Diamonds at the Lost and Found

by Sarah Aspinall

  I still have it, and just the sight of its dusty pink cover brings these early years of my life flooding back. There is a deep and satisfying thrill that the chapter titles and pictures still awake in me, a reminder of how a whole new future suddenly hovered into view. It was one that I hadn’t imagined was possible for me, but this book told me that it was, and gave me clear instructions on how to prepare for it.

  It became my secondary education, a manual for adult life, and I followed its recommendations to the letter. These were to ‘develop interests’ and to greet the world with a big friendly smile ‘more attractive to many people than classical beauty’.

  But the most revelatory chapters were on careers and the ‘fascinating array of opportunities’ now open to girls. Although it had been published a year before I was born, it was positively progressive compared to the values of the strange world I shared with my mother.

  Audrey had a category of poor creatures she called ‘career girls’ who lived pitiful solitary lives in small rented flats. They ranked below even ‘domestic types’ who slaved all day in a kitchen for dull husbands. The types she applauded were the ‘make-the-most-of-yourself girls’ and the ‘tryers’; at the top of the tree were ‘show girls’ who tended to be statuesque with long legs, and ‘glamour girls’ who had just got it all right and had diamonds in their ears and great mink coats. The girls in the pages of The Young Eve were nothing like that, and they had dazzling careers as photographers and actresses, artists and adventurers. They may have chanced upon boyfriends along the way, boyfriends who may one day become husbands, but this didn’t require them to give up these jobs so they could spend all day clothes shopping or at the hairdresser. These girls still found time for climbing mountains and riding horses, directing plays or sailing boats to exotic islands … and all this in their spare time from their ‘career’. It suggested you first ‘master the prosaic arts of shorthand and typewriting’, but said that this could lead to writing ‘novels or film scripts’ or even ‘interviewing interesting people and describing dramatic events on the radio or television’ and that working in film could take you ‘to the South Seas or the sewers of Paris’. How much more exciting this sounded as a reason for travel than our own desperate trek to these places.

  The Young Eve’s chapter, ‘Dreaming of Fame’, explained that ‘building castles whose pinnacles touch the stars is a glorious game. It is not entirely a game either, for all the great futures began deep in the dreams of somebody.’ It was permission to grow my own dreams into something real, and it told me how to go about it.

  Suddenly the yawningly empty weekdays were an opportunity rather than a misery to be got through.

  The affectionate voice of the lady narrator described to ‘darling young Eve’ the magic of theatre, and revealed to her the brilliance of Shakespeare; it explained why ‘a room of one’s own’ was the beating heart of a creative life. There were chapters that opened new worlds of longing and would be read over and over again, such as the one about the delights of the countryside and healthy walks … There were so many ideas which were quite new to me but somehow felt like small golden keys that could finally open the doors to the world I really ought to be living in.

  There was an interesting chapter on cordon bleu cooking which I longed to try, but we had no kitchen. First I wanted to eat it. Food at home was the cheap fried food on offer from the Back Flat. Every night I would ask the current housekeeper for the safest option, the chip butty served with a cup of sweet tea.

  My mother was suspicious of food, and when travelling she would always find the simplest and most familiar British dish on the menu, usually chicken and chips, and often would just have the pudding or ice cream. I never saw her eat a vegetable or piece of fruit, although oddly she appeared to glow with health.

  The next time we found ourselves in a fancy restaurant, I enquired if anything was cordon bleu. I then insisted on the waiter’s suggestion, boeuf Stroganoff. She rolled her eyes to make me feel silly, and told me that I wouldn’t like it and it was a waste of money.

  But I clearly remember, all these years and however many thousand meals later, that very first mind-blowing taste of the rich wine sauce, with its Sixties-style dash of brandy and double cream. New worlds opened up to me as I scooped up the plump rice, buttery mushrooms and tender shreds of beef.

  She was wrong, and yet again The Young Eve was right! I had wasted years of hotel dining rooms by avoiding things with fancy names. Suddenly menus became wondrous things that I would pore over, with such gorgeous names as ‘crêpes Suzette’, ‘chicken Kiev’ and ‘poires belle Hélène’. From that day I would enter restaurants with excitement, breathing in the decadent smells in the air, feeling a thrill as the menus were handed to us.

  Once we were back in Southport I became determined to find these amazing dishes for myself. Where in Southport, on a weekday lunchtime, could a runaway schoolgirl go to find this food?

  I must have wandered the streets sniffing. I found one small café, in a back street leading down to the seafront, where I caught the scents of garlic and wine seeping out of an extractor fan, drifting on the sea breeze as I passed. It was a reassuringly simple place with Formica tables and plastic squeezy tomatoes of sauce, but in the glass cabinet, alongside the limp egg sandwiches, was a tray of home-made lasagne, glistening with its oven-baked creamy golden topping, rich meat juices oozing at the edges.

  The Italian owner and his wife watched me with looks of amusement as I ate with gusto. I was hooked and soon I was in there most lunchtimes. My schooldays developed a new pattern: delivered by Mr Moore and his taxi to the school gate, I would wait impatiently through morning prayers and the first couple of meaningless lessons. Then, released by the mid-morning break, I would run out the back gates behind the netball courts and down to the seafront to bide my time till lunch.

  My book propped open against a plastic tomato, I would settle in as the promising vapours from the kitchen intensified and then lunch was ready. I revelled in the ritual of the delicious food and the feeling of comfort.

  Becoming braver, I ventured to Chez Nico, a cosy place with candles in Chianti bottles encased in woven raffia on red gingham tablecloths, and a bar decorated with hanging plastic vegetables. A dish called pilaf with prawns and peppers arrived in front of me, the waiter giving me a long glance as he placed the plate on the table.

  Occasionally, I sat near a solitary local businessman or office worker, and they would ask about the book I happened to be reading at the time. I thought it clever if I could describe the storyline in just a couple of sentences. If anyone ever asked whether my parents were nearby, I was always ready with: ‘I just had a doctor’s appointment, and my mum has just dropped me off while she does some shopping.’ I felt free, out of the wind and rain, and with a feeling that now I could think and plan the rest of my life.

  19

  Crashing into Gateposts

  IT WAS A WARM EVENING in late summer and my mother was going mad with frustration, pacing the landing between her bedroom and the bathroom. She was putting on her lipstick, frowning in the mirror and then wiping it off again. Through the open window was the drone of traffic, as cars full of families headed home from a day at the seaside along the main road. I sat curled up in the chair in her pink, perfumed bedroom, trying to read my book but feeling horribly infected by her restless mood. This atmosphere had been hanging heavily over us for much of the summer. I knew it well, and that it only vanished when the suitcases were open on the bed and we were about to go travelling, or, as she would say, ‘Let’s get out of this bloody town and get this show on the road!’

  But I can’t do it again. I know I can’t survive another pointless trip to the other side of the world and back. I can’t survive weeks in a hotel room with windows that won’t open, waiting for the signal that we are finally moving on because the mission has once again failed.

  The house seemed less and less like a home. These silent musty antique-filled rooms felt like the s
tage set for a play that never happened. Audrey had retreated to her bedroom where she created another, very different world, one that felt like her true self: bright, modern and scented.

  She still loved her car, though, and the thrill of roaring off away from the house, the town, her problems and the depth of her gloom, even when she didn’t have anywhere to go. I knew that some nights, in a panic at the quiet house, she would drive out to the motorway service station after midnight. She had told me, ‘It’s the only place that’s open all night, and, you know, there are people there.’

  That evening she took me out with her, holding open the passenger door impatiently: ‘Come on, Miss Flip, quickety hop.’ Although I was growing up she still talked to me in our special language, a mix of song, baby talk and euphemism.

  The car was still hot from the sunny day and my legs stuck to the pale blue leather upholstery. ‘Can we open the sunshine roof?’ I begged, as sometimes she let me stand on the passenger seat with my head sticking out of the roof while she drove. She even let me drive on the beach sometimes, in big circles going from the sand dunes out to the distant sea. But that time she just shook her head, the air between us thick with warm, salty intent.

  We drove in a rare silence. Usually she sang and always something which was perfect for the moment. This was a game we played, to find the right song for every occasion. Certain things, such as a hazy moon, the mention of Paris, the sight of a fallen rose … these were likely to set off a full-blown medley. But even starting up the car to go to the corner shop would at least warrant a short burst of some long-forgotten music-hall repertoire:

  We’re off, we’re off,

  we’re off in our motorcar.

  There’s sixty bobbies after us

  and we don’t know where we are.

  Some of these songs were a remnant from her time as a little Tapper in a Topper on the stage of the Liverpool Empire; others were from the crooners that she loved and were about solid-gold Cadillacs or cars with weird American names.

  Come away with me, Sally,

  in my merry Oldsmobile,

  down the road of life we’ll fly,

  automobubbling, you and I …

  Now it was the Sixties and she was on a drive to catch up with the times, flicking her hair up at the ends and squeezing into Tricel bell-bottoms in psychedelic colours. The record player by her dressing table no longer played her beloved Nat King Cole, but had been usurped by a transistor, tuned to Radio Caroline. That summer the open windows of Bluebird poured out the Beatles songs she had learnt.

  ‘Baby, you can drive my car … doo, doo, doo …’

  Mr Buttress, our neighbour, said to me, ‘Your mother is very with it!’

  ‘Where are we going?’ I knew that this sudden decisive mood was not just about fish and chips, or popping in to Auntie Ava’s for a coffee.

  ‘Out!’ She didn’t want to tell me, and I could sense that ruthless determination that rose up in her so quickly, and fuelled so much that we did.

  ‘You’ll see,’ she snapped when I pressed her.

  We drove, heading out of town a few miles, past the golf club, and then turned into a wide residential street, tree-lined. She stopped the car, switched off the engine. We sat in silence. I listened to the hot metal ticking quietly, the windows were down, and birdsong drifted in. I stared out at the big detached houses set back among leafy gardens and asked, ‘Why are we here?’

  She shushed me.

  She was staring at the house opposite. Behind a pair of tall wrought-iron gates hung from sandstone posts, a gravel drive arced up to a red-bricked Edwardian villa half hidden behind linden trees. I could see the tail end of a large car parked by the house and a recently used lawn mower beside it.

  Nothing happened. The engine ticked, the birds sang.

  ‘What are we doing?’ I complained, sighing theatrically.

  She frowned. ‘Shh!’ I could hear her thinking, brain clicking away, like a cat figuring out how to strike its prey.

  Suddenly her jaw tightened, she touched her hair and started the engine. We shot forward a few yards, she skidded to a stop, threw the car in reverse and roared backwards, swinging the steering wheel.

  ‘Mummy!’

  I was screaming as the rear of the car bumped up over the pavement and smashed into the stone gatepost with a bang.

  ‘Why did you do that?’ I screeched, furious. ‘You did that on purpose!’

  ‘Not a word!’ She calmly switched off the engine again, checked her lipstick in the mirror, climbed out, walked around the front of the car to open my door, took my arm and pulled me. Then we walked up the driveway, past the parked car and lawn mower, and were standing at the front door, Audrey ringing the bell insistently.

  She gave me a look that told me that she was not to be messed with. The door opened and a man stood there. He was tall, his grey hair receding and his cardigan oddly scruffy.

  He looked stony, as if he didn’t want anyone to ring his doorbell.

  ‘I am so sorry,’ she said sweetly, instantly transforming herself into someone rather fragile. ‘I’ve just had the most terrible accident. I was trying to turn around and I seem to have driven into your gatepost.’

  I couldn’t tell if he was going to be cross or not. He came out and walked to the bottom of the drive. He looked at the gatepost, and the crumpled back of our car.

  ‘I’ll get a pen and paper, and my insurance details,’ he said, and was about to go back into the house, but she was too quick for him.

  ‘Could you possibly get me a glass of water?’ she asked. ‘I’m feeling a little faint.’

  ‘Oh, yes … erm, yes of course.’

  As he turned away to get the water, she struck again.

  ‘I’m so sorry to ask, but is there anywhere I could sit down, just for a moment?’ she said, putting her hand to her throat, and adding a perfectly pitched tremble to her voice.

  He hesitated. I could see that he very much didn’t want to have us in his house, but couldn’t think of an excuse. He held the door open for us to go in.

  The kitchen was large and new, but bare, unused-looking. There was a plate with a half-finished meal on the table. He was eating his dinner when we so rudely, deliberately, interrupted. The table was just set for one, and then it clicked. I suddenly realized why we were there.

  She had done her research and swung the operation into gear with precision. Peter Aspinall was a widower, with a teenage son away at boarding school. His wife had died of cancer soon after their son, Keith, was born and Peter had found it difficult to recover from the loss. He had done well in business, working his way up to become managing director of a small sweet factory that made the bright pink sticks of rock sold down on the seafront with the word ‘Southport’ running through the middle of them. He had expanded the firm’s lines of sweets, won some lucrative export contracts abroad and made some money. None of this was obvious from the rather empty and lifeless house.

  I later discovered that for some years Peter had been unsuccessfully targeted as a potential love interest for the single women of Southport. Married couples would persistently invite him to dinner parties, where he would be introduced to their single lady friend. His golf partners, pushed by their wives into insisting that he join them for golf-club dinner dances, would then give him faintly apologetic looks as he arrived to find an unattached divorcée there to make up a foursome. He eventually stopped going out at all, and became something of a recluse.

  My mother had heard these stories, and realized that the only way to meet him was a more direct ambush. Now that we were sitting awkwardly in his kitchen, on the hard upright chairs with our glasses of water, I was wondering if she was regretting it. Peter seemed so sombre, and not remotely her type. He looked at her unhappily as she prattled on, trying to make any sort of connection.

  ‘Oh, is that from Switzerland, a real cow bell?’ She had alighted on the only decorative object in the room. ‘I’d love to go to Switzerland, the air must be
so clean.’

  He was holding the piece of paper with his insurance details on it, as if expecting us to leave.

  She sipped her water. ‘We’ve travelled a lot, Sally and I, it’s been quite an education for her. Gosh, we’ve had some adventures, haven’t we, poppet?’

  I gave the faintest nod. I wasn’t going to help her out this time.

  Even she could not spin things out any longer, and we were soon back at the front door, having checked that our car was probably all right to be driven to the garage. There was a shaking of hands, phone numbers exchanged, and we all said our goodbyes, agreeing that the gatepost be discussed at a later date.

  Her mood was giving nothing away as we drove off, and I didn’t speak either, feeling that the obvious failure of the expedition was punishment enough for her having behaved so badly. She didn’t seem too despondent and I grudgingly admired the way that she had pulled it off.

  She would often say that ‘all the world loves a tryer’ and it was true for me; I mostly liked to see her trying and would have been sorry to see her give up.

  I was amazed when, a week or so later, she announced that she was going out for dinner with the gatepost man. Soon after that he appeared again, to take her for lunch at a country restaurant near Formby, and they wanted me to come. My mother did much of the talking, but he tried to engage me, asking me questions about school without realizing this was the last topic I’d be interested in.

  ‘What is your favourite subject, Sally? Your geography must be up to scratch with all this travelling you and your mother have done?’

  ‘She’s not too keen on school,’ my mother laughed. ‘She’s been spoilt – too much fun outside school to settle down to a routine.’

  My mother was working harder than I had ever seen her, and I was mystified as to why, when he seemed so quiet and ordinary. I had heard her say ‘any old port in a storm’, but surely this was more like shipwreck on a completely deserted beach. It was hard to believe that after all our long search she was now chasing this poor man who simply happened to live up the road and be alone.