Pete Townshend: Who I Am. Pete Townshend

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СКАЧАТЬ (cars were a great curiosity), and followed the milkman and his horse-drawn cart all the way to Gunnersbury Park, a round trip of about ten miles.

      Jimpy and I both had tricycles, and one day, still only four, we both rode mine to the park to attempt a new downhill duo speed record on the steep path in front of the manor house. I stood on the back axle and Jimpy steered. The bike became uncontrollable at high velocity so we could only go straight ahead – crashing right into a raised brick planter at the foot of the hill. We ended up with our faces in the soil, shocked and bloody. The bike was so badly bent we couldn’t ride it back home. My nosebleed lasted two days.

      ***

      In 1950, when I turned five, I didn’t go to the local free state junior school with my pals. Mum, still thinking I looked cute in uniform, sent me to the private Beacon House School, two-thirds of a mile from our home. I knew none of the children there, remember no one I met there and hated almost every minute of it.

      The school occupied a single-family house, and assembly was held in a small back room into which we marched each morning singing ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’ like a bunch of brainwashed Chinese Communists. After an inedible lunch we were expected to nap at our desks for fifteen minutes. If we moved a muscle we were scolded; further fidgeting could lead to ruler slaps, or worse. I was caned several times, and whacked with the teacher’s rubber-soled slipper.

      On one occasion I was so hurt and humiliated that I complained to my parents. They spoke to the headmistress at the school, who responded by singling me out for especially cruel treatment. Now I wasn’t even allowed to go to the toilet during the day, and I sometimes helplessly soiled myself on the long walk home from school. Afraid of even worse retribution from the school, I didn’t say another word about it to my parents. I went to Jimpy’s and received the sympathy – and fresh underpants – that I couldn’t find at home.

      Around this time Mum started taking me to ballet lessons. I walked into a room and saw twenty toe-twinkling girls in tutus, giggling at me. I was one of only a few boys in the group. One day, after I misbehaved, the teacher pulled down my tights, bent me over a bathtub and spanked me while the girls gathered excitedly around the bathroom door.

      Perhaps perversely, I enjoyed ballet classes. I am almost a dancer today because of them. Although even now, in my sixties, I am prone to slouching like an adolescent – indeed a photograph of me as a young man is used in a book about the Alexander Technique as an example of ‘post-adolescent collapse’ – I can move well on my feet, and a lot of my stagecraft is rooted in what I learned in those first few ballet classes. But Dad voiced his uneasiness at Mum taking me, so she stopped.

      Towards the end of the Squadronaires’ summer touring season, the band’s busiest period, Mum got a phone call from Rosie Bradley, a good friend of my grandmother Denny’s brother, my Great Uncle Tom. She lived in Birchington, on the corner opposite Denny’s bungalow, and had been passing increasingly troubling news of Denny on to Mum.

      During the summer of 1951 Denny was acting in a bizarre way and Rosie couldn’t tell how much of it was due to menopause. Mr Buss, Denny’s wealthy lover, had responded by sending money. Rosie thought Mum should go down and see to her. Rosie described a recent delivery Denny had received, prompting her to call over the road, ‘Rosie, Rosie! Come and have a look at this!’ In the boxes were four evening dresses and two fur coats, yet Denny was still walking around the streets in a dressing gown in the middle of the night. Rosie described Mum’s mother’s behaviour as ‘quite bonkers’.

      After contacting my parents, Rosie persuaded Mr Buss to rent a two-bedroom flat for Denny above a stationer’s shop in Station Road, Westgate. Still, Mum worried. ‘Cliff,’ she said to Dad, ‘I think she’s going batty. Do you think perhaps Pete could go down there? He could go to that little school, St Saviours. That might sort it all out.’ And this, strange as it may seem, is how I got sent to live with my grandmother in Westgate, and descended into the darkest part of my life.

      Denny’s domestic notions were downright Victorian. She ordered her own day, and mine, with military precision. We woke up before six and had breakfast, toast for her and cornflakes and tea for me – unless I’d done something wrong; her favourite punishment was denying me food. She granted me affection only when I was silent, perfectly behaved, utterly compliant and freshly washed – which is to say, never. She was a perfect wicked witch, even occasionally threatening me with gypsy curses. What had been in my parents’ minds when they chose to send me to live with her?

      When I began at St Saviours at age six I came bottom of the class for reading and writing. By the time I finished I was on the top desk. That, I suppose, was the good part of going to live with Denny. I wrote a letter to Aunt Rose, Denny’s older sister, who returned my letter covered with red spelling and grammatical corrections. I was hurt by this, but Aunt Rose also told Denny that I was too old to be unable to read and write properly, and suggested Denny read me half of a suspenseful book, then stop and give it to me to finish. Denny read me Black Beauty by Anna Sewell, and the ploy worked. Caught up not just in the story but also in the unfamiliar comfort of being read to, I immediately picked up the book and finished it off.

      I don’t remember any other books from my time with Denny. One of my few amusements was playing with the knobs on a chest of drawers, pretending they were the controls of a submarine. I also listened to Children’s Hour on the radio; the ‘Toytown’ adventures with Larry the Lamb and Dennis the Dachshund were pretty good.

      Opposite our flat was the bus station. Denny would call out the window and invite the drivers to come up for a cup of tea. Sometimes she’d take tea over to them, or send me. Denny saw nothing unusual about going out into the street in her nightdress under a dressing gown, and I didn’t mind crossing the street in my pyjamas to give a cup of tea to a bus driver, but I was upset when she asked me to go further, to the local newsagent or grocer, where I would come upon grown-ups on their way to work, looking at me oddly.

      Denny would get me up at five in the morning and she’d pack various items of food prepared the night before, including sponge cakes in baking tins. We’d march to various prearranged assignations, usually with American Air Force officers. There were brief exchanges, Denny passing over a sandwich or a tin, but what she received in return I don’t know. I remember large flashy cars with half-opened windows. I also vaguely remember a man I had to call ‘uncle’, who was deaf in one ear, staying the night a few times. He had a little Hitler moustache.

      The whole affair left me angry and resentful. I’ve spent years of psychotherapy trying to understand it. In 1982 my therapist urged me to try to push through to some clearer level of recall by writing about these morning exchanges. I started to write, and as I began describing a meeting – the Air Force officer winding down his window, Denny leaning in – I suddenly remembered for the first time the back door of the car opening. I began to shake uncontrollably and couldn’t write any more, or remember anything else. My memory just shut down.

      Our flat opened onto the first-floor landing, and my room was never locked; the key was kept on the outside. When I was afraid at night I’d run to Denny’s room. If her door was unlocked, she shooed me away; if it was locked, she’d feign sleep and wouldn’t respond. To this day I still wake up terrified, sweating with fear, shaking with rage at the fact that my door to the landing was always kept unlocked at night. I was a tiny child, just six years old, and every night I went to sleep feeling incredibly exposed, alone and unprotected.

      In addition to the buses, we also had a view of the train station. I loved to look at the magnificent steam engines, fantasising about sharing the moment with a friend, brother, sister – someone. My last thoughts before sleep often focused on longing for physical affection. Denny didn’t touch me apart from slapping me, brutally scrubbing my body in the bath or ducking my head under the water to wash off the soap. One night, when Denny lost her temper, СКАЧАТЬ