Read Touching From a Distance Online
Authors: Deborah Curtis
Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Entertainment & Performing Arts, #Music, #Genres & Styles, #Pop Vocal, #General
It was customary at the King’s School for certain boys to do ‘social services’ on Wednesday afternoons. This involved either going to play bingo with the elderly people in their retirement homes, or visiting the more agile in their own homes or the alms houses where some of them lived. While playing bingo, Ian and his friends would sniff at their handkerchiefs which previously had been soaked in dry
cleaning fluid in an effort to make the afternoon more enjoyable. The old people found the boys very entertaining as they were so lively and laughed a great deal.
Visiting the homes of pensioners living alone was much more lucrative. One boy would keep the old person talking and the other would pretend to use the bathroom in order to steal any drugs left in the bathroom cabinet. On one particular occasion, Ian and Oliver managed to obtain some chlorpromazine hydrochloride (brand name Largactil) which was considerably more dangerous than what they had stolen previously. Unbeknown to them it is prescribed for schizophrenia and related psychoses, and the emergency control of behavioural disturbance. Its side effects include drowsiness, apathy, depression, agitation and blurred vision. The following Thursday, unable to face the prospect of double History, they each took three tablets.
This was a normal dose for the tablets they usually took, but the Largactil was stronger and something that they had not tried before. The teacher woke them up and they went off to separate lessons. Oliver’s next lesson was Drama, but he was sent home because his tutor thought he was drunk. Ian was also sent home and there he gave Tony a couple of the tablets.
When Kevin Curtis returned to the flat he listened outside his son’s bedroom and could hear nothing but the sound of a record clicking around the turntable. He banged on the door to wake them up. Tony was in a confused state, yet after trying to put on still more clothes over his jacket, he was able to walk home to Hurdsfield. Ian was taken to have his stomach pumped. On leaving the hospital Ian met Oliver, who was only just going in. He had gone straight to bed when he got home, but his mother was concerned. She had called a doctor who said that he did not know what was wrong with Oliver. By midnight, when she had trouble finding his pulse, she sent for an ambulance.
Ian said he had taken the tablets for a laugh to see what would happen. Oliver’s explanation was more dramatic and with his tongue lodged firmly in his cheek he said flippantly that he was trying to kill himself. Sadly, Ian’s welfare was forgotten and his more humorous
friend spent every Wednesday for the following six months having counselling. There were repercussions at school, of course. Both of them were suspended, Ian longer than Oliver for some reason. It may have been Oliver’s lie that prevented the boys from being expelled. In the end it was Stephen Morris, in the year below Ian and Oliver at the King’s School, who was expelled for over-indulging in cough medicine.
The stomach-pumping incident hadn’t deterred Ian. Many more lunchtimes were spent in Sparrow Park – an oasis of peace behind the bustle of what used to be a market place, behind St Michael’s church in Macclesfield town centre – sniffing dry-cleaning fluid or popping pills in relative seclusion.
Sometimes when Ian took his friends back to his parents’ flat, he would mime to records on his acoustic guitar. He had made a brief, half-hearted attempt to learn to play, with little success. The drugs they took dulled their senses and Ian would often inflict pain on himself to see how much he could bear in this anaesthetized state. He used cigarettes to burn his skin and would hit his leg with a spiked running shoe. His pals would laugh at the blood, but were never inspired to copy him. Yet Ian’s violence was not directed at anyone else. Friends found him extremely loyal. He would decide whom he was going to ‘do right by’ and stick to them. His stubborn streak meant that he seldom changed his mind about a person.
*
I was six months younger than Ian and attended Macclesfield High School for Girls, which was considered at the time to be a sister establishment to the King’s School. I was born in Liverpool, but my parents left the city when I was three in order to bring up my younger sister and me in a more rural and less fraught environment. After spending a couple of years in Wiltshire and Sussex, we had finally settled in Macclesfield, Cheshire.
The Victoria Park flats were situated half-way between Macclesfield High School and the bus station, so it became a habit for me and my friends to stop off at the family advice centre there before catching the bus home. The centre and the youth club were run as a joint
venture and provided help and support for the residents of the council flats. An odd assortment of people would hang out there.
‘We used to bounce between different groups of friends. Within each group there was a particular way you behaved. There was only one time I saw him in an extreme state of anxiety. One afternoon, me, Colin Hyde and Ian had taken a load of sulphate, which heightens your anxiety level, gives you a jittery anticipation. Staying together as a group was fine, we listened to records, etc. But then Colin and I had to go up to Hurdsfield and we left Ian on his own. When we were walking back down Park View corridor, we could see Ian pacing up and down in a manic way and he had a Hoover flexible hose wrapped around him. Anxiety was streaming out of him. His mum had come back and he couldn’t stay in the house. He was wrapping it around himself in a morose, jittery way – we thought it was a snake at first – and he had that drained look he sometimes got. It was a particular look, wasted, ashen. That was possibly the first time I had ever seen him with that expression.’
Tony Nuttall
Sometimes the family advice centre provided a cover for truancy which would otherwise have kept the local children on the streets, and I suppose it gave them a shelter without question or interference. Sometimes this went horribly wrong. On one occasion a group of youngsters hid themselves in a store cupboard to sniff ‘camping gaz’. When the atmosphere became unbearable, Colin Hyde leapt out and then tried to push the door closed on the others. Ian managed to struggle out, then Tony Nuttall, but Colin struck a match and threw it into the cupboard before anyone else could leave. The three remaining youngsters were lucky to escape with blistered faces and arms, and singed hair.
That summer after Ian had taken his first overdose, I met Tony Nuttall at the youth club. With his scruffy clothes, untidy hair and long nose, he resembled a cross between a young Rod Stewart and Cat Weasel, but his sense of humour and wide smile gave him an
attractive appeal all of his own. He spoke of his friend Ian and was so excited at the prospect of introducing me to him that, one evening, I agreed to leave the youth club with him. Ian was living at 11 Park View with his parents and sister. As we walked towards the end of the landing and rounded the corner, I saw a tall figure staring out over the balcony and across the football pitch. I was intrigued, though not drawn to him. His hair was quite long, he was wearing make-up and eye shadow and his sister’s short pink fun-fur jacket. He nodded at me politely, but did not seem particularly interested in Tony’s new girlfriend. I felt like I was at an audition or waiting to be granted an audience. I got to know Tony through the club, but despite the fact that he and Ian were such close friends, I never saw Ian there.
Over the following months I spent most of my spare time with Tony and Ian. Our usual meeting place was Mr and Mrs Curtis’s flat. Although the other rooms were cosy, Ian’s room looked like a cell and reflected Ian’s minimalist attitude towards decor. There were two single beds – presumably for when Tony stayed the night – and a chest of drawers. Ian’s record collection was neatly held in a small box and although his taste could be varied, he was in the habit of changing his discs rather than extending his collection. His other prized possessions, namely his
Oz
magazines and his collection of music newspapers, were in the bottom drawer of the chest. Most telling of all was a black ring-file holding lined paper and cardboard filing cards. Each filing card was labelled either ‘Novel’, ‘Poems’, or ‘Songs’. I thought him rather ambitious, but he showed no signs of embarrassment about it.
Tony and I were rarely alone as a couple. When it was cold and wet, the three of us listened to records in Ian’s bedroom and if Tony and I wanted a kiss and a cuddle, Ian would sit and smoke. I didn’t notice Ian paying any particular attention to me and often wondered why he didn’t find himself a girlfriend so that we could make up a foursome, but he seemed content to lie back with his cigarettes and listen to music. My own taste included the Beatles, Creedence Clearwater Revival, T Rex and the Love Affair (mainly because of
my crush on lead singer Steve Ellis). Ian’s was diverse and exciting, and quite different to the poppy Motown-type music that my friends were listening to.
These times were the best, as Tony and Ian didn’t take drugs if they were spending the day with me, but quite often they played truant together and would meet me after school. Sometimes they took Valium purloined from someone’s parents, or sniffed whatever toxic substance they could lay their hands on. Both their faces would be cold and pallid, and their breath heavy with the fumes of carbon tetrachloride.
‘Taking Valium was meant to be fun. There was never anything sinister about it, but it got out of hand. That had a lot to do with this romantic image. Taking drugs seemed a good image. When I was told he had killed himself, my first thought was: “What an indulgent bastard he is.” There was no need to do it. What he really wanted to do was play rock and roll. I think he was doing what he wanted to do. The theatrical way he did it suggests … He did enjoy the theatre and he did enjoy his theatrics affecting other people. I think that was important to him. It wasn’t enough to dress up and go out; he had to get drunk and wind people up. We all thought it was fun and it
was
fun to an extent. But it was an indulgence – you could only get away with it between certain years.’
Tony Nuttall
Sometimes Ian would say he suffered ‘flashbacks’. He described situations where he would have a sensation of floating, as if he had taken drugs when in fact he had not. This was always assumed to be a side effect of whatever he had taken the previous week. No one thought they might have been early epileptic fits. Either way, he would not have told his parents about it.
Events such as these were too easily passed
off as the effects of drug abuse. We attended a small gig held in a hut next to the public library on Park Green, Macclesfield. The band playing used a strobe light while they were on stage and after watching it for a time, Ian
collapsed on the floor. He was unceremoniously pulled out by the armpits, heels dragging, and left to recover in another room.
Eventually, Tony Nuttall and I parted company. At the time I was mystified. There was no big row, no confrontation, nothing. One day I was flavour of the month; the next I had time on my hands. Luckily, I was able to pick up where I had left off with my friends. I remember the summer of 1972 as long, hot and balmy. All my pocket money was spent on Loons, love beads and joss sticks.
The King’s School had an innovative drama teacher called Graham Wilson. When putting together a production of Tom Stoppard’s
The
Real
Inspector
Hound,
he decided to ask if any Macclesfield High School girls would be interested in sharing the project. As these two schools were the grammar schools in Macclesfield, it was only natural that they should try out some joint ventures. It was during rehearsals for the play that Oliver Cleaver first met Helen Atkinson Wood, who was head girl of our school. Like me, she was told she just
had
to meet this boy called Ian Curtis who wore black nail varnish. Ian and Helen had backgrounds which were poles apart, but they developed a close friendship. When the lanky, awkward boy from the council flat met the petite, effervescent blonde, there was a mutual interest.
‘There was always something that felt quite wicked about knowing Ian … He didn’t really need to talk about it because he had that self-destruct part of his personality, but you don’t even need to be talking about dangerous things, because you know that if somebody is actually doing that to themselves then they are looking for a different journey than perhaps the one you’re looking for or perhaps the one that anyone that you know is.’
Helen Atkinson Wood
Ian’s interest in Helen stemmed neither from her status as head girl nor her wealthy background. He was fascinated by the fact that at sixteen she had fractured her skull when she fell off her horse. Helen was unconscious for three days and took two school terms to recover.
The idea of someone learning to speak, read, gain their memory and walk, let alone get back on the horse and ride again, made Helen all the more attractive to Ian. He embellished her story and retold it several times, which gave me a vision of Helen as Heidi’s friend Clara. Helen puts it down to Ian’s fascination with drama, but nonetheless his admiration for her obvious courage was central to their friendship. Helen was sure that the ordinary held no magic for Ian and, though he never actually said it outright, she suspected that he found the idea of dying young magic in itself and was not surprised when he carried it through.
On 23 December 1972, four of my friends – Gillian, Anne, Dek and Pat – decided to hire the Scout Hut on Fence Avenue and hold a double engagement party. Pat remembers Ian as a joking, laughing person to whom music was the only thing that really mattered. Ian rarely introduced his friends to his family. He would tear downstairs, push his friends into his room, lock the door and put the music on. Ian arrived at Pat’s party in a stupor and confided to me that he had a bet on with his friends that he would be able to kiss the most girls that night. Consequently I spent the remainder of the evening introducing him to all of my school friends. Finding it very amusing, they all acquiesced.
Before we parted, Ian asked me to go out with him and invited me to a David Bowie gig at the Hard Rock in Manchester. What thrilled me was not particularly the opportunity of going out with Ian, but more the chance to get out of Macclesfield and to be included in a crowd of people who did
more than catch
the train to Stockport for a weekly shopping trip. I was looking forward to seeing Tony again, though I never got the chance to ask him why he dumped me so unceremoniously as he kept his distance.