Tally's Blood 6

I realised last night watching a stagger-through of Tally’s Blood just why I find the moment at the end of Act 1 so moving when Massimo returns from Canada. It is for a similar reason that I find the scene where Hughie is trying not to cry so moving. They both trigger the same emotional memory in me that reminds me of an episode from my very early childhood.

I was 3 years old and my mother, due to complications, had been in hospital during the last month of her pregnancy before giving birth to my sister, Katie. For some reason I had been forbidden by my father to visit mum during that time. Perhaps he thought it would upset or confuse me. Dad and grandma had looked after my brother, Julia and me during that time. Eventually of course mum came home. I can still vividly recall standing at the top of the stairs as my dad carried mum’s bag from the car, my grandma held the door open, and my mother appeared looking radiant and strangely different with my new baby sister in her arms. I can remember mum saying to grandma how wonderful it was to be home and then noticing me as I stood at the top of the stairs looking down on all this. My mum smiled hesitantly... “Hello, Mark. Did you miss me? Come and say hello to your new baby sister,” I feigned diffidence, knowing that this was a rite of passage I did not want to make, for as soon as I acknowledged this new arrival the whole family dynamic would change forever and I would have to become grown up and responsible as I had been warned. It would become somehow real, and things would never ever be the same again.

My mum’s expectations of a sentimental homecoming were dashed. I remember she looked so forlorn and disappointed as she looked up at me. She was heart-broken I hadn’t run down the stairs towards her and hugged her with all my might. I overheard her whisper to my father and grandmother, “He doesn’t remember me.”

Of course I did. Of course I remembered who she was! But she had changed, and for some reason in some deep part of me I couldn’t help resenting this. I hadn’t been consulted about this new addition to the family. I was irrelevant. But I knew it would be unfair to take it out on this tiny baby, and the only person I could take it out on was my mother. She said she would always love me, that she had no favourites and I then I would put this to the test.

I had been a happy, affectionate and effusive child until this point. It wasn’t long after this day that I became haunted with recurring nightmares which continued into my adolescence, as I strived to maintain this stiff, unbending visage of emotional restraint and indifference, a stiff-upper-lipped mask of ‘bravery’ which my mother had told me was the measure of adulthood and maturity- the placing others’ needs before ones own. This was the genesis of one of the most destructive and hideously subtle reptiles in my First Mansion. I was being forced to grow up too early, and follow the example my mother set for “adulthood” which seemed to mean resisting one’s natural impulses and emotions; sacrificing one’s own emotional needs and who one really was in order to conform to the onerous and ‘inevitable’ expectations placed on you by the world to be other than one’s true self.
As far as I could see, although I could barely say my own name let alone articulate any of this the rules seemed to be as follows:

Don’t cry.
Don’t be jealous.
Don’t be “silly” (i.e. sensitive).
Always put others’ feelings, especially your younger brothers and sisters before your own.
Don’t seek attention.
Be seen and not heard.
And, (perhaps most wounding of all) suffer in silence.

Inwardly I was not at all ready for these twisted notions of Catholic sainthood (Was I ever??!!). And so it was that I instinctively protested in an insidious and passive-aggressive way. Of course I had never even heard of the phrase passive-aggressive then (- and I suppose in the early 1960s this pop-psychology phrase probably had yet to be coined!), but that didn’t mean I didn’t know how to manipulate others through such means. Now i look back on this I realise what a conniving wee bastard I really was! After all- I had ben tutored in such tactics at the feet of a true master- my own mother. Oh the irony of that! I decided in that very moment that I would use this opportunity to give her a dose of her own medicine and to pretend that I really didn’t remember her. When I sensed she was upset by this I remained where I was on the landing, peering through the banisters. I didn’t come running down to her, I just stared at her as if she were a stranger to me. To her I seemed withdrawn and taciturn, even afraid- which she interpreted as me having forgotten who she was (…How ridiculous! Of course I hadn’t forgotten who she was! My mother and father had always branded me as soft in the head, not very bright, and never granted me any real intelligence at all- but I wasn’t completely daft- or at least only when it suited me to be so!!).

I recall I got this strange feeling of going hot and cold at the same time- a surge of dark power coursing through my legs and chest. The plan I hatched and put into operation there and then was to thereafter withdraw all voluntary displays of fondness towards my mother- and only to embrace or kiss her when she asked me to, standing aside to allow my brothers and sisters to claim the lion’s share of her affection. In retrospect of course this was terribly cruel of me and upset my mother a great deal I suspect- and to be absolutely honest it hurt me a great deal too- but that was precisely why I chose to do it- BECAUSE I KNEW it would break her heart that I had locked away all signs of emotional dependence on her.

She'd hurt me by claiming to know how I felt, and this would be my revenge. She was turning this into some silly drama by pretending that I didn’t know who she was- well then, so be it. If that was the game, then alright I’ll play by your rules, mummy, and we’ll see who backs down first. Why should she assume that because she was my mother that she should have an automatic entitlement to my thoughts, my love, my identity? Hadn’t she been the one to tell me that growing up was about breaking free of ones parents and making ones own way in the world? OK then, so be it. This little boy’s heart had longed for attention which I felt was going to be denied me forever more, and lavished instead on this new arrival, my sister Katie, and my other younger siblings. All mum and dad’s time and energy from now onwards would be taken up with caring for my three younger siblings; my needs would remain secondary to theirs- perhaps rightly so one might think; but to my 3 year old mind this was sickeningly unjust. I didn’t feel ready to be abandoned like this. I would take charge of this and do it myself.

This was a defining event in my early life, and marked the beginning of my individuation process as a nascent personality, and generally fucked-up ego. And perhaps even more interesting and significant than this was the fact that this early episode was in fact the very first time in my life I ever remember pretending to feel something other than what I truly felt inside. What I mean is, this was the first time I ever ACTED! It perhaps set the mark for everything in my life that came after. Inwardly, what I felt was a deep sense of loss and betrayal- but I chose to mask this with a frosty and cold rebuttal- a deliberately constructed charade that I didn’t remember my own mother. She had made this possible, and I wanted her to live with the consequences of having created this situation. After all, if mummy was always right- simply because she gave birth to me- and if, as she also claimed, she knew me far better than I could know my own self, and could see into my inner thoughts- well OK, so be it; I will behave as if that were true- and then watch her suffer the cruel consequences of her assumptions. My acting became about blocking her from seeing my true feelings. My damaged ego was fuelled by an unconscious but toxic envy of my younger brothers and sisters, and a naked fear of rejection by my parents and a rejection of this new regime of self-sacrifice that was being imposed on me. I was going to show her the consequences of her arrogant and false assumptions, and see how much she liked being rejected by me. Of course I am describing something I could never really properly think through at the time. It is only now I can see what happened in that instant.

The reason I mention all of this is because there are two moments in Tally’s Blood that, for me, are somehow deeply redolent of that primal scene. One is where the 6 year old, Hughie, is explaining to Lucia that his mother needs him to be the big, brave man in the family now his father has died, and has been forbidden to cry.

And the other moment that moves me even more deeply comes just before the interval. Massimo Pedreschi returns home after 4-years' incarceration in a POW camp for enemy aliens in Canada. He arrives at the door, and he greets Rosinella, his wife, and then turns to his erstwhile daughter, Lucia (now aged 10). Lucia stares and waits awkwardly at the other side of the room, reticent and cautious, as Massimo extends his arms to her. But she seems not to recognise him- he has lost a lot of his hair; he looks tired, older, thinner.

"Lucia...?" he asks, searchingly.

Lucia pauses and then takes one tentative step forward… and then another, before she begins to accelerate, and then finally launches herself into Massimo’s arms as he lifts her high off the floor. The music swells to a crescendo and the lights dim to blackout on this tearful family tableau. All rather cheesy you might well say... But this sequence is so deeply poignant for me because it contains echoes and parallels with that episode when I was three, offering a kind of evocation and artistic reconciliation of my own past.

And the reason I think I wanted to direct this play is because these two moments move me so much. They are so redolent of my own 'primal scene'. I hope it isn't that I am in any way using this project as some kind of self-indulgent psychodrama workshop, but these moments certainly do offer me the potential for deep inner soul repair, and psychological healing.

Emotional and sexual repression, matriarchal control, Catholic exclusivity, that whole sorry paradigm of 'sanctification through suffering' and the denial of affection are all woven deep into my directorial interpretation of this play- and these themes are very recognisable to me and reminiscent of my own childhood.

Art as therapy anyone?