up the people who used to be about. For a start there were two sorts of ice-cream man, Wall’s and Eldorado. They would be coming along on their box-tricycles, pinging their bells. Errand boys on their heavy bikes would whistle as they passed. The dustman’s cart had two big horses. The ragand-bone man had one very small horse which pulled a small cart loaded with strange articles. The ice-man had a noisy black lorry which dripped. He carried a huge gleaming block of ice on a sacking pad on his shoulder, holding it with a pair of fearsome black tongs – I was afraid of him. Hopeful people with suitcases were going from door to door selling things – brushes, laces, insurance, salvation – to the housewives in the houses.
I turned the corner into the cul-de-sac and saw a line of small, shabby, semi-detached houses. In 1925, in one of these, number four, I was born and had spent the first ten years of my life. I walked up to number four and stood in front of it. No wave of recognition came over me, no golden memories flooded back into my heart. The only feeling I had about that poky pebble-dashed house was that it was quite extraordinarily small.
Then, gradually, I began to realize what was wrong. In those days I had been much nearer the ground. So, rather creakily, I lowered myself on to all fours, leaned forwards, nudged open the garden gate with my head and peered in at child, or perhaps large dog, level.
That did the trick. The first thing I saw, just inside the gate, was a piece of thick metal pipe sticking up out of the ground. On top of it was a small metal box with a curved top and a grille in its side. I don’t know what it was – a drain-ventilator perhaps – but sixty-five years before I had known it well and had enjoyed its company. I now looked at it with great affection, recalling very clearly the feel of its sun-warmed metal under my hand.
Beyond the pipe-thing, under the skinny privet hedge, I could feel again the black beetly earth between the roots and, behind that, at the foot of the house, I saw with a shudder the violent texture of the edge of the rendering. There the bottom of the thick stony skin of the house had curled up and broken off, leaving a jagged edge of powdery cement to moulder away and suppurate shiny brown pebbles. The mixture had fallen as a loose gritty scree against the side of the house. It was still there.
Feeling slightly foolish, I hauled myself to my feet and dusted off my knees. So, yes, that was the house. I now recognized the raised brick path which wended its way from the gate to the front doorstep. But it was only three paces from end to end, and where was the wide lawn where the tall horn-poppies grew? I had roamed the flower-beds lifting off their pointed hats so that the bright yellow-gold flowers could spread out in the sun, and when a bee landed on a flower I would stroke its back with my finger.
My mother had been quite alarmed when I told her about stroking the bees. She seemed to think it was the wrong thing to do, but I was very close to them and I was sure they didn’t mind. I think she may have told me not to do it any more but I don’t remember whether or not I obeyed her. I wore a pale blue sort of blouse and padded pants, and in the sunshine the front garden was my kingdom.
I could remember stroking the bees quite clearly but equally clearly I could see that the garden in my memory had absolutely no connection with the garden in front of me. So, rather dispirited, I turned away. Going back hadn’t really been a lot of help. I realised that if I wanted to see how things were all those years ago I would have to rely on the pictures that were already in my head – if I could find them.
As I walked away I tried to look at the inside of the house as it had been when I was young. The first thing I saw, on my mother’s dressing-table, was a jar shaped like a small casserole. That was magical. Except for the knob on the top which was a clear mauvecoloured marble, it was made of pale purple translucent glass. When I lifted the lid, very carefully as it was crisp and fragile, it would ring like a bell. The jar was completely filled by an ephemeral ball of swan’s down which, if I lifted it by its ribbon-tag, would spring softly out and release a cloud of marvellously smelling pink powder, so fine that it floated in the air. Sometimes the cloud would float into a shaft of sunlight where it would light up like a flame.
Most of my parents’ bedroom was occupied by an immensely tall four-poster bed. This had fluted pillars of shiny dark wood. The flutes bulged slightly but were held together by a tight concave band of the same wood, amazingly smooth and delicate of form. I would wrap my arms around these pillars, stroke them and gaze into the rich darkness of the wood. That great bed was a different place from the ordinary world. The deep pillows and the wide eiderdown were a haven of luxury and indulgence. One of the privileges of being ill was to be moved from my thin-skinned iron bed to lie in splendour in the big bed, to be cosseted and made special. There I would float in absolute happiness, knowing that I was in the safe centre of life.
My brother John was three years older than me. We slept in the back bedroom, which we shared with a tall linen-press like an open-fronted chest of drawers and a large wickerwork laundry skip which crackled and clicked to itself during the night.
Other sensations came back: the rich taste of the leather pram strap which I chewed, the delicious cold flavour of a Wall’s penny Sno-frute, the smell of roses. Daisy had a wide blue bowl in which she would float big roses from the garden. This stood on a table just below the height of my nose, so I could lean on it and gaze across the wide landscape of roses, watch some luckless insect clambering from petal to petal, and sniff my heart full of the glorious scent.
There was music too. In the downstairs back room stood a tiny piano-like instrument called a Dulcitone. Our housekeeper Elsie would sit at it and press the keys with one finger. For her it would play ‘Baa, Baa, Black Sheep’ in delightful tinkly tones, like a carillon of chiming clocks. It wouldn’t do it for me. However hard I hit the keys and shouted the words, it refused to play that song or any other. I hated it.
The front room, which we weren’t always allowed to go into, had a powerful smell of its own. It was a darkish room, lined entirely with books, and it contained my father’s intriguing roll-top desk, which had pigeonholes and sliding drawers and strange interlocking containers. I remember the day my brother and I discovered, third along in the bookshelf to the right of the fireplace, a heavy German book called Die Erotik in der Photographie. The text was of course incomprehensible but the many photographs of interestingly undressed ladies were deeply fascinating. Some of the photographs were printed side by side in pairs. I discovered that if I held the book up and allowed my eyes to look right through these photographs, beyond them and away into the distance, the images would merge until at last a voluptuous three-dimensional form materialized on the paper. I was proud of this accomplish ment and with the right glasses on I can do it to this day, but sadly the allure of the coy Teutonic lovelies has diminished.
On a tall table in the window stood a gramophone with a magnificent polished-wood horn. Sometimes, late at night, this could be heard playing scratchy German tangos.
The smell of that front room lingers to this day in the drawers of my father’s desk, which is now in my study. It is the smell of briar pipes and tobacco, mixed with the rich scent of cigar boxes. It brings back clear memories of the place, but not of the people.
But there is one incident in which I can recall the people – both myself and another person – with dreadful clarity. I was standing on the doorstep of the house next door where John’s friend, Russell Wright, lived. I banged on the door as usual. Mrs Wright opened it. As usual I said: ‘Can I come in?’ Mrs Wright looked down on me sternly from a great height and, unexpectedly, said: ‘No. You can’t.’ Then she added: ‘You don’t come knocking on other people’s doors saying “Can I come in?” That’s rude! That’s what rude, naughty children do.’ Then she slammed the door in my face.
I stood there, profoundly astonished.
From that moment on I think I began to be more aware, or perhaps more wary, of people; certainly so of Mrs Wright. I think my wariness may have
