didn’t just fall flat on their sides at every corner.
One evening, on our way back from the Coles’, I saw something quite unexpected. It was dusk, almost dark, which was the best time to travel on the open top of a tram. Being above the lampposts the deck was dark except when the tram-pole spluttered and gave off white sparks as it rolled, hissing, along its wire. You could hold on to the rail and look down on the stream of cars and vans and see the people moving busily on the pavements, lit by the bright shop windows. It was like being high in the rigging of a tall ship. Standing there, scanning the view from side to side, I suddenly observed, or perhaps I should say, noted the predicament of, what I could only conclude must be a hitherto unknown section of society.
Along the Finchley Road, as along many other big roads in London, there were parades of shops, all brightly lit and thronged with people. From the top of the tram I could see that the shops themselves had dark flat roofs. Behind these, on a level with me but invisible from below, was a line of windows. Many of these were brightly lit and as the tram passed I could see straight into each room from corner to corner. I saw families having tea, people sitting reading, a boy doing his homework, a mum ironing on the table, even a thin man and a fat lady playing cellos – all life was there for me to look at, set out in single bright boxes.
This was quite fascinating, but gradually an awful thought occurred to me. These upstairs people had no front doors. They were totally isolated. They had to live their upstairs lives in an upstairs world which was completely separate from ours.
Amy, our housekeeper, was in the cabin below. I ran down to tell her about it. I explained to her how the rooms were set side by side for the whole length of the shopping parade, so there was no way out on that level, and there was no way in or out downwards because the dark flat roof was in the way and underneath was all shops, and shops had counters which you weren’t allowed to go behind and shops were often closed. I was alarmed about this but Amy didn’t seem to think it was very serious. She said she was quite sure the upstairs people had ways to get in and out if they wanted to.
Eventually I had to agree that this might be the case. But even so the anxiety must have remained in my mind because, years later, I noticed some unobtrusive front doors squashed between the shops on that part of the Finchley Road, and I remember feeling distinctly relieved.
In 1930 I was five and it was time for me to go to school. I wasn’t enthusiastic about this idea, mainly because it meant I had to master the intricacies of dressing in school clothes. I had to put on a thick vest with short sleeves and a grey tuck-in shirt. The rather long and complicated underpants had loops on the side through which the leather tabs of the braces had to be threaded before they were buttoned to the grey flannel short trousers. If you forgot to do this, one side of the pants came down, which made walking difficult. But I mastered the procedures and, to my surprise, found I quite liked school.
This was Woodstock School, a private school with about two hundred pupils in a spacious house and grounds on the Golders Green Road. The school was run, and perhaps owned, by a Dutch couple, Mr and Mrs de Vries.
The atmosphere of the school was friendly, gentle, respectful and firm. In general we sat still and learned things, like how to read and write and do sums, a grounding for which I never cease to be grateful. The teachers, and sometimes even Sir (Mr de Vries), were genuinely pleased if I did something well, and awarded stars for good work, stars which Sir liked to draw all over the page in elaborate patterns and many coloured crayons till they looked like bursting fireworks. The teachers were equally unhappy if the work wasn’t good and didn’t hesitate to sling it back and have it done again if it wasn’t up to scratch. I didn’t really mind that either. I liked to please.
Reading my first school reports I see that: ‘… his drawings are interesting as they frequently deal with the mechanical workings of things, particularly with water works’, that I had a bad stammer and was nervous and easily upset and also, rather nicely, that: ‘He is a lovable wee fellow and has delightful manners.’
The member of the staff that I remember most clearly was a lady who came in to teach us Art. I think her name was Miss Horrocks. She looked quite old, wore a long dress and beads, and spoke in a slightly wistful manner with a dark, croaky voice. The fascinating thing about her was that her hair grew in the form of intricately woven circular pads which covered each ear like earphones.
Miss Horrocks showed us pictures of people with straight noses and lots of floating hair who wore lovely flowing clothes and lived in dreamy decorated landscapes. These, she told us, were Art. I found it truly wonder-full, deeply imbued with rich but unknown significance.
What Miss Horrocks liked us to do for her was make copies of designs which she called ‘tile patterns’. She had stacks of cards of these which she would hand out for us to look at and copy. As far as I can recall the patterns were mostly of formal entwinings of leaves and flowers, but the one I remember most clearly, perhaps because I thought it was a bit sinister, looked something like a partially deflated ace of spades surrounded by limp black snakes, which seemed to be fainting in coils on to the floor.
Looking back I have the impression that Miss Horrocks may have been a genuine surviving disciple of William Morris, or even of the Pre-Raphaelites, and I feel rather honoured to have met her.
For the first year or so we were taken to school and collected by Amy. Of all the various housekeepers who looked after us at Hendon, she is the one I remember with particular affection. We had even been to stay at her parents’ tiny house in Leiston in Suffolk. The house and the neighbourhood were fascinating, especially the water supply which was brought from a well in shiny buckets, but I saw little of the place because I almost immediately came down with measles.
My body became very pink and knobbly and I was put to bed. I think Ray and Daisy may have been away in Paris at the time, so my grandfather, George Lansbury, who was a member of the Cabinet in the newly elected Labour Government, was alerted. Perhaps as a result of this a uniformed policeman was sent to the house to ask after my health. This event caused great excitement in the neighbourhood but it was nothing to the excitement that came a day or two later when Grandad himself turned up, really just to pat me and wish me well because by then I was over the worst of the measles. Being in bed I didn’t witness his arrival but apparently the reception was fairly rapturous. These were poor people and they all knew George Lansbury.
III. Grandad.
Poor people were George Lansbury’s life. He was a founder member of the Labour Party, a militant pacifist, a lifelong campaigner for social justice who had become a much loved and revered figure, known as the uncrowned king of London’s East End. He it was who, accompanied by a brass band, had led the whole of the Poplar Borough Council to the High Court and on to prison, for refusing to implement the Means Test.
My mother Daisy was George’s seventh child (he had twelve in all) and she was brought up in ‘the movement’, where there was exciting work for all to do, including, for her, the task of impersonating, and being arrested for, Dorothy Pankhurst, the Suffragette leader.
My father, Raymond Postgate, who came from a formidably academic family, had turned against the academic life and had embraced socialism. He became a conscientious objector in the 1914–18 war, and was imprisoned and disowned by his father. He went to work for George Lansbury when he was editor of the Daily Herald, and married his secretary, and daughter, Daisy.
Grandad played an important part in our lives. Well, no, he didn’t exactly play a part, he was just there, a godlike personage hovering somewhere above us, likely to appear unexpectedly at any moment. I can see him standing in the doorway. He was huge. His bowler hat over his big white-whiskered face and massive black overcoat completely
