Joel and T. London 1976-77

Joel and T and me. In my memory we were always together, the three of us. Every weekend that first year. We slept at Joel’s flat, on the Finchley Road. It was the upstairs part of a big house that had been designed for the Governer of the Bank of England I think. I remember Joel showing me a big hidden safe in the wall. It was small, but comfortable. Joel’s mother was an artist and his stepfather was in the film business. The walls were crowded with paintings and by the dining table was a huge framed poster of John Lennon. We didn’t go into the sitting room very often – it was expensively furnished and was sometimes used by film or tv companies. On a sideboard you could see a Bafta award glinting softly. Joel’s father had been given it shortly before he died, still in his twenties. At first, Joel’s mother Marnie had enjoyed huge success – despite looking after Joel on her own – she was pregnant when her first husband had died - but then she had partly lost her sight, and they’d had to move from the big house in Notting Hill to this flat, and lose the two au pairs who’d looked after Joel.

After that Joel told me how, once she was better, he’d had to go out to dinner with her while she networked her way back into the business. There was no-one to look after him at home and so by the time he was 16, he had spent many, many evenings sitting in expensive restaurants in Soho, trying hard to behave in the right way – he knew Marnie’s living depended on it. I remember the tales he had of how it sometimes went very wrong – how once he’d sneezed, and the ashtray in the middle of the table had scattered its contents over everyone’s plates – he cringed with mortification when he told me that, but he also knew he’d been an asset to her at times. His childish, inadvertently funny remarks had made the important people laugh. For years he had pronounced grand prix as grand pricks, and no-one had let him in on the secret because they’d thought it so amusing.

Marnie had remarried, and Joel’s stepfather was called David. As you went into the flat, there, on the wall facing the door, was a huge painting of him by Marnie. He had a gaunt look to his face, big hollow eyes, and a clipped beard. I don’t think I ever saw him in anything other than Liberty print shirts. Marnie must have been in her mid-forties at that time. She was still beautiful – you could see that, but ancient also, in my eyes. She often wore that gentle, faded blue that you can see in old photographs from that period. David spoke softy, but Marnie had the louder, clipped tones of someone who’d grown up with her own ponies. They were so friendly to me, so welcoming, and I was so shy and speechless around them in return. I had none of Joel’s social polish with adults. I still couldn’t get my head around treating them as equals.

I have no idea if it was intentional, if Marnie knew her comments were being passed along to me through Joel, but from time to time he would say things like “ Marnie thinks you hair looked better when it was lighter”; “mum said you’re more beautiful than Camilla. She said perfect people are less interesting to look at”. It was flattering, and I always followed her advice, but I still didn’t believe I was anything even approaching pretty. I hated the way I looked. When I stared in the mirror, which was very, very often, I always saw huge, despite being size eight, and when I stood on the scales, and the needle crept even slightly past the seven stone mark I was devastated until it went back down again. I did that every day for years.

With Marnie and David, and the circles they moved in, appearances meant everything, and often they didn’t really have the income to live up to that. The school fees were paid, but sometimes Joel was sent across the road to buy newspapers, because the bill hadn’t been settled for so long. When they worked out who he was, T or I would go in instead. It was strange after that, watching Marnie wrap Christmas presents, seeing the empty boxes pile up on the table as she worked her way through the heap of things – glossy, show off boxes with expensive names on them – Hermes, Fortnum and Mason, Liberty. Whenever things got really bad – when for instance David’s film company in Soho went bankrupt – they would throw a massive party – no expense spared - and we three would hide in Joel’s room, listening to the loud laughter and the sound of clinking glasses, and corks being pulled, smelling the expensive scent mixed with alcohol fumes and cigar smoke wafting through the door.

We couldn’t always escape so easily though – sometimes we were expected to join in – at restaurants, dinner parties and so on, and gradually I became less uncomfortable, more at ease. Never totally though. Those pubs in Soho – all around Greek Street - were the worst – the Dog and Duck, the Frenchhouse – all crowded and noisy and smoky. Journalists, writers, film directors, actors, artists, playwrights – they all seemed to live in those pubs – social networking was what they did all day long, and the longer they stayed, the drunker they got. I died each time I was noticed. I would have given anything to be invisible until we could escape safely back into our comfort zone of our own pubs and clubs and Joel’s bedroom. Once, a very drunk and very famous angry young playwright turned and suddenly asked me loudly “and what do you do?” “um – nothing. I’m a student”, I said. He exploded with laughter and shouted my reply to the whole crowd – he thought it was hilarious. I thought it was the worst day of my life.

Joel had the social ease that I never reached, but he was also clumsy, always dropping things and flushing with embarrassment when T and I teased him. He was very tall and spindly thin, with longish blond hair, cut in straggly layers, and a fringe he was always pushing out of his eyes. He often wore black, which made him look even thinner. He was still at school when we first met. I think he’d been kept down a year because he had really bad dyslexia – he was still doing O levels there. The following summer he failed them spectacularly – in one he even lost marks for putting the wrong surname in – his own, as opposed to his stepfather’s. I think he got one per cent for that exam. Most people then thought dyslexia was an excuse for lazy or stupid. Joel was neither and he countered the cynics by being a clown, laughing at himself before they could laugh at him.

T was as dark as Joel was blonde. He was at college with me. He was really sarcastic and made me laugh, but he was darker than Joel in other ways too. I think that was his armour against the world. The scowling face, the edginess – like he was always slightly uncomfortable in his skin. His real name was Thierry, but we called him T – never Thierry. His mother was French but at that time I think he didn’t like being different – he wanted to be normal and English and blend into the background. He never said anything about it, it would have been too uncool to admit to a weakness – we just always called him T.

I was the same – my father was French and I had also been given a name that stood out painfully. I don’t think I met anyone with the same name until much later. I hated it and gave myself a nickname when I was 14 – insisting at school and college that my friends call me by it, something more English. It was still there officially though and I cringed when teachers met me first – that raised eyebrow at my unusualness. None of them could say it properly and it would make me wince as they tried unsuccessfully to attempt it