Come Dance With Me

1 °Christabel Alderton

23 January 2003. OK, the owl tattoo. I get so tired of explaining everything, even to myself. When I got back from Maui in 1993 I wanted to, I don’t know, draw a line under that time? Put it all behind me? That sounds like a joke in view of where the tattoo ended up. I’ve said before that I do a lot of stupid things, right? So I had this book my neighbour Victor had given me and in it were some Caspar David Friedrich owls that really talked to me. The one I decided on, sitting on a grave marker with his wings outspread, he was like an orchestra conductor, very much in charge and he was commanding silence. His whole body was saying, ‘‘OK, that’s it.’ I got a photocopy of it and took it to the Fulham Tattoo Centre. The walls were full of dragons, devils, hearts and flowers and skeletons and whatnot and there were a couple of pretty girls discussing body piercing. One of the signs on the wall said that nobody under the influence of drink or drugs would be tattooed. It was a grey day with reality coming down like rain.

‘Where do you want this and how big?’ said the man. When I told him he looked at me sideways and said, ‘You’re not on anything, are you?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Do I look like I am?’

‘Kind of.’

‘What, you want me to pee in a cup so you can test it?’

‘Calm down, OK? It’s just that you might not be quite yourself today.’

‘How do you know I’m not like this every day?’

‘Look,’ he said, ‘once you get this on you it’s there for good, so it’s best not to do anything you’ll be sorry for.’

‘All my life I’ve done things I’ve been sorry for,’ I said. ‘Why should I stop now?’

‘OK, I’ll do this owl for you if that’s what you really want. First I have to make a tracing for the transfer. Come back tomorrow and I’ll be ready for you. It’ll cost you fifty pounds.’ So the next day I came back and now that owl is part of me.

I know that I tend to make a mystery of myself with Elias. Well, I have a lot to be mysterious about. I was nineteen when I married Richard Turpin. I was singing with an all-girl group called The Nectarines. That was in 1968. We were doing a gig at the Orford Cellar in Norwich with some of our own songs and a few covers. This bloke who was very close to the stage kept staring as if he’d never seen anything like me before. We wore miniskirts and fringey tops and I’ve always had good legs. After the last set he came up to me and said, ‘Hi, I’m Dick Turpin.’

‘Where’s your horse?’ I said.

‘My horse is a white Ford Transit with a ladder on top,’ he said, and gave me his card:

Dick Turpin

The Highway Roofer

‘We’ve got it covered.’

‘Great,’ I said. ‘Next time I need a roof I’ll ring you up.’

‘I’m putting together a brochure,’ he said, ‘and I want to feature you in it.’

‘Wow,’ I said. ‘This could be my big break. Does that happen before or after you ask me up to see your roof tiles?’

‘Come on, do I look like that kind of guy?’

‘Yes.’ He looked like Jack the Lad with an indoor complexion even though he did outdoor work. His mouth was smiling but something about his eyes made me wonder if there was a peephole in the dressing-room wall. He was a big man with big strong hands. Like my stepfather who was always opening the door of my room without knocking. He’d managed to catch me in my underwear once or twice but he’d never got further than that. I’d been thinking it was high time I got a new roof over my head.

‘What I have in mind,’ said Jack the Roofing Lad, ‘is a back view of you climbing a ladder in a Dick Turpin T-shirt and a skirt a little shorter than the one you have on now.’

‘Cheeky,’ I said. ‘Do I get to show my face at all?’

‘Of course. When you reach the scaffolding you turn and smile and we’ll have a close-up with my message under it: FOR A ROOF YOU CAN LOOK UP TO, PHONE DICK TURPIN FOR A FREE ESTIMATE! There’s three hundred quid in it for you.’

So I did it, one thing led to another, and I very quickly got a new roof over my head. Dick got what my stepfather hadn’t and it was legal. He was not a gentleman in bed or out of it. He drank a lot of beer and he watched a lot of football, sometimes at our house with men from his crew who also drank a lot of beer, sometimes at other places. The house was nothing wonderful, a small brick end-of-terrace with two up and two down. With a leaky roof that he never got round to fixing. The Nectarines disbanded and there I was being some kind of housewife. It wasn’t quite my idea of getting out into the world.

It lasted almost a year and by that time Dick had knocked me about a few times too many with his big strong hands. He went off to work one rainy day when I was wishing he’d fall off a roof. He did and it killed him. My judgement has never been good but neither was his.

I wonder what Elias would think if I stopped being a mystery and told him just how risky it is to get too close to me. Stevo’s been OK so far but maybe he has nine lives. When I got back to my house after Django’s death I found this tiger-striped kitten in a basket on my doorstep. He looked up at me as if Django’s spirit had gone into him. I couldn’t give a cat his name so I named him after Stephane Grappelli.

If Elias were smart he’d find somebody safer to get mixed up with.