Amma nodded, Shirley took her hand and led her to the group she’d just left who were playing rubber band skipping
they were inseparable after that, Shirley paid attention in class and could be relied on to help out with homework
Shirley listened for hours to Amma talking about the crushes she had on boys, and later, after a transitional bisexual period (with brief crushes on Shirley’s brothers Errol and Tony), girls
Shirley never had a negative word to say about her sexuality, covered for her when she bunked off school and listened avidly to her tales from the youth theatre – the smoking, snogging, drinking, acting – in that order, even when their paths forked after school, Shirley into teaching, Amma into theatre, they maintained their friendship
and even when Amma’s arty friends said Shirley was the dullest person on the planet and did she have to invite her? Amma stood up for Shirley’s ordinariness
she’s a good person, she protested
Shirley babysat Yazz whenever she was asked (Amma also babysat Shirley’s girls once or twice, maybe?)
Shirley never once complained when Amma needed to borrow money to pay off her debts, which she sometimes wrote off as birthday presents
it felt one-way for a long time, until Amma reasoned she made Shirley’s safe and predictable life more interesting and scintillating
and that was what she gave back
then there were the members of her group or squad, as Yazz corrects her, no one says group of friends, Mum, it’s so, like, prehistoric?
she misses the people they used to be, when they were all discovering themselves with no idea how much they might change in the years to come
her group came to her opening nights, were at the end of a phone (landline, of course – how did that work back then?) for a spontaneous night out
were there to share and stir-up dramas
Mabel was a freelance photographer who went straight once she hit her thirties, ditched all her lesbian friends as part of her reinvention as probably the first black, Barbour-wearing, horse-riding housewife in the Shires
Olivine went from being un-castable in Britain because she was so dark to landing a major crime series in Hollywood and living the life of a star with ocean views and glossy magazine spreads
Katrina was a nurse who returned to Aberdeen where she belonged, she said, became a born-again Anglophile, married Kirsty, a doctor, and refuses to come down to London
Lakshmi will be here tonight, a saxophonist who composed for their shows, before deciding there was nothing worse than a song and a tune and began to put the niche into avant garde and play what Amma privately thinks of as bing-bang-bong music, usually headlining weird festivals in remote fields with more cows than punters in attendance
Lakshmi has also developed an improbable guru persona for the gullible students she tutors at music college
who gather around the hearth of her council flat sipping cheap cider from tea cups
while she sits cross-legged on the sofa in flowing robes, long hair streaked with silver
denouncing chord progressions in favour of micro-tonal improvisation and poly-tempic, poly-rhythmic and multi-phonic structures and effects
while declaring that composition is dead, girls and boys
I’m all about the contemporary extemporary
even though Lakshmi is approaching sixty, her chosen lover, male or female, remains in the 25–35 age range, at the upper end of which the relationship ends
when Amma calls her on it, she comes up with a reason other than that they’re no longer quite so impressionable, fresh-faced and taut-skinned
then there was Georgie, the only one who didn’t survive into the nineties
a plumber’s apprentice from Wales, she was abandoned by her Jehovah’s Witness family for being gay
she became the lost orphan child they all took under their wing
the only woman in a council’s plumbing team, she had to endure constant innuendo from her male colleagues with their jokes about screw hole locators, blow bags, nipples and ballcocks
as well as comments on what they’d like to do with her arse when she was fixing something under a sink or peering down a gutter
Georgie
drank two litres of Coca Cola a day and mixed it with spirits and drugs at night
she was the least lucky of their group in attracting women, and sadly, stupidly, thought she’d be on her own forever
many a night out ended in tears with Georgie saying she was too ugly to pull, which wasn’t true, they all endlessly reassured her how attractive she was, although Amma considered her more Artful Dodger than Oliver Twist
which in the lesbian world wasn’t such a bad thing
Amma can never forget the last time she saw her, both of them sitting on the kerb outside the Bell as the revellers drifted drunkenly off while Amma forced a finger down Georgie’s throat to make her regurgitate the pills she’d taken in the toilets
for the first time in their friendship, Amma actually showed her frustration with her friend for being such a hopeless case, for being so insecure, for not being able to cope with adulthood, for getting off her face all the time, it’s time to grow up, Georgie, it’s time to grow the fuck up!
a week later she went over the top floor balcony on the Pepys Estate in Deptford where she lived
to this day, Amma wonders how Georgie died
did she fall (accident), fly (tripping), throw herself off (suicide) or was she pushed (unlikely)
she still feels guilty, still wonders if it was her fault
Sylvester always shows up on first nights, if only for the free booze at the after-party
even though a few days ago he accused her of selling out when he cornered her outside Brixton tube station on her way home from rehearsal
and persuaded her to have a drink with him at the Ritzy where they sat in the upstairs bar surrounded by posters of the independent films they’d been going to see together since they first met as students at drama school
films like Pink Flamingos, starring the great drag queen, Divine, Born in Flames, Daughters of the Dust, Farewell My Concubine, Pratibha Parmar’s A Place of Rage and Handsworth Songs by the Black Audio Film Collective
films that inspired her own aesthetics as a theatre-maker
although she’s never admitted her equally lowbrow tastes to Sylvester, who’s too much of a political purist to understand
such as her addictions to Dynasty and Dallas, the original series and their recent incarnations
or America’s Top Model or Millionaire Matchmaker or Big Brother
and the rest …
Amma looked around the bar at the other alternatives who’d moved into Brixton when it was crime-addled but affordable
these people were her people, they’d lived through two riots and were proud of their multiracial social circles and bloodlines, like Sylvester, who’d gone on a pilgrimage here to visit the gay community centre that came and went and met the man who became his life partner, Curwen, newly arrived from St Lucia
they used to make such a striking couple
Sylvester, or Sylvie, was then blond and pretty, he spent most of the eighties wearing dresses, his long hair flowing down his back
he was out to challenge society’s gender expectations, long before the current trend, he’s taken to complaining, I was there first
Curwen, freckled and light brown, might wear a turban, kilt, lederhosen and full make-up
when he felt like it
to challenge various other expectations