Running away

School is relentless. It goes on and on and on. Perhaps because it’s such a fundamentally damaging experience, the Numskulls have stashed away more memories of school than anything that follows, which is why I’m writing so much about it in this book. At the time it feels like it will never end, like a life sentence. It seems the only way to prove that I am not forgotten, that I’m not just a name and number – A. C. Edmondson 138 – is to constantly rail against the system.

Then as a sixth former I’m actually suspended from school.

My favourite entry in the school punishment log – yes, they keep a book – is ‘attempted asphyxiation of a chemistry master’ (which in truth was nothing more dramatic than a tussle over a bottle of ammonia), but the official reason for my suspension is ‘throwing up in the prefects’ waste-paper bin’. The eagle-eyed amongst you will recall that in Bottom Live: The Big Number Two Tour Richie and Eddie get sentenced to 350 years in prison for ‘attempted asphyxiation of the entire population of West London’.

But back to the plot.

I never make prefect, so it’s not my waste-paper bin to throw up in, though I think actually hitting the bin should be a mitigating factor. But hell hath no fury like someone your own age with a prefect’s badge; I’m dobbed in. My peers are always dobbing me in. On another occasion I’m eating a Caramac in a bus shelter and a passing young autocrat sees the glint of the gold foil wrapping paper and dobs me in for smoking. That’s another six of the best for me. There is no camaraderie, just nastiness, it’s like living with the Hitler Youth.

Throwing up in the young Gauleiters’ waste-paper bin appears to be the final straw, and on a totting-up basis, which takes into account an ‘ongoing laissez-faire attitude to school rules’, the headmaster thinks it best to immediately suspend me pending a decision on my expulsion.

He wants to expel me! For throwing up!

How was I to know that several bottles of Newcy Brown and sniffing the dry-cleaning fluid from matron’s office would make me a) never hear Lou Reed’s ‘Sally Can’t Dance’ without seeing multiple white circles round people’s heads, and b) quite bilious?

Guybrows delivers the verdict in his study the next afternoon and as I walk out of his office – now wearing two pairs of pants for no reason at all – I take immediate and complete responsibility for my actions, and run away.

There are only two options really – go back to Bradford and face the wrath of my parents who have recently returned from Uganda, or run away. What’s a young berserker to do?

I hitchhike the twenty-six miles to Hull and make straight for the docks. A keen reader of Tintin books as a child, my idea is to find a cargo ship, shimmy up the anchor rope under cover of darkness, stow away in the hold until the ship reaches international waters, then present myself to the captain as a willing and capable deckhand. Surely by the end of the journey he’ll see what a stalwart fellow I am and offer me a permanent job on a decent wage?

I’ve recently read Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad too – it’s set on a steamship on an unnamed river that is obviously the Congo, and follows a young man’s journey into a living hell – so this dream is confused at best. But who knows where I might end up: New York, Buenos Aires, the Congo? It’s the start of a new life as a working, paid adventurer!

Unfortunately, Hull docks are closed. I climb a lamppost and look over the wall into the docks; they’re empty, there isn’t a single ship – how can that be? It’s 1974, I know it’s a recession, I know we’ve had the Winter of Discontent and the three-day week, and that they haven’t been able to bury the bodies, or clear the rubbish, or turn the electric on at night – but no ships at all? What kind of country can we be without any ships? An island with no ships? Are we stranded? It’s a brutal way to learn about economics – but possibly more enlightening than doing PPE at Oxford.

Bloody oil crisis, bloody stock market crash, bloody double-digit inflation – I should be on my way to a new life in Africa or South America. I’d be the guy in the panama hat, the hard-drinking fixer who’s in with everybody. I’d be adored by women, they’d find me irresistible – the ambassador’s wife, the oil magnate’s daughter, the local chieftain’s entire harem.

I’ve got nothing with me except a small amount of loose change and two pairs of underpants, both of which I’m wearing. I survive the night on a bench in the bus station and the next morning spend 2p on a phone call to Wilf, the friend who helped mop up my blood after the Curved Air gig. He’s a day boy, not a boarder, and lives near Goole. He has to talk quietly so his dad can’t hear. He’ll bunk off school. He’ll come and meet me. We’ll have fun. It’ll be like the bit in if . . . when Mick and Johnny steal a motorbike and drive out to that cafe and have sex with the unnamed girl played by Christine Noonan. Except we probably won’t steal a motorbike. Or have sex with Christine Noonan. And I’ll just hitch to meet him.

The next morning I wake up in a chicken coop near a farmhouse just outside Beverley. I say ‘wake up’, but I’ve had no sleep at all. My brain is fried. Is that what they call them? ‘Coop’? ‘Hen house’? It’s a small shed with chickens. Although they’ve all left. I can see them outside, looking in at me through the chicken wire. Is everything in their world named after them? Chicken wire, hen house, egg box. Anyway, they look confused. Is that confusion? No, it’s not. It’s . . . opprobrium. They’re judging me. Chickens! Dumb chickens. Dumb, thick chickens. Judging me. Cocking their heads on one side. Tutting. Glaring at me with their beady, little, black eyes. It’s reproach. They think I’m a disgrace. The really big one, the one with the buff-coloured feathers all puffed up behind her, she could be my mum. That’s the look my mum gives me.

It stinks in here, but it doesn’t stink of animal shit. You’d think it would, but no, it’s ammonia. That’s what I can smell. That’s what chicken shit smells like. It’s the asphyxiating stuff the chemistry master sprays around the classroom at the end of every lesson. He’s a dick. He needs someone to punch his lights out and I might be that person. If I ever go back. Which I won’t. How does he get off on that? Spraying it around. It must catch his throat like it does ours. Must make his eyes water. Make him gasp for breath. Like chemical warfare. What a dick.

I can smell fire too. Old fire. Old smoke. Smoky clothes. From when Wilf and I set fire to that embankment. That was a laugh. Didn’t even mean to do it. Just lying in the grass on the embankment. Wilf’s Swiss army knife with the magnifying-glass attachment. A few tufts of dry, dead grass. Bit of smoke. Bit of flame. Hard to see it in the bright sunshine. Is it hot? Yes, it’s just burnt my hand. Then, woof! Like it had petrol on it. It spread so fast. Dried-up, wilted bracken and brambles. Dead leaves. Burning so hard. Tried to put it out at first but quickly gave up and just laughed at it. Had to move back. Whole embankment up in flames. Massive clouds of smoke billowing up around us. And a train coming! A train! But it went straight through. It was all right. Through the smoke. Worried faces at the windows. Wilf and me pissing ourselves laughing. Better run anyway. So we ran. We could hear the sirens in the distance. Police or Fire? Could have been both. We didn’t stop to find out. Ran down the bridle path. Stinking of smoke. Wilf went home.

I tell you what I like in here. It’s the straw. Straw or hay? I don’t know. I don’t know the difference. But I like it, whatever it is. It must have been fresh when I came in. It’s springy. A bit spiky, but really comforting. Smells like newly mown grass. So probably hay.

It was a choice to come in here last night. There were options.

I could have gone to Wilf’s house. But I’d have had to deal with his dad. His dad with the tattoos. The tattoos he’s tried to cut out of his own arm with a razor. Big scarred arms. He doesn’t like them. ‘Never get tattoos.’ That’s about the only thing he’s ever said to me. Merchant navy. Has he been to New York? Buenos Aires? Up the Congo? I bet he knows how to kill a man. Or a boy.

The buses had stopped but I could have walked back to school. Could I? Ten miles? Got to be ten miles. Maybe fifteen. At that time of night? Could have hitched. At that time of night? Dangerous. Seventeen-year-old boy. Lot of Jimmy Saviles about. Hitching. Late at night. Could have been that pervy canoeist. We’ve all heard things. Hitchhikers getting murdered on the news. What type of person would open their car door at that time of night? To a teenager smelling of booze and smoke.

Besides which . . . I’ve been gone for two nights. Why give up now? I need to get further away. Not go back. Going back is giving up. Going back is losing. No one cares about me anyway. I should get to Scarborough. There’s work on building sites there. I’ve seen stories in the papers. ‘Super Hod’. He’s just a bloke that carries bricks. That’s all he does. The papers are full of stories about him – a builder’s labourer who can deliver bricks in his hod faster than anyone else. He’s earning twenty grand a year. More than Ted Heath, the prime minister. He’s got gold taps in his bathroom and a Rolls-Royce with the number plate ‘HOD 1’.

I can carry bricks.

It’s Nichola’s dad’s chicken coop. Nichola could have been more obliging. She’s not my girlfriend, I know that, but I’m a man on the run – she could have found that appealing. We’ve snogged before. I waited in the phone box on the village green. Very cold. Smelled of piss. The phone box, not me. But maybe me as well. Kept ringing her. Eventually she came out to see me – she wouldn’t take me back to the house. We snogged, but not for long. ‘You stink of smoke,’ she said. She went back home and I followed and stood near the gate, she could see me and kept shooing me away silently through the window. She came out and spoke to me. ‘Dad’ll call the police if he sees you.’ No snog this time. Quite brusque. Quite rude. Quite right.

But I’m stuck. I’m properly stuck. I’ve got nowhere to go and nothing to get there with. It’s starting to rain. I look for somewhere to sleep. I find the chicken coop. Hen house. Whatever it is. Nice new straw. Or hay. Very tired. Fitful sleep. Stinks of ammonia. It’s like sleeping with the chemistry master.

Dawn breaks and a plan forms. I spend the last of my money on the first bus back towards Pocklington. Towards! I haven’t given up yet.

There’s a boy called Andy, a day boy, he’s got his hair to stand up like Andy Mackay’s from Roxy Music, he lives in a village not far from the school. It’s not New York, it’s not Buenos Aires, it’s not the Congo, it’s Bishop Burton. But I happen to know that his parents are away for the week, because he was planning a party . . . you can possibly see where this is heading. And yes, it does go that way.

To be fair, Andy is slightly reluctant, it’s not like we’re best friends or anything – we know each other, but only as classmates. But I stink of ammonia and smoke and possibly look slightly unhinged, possibly volatile, possibly berserk, and I eventually persuade him to let me stay in his house, on my own, while he toddles off to school. This is the closest I ever get to being Malcolm McDowell in if . . .

I settle down with a cup of tea and a packet of his mum’s ginger nuts and switch on the TV – Watch with Mother, Pebble Mill at One, Crown Court – it’s not the most exciting TV schedule but it’s made more delicious by knowing that I should be at school. I drift in and out of sleep. Andy interrupts an episode of Time Tunnel when he comes home. He’s a bit flustered. Apparently they’ve got the police out looking for me. The police!

‘Is it about the fire?’

‘What fire?’ he asks, looking round anxiously at the house.

‘So it’s just about running away?’

‘It’s about you going missing,’ he says. ‘They don’t know where you are.’

I think Andy wants to help me, he’s a nice bloke, but he doesn’t want to get into proper trouble. He doesn’t know me well enough for that. Fair enough.

Money can’t buy you love, but with no money at all, you’re stuffed. I ring Bradford, reversing the charges; I ring my parents, and confess.

A couple of hours later I’m in the car with Dad on the way back to Bradford. He’s absolutely furious. So furious he can’t speak. He’s literally quivering with rage – I can feel the vibrations through the cheap metalwork of the modest family saloon we’re travelling in. My dad was never good at heart-to-hearts, and in this instance I’m glad of it, because for the first thirty minutes he doesn’t say a word. And I offer nothing in return.

Finally, as we negotiate the interminable roadworks on the still incomplete York bypass, he breaks the silence. He’s had the journey over to consider his tactics, but his opening gambit, delivered with an air of heartbreaking desperation, is:

‘Adrian, what are you going to do with your life?’

I think for a while before I answer. It occurs to me that I’m in such trouble already that I might as well go for broke.

‘I want to be an actor,’ I say.

This is true. It’s all I’ve ever thought of being since I first played Angel Gabriel in the school nativity. Besides ‘rock star’. But actor seems more likely at this stage. After all I’m halfway through rehearsals for the school production of Hamlet – and I’m playing Hamlet!

The Nativity is where it started. Oh yes, I owe it all to our Lord Jesus Christ. But not the angry one from the Mission – the nice middle-class one from the Church of England. Thora Hird’s one. The one without the fire and brimstone. The one with the jolly story about the innkeeper and the donkey, and Mary and Joseph going to pay their taxes, in the school assembly hall.

In the early sixties, thanks to Dad’s constant flitting about, I go to four different primary schools in successive years. At each of these, because of the white hair of my early childhood, I’m chosen to play the Angel Gabriel in the Nativity.

It’s a wonder schools do the Nativity every year because it’s not particularly kid friendly, acting wise. Mary and Joseph are on a hiding to nothing – kids don’t understand conception yet, let alone the immaculate kind. The wise men have too many props. The shepherds have to divvy their lines up amongst the three of them, though I’ve seen a production with fourteen. So the only real meat is in the inn keeper, or, if you’re particularly adept at physical comedy, the donkey. The Angel Gabriel is usually reserved for the shy child who stands on a stool at the back and is gently guided through it by the ‘kind’ teacher.

But the white hair gets me the job. I’m the one that looks different, other-worldly – I look like an angel. And after doing it at two schools in a row I start to get my tongue round the King James dialogue, which is the standard text at the time: ‘Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women. Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God.’

I’ve no idea what it all means, even now, but I can make it sound like I do – which is what acting is really about. It’s all a con trick.

Between the second and third schools my mum, taking a punt, holds onto the wings during the move and slips them under the rug to keep them flat. She feels a bit guilty about not making new wings and adds some extra bits of tinsel to make up for it – so they grow incrementally into something pretty spectacular.

And by the end of my fourth outing in the role, what with the RuPaul wings, the diction, and the crystal-clear faking of the text: most of the audience are talking only about the Angel Gabriel – his stage presence, how confident he is, and how they’re glad to see him feature in the annunciation to the shepherds, a scene normally reserved for a lesser, second angel – because ‘they just want to see him again’. ‘It’s as if a professional actor had come on.’

Ah, the smell of the crowd, the roar of the greasepaint. That’s when I get the acting bug. Except it’s more of a disease than a bug, and there’s no known cure.

Of course my parents want me to be a lawyer, or a doctor, or at the very least an accountant. Something respectable. Something middle-class. Something that might get me into some august institution like the Rotary Club. And when your parents have such ‘high’ hopes for you, the line of least friction is to mumble along with their narrative, but secretly do something completely different.

One virtue of being packed off to boarding school is that our lives separate when I’m twelve, and from that point on they don’t have the slightest clue as to what’s really going on in my life. Not only am I in every school production: Brecht’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle, Ionesco’s Rhinoceros, Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew and Hamlet, Ted Hughes’s The Tiger’s Bones, but I’m also a stalwart of the annual House Arts Festivals, when each house offers up a play. I become producer, director and star; I put on productions of Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi, Boris Vian’s The General’s Tea Party, R. C. Sherriff’s Journey’s End, and endless short pieces by Harold Pinter, N. F. Simpson, Tom Stoppard and Samuel Beckett. My friend Rob and I do a two-man version of Waiting for Godot on the banks of the Chellow Dene Reservoir in Bradford.

The programme from the production of Journey’s End features my name many more times than modesty allows: I produce, direct, and star, I paint the scenery, record the sound effects, and I even write an excruciatingly pompous introduction. Plays are definitely my thing. I mean, come on – I’m playing Hamlet!

Although, hang on, I’ve been suspended, I’m not playing Hamlet any more, am I?

Oh, no, oh, that’s a bit of a blow. Wonder what they’ll do? They can’t recast at such a late stage, can they? There’s only a couple of weeks to go . . .

I haven’t been paying attention to my dad’s response, but become aware that he’s pulling off into a lay-by. He stops the car, switches off the engine, and puts his head in his hands. After an eternity of slowly rocking backwards and forwards he raises his head and speaks into the car roof.

‘Adrian, you’ll never get a mortgage!’

I don’t really blame Dad for being how he was. He was ten when the war started, so he’d spent all his formative years, up to the age of twenty-five, on rationing. Money was never easy when he was young. People were careful. Finances were precarious. And strangely, being in hock to some bank for twenty-five to thirty years had become the accepted ‘safe’ way to do things. A badge of prudence and respectability. ‘They must be good people – they owe thousands of pounds to the bank.’

The school suspension doesn’t last long. I’m not the only one to notice that doing Hamlet without Hamlet is going to be difficult. I’m invited back a few days later. In a bizarre meeting with Guybrows and my dad I’m made to promise that I will join the army when I finish school, because this will make a man of me. The army will be able to channel my ‘high spirits’ into an efficient fighting machine.

I don’t join the army, I become an actor, and a fairly successful one too – at least financially. You can’t argue with that, critics. By my late twenties I have a large and refreshingly expensive mortgage – interest rates peak at 16 per cent at one point. But I have spare cash too. Enough to give my parents a sizeable chunk to help them buy a bungalow for their retirement.

We never mention the moment in the car. But to be fair we never mention anything.