Touching from a Distance Read online

  Ian saw an advert in a newspaper asking for young men to apply for jobs abroad. Again the interview was in London and Ian went down to find out what it was all about. The job turned out to be the position of gigolo in the South of France and Ian was asked if he would be willing to entertain rich old ladies. They photographed him while he talked. I don’t know whether he was offered the post, but he was allowed to bring home some of the pictures.

  After I took my O levels, Ian set about persuading me to follow him and leave school altogether. He implied that he had no real wish to date a schoolgirl and, to be fair, it took little persuasion for me to leave. All my close friends were leaving and I was nervous about making new ones, so I gladly took the easy way out. The idea of studying elsewhere appealed to me and I was keen to start again in an establishment where I felt I could be more anonymous. I disliked drawing attention to myself and in retrospect I think that was one of my main assets for Ian. I was there as an accessory, with little danger of ever outshining him! I enjoyed the attention I thought he was giving me, genuinely believing that he knew best. I stopped wearing make-up because he said I looked better without it and tried not to displease him by going anywhere without him. ‘We’ll get married‚’ he said. ‘Don’t worry about a job. I’m going to make so much money you’ll never need to work.’

  I passed seven O levels and looked at the local college of further education, intending to take my A levels there, but Ian seemed distressed at the idea of me having even more opportunity to mix with men. He balked when he realized that I wore a short skirt rather than jeans to look around the college and insisted that should I enrol at the college, I would not wear make-up. His anger frightened me, but I pushed it to the back of my mind. I told myself that he would change when he felt more secure in our relationship. Indeed, it was hard to reconcile Ian’s attitude towards me when other men were around and his attitude when we were alone. He liked to take me on long, rambling country walks. The solitude and the silence seemed to make him happy and he was never more charming and loving than on these occasions.

  I’m not sure Ian himself knew why he would suddenly become so angry. He seemed to have a great deal of hate inside that was always directed at those closest to him. In the autumn of 1973 we went to a Lou Reed concert at the Empire Theatre, Liverpool. My parents kindly offered to drive us there and visit relatives while we went to the gig. We had to leave Macclesfield quite early, so when they picked me up from my photography class at college, Ian was in the car. The familiar pout and glower were already in place. When he surreptitiously showed me the quarter-bottle of gin in his pocket, I realized that he was well on his way to oblivion.

  Immediately on entering the theatre, he began to drag me around by the hand as if searching for something. The last place he pulled me into was a vast, white, bright room full of men, who turned around and shouted at me. I couldn’t believe that Ian had actually taken me into the gent’s toilet, but he decided that it was all my fault and turned on me. I still didn’t understand why he had drunk so much in the first place, but I knew I wasn’t going to enjoy the performance. By the time we found our seats I was crying, my head ached with the tension and I began to feel nauseous. A man in the row behind could hear Ian’s seething remonstrations and offered me some painkillers. Ian tried to prevent me from accepting, but I took them anyway and had to suck the pills because I couldn’t swallow.

  I had a Saturday job in a lingerie shop in Macclesfield and in the evening I would take the train to Manchester and meet Ian at Rare Records in Manchester city centre. The Rare Records job was incredibly important to Ian. He swotted for the interview by reading all his back copies of the music press and was thrilled when he was offered the job in the pop department in the basement. Ian allowed me to use the train to Manchester because he wanted me to be there as soon as possible, but he insisted that I make the journey home on the bus because it was cheaper. It was also twice as long and very cold.

  Yet in some ways Ian could be very soft hearted. He was always hungry and forever buying greasy food from dirty-looking street traders. One balmy evening we were walking through Albert Square in Manchester. There were hyacinths in the window boxes of the town hall and the scent was overpowering. Ian took one bite out of his hot beef pie before spotting a lone tramp huddled on one of the benches. Barely able to chew the piece in his mouth, he went over and handed the pie to the tramp.

  *

  After only three months of my A level course, Ian asked me to look for a job and start saving for our marriage. Already bored with study, I accepted a clerical post in quality control at ICI pharmaceuticals. During the week we spoke to each other every night on the phone. Sometimes he would hint that he might have taken another girl out, or that he was seeing someone else, but any attempt to make me jealous was foiled by the fact that I trusted him implicitly. Also, because of his overwhelming jealousy, I assumed that two-timing me would be the last thing he would do. Moving to Manchester had brought about a change in Ian – as far as I knew he had stopped experimenting with drugs. This was a great relief to me because I (mistakenly) assumed he was happy. As someone who had never so much as smoked a cigarette, I found his desire for escapism through drug-induced detachment incomprehensible.

  Ian’s bedroom was the front parlour at his parents’ house and it was here we sat, hour upon hour, listening to Lou Reed and Iggy Pop. I didn’t mind this as I had developed my own favourites. The only album of Ian’s that I never took to was Lou Reed’s Berlin. One afternoon he decided to read to me from the works of Oscar Wilde. He chose ‘The Happy Prince’. It tells the tale of a bejewelled statue and his friendship with a swallow. The bird postpones flying south for the winter in order to help the sad prince. The swallow picks off the jewels and gives them to the people of the city who are suffering. ‘Dear little Swallow‚’ said the Prince, ‘you tell me of marvellous things, but more marvellous than anything is the suffering of men and of women. There is no Mystery so great as Misery. Fly over my city, little Swallow, and tell me what you see there.’ As Ian’s voice neared the end of the story, it began to crack like the leaden heart of the statue and he cried like a baby.

  A constant obstruction to the potential smooth-running of my life, Ian made it difficult for me to feel comfortable in my first job. His persistent questioning about the men I worked with would make me self-conscious about becoming friendly with anyone. He would telephone every night and interrogate me. We argued during one such telephone conversation and Ian deliberately put his foot through a glass door at his parents’ house.

  He was my first lover but one evening his unfounded, obscene ranting and raving about my friendships with previous boyfriends got out of hand and I became ill. My father took time off work the next day to take me out to lunch. He and my mother hoped it was an end to my relationship with Ian Curtis. They had always found Ian strange, although up until then he had behaved towards them in a fairly innocuous manner. Initially, it had been the earring, the sunglasses worn in the dark and the Marlboro smoke that bothered them. What alarmed them later were his selfishness and his desire to be the centre of attention. Ian turned up in Macclesfield the following Friday. Knowing that my mother wouldn’t allow him over the threshold, he booked in at the George Hotel on Jordangate.

  As we sat in Sparrow Park that night, I endeavoured to let Ian down gently. I suggested we stop seeing each other for a while or just not see so much of each other. He was distraught and kept on and on, begging me to reconsider. Eventually I gave in and agreed to carry on with the relationship, promising myself at the same time to try to finish it another day. The next morning, armed with a bouquet for my mother, he apologized to her. She did her utmost to feign forgiveness, but I knew she was still furious.

  *

  On 14 February 1974, Ian gave me another valentine card with a rhyme inside. It described a dream he’d had about me, walking alone and lonely on a deserted beach – definitely not a love poem. I threw the card away as I felt that he was tryin
g to frighten me. Nevertheless, the dream was to come true in June 1980 in Carnoustie, Scotland, where I holidayed with my parents and Natalie after Ian’s death.

  Despite my earlier resolutions, Ian and I became inextricably tied and I couldn’t or wouldn’t imagine my life without him. He never forgot that I had tried to end our relationship. As a warning, he told me that I had no choice but to marry him since no one would want what was irretrievably ‘his’.

  We got engaged on 17 April 1974. The engagement ring held half a dozen small sapphires surrounding a minute diamond and cost £17.50 from Ratners. What impressed me most of all was that Ian sold his guitar to pay for it. My parents had offered me either an engagement party for all of our large family, or an eighteenth birthday party for my friends the following December. Ian chose that we should have an engagement party. It didn’t seem to matter to him that owing to sheer numbers we would not be able to invite our friends. He was fond of telling me that his friends didn’t really like me, so it didn’t matter to me either. He also pointed out that an engagement party would mean presents for our future together, but an eighteenth birthday party would mean presents for me personally. His views seemed practical and the way he put it made it sound as if he only wanted the best for our married life. By the time he had finished, I felt selfish for even considering a birthday party. The only friend I invited was a close one from school, Christine Ridgeway. He had outlawed all my other friends.

  My Liverpudlian family came to Macclesfield in its entirety. If anyone knows how to party, they do. No one had any intention of driving home, so there was no need to worry about how much anyone was drinking. They gathered in the kitchen and told raucous jokes, they danced in the dining room, and they chatted in the lounge. Meanwhile, Ian’s family sat perched uncomfortably on the edge of the settee. They didn’t drink alcohol but wanted endless cups of tea, which kept my mother tied to the kitchen.

  As I downed a few drinks I began to get into the swing. While I was having a quick dance with one of my younger uncles, I didn’t notice Ian glowering at me through the doorway. When I joined him in the hall, he took hold of his Bloody Mary and threw it upwards into my face, covering it and my dress in thick tomato juice. Christine tried to referee between us. There was no need because my main concern was that no one else should know what he had done. In fact I covered up for him. His family left shortly after I reappeared in a new outfit. My mother guessed what had happened, but I denied it.

  Ian did try to join in with the fun, but he danced alone rather than with me. His stiff, contorted movements and static, staring pout assured him of a large if puzzled audience. As my relations looked at each other bemused, I experienced a strange mixture of embarrassment and glee at his individuality. The next tantrum came when Ian realized that we would not be able to have a room to ourselves for the night. In a three-bedroomed bungalow with dozens of guests looking for somewhere to put their heads, it wasn’t surprising. The next day, despite the not altogether innocent parties at the antique shop, Ian gave me a lecture on the excesses of drink and how various aunts should have conducted themselves. My grandmother went home convinced that Ian was ‘on drugs’. I only wish he had been; at least it would have provided me with an excuse for his behaviour. Even then, my mother voiced her fears about Ian’s split personality, but I was horrified that she could suggest such a thing. My relationship with Ian had almost become an act of defiance.

  We did have a small engagement celebration with Kelvin Briggs and Elayne King when we went to Jilly’s in Manchester for a Bowie/Roxy Music night. Whether it was to save money or for devilment, I don’t know, but we took our own drinks hidden inside our coats and didn’t buy a round all evening. I was sorry that Helen and. Oliver weren’t invited and got the impression Ian thought getting engaged was ‘uncool’. Ian lived his life by a conflicting code that changed depending on who was there at the time and what he could gain from it.

  Ian left his relatively secure job at Rare Records and hired a stall on Butter Lane antique market, round the corner from the record shop. This was an obvious bad move. I don’t think he ever made enough money to cover the rent. Initially all the stock came from Ian’s personal record collection. He bought new stock only once and the proprietors of the market complained that Ian’s goods were not strictly antique. I had taken a job at Macclesfield Borough Council and was working in an office next door to an auctioneers’. One lunch hour I bought a job lot of 78 r.p.m. discs, hoping that they would satisfy Ian’s critics. I don’t know if Ian actually sold any records while he had the stall. His collection diminished, but he never made any money. Even his prized copy of Bowie’s The Man Who Sold the World, with the cover picturing David Bowie wearing a dress, was allowed to go. Jubilantly, he told me he had sold it to a young boy, but it transpires that he had given it to Helen Atkinson Wood. He had managed to keep in touch with some of his old friends, despite forbidding me to see mine – including a male penfriend I’d had since I was thirteen.

  Eventually, Ian could no longer pay for his seat on the indoor market and began looking for a job. He applied to the Civil Service and was given a post at the Ministry of Defence in Cheadle Hulme. Just before he took up the post, he spent a day in Manchester with Aunty Nell. She helped him to sort out his wardrobe for his new job and he had his hair cut in a smarter, more spiky style. They had their photographs taken in a photo booth and they both looked so happy. Ian laughed when he told me later that Aunty Nell was pleased about his new job, but warned him that there might be homosexuals in the Civil Service. After a few months with the Ministry of Defence, he was offered another job working for the Manpower Services Commission in Sunley Building, Piccadilly Gardens, Manchester, which was much nearer home.

  We spent almost every weekend at Ian’s parents’ house. This occasionally annoyed his father but he lost his temper only once and even then nothing was said to me directly. Ian liked to take me to the gay pubs and clubs around Manchester, especially the Rembrandt, Napoleon’s and the Union. There was an old transvestite at the Union who called himself ‘Mother’ and sang bawdy songs. It embarrassed me that we behaved in such a voyeuristic manner, but I was embarrassed even more when one night we bumped into a couple of friends from Macclesfield. When the flustered ‘Helios’ were over, we embarked upon a gay pub crawl. Our friends introduced us to some of the regulars and Ian was able to talk to them for a long time. He had an intense interest in the way other people lived, especially those who led lives which were out of the ordinary. I didn’t want to know about the poor unfortunate man who was beaten up in the toilets on Park Green in Macclesfield.

  Other times we would go to the Bier Keller on Saturday nights and get legless before catching the last bus home. Ian’s mum and dad would wait up for us. I would sleep in Ian’s bed and he would sleep on the living-room settee. At bedtime, Ian always insisted on going to the bathroom first. He was still obsessed with his complexion. He wore antiseptic cream most of the time like thick make-up, adding an extra layer when he went to bed. His friends and mine thought it rather funny, but he never went anywhere without checking his skin.

  Ian liked to laugh with his parents and he pulled his mum’s leg all the time. He would say something utterly ridiculous while just out of earshot and she would pop her head out of the kitchen with a look of disbelief, to see Ian sliding down into the chair in a silent, quivering laugh. His jokes were always teasing, but never spiteful.

  In 1974, when we attended the wedding of my cousin Susan in Liverpool, the occasion was marred when Ian forbade me to dance, as he considered the scooped neckline on my cotton dress to be too low cut. I judged that even Ian would not dare to make a fool of himself in such a public place, so I danced anyway and ignored Ian’s sullen, miserable face. I thought it unreasonable for him to try to spoil my fun again. Luckily he was restrained, but insisted we make love on the train home to Manchester. By now I was used not only to Ian’s jealous and possessive attitude, but also his particular brand of retribution. I felt he
was re-establishing ownership.

  CHAPTER THREE

  FACE TO FACE

  Once we had named the day, our wedding preparations seemed to set themselves in motion. Ian showed little concern for the arrangements, but knowing his fetish for making sure my body was covered I chose a high-necked wedding dress. He didn’t like other men to look at me. I also bowed to his request that one of the hymns would be ‘Glorious Things Of Thee Are Spoken’, sung to the music of Haydn which is the same tune as the German National Anthem. Although I enjoy the flamboyance of the church, I hold the cynical view that some of the Christians I know are the most ‘un-Christian’ people. In fact, initially Ian was reluctant to marry me in a church. He predicted I would be struck down as I walked along the aisle.

  On the eve of our wedding, my insides were churning and my own and my mother’s nerves were in shreds. As I ironed my going-away dress and counted my ‘sexy knickers’, I felt afraid rather than excited. I convinced myself that the feeling that things ‘weren’t right’ was just wedding nerves, but I still had an understandable desire to take more than a few steps backwards in time. Since then I have discovered that Ian had doubts of his own. He told Lindsay Reade (Tony Wilson’s first wife) that he had thought about cancelling the wedding because he knew in his heart that he would eventually be unfaithful.