I phone dead people.
Just before the Wednesday tech-run in Forli, Italy, I receive a text from Australia: “Oh my god maureen I can’t believe it”. Having seen Maureen several weeks ago in Oz and knowing she had a bit of a problemo on the health front, I immediately assumed the worst but as the actual D word wasn’t used I clenched my optimism and hoped for the best. I texted back: “What?”
“She died.” Hmm. The D word. A word impervious to misinterpretation or critique. And it was a text so I couldn’t tell myself I had misheard. I chose to tell no-one and got through the tech-run and the show that night. Back at the hotel, I have three large glasses of wine, go to my room and have a cry. I had liked Maureen. I realise that I must call her partner, also a dear friend, and so rally my emotions and press buttons. Dead Maureen answers.
“Hello?”
Suddenly, it’s all gone a bit Donnie Darko. At the very least, Punk’D! with Ashton Kutcher. It’s in moments like these you realise you’ve incorrectly used the expression ‘gob-smacked’ on every other occasion in your entire life. It so happened that Maureen’s entire life wasn’t entire just yet.
“You’re…I was told you were…I thought…I got a text…” I start crying again, this time from down the other end of the Field of Extreme Emotions. I’m also wondering if it’s socially acceptable to tell a friend - we’re in spinach-in-your-teeth territory here - that they’re not dead? I have to explain my Gwyneth Paltrow behaviour somehow and so opt for the bizarre truth. Maureen is still alive and still laid-back and is slightly puzzled by these odd Chinese Whispers running around behind her breathing back but far more keen to tell me what an arsehole the butcher is for recently firing her son. There was some talk about how well the chemotherapy had gone, but mainly it’s about what an arsehole the butcher is for recently firing her son. I speak to her partner. I tell him people are sending each other Maureen-is-dead! texts but he too verbally shrugs and launches into a yarn about what a bitch the butcher’s wife is. I want them to rejoice as much as I but the butcher and the firing and Falcon Crest-like machinations behind it are the main topic of international mobile conversation. I keep silently telling myself I am thrilled to be hearing about the butcher rather than funeral arrangements and so must not begrudge a few euros going to the phone company. But let me tell you, they’re really pissed off with the butcher.
Exactly a week later we’re in Lisbon. So again, it’s just before the Wednesday afternoon tech-run when, again, I receive a text from the same girl. I just know this is going to be about the D word, again, and I just know this one won’t be a mistake or mashed third-hand headlines and I read it and then I ring her and I miss the vocal warm-up completely while she tells me how her Dad died. It was coming. It was coming like an old snake through thick grass, but it was coming. No chance of being punk’d this time either. He gone. I’ve known her Dad since I was 17 so, one week later, I’m having a sad day again. I hope they have State of Origin in heaven, Merv, or you’re going to be more pissed off than Maureen with that bastard butcher.
But let me continue with this cheery cup-cake of a theme with its inevitable philosophical icing...
A couple of days after that, I’m walking off-stage with the gal playing Rosie when our young leading lady comes running from the dressing rooms, youthfully lurching between the backstage electrics and the drummer’s booth, sobbing. Rosie can be instantly devastated for someone who has dropped their paper serviette at breakfast, so her concern for the young crying girl is that of the mother in Little House on the Prairie when Walnut Grove has yet again bruised or blinded one of her children. But from every episode. In all eight series. Nine if we include Little House: A New Beginning and I don’t see why we shouldn’t. So a lot of concern, all crammed into one second. I’m now more worried about Rosie than the girl. Or whoever she’s crying about.
“Michael Jackson’s dead!” the young girl cries. And cries.
“Is that all?” I think. I really did. Rosie has her hands over her mouth as if she’s watching a struggling Chihuahua being raped by a drunk walrus. After my two very recent episodes involving Mr Death, despite one being moot, I am utterly inured to Mr Jackson’s passing. We weren’t close. The young girl is reacting as though they were. My head tilts and my brow furrows. Very much like the Chihuahua when it first saw the walrus approaching. I just don’t understand this level of weeping and wailing for people you’ve never, ever met or known and with whom you’ve never shared a couch watching State of Origin. Like line-dancing, religious jealotry and anal-bleaching, it mystifies me.
Death was on a roll. We all heard about Farrah. Charlie’s Angels was the first thing my family watched on our first colour TV. Disturbingly, I have a video-like recall of that evening and can even now replay the scene in which my Dad plugs in the new TV and then we argue about what to watch. We happened upon the Angels and everyone was happy. Dad for obvious reasons, my mother to see the sisters doing it for themselves and my sister for the snazzy culottes which they each wore with the ease and glamour of a Magnum holster. I was confused and I’m sure Farrah delayed my nascent homosexuality for two whole seasons. Anyway, she’s dead.
My mother sends me e-news of more deaths among ageing friends of the family, and even though they were already 40 when Farrah was 20, I was very fond of them and feel parts of my childhood memories unravelling like an old tapestry. Threads are being lost. Colours are fading. Characters are vanishing. It’s sad. It’s life. It’s death.
I’m back in England now. I hire a car and drive to Yorkshire to visit friends. On the motorway, I listen to BBC Radio 4. Radio 4 strengthens its hold on two favourite adjectives, ‘abstruse’ and ‘smug’, by broadcasting a man singing slave songs in falsetto - apparently a very popular niche market about to be noddingly admired on tour in church halls the length and breadth of England. He sings an old song from the cotton fields (in that stupid and unnecessary voice), which I will now adapt:
There’s a man goin’ round takin’ names.
There’s a man goin’ round takin’ names.
He took Merv’s name (and Michael’s and Farrah’s but not Maureen’s)
and now we’re in pain.
There’s a man goin’ round takin’ names.
I get to Yorkshire around 7pm. Hug my friend Adèle. Their cat died.
Hasta Manana ’til we meet again.
