Touching from a Distance Read online

  Tony and I were rarely alone as a couple. When it was cold and wet, the three of us listened to records in Ian’s bedroom and if Tony and I wanted a kiss and a cuddle, Ian would sit and smoke. I didn’t notice Ian paying any particular attention to me and often wondered why he didn’t find himself a girlfriend so that we could make up a foursome, but he seemed content to lie back with his cigarettes and listen to music. My own taste included the Beatles, Creedence Clearwater Revival, T Rex and the Love Affair (mainly because of my crush on lead singer Steve Ellis). Ian’s was diverse and exciting, and quite different to the poppy Motown-type music that my friends were listening to.

  These times were the best, as Tony and Ian didn’t take drugs if they were spending the day with me, but quite often they played truant together and would meet me after school. Sometimes they took Valium purloined from someone’s parents, or sniffed whatever toxic substance they could lay their hands on. Both their faces would be cold and pallid, and their breath heavy with the fumes of carbon tetrachloride.

  ‘Taking Valium was meant to be fun. There was never anything sinister about it, but it got out of hand. That had a lot to do with this romantic image. Taking drugs seemed a good image. When I was told he had killed himself, my first thought was: “What an indulgent bastard he is.” There was no need to do it. What he really wanted to do was play rock and roll. I think he was doing what he wanted to do. The theatrical way he did it suggests … He did enjoy the theatre and he did enjoy his theatrics affecting other people. I think that was important to him. It wasn’t enough to dress up and go out; he had to get drunk and wind people up. We all thought it was fun and it was fun to an extent. But it was an indulgence – you could only get away with it between certain years.’

  Tony Nuttall

  Sometimes Ian would say he suffered ‘flashbacks’. He described situations where he would have a sensation of floating, as if he had taken drugs when in fact he had not. This was always assumed to be a side effect of whatever he had taken the previous week. No one thought they might have been early epileptic fits. Either way, he would not have told his parents about it.

  Events such as these were too easily passed off as the effects of drug abuse. We attended a small gig held in a hut next to the public library on Park Green, Macclesfield. The band playing used a strobe light while they were on stage and after watching it for a time, Ian collapsed on the floor. He was unceremoniously pulled out by the armpits, heels dragging, and left to recover in another room.

  Eventually, Tony Nuttall and I parted company. At the time I was mystified. There was no big row, no confrontation, nothing. One day I was flavour of the month; the next I had time on my hands. Luckily, I was able to pick up where I had left off with my friends. I remember the summer of 1972 as long, hot and balmy. All my pocket money was spent on Loons, love beads and joss sticks.

  The King’s School had an innovative drama teacher called Graham Wilson. When putting together a production of Tom Stoppard’s The Real Inspector Hound, he decided to ask if any Macclesfield High School girls would be interested in sharing the project. As these two schools were the grammar schools in Macclesfield, it was only natural that they should try out some joint ventures. It was during rehearsals for the play that Oliver Cleaver first met Helen Atkinson Wood, who was head girl of our school. Like me, she was told she just had to meet this boy called Ian Curtis who wore black nail varnish. Ian and Helen had backgrounds which were poles apart, but they developed a close friendship. When the lanky, awkward boy from the council flat met the petite, effervescent blonde, there was a mutual interest.

  ‘There was always something that felt quite wicked about knowing Ian … He didn’t really need to talk about it because he had that self-destruct part of his personality, but you don’t even need to be talking about dangerous things, because you know that if somebody is actually doing that to themselves then they are looking for a different journey than perhaps the one you’re looking for or perhaps the one that anyone that you know is.’

  Helen Atkinson Wood

  Ian’s interest in Helen stemmed neither from her status as head girl nor her wealthy background. He was fascinated by the fact that at sixteen she had fractured her skull when she fell off her horse. Helen was unconscious for three days and took two school terms to recover. The idea of someone learning to speak, read, gain their memory and walk, let alone get back on the horse and ride again, made Helen all the more attractive to Ian. He embellished her story and retold it several times, which gave me a vision of Helen as Heidi’s friend Clara. Helen puts it down to Ian’s fascination with drama, but nonetheless his admiration for her obvious courage was central to their friendship. Helen was sure that the ordinary held no magic for Ian and, though he never actually said it outright, she suspected that he found the idea of dying young magic in itself and was not surprised when he carried it through.

  On 23 December 1972, four of my friends – Gillian, Anne, Dek and Pat – decided to hire the Scout Hut on Fence Avenue and hold a double engagement party. Pat remembers Ian as a joking, laughing person to whom music was the only thing that really mattered. Ian rarely introduced his friends to his family. He would tear downstairs, push his friends into his room, lock the door and put the music on. Ian arrived at Pat’s party in a stupor and confided to me that he had a bet on with his friends that he would be able to kiss the most girls that night. Consequently I spent the remainder of the evening introducing him to all of my school friends. Finding it very amusing, they all acquiesced.

  Before we parted, Ian asked me to go out with him and invited me to a David Bowie gig at the Hard Rock in Manchester. What thrilled me was not particularly the opportunity of going out with Ian, but more the chance to get out of Macclesfield and to be included in a crowd of people who did more than catch the train to Stockport for a weekly shopping trip. I was looking forward to seeing Tony again, though I never got the chance to ask him why he dumped me so unceremoniously as he kept his distance.

  Ian was a big Bowie fan and had already managed to spend time in his dressing room at one gig. He had David Bowie’s, Trevor Boulder’s and Mick Ronson’s autographs, one of Woody’s broken drumsticks and a spare guitar string. Bowie was playing for two nights and as Ian and Tony had tickets for both nights, Ian arranged for his friends to pick me up and take me to meet him for the second gig. This was the first time I had been to a proper gig. I was even excited about the support band, Fumble. I loved their rendition of ‘Johnnie B. Good’, not realizing that every rock band covers that song. When Bowie emerged wearing a one-piece printed outfit that resembled a legless babygro, we all gazed up in complete adoration. The stage was so small that he was extemely close to the audience, yet no one dared to touch his skinny, boyish legs.

  Ian had had only one serious girlfriend before me. Bev Clayton was tall and slim with large eyes and waist-length titian-coloured hair. Yet from that night on, I was Ian’s girlfriend and stopped even looking at other boys. I felt honoured to be part of that small group. For a short time I did not regard Ian as an individual, but as a party of people who were fun and exciting and knew more than me about life itself. I didn’t realize that Ian’s King’s School friends were also receiving their first introduction to David Bowie, Lou Reed and perhaps the seamier side of Ian’s ethereal world.

  I had attended primary school in the village of Sutton, in the hills of Macclesfield. My childhood weekends had been spent looking for birds’ nests, building dams across the river Bollin, and feeding orphan lambs. By the time I met Ian, I had abandoned my push-bike and stopped attending the church youth club, but was still leading a quiet existence. Suddenly, life seemed one long round of parties, pop concerts and pub crawls. It was a whole new scene for me and, like Ian, I gradually began to move away from my old circle. Ian never hid his interest for stars who had died young. Through him I began to learn about James Dean, Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin. Anyone who had been involved in the young, arty medium of any form of showbusiness and found an ear
ly grave was of interest to him. When he told me that he had no intention of living beyond his early twenties, I took it with a pinch of salt, assumed it was a phase and that he would grow out of it. He seemed terribly young to have already made the decision that life was not worth living. I thought that, as he matured, surely life would be so good that he would not want to leave it all behind.

  Gradually we began to see very little of Tony Nuttall. Ian admitted one day that Tony had agreed to let him date me on the condition that he looked after me. Though I felt like a pet with a new owner, my life was more interesting and somewhat more sophisticated with Ian, so I stuck with him.

  Occasionally we put ourselves on the baby-sitting rota and looked after the children who lived in Victoria Park flats while their parents went out. This was by no means a mundane job. Once we cared for two small boys whose parents had recently settled down after working in a circus. There were circus posters on the walls and the children leapt around from one piece of furniture to another, like monkeys who had been let out of their cage. Another time a small girl climbed on to Ian’s knee and asked him if he would be sleeping with her Mummy that night and whether he was her Daddy.

  Ian somehow managed to balance his life between his council-estate friends and his more affluent peers at the King’s School. I also tried to keep hold of my old friends, but I was not as successful, mainly because Ian strongly objected to them. Without me realizing it, he began to take control of my life very early on in our relationship.

  My friend Elaine and I had Saturday jobs on a cheese and bacon stall in the indoor market in Macclesfield town centre. Ian wanted me to walk to his flat every lunch-time so that his mother could make me a sandwich. Instead of speaking up I allowed myself to be the victim of either Doreen’s misplaced kindness or Ian’s determination to keep tabs on me. He always met me and escorted me to and from the stall. Considering the time I spent at the flat, I rarely saw Ian’s sister Carole. She was like Ian in appearance, but was always ready with a shy smile. She had not passed the eleven-plus to go to the local grammar school, so I assumed she was not as academically gifted as Ian. Although she was only about thirteen at the time, I once suggested to Ian that it would be nice when Carole started going out with boys so that we could make up a foursome. Ian replied, ‘My sister’s never going to go out with boys!’

  Ian would often spoil a pleasant evening by having an inexplicable temper tantrum. When half a dozen of us visited a friend’s home, one of us complimented our friend’s father on his house. The embarrassed father blushed and spluttered a little before saying, in a self-effacing manner, ‘It’s better than living in Moss Side.’ Ian immediately leapt upon his soap box and said, ‘What’s wrong with Moss Side?’ While the poor man struggled to explain himself, Ian accused him of being racist, threw a punch at another guest and ended up crouching on the floor behind the settee. I remember kneeling down and trying to persuade him to come out, but he was as implacable as ever. Most probably it was Oliver Cleaver who eventually coaxed him into going home.

  In the summer of 1973, Oliver’s parents went away on holiday, leaving Oliver to stay at a friend’s house. Oliver let us back into his parents’ house and we had a small but out-of-hand party which came to an abrupt end when Ian smashed his fist through the glass in the front door. No one knew why he was so angry, but the wound could not have been very deep as we were able to walk to casualty.

  *

  Autumn arrived and life was in danger of becoming boring again. However, while Oliver was drinking at the Park Tavern, he struck up a friendship with Robert from Copperfield Antiques and John Talbot who toured the antiques fairs. They were in the habit of throwing parties rather more frequently than anyone else we knew and the atmosphere of those evenings will remain with me forever. One of the happiest times of my life ensued. An impressionable sixteen-year-old, with Keats’s ‘The Eve of St Agnes’ ringing in my ears, I fantasized that one day we could all return to the days of wizards and knights in shining armour.

  The antique shop was a listed building, barely in the town centre of Macclesfield. Each time we went to a party there, Ian tapped on the door and it was opened the smallest peep. For some reason I always anticipated rejection, but we were never refused admission. There would be a roaring coal fire in the grate, the firelight licking the stone walls and ancient paving stones, camp-sounding music and often something to eat. The food would be elaborately laid out like a feast, with a huge bowl of punch into which everyone poured whatever they had brought with them.

  As the evening wore on, guests would disrobe and squeeze into the shower together. Ian was reluctant to join in with such antics – he was more likely to be found standing in a corner smoking. One evening a rather plain but nubile young girl slid naked between us while we were in one of the four-poster beds. Ian was horrified and kicked her out again. Yet Ian wasn’t always opposed to the presence of other females. When he disappeared for a long time one night I asked Kelvin to find him for me. When Kelvin also disappeared I began to search the house myself and discovered them both in a bedroom I had never seen before with Hilary, a blonde whose beauty was marred only by eyes that looked in opposite directions.

  On one occasion, rather than make the long walk home, we slept over. The walls of the bedroom were unplastered and a wooden ‘chandelier’ with candles hung from the ceiling. Five of us tried to squeeze into bed but eventually Oliver was dispatched to sleep on the chaise longue. Ian insisted I lie on my side next to the wall and somehow he managed to lie on his back. He wouldn’t allow me to sleep next to John because he didn’t want us to touch and neither would he turn his back on John. I lay and watched the water running down the stone wall – it was a very long night. The next morning John leapt out of bed first, smeared his face with Oil of Ulay, and made coffee to warm us up. His pugs, Oscar and Bertie, were released from the kitchen and we sat shivering, the coals of the fire long dead and the revels of the party a pleasant memory.

  The atmosphere was very ‘Noel Coward’ – there was a certain pride in its elitism. One evening a couple of Macclesfield yobs were barred entry. When they asked why, John replied, ‘Because you’re disgusting!’ At times it was insisted that the guests all wore hats or a particular type of clothing. The boys posed in the Macclesfield Arms wearing tailcoats, aloof and disinterested in the rest of the customers. All those dashing and handsome young men and most of them eyeing each other!

  John Talbot regarded Ian as being quite ordinary, which he was in comparison to some of the eccentrics in the antiques world. Ian exercised a quiet enjoyment of these friendships and nobody seemed to mind when they realized he wasn’t gay. While Ian did wear make-up, it was fashionable at the time and he didn’t stand out as being overly flamboyant in his dress and manner. To John Talbot it was Ian’s strong personality that projected itself and it was clear that nobody influenced him apart from his idols. Oliver Cleaver’s parents forbade him to visit John at the shop – in John’s opinion, missing the point that Ian Curtis had a much greater effect on their son. At the same time, Ian’s parents had begun to blame Ian’s lifestyle on Oliver.

  It was well known that, after music, Ian’s second love was his clothes. He yearned to be noticed and he accentuated his imposing image whenever he could and with little difficulty. Shortly before Christmas 1973, Ian set eyes on a tiger-print scarf in the window of a men’s clothes shop in Macclesfield. He knew he wouldn’t have any spare cash until it was almost Christmas and so he kept going back to the window to check that the scarf was still there. I went in one day and bought it as a surprise Christmas present. My pleasure was spoiled because of the distress it caused Ian when he thought Oliver had been in the shop and beaten him to it!

  People who knew Ian from that time remember him for his gentleness and thoughtful sincerity. Possessions never really meant a great deal to him and, although his passion lay with buying records, once the shine had worn off he would be amenable to lending or giving them away. He was generous to a fault a
nd it seemed to give him much pleasure.

  John Talbot said of Ian’s death: ‘I was confused because everything I read about him made him out to be a doom merchant and I don’t remember him like that. Music does propagate myths and people have tried to make that myth more than it was.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  WALK WITH ME, TAKE HOLD AND SEE

  Ian’s family moved away from Macclesfield in the late spring of 1973 when Ian was half-way through his first A level year. Ian had had enough of the King’s School and probably it had had enough of him. Once he decided to quit, there was no reason for the family to remain in Macclesfield, so they bought a house in New Moston, Manchester, from a friend of Aunty Nell. Ian’s intention was to continue studying for his History and Divinity A levels at St John’s College in the city centre, but after only two weeks he began to argue with his tutors and stopped attending lectures. He told me that he couldn’t agree with the views of his new tutors in the same way that he could with those at the King’s School. For a while he felt unable to tell his parents what had happened and spent two evenings a week walking the streets.

  In the summer of 1973 I took a holiday job at Parkside Psychiatric Hospital in Macclesfield. I was interested in training to be an occupational therapist and thought that working there for a few weeks would give me a good insight into the job. I had already worked there the previous summer, but since then there had been a staff change. The atmosphere was more oppressive than I remembered and the painful inertia of the patients was typified by an old lady called Eva. It had taken her a full twelve months to progress from peeing on the floor at the department entrance to sitting down and making a small teddy bear. Perhaps my depressing tales of the mental hospital spurred Ian on, but he began to think seriously about moving to London. When Jonathan King announced he was looking for talent, Ian went down to the big city and queued with the rest of the hopefuls. He took nothing with him; he had no demo tape, not even a lyric sheet, yet he expected Jonathan King to recognize his obvious talent!