umbrella. Kilburn could suggest to youthe pullulating mass of the working class, who any moment might swarm like termites up the viaduct and take the pinstripes apart; equally, it could be a comforting proof that so many people could live together quietly at close quarters.
Toni and I got off at Wembley Park, changed platforms, and went back over the area. Then we did the same again.
‘Christ, there’re so many of them,’ was Toni’s eventual comment. Thousands of people down there, all within a few hundred yards of you; yet you’d never, in all probability, meet any of them.
‘Well, it’s an argument against God, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah. And for enlightened dictatorship.’
‘And for art for art’s sake.’
He was silent for a while, awed.
‘Well, I take it back, I take it back.’
‘Thought you might. There are others, but this is the best.’ Toni silently got back on the next Baker Street train for his final run over the stretch.
From then on, I was not only interested in my journey, but proud of it. The termitary of Kilburn; the grimy, lost stations between Baker Street and Finchley Road; the steppe-like playing-fields at Northwick Park; the depot at Neasden, full of idle, aged rolling-stock; the frozen faces of passengers glimpsed in the windows of fast Marylebone trains. They were all, in some way, relevant, fulfilling, sensibility-sharpening. And what was life about if not that?
11 • SST
Things never changed for you. That was one of the first rules. You talked about what things would be like when they did change: you imagined marriage, and sex eight times a night, and bringing up your children in a way which combined flexibility, tolerance, creativeness and large quantities of money; you thought of having a bank account and going to strip clubs and owning cufflinks, collar studs and monogrammed handkerchiefs. But any real threat of change induced apprehension and discontent.
For the duration, things changed only for other people. The school swimming master was thrown out for queering up boys in the changing rooms (‘ill health’, they told us); Holdsworth, an amiable thug in 5B, was expelled for pouring sugar into the petrol tank of a master’s Humber Super Snipe; the children of neighbours did amazing, incredible things, like joining Shell and being posted abroad, or souping up bangers, or going to dances on New Year’s Eve. The house equivalent of such disturbances was that my brother got a girl friend.
Psychic blows normally come from other directions, don’t they? Like a son growing taller than his father, a daughter’s tits bursting out beyond her mother’s marginal convexities, siblings fancying one another? Or from jealousy – about possessions, about lack of spots, about academic success. There was very little of this in our family: our father was taller and stronger than both his sons; Mary evoked compassionrather than lust; and all three of us children had an equitable handout of goods and facial bad luck.
In fact, when my brother got a girl friend, it wasn’t really jealousy I felt. It was straight fear, quickened with a little hate. Nigel brought her home the first time without any proper warning from the Front Seat. Suddenly, half an hour before dinner, there was this girl in among us – shiny sort of dress, handbag, hair, eyes, lipstick; just like a woman in fact. And with my brother! Tits? I asked myself in furtive panic. Well, you couldn’t really see, not with that dress. But even so, a girl! My eyes stood out like chapel hatpegs. I knew, too, that I could rely on Nigel not to miss my fearful response.
‘Ginny, this is my father,’ (our mother was slaving in the kitchen to produce ‘just an ordinary supper’) ‘and this is my little sis, Mary. This is the dog; this is the telly; this is the fireplace. Oh, and this,’ (turning to the chair in which I was sitting) ‘is the chair in which you’re going to be sitting.’
I got up, sheepish and enraged, having
Toni and I got off at Wembley Park, changed platforms, and went back over the area. Then we did the same again.
‘Christ, there’re so many of them,’ was Toni’s eventual comment. Thousands of people down there, all within a few hundred yards of you; yet you’d never, in all probability, meet any of them.
‘Well, it’s an argument against God, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah. And for enlightened dictatorship.’
‘And for art for art’s sake.’
He was silent for a while, awed.
‘Well, I take it back, I take it back.’
‘Thought you might. There are others, but this is the best.’ Toni silently got back on the next Baker Street train for his final run over the stretch.
From then on, I was not only interested in my journey, but proud of it. The termitary of Kilburn; the grimy, lost stations between Baker Street and Finchley Road; the steppe-like playing-fields at Northwick Park; the depot at Neasden, full of idle, aged rolling-stock; the frozen faces of passengers glimpsed in the windows of fast Marylebone trains. They were all, in some way, relevant, fulfilling, sensibility-sharpening. And what was life about if not that?
11 • SST
Things never changed for you. That was one of the first rules. You talked about what things would be like when they did change: you imagined marriage, and sex eight times a night, and bringing up your children in a way which combined flexibility, tolerance, creativeness and large quantities of money; you thought of having a bank account and going to strip clubs and owning cufflinks, collar studs and monogrammed handkerchiefs. But any real threat of change induced apprehension and discontent.
For the duration, things changed only for other people. The school swimming master was thrown out for queering up boys in the changing rooms (‘ill health’, they told us); Holdsworth, an amiable thug in 5B, was expelled for pouring sugar into the petrol tank of a master’s Humber Super Snipe; the children of neighbours did amazing, incredible things, like joining Shell and being posted abroad, or souping up bangers, or going to dances on New Year’s Eve. The house equivalent of such disturbances was that my brother got a girl friend.
Psychic blows normally come from other directions, don’t they? Like a son growing taller than his father, a daughter’s tits bursting out beyond her mother’s marginal convexities, siblings fancying one another? Or from jealousy – about possessions, about lack of spots, about academic success. There was very little of this in our family: our father was taller and stronger than both his sons; Mary evoked compassionrather than lust; and all three of us children had an equitable handout of goods and facial bad luck.
In fact, when my brother got a girl friend, it wasn’t really jealousy I felt. It was straight fear, quickened with a little hate. Nigel brought her home the first time without any proper warning from the Front Seat. Suddenly, half an hour before dinner, there was this girl in among us – shiny sort of dress, handbag, hair, eyes, lipstick; just like a woman in fact. And with my brother! Tits? I asked myself in furtive panic. Well, you couldn’t really see, not with that dress. But even so, a girl! My eyes stood out like chapel hatpegs. I knew, too, that I could rely on Nigel not to miss my fearful response.
‘Ginny, this is my father,’ (our mother was slaving in the kitchen to produce ‘just an ordinary supper’) ‘and this is my little sis, Mary. This is the dog; this is the telly; this is the fireplace. Oh, and this,’ (turning to the chair in which I was sitting) ‘is the chair in which you’re going to be sitting.’
I got up, sheepish and enraged, having
Similar Books
