Mothers and Daughters (19 page)

‘Just lay off, give me some peace, Con. Don’t follow me around like a lap dog.’

His words slapped her across the cheeks more than any blow.

At Calais she went in search of a telephone. It took an age to get through and there were only a few minutes to speak to Auntie Su.

‘Thank God, Connie, where are you? I rang Diana and she said you’d disappeared again. What is going on? I can hear ship horns.’ Su sounded anxious and far away. ‘Come home, we need you. Grandma Esme has broken her hip in her garden.’

‘I can’t. I’m in France. When did this happen?’ Connie asked. How could that instinct be so accurate? ‘Is she OK?’

‘She’s not taking it very well. I need you to help me.’ Su was shouting, but the line was weak. There was a pause. ‘Why are you in France? Time to come home.’

‘I can’t. I have a commitment here with the band. Can’t Joy help?’

‘Joy is on bed rest, doctor’s orders.’

‘I’ll send a card … I’ll come back at the end of the month,’ Connie shouted. ‘Look, I’m on my way to Switzerland for a student gathering. I can’t come home now.’ She was crying down the phone.

‘Grandma Esme is more important than some student party. This is family. There is still time. Do not shame us,’ Su was pleading.

‘I can’t. I will write to her.’

‘Don’t bother!’ The line went dead. Connie felt terrible. Perhaps she ought to go back on the return ferry.

‘What’s up? Trouble’t Mill?’ Marty came up behind her.

‘My gran’s had a fall,’ she said flatly. ‘Auntie Su says I ought to go home now.’

‘Then you’d better go,’ Marty jumped in.

‘No, I have a song to sing.’

‘We can manage without you. Catch the return ferry back.’

Why was he trying to get shut of her?

‘We’re here now and my French is better than yours, I expect. I’ve never been abroad before. I’m not turning back now. Gran’s tough; she’ll recover. I can help out when we go back.’ No Winstanley was going to ruin her big holiday.

‘Suit yourself, but I still think you’d be better off going home.’

Connie wished she hadn’t rung. Now she felt mean and the uneasy feeling was just getting worse.

They drove through the night down moonlit roads lined with poplars, sleeping in a ditch by a cabbage patch in sleeping bags lined up for warmth. There was no time for any romantic trysts as they woke, stiff as boards and ravenous. They breakfasted by the roadside, sharing batons of white crusty bread and fruit. It was enough to be on
foreign soil listening to the bustle of French villages coming to life, the toot of horns and the smell of smoky cafés where they stopped for bowls of hot chocolate.

They whizzed through the battlefields of the Great War without stopping, past those sad gardens full of white crosses. Connie’s head was reeling with Auntie Su hanging up on her. She had shamed the family in not respecting tradition, after all they had done for her, but Gran had sent her away empty-handed and she felt she owed the old lady nothing. They rattled on through the countryside, miles and miles of lonely straight roads, and she fell asleep with exhaustion to escape everyone’s moaning and barking at each other. They arrived late at the camp, hidden on the slopes near Interlaken on the second night, tired, hungry and dishevelled. Connie fell into her allotted bunk without a murmur.

It was like being at Guide camp, segregated into bunkhouses, taking turns to do washing-up and setting tables, preparing meals by rote. The campsite was damp and cold at night, with thin blankets. Connie and Sandy were sharing with two other students, who stared at their dirty clothes with disapproval. It was then that they realised this was no jolly students’ shindig but a political convention of international student action groups, a hotbed of left-wing socialist groups, who had come to be
lectured and talked at, preparing for political action.

Eva was one of the leading German students, with ripples of white-gold hair rolling down her back. She wore jeans and a leather waistcoat. Her English was perfect, her ice-blue eyes discerning. Marty and Des seemed to be consulting her at every turn.

‘Trust us to land in some hotbed of socialist action. Wait until we get hold of Billy Froggatt! Does this look like one long party to you? The aim of this lot is to stir up student unrest, prepare them for battle,’ Marty said, sifting through all the leaflets on display in the meeting hall.

The lectures were in German and English in a barrack-like dining hall, which also served as a bar. There were small discussion groups and splinter groups for the leaders to muster enthusiasm and swap ideas. There were German documentaries with subtitles, which lulled Connie to sleep with boredom.

Why were they here? Was this what they’d busked for, given up normal lives? Connie tried not to think of Gran, struggling in plaster on her own. Neville would do his bit, she knew, but she couldn’t help feeling guilty. The best part of her day was drinking beer and attending gatherings in the evening after supper.

None of them had ever tasted this sort of
Continental food: bowls of yoghurt and chopped fruit bitter to the tongue, plates of cold meats, sausages and deep cauldrons of vegetables served up like a stew with sauerkraut and pickles, vast cheese boards. Breakfast was just bread and hot milky coffee substitute, and for packed lunch on walking days there was a lump of holey cheese, a hunk of bread and an apple.

Eva’s group were friendly and walked alongside Marty and the boys on the hike. She drew them like a magnet. Connie struggled in tight black leather boots that rubbed her heels after a mile and pinched her toes, giving blisters the size of eggs.

On the evening after their first walk, Marty gathered them together. ‘We’ve got a problem. They don’t want rock’ n’roll, they want folk and protest. We’re supposed to be some subversive cell from Leeds Uni, not singing Western capitalist music. Eva says we must fit in or not sing at all. I don’t believe it. All this way for nothing! He’s lead us up a gumtree. Wait till I get my hands on your friend Billy!’ He was pointing at Jack and Sandy. Then he disappeared to continue his talk with Eva.

Connie felt dumped like heavy baggage. She was left to her own devices, sitting under a tree with a guitar trying not to feel sick. Marty hadn’t been near her for days. What had she done wrong? It was as if she was just one of the group and no one special, and that hurt. Perhaps if she could write them a song
they might be able to perform and everything would be all right again? She’d taken his advice and written down the bits and pieces that popped into her head. What they needed now was a folksy number, something like Joan Baez sang, but tunes didn’t come so easily to her.

Connie shut her eyes, wondering if this was her punishment for not going home, then drifted off into a daydream and woke up with a line: ‘I’ve got the war baby blues.’ All of them were war babies, born when their countries were enemies. Now they were children of peace, a peace proving so fragile, threatened by nuclear war: Berlin, Russia, Hungary, America, Cuba, the Bay of Pigs invasion fiasco. Had nothing been learned after two World Wars?

She thought about Freddie, the dad she never knew. Was she like him in any way? Had his death in Palestine been worthwhile or just another pointless accident of war?

She repeated it in her head over and over until she found the tune of an old folk song, the one they used in
Z Cars
on the TV.

‘Sandy, wake up. How does this sound?’ she asked,
wondering if the lyrics made any sense to anyone else.

‘That’s brilliant!’ said Marty, giving her a hug.

Once they got hold of the idea everyone stayed behind in the barracks to practise the harmonies and get the song off pat. Even Lorne Dobson gave Connie a hug and laughed.

‘You’ve saved our bacon. We can add a few more verses and the usual protest CND songs but you bet, when they’re all drunk and we bash out a few numbers, they’ll be up and dancing on the floor. This is a weird place and no mistake, a cross between a nunnery and a prisoner-of-war camp, and it gives me the willies. All that political stuff – they are so deadly serious about it. Marty seems very taken with Eva,’ he added in a whisper, making mischief.

‘So?’ Connie smiled through her teeth. ‘We’re not joined at the hip.’

‘Just as well then.’ He winked at her.

On the last night of their gig, Connie stood up and introduced their new number with a new-found pride.

‘I’d like to dedicate this to my dad, Freddie, who I never knew, who died in Palestine at the hands of
Israeli separatists, and my late mother, Ana, who was a partisan in Crete, a prisoner of war and refugee.’

She sang first, the others joined in. They sang it straight off, adding a few more verses. The catchy tune soon caught on with first the English students and then the others. Everyone seemed pleased, and the beer flowed, and then some of the Brits asked for a few beat numbers and no one objected, and soon everybody was dancing just as Lorne predicted.

Connie was high with the success, looking round for Marty. He was dancing with Eva and her friend and not looking in her direction at all.

‘What did I tell you?’ Lorne whispered. ‘That Lorelei German
Mädchen
has stolen his eyes.’

‘So I see,’ Connie said, knocking back the spice beers as if they were fizzy pop. ‘Come on then. Let’s beat them at their own game,’ she said to him, trying to look cool, but fuming inside. They danced and did the shake, fooled around, but she didn’t care. Lorne could move like the devil, his hair flopping over his forehead, his eyes rolling as he sent himself up. He might not be the world’s greatest looker but he did have a strange hypnotic allure when he was dancing, his limbs loose and suggestive, his hips thrusting.

‘Have another,’ he said, shoving a glass in her hand, and she just let the drink flow over her. What was the point? When she looked across the room neither Marty nor Eva was there dancing. If he was out there in the moonlight with Eva what was the point of
crying into her beer? Two could play at that silly game, she smiled, and took hold of Lorne’s hand and put it round her waist. Time to see if the famous Lorne’s loins were as good as their reputation.

It was a brief, careless, headstrong act of drunken sex, but revenge was sweet. They tripped in the darkness, stumbling over each other, giggling and kissing. Lorne was expert at removing hooks, buttons, bras and other impediments. They were both so sozzled she couldn’t recall whether it was good or not when she woke up at dawn on the damp grass with such a hangover and a tongue like a cork doormat. She attempted to totter back to her bunk.

Marty was already up, packing the van with a face like thunder.

‘Where the hell did you get to last night?’ he demanded.

‘Not a million yards from where you were with Eva, I expect,’ she snapped back.

‘How could you be so stupid? We were here to sing, not fool around,’ he replied, ignoring her jibe.

‘Speak for yourself,’ she sneered. ‘I had a great time.’

‘Yes, I saw you making doe eyes at Lorne. For God’s sake, you must have been out of your head. You disappoint me, Connie. That was cheap and it’ll make problems. How could you stoop so low?’

‘Is he bothering you, honey?’ Lorne staggered forth with his rucksack, putting his arms around Connie.

She wriggled free. ‘I’m fine. I’ll go and pack. Show’s
over, I suspect.’ She was feeling sick and stupid and very small.

‘You can say that again,’ said Marty. ‘We’ve made no money. The van’s on its last legs.’

‘This’s been a complete waste of time,’ Des added, slinging his rucksack back into the van. ‘All that stupid propaganda, what’s it all in aid of?’

‘Ask Marty. He was the one having private lectures with the lovely Eva. I bet she was a trap to hook you into their schemes to change the world.’

‘And you can belt up or smoke a joint, Dobson. You haven’t exactly helped things along,’ Marty exploded.

‘Don’t go blaming me for Connie’s little night on the tiles. You started it.’

‘Oh, shut it!’

‘No, you shut it. You don’t order us around like Mr Hitler. We’re a group, a democratic, not autocratic, collective – decision makers At least I’ve learned that in the last past few days.’

‘Bullshit, Dobson. This band is rubbish without a leader. You’re always half cut and now you screw my girl.’

‘I’m not your girl, or anybody’s, for that matter,’ piped Connie. ‘So shut up, the both of you.’ It was awful to see everything disintegrating like this. She was sobering up fast and now she was feeling cheap and silly.

‘Well, I might as well tell you … I’m out of it,’ said Marty, as Jack, Des, Lorne circled round him with
Connie and Sandra clinging on to each other. ‘I’m leaving, going solo. I’ve had an offer. It just hasn’t worked out, has it? We’ve had three months and this fiasco is the last straw.’

Everyone stood shocked, heads down, but Marty continued, ‘It’s better we split up now. You can all regroup. I want to do other stuff … experiment. Tony has some ideas.’

‘Has that poofter been feeling you up then?’ Lorne sneered.

Marty leaped at him and punched him. ‘Just shut it, big mouth. You think with your dick!’

Connie couldn’t stand it and turned away in tears. ‘What about me then?’ she whispered.

Marty pulled her to the side, out of earshot, of the others. ‘Look, Connie, you’re still a kid. Go back and finish your studies, make up with your family. I’m not ready to be tied down. Write some more songs and send them out. But I’m travelling solo from now on.’

The journey back was long, dreary and full of tension. Everyone was shocked by Marty’s defection. The van’s exhaust finally gave up and they had a struggle to find enough cash to have it wired together. They scrumped apples off trees and had to share a loaf of bread and drink water, hunger making them all tetchy. Lorne kept trying to snuggle up to Connie but she was having none of it.