Everything I Have Always Forgotten (16 page)

We once had a most pretty, even engaging, kind and enchanting young assistant matron. She was a model and happened to be ‘resting' from modelling. She told us she had an eighteen inch waist. I am sure I was not the only boy to adore her. And then she was gone. She scarcely lasted a month on the job. She was far too likeable… I shall never forget her. For two-thirds of the year, boys like myself were deprived of female companionship. The women we encountered during term time were either sergeant major battleaxes as matrons or perhaps the stray dried-up, sad ladies who taught advanced Mathematics or Physics. A pretty, flirtatious young woman was a ray of sunshine in the desert of our sexuality.

XV

MOUNTAINS AND GUNS

O
utside the school in London, we would go and visit a small toy shop where the owner would sing us dirty songs (
“
Auld Ma Kelly, with a Bamboo Belly and Her Tits Tied Up With String…
”
) and seemingly overlooked the shop-lifting exploits of my classmates. I never tried theft because I knew it was wrong and above all, I did not want to be caught. I had enough chastisement in school for things I did not comprehend, why look for more? Perhaps the ‘Head Man' was whipping me to stop me even thinking of shoplifting. If that was the case, then it certainly worked.

As a teenager, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer – my neighbour at dinner at Pratt's, a very select gentleman's dining club to which Father once took me told me that the purpose of the ‘public school system' (private, exclusive schools) was to instil a certain deviousness and a capacity for bending the rules “without ever getting caught
.
” Yet government ministers seem to be getting caught in droves these days. Perhaps the English private school system is no longer doing such a good job… For my own part, by his judgment, I did pretty well. By the time I had finished high school, I had an illicit car kept at school, smoked cigarettes (which I hated, but they were forbidden) and kept a cocktail cabinet inside a large old wireless, whose clumsy valve intestines I had replaced with a transistor set – which left plenty of space for bottles. I also had a girlfriend in a neighbouring boarding school and frequently broke the 30-mile limit for excursions on days off – I was clearly learning ‘to get the ropes'. Incidentally, to avoid the problem that gentlemen might encounter when unable to remember the names of the staff at Pratt's, they were all called ‘George' – it was considered more friendly than just calling out: “My good man!”

One landmark remains in the blur of those early years: a slideshow given by a member of the Edmund Hillary-Tenzing team that made the first successful ascent of Everest. I am fairly sure that the lecture was not given by Sir Edmund himself, though I did meet him elsewhere. No, I believe it was given by one of the support team who climbed as far as the last base camp… I vividly remember the unreal blue of the Nepalese skies and brilliant white fangs of the Himalayan peaks, of those early Kodachrome slides. My fantasies about becoming a rock climber were never fully realised, though I did climb some tricky crags in Wales, rocks that had claimed more than one life before and after me. I was about to meet my first climbing buddy and I was just nine years old by then.

I remember James Morris, the journalist who cabled news of the success of that ascent, when he came to visit my Parents, as a very manly man – a war hero and invincible journalist who wore heavy tweeds and stout hiking boots. I believe he even smoked a pipe at the time. Now well known as Jan Morris the travel writer, following a sexual realignment procedure, she was visited by Paul Theroux (as described in his book,
The Kingdom by the Sea
) and they compared notes on sexual advantages when packing for a trip. He said Jan had the ultimate authority when she told him: “It's so much easier as a girl, one just shoves a couple of little frocks in a rucksack and off one goes.” As Theroux remarked: “… and she must have known about the comparison more than anyone!”

In my dormitory, I met Alan Trist, only son of a social psychologist. His mother had been in a country mental institution since Alan was two years old. There was an ‘aunt' who lived with his father and eventually became Alan's stepmother. He had a long, elfin face, narrow, with pointed chin and ears. He was slightly built for his age, but tough – considering that he was a city dweller. As time went on, I often invited him to come and stay with us in North Wales and despite Father's philosophy of ‘benign neglect' in raising children, Alan got a lot more attention and company with us than he did at home in London. He was ahead of me in class, so during the school day we had no contact with each other, but at night, after lights out, when we were forbidden to talk, we chatted about this and that… now that I think about it, he never spoke about himself, so I must have done much of the talking myself, no doubt describing (boasting of? Boys do that) life at home.

Eventually, Alan came to stay with us during school holidays until we had accomplished our journey to the Holy Isle of Bardsey. There was a lunch at our great family table. It was full with fourteen people. Alan was feeling brave and started regaling all present with his escapades around home in North London – thank God he did not mention the air gun battles! He was telling us how he and another friend used to enjoy climbing a huge wall around a great garden, where there were magnificent apple trees, laden with fruit. They would pocket as many as possible, until the vicious old lady homeowner set her dogs on them. Nan Roberts (who just happened to be staying with us at the time) asked kindly how many times he had done it. “Oh lots,” he replied with some bravado.

“Really? I only remember catching two little boys once, and yes, I did set the dogs on them, but they are so old, they don't have enough teeth to bite properly!” Alan had gone beet red on hearing her speak and finally recognising her. He started to slide down his dining chair until his head barely appeared above the table. Someone hurriedly changed the subject. What happenstance, to have the ex-wife of Wilfred Roberts (Lib. M.P.) at table with my young school friend, both some 240 miles from home!

On the weekends, we would get together in Hampstead. He had metal-wheeled roller skates on which he would barrel down Willow Road with his bottle-green nylon cape flying behind him, leaving behind a metallic rattling rumble of noise. He also had a splendid train set on a table with electric trains that ran through a countryside of magical tiny scenery. He told me I should get one but I had to point out that we had no electricity. He would turn out the lights in his room and run the trains around their tracks with their lights on. Oh, the miracle of electricity! I wonder if he had a television? I doubt it, this was still early years for TV and I don't remember my friends talking about it until I was in high school. Alan was obviously spoiled with gifts and starved for affection and attention. When I saw him in New York in the early '70s I thought it was the last time – he was on the road with the Grateful Dead. His wife had left him for one of the writers (who later become his boss and friend) – he followed her… and later, I was told, he had O.D.'d, not impossible given the addictions of some of the band. Except that he had most definitely not died and never took that dangerous path! I discovered him again quite recently and having spoken first on the telephone, have since spent some very pleasant times together.

One Saturday when we were still in school together, he invited me to join him on Hampstead Heath for a ‘war game'. We were fighting a large gang of older boys with several air rifles or BB guns… I do not remember whether there was anyone else on our side. Alan had an air rifle. We wriggled and crawled up to the crests of ridges and shot at the other side. They shot back. It was thrilling! Once or twice we were hit on our winter jackets and no harm was done, but now I wonder how losing an eye would have affected one of us. Sooner or later, I expect that someone did get hurt and the police would have been called in to keep an eye on the park. What really bothered me about the incident was that Father had trained me so strictly about guns.

Thinking back, I wonder what influence the boys' fathers had on them, that they should play this war game. Since Father was too old for combat, he had that desk job in the Admiralty. Other, younger fathers – begetting while celebrating a brief leave or being wounded – would have seen combat, and many died even after procreating. Of those who came home, some would, no doubt, have suffered post traumatic stress syndrome (had it been labelled then), yet for many, serving their country was the high point of their lives. For them, the war was inconceivably intense, pushing them to their utmost physical and mental limits in ways that later desk jobs or manual labour would never ever do. I was born when Montgomery was making slow advances up the East coast of Italy: November 20, 1943. Germany's capitulation and the ceasefire came about eighteen months later. Despite such conflicting feelings about the episode, in the heat of the moment I thoroughly enjoyed the thrill of the game. It was only afterwards that it left a bad taste in my mouth. Father felt guilty that he had been too young to do active service in the First World War, too old for the Second, and would have gladly served, so he was hardly a pacifist, but he was profoundly anti-violence. When Norman Mailer raised his fists against Father at some literary event, Father just embraced him in a bear-hug until he calmed down and stopped kicking. At 1.90m and some 110 kg, he was a giant compared to Mailer.

Years earlier, I had caught double pneumonia. I must have been three or four at the time and my head was covered with pale-blond curls. There were no American servicemen in Wales, but when we visited Mother's family in Gloucestershire, in the West of England, there were still quite a few, left over from the war – Fairford remained an American base for many years.

Father once asked a local farm worker what he thought of these American GIs? The response was: “Oh, they's grand chaps, grand indeed… but I'm not so sure about them white fellows they bring along with 'em.”

When these GIs drove past in their army trucks, they would shout good-naturedly at me: “Curly curly blondie”. I hated what I took as the taunts and thought they were a reflection on my virility, at three or four years old? Yes, I thought they took me for a girl. I started plastering down my hair with water as Nino did with his oil, combing it back flat so that it did not curl. Wet hair in a stone, unheated house and cold winter weather outside, contributed to fell me with double pneumonia and I spent what seemed like an eternity in bed.

At the time, I was too young to read, but distracted myself with the
Ashley Book of Knots
. It had just come out and Father had an advance review copy. With some rope and a marlin spike, I learned to knot and splice rope before I could read – alas, synthetic ropes have done away with such skills, but at least they don't rot. Someone gave me my first factory-made toy: a cap pistol with rolls of pink paper caps which made it go ‘bang' when fired. I once pointed it at Father when he came to visit me in bed – and ‘shot' him. He was livid. He told me never ever to point a gun at anyone.

He brought up a 12-bore shotgun and showed me how to dismantle and clean it, without ever pointing it at anyone. He told me stories of the neighbourhood farm boys and how they were always shooting themselves in the foot because they did not keep the safety catch on, how they shot each other through sloppy practices. Just like a recent vice-president of America – the stupid farm-hand! He drilled into me that a gun was useful to get food (in our case, rabbits and wild duck) but lethally dangerous… and yet here I was on Hampstead Heath inviting older boys to shoot at me! Alan never lent me his gun, so I did not have to cross that line: shooting at someone else. I just invited others to take pot shots at me…

By the time of our trip to Bardsey, he was starting public school and I was still only in my prep school. After that I remember going to visit him when he was at Westminster School in London. We were noticeably no longer friends and he seemed very grown-up to me, but his great sadness had seriously set in by then… he seemed depressed. His father had told him that it is hard for children to maintain their friendship, when one has passed puberty and moved on to a more grown-up situation and the other is still at a younger school. After Cambridge, he went to work at the Tavistock Institute where he was a visiting scholar. He spoke to me of Lang's theory of the acceptance of schizophrenia… but that was before I had read Lang. That was all to come.

For all Mother's scant control of her household, throughout our school lives, she somehow managed to send at least seven letters a week – or often postcards when she was abroad. One was for each of her five children, then one to her own mother and finally, one to her mother-in-law (Father couldn't bear the slightest contact with his own mother). They were distracted, scatty ramblings and barely legible at that. Remarkably straight lines of monotonous scribble, with clear, round loops for the letters L, G, B and D. They never ever answered any questions that I had asked in my own letters… they were simply regular affirmations that we existed. To this day, I like to receive bills, simply because they show that other people, out there, believe that I exist. No one writes letters any more. Living lonely and broke in Paris, I would take out my own passport to confirm my existence in the eyes of the world. In New York, I would re-read the letters (a dozen or so) that I myself had written to my Sponsors for Immigration purposes, so that they could simply have their secretaries copy the texts onto their own letterheads, sign and return them to me. Besides such Artists as Victor Vasarely, Julio Le Parc, François Morellet, Jack Youngerman, Schaeffer, Jacov Agam, there were letters ‘from' Directors of the Tate Gallery, Joseph Hirshhorn, the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, Howard Wise in New York, the Gallery owner Denise Renée in Paris – they had all helped me by signing the letters I had written for them! Now they helped me by letting me confirm my own existence by reading their signatures on my letters. It does seem that I was skilled at fooling myself.