Swan River (26 page)

* * * * *

On a warm night, late that summer, I went to a party in Battersea and stood holding a wineglass in a garden as darkness came on. A woman came towards me, peering into the gloom; she was holding a lighted cigarette. ‘That you, David?' She had an Australian accent. It was Kate, Bonnie's flatmate. We moved towards a light. Her skin was brown and her blonde hair had got blonder. As we talked, she said how sorry she was about what had happened with Bonnie.

I raised my shoulders. ‘It's in the past.'

She told me that Bonnie had moved in with Bob, the American producer, and that, though they still worked in the same office, she had grown tired of Bonnie; she was too openly ambitious, and too frivolous at the same time. Kate raised her eyebrows and pulled down her mouth, and apologised for being bitchy.

We got bored with the party and went for dinner at an Indian restaurant, where she talked about her boyfriend who only came to London once a month from Warwick where he was a graduate student. His name was Johnny Holly.

After that evening, we went out together often for many months. She loved music and dancing and our favourite places were the new psychedelic ones, UFO and Middle Earth, and sometimes, after midnight, we went to hear jazz at Ronnie Scott's. I discovered that Bonnie's Stan Getz and Dave Brubeck records were in fact Kate's. ‘Bonnie had never heard of Stan Getz until she met me.' With Kate, I felt free to confess that, until I met Bonnie, I hadn't heard of him either.

She was faithful to Johnny Holly and I tried to convince myself that I was content with that. But during the winter, when we had been close for some time, I found that I was in love with her. It was an obsession that had accrued gradually; I loved her company and her view of life – and I wanted more of her. I knew that I was in love because I just couldn't stop myself taking the bold steps of saying so and writing letters telling her why and how wonderful she was. I dismissed what I had felt for Bonnie just a year earlier as a delusion. This was real love, not a sudden passion.

But Kate couldn't reciprocate; she loved Johnny Holly. She couldn't give me back what I wanted to give her, and I couldn't stop demanding it. A few weeks after I declared my love, I ended our friendship because it made me miserable. She told me I was mad.

As they had done about a year before, Dave fed me pints of beer and Peter the Painter gave me advice. ‘What you felt for Kate really
was
love – not lust. I can see that, because you went out with her for months without thinking about lust, didn't you?'

I nodded feebly, wondering whether that was really true.

24

Treading Softly

During those hot months of 1967 I visited my father from time to time, but always felt that I didn't go often enough. He was grateful for my sporadic appearances and made a show of not putting pressure on me to see him more often which, of course, added to my feelings of guilt.

On a Saturday afternoon in August, I suggested we drive to Marlow and perhaps walk by the river. I felt like being outside; the temperature was in the eighties and the sky was clear. By then, driving somewhere and taking a short, slow stroll was the best way to be outdoors with him; he had taken to walking with a stick – though he stressed that his stick didn't have a rubber knob on the end, unlike those of real geriatrics.

He liked the idea. ‘We could go to the lock and buy ice-creams, like we did when you were little.'

Before we started I wound down all the Cresta's windows, and my father handed me his tobacco tin and took his jacket off; he was wearing his hat, a white shirt and royal blue braces. We drove slowly along the A40 towards High Wycombe among the caravans and loaded roof racks of an endless stream of holidaymakers. As the fan blew the warm air from outside into our faces, my father cursed the caravan in front of us and all the other traffic and threw his hat over his shoulder on to the back seat.

Rolling him a cigarette, I asked what he thought about anarchism, thinking he would broadly approve.

‘Anarchism! More right-wing than the bloody Tories.' He pulled out in the hope of overtaking the caravan. ‘Traffic both ways. Curse it.' He lifted his hands momentarily from the steering wheel.

‘I thought it was more left-wing than communism.'

He pulled back in line with the caravan. ‘Well, it's total
laissez faire
, isn't it? And isn't that a recipe for rich people doing what they like – devil take the hindmost?'

‘But, if everyone behaved decently – '

‘The trouble is they won't.' He tapped his ash out of the window and glanced at me quickly; I must have looked disappointed. He smiled. ‘That's the problem, Sunny Jim. The only thing that will interfere with the greed of the rich is giving power to the poor.' He flicked the indicator; we were taking the side road from Holtspur to Bourne End. ‘Anarchism is all very well as a model, but it could only ever be achieved by changing human nature – completely and utterly.'

He turned off the A40 and suddenly we could see for three or four miles, across the Thames to Winter Hill and the woods around Cookham. The sun was high above the trees across the river and my father flipped down the sun visor.

We were soon sitting in stationary traffic in Bourne End, and I persisted in arguing that anarchism could work and that human nature – whatever that was – could change. My father was gently dismissive; possibly it could change a little, but only very slowly indeed, imperceptibly, as people became better educated. He had read
Roads to Freedom
soon after I gave it to him at Christmas, and pointed out that Bertrand Russell had written the book long ago, in 1918, and, even then, had thought that anarchism was an impractical dream.

The traffic still didn't move, and he cursed and wiped sweat from his forehead as a police car edged past, its siren wailing. He talked about Bakunin, whom he called the father of anarchism, and Rousseau who had advocated that everyone should live in the woods, like primitive tribesmen; eventually Rousseau had gone mad. He smiled. ‘You won't go mad old chap, will you? You can't save the world by yourself, you know.'

I didn't answer. I watched some children queuing to buy ice-creams and felt hot and irritated.

He turned the engine off and pulled on the hand-brake. ‘I like that new magazine you're working on, but – and I know I've said it before – I wish they'd stop telling people to take drugs. You aren't taking any of those drugs are you? Pot, lysergic acid?'

I lied to reassure him, as another police car squeezed past.

He pointed at it and said he hoped they would hurry up and get the traffic moving. He nudged me in the ribs. ‘In an anarchic state, we would sit here for ever.'

‘No, everyone would get out of the way without needing the police to tell them.'

He laughed. ‘And there'd be no traffic lights, and everyone would wave each other on out of sheer good nature, I suppose.'

I couldn't help smiling, but I was still worrying away at anarchism and the hippies and universal love. As the traffic started to move, I asked him
why
he didn't have more faith in human nature. The answer seemed to involve original sin.

We passed a motor bike lying on its side amid an array of flashing blue lights. Two men in white coats squatted beside a man on a stretcher at the side of the road. As we drove on, along the flat road to Marlow, a warm breeze came through the windows. A group of Friesians moved lazily in the shade of some trees towards the river, and the Marlow Donkey, the two-carriage train that shuttled between Marlow and Bourne End, chuffed by going the other way. I trailed my hand outside the window, cooling it in the wind. His mention of original sin was somehow demoralising; it made me wonder whether it was possible ever to have a new idea – whether it hadn't all been thought already, hacked over interminably since Aristotle and Plato.

As we came into Marlow, my father turned off the main road and deftly found his way through the familiar little streets. He stopped the car beside an old brick wall, a few yards from the gravel path that led to the lock. I wound the windows up while he stretched, picked up his stick and put his hat on. He gazed down the road at the cedar tree, the smooth lawn and the big, old house that had been Uncle George's home. He waved his stick towards it, saluted with his left hand and muttered, ‘God bless you.'

We bought ice-creams from the van at the end of the path. It had its bonnet open and its engine running. My father told the man inside how, when he had been an ice-cream man, he had been able to turn the engine off at every stop because the fridges were cooled by huge blocks of ice. The man nodded politely and turned away to serve some children.

We licked at our 99s as we climbed to the crest of the curved wooden footbridge. There my father stopped to survey the river, the weir, the bridge and the church. He waved his stick. ‘One of my favourite views in all the world.' It was a scene that he had painted and photographed several times. It also appeared on postcards and tea towels. He took a deep breath through his nose and let it out through his mouth. ‘Beautiful day for it, Sunny Jim.' He hooked his stick over the balustrade and put his arm on my shoulder. A line of pleasure boats was waiting to use the lock, and four or five swans were paddling by the bank near the yew tree in the graveyard. I put my arm lightly round his waist – and realised that I was taller than him, just a little; my eyes were level with the brim of his hat.

We walked on and sat on a bench beside the lock. The ice-cream was dripping on to our fingers. Eight small boats filled the lock and we watched them rise gradually towards us, as water poured in through the sluices. A fat man in a peaked cap sat on a stool behind the wheel of a boat called
Lorelei
, and shouted self-importantly to a tired-looking girl with a rope in her hand. The lock-keeper smiled and looked on with his hands on his hips.

I became aware that my father was looking in my direction, and saw that he was frowning – not at me, but at the ground by my feet, or at something he was thinking. He looked up at me with a curious smile. ‘Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.'

‘What?'

‘That's what you're thinking, isn't it? Yeats. I've been treading on your dreams. I'm sorry.' He put his hand on my shoulder. ‘You are a clever boy. You must dream your dreams – and put them into practice if you can. Take no notice of what an old man thinks.'

He must have seen something in my face. I felt sad, but tried not to show it. He was seventy-five and I was nearing nineteen. I gripped his arm near his shoulder; I could feel hard muscle – formed by the daily typing of his thoughts.

* * * * *

Later, after he had chatted to the lock-keeper and I had helped to push the heavy grey beams that opened the lock gates, we sat on the other side and he told me that he had, at last, found his father's letters. He had gone through all his desk drawers, his two four-drawer filing cabinets and numerous cardboard boxes. They had been in the bottom drawer of the chest where he kept his clothes, in his bedroom. He thought they had probably been there since 1942, though the chest had been moved many times; he would have put them there after reading them, soon after his mother died.

‘I've read through them. There are only five from Swan River, but they give a little idea of what his life was like, if you're still interested. Rough and hard, I would say.'

‘I
am
still interested. What about our idea of going there?'

He looked at the ground and didn't answer.

‘Remember?'

He shook his head slightly and looked at me sideways. ‘I'm too old. I really am. I'd slow you down… but you go, if you want to. Take photographs and tell me about it.'

‘I'll go sometime. I'm not sure when, but I'll go. But you come with me – you'd be all right – if you want to.'

He shook his head again. ‘No. I'm not up to it. It's too far.'

I looked past him; a group of children were pushing on a beam, slowly opening one of the giant gates. He had never before declared himself incapable of doing anything.

Beyond the footbridge, on the lawn outside the big room where I had first heard the words ‘Swan River, Manitoba', old people were sitting at tables having tea; a man in a white jacket stood in the doorway holding a jug of orange squash.

* * * * *

Back at home, my father handed me a brown envelope. ‘Have a look. They don't tell you much, but you might be interested.' He went off to the kitchen to make tea. The envelope was addressed to him at an office in High Wycombe; it had been posted in London in 1942. There seemed to be about ten letters, old and folded, written on flimsy paper of different sizes. I unfolded one carefully. There were several cream-coloured sheets, about the size of a page in a paperback book and faintly lined in green. The first page was headed ‘Durban, Manitoba, Canada' and dated 14 October 1906, the year my mother was born – she would have been four months old then, and my father would have been two months from his fifteenth birthday.

My grandfather had small, sloping handwriting, and used black ink and a nib that produced fat strokes in one direction and thin ones in the other. The letter began ‘Dear George' – presumably Uncle George – ‘After leaving Winnipeg I got to Swan River, 319 miles at 11 pm.' It went on to say that the next day he had walked twelve miles to Durban, where he had started work on the Thunder Hill branch of the Canadian Northern Railway. I looked at the last page. The writing was larger. There was a bold number 6 at the top, in the middle. At the bottom, with some flourishes on the capitals, was written ‘Yours sincerely T. Clifton Reynolds'.

My father came in with tea and a packet of fruit shortcake biscuits, and I asked him why the letter came from Durban and not Swan River. He said that Tom had actually lived in Durban; that had been his address: just Durban, Manitoba, Canada. Durban was a small village and Swan River was the local town. I would see, if I read the letters.

I knew my father had last seen Tom in 1902, on the night he left with two suitcases and said, ‘I'll see you before long.' The date of the letter revealed that four years had passed before Tom went to Swan River. I asked my father what had happened in those four years.

He sat back with Joey on his shoulder and told me that Sis and Old George hadn't allowed Tom to see him, and that Tom hadn't known where he lived. They had moved from Norfolk Road after Tom left – not far, to some rooms, upstairs in a house in Rectory Road, Stoke Newington. This had been a come-down for Sis, but was also a relief, quiet and peaceful with no rows or drunkenness – just her and Cliffie much of the time, and Old George when he was at home. Sis did all the housework; there were no servants and no mother's help. They had no gas, just candles and oil lamps which blew black smuts on to the walls and ceilings. Cliffie was ten years old and responsible for lighting the fires and the range, and he often fetched food.

My father laughed and talked about ‘sheep's jimmies', which were half a boiled sheep's head and cost threepence ha'penny. They looked awful – he said I'd've hated them – but tasted delicious. He also remembered buying hot boiled pork with a pennyworth of pease pudding from a shop called Robinsons in Stoke Newington High Street. For that, he had often stood in a long queue with a bowl he brought from home.

He smiled as he bit into a fruit shortcake and recalled how on Saturdays Stoke Newington High Street had been full of hawkers. ‘My grandfather would take us and say, “Come on Sis. Let's you and me and Jim spend a golden sovereign.” He was a spendthrift… like me, though not so bad.' He shook his head and went on smiling as he told me about ‘the sixpenny ha'penny shop' where everything – chamber pots, kettles, rugs, huge boxes of candles – cost that curious sum. The shop was lit by paraffin flares, and customers had a clipper card which was clipped every time they bought something. For ten clips Sis used to get a free hardback book; she usually chose Dickens.

My father went to his bookshelves, pulled down a book and handed it to me – a small, fat copy of
Martin Chuzzlewit
with a dark blue binding. It had come from the sixpenny ha'penny shop. The type was tiny and black, and I tried to imagine Sis reading it in the light of an oil lamp. My father said they'd had lots of them when he was a boy; Tom had collected them too.

I asked about Tom – where had he been in those years before he went to Canada? Most of the time, my father told me, he had been homeless, a vagrant living on the streets of London. Sometimes he slept outdoors – on the embankment, my father guessed – and sometimes in a hostel for the poor, of which there were many, but even the poor had to pay something. He ate in soup kitchens where a meal cost a penny. He tried to get work of any kind, but there was a surfeit, even of labourers. His mother had died, and it seemed that only three people kept in touch with him: Uncle George, La Frascetti and his brother Bertie, the chess-player – his other brothers and sisters wouldn't see him because he was a drunk and an embarrassment. Old George had him sent away when he came to beg at his office in Shoreditch. But Uncle George gave him money from time to time, and La Frascetti took him out for meals and bought him clothes.