Authors: Lisa Gee
‘Can I stay at the party until eleven o’clock
at night
?’ she asked.
I explained that as the do wouldn’t be starting until after then, she would be allowed to stay up after eleven o’clock.
‘Until
midnight
?’
I nodded. Dora widened her eyes and mouth into big Os. This must truly be something special if she was allowed to stay up
that
late. Helen and I had decided to share a cab home. The party was due to end at two and we’d decided to book the taxi for one o’clock. This was on the decadent side for children of Molly-May and Dora’s ages, but we figured that this was a once-in-a-lifetime experience and excitement would keep them going. Or at least, keep Molly-May going. Dora, I knew, would experience sudden-onset exhaustion, loudly and inconveniently, but what the heck. She’d coped with the technical rehearsals, and one night wouldn’t kill her. Also, even though it would probably slash years off my life expectancy, and it wasn’t really my party, I wanted to make sure I had enough time to have some fun too.
All we knew about the party was that it would be quite posh, it would be at Old Billingsgate Market, and the kids who weren’t performing that night, plus one parent each, would be taken there
from
the theatre along with all the other guests by double-decker bus. This wasn’t really much information, but did allow plenty of room for speculation. Once us mums had got through the ‘what are we going to wear?’ phase, we moved on to ‘who do you think will be there?’ Would Julie Andrews turn up? Would we get to meet Andrew Lloyd Webber? Would Graham Norton be there? Jonathan Ross? The other Marias from the television show? Who else?
The debate raged, and not only when we met. Phone bills soared. We gossiped for hours on the phone, much to the annoyance of husbands, partners and children, and occasionally to the detriment of our work. In one incident, John’s mum Jane, who works for a vet, was supposed to be bagging up a dead cat, ready for incineration. Unfortunately, by the time she’d spent an hour on the phone to Grace’s mum Lynn, rigor mortis had set in. Her gossiping hadn’t so much let the cat out of the bag as made it impossible to get it in there in the first place, a problem she only managed to solve by snapping one of its legs in two.
Dora and I went on the tube to the show. I couldn’t fit a Harry Potter book into my evening bag, so we had to entertain ourselves, which essentially involved me hissing repeatedly: ‘DON’T DO THAT: you’ll get your hands/dress/face/bolero …’
‘What’s a bolero?’
‘The gold cardigan thing you’re wearing … filthy and your lipstick will come off on that window.’
In fact I wished I’d managed to find an evening rucksack: it was a struggle to fit the essentials – tickets, invitation, Oyster card, cash, credit card, door keys, mobile phone, a few tissues, lippy, eye pencil and foldaway hairbrush – into the little beaded purse I’d bought specially for the occasion. My inner stage mother thought I should also have packed a few business cards to hand out to famous people, but I ignored her. Anyway, no matter how violently I shoved in everything I needed to take, the catch still kept popping open. Eventually I realised I’d have to leave the tissues out and
either
sniff disgustingly, use toilet paper or both. Under normal circumstances I’d have taken a bigger bag, but tonight it felt important to make the kind of effort that seems to come naturally to most women, but leaves me feeling confused and inadequate. Partly, I suspect, this goes back to my mother’s exasperation with my untidiness. Partly it’s down to having enough self-awareness to know that I am genuinely clueless. As a student, I landed a Saturday job in a posh Brighton shoe shop. I was not a success and ended up being sacked, because, as the manager’s report made clear, I was the worst salesperson he had ever had the pleasure of trying to train. Alongside my inability to persuade people to buy shoes they didn’t really want and that didn’t fit them, there was the problem of my dress sense. I had been caught wearing lipstick that clashed with my shoes.
My skills hadn’t improved much over the intervening decades, so it was fortunate that the week before Laurie and I got married, the sixteen-year-old daughter of a friend had patiently explained eye make-up to me in the ladies’ loos at a function. ‘You put on the lightest colour eye shadow first. No. Not like that.
Before
the mascara, otherwise the eye shadow gets stuck in it. Then you put the darker colour on top. And
then
the mascara.’ Oh. If only she’d been there to advise on veil-fixing techniques, I might have looked okay during our wedding.
I managed to remember my make-up lesson while I was getting ready for
The Sound of Music
opening. The only make-up I had was the stuff I’d bought for the wedding. It didn’t go that well with my outfit, but as it didn’t clash with my boots, I didn’t think it really mattered, so long as I made a bit of an effort – no one would be looking at me anyway. I hadn’t, after all, been invited on my own account, but to make sure that nothing untoward happened to my child and that my child didn’t happen untowardly to anything or anyone else. And in case she did, so that I would be on hand to apologise and mop up afterwards.
We arrived at the theatre early, but there was already a crowd milling around outside and a group of children dressed as the von Trapp family singing to the camera crews and snappers who were hovering on the steps outside the entrance waiting for all the famous people to arrive. Dora was very excited. So was I – and I also surprised myself by feeling genuinely glad that she wasn’t performing that night. It meant that we could both just concentrate on having a good time. That didn’t mean I didn’t experience a hint of wistfulness: of course I did, but it was nowhere near strong enough to count as envy. And I certainly didn’t envy the way the opening-night parents – most of whom were rigid with nerves – were feeling at that moment. ‘I felt
sick
,’ John’s mum Jane told me later – and John was one of the more experienced performers that night. ‘I could only hope that he wouldn’t have an attack of nerves. He’d never had one before, but there’s always a first time. And also that they’d all be as good as they had been during the previews.’ On the up side for the first-night parents, a day or so day beforehand, some seats in the upper circle had been released for sale, which meant that the performing kids’ dads could also watch the show, as their mums had bagsied the tickets and party invites – although the more egalitarian amongst them had, previously, been planning to watch half the show each.
I carefully extracted our tickets from my microscopic bag, wrestled it closed and, clutching Dora’s hand tightly, wobbled around on my high-heeled boots to Café Libre, where the parents of the children performing that night were waiting. They were, understandably, even more excited than I was, but it was hard to tell as they’d also gone uncharacteristically quiet with nervous tension. And then it was time for the show, so, heads down, whilst surreptitiously keeping an eye out for anyone famous, we braved the crowd and cameras and made our way to the theatre.
Excelling myself, I managed to recognise several Marias from the TV show, and Cilla Black. Also David Ian – but that was mostly
because
he was with his daughter Emily (a Marta) and his wife Tracy, who I’d met by the stage door wheelie bins. Amongst others, I completely failed to spot Andrew Lloyd Webber (again), John Barrowman, Martha Kearney and, most gut-wrenchingly for the few cells that remained of my teenage self, Bob Geldof.
All the parents with kids were sitting together in a block at the back left-hand side of the stalls. The parents whose children were performing were just as far back but closer to the centre, seated a little away from the rest of us, but near enough to wave and make thumbs-up signs at. On our seats were the special opening night programmes, black covers instead of the usual white.
We all trooped over to the pile of red velvet booster seats and snaffled at least one for each child – two for the smaller ones. Most of the children chose to sit together, but Dora wanted to stay with me – or, more accurately, on me. The lights went down, the conductor, Simon Lee, waved his arms expressively, the orchestra burst into music and the curtain came up. And for the first half of the show, an over-excited Dora fidgeted all over me while delivering a loudly whispered running commentary.
‘Some of the nuns are boys!’
‘Sshhh!’
All my attempts to get her to sit still and quiet failed abysmally. She simply couldn’t contain herself. It was just as exciting watching her friends perform as it was to be on the stage herself, with the added bonus that she could talk about it while it was happening; something that she was banned from doing whilst actually performing. There was so much she had to tell me, mostly to do with what was going to happen next – ‘Look! The wheelbarrow! I get to go in that too!’ – but also about what had happened when they were rehearsing. Whilst this was merely mildly inconvenient for me – I had already seen the show twice – it annoyed the woman sitting behind us, an actress who evidently hadn’t and who eventually leaned forward and informed Dora that if she wanted to act when she was
older,
she needed to learn to sit still and be quiet. Now. She didn’t actually say
now
, but her tone of voice and face did. It worked for about five minutes, but then all the information Dora needed to impart started bubbling up inside her and eventually her lid popped off and the wriggling and whispered explanations recommenced. Fortunately, by then, Lesley Garrett was launching into ‘Climb Ev’ry Mountain’, Dora decided she was desperate for the loo, and when we returned to our seats, it was time for the interval.
We all chatted amongst ourselves and congratulated the now much-more-relaxed parents of the kids on stage, who’d been absolutely, delightfully brilliant. Over an overpriced ice cream, Dora elected to join her friends. I smiled at the woman sitting behind me and apologised quietly. She ignored me stonily. Dora, I noticed, glancing over to check on her, was now behaving impeccably. Away from me, she sat still and quiet throughout the second half of the show, completely focused on watching. No wonder they ban mothers from backstage.
At the end of the performance we all trooped outside. I held Dora’s hand firmly as we made our way through the crowds to the fleet of double-decker buses blocking Argyll Street. Instead of a number, the buses were displaying
Sound of Music
, and the route was: London Palladium–Austrian Border. We were about to be whisked off on the ‘Salzburg Express’.
Aside from the performing children – who would be brought along later in a minibus along with their accompanying parent and the rest of the cast – and Emily, who travelled separately with her parents, all the children, mums and the odd dad got on to one bus together and made for the back of the top deck. Here the younger ones shrieked over-excitedly, while the older ones wound them up, until they all got bored and burst into song. They sang exuberantly and tunefully all the way to Billingsgate. One or two of the mums thought they ought to quieten down a bit – but it was their night and, after all, they sounded fabulous. None of the other passengers
seemed
to mind, and why would they? Occasionally Dora would pop over for a cuddle. When she went back to the other kids, I sat looking out the window, watching the city lights and listening to the a cappella harmonies, while Alicia (Gretl) bopped Michael (Kurt) over the head rhythmically with an empty plastic drink bottle.
When the bus stopped, we filed down the stairs and out on to the chill east London street, walked around a big building and, having shown the smartly dressed bouncers our invitations, filed into a large, plain lobby. Here, those of us with coats to leave left them at the cloakroom. The children piled up in front of a curved temporary wall which was repeatedly branded with the
Sound of Music
logo, and the waiting photographers took a few photos, although they were really waiting for the cast that had performed that night. Then we were all herded into the party proper.
To enter, you passed through a tunnel housing an artificial snowfall, which proved especially popular with the younger children, who caused a traffic jam by wanting to stay and play in it. Once through, on the right was a glühwein bar, the drink served in
Sound of Music
mugs. I failed to snaffle one, although several other parents managed. And then … well, the entire enormous space was Austrian- and
Sound of Music
-themed. There were almost life-size model cows (complete with cow bells) and sheep, standing in neat lines and confined to an astroturf paddock, and a oompah band, clad in green jackets, black britches and long white socks, playing oompah music. There was a mini Alpine chalet, picture perfect on the outside, but spookily dark and unfurnished inside; and a picnic area featuring enormous hampers filled with a combination of fake and real food set amongst enormous silky black scatter cushions and gigantic potted silk daisies. Electric ‘stars’ shone through a black cloth night that covered the walls. Towards the middle of the enormous space was a gigantic circular bar from which staff served drinks to about twenty double-decker-bus-loads of glamorous
guests.
It was very, very noisy and very, very exciting. I felt dazed and dazzled.
Dora didn’t, and along with a gaggle of her friends started disembowelling the picnic hampers and sorting the real food from the fake by either taking bites out of it or throwing it at each other. There was a tall round table by the side of the picnic area and a group of us parents set up home there with our glasses of champagne and pretended we weren’t with our children. Food was served: small bowls of – you’ve guessed it – schnitzel with noodles. Canny catering that: one small bowl of schnitzel with noodles is, usually, enough. There was also sauerkraut and, apparently, crisp apple strudel, but I failed to spot that. There was plenty of champagne and glühwein but no Almdudler. Andrew Lloyd Webber had missed a trick there. Or perhaps not. I kept half an eye on Dora, who seemed to be enjoying herself loudly and uncontrollably, and realised that I should have brought my camera. Most of the other parents had. Unfortunately, there was no way I could have fitted one into the little beaded bag which was dangling open on my wrist, even if I’d left everything else out. There must be a way of being simultaneously elegant and well equipped. You probably need either staff or a tardis of a bag, like the one Hermione Granger has in the last Harry Potter book.