The ObserverAutobiography and memoirReviewAlan Cumming’s violent upbringing at the hands of his father taught him the value of putting on an act
Alan Cumming is not smiling on the cover of his memoir. The man who loves to make us laugh is almost unrecognisably serious in black and white, touching one hand to his forehead as if he’s forgotten something. Thankfully, for us, he’s forgotten nothing. But not for want of trying –violence and the fear of it marred his childhood.
Split into four parts, Not My Father’s Son tells the story of Cumming’s appearance on Who Do You Think You Are? in October 2010. This neat device enables him to delve into his family history and travel around the world in an attempt to discover the fate of his maternal grandfather, Tommy Darling, killed in a “shooting accident” in Malay in 1951. At the same time, and very much off-camera, he’s forced into a quest to find his father and to rethink his whole childhood when the unrepentant bully he grew up calling Dad makes a close-to-death confession. These two narratives intertwine and what links them both is Cumming’s warm, confiding tone.
We begin on the Panmure estate in Carnoustie, Scotland – not a council estate but the leftovers of a country house where his dad runs a saw mill: “It was all very feudal and a bit Downton Abbey, minus the abbey… Looking back on it, it was a beautiful place to grow up, but at the time all I wanted was to get away as far as possible.” Didn’t we all? But what happens next makes it clear he had to escape or die: “Soon, my head was propelled forward by his hand, the other one wielding a rusty pair of clippers that he used on the sheep…They were blunt and dirty and they cut my skin, but my father shaved my head with them, holding me down like an animal.”
His father is the animal and there’s more to come. Cumming recalls all the drama of a childhood spent in fear of paternal rages and beatings but he’s no drama queen and this is not a pity party. Scariest of all are the calms between the storms: “That was the worst bit, the waiting… I never knew exactly when it would come, and that, I know, was his favourite part.” He pinpoints the origin of his acting career to pretending all was well as a child. Many actors say they sought the spotlight as a means of gaining attention but Cumming acted in order to avoid it. He lowered his eyes, and his voice, to butch himself up and appease his sadistic hyper-masculine father.
But it’s not all misery. There are moments of great and small joy – often side by side. When he’s 13 years old, Alan is offered a rare day out with his dad. He is, rightly, suspicious. When they arrive at the Angus Show, a rural country fair, his father slips away with another woman but makes sure Alan notices and so feels complicit in adultery. What does Alan do? He blows his pocket money on a dinner service from the back of a van: “I wasn’t likely to be throwing any dinner parties for quite a while hence. But I needed to feel comfort, I needed to know there was future for me that did not involve my father… Beige and bland with 70s-style flowers, I thought they were the most sophisticated thing I’d ever seen. They were my ticket out.”
He keeps his father’s secret: “Our family had always been one of secrets, of silences, of holding things in.” So Alan, his big brother and his mum, Mary Darling, all keep secrets. After his first major stage role, as Hamlet, the strain becomes too much and Alan has a breakdown and enters therapy: “It was truly horrifying, but it was also liberating because in accessing those horrible memories I was beginning to understand who I really was.” He realises the lines he has learned about his own life may be lies: “Memory is so subjective. We all remember, in a visceral, emotional way, and so even if we agree on the facts – what was said, what happened where and when – what we take away and store from a moment, what we feel about it, can vary radically.”
The loose ends of Tommy Darling’s life are tied up in the TV show screened in 2010 and it’s worth watching, especially now we’ve been behind the scenes. As for his father, and what he was confessing, I’m not saying. There’s no big coming-out scene for Alan but surely we’re past needing that? Cumming’s real conflict is with shame about his childhood and it’s a fight we can be glad he has won: “I believe if you’re honest, true to yourself, and committed, and especially if you use humour as a tool as well as a balm, people will respect you perhaps more than if they agree with everything you said. It’s actually quite a good ethos for life: go into the unknown with truth, commitment and openness and mostly you’ll be OK.” Mostly.
Not My Father’s Son is published by Canongate Books (£16.99). Click here to buy it for £12.99
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