Swan River

by David Reynolds

  ‘You’d’ve got better ‘A’ levels at a grammar school.’ He gestured despairingly with his hands. ‘Wouldn’t’ve been distracted by those idle toffs.’ He shook his head and asked what I was going to do.

  I told him about my job with the humanists for the first time and was going to mention journalism, but he interrupted.

  ‘Well, I started as an office boy at sixteen. Can’t do you any harm at eighteen.’ He smiled, raised his eyebrows and leaned his elbow on the mantelpiece. ‘Humanists are a good thing.’ He didn’t seem to mind about university; I was relieved, but at the same time almost disappointed.

  ‘Self-help! That’s the answer. I don’t suppose you’ve read it yet?’

  I shook my head. He had given me a copy of Samuel Smiles’s Victorian classic, Self-Help, the previous Christmas. It was quarter-bound in leather and was inscribed ‘To Cliff from Mother, 10th December, 1910’ – his nineteenth birthday. Underneath my father had written ‘and to my son Bob on December 18th, 1930’ and underneath that ‘and to my second son, David, at Xmas 1965’. I had wondered whether Bob had read it and how it had come back into my father’s possession.

  ‘Well, try to have a look at it.’ He sat down in his armchair with a slight thump. ‘It’s very good advice. The bits about Arkwright, Stevenson… Peel, Disraeli… the elder Disraeli… are very good, very inspirational.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about being a journalist.’

  ‘Ah!’ He pushed himself more upright in his chair.

  ‘But I’d like to be a fairly serious one… you know, a columnist or a leader writer.’

  He looked at me and started rolling a cigarette. ‘That’s an excellent thing to aim at. If you could do that, you could write and influence things… a bit like I have… now and then. We ought to go and see Old Bowen.’

  I had feared that he would say that. Old Bowen was very old indeed, deafer and less capable of walking than my father. The worst thing was that he dribbled and was always wiping his mouth with a handkerchief. He lived nearby with his wife and, as far I could understand, had once – a very long time ago – been ‘almost the editor’ of the Daily Mail. Although he was very deaf, he mumbled – unlike my father who shouted. My father and Old Bowen were unable to understand anything each other said; the last time we had been there Mrs Bowen and I had had to act as interpreters.

  He tapped on the arm of his chair. ‘Or Robbie Robertson?’ This was a much better idea, except that Robbie Robertson lived on the east coast of Scotland, in Montrose where he was the editor of the local paper. I had only met him once; he was stocky and brusque and liked slapping people on the back.

  Two years earlier it would have been easier to drive to Scotland than to spend an afternoon with Old Bowen; but now my father’s driving had deteriorated to a point where I was in an almost permanent state of alarm. ‘Rather long way to go, Dad… I mean, we don’t have to gallivant all over the country seeing people just because I’m interested in journalism.’

  ‘Well, there’s no harm in it. Society should be a meritocracy, but it isn’t, so you have to pull strings when you can. Anyway, I like gallivanting now and again.’ He grinned like a naughty boy.

  ‘I have to be at work on Monday. I work Monday to Friday. I can’t go to Scotland.’

  He looked disappointed. ‘Well, perhaps I’ll go.’

  ‘Dad, you don’t have to do anything.’

  ‘I know. But I like to help you as much as I can…’ He looked at me with watery eyes. ‘I’ve no money to give you, and I’m sorry about that, but I’ve still got a good brain and a few of my friends still survive… some of them not without influence.’

  ‘Well… “No person of quality esteems another merely because he is rich.”’ He laughed as I shrugged.

  * * * * *

  I managed to avoid a visit to Old Bowen, but the next day my father telephoned Robbie Robertson, talked for a while and then handed me the receiver.

  ‘David. You’ve left school already – very grown up – and you want to be a journalist? Right: two things. Write to all the local newspapers in range of where you live – they’re listed in the UK Press Gazette – and tell them you want to be a trainee reporter, tell them all you can about yourself and send any cuttings you have from anywhere including the school magazine. Second, try to go to a secretarial college and learn shorthand and typing. You’ll need it, so you might as well learn it now. That’s what you need to do. Got it? Good luck. Pass me back to your father, if you will.’

  ‘Thanks, Mr Robertson. Goodbye.’

  I arranged to do shorthand and typing at Pitman’s secretarial college in Southampton Row, and wrote to the editors of newspapers and magazines. And I wrote, and rewrote, and eventually sent, a letter to a twenty-four-year-old Australian who had just come to London to start an English edition of a magazine called Oz, which he had founded in Sydney four years earlier. I had read an article about him in the Evening Standard where he was quoted saying, ‘We aim at something between Private Eye and the New Statesman.’ In the photograph alongside he had long, straight hair like Brian Jones and was with a slim girl in a minidress who was described in the caption as the magazine’s secretary.

  * * * * *

  Dave and I bought a bottle of Spanish red in Praed Street. I was cold and nervous. ‘Maybe I shouldn’t come. I haven’t been invited.’

  ‘Don’t be a berk! Might be fun…if it’s not, we can go to the pub.’

  ‘I won’t know anyone.’

  ‘You know Mart.’

  ‘Slightly.’ I’d met Dave’s older brother Martin twice. He was twenty-one, enviably hip and had a dark-haired girlfriend who designed clothes. He and his flatmates, mostly students at the Architectural Association, were having a party in what Dave had told me was a huge flat on two floors. As we crossed Westbourne Terrace, the sound of a thousand people talking, mingled with the Kinks’ ‘Sunny Afternoon’, came from open ground-floor windows; above, on a balcony, people were drinking, chatting and staring down at us. I tugged at the collar on my donkey jacket.

  Inside, a long corridor was crowded with people moving in both directions. There was a wide staircase in front of us and an open door leading to the dimly-lit room at the front where the music was playing. In another room a double bed and most of the floor were covered in coats.

  I followed Dave as he pushed his way along the corridor to the kitchen. It was barn-like and painted brick-red, even on the ceiling and the window-frames. A man with shoulder-length hair was playing boogie-woogie on a bright blue upright piano, ringed by people jigging about, shouting and drumming on saucepan lids with knives and wooden spoons. A table was spread with food and another covered in bottles and cans.

  Dave knew some of his brother’s friends; there were quick greetings and I was briefly introduced.

  I stood about tapping my foot, smoking and drinking red wine. After a while I refilled my glass and wandered off. The room at the front seemed dark and noisy. I climbed the stairs, picking my way through feet and knees. It was too soon to drag Dave away and go to the pub. I would explore the place and just maybe – though they all seemed remote and older than me – I would meet someone I could talk to. In a room with a polished parquet floor, six or seven people lolled on a bed, chatting and laughing. My heels clacked as I walked towards open french windows. A black girl smiled from the bed and waved with her fingers – goodbye, not hello. On the balcony, more people, talking and laughing. A girl leaned against the wall, her knee forward and her foot under her bottom, and a man loomed over her, his hand resting on the bricks beside her face. Through another window, another uncarpeted room, loud with people, and beyond, a high-ceilinged purple bathroom with an old-fashioned bath on claw-like feet. I stared into a long mirror and pulled a few faces.

  Downstairs, in the kitchen, another man at the piano – playing slow blues. I helped myself to wine. In the room at the front, at least a hundred people – two hundred maybe – a perfumed, pungent smell, dim light from the floor in
the corners and Van Morrison’s voice behind the din of conversation – ‘Here Comes the Night’. Faces half turned and then turned quickly away, as I squeezed close to them, glass by cheek, stopping and going, something splashing on my hand, carefully treading where the spaces allowed, inching aimlessly past scented hair and striped collars but in search of a destination, finding one, reaching it, a small table beside the wall with bottles and lighted candles.

  I stretched for a bottle, filled my glass and turned back to face the room. Two girls were standing in front of me. Both had blonde hair falling around their shoulders and were dressed in black. The one closest to me was wearing something loose made of thin material that shimmered in the gloom. She smiled.

  The other one spoke. ‘Have you seen Johnny Holly?’ She had an Australian accent and twisted her mouth hopefully.

  ‘Don’t know him. Sorry. I only know two people here.’

  ‘Oh.’ She looked disappointed. She had a wide face and a fringe. ‘We don’t know anyone. Johnny Holly invited us, but we can’t find him.’ She looked at the bottle I had just put down. Her friend was still smiling and staring at me. They held out empty glasses.

  ‘I’m Dave.’

  ‘I’m Kate. This is Bonnie.’

  ‘Bonnie? Nice name.’

  She explained that it wasn’t her real name; her father had used it when she was a baby and it had lasted. She had a soft English voice. They were flatmates and worked together at Rediffusion Television. I said I was going to train to be a journalist, a writer. Kate was enthusiastic. She liked creative people. She wanted to be a painter, in a way was a painter; her father was a well-known artist in Australia. She asked how old I was. I had been eighteen two days before. ‘Nineteen.’

  They were both twenty, and I was glad I had lied.

  Kate talked more, but Bonnie looked at me more directly and I had a sense that in some way I was gaining her approval. We chatted and smoked each other’s cigarettes, ignoring the rest of the room, and they promised to wait while I fetched more wine from the kitchen. I uncorked a bottle and manoeuvred my way back to them, thinking of nothing but the fact that this was actually happening – a sophisticated party, with no one’s parents lurking around, at which people could stay as long as they liked and, for the moment at least, I was with two beautiful girls whom I was still trying to tell apart. I looked at them closely and saw that Bonnie was slightly taller, her features more delicate and her hair a little more dishevelled; Kate’s was carefully brushed and cut into a straight fringe.

  As we talk, the lights blink – and go off. The walls are flooded with a rippling red glow. Two projectors, their beams crossing and illuminating the dust. Red, purple, blue, eerily undulating on walls, faces and clothes. And the Beach Boys’ ‘Good Vibrations’ – so loud. Bonnie and Kate sway gracefully, their skin changing from blue to green. Bonnie drags her hands through the air in front of me. Men signal to Kate. She shakes her head; we form a tighter triangle. More music. More colours. Dancing, drinking and smoking hurriedly, more dancing, drinking… Light then dark. White light flashing on and off with the beat. Bonnie, Kate, everyone, gyrating in staccato jerks. Dave beside me, there and not there, there and not there, grinning and gone; first Kate’s, then Bonnie’s hair against my face as I shout introductions. A foursome, then a pair, Bonnie and me. Bonnie close to me, putting a hand on my shoulder, smiling. ‘Good Vibrations’ again.

  We went to the kitchen where it was cool. Dave grinned and muttered, ‘This is all right.’ Bonnie put her hand on my forehead. I looked hot, she said. More wine, tap water and a slab of bread with Stilton.

  We went out on the street at 4 am. It was cold and drizzling. Bonnie wore a red coat with fluffy white fur round the collar. I practised, ‘Maybe we could meet again,’ while she stood with Kate under the porch and Dave and I stopped a taxi.

  ‘Maybe we could meet again.’

  She smiled, tilting her head, ‘That would be nice,’ tore some paper, wrote and handed it to me. ‘Ring in the evening.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  18

  Dreaming in the Afternoon

  The Australian editor rang. He was friendly and wanted to meet me and gave me an address, ‘Clarendon Road near Notting Hill Gate’. It sounded familiar, but I couldn’t think why; I had certainly never been there.

  It was a street of old flat-fronted houses running north from Holland Park Avenue; some of the houses were posh and newly painted, others were grimy and peeling, with dark grey net curtains. As I got nearer, I thought how my knowledge of London would be useful to someone like this editor on his first trip to Europe. I imagined myself showing him – and the miniskirted secretary – the King’s Road, Portobello Road, Soho, perhaps even Buckingham Palace and the Houses of Parliament. I was searching for something that I could offer this man who sounded so dynamic and self-confident, because I had little idea of what journalism really involved – Robbie Robertson hadn’t helped at all with that.

  The house was one of the smarter ones, there was a vase of yellow tulips in the window and I could see the gilded frame of a large dark painting. I walked past and back again, rehearsing what I would say when the editor opened the door. I rang twice, leaving a long interval so as not to seem rude or aggressive. No one came. I lifted the knocker and let it drop with a thud.

  The door opened almost immediately. It was the secretary; she was wearing jeans and a loose sweater and had bare feet. She nodded when I said who I was, and led me into the living room where Richard, the editor, was talking loudly on the telephone in Australian, and the Kinks were coming at low volume from two speakers. The furnishings were unexpectedly plush, thick carpet and antique chairs, and there was a smart-looking kitchen area at the further end of the room.

  The secretary looked beautiful but tired. She told me to sit on a sofa and asked if I would like some lunch. She was going to cook some spaghetti; it would be no problem to do a little extra. It was 4 o’clock, an hour later than I had ever had lunch – even at Christmas. Her accent was softer than Richard’s. I accepted enthusiastically; I wanted her to know that I was the kind of person who could eat lunch at any time.

  Richard went on talking, smiling at me occasionally and mouthing ‘sorry’, and Ray Davies kept on repeating ‘all day and all of the night’. A few feet away the secretary boiled water and chopped something up. I stared around, and picked up a copy of the New Statesman.

  Richard put the phone down, leaped across the room and knelt on the floor in front of me. ‘David Reynolds.’ He said it very loudly, leant back on his hands and stared at me with a huge, teasing grin. ‘Tell me about David Reynolds. Tell me everything.’ He waved his arms in the air and laughed. ‘I really want to know.’ The photograph in the Evening Standard hadn’t revealed the large mouth and the thick lower lip which formed a deep crescent when he smiled. He was wearing a thick cream-coloured woollen polo-neck, on to which his hair flopped enviably.

  ‘Well…erm…I worked on my school magazine. I’m learning shorthand – ’

  ‘Yeah. You went to a public school.’ He shook his head and smiled. ‘We have those in Australia. You just left. I remember.’ The secretary brought two mugs of black coffee. ‘Thanks Louise.’ He took her hand and she leaned her knees against his shoulder. ‘So you like this idea of mine?’

  ‘Yes. It sounds – ’

  ‘It’s all happening, David. It’s all happening already. Colin MacInnes is doing a piece about Malcolm X. Alex Coburn’s interviewing Paul Johnson. David Widgery, Peter Porter, Martin Seymour-Smith, er… Stan Gebler Davies. All over the UK, people are writing for us.’

  ‘And Germaine.’ Louise spoke softly.

  ‘Yes, Germaine.’ He hugged her knees and grinned as he drew out the second syllable.

  I hadn’t heard of any of these people and wondered whether Germaine had a surname. ‘That sounds great.’

  ‘Printers are falling over themselves to print it… So what co
uld you do?’ Louise wandered back to the kitchen.

  ‘Er… well I could do lay-out, proof-read… maybe – ’

  ‘Anything you want to write about?’

  ‘Well… I do want to write about a man I know who was a rear gunner in bombers during the war.’

  He grinned broadly and briefly and looked doubtful. A cloud of steam came from the kitchen. ‘As long as it’s relevant, David… Relevant to now… You know what I mean?’

  I didn’t. ‘Yes. I think so.’

  ‘And you could do proof-reading, a bit of editing, all that stuff?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve done that.’

  ‘And there’s no money… for now, anyway. Can you survive without money, David?’

  ‘Well. I’ve got a job. Part time. Clerking stuff at – ’

  ‘So you’ve got some spare time?’

  ‘Yeah, except I’m learning shorthand typing in the mornings.’

  ‘Shorthand typing!’ He laughed. ‘That’s serious… Don’t look so worried! Let’s eat.’ He touched me on the knee and stood up.

  Richard ate with his head low over the plate and his hair brushing the table. I kept glancing at Louise. She hardly spoke and rarely smiled; she was slim and graceful, a deep-thinking Jean Shrimpton. I had never had food like it – spaghetti with tinned tomatoes, cheese, chunks of garlic, green peppers and cooked salami.

  As we ate Richard passed me copies of American magazines I hadn’t seen before – The Village Voice, The East Village Other, The Berkeley Barb – and asked me what I thought. They looked a bit like our unofficial school magazine, except for some thick wavy lettering that was hard to read.

  ‘That’s beaut.’ Louise pointed to a group of pink letters shaped like a teardrop.

  ‘Yeah.’ I stared at the page as I twisted spaghetti round my fork. It seemed to be advertising a record by a group called the Grateful Dead.

  A tall man came in and shuffled up to the table, smiling tightly as if he had a headache. He had long uncombed hair, a moustache like Marlon Brando’s in Viva Zapata, small circular dark glasses and a shaggy white sheepskin waistcoat which he seemed to be wearing inside out. Apparently, he had been asleep upstairs. He looked at Louise. ‘Any food?’ He sat down, put his arms on the table and squinted around.