Touching From a Distance (9 page)

With hindsight, the decision to start a family was not a sensible one, especially as our finances were in such a precarious position. Nevertheless, hearing the other women at college talk about their children had made me broody. I tentatively began to talk about babies thinking Ian would probably suggest a more appropriate time to have one. Ian wasn’t the type of man to discuss events logically and what he wanted most in the world was for people to be happy. If a baby would make me happy, we could have a baby. Ian insisted that there was no need to worry about money as by the time he or she was born, he would be making plenty. I wanted to believe him and my desire to start a family overcame any financial concerns.

When I did become pregnant Ian was pleased to tell his parents, but reluctant to tell the rest of the band. I was determined not to be the one that broke the news, but one night at the Band on the Wall, Bernard’s girlfriend Sue said to me, ‘You two are so close. I wouldn’t be surprised if we heard the patter of tiny feet soon.’ ‘How did you know?’ I replied. Ian looked so embarrassed, like a man who had made a blunder. Despite his apprehension, it was an anticlimax. Old-fashioned gentleman Hooky was concerned because earlier that evening he had allowed me to drive the transit van to the Greek takeaway and now he didn’t think it was appropriate in my condition! Yet I wanted everyone to know I was pregnant. Peter Hook was to say later that one of the problems with Joy Division was that they ‘kept their relationships at arm’s length and so did not share any happiness’. Already the very nature of my personality was at odds with band policy. It was almost as if it was unfashionable to be happy.

Ian and Bernard had become close. Ian enjoyed talking to Bernard
about diverse, less mundane issues in life. Books, extreme concepts and philosophies all came under Ian’s intense scrutiny. Institutions where people are locked away and forgotten about were one of his particular interests. My sister Jill had a friend who worked looking after the teeth of people in institutions and Ian loved to hear of patients with extra breasts along the nipple line. A simple harmless deformity would fire his imagination. Yet Bernard remembers that most of the time spent with Ian was humorous:

In my view this humour was very private and detrimental to any other relationships each individual member of the band had.

On 28 October 1978 Ian and I were the witnesses for Bernard Sumner’s marriage to Sue Barlow. Sue and I had become good friends. Being the original ‘girlies’, we had seen Joy Division develop from a schoolboy idea to the realization of a dream. They kept the wedding very low-key and so we were the only guests. Half an hour before the wedding I was driving Sue up and down Peel Green, Manchester, trying to find a florist so that she could have a last-minute bouquet. Afterwards we all trundled off in the Morris Traveller to the Last Drop Village in Bolton for a meal, which Bernard somehow managed to pay for with only £6 in his pocket! By this time I was irritated because he had made hurtful jibes about the speed of my beloved car and the main point of conversation over the meal had been the fact that he was not wearing any underpants. By contrast, Steve Morris arrived on our doorstep the following Saturday saying he wanted to take us both out for a meal. His only explanation was that he had £60 in his pocket and wanted to spend it all that night. I suppose the fact that I wrote to my sister and told her all this proves that I was already concerned about how we were going to cope when the time came for me to give up work.

Steve Morris became the first member of the band to change partners. A small group of female fans had begun to appear at gigs. With alarming regularity they would turn up before myself and the other girls and buy drinks for the band. Known collectively to us as ‘the Goshes’ because of the way they spoke, they were pleasant and very enthusiastic – possibly the first real Joy Division fans. Ian was especially keen that Steve should pair up with one of them – Gillian Gilbert. He would mutter through his teeth and sigh at their shy attempts to get to know one another and, in my ear, he urged Steve to make a move. Steve’s long-standing girlfriend Stephanie was in for a painful separation.

Stephanie was a tall, eccentrically dressed girl, whose soft voice belied her stature. I hadn’t got to know Steve and Stephanie very well, mainly because Ian had always insisted that Steve didn’t want me in his car as there was only room for his ‘friends’. So when tales of Stephanie’s inability to accept the end of the relationship began to filter through via Ian, I took little notice.

One afternoon I came home to find Ian seemingly in a panic. ‘Stephanie’s in the bathroom,’ he whispered. ‘She’s got razor blades in her handbag and she says she’s going to kill herself.’ Stephanie descended the stairs like a woman who was not intent on ending her life, but had merely visited our bathroom. I was surprised to see her, especially as she was acting as if she was an invited guest. Ian ushered me into the kitchen and urged me to leave by the back door and telephone Stephanie’s father so that he could retrieve her. It wasn’t easy to tell a man that his daughter had just threatened suicide, but I relayed Ian’s story just as he had told me to. The three of us sat around drinking coffee and chatting. Stephanie still gave the impression that she had been invited to come and see us. She was perfectly at ease. There was no mention of suicide, razor blades or anything else unpleasant.

Some time later, Stephanie’s father turned up in a taxi to take her away. She had no idea why we sent for him. She looked questioningly from Ian to myself and all I could say was that I was sorry. I remember the confused hurt in her eyes and Ian’s refusal to discuss
the event afterwards. For the rest of the day there was a look I interpreted as smug satisfaction on his face and I convinced myself that I had betrayed Stephanie. I could see no reason why Ian would cause such pain by setting Stephanie up and yet I felt as confused as Stephanie had looked. It crossed my mind briefly that he was in fact vetting Stephanie’s suitability as a girlfriend of one of the band, just as he had vetted and dismissed my school friends. A comment made by Steve Morris when I interviewed him does little to clarify Ian’s attitude towards Stephanie. He said, ‘Sympathy was one of his qualities, particularly with regard to Stephanie. You can’t be in a group without someone getting on your nerves – everyone did at some time.’

After coming into a small inheritance, Tony Wilson used his good fortune and financed the recording of the
A
Factory
Sample
EP. When asked to collaborate, Martin Hannett was able to realize his interest in Joy Division by producing two tracks for them: ‘Digital’ and ‘Glass’. Peter Saville began to establish himself as Factory designer and chose the silver and black simplicity. Appearing to be encased in an extended sandwich bag, this double EP gave the public the opportunity of sampling what Factory Records would have to offer. Joy Division, the Durutti Column, John Dowie and Cabaret Voltaire each had room for at least two tracks, a sticker of their choice and a rectangle containing information about the individual recordings, which Joy Division left almost blank. Paul Morley said of their offering: ‘How much longer before an aware label will commit themselves to this individual group?’ Martin Hannett’s production gave them a much cleaner and colder sound than had been previously heard on
An
Ideal
for
Living
and which lacked the warmth and emotion he would later achieve on
Closer.

One of the very few gigs I attended outside Manchester was the Check Inn, Altrincham, in November 1978. A young fan named Dean tried to persuade me that should we have a son, Dean was a nice name. His apparent shyness when asking Ian for his autograph was appropriate to a demigod rather than an up-and-coming young singer. Although it was exciting seeing the acceleration of Joy
Division’s popularity, and I had believed in them from the beginning, there was a surreal quality as Ian’s predictions and dreams began to come true.

Towards the end of 1978 my pregnancy became all too obvious and on 27 December Ian had his first recognizable epileptic fit. Joy Division were to play their London debut at the Hope and Anchor, but Bernard was in bed with flu. After some discussion it was decided that the gig had to come first, so Bernard was bundled into the back of the car wrapped up in a sleeping bag. As a first London gig the Hope and Anchor was a disappointment. Expecting the glamour of the capital city, Joy Division hadn’t realized they would be playing in a pub cellar and that all the equipment would have to be lowered in through a trap-door. The small audience was not enough to spark the exhilaration needed to spur the band on.

Disappointment turned to turmoil on the way home. Bernard remembers that Ian’s conversation about the gig had taken a rather negative turn and Ian had told me when he came home that there was even talk of him leaving the band. As Bernard tried to keep himself warm, Ian began to tug at his sleeping bag. A struggle followed and once Ian had the bag he wrapped it around his head so tight that Bernard couldn’t wrestle it from him. Eventually, Ian’s seizure surfaced and he lashed out, seeming to punch at the windows. Steve pulled over to the side of the road and when the fit was over they took him to the Luton and Dunstable Hospital.

I was dumb struck when Steve Morris and Gillian Gilbert finally brought Ian home. He had a letter for his doctor and some Phenobarbitone tablets. ‘I’ve had some kind of fit,’ he said, but I didn’t really believe him. I thought someone must have made a mistake or perhaps he had faked it. All of us were astonished and unable to believe it. We took it for granted that the incident had been a one-off and that if there
was
any illness, it could be cured. I rang his office and mine and we both stayed at home the following day, expecting something else to happen. When I rang his parents they appeared stunned and unable to swallow the information I was giving them.

Ian’s GP was disinterested. The most he could do was put Ian on
the waiting list to see a specialist. In the meantime, Ian was expected to carry on with his life. His fits became quite frequent and frighteningly violent. We tried to keep a record of how often and how serious they were. It seemed extreme to go from having no fits at all to having three or four a week, and to become epileptic so soon after studying the illness was too much of a coincidence for me. I decided that it must be something else and waited for them to diagnose it so that it could be put right.

Ian never left the room without telling me where he was going even if it was only to the bathroom and then he always left the door unlocked. One evening he returned from walking Candy looking badly shaken. The next morning the bruises on his back appeared so severe that I thought he had been beaten rather than suffered a fit. I went with him to the doctor again that morning, hoping Ian’s injuries would entitle him to more speedy treatment, but to no avail. Ernest Beard came with us for that appointment. The doctor seemed mildly amused when we all trooped into his surgery and after examining Ian’s back he merely shrugged his shoulders and sent us away to wait for Ian’s hospital appointment. Ernest Beard was a retired Navy man who had worked on destroyers and had been involved in the evacuation of Crete, and although he was experienced in working with people who had all manner of problems, Ian did not really give the appearance of needing his help.

I knew Ian was quite knowledgeable about epilepsy and tried to pump him for information. I wanted to help him but until he had seen a specialist no one really wanted to use the word ‘epilepsy’. Ian’s provisional driving licence arrived, but by now there was no question of him using it. An epileptic can suffer from convulsions of
one or several types and for obvious reasons they are not allowed to drive. However, apart from this Ian had told me that once such a person had been prescribed the right anti-convulsant therapy, they would be able to lead a normal life. As the description ‘normal’ is somewhat ambiguous, it would have been easy for Ian to substitute it for ‘boring’.

My parents began to worry about me and our unborn baby. As we couldn’t afford to install a telephone, they paid for us to have one as this reduced the risk of my being isolated in an emergency. Ian registered himself as disabled. He told me benefit claims are processed as a matter of urgency for disabled people.

While Ian was busy rearranging his personal life, the band were becoming more and more in demand. On 13 January 1979 Ian appeared on the front cover of
NME
sporting the soon-to-be-famous long green raincoat and the inevitable cigarette. This honour was down to Paul Morley’s persistence. Morley’s earlier attempt at getting Ian that particular spot had been thwarted when the editor insisted on using Joe Jackson instead. At the end of the month the first John Peel session was recorded. Joy Division had definitely arrived and although they had worked so hard for so long, it all seemed sudden and bizarre. Sandwiched in between these two important landmarks in the band’s career was the realization that Ian’s illness was something we would have to learn to accommodate.

It was 23 January 1979 before Ian saw a specialist at Macclesfield District and General Hospital. He arranged for various investigations to be carried out into Ian’s condition and prescribed Phenytoin Sodium and Phenobarbitone. Phenytoin Sodium is a long-term treatment most commonly used to treat epilepsy. Its side effects include slurred speech, dizziness, confusion and gum overgrowth. Phenobarbitone is an anti-convulsant used in combination with other drugs and its side effects are drowsiness, clumsiness, dizziness, excitement and confusion. I am sure Ian was warned of all these side effects and he did tell me that he would need to see the dentist more often to keep a check on his gums. The possibility of confusion was also mentioned. I thought, ‘Hell, what’s a bit of confusion if it stops the fits?’ I
felt that Ian was safer now because he was in the hands of the hospital, but at the same time there was a certain finality, an impotent acceptance.