everywhere and the constant presence of Yellow
Cabs which we used a lot. On my first *ride in a Yellow Cab I
admired very much the generous ashtray in the back, flicking
ash and putting cigarette ends into it at a great rate-until I
found it was really the chute you put your money in! I was
fascinated, too, by trivial differences: the traffic lights being
simply green and red, with no amber; the public telephones in
drug stores, and, for that matter, drug stores themselves; being
commanded 'Walk' or 'Don't Walk' at pedestrian crossings;
and all my romantic notions of New York gained from films and
television being confirmed and compounded by two simple
I29
street signs together. One said cmadison Avenue', the other
4 48th Street'. That was where we were staying and, as if I was
personally living in a film, I never really believed it was true.
Yet all the time-I suppose because we speak the sartle
language-it Seemed like home and yet in so many different
ways was not. The time this struck us most forcibly was just after
arriving at the hotel. It was early evening and after we had
been shown to our room we came down again, and feeling very
hungry, I said to Don: 'I could do with some tea, couldn't
you ?' s a good idea,' he said. 'I'll get a waiter.'
'Yes, that' when I say I felt like having tea, I
I must explain here that
meant the kind of tea we have in Nottingham: not just a cup of
tea nor even a cup of tea with a few polite scones and biscuits,
but a pot of tea, with all sorts of catables-a plate of bread and
butter, pork pie possibly, and salad, cheese, pickles and perhaps
fruit cake. This (and the pork pie idea was looming particularly
large when I spoke to Don) is what I had in mind as we sat
down in the lounge of our hotel in Manhattan.
The waiter came and we asked for some tea. He looked a little
blank.
Don repeated the order.
'You mean, like cups of tea with tea-bags?'
'No,' said Don, 'we'd like a pot of tea, please . .
'A what ... ?'
Don went on. 'A pot of tea with something to cat.'
The waiter's amazement was beyond belief. It was as if he
had just heard the Third World War had broken out.
'Tea ... to eat?' he said, eyebrows hitting the ceiling and
making people on distant sofas and chairs look round to see
what was going on.
But before Don could expand any more on his ideas of
English northern tea the waiter had turned and disappeared.
'Well,' II said, 'that's it. They obviously don't serve it and
that's the last we'll see of him.'
I was wrong. Within a few minutes e reapp , and with
him was someone who looked like the manager. We felt rather
uneasy. But we need not have done. The manager could not
have been nicer as we explained what we nicant by 'Tea'. And
I30
h cared
not lonc, afterwards the self-same waiter, all smiles, brought us a
0
great tray with not only endless hot water, tea-bags and cups,
but an incredible assortment of the most wonderful sandwiches
-turkey, chicken, prawn, and accompanied by every kind of
pickle and mustard imaginable. It was marvellous. They
obviously do have tea in New York, but they don't call it that!
But before then we had had a different sort of surprise. On
the way from the airport John suddenly noticed a big black car
just in front of us. 'Look at that,' he said. 'Mafia Staff Car!' I
nearly went under the scat. 'Mafia Staff Car?' I said, not
believing it was possible. 'Shouldn't you tell the driver to keep
clear?' The driver overheard and started laughing. 'It's a joke,'
he explained, as I was still waiting for tommy guns to appear
from the windows of the black limousine. 'Oh,' I said. 'It's just
a plate anybody can buy,' he went on. 'You could buy one and
take it back home and stick it on your automobile.' 'I see,' I
said, feeling rather silly, and then we all had a good laugh at
this first example of New York humour.
As we drove on to Manhattan Island I noticed tiiat, although
there had not been a cloud in the sky, it gradually seemed to get
darker. Then I understood why. We were now driving along
streets like canyons where every single building was a skyscraper.
I looked out of the window and up and up at these
cliff faces of concrete and glass, and they seemed to go up and
on for ever. I found it rather disturbing.
Our hotel room was on the tenth floor: not ve~-v high,
perhaps, by New York standards, but certainly the highest I
had ever been in a building in my life. I steeled myself to look
out and down on to the street below where the traffic seemed
like Dinky cars, and I felt quite remote and unconnected with
the human beings I could see like specks on the pavements. I
didn't like * it one bit. Later, I liked even less sleeping at that
height. I lay in bed and had a strange, detached mental picture
of myself suspended at that height, with the roar of traffic
beneath, never-ending, and me right up there with nothing to
support me, lying horizontal in the air. I didn't sleep much
that first night.
The next day we met Tom Congdon, our American publisher,
and discussed the schedule for the week: we were to be
I3I
launclied on a round of personal appearances, a lot of broadcasts
from local radio stations and one television show, the
widely-networked Today Show. The television was first on the
list, and as we drove down to the studio I was very aware that I
was glad I had brought Emma's lead with me. The thought
of appearing before this enormous American audience was
quite daunting. I took the lead out of my bag and carried it
into the studio with me. I felt mentally that Emma was there
trotting beside me, quietly being more confident than I was,
pulling gently on the lead and transmitting a message to me:
'It will be all right. Don't worry. Remember when we were
on the Russell Hary Show and I went to sleep? Think of tliat.
Think of me beside your chair. You'll be all right.'
I was introduced to the interviewer who, I saw, had noted the
lead dangling from my hand and I fancied that I also saw a
thinks-balloon rise swiftly from his head with a big question
mark in it.
'Er ... I've brought Emma's lead,' I said. I thought I had
better somehow explain, but saying that only seemed to make
it worse.
He looked slightly nonplussed.
'You don't mind do you? Only And then I couldn't
really explain the true reason, and just went on lamely and
apologetically, 'You don't think it looks stupid, do you? I'll
keep it out of camera shot. No one will see it.'
He smiled as if he then really understood. 'No, go ahead ...
feel free. It's fine.' Then he took me through the sort of questions
he would ask, the technicians came and lit me up and did their
tests, and soon I was absorbed in the business of the inter
view.
But all the while I kept a tight hold of the lead down in the
chair beside me, and as we were cued in and the show began, I
imagined literally that Emma was down there too, curled up
asleep, giving me confidence in the way that she always did,
and proving once again how much I still needed her.
In between fulfilling our commitments to the schedule Tom had
mapped out, we had plenty of time to look at New York. It was
such an exciting city, and vibrated and tingled with bustle and
life, and gave a strange, heightened sense of feeling good to be
I32
I
alive. I had only one major, permanent disappointment. I
really did expect to see Fred Astaire in top hat and tails
dancing along Fifth Avenue, and when there was no sign of
him I was quite sad! I suppose that was an indication of how
much films influence the average English person's idea of New
York. But there was a plus side to this. We were relieved that it
was possible to walk about and not see gangsters in a street fight,
and not be mugged at every corner, nor was there a sign of the
equivalent of Kojak keeping down the crime that we have
grown accustomed to think flourishes every second of the day
or night in New York.
We were strolling along one evening and came across a police
patrol car parked by the sidewalk. John and Don were so full
of admiration they had to stop and look all round it, but just as
Don was peering at the light on top of the car we saw the policeman
coming towards us. I stood back, wondering if he was
going to arrest us there and then, and fascinated by the gun in
his holster which swung ominously as he approached. I felt I
had seen this sort of thing on television, and didn't fancy being
despatched to the morgue.
But what the policeman said was: 'Hi! How'd ya like it?' I
think he must have guessed immediately we were English
tourists.
Don leapt back from the car as if shocked by several thousand
volts and looked defensive. John also managed to look shifty,
although we were doing nothing and the policeman seemed
friendly.
'Er ... marvellous,' we said at last. The policeman opened
the door.
'Get in,' he said.
So that was it ... the soft approach ... we were going to be
taken for a ride to whatever Precinct Police Station ... But
before this thought had really time to materialize, the policeman
followed up.
'Go on, get in. You're English aren't you? I'll take a picture
of you if you like sitting in a genuine New York police car.'
And that was it. We chatted to him. He took Don's camera as
we all piled inside and heard the radio crackling out messages,
and he took a photo of us, then Don took one of him and me
I33
smiling in front of the car. It was all so friendly, and that
incident with the policeman was typical. We found the
American people so marvellously warm and open. Meet an
American for five minutes and you know his entire life-story.
Another lovely thing we found was that complete strangers
spoke to us. Quite unlike England. It is impossible to savour
the true meaning of 'English reserve' and realize what a
handicap it is until you have been to America. 'Have a good
day,' everyone said and they really meant it. Try that on a
Nottingham bus at seven in the morning, I thought.
Visiting New York radio stations was a different kind of eyeopener.
Although I had found that the television studio had
been very much like one of ours at the BBC or LWT back home
-except it was high up in a skyscraper block-the radio
stations were as unlike Broadcasting House as could be
imagined. I was extremely surprised. I had expected everything
in New York to be on a bigger scale, so when I went into my
first radio station and found it was tucked away in a small room
high up at the back of a downtown office block, I could hardly
believe it. Also the people who ran them were far more informal
than I had been used to at the BBC. They were all very easycome,
easy-go, and were even more advertising-minded than
our own commercial stations.
One station we went to advertised nothing but kosher products.
Of course, I had done a lot of interviews for commercial
stations in England and was used to having the advertising
slipped into the interview. But I was not quite prepared for
what happened here. I was in the middle of telling them a story
about Emma, and had reached a dramatic bit where Emma
saved me from being knocked over and killed on a pedestrian
crossing, when suddenly I was stopped. A man leaned in front
of me and, without any warning, started a great harangue about
the quality of kosher salad cream and then broke into a little
ditty about it. When he'd finished he grinned, and I got on as
best I could picking up the tl-ireads of what I'd been saying:
'Where was I? Ah yes. On the edge of the pavement. . . .'
We then went on to discuss my eye operation and I was just
about to say what it was like when the bandages came off for
the first time when ... a hand on my shoulder. Stop c-.,,erything.
I34
The man was back clutching another bit of paper and broke
immediately into song. Wonderful kosher butter this time.
I found it very difficult to put much enthusiasm into relating
the first moments of sight when all I could think of was kosher
butter.
One of the nicest radio stations we went to in Manhattan was
run entirely for the blind. They broadcast about twelve hours a
day, reading news headlines, a serial-extract from a book, and
giving all sorts of shopping information for blind people. It was
run by a blind person and I really took to the interviewer, a
former actress called judy. Of all the interviewers we met she
was by far the most attentive and enthusiastically interested in
not only the story of Emma and me, but also in Don and what
he had to say and how he felt.
This was another aspect of American broadcasting people
that made them so different from their English counterparts.
Invariably they want to know far more about how you felt in
any given situation. 'And what were your emotional feelings
then?' seemed to be their favourite question. And, of course, to
anyone English that is riever a very easy question to answer. We
keep ourselves to ourselves and don't regard our feelings as
public property. Both Don and I found it all rather refreshing,
however, and in the end we became quite good at actually
saying what we felt. I thought it was rather endearing that
Americans set such store by people's emotional reactions, and
how they felt it was all of interest to everyone else. Perhaps it
might do us English a bit of good to take that particular leaf
from their book.
When we left this radio station and I had put Emma's leadonce
more my mainstay-back in my bag, I had a reminder of
her even more for
cible than the lead could ever provide. There
at the edge of the sidewalk was a guide-dog with her master.
But to my horror there was, just in front of them, a begoingbowl.
I was shattered.
Begging is not illegal in New York, but the blind man and
his dog were somehow very different for me from all the other
people we had met asking for money. I was not at all sorry for
the blind man, but I was moved almost to tears by his dog.
Perhaps it is a terrible ivay to think of it, but my reaction was
I35
that lie knew precisely what he was doing and his dog did not.
The poor dog liad no choice but to sit and beg with her owner.
It was so sad.
Apart from isolated incidents like this I was enjoying our
American trip, but I thought constantly of Kerensa and Emma,
wondering what they were doing, imagining Emma romping
about with Buttons in the garden, and hoping that a wistful
thought or so might cross her mind. I tried desperately to
adjust to the time difference between New York and Nottingham,
and would be walking along Fifth Avenue at lunch-time,
look at my watch, and even my permanent regret at the absence
of Fred Astaire would be blotted out. I would whizz the time
on by five hours and think: it's Kerensa's bedtime, or: Mum
will just be putting the dog food out. And my mind, superimposing
the most unlikely image on the bustle of Manhattan,
would picture Emma and Buttons putting their brown noses
into their bowls. Having Emma's lead was a comfort, but it was
no substitute and I really wanted it to work magical powers and
somehow transport Emma across the Atlantic there and then.
To make up for this I made a phone call home every day.
Kerensa thus knew that I had not really disappeared, and my
mother told me afterwards that when these transatlantic conversations
took place, Emma sat near by inclining her head
very much like the dog on the gramophone record label and
with an expression that said: 'I know who you're talking to, so
everything's all right.'
I could not wait, in the end, to get home. The details of the
flight back, saying goodbye to everyone, the final broadcast
emma vip Sheila Hocken Page 17