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🎵 She may be the face I can't forget
A trace of pleasure or regret
May be my treasure or the price I have to pay… 🎵
I am stretched full length on the settee when Mum arrives home from work. On the screen in front of me, Julia Roberts, chic and sophisticated as always, basks in the light of a thousand camera flashes.
“Dickie” Mum says, sloughing off her coat, trying to sound cross, “Don’t you have any homework to do? Or any test papers left to complete?”
🎵She may be the song that summer sings
May be the chill that autumn brings
May be a hundred different things
Within the measure of a day🎵
Dickie, that's me.
I was named Richard William Argent for my father and his father before. If I had been fortunate enough to have been born in the United States I would probably be known as Richard. W. Argent the third, instead, here in the provincial backwater of Rochester, I am distinguished from the Richards in the paternal line of my family by use of the diminutive… Dickie.
This comment about homework is typical of Mum. The parents are obsessed with my education. I'm going to be eleven next May; the senior schools around here are pretty crap to say the least. As a boy of mixed heritage, they fear I am already at a disadvantage, and statistically unlikely to achieve my potential educationally, Mum has set her heart on my getting into Truham, the local boys’ grammar school, and Dad follows her lead. Due to this obsession, I have had my school holidays ruined by extra tuition and test exam papers. The actual exam is in a fortnight’s time and Mum’s scared I won’t pass… I will though, Geraldine my tutor says I am the brightest of all her students. I just have to pass high enough to be offered a place. So, Mum has got into such a state that any time I spend not practising for the exam equals time wasted. So, her catching me watching Notting Hill for the millionth time is bad karma for me.
I’m unlucky, Mum is home earlier than usual this evening. In our cosy front room, there is nowhere to hide. But as the DVD is only playing the opening titles, I might just get away with the fact I have already watched it all the way through once this afternoon.
The thing is I am actually on the same page as Mum and Dad when it comes to grammar school. Personally, I fancy HGGS, but as that isn’t an option, Truham, it is. At least it should be better than the comp. Most of the kids in my year at primary school will end up at the comp. I will be glad to see the back of them. At eleven the boys are complete fuckwits, whose response to the fact I’m not like them is to push me into the lockers on the regular. I don’t always get why I am not like them myself; I want to fit in, I do... But I also want to wear my hair as long as I dare, I want to paint my nails and spend my pocket money on moisturiser and styling products. So that’s the boys… louts and bullies every last one of them. Of course, the boys at Truham may well be the same, but at least it will be a fresh start. The girls at my school aren’t much better. I’ve promised myself that I will never be like them.
🎵 She may be the mirror of my dreams
A smile reflected in a stream
She may not be what she may seem
Inside her shell 🎵
As I am wondering if every ten-year-old feels like that, on the brink of puberty or if it is just me, Julia Roberts fades from the screen and Hugh Grant begins his opening monologue walking through the market stalls. I try swapping out the pronouns to see if they fit me.
He may not be what he may seem inside his shell.
It should work, but somehow it doesn’t. Hugh keeps walking, raving about the place where he lives. I can’t wait until I am old enough to leave this town and live in London. A person can be whoever they want to be in a city as big as London.
Mum comes and sits beside me on the couch, moving my feet so that they rest in her lap. She rubs them gently and looks at me like she did when I was younger, when we would have ‘a little talk’. Like when Granny Argent passed and ’went to heaven to sing with the angels’.
“I’ve never understood your fascination with this film, it’s very dated now… Hugh Grant went to seed very quickly after this.” What Mum is getting at is that for some reason known only to her, she doesn't think the film is age appropriate.
I think Mum thinks I have a crush on Julia Roberts, I’ve heard her talking to Dad about him giving me ‘a little talk’ of his own before I go to senior school. But every now and then she puts the feelers out to see if the crush might be on Hugh Grant. That is not beyond my imagination.
If I long for anything at all as portrayed in this film, it is to have friends that get me. like Max, Bella, William, Spike, Honey and Bernie get each other. The way they love and accept each other and are just there for each other. It would be wonderful one day to belong to such a friendship group. One thing I know for certain is that it isn’t going to happen to Dickie at the comp. My eyes fill with tears at that thought. I brush them away quickly but not before Mum spots them and pulls me into her arms, this has the effect of making me cry more.
“There, there.” Mum coos, “You mustn’t worry about the silly old exam, if you don’t get a place at Truham, we’ll go private, we can even move house if we have to. The important thing is we love you and we’re proud of you, whatever happens”
I know she thinks she means it but we’re not the kind of family that goes private for anything, so I cry a bit more, until I stutter out,
“It’s not the exam.”
“What is it then, Dickie, you can tell me anything. I won't judge you.”
“It’s just… I don’t… think I want to be called Dickie anymore.”
Mum looks surprised, I know that ‘where did that come from?’ expression of old but she seems to recover quickly,
“That’s fine D…darling, you can be Richie, or Ricky… or if you really don’t like Richard, you could use William, your middle name, if you’re too grown up for nicknames, or you could choose something else. Before you go to Truham… It’s nothing to get upset about.”
Mum feels around in her blouse and hands me her handkerchief. It is warm and smells of her body lotion, and I guess it was tucked inside her bra.
I wipe my eyes and blow my nose. Mum has paused Notting Hill, and the screen has gone blank. I catch sight of myself in the mirror above the fireplace. I see my eyes are red and my nose is blotchy. Unlike Julia Roberts who looks all dewy eyed and gorgeous, even when she’s breaking her heart on screen. Then I am suddenly distracted when I notice that my hair has really got quite long and I wonder momentarily whether I could get away with wearing it in bunches, or if Mum would let me have it straightened. But that is probably a battle for another day.
Mum gets up then to start to put the dinner on, everything seeming to be settled. What Mum doesn’t understand, and I don’t really understand myself, is that I don't have a crush on Julia Roberts, I think I want to BE her.
🎵She who always seems so happy in a crowd
Whose eyes can be so private and so proud
No one's allowed to see them when they cry…