Diamonds at the Lost and Found

by Sarah Aspinall

  ‘Don’t ask, don’t get’ and the ant and his rubber tree went through my head.

  I walked over to where he was sitting in the hotel reception.

  ‘Mr Wisdom. I just wanted to say what a big fan of yours I am, and how much I loved being part of this film.’

  He nodded graciously, and told his assistant to give me one of his signed pictures.

  ‘There is one other thing. I’m holding a charity event for the League of Pity.’ Peter had suggested this wording. ‘And I wondered if you could spare a few minutes of your time on Saturday to be our star guest. My house is only down the road and it would mean so much to us all if you could make a brief appearance.’

  He turned to his PA. ‘How’s Saturday looking?’

  ‘It’s mainly “pick-up shots”,’ she said, ‘but we should get a break.’

  We left it that we would wait and see, but the assistant gave me a big wink and a thumbs-up.

  It was enough to update our publicity material. Jane and I wrote many more announcements saying the date was now this Saturday with a ‘confirmed visit from film star Norman Wisdom, fresh from filming his new comedy.’

  The grand opening was scheduled for 2 p.m. That morning Peter made a platform at the end of the garden for Jane’s Rose Queen throne, which was a chair he covered in ivy. Then, miraculously, a few neighbours and local kids began arriving to help, in response to the leafleting I’d done along the street. A boy from up the road, Andrew Bentley, put up a tent and made a sign saying SIXPENCE FOR A KISS; he planned to sit in there all day selling kisses. One girl and her dad had made a treasure hunt in an old sandbox, another turned up with a fat baby and a sign saying GUESS THE WEIGHT OF THE BABY and Ava wrapped tombola presents beautifully for her table. The garden was beginning to look convincingly like a fete but I heard my mother on the phone inviting Auntie Grace and saying that she was sure no one would come.

  I set up my desk at the front gate with Jane’s League of Pity money box, to charge an entrance fee. Just before two o’clock my mother came out looking worried. She had put lots of soft drinks behind the bar in the party room and set tables and chairs out everywhere. She looked down the empty road anxiously and then at her little gold watch. I wasn’t concerned; it wasn’t two o’clock yet.

  At last, and just as her watch said two, the first people appeared in the distance, walking along the usually quiet road. Then a car drove up and parked, and then another. By two fifteen there was a steady stream of people and cars that built up to a crowd, and my mother had to sit next to me to help with taking money as a long queue formed and the street was lined with vehicles.

  Peter came out and took over as ticket seller, and I said once again what a brilliant idea it was of Mummy’s to do this for charity.

  Then I went out to the back garden where a proper party was now in full swing. The fat baby was being passed along, people were waiting to place flags in the sandpit. There was a rush for Ava’s tombola and she looked so wonderful in her white lace dress and huge white hat that I felt they were queueing up to look at her more closely.

  The only less than successful contribution was Andrew who emerged from the hot tent looking very red in the face and bemused as to why no one was willing to wait for a kiss.

  What made me very happy was that my mother looked like a normal mummy and all the neighbours were being so friendly to her. It was as if it was her party, and people were congratulating her on her lovely home and garden and saying that she must come around for a cup of tea. Perhaps her years of social exclusion were finally over.

  In the middle of it all, Peter appeared with Norman Wisdom and everyone cheered. He stood at the doors of the party room and Peter called, ‘All quiet please!’

  The hubbub stopped and Norman shouted, ‘I declare this garden party open and wish it a great success. And hope you will all come to see our film. Thank you, Southport, for your warm welcome!’

  He was about to leave but my mother rushed up to him and began chatting; suddenly he changed his mind and disappeared with her into a corner of the party room where I saw him mesmerized.

  That evening Peter told me that he’d been ‘very impressed’ and I felt that we had bonded over the whole event. At dinner we began to chat about my interests, and I made an extraordinary discovery. It seemed that Peter and I had a lot in common, and as I talked about reincarnation I realized that he knew a lot about it. We became so animated that my mother began to laugh and said that we were made for each other as I was Miss Crazy Pants and he was Mr Bananas. Perhaps we were made for each other, as these conversations were the most exciting I had ever had with an adult, and yet this was a man I had at first struggled to talk to. I’d been searching for something and now, amazingly, it seemed that Peter might be the person to supply it.

  The filming was almost finished, and I only managed to speak to Tony Tenser one more time. I thanked him for the wonderful experience and asked his advice about becoming a film producer or director. He said that the important thing was to work hard at school and pass all my exams first.

  In retrospect this may have just been an adult saying what he thought he should say to a young person. After all, he’d made his own way up by working at ABC cinemas before getting himself into the publicity department and having a stream of brilliant ideas, one of the most inspired being to get a waxwork of Brigitte Bardot made, and then hiring someone to steal it, a stunt which got her name and picture into every newspaper in Britain. He became the nearest thing Britain had to a movie mogul, and with little education behind him. But I didn’t know any of this at the time, and his words planted in my mind the seeds of a terrible idea. It hadn’t occurred to me that my brilliant future might be hampered by not having been to school much. Despite having read as widely as many literature graduates, I could barely add up and had no hope of passing any exams.

  Oddly this marked a turning point for me, and despite it coming during a moment of happy success, it filled me with a new anger and sense of rebellion. I’d always tried to help my mother, particularly with her boyfriends, and even now with making a good impression on Peter. She hadn’t been helping me, though. My terrible education was all her fault; the fact that I could not do things like swim or hold a tennis racket was all down to her. I was weird, and I’d had a weird childhood. She was weird and had left me with strangers; she didn’t even deserve Peter, or a normal life.

  These revelations seemed to crash in on me, one after another. If I’d felt like an awkward, odd child it was because she had dominated me so much. She’d let me miss school because it kept me in her power, and I might have found my own way of educating myself, but that would never qualify me to do all these wonderful jobs that The Young Eve talked about. My desire to escape from her now became overwhelming and I was determined to find a way.

  I was more desperate than ever that the wedding should take place.

  It was now clear to me that I had spent years worrying about my mother, and taking care of her, and that the marriage would allow me to be free. But I was beginning to feel more and more sorry for Peter as I got to know him, and I very much wanted to believe that she would make him happy.

  A few weeks before the wedding date Audrey announced that she would have to go into hospital. Something called fibroids had been detected in her womb and so she was to have an operation, a hysterectomy, and would be away from home for several days, but I wasn’t to worry. Auntie Grace would move in to look after me, and Peter would bring me to the hospital to visit. So one evening he picked me up and we drove over to the Southport General Infirmary. After parking the car he turned off the engine. I sensed he wanted to say something, as he sat there shyly.

  I started filling the silence with my chatter about a film I’d just seen. ‘So there’s this big black well sort of thing, and the apemen start behaving more like humans when they are near it. Then there are these astronauts, and one is a computer called Hal that speaks to them like this. “I’m sorry, Dave”…’

 
; He muttered something about it sounding interesting. He turned to face me, his colour coming back as he found his courage, then turned again to stare out of the windscreen.

  ‘About your mother … you see, Sally,’ he steadied himself, ‘I knew that some lucky people had what you might call a “grand passion” and I thought I would be definitely the last man on earth that would ever happen to … until that day when you and your mother walked, or should I say crashed, into my kitchen.’

  He looked at me with a sudden flood of feeling. ‘It’s been quite a shock, to tell you the truth.’

  He waited for a reaction, and I managed to smile and say that this was lovely news.

  Then we went into the hospital. I felt a rush of sympathy for him mingled with foreboding.

  23

  The Wedding

  THE MORNING CAME AT LAST, and my mother appeared in her wedding outfit, a cream suit and a hat with lots of tiny fragile feathers on it, swaying in the breeze. She had lost weight and was now a little thin for the jacket, and her face looked delicate, framed by all the feathers. At the altar I stood behind her and watched her shaking in fear. The hat and feathers trembled in sympathy, revealing her panic to the whole congregation. I heard Auntie Grace mutter to Phil, ‘I’m surprised he isn’t the one quaking in his shoes.’

  My mother and Peter then disappeared off on their honeymoon to Malaysia, where Peter had recently signed a lucrative deal to sell sweets. On their return they showed me photographs of them against white beaches and turquoise sea, and having drinks on wide painted verandahs, and with backdrops of enormous green frondy leaves. In these pictures Peter had a lovely big smile, a smile I hadn’t seen before, which transformed him into a handsome man.

  My mother seemed delighted that she could now go with him on something called business trips, where she would travel in a rather different style than before. Now she would at last be like the lady we had met on the cruise ship, the wife with the devoted husband fetching her wrap when she felt cool, taking care of her. I remembered her appearing in front of Auntie Grace in that glittering swimsuit with all the feathers coming out of her bottom, and I wondered, does she even know how to be this other person? And will she be able to love Peter?

  Mum and Peter on their honeymoon.

  Peter didn’t appear to expect very much at first, but he did hope for some kind of home life. It wasn’t clear whether he had known quite how completely unable my mother was to do anything of a domestic nature. I had a vague memory of her trying once to boil me an egg, but otherwise I’d never seen her cook anything.

  One evening, soon after they’d returned, I came home to find her almost in tears. She was trying to mop the floor with tea towels, and it was an ice rink. She had put a large chicken in to roast with nothing underneath it, and the fat had seeped out of the bottom of the oven and spread in a film across the lino.

  She said crossly, ‘The butcher said I could just stick it straight in the oven as it was, and now look what’s happened.’

  I helped her transfer it into a suitable oven tray and clean up, but she was determined that it was because she ‘wasn’t the domestic type’ and nothing could change. She frowned when I read to her from The Young Eve: ‘Once upon a time people thought it charming for a girl to pretend she was helpless and couldn’t hold a pan … now, from duchesses to dustmen, the idea is the same – cooking matters!’

  ‘Oh, you and your Girls’ Guide, it will turn you into a bore if you don’t look out!’ she said irritably.

  It hardly mattered, as I was beginning to see that Peter was still so devoted to her he would have lived on chip butties for ever and there was no reason to worry. Perhaps she had got away with it, and he would just accept everything about her. It would be unfair, though, to depict him as simply under her spell. Peter managed to be totally moral and also the least judgemental man imaginable. He was that rare thing: a completely kind person.

  Peter now said enthusiastically that he would do the cooking, as he had always cooked for himself anyway. His repertoire was simple; he would grill a lamb chop or fillet steak and serve it with frozen chips and peas or sweetcorn. There were also, for the first time now in the late Sixties, ready meals and deep-freeze delights that he would try out. Findus Crispy Pancakes oozed interesting fillings to mop up with your chips. Vesta Chow Mein was a miracle in a packet which included what appeared to be flat strips of white plastic that, when dropped in hot oil, puffed up into crunchy yellow noodles. Smash created mashed potato by just adding water to a powder. There was something fascinating about these futuristic instant dishes that my mother loved: more like food that you would eat in a space capsule and nothing to do with drudgery and dull housewives. In the TV advert for Smash there were goofy-looking aliens tittering at the silly Earthlings who were actually peeling potatoes, and my mother had more in common with these little green men than with the women who she disdainfully called ‘the domestic type’.

  Keith was back at boarding school, but he came home in the holidays and we had a strange attempt at family life. I was surprised to see how much Peter now smiled. He had a nice, kind face, and could look what my mother called ‘distinguished’. He was tall, and Audrey said he looked like Steed in The Avengers and bought him a bowler hat, which he obediently wore to go to work. I realized that he would have worn a pink bonnet if she had asked him to.

  Life with Peter was like watching someone shed something, an outer chrysalis of stiff, stoical unhappiness. Inside was this entirely different man who could do a perfect impersonation of Sean Connery as James Bond, who could laugh till tears appeared in his eyes, and join in with the chorus of ‘Lovely Weather for Ducks’ while my mother did one of her dance routines across the kitchen floor.

  Peter, 1969.

  Keith later told me that the most surprising moment of his whole life was coming back from school and going into the living room that first summer to find his father with my mother sitting on his knee. She was gently flicking his ear, kissing it and singing, ‘Little Peter Rabbit had a fly upon his ear, so he flipped it and he flopped it and the fly flew away,’ while Peter giggled. In short, we both realized that they were happy and transformed by that happiness.

  Suddenly everything had changed. My mother would wait for the sound of his key in the door. He had, rather shyly, suggested that I might call him Daddy, and he would walk in and shout, ‘It’s the Daddy man!’ She would run over to wrap her arms around him, and they would reach out to me and I’d join them – only to find in myself an unexpected reluctance. It seemed that, almost overnight, I’d changed too.

  There was a terrible irony, of course, in that for so many years I had longed for normal childhood and now, just as it finally arrived – the family I had so wished for, the house I’d always imagined – I found that all I wanted was to get away.

  ONE OF MY GREATEST PROBLEMS at that age was what to do during school hours. Despite Tony Tenser’s terrible warning I still couldn’t bear to sit in classes where I was so behind. My mother would announce the day with a song, and I’d roll out of bed to strains of ‘Be My Little Baby Bumblebee’, with Audrey buzzing around, and even pulling back the covers to buzz in my ear.

  ‘Oh shhh …’ I’d say grumpily.

  Peter had pointed out that Mr Moore’s taxi was hardly necessary when there was a bus stop near the house, so I would now pull on the hideous maroon school blazer, and set off in the right direction, rolling up the waistband of my skirt as I walked. In my pencil case was the make-up I would thickly apply as soon as I’d made my dash for freedom. Then I would either shirk school altogether or I’d arrive and go into assembly, sing hymns, then shuffle into the classroom, daydream till break, and then find my legs carrying me out of the school and down the road into town. If the school called my mother she would say I had tummy ache and had come home.

  ‘It’s my fault,’ she would declare, ‘life’s been too exciting for you. Just don’t tell Daddy,’ and she would sing:

  ‘How ya gonna keep her
locked up in school, after she’s seen Paree?’

  She was more than disinterested in education; she actually resented it. She still believed that it might impede a girl’s chance of catching a man, or the right sort of man.

  Despite the tacit permission, the process of truancy always felt creepily trancelike, especially as I now feared it might have ruined my life, and having got away from the school I was always plagued by the same uncertainty about what I could possibly do with my days.

  In summer there was the distraction of the sea-front and Pleasureland. I’d always loved the gaudy grubby madness of the fairground, but now I’d noticed a new attraction – the bikers who worked there. They were a dreamily rough bunch and I loved to watch how, if there were pretty girls aboard, they would send the Waltzer into a frenzied spin, the cars whirling with shrieks of fear, all whizzed up with the train-track rattle and blaring overloaded speakers with their cacophony of the latest pop hits.

  I’d once had a moment of wild success when I’d got talking to one of the bikers, Jeff. He was big and surly, so it was fun to try to get him to smile and show a glint of his gold tooth. I loved to imagine us setting off together on a road trip across America on his motorbike, the wind in my hair as we rode through Monument Valley.

  There was an indoor Fun House at the fair that was a great pick-up place for teenagers, like a giant playground for adults, with dark cubicles where you could go in to see Lady Godiva or Peeping Tom. Jeff at last caught my look, and followed me into one of the cubicles and pushed a fat tongue into my mouth and moved it around. He then fondled my padded bra, before working out that I didn’t have breasts and pulling away nervously. He peered at me in the darkness, realizing that under my thick make-up I was no more than a kid. But it didn’t matter that he’d recoiled; I was still triumphant.

  On a weekday, however, or in wet weather, all my usual hang-outs were closed and depressing. The sea was receding year by year and the beach was now a mudflat stretching wetly to a distant grey ocean. Southport, the wonderland of my childhood, was slowly disappearing and in its place was a dull seaside town that even the sea had abandoned.