While he did his deliveries along the street, the milkman would leave his horse and cart outside our house. He would put a nosebag on the horse’s head. I would watch the horse sniff and snort into the bag of bran and oats that was fixed over its nose and then, suddenly, throw its head and the bag high up into the air in a cloud of dusty chaff. Then it would lower it gently to the ground and go on munching.
I have since learned that horses do this for a reason. They do it in order to bring the heavy oat-grains up from the bottom of the bag so that they can eat them. That was a disappointment: I thought it was just joie de vivre.
II. Wonders.
Even though I can remember their names, Elsie, Amy and Peggy, and I know I was fond of them, I can’t recall exactly what our housekeepers looked like. But – even though she wasn’t always there and when she was it wasn’t always easy to attract her attention – it was my mother Daisy who was my refuge and haven. I would like to be able to describe her as she was in those very early days, but it is quite impossible. As I try to picture her I find myself folding softly into her safety, which was a place from which no comparisons could be made, a place where it was good to be, a place where there were good times.
Bathtime was particularly good. It was presided over by a large copper-coloured geyser at the far end of the bath. This had a sort of swivel tap which Daisy would turn on and light with a match. A bright finger of blue and yellow flame would spring from it. Daisy would turn on the water tap and then deftly swing the flame round into the interior of the geyser. There came a moment of thrilled anticipation and then the whole geyser went ‘WOOF’ and seemed for a second to be so full of flame that it must burst. After that it settled down to a gentle roar as the hot water poured out of its spout and splashed into the bath.
In those days the bath seemed much larger. There were lots of waves and drifts of foam, a rubber duck, elusive soap to slither after, a long scratchy loofah and Daisy’s huge sponge which drank up so much water that you could hardly lift it. My brother would be at the other end making even more waves and ill-treating the duck. Then, after the bath, there would be big warm bath towels and running about with nothing on and after that sitting up in bed in flannelette pyjamas being told a story.
Taking a bath was never a particularly private activity in our house. John and I would wander in and out of the bathroom while Daisy was in the bath, to talk of domestic matters or make enquiries about anatomy. This was quite ordinary.
I think my father, Ray, may have been a bit less hospitable. I can only remember once seeing him in the bath. He was very hairy and his body seemed to fill the bath almost completely. It occurred to me at the time that he didn’t need a lot of hot water for his bath and that if he had been truly bath-shaped a couple of jugfuls would probably have been enough to cover him quite adequately.
Ray is almost as hard to describe as Daisy. He was very large and very warm, with a roughish pelt that smelt faintly of tobacco smoke. Being an author, he was usually busy in his study but even so he did observe certain ceremonies. Every Saturday I was given my ‘Saturday Penny’. Ray would solemnly make the presentation and then he and I would put on our coats and walk along to the sweetshop to spend it.
Ray had a large woolly overcoat and a large furry-backed hand. When walking beside him I liked to get my head between his hand and his coat and hang on to two of his fingers. This was a very comfortable arrangement because his hand was as warm as a hotwater bottle and it also kept the wind off.
The sweetshop had a marvellous array of cheap goodies. It was amazing what you could buy for a penny – four round gobstoppers which changed colour and flavour as you sucked them, or four liquorice bootlaces, or two blocks of solid lemonade or one chocolate-covered ice-cream cone, which didn’t have ice-cream in it but pink marshmallow, or even, I think, a yellow sherbet-fountain with a liquorice tube in the top. This looked a bit like a firework and behaved in much the same way when you sucked at the tube and suddenly found yourself with a mouthful of explosive, prickly tasting sherbet.
Sometimes we would be taken shopping, to Golders Green on the top of a rattling, roaring open-topped bus, an experience I always hugely enjoyed because I was fascinated by all forms of transport. We would get off at Hoop Lane and walk along the wide pavement of the shopping parade. There we would often see a three-piece brass band: three strong-looking men wearing medals and playing golden instruments while another capered and saluted and smiled, rattling a box for pennies. I expect they were out-of-work exsoldiers, but they made a lovely noise.
In the draper’s shop with its broad mahogany counters all was calmness, efficiency and respectful servility, but high up, close to the ceiling, the money-jars were whizzing backwards and forwards like frenzied bats to and from the cashier, a lady in a high round desk at the centre of a web of wires.
One amazing shop had fires burning in the window with perforated tins rotating on the top. They made smoke, but this was no ordinary smoke, it was the smoke of roasting coffee; powerful, pungent stuff. I wasn’t sure I liked the smell but it was devilish exciting.
The fish shop had a cold smell which came from a marble slab where wet dead fish were laid out, and also from a deep metal tray in which live eels were squiggling.
In those days quite a lot of ladies wore foxes around their necks. These animals were very thin, with sparse hair and eyes as bright as beads. Eventually I decided that they weren’t really alive but I still didn’t want to touch one.
Occasionally we travelled on from Golders Green to visit our cousins the Coles, who lived in a tall house in West Hampstead.
To do this we travelled on the queen of all public transport – the tram.
Trams were tall and thin and had a special smell. This wasn’t smoky and oily like the smell of buses, it was clean and almost fresh. As it started to move, a tram made a rich metallic grinding noise, Gerdoing – gerdoing, gerdoing, gerdoing … which rose in pitch as it speeded up until it became a steady song, accompanied by clangs, clunks, creaks and graunching noises as the tram swayed and pitched on its narrow rails. When it came to a sharp corner the tram would jerk sideways and lurch as if it had been barged by an elephant. To this day I don’t understand why trams didn’t just fall flat on their sides at every corner.
One evening, on our way back from the Coles’, I saw something quite unexpected. It was dusk, almost dark, which was the best time to travel on the open top of a tram. Being above the lampposts the deck was dark except when the tram-pole spluttered and gave off white sparks as it rolled, hissing, along its wire. You could hold on to the rail and look down on the stream of cars and vans and see the people moving busily on the pavements, lit by the bright shop windows. It was like being high in the rigging of a tall ship. Standing there, scanning the view from side to side, I suddenly observed, or perhaps I should say, noted the predicament of, what I could only conclude must be a hitherto unknown section of society.
Along the Finchley Road, as along many other big roads in London, there were parades of shops, all brightly lit and thronged with people. From the top of the tram I could see that the shops themselves had dark flat roofs. Behind these, on a level with me but invisible from below, was a line of windows. Many of these were brightly lit and as the tram passed I could see straight into each room from corner to corner. I saw families having tea, people sitting reading, a boy doing his homework, a mum ironing on the table, even a thin man and a fat lady playing cellos – all life was there for me to look at, set out in single bright boxes.
This was quite fascinating, but gradually an awful thought occurred to me. These upstairs people had no front doors. They were totally isolated. They had to live their upstairs lives in an upstairs world which was completely separate from ours.
Amy, our housekeeper, was in the cabin below. I ran down to tell her about it. I explained to her how the rooms were set side by side for the whole length of the shopping parade, so there was no way out on that level, and there was no way in or out downwards because the dark flat roof was