Big Girls Don't Cry: The Wild and Wicked World of Paula Yates' Mother
288
Big Girls Don't Cry: The Wild and Wicked World of Paula Yates' Mother
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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781844545216 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | John Blake Publishing, Limited |
| Publication date: | 03/01/2011 |
| Pages: | 288 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 1.25(h) x 9.00(d) |
About the Author
Helen Thornton is the mother of Paula Yates, who is the former wife of Bob Geldof and girlfriend of Michael Hutchence of INXS.
Read an Excerpt
Big Girls Don't Cry
The Wild and Wicked World of Paula Yates' Mother
By Helene Thornton
John Blake Publishing Ltd
Copyright © 2006 Helen ThorntonAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-84454-252-9
CHAPTER 1
Once, in the middle of the night, I woke and lay listening to a plane droning overhead. The engine had a curious throb, so it was a German plane – my grandad, George, had taught me that. I was four years old and always curious, so despite my fear of the 'enemy', I rose, crept to the window and lifted the blackout curtain to see if I could spot the plane. Instead, I saw something I have never forgotten, a yellowish-orange sky in the middle of the night. I was so astonished, I ran to my mother's bedroom and woke her.
'The sky is orange! Why is it orange in the middle of the night?'
She replied, 'It's orange because Liverpool is burning.
Now please go to sleep.'
Returning to my room, I lay in the darkness thinking of Liverpool burning. It wasn't far from our town, Blackpool, and my nana, Constance, had told me that Liverpudlians were very brave people. I thought of the children and the houses falling in ruins under the bombs. Then I pulled the bedclothes over my head and tried to sleep, despite the noise of bombs being unloaded not far away as our planes pursued the Germans from Liverpool.
We always slept in the house as Gertrude, my mother, wouldn't go into the nearby air raid shelter because someone had told her there was a frog in residence there, despite what my father, Bill, said. She had phobias of dogs, cats, frogs, toads and anything that could run faster than she could. I was taught from the beginning that all dogs and cats bit people who approached them and that I had to cross the road to avoid contact with such animals. I therefore crossed a number of dangerous roads to avoid being eaten by a cat, dog, dinosaur, even the neighbour's parrot.
My nana had told me that the Germans couldn't bomb our town because they would get the wings of their planes caught in the girders of the Blackpool Tower. I believed this, because Nana had said it and I was comforted by the thought, but often I lay awake, thinking of the orange-yellow sky outside and Liverpool burning. Not sleeping when worried was to be a leitmotif of my life.
I was a shy child, intelligent and sensitive to people's moods. My principal quality was generosity; my great fault was a tendency to laugh like a gong when I shouldn't. If an Olympic gold for giggling had existed, I would have won it hands down. What I liked best was being at home, lying in the long grass of my father's allotment, watching bees and smelling the clover flowers. I was born a recluse and when invited to a children's party would often return home after a few minutes, having handed over a gift and been polite to the parents. When visitors arrived in the house, I had the bad habit of hiding under the table, concealed from view by the long tablecloth that touched the floor. I made the mistake of doing this once at Nana's house and came close to giving her a heart attack. At an interesting point in the conversation, I suddenly chimed in. Nana, who had not realised I was under the table, turned pale and when she had recovered marched me off to my mother. She said that it was time to rid me of my shyness and suggested that I be auditioned for the Tiny Tots of the Blackpool Children's Pantomime, held each year at the Grand Theatre.
Teeth chattering with terror, I was taken to audition and sang a scale for the producer. To my horror, I was accepted and rehearsals began. This pleased my mother, because she was stage-struck. I wasn't and wondered what it was all about. I soon found out.
When the Tiny Tots lined up on opening night to perform the song 'In an Eighteenth-Century Square', I was there and ready to sing, as we had at rehearsals. Then the curtain rose, and for the first time, I saw a packed theatre with hundreds of faces looking at us, spotlights that dazzled and the conductor all dressed up in his evening clothes. Panic hit me and I took a tiny step sideways towards the wings. I was about to take a second step towards freedom, when I saw my mum glowering at me from the wings, and, scared, I took a small step back. It was an unpromising start to Nana's bid to give me more self-confidence, but eventually it succeeded. I did a number of shows over the next eight years, learning to enter and leave a stage and take my bow.
Life during the war seemed unreal. On the one hand, food shortages left everyone hungry, but on the other, there was a sense of national unity and deep patriotism rarely seen in normal times. Due to her difficult nature, my mother was often furious with my father, so I used to walk alone to the sea and watch the waves crashing in on the north shore. I loved the sea; still do. For me it's the panacea to all ills and even now, in moments of crisis, I go to the sea and after a while I feel better. Grandad taught me the safety rules: never go down the steps to the beach when the tide is coming in. Never walk on, or lean over, the sea wall. I obeyed, as always. What I wanted was to hear the sounds of the sea and watch the waves come crashing in. I have always found the sea a solace, especially so during my solitary childhood. I had a playmate in my neighbour Sylvia, but otherwise spent a great deal of time alone.
'One day, Nana asked what I wanted to be when I grew up. I replied, 'Invisible.' Shocked, she mulled over this and then said, 'No one can be invisible, dear.'
'Then I'll be a seagull,' I replied.
Nana sighed. Little boys of the period wanted to be train drivers. Little girls wanted to get married or be nurses. What to do with a grandchild who wanted to be invisible or a seagull? Nearly twenty years later, my daughter, Paula, aged four, was asked the same question by her grandmother, Sybil Yates. The reply came without hesitation: 'Famous.'
It was to become an obsession that took control of her life and led her to disaster.
CHAPTER 2At a certain moment in my early childhood – I'm not sure of the year – I became very ill. I've never discovered what illness I had because at the time Gertrude was living on pills and sleeping twenty hours out of twenty-four, so she 'forgot' to send for the doctor. My father was a policeman and worked irregular hours. My life was saved by the unexpected arrival of Grandad George, who asked to see me. He told me much later that Gertrude couldn't reply when asked where I was, so he ran upstairs and found me half dead and delirious, crying that there were tigers on my bed. George scooped up all the bedclothes and me with them, put us in his car and drove hell for leather to his home. The family doctor was called and the entire household was mobilised to try to save me.
Some days later, I became aware of watery sunlight filtering through the window and lighting up a vase of snowdrops. I was warm in my high bed with its ladder that Grandad had made. Nana arrived with some beef tea. Terrified of being sick on the bed, I said I did not like beef tea. Nana replied, 'I made this, it's clean and it hasn't any fat in it.' I drank it all. I remember very little of the weeks that followed, except visits from the doctor and from my aunts, Connie and Marjorie. Everyone tried to make me eat, but in my child's mind eating was linked with images of slimy vegetables and fly-covered meat. I never ever wanted to eat. We had rationing until 1953, which further hindered my mother's disastrous attempts at cooking. To make things worse, Nana was an excellent cook, giving Gertrude another reason to resent her mother.
On the first day that I got out of bed, dressed and went downstairs, Nana decided on special means to revive my appetite.
'Bring the bottle George,' she said.
George brought in champagne, its label golden and impressive. Nana explained that champagne was for great occasions and royal coronations and this was a great occasion because we were celebrating my recovery. She handed me a small Venetian glass painted with pure gold spots and full of mysterious bubbles, and proposed the toast: 'To our Elaine.'
We all drank and I fell in love with the golden liquid that is one of the few things that my weak liver – still damaged by that childhood illness – allows me to drink. I was only allowed one glass, after which I was surprised to feel a bit hungry. Though money was tight, Nana was so charming that she was always able to get a bottle or two from a friend, even though it was very scarce. She rushed out of the room, returning with three bowls. In one, there was chicken soup, in the second, mashed potato and, in the third, thin strips of chicken breast.
'Eat whichever you want,' she said.
I ate all three of them and my recovery began, aided by occasional glasses of champagne, the adoring attention of my grandparents and visits from the elderly doctor, who was about to retire. He liked poetry and he taught me 'The Lake Isle of Inisfree' and 'Drake's Drum' and so entered into the legend that children invent about those who are important in their life. No one ever mentioned the fact that my hair had fallen out in large quantities during the illness, or that my fingers had become crooked and permanently deformed. Had I had rheumatic fever, or typhoid, as a New York iridologist once suggested? Or both?
Looking back, I realise that my grandparents were responsible for forming my rock-like stability which so helped me when under fire. They were a remarkable couple. He was 6 feet 5 inches in his socks, a retired police inspector and a former soldier in the Royal Artillery in the First World War. He came from the wild countryside of Bowland and his values were basic: truth, honour and the land. He once told me that the most important thing of all was the rich brown earth that he held in his hand. That was the essential in life.
Nana was 5 feet tall with pale green eyes and had a habit of tilting her head back and looking along her long nose at the object of her interest. She was from a brainy family who were comfortably off. Her father's hobby was buying terraced houses. One of her brothers was a chemist and another invented a patent medicine to combat flatulence. Her brother Herbert was a wise man with a penchant for the ladies. The family joke was that wherever Herbert went the population increased inexplicably. Then there was the black sheep of the family, who was a compulsive gambler and died very young. Nana loved opera and travel. She had a small collection of Venetian glasses that was wondrous and her perfume was Violette de Parme. I can still remember that fragrance now – it was just like having a cloud of violets floating over your head.
The passion of her life was George, who returned her feelings and never changed his mind, or his absolute devotion. He dreamed of teaching her to be economical, but it was not in her nature. She did try, once, when she bought 15 yards of damask for curtains and 15 yards to keep for the future, 'as an economy'. When he was told the price per yard, George staggered back as if shot and didn't say a word for hours. Nana thought she had best not try economising again.
The things I remember best about my grandparents were Nana's style, her iron will and her deep understanding of people's problems, especially mine, and of George I recall his rigour – 'military discipline, Elaine, military discipline'. I remember being taught to keep my word and best of all I remember watching them together. They were two beings in total harmony.
In the very long recuperation period after my illness, I stayed with my grandparents and was as happy as a princess. At home, I was forbidden to read in bed. 'You really must learn to sleep Elaine,' Gertrude woud say. During that period, she slept twenty pill-provoked hours a day and wanted a child who did the same. I was also forbidden to get up early or to go down to the kitchen to try to find something to eat. At Nana's house, George got up at a quarter to five each day as he had from childhood. He lit the fire, made two vast pots of tea and then began toasting bread. When I realised that I could get up, wash, dress and run down to the kitchen to sit in front of the fire with George, I was ecstatic. In winter, we stayed inside. In spring and summer, we walked in the garden, listening to the birds' dawn chorus and discussing life in general. My grandparents' views – his simple and honest; hers deeply perceived – have influenced my whole life and I believe they prepared me for its worst moments. Their stability became mine, so my early suffering became an advantage, the preparation for coping with a turbulent life.
In his book The Ugly Ducklings, the famous writer, psychiatrist and ethnologist, Boris Cyrulnik, cites a traumatic childhood as either the cause of lifelong neurosis or – for the artist – as a base for lifelong resilience. Whatever the foundation of my character, I have always been grateful to George and Constance for their wisdom and love, unfailingly given.
CHAPTER 3The other unforgettable character of childhood was Elizabeth, known as Polly, my great grandmother and Grandad's mum. He took me to see her as a special treat and once we stayed two nights in her little house. I had walked a long way with George and earned his praise and the title 'my little soldier'. I was happy and thrilled to think that we were going to stay with his mother. George was as proud of her as he was of me and said he wanted me to learn from her the valuable things in life: 'To love the earth, nature in its wild state, animals and the truth.'
Polly lived in a granite stone house in the Trough of Bowland area and was of farming stock. Under a thunder-grey sky, I returned to see the area again a year ago. Nothing had changed. The trees still leaned at an acute angle to the ground. The Roman walls still protected the fields and the hills were still mauve with heather. I sat near a stone bridge, eating a sandwich and thinking of Polly, who loved to laugh and had a killer instinct sense of humour greatly appreciated by her family.
She was eighty-eight when I first met her and still had gas lights in the house. Ever curious, I touched a white net bulb and to my horror saw it disintegrate. Terrified, I went to confess what I had done. Polly, quite unperturbed, said, 'You were just curious. You'd never seen one of those before had you? We'll go and put a new bulb in and then I'd best show you your room. You'll be wakened in the morning by a very good friend of mine.'
At five o'clock, as dawn lit the sky, a magnificent cock appeared on the stone wall of the garden and cockadoodled. It's funny how memories return at the most unexpected moments. I remembered him, years later, after the first of four eye operations in Cannes, when, at dawn, a cock in a nearby garden made such a noise a nurse cried, 'That cock should be shot!' Half stunned by medication, I said, 'Oh no, he reminds us all that this is a new day and we're going to get better.' The nurse liked this idea and told everyone. I hope he ends his life in old age and not as coq au vin!
The most memorable character from my childhood appeared when I was four or five. I was in the front garden picking marigolds when I saw a man at the gate. I had never seen anyone like him before and stared in wonder and admiration. This moment is as fresh now as ever it was, though six decades have passed since I met the gentleman. He was small, but had a rare elegance. His eyes were so heavy-lidded he seemed to be dozing and his hair was silvery white. I found this odd. He was not an old man like Father Christmas, who also had the white hair, because his face was relatively unlined. All this passed through my mind in a few seconds, while the stranger looked at me with as much curiosity as I looked at him. Then he spoke.
'You must be Elaine, may I come in?' I curtsied, because I was sure he must be royalty. Then I opened the gate.
After asking my mother's permission, the man took me to the local park and we went first to the hot houses, where he showed me rare orchids and carnivorous plants that thrilled me. Then he recited a poem to me. Then we went to the lake, where I was attacked by a gander. The gentleman tapped the gander with his silver-knobbed cane and I felt sure he was used to being obeyed, even by geese! He was cool, calm and tough beneath the elegant exterior. We went next to a café for tea and cakes and I told him that I was frightened that the Germans would drop bombs on our house. Mr X, as I shall call him, reiterated what Nana had already told me, that the Germans couldn't fly over Blackpool because of the tower, as their plane's wings would get tangled up in the metal parts. Reassured that he knew about things like that, I walked happily at his side back to the house. Outside the gate he said, 'I'll come again tomorrow.' And he did.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Big Girls Don't Cry by Helene Thornton. Copyright © 2006 Helen Thornton. Excerpted by permission of John Blake Publishing Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page,Dedication,
Preface,
Part One: ELAINE,
Part Two: THE MARRIED YEARS – JESS YATES' MARIONETTE,
Part Three: GLIMPSES OF FRIENDS, ENEMIES, PLACES AND TRAINS,
Part Four: THE GIRL WITH BLUE GLASS EYES,
Epilogue,
Copyright,