by Liz Byrski
‘Not really,’ Tom says, ‘but it wasn’t my finest hour. Come on, let’s dump the rust remover and open a bottle of something decent.’ And he carefully puts the diary away in his desk drawer. ‘It’s surprising, how the past sounds when you read it again,’ he says and, putting a hand on his heart, breaks into song ‘Memories, wrack the corners of my mind . . .’
‘Barbra Streisand,’ Richard says. He hums the next few bars out of tune; unlike Tom, Richard is not a singer. ‘And then there’s that bit about would we do it all again if we got the chance?’
‘Almost certainly,’ Tom says, urging him towards the kitchen. ‘And if we had the chance to cock it all up again, we’d probably do that too. That, I maintain, is what makes us interesting; flawed, doomed but interesting.’
‘Sometimes,’ Julia says, looking up from the bench where she is spooning mashed potatoes into a dish, ‘you two sound as though you’ve escaped from a bad adaptation of an Evelyn Waugh novel. You’re anachronisms.’
‘But she loves us to bits,’ Tom says, winking at Richard.
And Julia throws an oven glove at him.
1968
FIVE
Kilburn, London – January 1968
‘The house is freezing cold and a bit damp,’ Jane said as the taxi drove away. ‘It belonged to Sandy’s great-aunt, who died, and the relatives are fighting over the will, so she gets to use it until it’s settled. But, major advantage, the hot water works and the beds are okay.’
Zoë, standing between her suitcases on the pavement, stared up at the decaying elegance of the facade – the once cream walls mottled grey with damp, the chipped cornices and cracked plaster, and the tall bay windows with their peeling paint – and loved everything about it. Most of all, she loved the fact that it was half the world away from Fremantle and from Eileen.
‘I don’t care how cold and damp it is,’ she said, ‘I’m in London, that’s all that matters.’ And, turning to pick up her suitcase, she yelped in shock as a large hand whipped it away.
‘Hi, I’m Harry,’ the owner of the hand said. ‘I’ll take your bags in for you.’ And he picked up the two suitcases as though they were a couple of bags of groceries and ran up the steps and then to the first floor.
‘Does he live here?’ Zoë whispered.
‘Harry? Yep, him and Sandy,’ Jane said. ‘And there are some people on the top floor too but they’re only here for a few days.’
‘But . . . he’s . . .’ Zoë hesitated.
‘Black?’ Jane supplied, picking up the belt of Zoë’s coat, which was dragging on the pavement.
‘Well, yes. Is it okay?’
Jane straightened up and looked at her. ‘Why not? He’s Jamaican, he’s a student.’
‘He looks quite old for a student,’ Zoë said.
‘Oh, he’s been studying for years,’ Jane replied. ‘He’s doing a PhD. Not medicine; anthropology I think.’
‘But Mum always says . . .’
‘Zoë, you came here to get away from Aunty Eileen,’ Jane said, urging her into the house. ‘Forget it, this is London – different, exciting and fabulous.’
But Eileen’s warnings about black people weren’t easy for Zoë to dismiss: evil, dirty, dangerous, don’t make eye contact.
‘I’m quite civilised, really,’ Harry said several hours later, catching her watching him nervously. ‘I don’t eat little white girls for breakfast.’
‘Just for Sunday lunch,’ Jane said, and the two of them laughed.
Zoë, flushing, attempted to laugh too.
Three weeks later on her first day as a commuter, heading to the job the temp agency had assigned her, Zoë was nearly trampled by the hurrying crowd as she stopped in amazement at the sight of snow. Fairytale flakes were drifting from a pearly grey sky, which cast a strange iridescent light over London, and seemed to soften the usual cacophony of voices and traffic noise. Outside the station, a news vendor stamped his feet against the cold.
‘US B-52 crashes in the Arctic!’ he yelled, waving the newspaper. ‘Radiation alert! B-52 crashes!’
Zoë stared in dismay at the man’s mittened hand, his fingers poking out and blue with cold. It was considerably colder, both inside and outside the house than she had ever imagined.
‘Which way to Portland Place?’ she asked the man.
‘Down there, love. Regent Street, then left. American plane radiation alert!’
The imposing facade of Broadcasting House faced her, curving as stately as a great ship, as she turned into Portland Place. Inhaling a deep breath of cold air, she walked up the street, pausing only briefly to glance at the statue of Ariel and Prospero standing guard above the entrance. Then she joined the steady stream of people making their way into the foyer, hurrying to the stairs or to the lifts, unwinding their scarves and greeting each other, and anticipation turned to anxiety. Overcome suddenly by the seriousness and importance of the place, Zoë felt helpless and completely out of her depth.
‘Are you okay? You look a bit lost,’ said a man, stopping alongside her. ‘Can I help?’ Snow was melting in damp patches across the shoulders of his trench coat and in his fashionably long hair.
‘I was just . . . well, taking it all in,’ Zoë said, ‘and wondering where to go.’ He was disturbingly handsome – tall, with searching grey eyes – and she wondered if he was famous and if she should know who he was. ‘It’s my first day . . . it feels . . .’ she paused, lost for words.
‘Right, perhaps?’ he said. ‘It feels right? As though you’re absolutely supposed to be here?’
The word she’d been looking for was ‘terrifying’, but the way he was looking at her made her weak at the knees, so she nodded.
‘I felt like that on my first day here too,’ he said, ‘it’s a good feeling. I’m Richard Linton, by the way. I actually work at the Television Centre, but I used to work in radio here. So, can I help you find out where you need to go?’
By the time he had escorted her to the audience research department he had persuaded her to meet him for lunch in the canteen. Zoë passed her first morning at the BBC in a haze of confusion and distracted by a longing for lunchtime to arrive.
When Richard spotted her in the foyer, Zoë was wearing a scarlet coat, black tights and shiny, knee-length black boots. He was captivated not just by her appearance but by the way she was standing: still, rapt, as though she were breathing in the atmosphere. Committed as he was to the BBC and all that it stood for, he thought he detected a kindred spirit. As soon as he spoke to her, he loved the strange rising inflections of her Australian accent and the fine bones and pixie-like face under the cap of short dark hair. Most uncharacteristically, Richard knew that his brain had taken a snapshot of her and burned it into his memory. He had been on his way to an appointment and the odds on their meeting in this way were remote. The randomness of it made him feel that this had somehow been meant to happen.
‘I work on Panorama,’ he explained to Zoë when they met for lunch. ‘It’s a current affairs program, like your Four Corners.’
‘Really?’ she said, nodding politely.
‘The BBC is my natural home,’ he continued, battling with the canteen’s macaroni cheese. ‘When I was thirteen I decided I was going to work for the BBC, and here I am. And I just got promoted.’
Zoë smiled and, abandoning her struggle with the macaroni, pushed her plate aside. ‘That’s wonderful,’ she said, ‘congratulations.’
And as she looked up at him, Richard’s heart seemed to lurch and flutter in a most peculiar way and he had trouble catching his breath. He’d been smarting from the ignominy of being dumped recently by a very assertive young journalist from radio news. And the previous weekend he’d had an uncomfortable falling out with his parents over his involvement with the anti-Vietnam campaign. But when Zoë smiled at him and said ‘congratulations’, none of it seemed to matter anymore. As the macaroni congealed, and he reached across the table to light her cigarette, Richard had a sense of exciting possibilit
ies. He had never believed in love at first sight, but this, he thought, must be about as close to it as things come.
High on the ceiling above Richard’s bed, a cobweb, thick with accumulated dust, hung in a loop between the light cord and the opal glass shade. Zoë lay gazing at it perfectly still, enjoying the way her body moulded into the bed, the looseness of her limbs and the luxury of Sunday morning. She felt something like affection for the cobweb; it spoke to her of the monumental difference between here and home, as Eileen would have whisked that cobweb away as soon as it appeared. But then, nothing here was anything like home, and Zoë relished her liberation from the narrow, timorous life her mother had created for them; one dominated by what people might think.
From the bedroom she could hear Richard clattering crockery, thumping the toaster, abusing his new electric percolator. He never did anything quietly. It was, she thought, probably because he did everything very fast, as though there were more important things demanding his attention. He even made love that way, although, with no other basis for comparison, she realised this might be the way all men did it.
‘Your breakfast, madam,’ Richard said, edging the tray onto the bedside table, which was already cluttered with books, small change, tissues, a packet of Rothmans and an overripe banana. ‘Coffee, toast and peanut butter. Happy nineteenth birthday.’ He dropped a rectangular gilt-embossed leather box into her lap. ‘Here’s your present. Shove over so I can get back in.’
Zoë, not sure if she was excited or embarrassed, wriggled across the bed to make room for him. She was unused to getting presents and those she did get were only ever from Eileen, and usually something essentially practical and unexciting. This looked totally different.
‘It’s antique,’ Richard said, as she opened the lid to reveal a heart-shaped blue and white enamel pendant encased in silver. ‘I hope it’s okay.’
Zoë gasped. ‘It’s beautiful, Richard. The most beautiful present I’ve ever had,’ she said as he took it from her.
‘Oh, rubbish,’ he said, putting it around her neck and fastening the catch. ‘It’s not hugely precious or anything. But I’m glad you like it.’
‘I love it,’ she said, ‘and I’ll wear it forever.’
Richard reached for his mug of coffee and took a sip. ‘Good, it looks nice. It really suits you.’ He leaned over and kissed her. ‘Many happy returns. Oh lord, you’re not going to cry, are you?’
Zoë swallowed hard and pressed her palms to her eyes. ‘Only a little bit and only because I’m happy.’
‘Oh, that’s good. Look, I’ve promised to go to my parents for a weekend in a couple of weeks’ time,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you come with me?’
‘You don’t think it’s a bit soon?’ Zoë said, biting into the soggy toast and trying to pretend she was unaware of the significance of being introduced to parents.
Richard shook his head. ‘You have to meet them sometime.’
‘Well, if you really think so. Will your sister be there?’
‘No. Julia’s still in Paris; still moaning about hating it, hating the French and hating being an au pair.’
‘I thought you said she hated small children.’
‘That too,’ Richard answered. ‘She’s very hard to please, as well as not being qualified to do anything except get married. But you don’t need to worry about Julia; you just have to grit your teeth and survive the parents.’
Nothing had prepared Zoë for Bramble Cottage; it crept up on her from behind high hedges at the end of a narrow lane, revealing itself only as Richard made the sharp turn into the drive and crunched to a halt on the gravel. The rambling two-storey wattle and daub house, with its whitewashed walls sectioned by dark wooden beams, tightly thatched roof, and leadlight windows with diamond panes glinting in the Saturday morning sunlight, took her breath away.
‘Some of the beams inside are very low,’ Richard said, ‘you should be okay but just remember to watch your head.’
It wasn’t just the house that was surprising. Zoë had imagined Richard’s mother as an older, female version of her son; tall, loose-limbed in elegant casual clothes, silk scarves, subtle jewellery, even perfectly fitting jodhpurs. But Anita, dressed from neck to knee in paisley patterned wool, resembled a sturdy, high-backed, solidly upholstered armchair. Her short, rigidly permed hair was rolled back from her forehead with two almost perfectly circular curls at each side, reminiscent of the Queen.
‘How lovely to see you, darling,’ Anita said, greeting them at the door. ‘And you must be Chloe, from Australia, how interesting; you must tell us all about it. A lot of kangaroos, I believe.’ She crushed Zoë’s hand in her own plump one, and peered fiercely at her through rather bulbous blue eyes. ‘Come through to the kitchen and I’ll put the kettle on.’ She ushered them to the kitchen and set a large kettle to boil on top of the Aga.
As Richard chatted to his mother, Zoë shifted nervously from one foot to the other. She already had a feeling that she was not welcome here; there was something immediately intimidating and slightly hostile about Anita Linton. Noticing a group of framed photographs on the wall by the breakfast nook, she slipped away and peered at them; Richard and his sister on a beach with buckets and spades, and then, a little older, on ponies, staring gravely at the camera from beneath the velour peaks of their riding hats. Lastly, she saw one of Julia as a sturdy teenager. With her pale hair in a long bob, and wearing a twinset, pleated skirt and a single strand of pearls, she looked every inch her mother’s daughter.
‘Julia on her seventeenth birthday,’ Richard said, coming up behind Zoë and putting his hands reassuringly on her shoulders, before turning back to his mother. ‘So, she’s staying on in Paris after all?’
‘She certainly is,’ Anita said. ‘Daddy put his foot down, but she does seem to be settling in now. Ralph,’ she called, leaning out through the back door, ‘come along, dear. Richard and Chloe are here.’
‘It’s Zoë, Mum,’ Richard said, picking up the tray, ‘Zoë. In Greek, it means life.’
‘I know that, dear,’ Anita said, taking them into a chintz-upholstered sitting room. ‘And are you of Greek descent, Zoë?’
Zoë shook her head. ‘I’m Australian, Mrs Linton,’ she said. ‘But my great-great-grandfather came from London, from the East End. He was sent out to Australia as a convict and he married an Irish housemaid who worked for one of the settler families.’
‘Really! A convict,’ Anita said, twitching her shoulders, ‘and a housemaid, you don’t say.’
That night, in a narrow single bed in a tiny room beneath the sloping ceiling, Zoë wondered whether Richard would attempt to join her. Confused by the house – which seemed to have several narrow, curving staircases, different floor levels and strange storage spaces accessible only when bent double or on your knees – she had no idea where he was. Would he have to pass his parents’ room to reach hers? Would he risk it? She almost hoped not, as discovery by the beady-eyed Anita was too horrible to contemplate. She was exhausted from the effort of trying to get everything right and getting most of it wrong, from talking about her convict ancestry to putting milk in her cup before the tea. Even her attempt to compliment Anita on the scones had turned to disaster when she had explained that Eileen made pumpkin scones; pumpkin was, in Anita’s opinion, suitable only for feeding to farm animals. Could Richard, wherever he was in this beautiful, but strange, old house with its creaking timbers and creatures scuttling about in the thatch, possibly still love her after today’s performance?
Early the following afternoon, as she stuffed clothes into her suitcase, still shaky in the aftermath of the heated argument over lunch, Zoë mused that home was, at least, free of arguments such as the one that sent the Lintons spiralling into chaos over the roast beef and Yorkshire pudding.
It began with Ralph standing at the head of the table, and, with the studious care of a surgeon, carving the joint and placing slices of dark, overcooked meat on the plates Anita handed him. He was a tall, angular
man with a premature stoop; probably, Zoë thought, from years of avoiding the low ceilings in Bramble Cottage. As he stooped lower over the joint, she could see thinning grey hair stretched sparsely across his bald pate.
‘Glad to see that some of those left-wing wallahs have got some sense,’ Ralph said, apropos of nothing, as he sawed away at the meat.
Zoë, sitting opposite Richard, saw him stiffen and look up from the plate his mother had just put in front of him.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Dock workers marching in support of Enoch Powell,’ Ralph looked up momentarily from the carving. ‘These blacks think they can come here and take over the country, and the damn fool government panders to them. Says they’re British.’ He gave a short dry laugh. ‘Apparently, the dockers were marching along singing “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas”.’
‘It was an appalling speech,’ Richard said, and Zoë saw the colour rising in his face. ‘Why do you believe it’s okay to deny people access to work or housing because of their race?’
Ralph, who had returned to the carving, stopped again. ‘Why not? Why shouldn’t a landlord be able to decide who he wants in his property?’
‘So, you’d feel the same if it were the Swiss who were discriminated against, or Americans, or even the French?’
‘Different thing entirely,’ Ralph said, glaring at his son.
‘It’s the blacks that are the problem,’ Anita intervened. ‘You can’t trust them, they’re not like us.’ She lowered her voice slightly and looked across at Zoë while passing her a vegetable dish. ‘Cauliflower, dear?’
‘That’s the most appalling thing I’ve ever heard you say . . .’ Richard began and Zoë, in an effort to help, stepped in.
‘Actually,’ she said, ‘I share a house with someone from Jamaica. Not just him, of course, there are a few of us. But his name’s Harry and he’s very nice. He’s a university student and he works in a kitchen.’ The silence was chilling.