The month of May ended on a note of relief. Regina has been informed that she has no signs of breast cancer. And I’ll leave it at that—I don’t want to be accused of Too Much Information. Nothing worse than being subjected to a litany of someone else’s ailments. Suffice it to say that during the days of waiting for the radiologist’s report I was made aware of how much I love the little world that has organically grown around me here in my adopted country: the house, the pets, the Monday night Salon, Janet Klein & Her Parlor Boys, Will Ryan’s Cactus Cowboys, breakfast at the Coffee Gallery in the company of the round table sages of Altadena. And I realize how fragile is that world. I can’t stand change. But one day that world will break.
The weekly round: Regina has been baby-sitting and trying to keep the house tidy; I have been researching and writing about (a) Tin Pan Alley & World War One and (b) The Dance Craze of 1910-14, for lectures and concerts I will be giving at the Oregon Festival of Music in Eugene this August; Rollo has been waiting for me to take him for a walk; Simon has been threatening Rollo only to be threatened himself by a noisy bluebird at the window.
So--nothing dramatic to relate.
Instead I’ll tell you about a search for a mislaid video that led me back into 1973 and a vanished world. “The past is a foreign country,” wrote L.P. Hartley in the prologue to his novel, The Go-Between. “They do things differently there.”
I just couldn’t find the DVD of “Under The Ragtime Moon”, an odd musical tidbit I’d been involved in around the early 1970s. It was Ireland’s entry in a European TV variety show contest held annually in the Belgian coastal town of Knokke. I’d written the story—about a troupe of pierrots on their way to entertain troops at the front line in 1914 –and I had chosen the songs, mainly from a current LP of mine called “Under The Ragtime Moon”. Dolled up in a shriekingly loud outfit and made-up like an ageing queen about to meet death in Venice on a crowded beach, I played Happy Harry, leader of The Merry Monarchs. The Monarchs were a Northern Irish group called The Pattersons. The musical director, who was also on screen as bandleader F. Arthur Nouveau, was my old Trinity College friend, Fiachra Trench—a skilled pianist and arranger.
We didn’t win the TV contest; I’m not sure if we even placed. But I liked the way the songs were played and there was one number I really treasure, “Robinson Crusoe’s Isle”. I passionately archive all my work, believing that there may be somebody else who might in future discover and enjoy the stuff. Might even rave. You never know, do you?
Well, it took a lot of cursing and rummaging (and concern from Regina at my noisy state of disarray)-- and finally a phone call to locate this show. The DVD had vanished—I must have given it to some poor soul sometime. But UCLA had a 16mm color print, said the archivist. I must have deposited it there years ago. And then, at the Huntington Library’s rare manuscripts department, a VHS of the show turned up. It was the last one in the box and I hoorayed as I held it, watched by the eagle-eyed curators who guard the rare material and those who handle it. Among their charges are the papers of Christopher Isherwood, Kingsley Amis and Charles Bukowski. Anyway-- I had the material for making another DVD transfer.
What I didn’t have was the month and year of the show. Ah, but my journals would reveal that! The journals I’d started in 1972—surely the Knokke contest was held around that time?
The originals of my journals are deep in that same Huntington basement where we found the VHS. But I didn’t want to bother the guardians once again. Besides there are, I seemed to remember, photocopies in a cupboard in our back room, behind some of Regina’s vintage dresses and her wedding gown.
More curses and rummaging. Does she really need all these clothes? And this vase of artificial flowers? And what’s this Xmas wrapping paper doing on top of my precious journals?
At last, like the VHS tape, I found the early journals buried at the very back of the top cupboard, under a heap of later journals. Bloody nuisance. Well, that’s how it should be----they’re in chronological order. But it’s a bloody nuisance just the same.
Eventually I found the date of the shooting of “ Under The Ragtime Moon”: Saturday June 23. But in the search, along the way, I was transfixed by other stuff. That’s the way it is in libraries. You look for a specific book but along the way you find an unexpected treasure. Sort of like YouTube but not like the Internet in general.
I was stopped by other entries about my life at that time—living at our family home, Wildcroft Manor on Putney Heath, with my mother. But others I’d not thought about for some time sprang from the pages to play their parts in my farce of a life once more. A whole vanished world of things I’d done and hadn’t done, of mistakes, and regrets and .…
And how I wished I could return to make amends, to put matters straight, to appreciate those people, to apologize, to practice the piano, to stop and consider and not to rush about and rant. To relish my current age instead of wishing I was back in the 1960s and had luxuriant hair…But the past is a foreign country and we can’t return. The merry-go-round of life only circulates once. But this was the next best thing to time travel--even though I was a reader rather than a player, and it was frustrating not to be able to change my history…
Here’s a sampling of journal entries scribbled in somewhere along the way. The year is 1973. Many of the players are long dead. I will annotate:
June 24: THE RETURN FROM THE KNOKKE TV VARIETY CONTEST
(Jack is Jack Percival, my widowed mother’s constant companion since my father’s early death in 1962. He had been a good friend of my father’s; his father had been a bishop; had studied very little at Cambridge; had mucked about in Kenya with the English upper classes; had served in the Army in WW2 as a clearer-up of battlefields—after all, somebody had to do this mucky job[.])
Drinks at home, The Croft, with Mummy & Jack. Later that evening Jack got into trouble with M for not washing up properly, using soap and swish-mop. I had pointed out to him that a knife was still dirty and he’d stalked off in a baby pique. “Everybody’s being rude to me”, he grumbled. But the grumble was annoyingly high-pitched and peevish. Later I heard M tell him he couldn’t come golfing up at Brora in Scotland if he didn’t behave.
Jack has no backbone like my father. He’s funny enough and devoted to M, but I hope and pray she never gives in to his constant pleas for marriage. I couldn’t bear to have someone unmanly taking my real father’s place. I remember Suzanne (my sister) telling me how shocked she was on entering The Croft shortly after our father’s death to find Jack sitting pretty in my father’s armchair, sherry in hand.
And although I found his sayings such as “Keep it on the island!” amusing enough and was amazed and tickled when, while watching “Lawrence Of Arabia” on TV, he got up top bow deeply to Peter O’Toole as he whirled around campily in his new desert Arab costume, I fixed Jack Percival in my firmament as a silly ass, a P.G Wodehouse character. My father, in my memory, was a hero, a John Buchan character.
Monday, June 25:
Had a great time at Lords cricket ground with Jack who’s a member so we got into the private enclosure. Whisky and cucumber sandwiches. New Zealand V England. Slow stuff but Jack told me who was who and what the different strokes were: “cover drive” and so on. Not much drama in cricket but in principle I’m all for it.
Lunch at Penguin Books (They had published “After The Ball” the year before; the book had been commissioned in 1969 by Oliver Caldecott who’d become a good friend and went on to edit all my books published by major publishers until his death in 1989; since then I haven’t had any luck with the majors) with Caldecott, that jolly little fat man. Rolls and beer in his office. Described to him my new songbook concept, “Tin Pan Alley”. He mumbled “Jolly good” and rubbed his hands. His office is littered with new Penguins, some face down on the floor gathering dust. I hope he’s settled down faithfully with wife Moira, long-suffering. He used to borrow my West End flat for afternoon trysts with ladies; this was when I’d just signed my Penguin contract and wanted to please. Dropped into United Artists Records in the afternoon to see A&R man Alan Warner; he depressed me by saying that U.A. aren’t happy with me having record deals with other companies (Argo and Ember). And “Under The Ragtime Moon” has only sold 600 copies in Britain.
Tuesday, June 26.
Lunch with Jeremy (Jeremy Lewis, one of my three best friends—the others being Charles Sprawson, the art dealer, who, like Jeremy had been a fellow undergraduate at Trinity College Dublin, and Andy Wickham, whom I’d met in Los Angeles in the late 1960s. Andy, another Public School gentleman, was currently in the A&R department at Warner Bros Records and he and I had just produced, in Nashville, a record called “Hands”, my composition about a massage parlor girl for the company’s nascent country music department.) We discussed the awful decay of Britain into sniggering satirists and Monty Pythoners. General small-mindedness and a constant sneer at America. We also regretted the triumph of the working class over us. That evening he and wife Petra came over to flat for a film show of vaudeville acts. As usual Projector set up in bathroom by lavatory seat with light beaming across hallway and into drawing room with screen at the end. Very kind of M to let me store all my 16mm reels in her kitchen cupboards and the projector on its massive metal stand in her bedroom. When friends see this contraption they ask whether she’s just struck oil. Luckily M was away in Scotland on her golfing holiday with the now-forgiven Jack P. As usual the film broke.
Call from Bruce Merrin, my LA publicist, to tell me that
“Under The Ragtime Moon” is doing well in America. A “Pick” in Bill Gavin’s Tip Sheet and honorable mention on Ralph Story’s “AM” TV show. I tell J & P it’s like “You Turn Me On” all over again. Fingers crossed. To bed excited.
Wednesday, June 27.
Telegram from Andy Wickham saying: “’Hands’ going great. Could be a nugget. Fingers crossed. Will call”. I spent rest of day distractedly clearing out the back room. Too many of my things, not enough of M’s. She has dedicated her life to me. I don’t deserve it. Dillying and dithering in my mind about this songbook project for Caldecott. What can I say new about the dreary 1930s? What am I doing plunging back in that nostalgia music area that I exhausted in “After The Ball”? I should be writing about the here and now, or maybe some imaginative work. A novel! England’s so off-putting for romantics in a hurry like me. No encouragement, no pretty people. Oh, I so want to be back in golden California, like last year when I was recording with Andy, my new hero, and also with Mae West and Van Dyke Parks, not forgetting dining with Christopher Isherwood when Tennessee Williams stopped at our table with a beach boy and made a play for Andy.
Thursday, June 28.
Up to the West End. Bought a copy of “Billboard” and there inside was an ad for Debbie Dawn, “an exciting new discovery”, on her first outing, “Hands”. I gazed and gazed at it as I rode the tube, hemmed in by dirty people. Did some 1930s song research on George Formby at the British Film Institute-- but kept thinking of all the other writers who’ve ploughed this weary period. Including me when I did such diligent work at the end of the last decade—the glorious, glamorous 60s! How did I stay true to my subject when I was young and beautiful and sexy and…
Rot Moseley (An old friend dating back to the mid 60s when I’d been introduced to him by Christian Roberts, a close friend who was then a student at the Royal College Of Dramatic Art; Roy had signed Christian to his agency; he got him an important role in “To Sir With Love” and other movies; Christian was my friend but I was jealous and envious and wondered whether he really was better-looking than me) took me to see Bruce Forsyth at the London Palladium. The star leaned over the footlights and gave Roy a thumbs-up. “ Hello, Roy-boy! See you in the dressing room after the show for drinks!” he said, so that all could hear. Right in the middle of a song-and-dance routine too. But our Roy really does know-- and sincerely love-- his stars. He was Sir Lawrence Olivier’s dresser; he has stayed at Bette Davis’ house; Sir Noel Coward patted his head, Prince Charles acknowledges him.
Sat and drank beer with Forsyth. Admitted it had been an uphill fight with the audience that night. Referred to himself as an “all-round entertainer”, adding that it’s a “dirty word” over here. He’s never appeared in America but would dearly love to. I spoke up. He never heard of me. Roy told me that later.
Back at Wildcroft I got a call from Andy saying that Detroit had just ordered 10,000 copies of “Hands”. That promotion men were dispatching scantily dressed girls into the street to promote the record. That local LA station KMPC has held a staff meeting to declare “Hands” as the kind of smutty record they’re fighting to banish from the airwaves.
Friday, June 29.
Stayed up till 2 in the morning to do phone interview with Lou Erwin of KDAY. Erwin: “How come two limeys came up with such an American song?” I banged on about foreigners knowing more about American culture, etc.
Monday, July 2.
Dick & Diana Zimmerman, my magician friends from LA have arrived and are staying at The Croft. They have a ton of illusion equipment. Dick’s also a ragtime piano fiend and we’ve played some gigs in LA. He’s a wizard at getting me out of having anything to do with today’s culture. He’s created a safe balloon of the past, the ragtime past, where he lives. He skips around, avoiding the awful here and now. He always lifts my spirits, as does the effervescent Diana, his wife, known in magic circles as the “Blonde Bombshell Enchantress Of Magic”.
The couple has landed on me all of a sudden. I had hoped that Mummy and Jack would be back from Scotland so that they could help entertain the magicians. As it is I already had a dinner invitation from Tony Palmer, the hotshot TV director and London society man, an invitation I couldn’t refuse. What to do with Dick & Lady Diana?
I got them to go to dinner at a restaurant near Tony Palmer’s Notting Hill mansion. I’d pick them up later.
Guests at the dinner included George Orwell’s widow Sonia and playwright Alan Bennett, plus Lord and Lady Dufferin. I told my dinner partner, to the left, Joan Bakewell, the sexy TV presenter we all lusted after in the 1960s, how I’d drooled over her when I saw her on TV. “Where were you when I needed you?” she shot back at me. I argued with Tony Palmer on the merits of King Charles The Second. I shocked a left-wing magazine editor with my defense of Lincoln Rockwell. “Don’t he and his kind believe blacks have larger genitals,ha! ha!” said the editor, closing the topic.
After dinner I played the piano but nobody paid any attention. Just about to leave when, to my amazement, Dick and Diana turned up unannounced. They soon became the stars of the evening much to my chagrin. I described Dick to the guests as a mad magician and Diana as a Lady John Bircher. As if on cue they immediately went into their parts: she attacked the editor of “Oz” magazine for wearing a Mao button. Then Dick pounded out classic rags and Lady Dufferin, entranced, called out, “What a darling man—and such a 1930s face!” Without missing a note Dick shouted back, “I’m ragtime, madam! Ragtime!” Later he rushed up to Tim Rice to tell him how much ragtime there is in “Jesus Christ Superstar”. Dick did a smoke bomb trick for Alan Bennett and a ring trick for Sonia Orwell. They had rocked London society, shaking the liberals out of their complacency. A great evening!
Curiously, when I got them back to The Croft, with them still talking a dime a dozen and exulting, and had directed the irrepressible couple to the spare bedroom and said goodnight, with them responding with many a blandishment, I never heard a peep from them after the door was closed. Absolute silence. Even as I pressed my ear to the door I heard nothing.
Thursday, July 5.
Researching for the Caldecott/Penguin songbook at Francis, Day & Hunter, the venerable music publisher in Charing Cross Road. Flipping through bound copies of songs from the 20s and 30s. Sickening—because I’d covered this ground years ago when I was researching “After The Ball”, when I was fresh and young. Now I’m almost 32! What an exhaustive study I’d made back then! The music publisher’s archive room, on the top floor of a grimy Victorian building, hasn’t been dusted in years, it would seem. Warren of tiny rotting offices. In one was a Dickensian music copyist, looking like a plumber’s mate, scratching away at a manuscript as dandruff floated down, haloed by a hanging naked light bulb. Photos of Cliff Richard and Les Reed on the wall. Christ, it was depressing!
No news of “Hands”. I fear the worst. Subject matter too controversial perhaps. Mo Ostin, head of Warner Bros Records, is in town and he called me to thank me for my letter. Hasn’t got time to see me, though. However, his promo men assure him “Hands” is a hit—so long as the FCC doesn’t ban it for mentioning a brand name in the lyrics. I’d referred to massage parlor clients using their “Master Charge” cards. Why the hell did I do that? Not thinking, as usual.
Friday, July 6.
Spent morning at Feldman’s, the veteran music publishers, in Soho, near F,D & H. Rude old cockney in charge, asked me whether it was me who’d purloined bound file copies of their old songs. “Not that anybody blood cares about that old junk”, he added, sucking on a fag end. I asked if he had any photos of Bert Feldman, the founder, and he said they’d all been purloined by other journalists like me. His woman assistant was eating lunch, head down and looking in, from out of a grubby bag, as she read “The Church Times”. The whole scene was mucky and seedy and summed up the England that I want to escape from; and yet in a show biz career that started abroad and shot me up to the top I now find myself being sucked back like a pebble into the sea.
Wednesday, July 11.
Sore throat—probably due to being run off my feet by Dick & Diana. But today I had good news from the West Coast. Andy writes saying that “Hands” continues to “move well” and is “exploding in Philadelphia”. This is a key city, opening up the way to New York, a major market. Bruce Merrin has discovered that massage parlor workers in San Francisco are on the march, demonstrating for better conditions, so he wrote to them offering them our song as their anthem. We await a reply.
Cooked myself a huge steak using cream and oil. Threw masses of onions on top. Can’t cook but there had to be a celebration.
Friday, July 20.
Was dropped unceremoniously this afternoon by UA Records. In typical English manner they wouldn’t tell me in so many words. We had a silent sandwich lunch in their office, under the framed gold records. Then I pushed the question. Yes, they agreed. It was time to go our different ways. I huffed and puffed about how they were losing a goldmine—why, I was having a hit country record called “Hands” even as I spoke!--- and how I’d be around long after their rotten pop groups were long gone. Then I walked out, slamming the door. Did I hear some glass break? Later the managing director rang to politely talk about “attrition” and “cutbacks” and the “commercial disaster” that my LP has become. “Speaking on an aesthetic level”, he said, “I personally had a lot of time for it—but there you go!”
Sunday, July 22.
Mummy & Jack returned from their Scottish golfing trip. Jack presented me with an old salmon he’d bought in a shop. Terrible smell, nice thought. In the evening I went to film editor/director Jim Clark’s house to pick up some 16mm films I’d lent him. Told him about an idea I had for a boarding school novel. He cut me down: “It’s all been done—surely you’ve seen 'If'?" Lindsay’s done it and it’s the last word”. We’re all losers and jumpers on bandwagons to him. He added that I’m a typical example of a spoiled upper middle class public schoolboy. America! America! Oh, to start afresh-- far away from this crabby cobwebby crushing country!
Thursday, July 26.
To Brighton by train with Roy, and his queer friend Dolores Del Poof (real name John Marvin, a ship’s steward on ocean liners, who lives with a stoker called Reg). Dol is a fan of anyone famous. In the train he passed around signed glossies of famous people from all walks of life. Any walk of life-- he doesn’t care so long as they’re famous. He’d give anything for a Hitler. Took bus to Rottingdean to drop in on famous playwright Enid (“The Chalk Garden”) Bagnold. Rudyard Kipling’s house sits opposite hers. Kipling wrote “If” there. It’s Mummy’s favourite poem. The playwright let us in herself after Dol pleaded. He held out a copy of her autobiography for signing. This did the trick. A rambling untidy house; dusty saxophone on floor; a billiards room. Bagnold was shoeless and unashamed. She said it would have been no good if we’d arrived while she was making an omelette. Dol, in his excitement, sent a vase of flowers crashing to the floor. Bagnold said not to worry--the dogs were always doing that sort of thing. Dol, sweating profusely, told her he was a sailor. “Are you all in the navy, then?” “Certainly not”, said Roy. He claimed to be a noted film producer, an outright fib. When I got the chance I took Bagnold aside to tell her that I’d attended a nearby and respected prep school called Newlands. She nodded. I just had to disassociate myself from the others.
That evening we went to the end of the Palace Pier in Brighton to see “Those Were The Days”, a program of near-dead old-time music hall stars. On the bill were Bob & Alf Pearson (“We bring you melodies from out of the sky—my brother and I”), Nat Jackley (“World Renowned Rubber Legs Comedian”), and Lesley Sarony who wrote “I Lift Up My Finger and I say Tweet Tweet,” “Ain’t It Grand To Be Blooming Well Dead”, and “Let’s All Be Fairies”. Also an opening act called Terry Doogan (“Ace Of The Accordion”), a hunchback who made a point of showing off his handicap by constantly standing in a sideway pose as he squeezed his machine, leering like a pedophile.
Monday, July 30.
Blearily picked up the mail from off the carpet by the front door. A letter from Andy. Ripped it open and read: “It is difficult to write this letter but for the sake of all of us it is necessary to be realistic and direct. To all intents and purposes our record died this week.” Stunned I read and reread it. “Hands” had died in Philadelphia. The main radio station had dropped it. Now it was just a useless piece of plastic. I had been a fool to boast to the people at UA that I’d made a hit. I must clean myself up and get some discipline. Stop admiring myself in the bedroom mirror. The answer is hard work and study—and possibly a regular girl friend again. I must try and make contact with Vicki again. (Vicki Metherell was a girl I’d been seeing since my teens when I was at Bryanston School and she was at Cheltenham Ladies College. A real corker-- although my mother insisted she had a “touch of the tarbrush”. She now lived in Paris and I had been spending weekends with her while writing “After The Ball”, but I’d baulked at marriage and there were other reasons too.
Friday, August 10.
Worked on the songbook. Mummy in bed with a bad cold. Eats little except toast and tea, taken with “The Daily Telegraph” sports pages. Fixed final details for having a 16mm print of “Under The Ragtime Moon” struck from the video that the BBC let me have. Bloody expensive! 489 pounds. I got a 200 pound advance from Argo Records and 90 from Irish TV. Rang the British Film Institute to see whether they’d contribute another 200. They said they’d think it over. (You can now watch this short but merry TV show anytime on YouTube)
Very kind call from Andy at 1.30 in morning. Bolstered my ego no end: told me I‘m in the Top 100 movers & shakers list in “Esquire” magazine. Wants us to do a lot more recording when I return in September. Chips Moman, a hit Nashville producer, says that “Hands” production was great but that girls can’t identify with the lyrics. They don’t think of themselves as prostitutes. We should have considered that before recording. Universality is the thing to keep in mind when writing pop songs. And I’m supposed to be the expert on the history of the game! That’s why I got listed in “Esquire”.
Monday, August 13.
A perplexing day—I must get myself more organized and into a routine. Into the habit of writing this diary first thing, then letters, then the book. Every day, come rain or shine! I get so behind on the diary, leaving it for days and days and then dashing down the entries. Noel Coward and Somerset M were well organized in their working habits. That’s all there is in the end: work, the noblest of all actions! And nobody gets in the way. You’re God. And it also calms me down. I’ve been stuttering appallingly lately. Depressed about my inability to read music and to develop any technique on piano. Christ! I’ve been playing for a quarter of a century! Why haven’t I made any forward movement?
Thursday, August 23.
Had a lovely ad hoc holiday in Suffolk-by-the-Sea with Mummy. She was acting like a coltish schoolgirl. How she loves her grandchildren! On the way back in the car we tried to remember all the different places we’d had family summer holidays since WW2. There are several years we couldn’t fill in and it’s terrible to think there are years of my life that I can’t remember anything about. Gone forever! But at least this remembering game took my mind off the unpleasantness at breakfast in the Thorpeness Country club. William and Catherine (my sister’s children) are under the impression that I don’t work.
They’d asked why I was leaving so soon. I replied that I had to get back to London to work. “But you don’t work!", they shouted in unison. I’m pretty sure where they got this idea from. The Colonel, my brother-in-law, has been spreading this idea via his family lectures—about how I’m a playboy with a family allowance. Of course, I could be wrong.
Bruce Merrin phoned from Hollywood to say he’s got me on the “Today” show in New York. Yippee! Now it’s the old tussle getting the work permit at the US Embassy…
Friday, September 7.
Up to dreaded Embassy in Grosvenor Square. Remembering happy days around 1959-60 when I used to sit in their reading room glued to American history books with pictures of sturdy well-built, square-faced boys felling trees, riding surfboards and steering sleek cars with huge mouth organ front grilles. I wanted to be an All-American Boy so badly! The very word “American” sounded engorged with excitement and motion and youth…
But now! The queue winds right down the Embassy side and into the road. Mostly blacks and mixed races and wizened old women. God, I hate people en masse! I’m sure individually over tea and a Kunzle cake they’d be interesting. But here! Eventually I got seen and filled out the requisite form. Told to return at 2pm.
But at 3pm the official appeared with a clutch of passports—and mine wasn’t there! My H1 permit hasn’t come through. Devastated I called Mummy who sent off a telegram to my manager Jerry Dennon in Seattle.
Even so I booked a Pan Am ticket. Decided to treat myself to a First Class seat for next Tuesday. Well, Mummy is very kindly paying for this trip. Says I deserve it. Over a thousand pounds. It’s money, she says, she was saving to buy a little house so as to stop paying rent for the flat. I felt bad about this but she insists. She repeated the story of the money saved for the house when we sat down to a fishcake-and-chips supper at the old bridge table in the drawing room as the TV played calamities on the world news.
Monday, September 10.
Up early for another Embassy trip. Girl at desk tried to make me join endless queue. Luckily I caught the attention of the old gent I saw Friday, the official who hands out stamped passports to happy faces. He said the permit isn’t yet through but he’d have a word with the Consul-General himself at 11.30.
When I returned he gave me a thumbs-up. Explained that Jerry Dennon hadn’t done correct paperwork but they’d take a chance since I’m appearing on the “Today” show on Wednesday and then maybe the “Tonight” show with Johnny Carson-- and good luck!
Had lunch in a pub with Jeremy. As we parted he said sadly, “Oh,Eenon!’ and turned around and headed off fast for Holborn tube station. Was touched. Bought white shirt and white trousers at Village Gate. And an attachÈ case at Swan & Edgar. Back home on bus—rather friendly to the crowd; wanted to embrace them, or at the least shake their hand--now that I’d got my H1 permit. And it’s granted till December 15!
Steak and fried eggs for supper at card table. Took Dinger for a late night walk. (My brother Robin’s Labrador was temporarily staying at The Croft). Mummy came along. We circled the flats. I looked at her objectively—a hard thing to do. Yes, an attractive figure, but her face is getting lines and she stoops a bit.
The next day I flew Pan Am to New York. At breakfast I’d tried to see the color of my mother’s eyes. Grey, I think. But I couldn’t be sure. I’d never known the color of her eyes. Never dared. Or never bothered. She was just always there, like a spirit.
Our cleaning lady held Dinger up to the drawing room window as we drove off. Mummy always gets me to the airport a long time in advance. Conversation is tricky because it’s all emotion that’s churning.
A hard goodbye at the gate because, at the end, her eyes filled with tears. I had lingered too long.
But America was my destiny—I knew this instinctively-- and in five years she would become my home. We still live in the house I bought on impulse one wet day in 1979.