Not Stupid. Anna Kennedy
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and pots began falling onto the floor. My sister Maria Luisa began screaming, then jumped on top of me and flung her arms around my neck in blind panic. I could hardly breathe. Mum prised her off me and we all hurried down the stairs as they were splitting apart under our feet.
As our home shook even more violently and began to disintegrate, we rushed outside into the piazza. During a smaller, subsequent earthquake, I saw the nearby church become badly damaged and saw mannequins crashing through the windows of the shops.
I was 24 years old when we returned to the northeast of England. Given the chance, I would have loved to remain in Italy to continue running the successful dance school, Scuola de Danza de Anna, that I had set up on our arrival in Monte Cassino three years earlier, but my father, who is Italian, was having none of it. As far as he was concerned, the family – my mother, brother Tullio, Maria Luisa and I – would all return to Britain straightaway. I was gutted. My dance school had taken off really well and had the added selling point that I spoke English, so the kids coming to classes could improve their language skills at the same time.
Back in Middlesbrough, when I was 25, I found work in the office of the Whinney Banks Community Centre during the daytime and worked teaching dance to teenagers with special needs at the centre in the evenings.
One evening, as he rushed into the building, I noticed a young man wearing a Crombie coat, green socks and Dunlop trainers. He had what I would describe as a Jackson Five fuzzy haircut and a thick, bushy beard. He ran through the building and dashed up the stairs three or four at a time to where the yoga classes were being held.
He returned the next day as I was sitting in the lounge area during my lunch break. I must have been sitting very upright in my chair when Sean approached me. ‘Have you got a rod up your back?’ he asked. I just looked at him. What a strange guy! He sat down and stroked his beard.
‘Do you like beards?’
‘No,’ I replied as I turned my head away and ignored him.
‘OK,’ he said as he got up and off he went.
He was back again the following day, minus his beard. He looked at me and was obviously waiting for me to say something, but I didn’t. Then he started chatting to me. I have to admit, I really liked his eyes and the soft tone of his voice, which was surprising coming from such a big chap, who turned out to be a former rugby player – Sean was around six-foot-four tall and weighed around 18 stone.
After a while I got up to leave. I needed to be at Kirby College to attend a dance class to learn a new routine that I’d never tried before. Sean asked if he could walk me there and, on the way, he asked me for a date. I declined, concerned about what my father would say – even when I was 25 years old, my father strongly disapproved of me dating; the same went for my sister. Dad was so strict that if I was watching a film featuring a scene with a couple kissing I would be told to turn my head away. I was still doing so at 18 years of age because I’d been so conditioned by him. How crazy is that!
As a child, I hadn’t been allowed to go to friends’ houses to play. I’d been living such a sheltered life. From the ages of 13 to 16, I attended a convent school, where I took GCE O-levels and CSEs (Certificate of Secondary Education, which preceded the General Certificate of Secondary Education, or GCSE, in the UK) in French, English, needlework, domestic science, religious scriptures, maths and Italian. At the time I was incredibly naïve. After leaving school, I had, at the age of 16, my first experience of death and feelings of loss and despair when my friend Karen, who was also 16, died from a brain tumour. I found her death very hard to handle and to come to terms with.
I never dated at all until I was in my early twenties. When it came to boyfriends I’d had to be sneaky in case Dad found out. I had to pretend I was going to run an errand for my mother in order to get out of the house because Dad had such a controlling influence on us all. I think he was scared that my sister and I would be taken advantage of.
On leaving school at 16 I had wanted to enrol at Kirby College in order to learn to become an interpreter, but Dad had ripped up my application form. ‘Good girls stay at home,’ he’d insisted. When I was 17 my mother had a word with Dad. She told him I shouldn’t be hanging around at home all day. If I didn’t go to college he should let me go out to work. He reluctantly agreed and, after an interview at the Binns department store, I was taken on in the lingerie department, which necessitated my attending Kirby College one day a week to undertake business studies, so I did get there in the end.
My only escape from such regimented order came in the form of dance. When I was a young child, my mother had taken me to the Mavis Percival Dance School and it was there that I felt truly free to express myself. In a way, I was like a free bird when I danced – even though Dad tried several times to stop me going. As I’d grown up I’d enjoyed preparing for dance competitions and shows. I loved tap dancing but I also had to do ballet, which, to be honest, I hated. I much preferred fast-tapping jazz routines – ones you had to attack. I’m not a smoothy, floaty person. That’s just not me. But the ballet was a necessity if I was to improve my posture.
After working at Binns for 18 months I decided to open my own dance school. I’d studied for my teaching qualifications and was pleased to pass with 96 points from a possible 100. After helping my own dance teacher for a while, I began taking classes of my own in a church hall in Middlesbrough. At one time I had a hundred pupils. It was a very satisfying experience but, after I’d worked at Binns all day, dancing in the evenings meant I was always knackered! I had to choose between Binns and dance classes – so I chose the dancing.
It was only natural, bearing in mind Dad’s strict manner, that, when Sean asked me out for a date, my main concern was of Dad’s reaction, should he find out. But, when I declined Sean’s offer, he refused to give up, even when I explained my reasons why. Sean told me he would meet me in the nearby Debenham’s store and that I could use the excuse of running an errand for my mother as an excuse to get away.
It was absolutely pelting down with rain as I made my way to Debenham’s. I was convinced Sean wouldn’t be there, but there he was, wearing a smart suit and holding an umbrella. I was nervous. Although I’d already secretly seen a few boys in the short term, my first date with Sean was in the wake of a bad experience with one boy that had really scared me, mainly because I had been so naïve at the time. Sean, on the other hand, was quite forward and not shy at all. After chatting, we were surprised to find out that we had attended the same school in Middlesbrough and at the same time, although, to the best of our knowledge, we had never met.
Within three weeks Sean had asked me to marry him. At the time, we were in the house he shared with his mother, Coral, and his Aunt Pam. Sean had even cooked the meal for the occasion. A week later he took me into the town because he wanted to buy me a ring. It was now time to break the news to my family, but, when we got home, we discovered that Maria Luisa had been rushed to hospital with appendicitis, so it was obviously not the most appropriate of times to share our news. Instead I went straight to the hospital to see her.
However, the time eventually came when Sean was to be introduced to Dad. It was a complete nightmare. Everyone was nervous and Mum was baking for England. I’d already primed Sean to say all the things I thought Dad would want to hear, but it very soon became obvious that Sean was his own man. No one was going to tell him what he could or couldn’t say!
I was cringing as Dad became angrier and angrier. There were long silences, interrupted only by Mum frequently asking if anyone wanted more strawberry cakes. The meeting was a disaster. Dad was completely unimpressed, declaring, ‘He’s not going out with my daughter!’ Consequently, further meetings between Sean and me had to be clandestine.
I was heartbroken when Sean left Middlesbrough to attend Brunel University in Uxbridge, northwest London – and so was he. On arrival in London he rang me to say he’d get the first bus home to be with me again, but I persuaded him to stay. After four or five days, however, I was missing him so much. My Aunt Anita could see how low I was and said I should just pack up some things and go to him, that at my age I shouldn’t still be under Dad’s wing. Although I only had around £20 on me, I took the train to King’s Cross, where