Forgotten Life (19 page)

The Them were multitudinous.

 

You may imagine that I was happy to leave St Paul's. You may, but it would not be true. For my parents, ever tender for my welfare, had put my name down for a much larger school, Tremblingham College, which boasted four hundred boys. Since St Paul's never boasted more than twenty, including day kids, the chances of bullying at Tremblingham might be reckoned at twenty times more likely.

I never adjusted to Tremblingham. It proved to be much like a larger scale St Paul's without the laughs. Perhaps I would have done better if I had not felt I was being sent away as a punishment, as part of what amounted to a continued policy of not loving me. That feeling persisted throughout my school days, being now and then reinforced by one or other incident which showed I was not just imagining things.

While the pitiful round of school term, recovering from the last school term, and preparing oneself psychologically for the next school term, was in full swing, much was going on elsewhere.

The female Winter baby, first seen in these pages red-faced and supping milk, had by now grown up considerably, to the extent of running about and being able to bark like a dog when requested to do so. She had a name: Ellen Mary. She proved to be good value. Whereas I had been reduced to a dreadful lickspittle, hanging around to do anything my parents suggested in order to avoid even more severe punishment (The Hulks? The Inquisition? The Bar?), Ellen, confident of inexhaustible mother's love, was a rebellious little spark, and an increasingly stalwart ally.

The sense of alliance grew when Mater again began to have swollen knees, to wear looser clothes, and to rest even longer in the afternoons. There was an impression that pink bootees were being knitted, new maids engaged, and new cans of powder lined up on the bathroom
shelf. I knew these ominous signs of old. Though still blind to the finer points of reproduction, I sensed that another member of the family impended. And the treacherous thought came – it was going to be yet another little girl.

When this suspicion was conveyed to the first little girl, she was furious. Ellie was certainly not having a sister in the house. She'd rather have a big white dog, like Mrs Ravage's. She began to play up in preparation for the event. I was flabbergasted at this show of spirit, which would certainly have involved me in another walk-out up Ipswich Street. Behind my invincible aura of non-confidence, I trembled when the bedclothes were flung on the fire, and when the bottle of Friars Balsam was hurled out of the window, followed defiantly by a new tube of Colgate's Toothpaste. What powers of self-expression this sister had!

Alas, not even a new toothpaste tube can check the onward march of the fallopian tubes. Again the nurse dominated the house, all starched bosom and little pink nose, again the wailings of the newborn and the scent of meconia.

I was transfixed. All the old misery of disgrace went into psychic re-run. Was I again to be whisked off to granny's and lose another twelve teeth? Perhaps it wouldn't be so bad if Ellen were exiled as well. We could have fun in the mahogany-bound bath that made do-dos noises, and Ellen would certainly give granny a run for her money.

A maid brought us the joyous news. It was only a boy. I was saved. Good old God! Well played, Jesus! The parents would not get rid of me for a mere boy. I went back to Tremblingham with a relatively light heart. Ellen was furious, and at first refused to go to school. She had to be bought a little white dog – like Mrs Ravage's but smaller – before she could be induced to venture farther than the front door-step.

This new boy, soon christened Clement, marked a turning point in the relationship between Ellen and me. We now had something we both disliked. It brought us closer together – as close as we could get, considering that I kept having to go to school for two-thirds of the year.

Rebellious boys are popular at school. Quiet boys are unpopular. Quietly rebellious boys are the most unpopular. I could see that once again Tremblingham was up to Fangby's lark of trying to make us into Gentlemen – and with far better chances of success. So everything I did was against the grain, although I could not stop myself learning, since little else offered itself.

War was brewing. Over in Hitler's Germany, the smart money were beginning to pack. Meanwhile, we had our little battles on the home front.

While relations with Mater could not be regarded as more than warm, with an occasional sunny period, father was a figure I admired from afar. He was all I hoped to be, and evidently as he himself hoped, a model son for his father, my authoritarian old grandad.

He had his role in superior Nettlesham society.

Both he and Mater had musical ability. Every Sunday, father played the organ in church. We entered solemnly into God's temple, and nipped solemnly out of the same to the mighty strains he evoked. Evenings, he worked late in our shop, doing the orders. He did not smoke or gamble or drink. I never heard him swear. He was, however, a good man with a gun, won many prizes at shooting, and evidently had God's okay to shoot rabbits and partridges and pheasants whenever they showed their faces in our part of Suffolk.

His brother Hereward was completely different. Hereward cared nothing for church. Every Sunday, Hereward lay in late, recovering from the excesses of the night before. He smoked, drank and gambled. Gambling was a kind of passion with Hereward. He never worked late in the shop, and was over in Newmarket, betting on the gee-gees, as often as he could. I often used to think it must be more fun in Uncle Hereward's and Aunt Hermione's house than in ours, had it not been for their three mischievous sons, my cousins, Seneca, Setebos, and Cecil. These large indolent lads were good at football, blowing up frogs with straws, sliding on partly frozen ponds, and other sports for which there was much local competition. They bullied anyone smaller than they (like me) and howled vigorously when beaten. They were all red-faced, with a redness which varied
throughout life from acne to high blood pressure. I hated them because they once made another kid and me toss them all off twice in quick succession behind a barn.

Why had my father only one pale son plus little Clement, and Hereward three red-faced sons? It cannot have been just the luck of the draw. God must have had some excuse for making my father so short of male progeny and that progeny so inept at blowing up frogs with straws. The answer seems to be that he and Hereward related to their dread Pater, my grandad, much as Ellen and I did to Mater. Hereward always knew that whatever he did, however awful he and his sons were, he was sure of his Pater's love; and my father, however good he was, however often he abstained from a pint or a drag on a Player's, never could be sure that his Pater loved him.

As I have revealed, my origins were humble. Not that I saw them as humble at the time. Indeed, I thought of them as a cut above most origins, and the family – whatever its other shortcomings – as prosperous.

Grandad Winter's was not any old ironmongery. It stood in the square of Nettlesham right next to the Westlake Memorial Hall. Father said it was the biggest ironmongery business, almost, in the country; which is to say that it may have been the thirty-first biggest. Anyhow, we sold a lot of galvanized pails, I can tell you.

These were the very pails I mentioned as ringing in the new life, my life. Their harmonies, less reckonable than a peal of bells, were awoken by my father's reception of the news of the birth of his first son upstairs. He was at the time adjusting a price ticket saying
Unrepeatable
: 1/1½d.
each: Bargain
, when the news took him by as much surprise as if he had had no hand – or any other member – in the proceedings which precipitated my birth. He fell off the top of the steps on which he was balancing. Down he went. And with him went a dozen of the one shilling, one penny ha'penny pails, careering over the shop floor in great bucketfuls of sound, some actually rolling cheerfully out into the square. I was, you might say, into ironmongery from the very beginning. Nowadays they use the American term Hardware and done with it.

Grandad ruled over this shop with a rod of wood, which he applied without hesitation to my bare legs if I got in the way of customers.

He spent his days in a small office at the back. Its one window, not much more than a foot square, looked out on the brickwork of the side of the Westlake Memorial Hall. Wedged in with him was our cashier, Doris. In the front of the shop my father and his brother worked. Somehow father always got the dirty jobs and put up shutters, whereas it was Hereward who got to seduce the lovely Doris.

I was not popular in the shop. Things rattled when I went by. Nowhere was safe, nowhere was comfortable. Harsh surfaces threatened. On every side lurked stiff coconut matting, giant scrubbing brushes, blades of saws, bales of barbed wire, down to your humble emery paper. Fortunately, I was welcome in the shop next door, the little milliner's and haberdasher's run by Mrs Tippler and her two daughters, Rosemary and Ruth, among their soft goods.

No harsh surfaces here. Mrs Tippler was delicate and refined; conscious of her unfortunate name, bequeathed by a gent either deceased or permanently living up to his name in the Conversation Arms, she never touched a drop. Her two daughters were all peachy surface, pretty and pink and refinedly dressed – and a barrow-load of mischief when Mumsy was not around. I loved Rosemary Tippler. I loved Ruth Tippler. And this was rather odd because when I was twelve Ruth was thirteen and Rosemary was eighteen – at least a generation or two older than I, as it seemed.

But how desirably naughty they were. Since they took an interest in me, I blossomed in their sight. A detestable failing. Ever since, I have blossomed when a pretty woman showed interest in me, and after blossom comes the fruit, which has often been bitter.

When Mrs Tippler worked at her hats in the little room over her shop, or went out to see her ladies (those fortunates who had married Gentlemen), Rosemary and Ruth kept shop. I cannot remember them ever going to school. Perhaps they didn't.

Rosemary loved to tease and kiss me. She had rich brown hair which she, like a smart young thing, had had shingled, whereas her younger sister had a crop of straight dark hair, kept in place by a big
blue slide. Rosemary would say silly things to make me laugh and then laugh at me for laughing, and ask me if I was ‘all there'. When she had made me smart enough, she would kiss me. Real kisses. Marvellous kisses, mouth to mouth. Sometimes she would crush me to her tender bosom, when I could sniff how sweet she smelt. She would even permit me, momentarily, to feel her breasts when, excited beyond measure, I put my hand there.

It is really terrible to be twelve years old and not know what it is you wish so frantically to do. Terrible and delectable.

A green curtain was hung to cut off the rear of the shop. We felt ourselves safe behind it. They had few customers, and those often short-sighted.

Rosemary had a way of daring me to do something and being disapproving as I did it, while at the same time seeming to urge me on. Easy enough to say now that she was uncertain of her own sexuality and felt safe only when she could control the situation with a much younger boy. All that's over the young boy's head. He is in love and longing to experiment with all the dangerous forces whirling about him.

She wore a black velour dress on the day I was challenged to undo its little fiddly black buttons if I just dare. Every button undone was an absolute affront, an outrage.

‘Do you see this, Ruth? Look just at what he is doing now. Oh, you little devil, there goes another button. I'm going to go right out and tell your mum. What does he hope to find in there, I'd like to know. Eh, Joseph? What do you think is in there?'

It was warm in there. Perhaps from design, she wore no brassiere. Next moment a lovely soft breast was resting in the palm of my triumphant hand. It was a bit like finding an egg when you reach up into a bird's still warm nest in the spring. Almost as exciting.

‘There, Ruth, what do you think he's got hold of now? The cheek of it! I bet you didn't expect to find that, did you, sonny? Why, you're looking quite excited, and what exactly do you imagine you're going to do with it now? You mustn't be clumsy with it – it's delicate enough to be set before the king …'

I drew it out into the curtained daylight of their room. Rosemary screamed with affront and caused the breast to pop in again like a startled rabbit. For years after that – all through my adolescence – I had visions of getting that breast out again and kissing it, and much else besides.

Ruth I also loved. Her part in all this sexy teasing was also important. She was the onlooker. She watched, giggled, and commented.

Out at the back of their shop was a small yard, wedged between high walls. It was there she showed herself no mere onlooker.

I had noted how she jumped up and down with excitement when her sister kissed me. Ruth was darker, her lips redder, than her elder sister. And evidently more emotional.

Excited by a tease I had just enjoyed with Rosemary, Ruth and I fell to kissing. Kisses are marvellous when you know of nothing better. Strawberries out of season. Unlike her sister, Ruth was interested in my body. That is how she soon came to be clutching a sausage shape in her hand, and how I came to have my hand in her knickers and to be fingering a little crescent moon of a fishpool, with bewilderment and joy.

Gasping, I let my head roll back – and saw that Rosemary was watching us out of the rear window.

The delight of those two girls, and the harmless play with them, made a return to Tremblingham doubly awful, but warmed many a cold night in my bed when I got there.

I was playing with some friends in Nettlesham Square one day when out came my mother to the edge of the pavement and called me.

‘What's wrong?' I asked, fearfully drawing near and feeling guilty as ever.

‘Your grandfather's seriously ill, that's what's wrong. I don't think you'd better play out there.'