Warlight(15)

There are moments after I’ve put down such thoughts about Olive Lawrence when I almost believe I am composing a possible version of my mother, while she was away, doing something I knew nothing about. Both these women were in unknown locations, though of course it was only Olive Lawrence who courteously and beyond the call of duty mailed postcards to us from wherever she was.

And there is the third corner of the triangle these two women made up, which I also consider now. It is Rachel, who needed a close relationship with a mother during that time, to protect her in the way a mother could. She had walked between Olive and me that night up the slow incline of hill into Streatham woods, being told that when she was in the darkness with us there would be no danger, that there was no danger even in dreams or during the unstable tumult of her seizures. There were only crickets in song above us, only the scratch of a badger as it turned in comfort, only the hush and then a sudden whisper of the oncoming rain.

—

What had our mother assumed would happen to us in her absence? Did she think our lives would be like that popular play of the day, The Admirable Crichton—which she had taken us to see in the West End, our first play—where a butler (in our case, I suppose, the equivalent of The Moth) kept an aristocratic family well disciplined and therefore secure in a sort of upside-down world on a castaway island? Did she really assume that the shell of our world would not crack?

Sometimes, under the influence of whatever he was drinking, The Moth became cheerfully incomprehensible to us, in spite of the fact that he appeared assured about what he thought he was saying—even if what he said involved a few clauses falling away from the path of the previous sentence. One night when Rachel had been unable to sleep, he pulled a book called The Golden Bowl from my mother’s shelf and began reading to us. The manner of the paragraphs, as the sentences strolled a maze-like path towards evaporation, was, to the two of us, similar to The Moth’s when he was being drunkenly magisterial. It was as if language had been separated from his body in a courteous way. There were other evenings when he behaved strangely. One night the radio described the manic act of a man who had pulled passengers out of a Hillman Minx in front of the Savoy and then set fire to the car. The Moth had returned only an hour earlier and listening intently to the report groaned, “Oh God, I hope that was not me!” He glanced down at his hands as if he might find traces of paraffin on them, then seeing our concern dismissed the possibility with a wink. It was clear we now did not even understand his jokes. In contrast to him, The Darter, while more excessive in his inventions, had no sense of humour, like any person who is not fully legal.

Still, The Moth had this almost reliable stolidness. And perhaps he was our Admirable Crichton after all, even when measuring that cloudy liquid into his small blue glass cup that had once been attached to a bottle of eyewash, and drinking it down as if it were sherry. We did not mind the habit. It was the one time he was serenely open to our wishes, and Rachel could always persuade him at these moments to take us into parts of the city he appeared to know well. The Moth had an interest in abandoned structures, such as a nineteenth-century hospital in Southwark, which had been active long before the days of anaesthetic. Somehow he got us into the place and lit the sodium lamps so they shivered against the walls of the dark operating room. So many unused locations in the city that he knew of, lit by nineteenth-century light, shadowed and ominous to us. I wonder whether Rachel’s later theatrical life was formed by those half-lit evenings. She must have perceived how one could darken and make invisible or at least distant what is unhappy or dangerous in a life; I think her eventual skill with limelight and fictional thunder allowed her to clarify for herself what was true and what was false, safe and unsafe.

—

By now The Darter was stepping out with the Russian, who owned such a flaring temper that he was to bail out from that relationship before she could discover his address. This of course meant she too would turn up at Ruvigny Gardens looking for him at odd hours, sniffing the air for a scent of him. He became careful and never parked his car on our street.

The presence of The Darter’s various partners meant I was suddenly closer to women than I had ever been, apart from my mother or sister. The school I went to took only boys. It was a time when my thoughts and friendships should have been with them. But Olive Lawrence’s ease of intimate conversation, the way she spoke so directly about her wishes, even her desires, brought me into a universe that was distinct from anywhere I had previously been. I became intrigued by women who were outside my realm, with no blood or sexual motive. Such friendships were not controlled by me, and they would be passing and brief. They replaced family life yet I could remain at a distance, which is my flaw. But I loved the truth I learned from strangers. Even during those dramatic weeks with the spurned Russian girlfriend, I hung around the house more than I needed to and hurried home from school in order to simply watch her pace our living room with that unsatisfied look on her face. I would walk past her and brush her arm so I could collect that moment. I once offered to accompany her to the dog track at Whitechapel, supposedly to help her find The Darter, but she waved my offer away, perhaps guessing I might have another motive to get her out of the house. She was unaware, in fact, how close she was to The Darter, who was hiding in my room, reading The Beano. In any case, the curious pleasure of female company was in me now.



Agnes Street

That summer I found a job in a fast-paced restaurant in World’s End. I was back to washing dishes and filling in as a waiter whenever someone was ill. I was hoping to meet up with Mr. Nkoma, the piano player and fabulist, but there was no one I knew. The staff were mostly quick-witted waitresses—North Londoners and girls from the country—and I could not take my eyes off them, because of how they talked back to bosses, how they laughed, how they insisted they were enjoying themselves even though the work was hard. They had a higher status than those of us in the kitchen, so we were barely worth talking to. That did not matter. I could watch and learn about them from a distance. I worked there, shy at the centre of the busy pauseless restaurant, and their speed of argument and laughter kept me entertained. They’d walk past carrying three trays, proposition you, and walk off during your stammer. They rolled up their sleeves to show you their stringy muscles. They were forward then suddenly distant. A girl, a green ribbon holding back her hair, came across me in a corner during my lunch break and asked if she could “borrow” the small piece of ham out of my sandwich. I did not know what to say. I must have handed it to her silently. I asked what her name was and she looked shocked at my forwardness, ran back and organized a group of three or four waitresses to circle me and sing about the dangers of desire. I was about to enter a borderless terrain between adolescence and adulthood.