Alpha
Mummy: Novelist Jenny Colgan on how much Myerson should have revealed
At the height of their woes, when the drug habit of her elder son Jake was
filling their home with turmoil and violence, Julie Myerson and her family
liked to cheer themselves up by reading aloud from a book of newspaper
columns she wrote when her children were toddlers. “We'd pick one at random
and laugh about it,” says her husband Jonathan. “It was so funny, like the
one about Chloe telling Raphael to stick his fingers up her bum!” He
chuckles.
“They were very young then,” Julie says. “There was never going to be any
embarrassment about it.” A decade on, a very different version of their
family life is being aired through a gazillion media outlets. Julie is pale
and yawning with dark-circled eyes, following yesterday's publicity marathon
which took her from the BBC's Breakfast programme to Newsnight.
On the breakfast bar of their airy kitchen in their Gothic former rectory is a
3,000-word treatise on the evils of skunk-marijuana by Jonathan in The
Guardian, while in the Daily Mail are two pages on Julie's rift with her
sister - now healed, apparently - provoked by her earlier memoir about her
father's suicide. Julie's mother and sisters, even Jonathan's first wife
divorced 25 years ago, have all been doorstepped by journalists.
The publication of Julie's book The Lost Child has turned their lives into a
media melodrama and yet still neither seem remotely embarrassed. Stung,
ambivalent, surprised and shaken perhaps, but since Julie has written about
her children extensively and intimately since they were born, the Myersons
are almost as accustomed to public scrutiny as that other famous former
resident of South London's skanky Walworth Road - Jade Goody.
Reading the new book, cataloguing a traumatic three years in which Jake turns
from a brilliant boy destined for A-stars and Oxbridge to a menacing,
aggressive unmanageable drug-user, it is impossible not to empathise with
the Myersons' parental plight. As a mother with a just-turned-teen, I was
left questioning how I would react, what sanctions I could employ if my son
stole from my handbag, threatened me with knives, cursed and hit me so hard
he perforated my ear-drum. But overriding such sympathy was revulsion: how
could Julie Myerson believe exposing this vulnerable young man to a media
firestorm would possibly make his life better? To which she answers that
perhaps seeing the consequences of his drug use in print might shock him
into quitting.
The Myersons sit side by side on their bright pink sofa in a living room that
smells of snuffed-out candles. Although Julie wrote the book, they clearly
regard the decision to publish as a joint one. Jonathan - Jono, Julie calls
him - in a foppish vermillion shirt, is flamboyant, emotional, his eyes
filling with tears as he describes his own loneliness as the parent of a
drug-abusing child. His justifications are broadly political: he believes
the book will expose the “emergency of skunk”, the super-strength cannabis
that can permanently damage growing brains.
Julie sits primly, very upright, almost girlish, looking a decade younger than
48 and counters criticism with a steely charm. Her reasons are mainly
artistic: “You have to write the book you have to write,” she says. “I write
with a piece of my heart that I don't really have full control over.”
No doubt her son's behaviour must have dominated her life and thoughts and
work. It is certainly more compelling than the life of Mary Yelloly, a young
Victorian painter, Myerson was commissioned to write about, whose life and
early death from TB she eventually interwove in The Lost Child with Jake
Myerson's travails. I suspect most readers will skim these dutiful, fragrant
passages. But could she not have confined her domestic trauma to a private
journal, shoved it in a drawer, or redirected it into fiction, years on,
when the matter was less raw? Why publish now? At this the Myersons insist
that they could not have contemplated this without Jake's consent. In The
Lost Child's epilogue, Julie meets Jake - living apart from the family home
- to show him her manuscript. Yet reading this scene it sounds less like
Jake approves than that he is resigned to his mother cannibalising his
experience, as she has done all his life.
While many columnists - myself included - regularly mention their children in
their writing, Julie is notable for an almost shameless lack of
self-editing. I recall one column in which she goes shopping for a first bra
with the young Chloe. “Oh yes, that was so funny,” Julie says. “Chloe
actually said, ‘Mummy if you want to write about that, it's fine'.”
There was also the issue of the anonymous column in The Guardian called Living
with Teenagers. There was always speculation that Julie was the author,
something that she strenuously denied.
The series ended abuptly last summer after the author's youngest child
discovered that his mother was writing it when schoolfriends - who had
guessed it was her - mocked him about a column mentioning his acquisition of
pubic hair. During our interview yesterday I asked Julie if she was the
author - she looked me straight in the eye and denied it, but swiftly
changed the subject. Jonathan, meanwhile, slipped out of the room.
Hours later Julie rings me: “I just want to tell you I did write Living with
Teenagers,” she says. “I couldn't tell you until now because we needed to
tell our children.”
Maybe she denied authorship to avoid exposing her younger children, still at
school, to greater ridicule. But I can't help wondering whether the
admission that she was blithely exposing her troubled teens for cash every
week in a newspaper, could undermine her claim that she published The Lost
Child only after much soul-searching and for the highest motives. Now,
knowing she wrote the column, the book looks like her most recent act of
incontinent exhibitionism.
The Myersons say they had no idea that Jake - as he claimed in the Mail - did
not want The Lost Child published, that he actually contacted a lawyer to
try to get it stopped. “He understands what it is to be a writer,” says
Jonathan. “He's a very good one himself. Maybe he will one day write about
us. When he gets himself straightened out.” But in any case, wasn't a
teenager's approval irrelevant? Shouldn't they, as his parents, simply have
come to a grown-up decision that the book wasn't in his best interests?
They complain that Jake, now 20 and on a music course, living through busking,
has never done a day's proper work in his life. Won't this book form a
permanent and indelible stain upon his character far beyond the youthful
bravado of posing on Facebook with a joint?
Julie: “I don't think he wants to be Prime Minister! If he gets cleaned up he
won't be excluded from any profession, surely. Anyway, he wants to do
music.” Jonathan corrects his partner carefully: “At the moment he does,
yes. But you are right that if he wanted a more traditional career it could
be an issue. But he doesn't stand a chance in any of these jobs until he
cleans up.”
It is hard, given that the reader is invited into their lives, not to judge
their often barmy behaviour. Why did Julie decide to pay their son, who had
been stealing £20 notes from their pockets to buy drugs, £1,000 in cash in
exchange for including his teenage poems in her book? “We were very torn
about it,” Julie says. “We wanted to put it in a bank account and control
it, but he wouldn't let us. He used it to go to America last summer and have
a great time. Although Jonathan didn't think I should pay him.”
There is something not quite maternal about Julie Myerson's relationship with
her son: as if she almost seeks to be his peer. The pair are similar, she
says. Both are resilient, impervious to what other people think of them - a
very useful trait at present. Of her recent novel Out of Breath she says: “I
had the urge to write about some children escaping over dark fields. I
realised that one was me, aged 13. The other, Sam [a violent, unruly
teenager] was based upon Jake. What I thought was very funny and exciting
was the idea of being with my son as his sister. It probably says all sorts
of things about not wanting to have responsibility.”
She regrets nothing about publishing The Lost Child even though “I have upset
every member of my family - my mother's furious!” Jonathan corrects her
hastily. “You haven't upset every member. My mother's fine, my sister's
fine.” Her only shame is “exposing Jake to the tabloids”. (Her son sold his
side of the story to the Daily Mail for £4,000.) She wishes he had told his
story in a more upmarket paper, or at least in his own - rather than a
journalist's - words.
But could you not have predicted the furore - chattering-classes author with
drug addict son is irresistible subject matter, especially recalling the
stories eight years ago about your rift with your sister? “I was not going
to name Jake at first in the book,” she says. “Well, I know he could be
traced through Facebook or with a couple of Googles... Maybe I was naive.
But my agent [Gillian Coleridge] didn't see it coming. No book has had this
much reaction since The Satanic Verses.”
But did her agent not spot, above all else, the potential profitability of
such a memoir? “God, no!” the Myersons cry in unison. “Absolutely not!” Yet
undoubtedly while Julie's earlier novels including Something Might Happen
have sold very well, this new work is sure to rush up the bestseller lists.
Do they plan to use the proceeds to help the fight against skunk, which they
feel so passionately about? “If there is that much money,” Jonathan says.
“We live comfortably. If there is any over, maybe we could consider it.”
The Lost Child was originally due to publish in May, but will come out today
after Bloomsbury brought publication forward. To anticipate demand a reprint
has already been authorised.
For all its upmarket artistic wrapper of Mary Yelloly's tragic life, does The
Lost Child not amount to a middle-class Big Brother, a more literary take on
the much-mocked mass market genre, the misery memoir? “I have never read
Dave Pelzer or anything like that,” Jonathan says loftily.
Julie Myerson says she wanted to portray Jake as a “loveable, likeable boy -
it is a book about how much I love him, not a character assassination.” Yet,
I say, one is left with quite the opposite impression: that Jake is a
monstrous, selfish, bullying presence, a normal teenage solipsism amplified
to the nth degree by skunk's powerful chemistry.
Myerson tells me of a week last year when Jake suffered a stomach bug so he
could no longer smoke skunk and lay on her sofa while she tended to him.
“Two days off the drugs and I had my own son back,” she says wistfully. The
Myersons find it painful to encounter their son's friends with whom he
shared a few rebellious spliffs, but who kept attending school and now are
thriving at university. She dreams of her son returning from his grotty flat
in South London to live under her roof and take A levels.
And yet one is left wondering if the Jake who Julie yearns for in her book is
not the teenager but the tender baby, the clever, attentive boy she read
Famous Five stories to while he drank hot chocolate in the garden. The Lost
Child, putting the drugs issue aside, is an aching, empty-nest memoir: a
mother mourning for her uncomplicated little children, now grown, whom she
could care for, write about without comeback, love - and control.
Please try to remember that this has been written with love
Two months after I finish writing this book, I pick my boy up in the pouring
rain. I haven't seen him for weeks - he has no phone and he won't give me
the address of his Peckham bedsit. We go to a café, where he orders steak
and fries and I order peppermint tea. I try not to snatch too many glances
at his face. He looks OK, not as thin as last time and his hair has grown
long and curly. He has his guitar wrapped in a bin bag to keep it dry.
I tell him how good it is to see him. He shrugs. I tell him I've got something
to show him.
Remember that book - the one I started writing ages ago, about the girl who
lived 200 years ago? Mary Yelloly?
I didn't think you'd remember the name. Well, I started finding out about her
and it was just that her story was so unrelentingly sad. And all of this
stuff with you - it was all happening at exactly the same time. And one day
I suppose I just ground to a halt. I couldn't do it. And then I realised: I
could only write truthfully about Mary if I wrote about what was going on
with you as well.
He wipes a chip through ketchup and gives me a weary look.
So - what? My whole life story's in this f***ing book?
It's not quite like that, I say, pulling out the manuscript. But please, I
really do need you to read it, tell me what you feel about it. Don't worry,
it's not so much about you - or at least, it is - but it's more about me
really. A mother's story. And I know you're not going to like everything in
it. In fact there's quite a lot you might not like. But please, please try
to remember that it's been written with nothing but love.
He sighs, eats another chip.
It's a book about how much I love you, I tell him again, though I realise you
may not choose to see it quite like that.
He warns me that he won't be able to read it fast. (I'm pretty busy, you know,
I've got a lot on.) But, just over 24 hours later, we're in another
restaurant with the marked-up manuscript on the table between us.
It's so lovely to see you two days running, I tell him truthfully. I should
write books about you more often.
He almost smiles.
Yeah, well, Mother dearest, you've been very clever with this so-called book.
But he goes on to tell me there are some things he objects to.
Really? Like what?
Well, for a start, this bit about selling my brother skunk. I never gave him
skunk. Hash, yes. Big difference. And you say I encouraged him to get stoned
on the way home from school, but that's not true. I was actually trying to
stop him.
By giving him hash when he was only 13?
Yes! To prevent him having skunk!
Ah.
And another thing: when we're discussing the termination thing, you have me
just sitting and fiddling with my Xbox as if I didn't give a f***. And yet I
remember sitting down with you and Dad and having a really serious
conversation about it, both of you going on at me.
Really?
Definitely!
OK, I say. I'm sorry. I'll look at it. I can easily adjust it.
He turns the pages. He has marked up the bits he's unhappy with. So few bits.
I'm amazed at how many pages have no marks on at all.
At one point, he shakes his head.
You and your short, snappy little sentences, he says. I know what you're
doing, you know.
It's how I write.
Yeah, yeah. And then this bit, the bit where you and Dad throw me out for the
last time and you have me saying I'll take a knife and stab you through the
heart.
You don't remember saying that?
F***'s sake! If I said it, I wouldn't have meant it!
I know that, I say. It's not that I think you'd have done it. But you must
admit it was a pretty aggressive thing to say.
He looks at me for a moment with his clear grey eyes, but he says nothing.
And then, when you say I finally dropped out of school, you conveniently omit
to mention that I'd already got myself on to the course at Goldsmith's.
I think about this.
That's true, I say, I'm sorry, I don't know why I didn't say that. And how is
it, by the way? Are you still going?
He hesitates. There have been some attendance issues, he says.
You haven't been going?
I'm going. But if I miss a single session now, they'll kick me out.
You'd be mad to give up on all that work, I tell him. Just stay and do the
exam, for goodness' sake.
What d'you think I'm doing?!
He looks back down at the manuscript.
To be absolutely honest, he says carefully, I wasn't all that interested in
the stuff about the Mary Yelloly person.
Well, that's understandable.
I'm not saying it's bad, necessarily. But maybe you have to be pushing 50 and
female.
Thanks a lot!
But the bit in the church, at the end. I did think that was pretty good.
You did? I feel myself flush with pleasure. You really liked that bit?
He nods. Moments pass. I realise I don't want this dinner to end.
But if you want to know, he says softly, and he doesn't look at me now. You're
right: it was then.
What was then?
When I started smoking.
You mean -
You and Dad. All those evenings. I'd be in bed holding Kitty and just watching
this little dot on the wall while I listened to you two arguing.
My heart jumps.
Was it so many evenings? (In my head those bad months have shrivelled to
something small and dark and tight.)
The first time I ever smoked a joint alone - I felt so guilty.
Oh, darling.
He swallows and I think, he's still here, the exact same boy.
The shape of his mouth when he was five years old. What did we do to him?
I'm so very sorry, I tell him slowly. We had no idea. We were so wrapped up in
our own problems. We were idiots.
Yeah. You were.
I love you so much. We both love you so much.We walk along Walworth Road in
the cool, dusky evening.
Me in my old coat and trainers. His tall shape towering over me. I tell him
how very much it means to me, that he has read the book like this. So
quickly. So carefully and kindly.
I was dreading giving it to you, I tell him. But you see, I had to write it.
It was just the only thing I could possibly write.
I know that, he says quietly. I understand about writing.
Well, you're good, I tell him, to understand that.
He says nothing, lightly strums his guitar.
But I've been very merciful, you know, he says as we walk past Co-op Funerals,
Argos and Superdrug, litter blowing against our legs.
I know you have, I say. I know.
So don't you go thinking I approve of what you've done.
OK, I say, and I steal a glance at his face, which, despite his words, is warm
- amused, even.
For a moment I feel like the child. When we turn into our road, he perches on
a car bonnet and asks to play me a song he has written. It's rough, forlorn,
full of passion. When he plays, his face changes and he turns into someone
else, someone I don't really know.
I stand there listening to the song. People walk past. I don't know who they
think we are or what they think we're doing.
The sky has almost lost its light and I can smell cooking and exhaust fumes.
The boy who lives across the road - a boy who only a year or so ago was at
school with him, and is at university somewhere now - sticks his head out of
the window, grinning.
Hey, man! I thought it was you! What you up to, then?
Just playin' a song to my mum.
Cool! You OK?
Yeah. You?
Yeah. Good to see you, man.
We walk on down the road towards our house. I ask if he'll come in for a bit.
He says he won't.
But you could drive me to Brixton.
Where are you going?
The Academy. Gotta meet some people.
So I run into the house to grab my cardigan and car keys and, when his father
hears that our boy is outside, he comes out to say hello.
The boy is sitting on the bonnet of our car, curly head bent, playing
chords.He looks up slowly when his father approaches. Hello, boy.
Huh.
How's things?
OK. (The smallest flicker of a smile.)
When we're almost at Brixton Academy, he tells me that he's got another song
he wants to play me.
One I wrote about you.
So I pull in on Brixton High Road and put on the flashers. Close my eyes as
his music fills the car. I catch phrases . . . waiting for your hand . .
. as daylight breaks over my shy bones . . . I've made mistakes . . . lonely
in the rain. Again, that unknown young man's face.
And my tears start to fall, but it doesn't matter because he's not looking at
me, he's looking somewhere else - beyond, apart. He's singing about me but
he has gone somewhere else, somewhere that I can't go. When he has finished,
he still doesn't look at me. I can't really speak. My heart hurting. Salt in
my mouth.
It's so beautiful, I croak. Thank you.
He smiles to himself, a wobbly little smile. I knew you'd cry, he says. And he
opens the car door and, guitar under his arm, he's gone.
©Julie Myerson 2009. Extracted from The Lost Child, published by Bloomsbury
this month (rrp £14.99. Times BooksFirst £13.49, free p&p.
0870 1608080, timesonline.co.uk/booksfirst
