by Tim Parks
We rented a flat in North Finchley and got down to business with the rat race. House prices were spiralling and we would have to spiral after them. Shirley quickly found a place teaching infants at a private school for girls, St Elizabeth’s, a temporary arrangement as what she was really suited for was something in publishing or advertising maybe. But we both felt that this was a moment to swallow pride and get some experience behind us. We didn’t want to live off her parents. Meanwhile I got a foothold on the bottom rung at InterAct Management Systems and proceeded to become an expert (perhaps I should say one of ‘the’ experts) in network planning. Within a couple of years I was turning out software they’d never dreamt of till I arrived.
There was Johnson, an electronics man retired young from the airforce having lost an arm; pompous, mannered, always a fresh handkerchief in his pocket and so on, but very sharp. He’d had the idea. Then there was a dithery, worried type, Will Peacock, a great adjuster of trouser belts and twister of ties. He was putting up the money he’d inherited, and at the time I arrived still losing it. To look at him, death pale, stooped and fiftyish at thirty-five, you’d have thought he’d been bleeding for weeks on end. He needed a transfusion. But these were the halcyon days of software design and really you couldn’t go wrong (to my credit actually that I sensed this at once).
I remember the interview as one of the turning points of my life, one of those rare moments of real self discovery. These two dull three-piece men began to explain that they’d just won their first large contract, a network planning system for oil rig construction in the North Sea. The idea (it seems very old hat now) was that the constructors should feed into the computer all the information relative to task sequences and durations, specifications and quantities of material and labour required, estimated idle time, possibility or otherwise of simultaneous operation, etc. etc. and InterAct’s custom-written network program would then schedule all their work for them, time their orders, give advance warning of when they would need to draw on specialised labour, programme their payments, spot liquidity problems way ahead, and so on. Any unforeseen hitch or delay (flash welders not available for three days, interest rates up half a per cent) and the project manager need only tap in the details on a portable keyboard to have complete rescheduling and costing of absolutely everything.
It caught my imagination, I suppose because of the wonderful vision of life it implied (I still love network planning). All the complexities of people working together, people with different skills and temperaments, from different races and social classes, all the complications of fashioning and fitting together a vast range of heterogeneous and often obstinate materials, the hazards of shifting massive structures tens of miles across lashing seas and anchoring them to the sludge or rock of the sea bed – all this was to be controlled by one man tapping rapidly on a portable keyboard. And any snag, obstacle, inconvenience, rather than being allowed to send the whole house of cards tumbling to the ground, would simply be absorbed, analysed, and then the entire structure very finely altered, re-tuned, counterbalanced, and set on its way again, all embarrassments and dilemmas foreseen and neutralised, all interpersonal relations and moral issues rendered superfluous, nothing left to chance. It seemed a worthy cause to me and obviously profitable.
I told them I was their man. I really was. I’d study night and day to get into it. I’d be an expert on network planning before the year was out (and it was already September). They could pay me the absolute minimum salary for the first six months and then we could negotiate something reasonable on the basis of my performance, but I really wanted this job. I gave full reign to my enthusiasm, and you’ve got to remember these were still the bad old days pre-Thatcher when enthusiasm, at least for work, was taboo. But instinctively, and the feeling was overwhelming, I knew I was doing the right thing. It’s something I’ve noticed so often since then, that when I’m outside the exhausting claustrophobia of family and intimate relationships, my personality flowers, I get so damn confident. I knew I didn’t have quite the qualifications they wanted, I knew less than zero about network planning, so rather than bluffing it I simply offered to come in at a low price and work my bum off. I was dealing with a couple of canny older guys who needed a bargain and, as I suspected, would know one when they saw it. ‘Look, don’t even bother interviewing anybody else,’ I said with a sniff of humour so as not to sound unpleasant. ‘Take me. Please. I can guarantee it won’t be a mistake.’
In the end they picked up my soul for just £3500 a year. But I was sure I was the winner.
Perfectly Normal Behaviour
In those days InterAct had its offices on the North Circ, just past the Pantiles Pub, on the right heading south. So coming out of the interview victorious and immensely pleased with myself, I took a bus down to Park Royal to tell Mum. She was praying with a young girl who had leukaemia. I got this info from Mavis who was watching the kind of television they will put on in the no-man’s-land between breakfast and lunch. A diagram was showing how nuclear waste is sealed in canisters, a matter of burning concern for Mavis, who, one felt, could only have improved with a little radiation.
I waited for Mum, mooching about the poky old sitting room, savouring a feeling of detachment and maturity, examining here and there the pathetic objects that had inhabited my childhood, the Wedgewood, the quaintsy Hummels.
Finally Mother came downstairs with her dying girl. She was a stunningly pretty little thing, in her mid teens I imagine, a perfect, frail, pressed lily of a face, though with a silk scarf tight about her head; to hide hair loss I quickly supposed. I smiled sympathetically, but having embraced my mother the girl hurried out without sparing a glance for the rest of us. It’s something I’ve noticed frequently about the walking wounded. They don’t really want to be seen by the rest of us at the Crawley household. They’re embarrassed they’ve had to go looking for unorthodox help like this. All the stronger Mother’s pull must be to get them past the ogre of Grandfather at the door.
Hardly noticing me, Mother flopped onto the sofa and rubbed her fingers in her eyes. She seemed exhausted. I announced that after a brilliant interview I’d got a really promising job. She took her fingers from her eyes, focused on me and beamed. ‘Oh how wonderful, George. You must tell me all about it.’
‘Let’s go out to lunch,’ I said, ‘Just us two. Celebrate.’
‘Oh, I couldn’t do that, Dad and Mavis . . .’
‘Oh come on, you can leave Grandad and Mavis for once.’
She stood up smiling, smoothed down her dress, little girlish, looked around her, saw the other two imprisoned in their perennial sloth, television, newspaper, never a useful item in their hands, never an interesting comment to make, doing nothing but sapping away at her marvellous energy. She looked at them. They didn’t offer. They didn’t say, ‘Go ahead, Jenny dear.’ She hesitated, then said: ‘Oh well, perhaps I could fix them a couple of pork pies and a little egg salad. I think there are some salady things in the fridge. Hang on.’
I went into the kitchen and watched her working rapidly with plates, tomatoes, lettuce, boiled eggs. I noticed that there was something very different between the way she did these things and the way Shirley did them. Difficult to pin it down though. Unless it was simply that Mother lacked Shirley’s style, the way she has of turning a plate into a picture. Mother tended to fumble. There were cuts on her fingers. A tomato came out not in slices but rough fruity chunks. She wiped her hands on a torn dishtowel (showing Beefeaters) and we set out.
Perhaps this lunch was the happiest moment I ever had with my mother. We ate in a Greek place on Acton High Street near the railway bridge. Not ideal but what do you want in Acton in the late seventies. She was pleased as a child to be treated, perhaps more pleased, since children always think everything is due to them. She said: ‘I’m so very glad you’ve got what you wanted, George. It’s so important not to be frustrated and cooped up in life.’ ‘Kind of business that’s going to go like a bomb,’ I said, ‘with the
way labour costs are shaping up right at the moment. People just have to be efficient.’ She said: ‘Oh, this is lovely,’ and she beamed.
Coming back from paying, though, I caught her frowning. ‘Don’t worry, it wasn’t that expensive,’ I laughed. ‘I’ve got the money,’ for it would have been like her to have spoilt things fretting about how much cash I had. But she said she was thinking of that pretty young girl with leukaemia who was almost certainly going to die.
Then leaving the restaurant an odd thing happened. I opened the door for her and she stepped out directly and really rather carelessly into the path of an older, patently working-class man dashing for the bus with three or four Co-op carrier bags swinging wildly from his hands; one of the bags slammed into her leg and, half turning, the man stumbled and almost fell. ‘Fuckin’ idiot!’ he screamed, scrambling on for the bus. ‘Fuckin’ idiot your-fuckin’-self,’ I roared after him. ‘Why don’t you watch where you’re fuckin’-well going?’
No sooner were these words out than I realised what a huge milestone this was. I had never sworn in front of my mother before.
Collecting herself, she said: ‘There wasn’t any need for that, George.’ And after a few moments walking, she said quietly: ‘I hope you don’t use that language often. It’s so horrible.’ But the time had come; I said firmly: ‘Mum, you live in a different world, okay? A different world, another planet. The planet Goodness. And maybe that’s fine for you. But I live here and now. Okay? Everybody says that stuff, you know, everybody, it’s even tame.’ She said: ‘Perhaps they do, I just hoped you wouldn’t.’ As of old, she had her grating, meek-shall-inherit-the-earth tone. But I had absolutely no intention of excusing myself as I might have done five years ago. The terms of our relationship had changed. I offered the treats. Very soon I would be offering the financial protection too. And she couldn’t expect to criticise me about my language or any other perfectly normal behaviour.
Contemporary Civilisation
Those good years. I see myself bolting down my muesli, buttering my toast, showing variously-coloured season tickets to variously-coloured conductors, the 260, the 12, learning to leave the carcinogenic dregs at the bottom of tuppenny coffees at the office, staring and staring at the green Hew-Pack screen, exploring strings, sprites, double trip codes (my own invention), glancing up at the frenzied chase of polished metal on the North Circ, brushing lunchtime sandwich crumbs from the keyboard, studying on the bus on the way home (never a headache then), catching the nine o’clock news and the business programmes, studying and calculating away on my little IBM till midnight and gone, while Shirley maybe did the dishes, prepared lessons, read her art books, phoned friends, picked up the comedies she liked on the box. The neighbours across the hall invited us over for drinks sometimes, but we discouraged it; they were a sweet couple, Mark and Sylvia, both cheerful and very attractive physically, but hopelessly dumb. There was no future in it. You see that more or less immediately with some people. They felt they’d arrived in their two-bedroom Finchley flat, while we were only beginning our way up. No point in doing much more than waving to each other.
More willingly we went to parties, dances, when we got to hear of them. We still loved each other’s company, still shone in groups and enjoyed making a show of our happy relationship. Shirley would come and sit on my lap. We would get involved in friendly little tussles. You could sense people watching, envying. We had that off to a T. Or occasionally she cooked the most beautiful meals from French recipes to surprise dinner guests: Jill and Gregory, now resident in Hornsey, both in commercial insurance; Peggy, pregnant again (I didn’t even bother offering advice this time, you learn to recognise someone’s destiny after a while); and just every now and then Shirley’s younger brother Charles, one of your pink champagne lefties (Cambridge third in Philosophy) of uncertain sexual orientation and extraordinary belligerence; despite Daddy’s huge salary he had somehow wangled himself a council flat off the Goldhawk Road, which he referred to as ‘my pad’ and rarely slept in.
So we had these little treats, the odd evening in company. But mainly our life was just the glorious, as yet unsoured routine: the busy days, bus and office, the Mars bars, lager, Rothmans and Evening Standards, the steeply rising curve of my career, weekend purchases of consumer goods, Shirley’s teaching, parents’ evenings and school plays, on and on, day in day out, but brightly peppered with our always successful lovemaking, the pleasure at gloomy weekends of leafing through brochures to choose Mediterranean holidays we could now easily afford. Surely this was the good life, a triumph really of contemporary civilisation, busy young urban people, working hard, living well, faithful to each other, honest. It seemed that nothing was lacking. In my defence I think I can say that had it been allowed to go on this way, I would have been the last person to want to change anything.
Shortly after they took me up to eight grand, Mavis had a third shot at killing herself, and finally got it right: whole bottle of Disprin in the early hours and then the head in the oven for good measure. I felt a little sorry for my mother who would inevitably see this as another defeat and find cause to blame herself, but at the same time I couldn’t help feeling relieved that at least this weight had been taken off her shoulders.
Inevitably I was called in to deal with the practical side, the funeral arrangements. The difficulty here was to persuade Mother to go for a reasonably priced coffin and skip the rose tree bit at the crem which would have eaten up three months of her pension and would anyway have had to be shared with two other ‘cinderellas’, as Shirley rather quaintly put it. Likewise, when the back door was rotting away, when the fridge was faulty (occasionally defrosting itself all over the lino), when the bathroom window could never be properly shut because the wood had swollen, what on earth was the point of a wreath of pinks for mad Mavis? I did my best.
The surprise at the cremation, though, was that Grandfather cried. He said nothing, but tears streamed from his pulpy old eyes. Sitting next to him I put an arm round his thick back to comfort him and found him trembling with emotion. Foreseeing his own funeral was the only way I could explain it, for it is indeed awesome when the coffin suddenly slides away through black curtains and you know you will see that face (however unloved) never again; doubly awesome I suppose when you expect to be providing the object lesson yourself in the not too distant future.
It rained for the event. Peggy came late, in the last stages of gestation, accompanied by a tall blonde boy who may or may not have been the father. On trying to engage him in conversation he turned out to be Czech and spoke only the most broken English. Bob/Raschid had been informed but didn’t turn up, so that apart from the family there were only two rather mysterious spinster types in plastic macs who we eventually discovered were the other founder members of the Harrow branch of the Elvis Presley Fan Club. We let them take away the deceased’s record collection, rather generously I thought, since you never know how much that kind of stuff might be worth these days. Mavis had had no life insurance so there was no windfall to give the event any cheer, and after desultory conversation over coffee and digestives at Gorst Road everybody took their umbrellas and themselves off home.
In the Scirocco (disc brakes all round, electric windows), Shirley rather unexpectedly said: ‘I do feel sorry for your mother though.’ And over Tandoori chicken later, because we really had to get out of the house to brighten up, she said: ‘I wouldn’t mind you know if she got your Grandfather into a home now and came to live with us. She’s okay.’
‘No room,’ I explained promptly.
‘We won’t be where we are forever.’
I shook my head: ‘He’ll never go into a home. And so long as he’s in Gorst Road she’ll stay with him. Then you’re always saying how impossibly pious she is. Think, you’d have to stop swearing about the house, you’d . . .’
‘It wouldn’t be the greatest of losses,’ she said coolly. ‘One grows out of swearing.’
Could she really be serious? When we had our l
ives so splendidly worked out already. ‘We’d have to cut out the quickies any time we felt like it.’ Had she thought about that?
‘That’s true, but I’ve always preferred the unabridged bedtime version myself.’
I stopped eating and looked at her, her long fine face, big, prominent eyes, the curve of character in her jaw, my good-looking if rather sinewy wife. ‘Come on, come on, Shirley! She’d always be reproaching us for not having children, you know what she’s like. Go forth and multiply, the Christian family, and so on.’
‘She’s never said a word about it to me,’ Shirley said, ‘in fact I’ve always thought her admirably sensitive on that point. My own mother’s much worse.’
‘But you can see the reproach in her eyes, for God’s sake. She doesn’t need to say anything. That’s the whole point about my mother; she is a reproach in herself.’
Shirley smiled. ‘Hasn’t it ever occurred to you, that the hang-up might be yours rather than hers, I mean, you imagine her reproaching you for things you feel guilty of anyway. You’ve substituted her for your conscience, it helps you to ignore it. You think, it’s her fault I’m feeling guilty, it’s just my stupid mum.’
‘Three cheers for psychoanalysis,’ I said brightly, filling my mouth with some fierce sauce or other. ‘Want to know what I dreamt last night?’
But Shirley said: ‘Anyway, I’d really rather like to have a kid now actually. Why not? In fact that’s partly what I was meaning to talk about. We could find a bigger place, have a baby and your mum could look after it while we were at work.’
Errors of Judgement
On reflection, one of the many errors of judgement I made with Shirley was mistaking class for intelligence, class and perhaps academic ability. They had seemed such rock-solid guarantees of personality at the time. I should have reflected: a) that any society, in its struggle to maintain the status quo, has a natural tendency to associate the manners of its ruling class with an above-average mental capacity, and; b) that girls often tend to be great and successful swots during their school years, get eight As at ‘O’ Level, or whatever the new equivalent is, but that this is no indication of true intelligence, which, on the contrary, only emerges through long-term behaviour patterns and real-life choices. I should also perhaps have reflected on the lightness, even flightness with which Shirley adopts and then drops and then perhaps readopts all sorts of opinions and points of view. One week she is pro-Israeli, the next pro-Arab, depending on who has committed the most recent atrocity; one week she will stop taking sugar because it’s bad for her skin and the next she’ll start taking it again because she needs to put on weight, she needs more energy. In short, Shirley is a person who neither has nor holds any truly deep-seated opinions, is capable of following no one particular policy. So that I should have seen that her sensible line on children (that they were too risky a business and that people who wanted good careers couldn’t afford the time a baby required and deserved – opinions that more or less reflected my own) might turn out to be short-lived. Yes, I should have seen it and been ready for it. Except that we were only eighteen when we met and I was in love with her.
