The Two of Us Read Free

always ended with a sing-song. Dad often gave us his Ridice
     Pagliacci, reducing us and himself to tears. Then a rousing chorus of his version of the Riff Chorus from ‘The Desert Song’:
    Ho so we sing as we are riding ho
    Now’s the time you best be hiding low
    It means the Ricks are abroad
    Go before you’ve bitten the sword.
    Mum’s speciality was:
    You must remember this
    A kiss is still a kiss
    A sigh is still a sigh
    The world will always welcome lovers
    As time goes by.
    Her glances towards him were guaranteed to make Dad blush and, of course, cry. He cried at everything, happy or sad. We blamed
     his Italian childhood. He laughed till he cried and cried till he laughed. He seldom finished a joke, so convulsed would he
     be with the telling of it. The sight of him spluttering and weeping with laughter, doubled up and groaning weakly, ‘Oh Christ’
     had my sister and me rolling on the carpet. We also enjoyed it when he got incoherent with sentiment and yet more tears would
     cascade into his sodden, overworked cotton handkerchief. Particularly after a few drinks.
    Gradually, I warmed to the security of routine in this new way of life in Bexleyheath. I enjoyed playing in the street with
     the other kids – no one owned cars then, and I remember no threat of any sort from strange adults or the growing crisis in
     Europe, and anyway, I knew my parents would protect me from any harm. At five years old, without fear, I walked the two miles
     to school on my own.
    At Christmas, a big event pushed my fascination with performing a bit further. Upton Road Junior School decided to mount my
     party piece, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs . It never occurred to me that my teachers would not cast me in the lead. Hadn’t I thrilled the old girls in the Ladies’ Bar
     with my winsome Snow White? I knew every line of the role. It was a sad six-year-old who broke the news to her family that
     she had been cast as Dopey. Daddy threatened, as he always did, to write a letter, while Mum went into ‘best of a bad job’
     mode and set to work with Billie to make me a costume that would outshine all the others. My red dressing-gown had a little
     train sewn on, pointy felt slippers were fashioned out of an old mat, and the crowning glory was a cotton-wool beard, fixed
     with elastic round my head under a green nightcap. I still felt pretty bitter towards the girl with hair as black as ebony
     and skin as white as snow, who squeaked her way through rehearsals of my coveted role. Just because she’s pretty. It’s not
     fair. Ah, little girl, it was ever thus. But you will learn that one day her ebony hair will go grey at the roots and her
     white skin will crinkle and people will say ‘How sad’, whereas, with a bit of luck they’ll say, ‘She’s perky for her age’
     about the woman who played Dopey.
    When the great day of the performance dawned, I put on my much-admired costume and set off heigh-hoing up the wooden steps
     of the platform behind the other six tiny dwarfs. Somehow my train got caught in my legs and my slippers were well named for
     I slid flat on my face. There was a gasp from the audience which I quite enjoyed because it drowned the sotto voce Snow White’s line. I straightened myself up, twanging my beard, which had settled round my eyebrows, back in its place. What
     was this? A huge, relieved laugh. This is a good lark, no one’s looking at Snow White, particularly when I contrive another
     fall and repeat the business with the beard. My lack of subtlety can be traced to this day. Drunk with success, I fell about
     all over the stage, to the delight of the audience and the fury of my teacher. Not to mention Snow White’s mother. A triumph
     rescued from the ashes of my humiliation. A lesson learnt. Making people laugh was a good ploy to deflect attention from Snow
     Whites.
    4 February
    Letter from someone asking me to support a campaign against the closure of Upland Junior School. Because it is an