There was general laughter at that, and Waldo sat back and lit a cigar, preparing to go on, but Richards waved a hand.
‘I was brought up to vote Conservative,’ he said, claiming the right of the landlord to interrupt. ‘But there is no doubt about it, the writing is on the wall, and this time it will take a very large dose of washing powder to scrub it off.’
‘You have your political scandals in America, Waldo,’ Charley reminded him.
Waldo lowered The Times once more.
‘Sure, but it’s different in America. We’re more open in our style of government. What you see is what you get, although sometimes one can’t help wishing that one didn’t have to see quite so much!’
Waldo always enjoyed the democratic process’s being torn apart in the Three Tuns. It was part of the English way of life, and besides, it was in the Three Tuns that he had first noticed Meggie wearing a red dress, her hair all caught up, everything a little awry, making her seem more than beautiful, more than desirable: totally alluring.
‘Did you know that the Almanack – to which as you know I am devoted – did you know that it is forecasting a shock of global proportions before the year is out?’
‘Ah, you and your Almanack,’ Charley said, shaking his head and returning to the Daily Mirror. ‘You might as well consult the Bible, really you might, and look what people find there, every prediction except the right one, eh?’
‘No, it has, it has predicted a global shock.’
Charley sighed. ‘Not another tanner on baccy? Now that would be a disaster.’
As Waldo rose from the window seat at the Three Tuns, Tam was breakfasting off eggs, sunny side up, muffins and bacon and on the point of sitting back well satisfied when R.J. strolled into the bunkhouse kitchen, lighting up a fresh King Size Pall Mall, untipped.
‘There you are, boy,’ he said, eyeing Tam. ‘Ah been meaning to find you. Reckon both you and I are due for a break after that roundup, so how’s about accompanying Sue Sue and myself to Dallas for a bit of a hooley? Sue Sue hasn’t done any proper shopping at Neiman Marcus since – well – since last month, and she’s gettin’ kinda restless. So how’s about it, boy?’
Tam wiped his mouth on his red checked napkin.
‘I should enjoy that, sir.’ He nodded, careful not to seem too enthusiastic.
R.J. took a deep draw of his smoke and strolling over to the bunkhouse range he poured himself a large mug of black coffee in an unhurried manner. This was something that Tam particularly admired in R.J. – his sublime ability to be able to do everything, even rounding up steers, in a manner that was as unhurried as an eighteenth-century aristocrat. At that moment he was tasting the coffee as he strolled back to Tam’s table.
‘So you wouldn’t mind tagging along, boy?’
‘I would be honoured to be asked, sir.’
R.J. nodded. He knew that his wife fancied the English boy, he knew that his daughter had fancied the English boy, and he now knew that the English boy, having not fancied either of them, now fancied the daughter of his neighbour, one Dainty Swallowfield.
‘Yes, boy, you can come with us. You can come shoppin’ with Sue Sue or you can join the rest of us and wave at Mr Kennedy’s motorcade as it goes through. Either way I dare say you’ll have yourself a good time.’
At the mention of shopping Tam had, as R.J. had imagined, immediately thought of Dainty Swallowfield. He could buy her something really pretty, and Sue Sue Dysart could help him. Dainty was tall, blond, a great Country and Western fanatic, and had brought Tam’s amatory techniques well into the second half of the twentieth century. Even better, although she liked to make love, she never pretended that her heart was involved, which of course made her a great deal more fascinating.
‘I think I might fancy some shopping with Mrs Dysart. I don’t rightly know much about Mr Kennedy, sir.’
‘No, boy, I don’t suppose you rightly do. I have to tell you he’s not that popular in Texas, which is why he’s paying us the courtesy of a call, I guess.’
It was a three hundred odd mile flight from where the Big U ranch lay, fifty miles to the north of Austin. They flew in the Dysart family plane, a twin engine Lockheed bought from the military and converted into a small luxury passenger plane. The weather was for the most part good and the visibility clear, so that Tam, sitting up in the cockpit with the pilot, while his hosts opened up the bar behind him, was able to get an angel’s eye view of the vast country over which they were flying.
If Tam had imagined that he’d gained some grasp of the awesome magnitude of the state of Texas when he’d taken to its roads, nothing had quite prepared him for the actuality. It was as if a whole world was spread below him, an endless land with no visible horizons, just a vast expanse of pasture and mountains, waterfalls and plains. Tam began to experience a feeling of almost hysterical excitement, excitement that he had never felt before. It was as if he was being born not just into a whole new experience, but into a new existence. It was as if he was shedding a skin and growing into something entirely different, emerging from his childhood and early youth into life proper, and all because of the vast expanses below, this infinite immeasurable land rolling on and on beneath the smart red and white painted aircraft.
Naturally there was dread too for the longer he stared out of the window the less he wanted to actually arrive at his destination. He wanted to stay at twenty thousand feet, flying high, flying over everything, never entering into real life again. But then all too soon he could see an outline of a city as the plane tipped its wings, tilting at forty-five degrees as the pilot began his descent and approach to the airport, bringing the Lockheed into Dallas, unaware that within less than a day it would be the focus of every nation on earth.
Lionel saw it all happen on television. Mattie and John had left him for the evening, and since it was too early to eat, and he had already had several drinks, he switched on the television, and drawing his dear old dog to sit up beside him he waited for the news. Minutes later he was fast asleep, for what with the fire in the sitting room and the restful sound of the dog’s snoring there was little to keep him awake.
He awoke much later. The fire was out, and he was hungry. He wandered through to his immaculately kept kitchen, prepared himself a grilled lamb chop, a grilled sliced tomato, a grilled mushroom, and some fried potatoes, not to mention a generous helping of mint sauce, and wandered back with it all neatly set on the tray. It was only as he sat down that he heard the news, and only when he turned up the sound that he realised that once again the world was teetering on the edge of a crisis.
He frowned at the screen, finding himself unable to quite take in what the newsreader was saying, wanting to say to him ‘I say, old thing, would you mind repeating that?’, staring in bewilderment at the images being presented by the news teams.
Tam was staring at a delicately beautiful glass bead necklace with matching earrings shaped like butterflies when the crowds that were shifting and passing behind and beside him appeared to become frozen. Sue Sue was nearby, absorbed by an infinitely more expensive pair of earrings which she was trying on, turning this way and that as the assistant held a mirror for her to look at her reflection.
‘Mrs Dysart?’
‘Yes, darlin’?’ Sue Sue turned away from the mirror towards Tam.
‘A lady behind has just said that President Kennedy has been shot.’
‘Darlin’.’ Sue Sue smiled at Tam and patted his cheek. ‘You have to get used to Texas, honey. Even the rumours are bigger.’
‘No, really, Mrs Dysart, someone’s just come in and told her he’d heard it on his car radio, and she’s just run out of here, crying. Look!’ Tam pointed.
‘Ah, darlin’, her husband’s probably just taken her cheques away. You know how some men can be – they don’t unnerstand a woman’s wants, dear.’
Sue Sue turned back to the mirror, and it was only when the assistant put down the glass and turned away to try to cope with yet another tearful shop
per that the dime started to drop, and she realised that Tam was perhaps not inventing everything, that the President of the United States of America had indeed been shot.
It was then that the panic set in. People swayed to and fro, turning this way and that, always demanding, over and over, and over, was it true? Could it be true? Where was he? Was he dead? If shot was he dead? Was it possible?
Tam watched in muted fascination, feeling that he too had lost all colour, as they all had, that he had no blood in him, feeling that he too would like to cry, but feeling also that, since it was not his president, it might not be quite right. It was as if, like when he played music, everyone at that moment had welded together in this moment of grief, struck down by bewilderment and infused with panic. As if everyone was looking round feeling that they would never find their wives and husbands ever again, such was the sway, the to and fro of the first silent then loquacious crowd of shoppers, and he was a part of it, and yet not a part of it, just like them, just flotsam and jetsam, not really mattering much at that moment, yet mattering too, and more than they knew.
‘We must find mah husband, honey.’ Sue Sue grabbed Tam’s sleeve. ‘We must get the hell out of this city. I reckon if they’ve shot the president, who will they shoot next? Could be the Russians invading us. I have a gun in mah purse, but it’s only a small one, and I doubt that will help us overly.’
She started to run towards where they had already arranged to rendezvous with R.J. and the pilot, and Tam started to run after her, as did many others, all of them running, only Tam had the feeling that maybe they would be running towards trouble, because that was what so often happened when you thought you were running away.
Thoughts flashed through his mind: his home, Bexham, Flavia, Kim and Jenny. He started to pray as he ran, remembering moments in his life as he heard his own breath coming out in little gasps. Pictures of his life – his mother pushing him on a swing on a sunny day with Mr Astley seated at a table, the Bexham sky bluer than he ever remembered it since. His father coming to fetch him from the fields, swinging him up and around before walking him home singing some old Sussex pub song. Eating lardy cake with Flavia while sitting on a wall watching the fishermen and the boats.
He knew at that moment he might never see any of them again, but that if he kept Sue Sue’s pink scarf, now fluttering behind her, in front of his eyes, he might.
Lionel must have been dozing in his chair for a long time. He was certainly enjoying where he was. He was upstream somewhere on a beautiful stretch of river with what felt like a good-sized salmon on the end of his rod. The banks of the river in which he had been wading were covered in flowers, which was strange for the side of a river. The blooms were of soft colours and the shapes of the heads were graceful, the outlines gentle. A warm sun had made the crystal clear waters around him dance and sparkle as though they were baubles thrown from some eternal Christmas tree. He could see fish swimming, rhythmically, watching him with their large, doleful eyes as he flicked his fly back and forth across the water, yet even as he caught one he knew it was not on his line, that it was no more on the end of his line than its companions, that they all remained swimming and playing about him, teasing him with their lazy antics, playing at being caught, taking the line in their mouths and, as Lionel pulled this way and that in the clear waters, jumping and spinning in the air.
Laughter from the bank opposite him made him look up to see the familiar face of a handsome young man watching him while his feet dangled in the water too, splashing to and fro as lazily as the teasing fish.
‘How’s it going, Lionel?’
‘As you see, Jack, as you see.’
They both laughed in delight, and finally Lionel sighed from pure exaltation, at the sparkle of it all, at the clarity. It was all so simple really.
* * *
‘Is there something the matter, Daddy?’ Mattie shook Lionel gently by the shoulder. ‘Daddy? Daddy!’
But there was nothing truly wrong, and no real need for Mattie to cry, especially not if she could have seen Lionel at that moment strolling with his new friend Jack among the flowers and the trees, the two of them talking about every imaginable and some quite unimaginable things, all of which, should she have heard them, would have made her smile and laugh quite as much as they.
1967
‘There never was such a crowd, some walking shoulder to shoulder, some on their own, some jostling each other in their hurry to go forward. But where they were all going no one could have said, least of all they.
More than that, where was it all to end?’
INTERLUDE
‘Women can be anything they want this Season, that is the stunning news, for following the geometric fashions of last year Paris is bringing us the news for which we long. We can wear Regency waistcoats over velvet knee breeches. We can be Feminine and Starry, Zhivago-like in our long coats with vast fur hems and matching trimmed hoods. We can be Sirens in navy blue velour with endlessly long mufflers which we can toss over our shoulders as we stroll the boulevards. In short the choice is ours. Cat suits worn with long coats, Regency velvet trouser suits worn with long floppy hats. We are what we want to be this Season. That is the wonder of Nineteen Sixty-Seven. The choice, ladies, is yours, the look is yours. We are not at the feet of Paris, Paris is at our feet. We have led the way with British boutique fashion, and now they are hard on our heels. In the daytime we can stun in Yves Saint Laurent’s trouser suits, the masculine cut adding to our feminine allure, in the evening we can seduce with the frills and spills of lace and velvet. Either way we will be unstoppable – as time will prove. Nineteen Sixty-Seven is here to stay!’
Susie Sissingford for My Style magazine
Chapter Eight
To anyone approaching London eager to take part in a revolution that involved everything from fashion and food to interiors and sexual morals, the sound was unmistakable. It was the insistent rhythm of thousands of young people moving forward, silently chanting, This is our time.
‘The young have money to spend, let them spend it,’ the bankers murmured.
No sooner had the new revolution started than it filtered out to the provinces, cities and towns, all of which seemed to be instantly transformed into a sea of chaotic conflicting fashions, so that, unlike previous generations, the young of every class could no longer recognise each other instantly from the way they dressed. Tweeds and pearls were no longer worn except by those poor souls who had been married off and quietly dumped in the country; and even they were known to be putting up their hems to skirt the tops of their knees, to the less than quiet consternation of their country-loving mothers-in-law.
No one needed to tell Flavia Sykes any of this, not after selling endless Laurel Cottage fisherman’s knits, knitted stockings, and seafaring pullover/dresses to an astonishingly wide variety of customers. She had modelled more Laurel Cottage Dolly Fashions than she cared to think about. Finally, as the business expanded and no longer needed her to promote their already popular designs, she had moved to London, where she was already finding work. This particular afternoon was her first assignment for a premier manufacturing house. As she stood about waiting to be sent flying down the catwalk to what she hoped would be gasps of appreciation, she was finding that her twenty-one-inch waist, far from being a cause of admiration, as it had been in Bexham, was now a reason for considerable grumbling by the backroom staff.
‘At least twenty-two for Susan Ball fashions, dear, yes,’ said one of them, frowning at the cause of the problem standing in front of her, ‘not twenty-one. We’re not Paris, you know, love.’
Despite the fact that she had very little experience outside her mother’s fashion business, part of Flavia wished to goodness they were Paris. After all, if the clothes were French, perhaps they would be a mite more exciting.
She picked up a cigarette packet and her lighter preparatory to going out of the stockroom into the street for a breath of fresh air, and a good gasp of nicotine. Once outside she lea
ned against the wall, and stared up at the small piece of sky that she could see between the buildings.
She had already told her mother and father she was on her way, and it was true that she was being employed by the best of the second eleven, but Paris, and a life as a top photographer’s darling, was realistically still a long, long way off, and she knew it.
She watched a small spiral of smoke drifting up to the narrow band of blue above her, and thought with some pride about her mother and Laurel Cottage Dolly Fashions, and how they had set about launching the business. Together they had turned it from silly gifts, and mugs, and tea towels with pictures of seagulls sitting on the sides of boats, into a profitable fashion enterprise. But now it seemed that the upshot of the huge success of Laurel Cottage Designs was that her father had just taken off for a long holiday touring Australia with a male friend, leaving her mother alone at home just as Flavia, and Sholto too, had left for London.
‘Good luck this afternoon, darling.’
When Flavia had spoken to her earlier Rusty’s voice seemed to be echoing around the family kitchen, bouncing off the Formica cupboards full of expensive china that would now be neatly stacked for Rusty’s sole use. Flavia imagined that when Rusty woke up every morning at Lowfield House she must feel she was rattling around, a pathetic figure in a cotton wrap making her coffee and single piece of toast for breakfast, tidying an already tidy house before leaving for her office, and then coming home in the evening to a lone steak and salad and watching the television news before going to bed quite alone, except for the cat.
Flavia would have adored to ask Rusty up to stay with her at the flat she shared with three other modelling hopefuls, but Laurel Cottage Designs had really taken off and Rusty couldn’t be spared, even should she have wanted to be.
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