Gladys Reunited - A Personal American Journey (The Gladys Society)

247 Pages·2011·1.04 MB·English

by  Toksvig Sandi

Gladys Reunited
A Personal American Journey

SANDI TOKSVIG
To Jesse, Meg and Ted
Acknowledgements

My father once wrote a book called Edited Reality. It dealt with the difficulties
of covering the American presidential elections as a foreign journalist. He wrote
about how tough it is ever to present an objective and factual account of a real
event. Different people at the same occasion will perceive it differently. This is
my edited reality of the journey I have taken. I hope that the women of the
Gladys Society who took me into their homes and lives will accept that I have
done my best to present a truth of what happened. Thank you to them and their
families for making me so welcome.
Once again I find I couldn’t have written a word without my mentor and
friend Ursula MacKenzie, the splendid Viv Redman, who keeps me going with
her eye for detail, and my agent Pat Kavanagh. Thank you as well to my travel
companions Richard and Paul, my kids for letting me go, Alice for her support,
the extraordinary kindness of my friends Carol and Sue and to Helena Taylor for
needing something to read on her holidays.
A Preface on a Horse

Can I just say right at the beginning that I like America? It’s a country I feel
comfortable in. I grew up in New York. I spent my formative time there: those
growing years, which an advertising slogan for pap white bread in the late
sixties/early seventies called The Wonderbread Years’. It is the place of my
childhood. I know all about ‘America the Beautiful’. I have seen its ‘purple
mountains majesty’; its ‘amber fields of grain’ and travelled from ‘sea to shining
sea’. This is the story of a journey to a country I know, to seek a group of
women I used to be friends with. It’s a trip that should have been a doddle, but it
wasn’t. It was endlessly surprising and, at one point, very nearly fatal. I suppose
journeys ought to be related in the chronology in which they occurred, but
indulge me while I take one incident out of sequence. I think it reveals a lot
about the English woman travelling in the colonies across the water.
There is a quote attributed to George Bernard Shaw that says something along
the lines of America and England being two nations divided by a common
language. I always thought it was nonsense till I met a horse called Shirley and
fell face-first into the Arizona desert.
It was like this. I had arranged to go to an all women’s rodeo in Phoenix,
Arizona, to meet up with two members of the Gladys Society. You don’t need to
know who they are yet because, suffice to say, neither of them showed up.
Without the women I had come to meet, I found myself wasted on the sweet
desert air and on something of a fruitless mission. Ever one to turn disaster to an
advantage, my business partner, Richard, with whom I make television
documentaries, decided the non-appearances were a good thing. We were in the
Wild West and we should make the most of it. Without strange women to clutter
up our day we could concentrate on making a very fine little film about the
curious world of the rodeo. I like to think I am highly professional and so I
agreed. I justified travelling five thousand miles to meet two women who never
came by telling Richard that he was right; that I was keen to make a defining
piece of film about the American addiction to the iconography of the cowboy
and how that image had impacted on societies around the world. Richard nodded
and said that sounded good but actually he just wanted to meet cowboys in tight
jeans and have me do something amusing with a horse. It is my own fault for
choosing a gay boy as a cohort.
We went to watch rodeo. We watched professional rodeo, where many people
did quite dangerous things with huge animals; and then we watched amateur gay
and lesbian rodeo, where many people did quite dangerous things with huge
animals accompanied by a Barbra Streisand soundtrack. It was all looking rather
jolly until the night Richard frankly had a Bloody Mary too far.
‘I think what we need to make this documentary really special,’ he slurred at
me, ‘is to have you actually take part.’
Now it is possible that I too had ingested a spirit or two. A tabloid paper
would no doubt have said that I was ‘pissed’, but I prefer to use the show-
business expression that I was somewhat ‘tired and emotional’. Anyway, I
agreed and forgot about it. The next day Richard asked the organiser of the
Professional Women’s Rodeo Association, ‘What would Sandi have to do in
order to take part in a professional rodeo?’
The organiser, a charming woman in surprisingly well-fitting leather, tipped
back her hat and drawled, ‘Wheeell, she’d haaave to join the Prowfessional
Women’s Rodeo Association.’
One hundred and twelve dollars later and I was a member. I felt some pride at
this and indeed, even now, as I venture down my local high street in England, I
swagger slightly knowing I am probably the only paid-up member of the PWRA
hitting that particular town. It was when the organiser passed me my
membership card that I had my first misgivings.
‘Do you not want to know if I can ride at all?’ I asked nervously.
‘No, ma’am,’ she said. ‘If you caaan’t riyde then basically you just gaaave a
donation.’ She smiled at me and sauntered off to subdue a reasonably enraged
bull.
Card in hand, I watched the many events with renewed interest. I was
absolutely dear that I did not wish to get on anything bucking and I wasn’t mad
keen on any activity which involved roping together the four legs of a creature
who was trying simultaneously to run away. In the end Richard and I settled on
the least scary-looking event — The Barrel Race.
Basically it works like this: the rodeo arena is about the size of half an
English football pitch. It is covered in brown, dusty dirt with a large entrance
gate at one end for horses and riders and chutes along one side for the less tame
entrants. Three barrels (in fact old oil drums) are placed at some distance apart in
a triangle. Horse and rider then compete against the clock to enter the arena, ride
a cloverleaf pattern around the drums and out again. A professional barrel racer
makes this look like a very straightforward procedure. The fact that they seem to
be able to take a huge thoroughbred animal almost sideways round an obstacle
impressed rather than deterred me. I knew that the champions could do the
whole thing in about thirteen seconds but I wasn’t aiming to win, just take part. I
decided my approach would be the same one I had had as a child to any running
race — no point in rushing things.
Despite the fact that I have done many curious things in the course of my
career (canoed across Africa — not to be recommended. You end up with
something not dissimilar to trench bottom; sailed an ancient yacht around the
whole of the UK and once, bizarrely, been blown up in the waters off the Isle of
Wight while trying to manoeuvre a wardrobe which had been converted into a
miniature hovercraft — it’s a long story and we haven’t the time), despite my
many adventures in life, I am by nature a somewhat cautious person.
‘I think,’ I said to Richard, ‘perhaps I ought to have, you know, at least the
one riding lesson.’
‘I thought you could ride,’ he said.
There was a slight pause. ‘Not as such,’ I confessed.
Richard and I were on a very limited budget and this fact was reflected in our
hotel. Les Jardins is a strange, deserted motel in downtown Phoenix. It is built
round an open-air pool with much pale pink decor. I don’t think you’ll find it in
any guidebook and there are reasons for this. The only pretension it has to being
an upmarket hostelry is the name. Clearly the owners don’t speak French for
there are no gardens of any kind for several miles around. The hotel provides
few amenities but in the lobby there is a rather shabby stand made of chipped
Formica which holds the ubiquitous tourist leaflets you find all over the world.
Richard leafed through them.
‘I bet there are some riding lessons here,’ he said. ‘It’s the Wild West; people
must be gagging to get on a horse.’
‘Are you?’ I asked. He looked at me as though I had suggested he might also
take up manual labour and produced a glossy slip with a flourish.
‘Here we are! The very thing. MacDonald’s Farm.’
‘MacDonald’s Farm?’ I repeated. ‘Do you think that bodes well? I mean it
doesn’t sound very… western.’
‘Darling, it will be a triumph,’ he declared and swept off to be charming on
the phone to, presumably, Old Macdonald himself.
I was beginning to have rather serious misgivings. I like animals. I like them
a lot but not so as I need to come into physical contact with them. I spend a good
deal of time working for animals with the Born Free Foundation and I think
animals should be free. They should be free and not made to walk under my not
inconsiderable arse. The other thing that has happened as I get older is that I am
much less bold than I used to be. I don’t want to risk my life any more. I am
acutely aware of my own mortality and I figure the grim reaper will come calling
soon enough without me sending him a route map. I phoned home.
‘I’m scared,’ I blubbed to my nearest and dearest. ‘I don’t want to get on a
horse and now it’s all organised and I think something terrible is going to
happen.’ I received many long-distance strokings and soothings but it didn’t
help. I was still scared as we pulled into MacDonald’s Farm.
The farm lay some distance from Phoenix, to the north, in a large area of
desert. There is an expression in America used when someone has died. People
often say ‘He bought the farm’. I don’t know where the saying originates from
but MacDonald’s looked like the sort of farm you might buy if your death was to
be followed by mild punishment. Attempts had been made to turn the place into
some kind of tourist Mecca. A row of sheds had been given false fronts to
recreate the look of a Wild West town. They were rather small and lacked only
Munchkins to complete the surreal picture. I was introduced to a cowboy called
Bill. Bill certainly looked the part. He wore the pointy boots, the jangling spurs,
the leather chaps and a long leather trail coat. He had a fine black hat and a
splendid moustache. Sadly, he was also myopic. Bill wore the thickest spectacles
I have ever seen. He appeared to view the world through the base of twin whisky
tumblers and I found it unnerving.
‘He can’t see,’ I whispered to Richard.
‘So what?’ he hissed. ‘What’s there to see? It’s the desert. All there is out
here are cactuses and you can feel those.’
Bill sized me up and went to select my horse; It was a girl horse. Bill led her
towards me in the corral.
‘Here you go, Sandi. This is Shirley.’
‘Shirley?’
‘Yup.’
‘The horse is called Shirley?’
‘Uh huh.’ Bill wandered off leaving me with Shirl. It wasn’t what I had
expected. I looked at my steed. This was it. This was me about to enter the world
of the cowboy. It was a world that I had spent some time trying to prepare for.
I live much of my life in the mistaken belief that you can ready yourself for
anything if you have enough knowledge. I tend to seek my armour for daily
battles in books. I had scoured book-shops in Phoenix for cowboy lore and I
thought I was ready. In one of my many tomes it said, ‘All you need to be a
cowboy is guts and a horse, and if you’ve got the guts you can steal the horse.’
Well, I’d got Shirley with my Visa card and somehow it didn’t feel quite
right. Bill helped me heave on to the horse and we set off. Him in his great
Western garb and me in an ill-fitting pair of jeans from The Gap. I was further
from ready than I have ever been in my life. We wandered out into the desert
amongst the feel-able cactuses and, in a clearing of sand, began the lesson. Bill
laid out the basic barrel pattern on the ground and Shirley and I began to master
the cloverleaf ride. Richard filmed and everything proceeded quite sedately
under the magnificent blue of the Arizona sky. I can’t say I was at one with my
mount but the trembling fear began to ebb away slightly. In fact, I thought it was
all going rather well, which only goes to show how out of touch a human being
can be with the equine mind. On reflection I realise, of course, that we had upset
Shirley’s entire world. She was not a creature destined for glory in the rodeo
ring. This was an animal on a tourist ranch. An animal whose daily life consisted
entirely of plodding along the same track, day after day, with her nose firmly up
the bottom of the horse in front. We were making Shirley very unhappy indeed.
After about half an hour Bill declared, ‘I think we should lope one.’
I shrugged my shoulders nonchalantly as if I even knew what that meant.
‘Okay but not too fast.’
Basically what happened is simple:
Bill and his steed set off very fast.
I set off very fast and…
Shirley didn’t.
Among the many experiences I have had in my life, being bucked off a horse
had, until then, not been on the list. All I can tell you about it is that it is a
surprisingly long way up before the inevitable drop down. Shirley kicked both
back legs high in the air, I tipped forward, managed to stay on and then she did it
again and I was gone. Up, up and away and then down, down, down into the
desert. I landed with a rather satisfactory thud and lay moaning in the sand.
Everything that I had feared had happened. I was in that instant consumed with
terror. I thought I had broken my neck. I thought that I was paralysed and I also
thought that it was terribly embarrassing. If I blame my English boarding-school
education for anything (and, believe me, I have a very long list) then it is a
burdensome sense of manners, which was so forcibly instilled that I cannot
shake it off. I felt somehow that it must be my fault and that I had behaved
badly. Bill had leapt off his horse and was by my side.
‘Don’t move, don’t move,’ he ordered. It was an unnecessary instruction. I
couldn’t move but I was desperate to get up and show that everything was fine.
He tried to roll me over and sit me up. The pain and fear were overwhelming.
‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘I’m so sorry.’
Richard, finally taking the matter seriously, abandoned the camera and ran
towards me. However injured I was this was too much.
‘Keep filming, you bastard!’ I shouted through gritted teeth. I blamed Richard
for the entire event but thought we should at least get it on tape.
Shirley snorted and went home. She knew when her day was satisfactorily
done. She too was a bastard. Bill produced a brand-new sling from his inside
pocket. If I had known it was something he habitually carried with him I would
never have got on the horse in the first place. As I was completely unable to
move my right arm, he fixed the sling around my neck and strapped my arm to
my chest. Between them, he and Richard got me to my feet.
‘I’m fine,’ I kept repeating. ‘I’m so sorry.’ I wasn’t fine. I was terrified and in