Homage to Gaia (6 page)

I never did biology at school after natural history teaching ceased at about age twelve. Those opting for science had a limited choice of subjects and mine were physics, chemistry, and pure and applied mathematics. Biology in those days was for those intending to become dentists or physicians. It included a fair amount of dissection, even of live frogs, the thought of which I found revolting.

I learnt my biology from reading, especially books by JBS Haldane. None of the other scientists’ books I read had his personal and
hands-on
approach. He became my hero when I read of his use of himself as a ‘guinea pig’ in physiological experiments, such as when he swallowed grams of ammonium chloride to increase the acidity of his blood. Practical biology came from walks in the country with my father, who
had a lively sense of wonder and a way of passing it on. On weekends during the warmer seasons, I would leave home with my mother and father early on Sunday morning, take the tram to Streatham
Common
, and there take an electric train to Dorking. At Dorking, we changed onto a small steam train that pushed and pulled its way to Horsham. Half-way was the station of Holmbury St Mary where we alighted. We then began a walk across glorious meadows to the woods on the flanks of Leith Hill. From there, we walked on to Coldharbour village, where we stopped for lunch or tea. I think my father had been an apprentice to a poacher when he was a boy and before the
gamekeepers
caught him. He had a strong sense of ecology, knew the habitats, could see the trails of all the common mammals, and knew where the birds nested and their names. I learnt from him the
common
names of nearly all the wild plants, and such useful wisdom as that it is safe to enjoy the sweet crimson berries of the yew tree so long as the deadly pips are spat out. Leith Hill was a wonderland. I learnt to catch trout by hand from the small streams and gorged on
blueberries
, or hurts, as the locals called them.

As a child, my parents fed and bathed me but otherwise left me to my own devices. When not at school I roamed the Brixton streets and played with the children there. Coal smoke pollution fouled the air in wintertime and, when there was a still night, the loss of heat from the ground to the dark sky lowered the surface temperature, resulting in a pool of cold air a few hundred feet deep, which filled the London basin. The United Kingdom was a superpower before the Second World War but it did nothing to relieve the harm of smog. In certain ways, the plight of the Los Angelenos, beset by smog from their cars, matches the helplessness felt by Londoners. When I was a child, London had worse smogs than other British cities because the
combination
of geography and meteorology made it easy for the air to form an invisible but tightly closed lid above the city. This lid, or inversion as the meteorologists call it, lies between a hundred and a few thousand feet above the ground, and under it everything emitted in the city accumulates, sometimes to lethal levels. The air in this cold pool was stable and it did not mix with the warmer atmosphere above, so that the fumes built up to make the infamous pea-soup fog. It could be so bad that I could see no further than a few yards in front of me and sometimes even one’s feet seemed to be vanishing in a foul haze that smelt acrid and was choking to breathe. A clean shirt became black after a short walk as the filthy air impinged upon it,
and a film of greasy black soot soon covered all exposed surfaces—it took days of rain to wash away a night’s accumulation.

Dr Wise, our GP, was a wonderfully kind and cool young man, and would often call in on his bicycle during the winter. My father was never ill but my mother suffered chest infections every year,
exacerbated
by the foul air and by her habit of smoking, and I was often ill. It seemed that only those with a resistance to the coal smoke survived long in the London basin. We were lucky to have had the 1930s Depression, which closed the shop, for after a few more years of Brixton air I might not be writing now. It was extraordinary that we tolerated this poisonous environment, and that nearly everyone regarded the smog as a weather phenomenon, something natural and about which we could do nothing. In the 13
^th
century, King Edward I banned the burning of coal in London and warned that hanging would be the punishment for those who disobeyed. It was not until the mephitic smog of 1952 killed more than 4000
Londoners
that they reinstated the ban.

Those were times when coal dominated our lives. The open grates in our homes burnt the dirty fuel that fouled the air but gave no proper warmth. The hot smoke of its combustion rushed up the chimneys into the over-laden air and cold air flowed in through the cracks along the sides of ill-fitting windows and doors. In the evenings the family huddled round the fire trying to keep warm and retired later to bedrooms so cold that water on their bedside tables would often freeze. The English had hot water bottles not because they were under-sexed, but because they really needed them to keep warm in the wintertime. The fire demanded continual feeding with black lumps of coal, and in the morning someone had to clear the grate of its accumulation of ash and dust. To keep her home clean in those days was a heroic and strenuous task, but nearly all women in Brixton seemed to do it, and clothes and houses were clean despite the endless rain of dirt. It was a Kafkaesque scene. Working people endured a cruel regime where they must stay clean in a world where black soot falls endlessly from the smoke-filled sky. The wealthy suffered less. Many had central heating from a single, coal-fired water heater. We were lucky to have the shop heated by gas; at least there was no ash and dust to contend with. It was astonishing after the Second World War to visit government buildings in London’s Whitehall where every office had its open fire, whose incessant demands were fed by minions scurrying around all day with their coal buckets.

To add to the self-inflicted harm of winter in London, smoking was a normal part of life and all the adults I knew, except my father, smoked pipes or cigarettes. Tobacconists’ shops were as common as pharmacists, and deemed equally essential. No wonder the life
expectation
was only a year or so over sixty. It was an awful environment in which to raise children. There were other poisons more deadly and more hidden. Everything was painted with lead paint that when old, would flake into dust. Children playing would take in a daily dose of lead that could harm their developing brains and stunt their growth. The lead compounds had a sweet taste and this would attract some children to chew pieces of wood that had been lead painted, adding to the problem. Mercury was also ubiquitous. A favourite indoor
firework
set off regularly at children’s parties was Pharaoh’s Serpent. It was a little pyramid package of tinfoil containing ammonium
dichromate
and a pellet of mercury thiocyanate. When lit, it gently spurted forth a green powder, while a long twisting black snake arose from this green pseudo grass. Anyone unwise enough to breathe the smoke coming from this clever pyrotechnic display would breathe in a dose of mercury vapour, a potent brain poison. Toy puzzles had beads of mercury quicksilver in them. I remember when a class of thirty boys at my grammar school was given test tubes containing a few grams of red mercury oxide. The schoolmaster instructed us to heat them over our Bunsen burners until the red oxide decomposed into oxygen and metallic mercury and when we did this the vapour of the mercury condensed on the sides of the tube as a bright silvery mirror. To show the oxygen produced, we inserted a glowing wooden splint into the test tube and saw it burst into flame in the oxygen-rich gas. It scares me to think how much deadly mercury vapour that group of selected children breathed in. They were the cream of their generation, the one per cent who had passed their 11+ examinations. I suspect that the same thing took place in schools around the country and may have set a whole generation of children at risk of brain damage. Then of course there was calomel, mercurous chloride. This was a favourite laxative, given to babies when they teethed. In addition, if this were not enough, dentists thrust mercury silver amalgam into the cavities of our teeth. I have often wondered if a sudden loss of the ability to play chess, and a growing awareness of dyslexia when I was aged about eleven had something to do with the mercury in my environment. But we are a tough species—despite these insults that 1920s London imposed upon us—and my mother and father lived to their 90s and
80s, respectively. These were gross pollutions and I view with wry amusement the hypochondria of the many who now agonize over trivial levels of chemicals in the food they eat.

Sodom and Gomorrah had their attractions for their inhabitants, no doubt, and so it was with Brixton. Despite its winter miasma, or maybe because of it, Brixton seemed to be an entertainment centre for London. There were theatres and cinemas, dancehalls and skating rinks, and there were public parks and commons a short walk away and, above all, there was easy access by tram and tube to all else that London had to offer, and even to get out of it if you wanted. My grandmother and grandfather had come to live in the flat above the shop and they would take me with them on walks or to the theatre, or on voyages down the Thames. My lonely wanderings around the Brixton streets lessened, and at every school holiday—three weeks at Christmas, four weeks at Easter and six in the
summer
—I went away into the country. This was partly to ease the burden on my parents, whose working day was already full and partly because the well-named Dr Wise, our GP, recognized that the Brixton smog caused my frequent winter illness. Sometimes I would go to stay with my aunts, but at other times they sent me to remote farms in East Anglia, that were prepared to take children. Some of these, like the chicken farm at Baldock, where a kindly family cared for me with love and affection were heavenly. It was at the Baldock farm that I learned to ride a bicycle. Others were brutal in their cruelty. I dreaded the strongly Nonconformist religious farms in East Anglia. Here, every Sunday was a punishment. I would have to dress in a suit and go to chapel three times during the day. To me the services were intolerably boring. When not at chapel they made me sit on a stiff chair and wait for the next meal or next service. To go outside to walk, except to chapel, was forbidden, and so was reading anything other than the Bible. Any infringement of these rules led to a beating. That kind of mainly working-class religion was of course self-defeating, and no child of spirit subjected to it could do anything other than rebel.

My happiest times in this period were those spent with Miss
Saunders
and her brother at the village of Coldharbour near Dorking. The village was in the heart of what seemed to me endless heath and woodland on the slopes of Leith Hill. I enjoyed new explorations every day, discovered snakes and lizards, and caught trout in the sparkling water of its streams. It was what I mean by real countryside.
Miss Saunders was a countrywoman and she ate simply but not well by finicky middle-class standards. She would give me tinned peas or baked beans for lunch, and I loved them. They did not eat the fresh vegetables that her brother grew in the garden. I do not know where they went: probably they gave them away. Children and those living in the countryside often have a perverse taste for junk food, and as a child I was no exception.

The Depression of the 1930s hit us hard. There was one year when only one customer entered the shop. At the end of that year, with sorrow and with much discussion, my mother and father had no option but to dismiss our shop assistant, Mr Weatherby. The family savings were flowing away and, after much agonized talk, they finally decided to tell him that he must go because they could no longer afford to keep him on. The shop was rented, and the rent and tax were high. They sought in vain for someone to take it over until suddenly, in 1932, an art enthusiast appeared and took it on from them. They were then able, from their remaining savings, to buy a small house at Orpington in Kent, in Hillview Road, just near the station. The move to Orpington did little to change my personal life. I continued at the Strand School and travelled by train to Brixton. The journey, which involved a mile walk from Brixton Station, took over an hour, which meant early rising and a late return from school. I saw little of Orpington and made no friends there.

Although only ten to twelve during this period, I was deeply aware of their unhappiness, which resonated with my own miserable
schooldays
. In the way of children, I was ashamed to be a shopkeeper’s child. The middle-class peer group of the Strand School included children whose parents were minor civil servants, dentists, solicitors, and so on. To them, shopkeepers and small business were ‘Trade’ and, in the snobbery of the time, they disdained them. The sign, outside the villas of the bourgeoisie, ‘Tradesman’s Entrance’ pointed to a dark alley leading to the scullery door. I suppose this tribal scorn against trades folk of any kind arose from envy of imagined wealth. It had trickled down from Victorian times when the aristocracy had been offended by the wealth and success of entrepreneurs. It is easy to forget how, in the 19
^th
and early 20
^th
centuries, their antecedents judged people. Breeding alone was thought to bring forth the good qualities. It was widely held that no newly rich person could ever be a gentleman or a gentlewoman and what the aristocracy thought yesterday the bourgeoisie thinks today. The collective contumely of the petty bourgeois
was for its victims little different from racial hatred. What is odd is that the intellectual middle class, whose members would be deeply
distressed
to be called racist, still stigmatizes ‘Trade’ as if those
connected
with commercial activity were of a different race.

One day in December 1931, my school announced that boys could sit for the Supplementary Junior County Scholarship. I realized that this would relieve the burden of school fees from my mother and father and I asked the schoolmaster who made the announcement how I should apply. He laughed and said, ‘Don’t waste your time, you haven’t an earthly chance.’ Even so, I went to the school secretary, Miss Borer, a plump and friendly woman who had a spacious office at the front of the school, and she readily gave me a form and helped me complete it in her office. I went home and soon forgot all about it and never mentioned it, but in February 1933 a letter arrived summoning me to another school in Streatham to sit the examination itself. I was incubating pneumonia at the time and was feverish; perhaps because of this I could think more quickly. Anyway, the exam was not difficult. One requirement was an essay. There was a choice of subjects and one of these was ‘Iron and Steel’. I had recently read a book from the Brixton Library about the steel industry, mostly technical, and had found it fascinating. I had a good memory and was able to write at length about iron smelting, Bessemer converters, and the production of the various alloy steels. I knew little in real terms about these metals but phrases like molybdenum steel, or chrome vanadium steel, all were filed away in my mind, along with their remarkable properties. I staggered home from the examination and was ill for six weeks. There were no antibiotics then, and infections just had to take their course. They sent me to the Saunders family at Coldharbour near Dorking to convalesce, and it was here that the good news of my award of the scholarship came. I feel sure it was the essay that did it, and I
remember
Miss Saunders coming to my bedroom early one spring morning with the good news that astounded as well as pleased me: just for once, something right had happened.