When I get back from North London it turns out my parents aren’t dead. But there have been changes. They’ve moved the furniture around and there is a set of wooden runners over the three steps down to the garden from the French windows, freshly carpentered in new wood. Carpentry is something my father does. Dad built us a swing in the back garden, excavating a pit for its foundations in which he discovered a load of empty bottles buried by the previous owner of the house, ‘he was an alcoholic,’ my Mother muttered darkly. At the end of the garden now, near to the swing, is a pram. Howling sounds are coming from the pram.
It is around this time that I decide I am not getting enough affection from my family members. ‘Nobody loves me,’ I wail at mealtimes, hoping perhaps that someone will contradict me. Instead they laugh, and give me a new nickname: Pathetic Lobster. I go into crying jags that last until I give myself too bad a headache to continue. I get myself locked in the cupboard under the stairs just to find out, perhaps, whether anyone will bother to come and find me. They don’t – and I scream at the top of my lungs until my mother comes to let me out. ‘Nobody loves me,’ I continue to complain. ‘Pathetic lobster,’ they reply. I decide to look outside the family circle for love.
Being a Roman Catholic, I seek intercession from the Virgin Mary. In between all the other things we are constantly being enjoined to pray for at my Catholic primary school – the starving children in Africa, forgiveness for our sins, that Canon Dobson’s sciatica be relieved – there is a space for personal prayers: ‘don’t just ask for toys and sweets children,’ my teacher, Miss Henderson, says with a smile. We wouldn’t want the Holy Mother to think us superficial.
I pray for a girlfriend.
About this time I become aware that a girl in my class at school lives in our street. Her name is Karen Wells. She has a round open face, a nice smile and bright blue eyes. I tell Mum that I have special feelings for Karen and she says, ‘look at the mother, I would’ —Mrs Wells is Italian and a bit overweight— ‘that’s how she’ll turn out’.
Undeterred, I go round to Karen’s house one afternoon and ask if I can play. There’s a whole mob of kids, led by Karen’s older brother Kevin, who teases me, and I don’t get to talk to Karen.
For my birthday that year I get a tape recorder (a proper reel-to-reel tape recorder) and a toy guitar. Inspired by Cliff, who is always singing song to girls in his films, I write a song about my love for Karen and, accompanied by some exploratory strums on the guitar, sing it into the tape recorder. Perhaps I am intending to play it to her, or send her the tape. There is no fixed plan.
When I get home from school the next day I hear laughter coming from the kitchen. I walk in to see my sister and mother playing the song back on the tape recorder and pissing themselves laughing. It sounds terrible. Tuneless. And the lyrics are stupid: I love Karen, sitting on my knee/oh how happy together we will be.
I never touch the tape recorder again, or the guitar, and Karen does not become my girlfriend. It will be twelve years before I write another song.