! At that time, the usual Glaswegian paternal behaviour would have been to disappear to the pub when the first labour pains struck, but Billy’s devotion – and probably his curiosity – led him to be at my side throughout the process.

‘I’ve seen your bladder,’ he announced later, in a smug, slightly creepy, sort of way. Apparently there was a rather dodgy moment during the operation, when he came close to passing out and had to be helped from the surgery but, all in all, he did rather well – well, if you discount the fact that, cradling our newborn child, he followed the surgical team to their changing room and did twenty minutes of comedy for them while I waited furiously, lying captive on a gurney in a corridor.

I was terribly worried about leaving hospital. There was a whole posse of photographers waiting outside. Would my baby be in danger? The men might crowd us, chase us. I had already felt physically threatened by the ‘pack’ on many occasions. Or would Billy lose his temper with them again and retaliate violently? I needn’t have worried. A few flashes and well-wishes, and we were on our way home.

As new parents, we were in heaven. Welcoming Daisy into the world was thrilling, and my intense maternal feelings of love and care for her were soon flooding through me. Given the ambiguity about mothering I’d picked up though my childhood experiences, I had worried about whether I’d ever be a good mum . . .

Well, that’s understandable, given your relationship with your own mother . . .

Yes, but actually I bonded very quickly with my new little person. And Billy was an attentive father – taking his turn at nappy-changing and helping me to get the rest I needed. He sang Daisy to sleep – usually to Ry Cooder’s ‘Little Sister’ – and invented something called ‘Sleepy-toes’, a kind of improvised poem that has never failed to transport a baby into the Land of Nod.

You seem surprised . . .

Well, Billy already had two children, Jamie and Cara, who were still living with their mother in Scotland. I met them fairly early in my relationship with Billy. They were delightful, shy, Scottish children; although, naturally, they were troubled by their parents’ divorce. I met them outside Drury Lane Theatre when I was in
Pirates of Penzance
. Billy had brought them to a matinee and I can’t imagine what they thought of me at the time. I remember that my hair was short and spiky (chopped for a cover of
Cosmopolitan
magazine) and I seem to remember I was wearing leopard-print stretch trousers and a T-shirt that said ‘Fuck Art – Let’s Dance!’ Perhaps it was not the best introduction to a future stepmother but I can’t be sure because, to this day, I have not managed to get anything concrete out of Jamie and Cara about what impression I made. But I quickly came to adore them both, although I was very concerned about all the upheaval in their lives – some of it due to me.

You have feelings of guilt?

Well, yes. I mean, it was all pretty messy. And public. And, unfortunately, the children were dealing with a number of other, significant problems, although it took me and Billy a while to discover exactly what those were. Jamie, it turned out, had not attended school for nearly a year, and Cara was miserable for a multitude of reasons connected with the fact that Billy’s ex-wife Iris was struggling herself. Challenged by alcohol addiction, depression and a hoarding disorder, she was unable to care for herself properly, let alone her children. Just before Daisy was born, Billy and I decided to seek custody of Cara and Jamie, a process that was enormously stressful for all concerned – and, again, not the smoothest when it involves a comedy god. At one point, a court reporter was detailed to sit in our house, watch our family interaction, and interview everyone. There was a heart-stopping moment when Cara, questioned about her father’s style of disciplining, mischievously repeated his jokey line: ‘He always says he’ll thrash me within an inch of my miserable life!’ See what I mean? If you can help it, stay away from comedians. They just cause endless trouble.

But, fortunately, the official had a sense of humour, and recommended that Billy be granted custody, with regular visits granted to their mother. I felt terribly sorry for Iris, and did my best to get her some help. She entered treatment for a very short period, but failed to improve. The children saw her only sporadically after that. She eventually moved to Spain, became estranged from her children, and struggled greatly with her psychological problems right up until her death in 2010.

Her children, though, thrived in new schools in London. We had bought a converted fish factory in Fulham, and they moved in. Pink and green striped couches, red spiral staircase, wacky pottery everywhere – that became our sanctuary and we tried to create normality for them. Normality? Who am I trying to kid? Well, it was a crazy kind of ‘normal’. At least they had a routine and attended school. In summer we had picnics in the enclosed courtyard, drove to Cornwall for minibreaks, and gazed at shooting stars on Hampstead Heath . . . More or less ordinary? Well, if you discount things like the fact that our answerphone always contained hate messages because I’d done a greeting that was a perfect Margaret Thatcher voice: ‘I’d like to take this opportunity to tell you all that we’re not at home . . . Do kindly call back later. And if that’s you, Denis, please pick up a tart on the way home – preferably a little Spanish one . . . You like those swarthy temptresses don’t you?’