Absolute Beginners

by Colin MacInnes

  IN AUGUST

  For our trip up the river, Dad and I decided that we’d settle for the bit in between Windsor castle and a place called Marlow. We chose the shorter run because we found that was about all we could manage what with travelling to and fro from London, and also because Dad’s health was certainly far from brilliant – and also because I’d discovered (but this was a secret that I kept from Dad) that Suze and Henley had a house down by the Thames at a village by the name of Cookham, and though I’d no intention of dropping in for tea and buttered scones, I certainly wanted to have a look at the place, as our pleasure boat sailed by, if that was possible.

  There we were, then, up in the front seat, and passing under Windsor bridge. I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a Tunnel of Love – I mean in one of those boats that wind along it in at the amusement parks – but if you have, you’ll know the whole point is to get in that front seat, right up in the prow, because if you do, you have the sensation as you glide along, that you’re just hanging there over the water: no boat, just you and the surroundings. Well, this was the same (except, of course, that it was light, not dark – in fact, a glorious August day), the water sparkling so that I had on my Polaroids, the diesel chugging, and old Dad there, with his open-neck shirt and sandals, and his mackintosh in a roll (trust Dad!), and puffing away like an engine at his briar. Up there behind us, was the enormous castle, just as you see it on the cinema screen when they play ‘the Queen’ and everyone hustles out, and there out in front of us were fields and trees and cows and things and sunlight, and a huge big sky filled with acres of fresh air, and I thought, my heavens! If this is the country, why haven’t I shaken hands with it before – it’s glorious!

  In fact, the only dark cloud on the horizon, was Dad himself. It’s like this. By means of nagging and prodding and persuading, I’d managed to get him inside Dr A.R. Franklyn’s consulting room in Harley Street. Honest, it was like getting a hip cat into a symphony concert, but I succeeded. While I waited outside, reading eighteen magazines from cover to cover, Dr F. gave my Dad a thorough go-over. But all he would tell us was that he must get Dad into hospital for a proper examination, which he couldn’t do there in Harley Street even if he’d wanted to, but Dad turned this down point blank, and said he wouldn’t go into hospital unless they’d tell him what was the matter – which, as I tried to explain to him (but it was like talking to a wall), was exactly what they wanted to find out, if only he’d only go inside there for a day or two. But Dad said once they get you in hospital, you’re half dead already, and he wouldn’t.

  Well, there it was. I tried to forget it, on this sunny summer day, but there it was.

  At this point, we went round a great U-bend, honking our horn like a truck in the Mile End Road, and round in the other direction came two hundred or so little boats – I swear I don’t exaggerate – each with one kiddo in them, sitting the wrong way round, and rowing like lunatics: a club, it must have been, of athletic juniors, each in white vest and pants and brown legs and arms and a red neck – it was cyclists they made me think of, weaving their way at speed through the city traffic – and we, of course, had to slow down almost to zero as they shot by both sides of us in their dozens. And I got up and cheered, and even old Dad did. Wonderful kiddos on that hot-pot cracking day, racing downstream as if only the salt sea would stop them!

  And as we went on, I was really astonished at all the different kinds of boats they had on this old river! Boy! There’s a great life on this Thames you’d never imagine, if you only saw it down in the city among the cargo ships and barges. Moored beside the stream there were square things like caravans, with proper chimneys and cats emptying slops over the side, and out in the fairway there were powered craft – some of them, believe me, you could have sailed in to South America – and occasionally we met a real old-timer, with a funnel and steam engine, like the Mississippi things they show you on the LP sleeves. And a big surprise was that there were so many sailing boats: I mean, how did they do their criss-cross performance, like Saturday night drunks, in a river as narrow as old father Thames is up there? And canoes, of course, and eskimo boats with one oar made of two (I hope you dig), and even the craziest number of them all – a flat one like a big cardboard box the same size each end, where the chick sits on cushions in the front part, with a brolly, and her stud heaves the thing along with a hop pole, just like gondolas. And the biggest surprise of all, when we got a bit further up the river, was one really large sailing boat lying there in a sort of parking lot, which, according to Dad, must have been brought up there in bits and re-assembled – anyway, I can’t tell you how peculiar it was to see this big ocean boat sitting there right in the middle of the English countryside.

  Surprises? Believe me, there were plenty. Did you know those river cats drive their boats on the wrong side of the water? I mean, no keep left nonsense at all for them? And dig this one. Did you know, when you go up stream – I do hope I make this plain – you go up hill, and so you have to use a kind of staircase, which is called locks? This is the spiel. You form up in a queue, just like at the Odeon, then, when it’s your turn, sail in at one end, into a sort of square concrete well, and they shut two big doors behind you, as if you were going away inside the nick, and there you are, like pussy at the bottom of the drain. Then the lock-keeper product – with a peaked cap, and an Albert watch-chain, and rubber boots – throws some switches or other, and the water gushes in, and you’d hardly credit it, but you start going up yourself! I mean rising like in a commercial lift. And when you’ve got up there, you find to your amazement that the river on the far side is way up there too: i.e. at the same level as you’re at yourself now in the well thing. And the lock-keeper opens two more doors, by pushing against great wooden arms they have with his arse – and a lot of kidlets helping him to do so, or maybe hindering – and you get your release papers, and your civvy clothes back and your fare money, and see! you’re out in the stream again away to freedom, except that now you’re that much higher up! Boy! I certainly dig those locks! And most of them had little gardens, like in St. James’s, and tea chalets, and river cats and onlookers all jigging around and shouting, and having a great, noisy, lazy, watery ball!

  ‘What about a pint?’ said Dad, who the sight of all this water must have been making thirsty.

  ‘Why not? Come on, I’ll buy.’

  ‘You flush these days?’ Dad asked, as we made our way past the excursionists, and the skipper at his tiller, and the technical kiddo who helped him by sitting on the rail.

  ‘I’ve just had a sub,’ I answered, as we cracked our heads on the low door leading down into the saloon.

  ‘For doing what?’ he asked me, when I’d got the wallop and the Coke.

  It’s weird, isn’t it, how your elders are always so suspicious when they hear that you’ve made money! They just can’t credit that little junior has grown up a bit, and turned some honest coin.

  ‘If you listen, Dad, I’ll explain,’ I said. But it was hard to concentrate, because through the portholes just beside our faces we were exactly at the water level, and you found yourself unable not to watch, just like the telly.

  ‘I’m listening,’ Dad said.

  I told him how a character I knew called V. Partners, who’s prominent in the advertising industry, had said he’d sponsor an exhibition of my photos if I’d agree he take the best of them to publicise a skin lotion he was marketing, called Tingle-tangle, which was targeted at the teenage market, and that he’d given me an advance on it of two times twenty-five.

  ‘That’s not much,’ said Dad – very greatly to my surprise.

  ‘You don’t think so?’

  ‘It’s not all you could have …’

  ‘You mean I should have asked more?’

  ‘Not that exactly, no. Did you sign anything?’

  ‘I had to.’

  ‘You’re a bloody fool, son. Also,’ Dad added, ‘he is, because you’re a minor.’

  Well!

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nbsp; ‘Listen, Dad,’ I said, quite a bit vexed, ‘I’ve not got your experience, but one thing I’m not, please, is a fool.’

  ‘Apologies,’ said Dad.

  ‘Apologies accepted.’

  But I wasn’t pleased – no, not at all – the more so as I thought Dad might probably be right. Vendice was very nice – and at any rate he’d listened to me, and not laughed – but of course he was in business for commercial purposes. I thought: I must get to know a lawyer.

  ‘What time we get there?’ Dad asked.

  ‘Marlow? You thinking of that already? About six.’

  ‘We might stay down there for tea.’

  ‘If you want to, Dad, but I’d like to get back to the smoke, if you don’t mind, because I want to take in a concert, second house.’

  ‘That jazz?’

  ‘Yeah. That jazz.’

  ‘Oh, all right. Where we have midday grub?’

  I thought quick. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘we could have it here on the Queen Mary, or we could stop off at one of the little villages, and catch the next boat on.’

  ‘Our tickets let us?’

  ‘Oh, certainly. I’ve checked.’

  ‘Well, we’ll see,’ he said.

  ‘Okay.’

  That brought back thoughts of Suze. And much as I love old Dad, taking him all in all, I couldn’t but wish that, at that very moment, he wasn’t there, but she. Glory! How fabulous it’d be to make this river trip with Crêpe Suzette! And why in creation didn’t I think of it, back in the earlier days?

  Wow! I really had a shock! Because a face – a human face – flashed by a porthole, just outside. But then I saw what it was, which was a bunch of bathers knocking themselves out in the surrounding drink, and Dad and I went upstairs to get a closer dekko. There they were – scores of them – diving off the bank, thrashing about in the river, and making the skipper swear at them by coming too near to his transatlantic. Yelling and splashing or, if they had any sense, roasting their torsos up there on the green, or just standing in plastic poses, watching. ‘Good luck to you!’ I shouted at an Olympic number who’d flogged it across the water in front of the ship’s bows. ‘Help! but I’d like to join them,’ I told Dad.

  After this we passed a quieter bit, with big houses with their front lawns on the river, and sometimes quite lonely, with only an angler or two sitting like they were statues, and swans coming out to hiss at us, just like alligators when the paddle-steamer sails up the Amazon, or the Zambesi, or wherever it is, to gnash at the explorers. As we passed tall banks of rushes, they seemed to bow to us, because they sank several feet, then rose again when we’d gone by. And sometimes hills popped up unexpectedly – and what was even more peculiar, popped up again (I mean the same hills) in some quite different location, because we’d gone round several mile-long bends. There were little bridges we could only just get under, like in corny films about baronial Scotland, and beside each of the locks, were weirs with notices saying ‘Danger’, and roaring noises like Niagara, or almost. In fact, the whole darn scene was as good as Cinerama in continuous performance, and much fresher.

  The most famous of these locks, so Dad informed me – and he must have been right, because the skipper left his wheel to a skilful kiddo I admit I envied, and came along among the passengers to say the same – was one called Boulter’s Lock. It had a little bridge, like in Japanese murder pictures, and a big wooded island, and according to Dad, in the days of Queen Victoria and King Edward and all those historic monarchs, it was the top hip rendezvous for the dudes and toffs and mashers, and their birds. Personally (though naturally, I didn’t say so), I found it a bit gloomy – a bit sad and deserted and un-contemporary, like so many glorious monuments your elders-and-betters point out to you proudly from the tops of buses. And when we sailed on afterwards into a section they called Cliveden Reach (only you don’t pronounce it that way, because it’s a square thing to do with educated words), which apparently is one of the scenic glories of the nation, I admit I was considerably wrought down. It was like the canal at Regent’s Park, only, of course, bigger: I mean great woods of dangling trees like parsley salad, wringing themselves out into the river, all rotting away gradually, and old: which, of course, England is, I mean all those ancient cities, but it seems even the nature part of it can look like that as well.

  But now I was growing a bit nervous: because I knew when we’d get out of this Cliveden lily-pond, the next stop would be the place called Cookham. Now, when I’d imagined the whole scene, lying back at home upon my spring divan, I’d thought – well, I know it’s foolish, but I had – I’d thought of Suze’s house being a little white thing set beside the river, and the boat going slowly by, and she coming out just at that moment (without Henley, need I say), and seeing me there on the deck like the Captain in H.M.S. Pinafore, and throwing a kiss or two at me and pleading to me to alight, and the boat pulling in beside her garden, and me getting off into her arms.

  Well, naturally, as the day grew older, I knew that wasn’t going to happen, but I’d put off deciding exactly what I should do: e.g. get off or not, and how to find Suze’s dwelling, if I did. But just after Cookham lock (which comes a bit before the place itself), while I was still hesitating about it all, and feeling kind of paralysed, and wondering if perhaps I even wanted to see Suze at all, it was Dad who came, unexpectedly, to my assistance – though in a very awkward way. Because when we’d set sail again after the lock thing, and I was already cursing myself for doing nothing, and we were just going to go underneath the metal bridge there, Dad slumped on to my shoulder, and passed out.

  So I propped him up and ran and told the skipper, who wasn’t pleased and said we could hop off at the next lock we came to. But I said no, that was no damn good, that Dad was a sick man, under Dr A.R. Franklyn’s care of Harley Street, and that I had to get him to the Cookham doctor quick, and if he didn’t stop his boat immediately, I’d hold him personally responsible. And then I turned round to all the passengers, and said in a loud voice my Dad was dying and the skipper didn’t care a darn about it – in fact, as you’ve guessed, I became a bit hysterical.

  Well, I know mums and dads by now, and if there’s one thing any official person hates, it’s when they turn on him in a body – or, so far as that goes, if there’s anything like a fuss. Some nosey, interfering passengers, thank goodness, took a look at Dad, and said I was quite right – they wanted to get rid of him too, I could soon see, because nobody likes sickness, especially on a holiday. So the skipper slowed the boat down, and pulled in near the bank there, and bellowed at an old geezer who was mending boats just beside the iron bridge (or that’s what his sign said he was doing), and the geezer rowed out in a little boat, and we got Dad down into it, and pulled off, and the pleasure boat sailed on.

  By the time we landed on the slipway, Dad had fortunately recovered; which I was bloody glad of, because I did feel a bit guilty about bundling him into the little boat – and in fact, about my whole hysterical performance. The old geezer helped him into the boathouse, into the shade, and yelled at his wife to get a cup of tea, and get on the blower to the local national health representative, who turned up before long, not very pleased to be interrupted from his test tubes and hypodermics, and Dad not very pleased to see him either, because he said this was a lot of fuss about nothing, and we should have stayed up there on the boat, and what the hell: so neither of them was very cooperative with the other. And this Cookham doctor said there was nothing much wrong with Dad that he could see (I’d heard that one before!), and what he needed was a rest, and then get on the bus and go straight back home to bed, and slumber.

  So the boat-building geezer fixed Dad in a deck-chair with a hood on it and tassels, and his wife came up with further reviving cuppas, and I said a bus would be too slow, and cost what it would, I was going to get Dad back to London in a taxi. The geezer said he’d phone through to the local car-hire, but I said no, just to give me the address, and I’d go off and fix things personally, and tha
t would give Dad time for a short nap to set him up again, and me a chance to have a swift dekko at this lovely beauty-spot. So off I went.

  This Cookham is a real old village like you see on biscuit boxes: with a little square church, and cosy cottages, and roads made of mud, and agricultural numbers trudging about them doing whatever it is they do do. I asked one or two for the address I wanted of the car-hire, and they were very relaxed and friendly, and didn’t talk a bit like country people do in variety spots and things, and when I followed their directions, I came round a stack of corners … and wham! I saw Suze’s house there! Yes. I mean, it was the same house I’d imagined in my vision, near enough … at any rate, I didn’t ask any more directions, but just walked in through the front garden, and round the side to the lawn beside the river, and there, sitting on the grass listening to the radio, I saw Suze. And only Suze.

  ‘Hullo, Crêpe Suzette,’ I said.

  She looked up, but didn’t get up, and stared at me a minute, and said, ‘Hi.’

  I came up a bit nearer. ‘You all right?’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Suzette.

  ‘Henley well?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she said.

  ‘Can I say hullo?’

  Suze had got up on her two knees, and her hands falling down between them. ‘He’s up there,’ she said.

  ‘In London?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  I got down on my knees too. ‘So I’ll miss him,’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Suzette.

  And then – well, it was like we were shoved at each other from behind by two great enormous hands. And there we were, all mixed up in a bundle, me clinging on to Suze, she clinging on to me, and Suze sobbing like a child – I mean, great dreadful sobs more like groans, it was really awful.

  Well, that went on for quite a while, and I’m not conventional, but I thought, hell! there’s windows all over the damn place, even though this is the country, so I kept saying, ‘Suze, Suze,’ and bashing her on the back, and kissing her face when I could get at it, and ‘Suze, take it easy, kid, do relax, girl, please take it easy.’