Martin Amis

by Richard Bradford

  After summoning an ambulance Mavis telephoned Kingsley, who had spent most of the evening with Jane’s brother Colin, drinking. Though unsettled by the news he seemed infuriated by Mavis’s implication that he should go immediately to the hospital: ‘Why do I have to?’ he repeated, as much to himself as to Mavis. But he did so next morning and visited upon the semi-comatose Hilly an outpouring of invective for what she had done. Whether he was genuinely angry with Hilly or whether he was turning his own feelings of guilt and distress against her is unclear.

  He was living the fantasy that all of his male characters since Jim Dixon had privately, sometimes bitterly, cultivated. Each of them had faced an inhibiting package of circumstances – involving, worst of all, monogamous commitment – and only Jim in his closing paragraph had opened the door upon pure escapism: a life with the girl of his dreams while seemingly excused such onerous matters as family, work and responsibility. Kingsley’s arrangement with Jane Howard, in Blomfield Road, Little Venice, fell only just short of this in that he continued with a painstaking schedule, producing on average a thousand words per day. But he had never treated fiction writing as work. It meant the expenditure of enormous effort and skill but not of the kind that he resented, such as teaching, marking and administration let alone the demands of running a household. Writing fiction involved a world that was exclusively his own, one he could shape and control as he wished while of course taking pride in its formal design. It is evident from the letters he wrote to Jane in the year before he left Hilly that he had turned himself into a character born of his own imagination, a figure who became increasingly less credible as he exempted himself from commitments to reality.

  Martin holds that his father never planned to despatch the family to a form of emotional oblivion – ‘He was far more sensitive and affectionate than the average, male, parent of his generation’ – but he does not dispute the contention that during 1963–65 he immunized himself from the practical consequences of his actions.

  The day she was released from hospital Hilly telephoned Jane and stated, curtly though not impolitely, that she was ‘off’ and now ‘it’s all up to you’. Jane was not sure what this meant until two days later she received a message from George Gale. Hilly and Sally were now, he announced, staying with them in Wivenhoe, Essex. He added that he had been down to the Fulham Road house to collect some bags and found the place in an appalling state; empty bottles were all over the place, pots unwashed, nothing but a few decaying remnants of food in the fridge. Martin: ‘The house was full of girls and some of my friends. Phil was out, but I didn’t know where.’ Gale reported to Jane that as far as he was aware Hilly had given Jane and Kingsley clear notice of her intention to leave for the country (it was evident to all that she was suffering from severe stress), which they had elected to ignore or deliberately misinterpret.

  When Colin and Jane eventually arrived to inspect the house they found that, if anything, Gale had understated the dire conditions in which the boys were living. After cleaning the kitchen, bathroom and living room they realized that Martin and Philip certainly could not be allowed to remain there. Blomfield Road was too small so they decided to completely refurbish the Fulham Road house with a view to at least having the place presentable for Hilly following what they assumed would be her return and in the interim look for somewhere more spacious and permanent for themselves, Kingsley and the two boys. Martin’s and Philip’s initial encounter with Jane occurred shortly after their return from Majorca and is described in Experience, rather as if a piece by Iris Murdoch had been rewritten by a copy-editor with some cognizance of the real world. ‘You know I’m not alone,’ announces Kingsley as he opens the door. He is in striped pyjamas, Jane in the background ‘in her white towel bathrobe, with her waist-long fair hair, tall, serious, worldly . . .’ It was not, observes Martin, ‘that he was surprised to see us. He was horrified to see us. We had busted him in flagrante.’ I would not doubt the veracity of these comments but then literature is abundantly stocked with emotions recollected in tranquillity as Wordsworth so misleadingly put it. What the poet really had in mind was the replacement of an inchoate or transitory experience with something that reads very well. The facts, at the time, were much less exciting, at least for those who had to deal with the consequences of Kingsley’s acts and indulge his persona.

  Hilly returned to Fulham Road from the Gales’ ten days after her departure, George having acted as an intermediary between her and the Howards; the latter had in little more than one week replaced all the unwashed, and unwashable, bedclothes, sanded the wood floors and repainted the walls. Martin observed all of this with studied detachment and when Philip arrived back from wherever his inclinations had taken him he too treated Colin and Jane as though they were tradesmen. Neither of the boys enquired as to the absence of their father. ‘I was told later,’ states Martin, ‘that during the clean-up Jane told Kingsley that in her view it would all happen again. She and Kingsley decided that Philip and I would live with them. That is why the renovation of the bigger house [108 Maida Vale] took so long. It would need at least five bedrooms.’

  In preparation for this Jane persuaded Kingsley that it would be both pragmatic and from his point of view responsible for the two of them to move temporarily to the refurbished Fulham Road house to keep an eye on the boys. During the short period that they had actually lived together Kingsley had dispelled most of the illusions that she might have entertained regarding his sense of responsibility, but surely, she thought, if some degree of respect and affection were to be restored in his sons’ perception of him then an experiment in domestic proximity must be at least attempted. This would remain a hypothesis given that Martin only ever returned to the house to eat and sleep and Philip when on summer holiday from boarding school in Saffron Walden. Their sullen distaste for the arrangement was reflected by Philip’s habit of addressing his father as a ‘cunt’ and ignoring Jane completely.

  Jane’s meeting with her old acquaintance Alexander Mackendrick, doyen of such Ealing classics as The Lady Killers and Whisky Galore, was pure coincidence but during their conversation on his forthcoming production she began to nurture ideas. A High Wind in Jamaica was to be shot on the eponymous Caribbean island later that summer and he was still casting children and adolescents. Martin: ‘I was sent for screen tests at Pinewood Studios. Overall it took about three weeks. There were other candidates.’ He looked a good three years younger than fifteen and was taken on. Hilly enjoyed innocuous yet glamorous dates with the good-looking support actors and stuntmen while Martin pursued Beverly Baxter, elder sister of the precocious fourteen-year-old lead Deborah. Most evenings he was left in charge of eight-year-old Karen Flack, another of the leads, who, Hilly advised him, was destined for stardom. She told him to share the huge double bed with her so that in years to come he could claim truthfully that he had slept with the delectable Miss Flack. Martin recalls the remark because it revealed to him, probably for the first time, how much his father and mother had in common: ‘Kingsley would have loved it’. And Jane? ‘Indulged it, yes, but with reserve.’

  They had flown out first-class with BOAC, Martin’s first experience of air travel, but shortly before proceedings were completed in the Caribbean Hilly decided to cash in their tickets for a cheaper, tourist return. The difference apparently was considerable and they remained in Jamaica for two months. She could for a while become again the fun-loving mother of the Swansea years. The rest of the film was made in Pinewood to which Martin travelled by chauffeured car, and by the time it was completed he was already two weeks into the new school term.

  On the day of his return to Sir Walter St John’s Grammar, Battersea, Martin, dressed in a brand-new uniform, found that his name did not appear on any of the registration lists in classes for which he had previously been enrolled (to state that he ‘attended’ them would be generous) before the summer break. He was not so much summoned to the headmaster’s office as referred there by a sequence of form teachers
who seemed by turns embarrassed and impatient with a superfluous pupil. The head glanced at his uniform and noted with undisguised weariness that he seemed to believe that he belonged there. Martin had brought a letter from his mother, plus a cover note from Mackendrick himself, explaining the delay in his return and asking for allowance to be made, given his significant contribution to the cinema arts. The note was, he was informed, irrelevant since two months earlier a letter had already been despatched to his home address informing his parents or guardians that he was henceforth expelled for persistent and unexplained truancy. No one is certain if the letter was lost, ignored or destroyed in the massive clean-up, but from autumn until Christmas Martin pretended to all who took an interest to be enrolled at Sir Walter St John’s, while spending most of this time as an adolescent non-person, absent from the records of any educational institution.

  Colin Howard: ‘It is difficult to recall that time exactly, before Martin “moved in” properly. Jane and Kingsley seemed constantly busy, away quite regularly, and Martin . . . well he seemed to pass through. He was, to me at least, amiable but a little sanguine beyond his years – what was he, fifteen? As if he had tired of everything before he knew anything.’

  By now Hilly was taking in lodgers to supplement her meagre wages. Following her return from Jamaica she had found a job in the Battersea Dogs’ Home and Animal Refuge, an institution that took care of abandoned or maltreated domestic pets and curious urban strays such as donkeys, sheep, and goats. Martin: ‘Hilly always loved animals and the job in Battersea made her feel nostalgic. It reminded her of the time just before she met my father. But it gave her something to do, took her mind off what she still could not come to terms with.’ Kingsley was still paying the rent for Fulham Road and on the advice of Jane agreed to supplement this with fees for a private day school. This was Martin’s O-level year. Philip had already failed all of his and moved to Davies, Laing and Dick, a crammer in Notting Hill. Legally crammers fed upon those who had, post-sixteen, failed examinations in full-time, state or private schools though by some sleight of hand Martin, then only fifteen and technically an absconder from the education system, was enrolled with his elder brother. Martin: ‘It was that sort of place, for upper-class drop-outs.’ Some parts of Notting Hill itself were still downmarket but most of it had been reclaimed by the West London middle classes. Davies Laing and Dick fed on this. ‘The place appears in The Rachel Papers, undisguised. I found it fascinating because for the first time I came across that very English thing, class. The day I left Sir Walter St John’s the other boys offered respectful nods and grins. My accent [very RP with even then a slight drawl] had previously marked me as posh and weak, but now I’d been thrown out and for a brief moment I became faintly villainous.’

  At the crammer Martin was still perceived as solidly middle-class but this time by those who despised such people for their vulgar ambitions. ‘The girls were what are still in some places called “County”, girls who travelled, magnificent and unapproachable. The boys were straight out of Waugh or Wodehouse, without the compensating humour. Guys with lots of titles. I met Rob [Henderson] there. In the novel I fill the place with grotesques, teachers and pupils included.’ There is certainly a good deal of merciless caricature, fuelled by resentment on Charles’s part, and one suspects his creator’s.

  I knew the kind of punks that went to this kind of place. Cuntish public-school drop-outs, dropped out for being too thick, having long hair or dirty boaters, unseaming new boys in multiple buggery, getting caught too many times with an impermissible number of hockey sticks up their bums . . .

  A tall ginger-haired boy in green tweed moved gracefully down the steps. He looked at me as if I were a gang of skinheads: not with fear (because the fellows are quite tractable really) but with disapproval. Behind him at a trot came two lantern-jawed girls, calling ‘Jamie . . . Jamie’. Jamie swivelled elegantly.

  ‘Angelica, I’m not going to the Imbenkment. Gregory shall have to take you.’

  ‘But Gregory’s in Scotland,’ one said.

  ‘I can’t help thet.’ The ginger boy disappeared into an old-fashioned sports car.1

  ‘My concession to fact is that in both places [fictional and real] no one stood the faintest chance of passing exams, me included.’ Philip retook his O-levels the same year that Martin sat them for the first time. ‘We came out with three each. I failed English.’

  By spring 1965 Fulham Road had fallen into a state of dilapidation even worse than the period before Hilly’s overdose. She worked hard at the animal centre and some nights during the week she held parties for friends or went out to pubs and restaurants. Almost every weekend she left London to stay with the Gales in Essex. According to one of her occasional lodgers, Penny Jones, Martin and Philip ‘never went to school . . . were heavy on drugs . . . were bonking every female they could get their hands on’.2 Used condoms were, she reported, draped ostentatiously on the railings of the balcony, not through carelessness or for reasons of unhygienic economy but as notices of the rule of anarchy and hedonism. Similarly a pot of LSD tablets, labelled ‘LSD’, was placed in the fridge alongside similar vessels containing hummus or olives. Martin takes issue with this portrait. ‘Perhaps we were feckless. But there were no hard drugs. It’s possible we did the labels, as a joke. The drugs didn’t exist. Phil took some dope, but nothing heavy. I didn’t drink till I was twenty.’

  There is no record of Kingsley ever visiting the house (he supplemented the rent by banker’s orders) and nor did he show any particular interest in the behaviour and educational progress of Martin and Philip. George Gale, as he had previously, acted as intermediary and informed Jane that Hilly was in a state of inertia. He did not accuse her of irresponsibility but he made it clear that she was finding herself emotionally and psychologically incapable of dealing, alone, with the family she once shared with Kingsley. Jane had made preparation for what she saw as inevitable and in April 1965 Martin and Philip moved in officially to 108 Maida Vale with Kingsley, Jane and Colin. For most of the subsequent six months both teenagers involved themselves in a regime of absorbed epicureanism and apathy. The episode described by Martin in Experience in which Jane and, reluctantly, Kingsley confront the brothers regarding their drug taking is characteristically wry and dexterous in its avoidance of the apportioning of blame. The characters strut marionette-style through a darkly comic performance of unhappy families with Martin, in early middle age when he wrote it, choreographing the act and recycling memories. Kingsley and Jane’s horrified suspicion that they might be harbouring drug addicts opens out into the farcical disclosure of Philip’s ‘stash’, a box on open display in his bedroom with two words painted garishly on the lid: ‘Phil’s Drugs’. Kingsley takes the sixteen-year-old Martin out to Biagi’s, a nearby Italian restaurant, and instructs him on how the descent of contemporary youth into drug-induced torpor is part of an International Communist plot to undermine Western democracy. ‘He was drunk, and he was working on probably his most ridiculous book, Colonel Sun, which involved his reading a large number of James Bond novels.’

  In Experience Martin writes of his father and his soon-to-be stepmother with the kind of charitable concern, which raises the question of how exactly he felt at the time. So I ask him. ‘It’s hard to say. My memories of Jane during those first months are softened by what would happen later, most obviously with the help she gave with my education.’ But surely he must have shared some of the resentment that Philip more conspicuously displayed? ‘Very likely.’

  Philip even today maintains that Jane, albeit in a haughtily diplomatic style that would have been alien to Hilly, indicated that the two of them were an onerous but unavoidable burden, part of the contract that would allow her a permanent relationship with Kingsley. Indeed in Slipstream she too hints that her development as a writer was hindered significantly by the events of 1963–66. Once she had finished one of her finest novels, After Julius (completed early 1964, published 1965) it would be four years before
she would again work full-time on another piece of fiction. In Philip’s account of things the atmosphere in the Maida Vale house was a confection of mutual antagonism and diplomacy: Jane took it upon herself both to alert Kingsley to problems he would prefer to ignore while making ostentatious attempts to offer advice and instruction to a pair of hooligans. Martin: ‘Philip became a Mod. He bought a Lambretta scooter. The colour of his socks changed daily. Eventually we both took drugs. I smoked dope and occasionally took some speed. We associated booze with the lifestyle of Kingsley and his generation and hardly touched it. It had to be illegal to be interesting.’

  Within two months Philip had left the Notting Hill crammer – not officially, he had simply ceased to turn up – found a girlfriend and in early 1966 he moved with her into a squat. Jane showed concern, token concern in Philip’s opinion, and Colin – the only adult in whom Martin and Philip could confide – asked him without success to reconsider his decision. Kingsley, while of course not oblivious of events, neither attempted to persuade his eldest to stay on nor displayed any obvious disquiet for his well-being. Relations between them would remain fraught, verging upon bitter, for most of the subsequent decade. As Martin puts it, he ‘never came back as a child of the house. He was gone.’ Contrast this with Colin Howard’s comments. ‘“Gone” in the sense that he rarely stayed for more than a night or two, but he made his presence felt. When they [Martin and Philip] were together they were formidable . . . Perhaps Kingsley and Jane would have got on better, in the end, if it hadn’t been for the boys. No one could blame them, but Kingsley managed to avoid most of their wrath.’ Both had inherited from their father a talent for mimicry and Jane’s verbal mannerisms – unselfconsciously upper class – along with her postures and head movements were gradually assimilated and malevolently reproduced, particularly when responding to her complaints about their behaviour and suggestions as to how they might improve themselves. All accounts of the period present Martin and Philip as equally hostile to Jane and shrewd in their handling of Kingsley.