There were teachers at her school who had been encouraging her acting, saying she should now try for RADA. Others suggested that, as she was good at art, she should go to art college. But most said she must try Oxbridge entrance, for the honour of the school. Where had they come from, all these talents? Nobody in her background had ever been remotely academic or artistic.
So what was she doing with me? That was what our Carlisle friends thought. It won’t last, you’ll see. They are too unalike. Which is what I believed as well.
She sat the open scholarship exams for both Cambridge and Oxford. At Cambridge, she found she was on the same exams and interview round as another girl of her age, also called Margaret, Margaret Drabble, who was at some Quaker boarding school in York. In between waiting for interviews, Margaret Drabble took her to a Friends Meeting House.
Both Margarets got awards at Somerville, Oxford – and their names appeared in the same list in the Manchester Guardian on 21 December 1956, one after the other, in alphabetical order: ‘M. Drabble, Mount School, York, English. M. Forster, Carlisle and County High School for Girls, History.’ They also both got awards at Cambridge, and M. Drabble chose the Cambridge one, so they never met again, not till many years later.
At the high school in Carlisle, Margaret’s name went up on the honours board in the school hall. Not many girls at the high school had won such an award before.
To celebrate, her father, to everyone’s surprise, pulled out his wallet and gave her a ten-bob note. I suggested we should spend it by going out into the country for a slap-up meal at a posh place called Fantails in Wetheral. It was raining when I picked her up, so I had the cheek to ask Arthur, as I was now calling him instead of Mr Forster, though he never quite approved, if I could borrow his umbrella. Then off we went on the bus, me in my best charcoal grey suit and Margaret in her best frock.
I studied the menu, realised it was more expensive than I had imagined, so steered Margaret towards the cheapest item, an omelette, which I hate. Even so, the bill came to more than I had on me, including Arthur’s ten bob. I let Margaret go outside and went to settle up, trying to explain to the pompous owner that really, I had money at home, but, so sorry, just not quite enough on me at this moment. He was very unfriendly and suspicious and I feared I might have to do the washing-up. He took all the money I had and made me give a written agreement that I would return first thing in the morning and give him the two shillings still owing, the bastard.
I then joined Margaret on the step outside the restaurant where it was still raining. I opened up Arthur’s umbrella, gave it a few twirls to look nonchalant. I realised I was being watched by two local farm lads clearly thinking, who is that twat with the brolly? The handle suddenly came off and Arthur’s brolly collapsed, falling down the steps.
We had to walk home, as I had no money left for the bus. Next morning I came out on my bike to pay the rotten sod his two bob. When I’m rich, I told myself, I’ll buy Fantails and sack him. Bastard.
While I was back at Durham, Margaret went off for six months to France as an au pair. Oxford had remarked on her lousy French – which was as bad as mine, though her accent was much better – and suggested that while she waited to come up to Oxford she did something to improve it. So she got a job as an au pair in Bordeaux. We wrote to each other all the time, but already it seemed she was moving away, having new experiences I did not share. But once she was back, and I was home in Carlisle for the Christmas vacation, we continued to be inseparable.
All the same, we were beginning to have lots of heated, silly, petty but furious rows. They were often to do with me being late, or getting the arrangements mucked up, or both. We usually met up at Burton’s corner when we were going out, then set off on a long walk. I would arrive late, panting, saying I thought we had agreed to meet at the City Picture House, which of course was not true. My idea of being prompt, such as when catching a train, is to jump on it when it is leaving the platform. Margaret’s idea of prompt is being there half an hour early.
We used to argue about who said what, who had agreed this, then we argued about who had started it all, going back over the conversation till we were shouting at each other, with one walking off in a huff. Luckily, by the time we had parted for the evening, we had made up, or at least were walking together again, if in silence.
I was slow at understanding things she had said, or explained, partly because I never listened properly, or so she maintained. More likely I am just slow on the uptake. I like to get things straight, to interrupt and ask questions, which annoyed her when she had made it perfectly clear. I maintained she was too quick for her own good, that she was saying she understood something when she couldn’t possibly. She was almost always right, able to know or predict what was coming, before I or anyone else had finished what they were saying.
Sometimes, of course, she got it wrong, but then she would quickly lie, turn it round, make it my fault not hers. Her lying was amazing, making things up on the spot, giving plausible explanations and answers. If she got caught out in the fib, she would laugh and say, ‘So what, I lied – surely you realised?’
Her reactions were often unexpected. I could never predict what she would say or think or feel. I suppose it was the reason she had done so well at the Oxbridge interviews – being fluent, quick, quirky, decisive in her responses.
She did not think it was much of a skill, more of a trick, to be able to take an unusual position or thought and defend it, a verbal game she knew Oxford dons loved. How did she learn all this? Where did it come from? Her father Arthur, I suppose. He was a contrary bugger, went his own way, could not be flattered or impressed; but he lacked the gift of the gab or the mental dexterity of Margaret. She did not consider herself brainy, not in the intellectual sense, just good at understanding and quick at being decisive. I learned that many girls in her school were quite scared of her, probably some of the teachers as well. She could be too direct, too outspoken.
I did sulk now and again, get hurt if she called me stupid, or if she refused to discuss a topic any more, saying she was bored, we had discussed it enough. It was exhausting, but somehow exciting and stimulating. The only time I ever got really upset was when she said, ‘This is not going to work. I will just make you miserable; you’d better leave me now.’
‘Don’t be stupid,’ I would say. ‘You are just saying it so I can say, “Don’t be stupid, it will work.”’ And she would reply, ‘No, it won’t, I won’t make you happy. Anyway, I am never getting married and I never want to have children, so off you go now, go on.’
I wanted to cry when she said this, but pretended to laugh, be amused by her adolescent posturing. I was never sure if she was testing me, or herself; I wondered if she really was a pessimist at heart, about the world in general, about people and emotions, about us, or just saying it. It was not at all like me, being a cheerful little soul, thinking good things will happen, it will all work out, don’t worry. She did seem to worry a lot, which she denied, saying she was merely a realist. By imagining the worst, so she said, it made it easier to cope when something did happen.
We seemed to be opposites, in so many ways. Like poles repel, unlike poles attract. That might be true in electromagnetism, so I learned at school, but was it the same for people? I think on the whole it does apply. There is an attraction in opposites.
Despite being optimistic about most things, I was also at the same time restless, impatient to get on to the next thing, having new ideas, living ahead in my head, wanting things to happen, now, I can’t wait. She was more accepting, realistic, clear-headed. She would sigh and groan at my optimism – but I sensed she liked me being that way. And we would have a hug.
On most of our long walks, I was hardly aware of where we were, in a dream, still talking all the time. Often we were lost, deliberately going ways and routes we didn’t know, then having to find our way back. She would never ask anyone directions, and stopped me doing so. It was as if she considered it a weakness, havi
ng to depend on others. I like asking, listening, even if I then ignore their directions or advice.
We were once miles away up the River Eden, heading towards Rockcliffe and the Solway marshes, arguing about something or other, with me getting sulky and moody. We found we were walking down a country lane behind two boys aged about ten, one very tall, who reminded me of Reg, and one small, i.e. like me. They were not aware we were behind, but as we caught up with them, it was clear they had been having words and one was sulking, just like me. ‘Oh well, if that’s your attitude, Keith,’ said the smaller one, furiously, storming off, leaving the other behind.
It made us smile; our own little tiff was forgotten. It then went into our lexicon, our own private glossary of banal words and phrases, which had a meaning and memory only for us. ‘If that’s your attitude, Keith,’ one of us would say to the other at fraught moments.
Then we would smile. And hold hands. Ahhhhh . . .
19
HOLD THE FRONT PAGE
I was twenty-one on 7 January 1957. I remember it well, for I was there, but also the cost – did I moan about the cost. Can’t of course remember now exactly what it did cost, but I recall regretting that I had decided to pay for everything and be Big Mick. That was one of my mother’s expressions, when someone foolishly shows off in some way, usually by being unnecessarily generous.
I could not expect my parents to pay for my twenty-first, which seems to be normal today, or feed my friends at home. A pound of mince and a bag of tatties can only go so far. I worked extra hours and long shifts for the Post Office over the Christmas hols in order to pay for a slap-up do, whatever sort of do I might decide to splash out on.
The revolution in food has been one of the biggest changes in my lifetime in what we now call Cumbria. (In 1974, Cumberland and Westmorland, plus a bit of Lancs and a bit of Yorks, became the new super-county of Cumbria.) In fact, in the nation as a whole, the transformation in eating – at home and in restaurants – has been dramatic, across all classes, all regions.
I never ate out as a child, never visited hotels or restaurants till I went to Durham, but then nobody I knew did – the main reason being that there was nowhere to go. I am straining hard to remember the names of any restaurants in Carlisle in the fifties, apart from Fantails, which was out in the country at Wetheral. In the city, there were chip shops, like Brucianas, where you queued in a side alley and bought chips, mushy peas, pies. And there were some dusty, old-fashioned teashops, where ladies in from the country went after they had done their shopping and sat in the window with pots of tea and had scones and cakes. All such teashops and cafés closed at five o’clock, as did all the shops. At five o’clock each day, they signed a suicide pact, gave up the ghost, died a sudden death. The centre of Carlisle then became a morgue, till morning.
The only place you could go and eat after six o’clock was one of the hotels. Even the crummiest commercial hotel had a dining room. The best hotels, like the Crown and Mitre, County and Central, had nicer dining rooms, with oak-panelled walls, but the food was very much the same in all of them.
Waiters in those days, in so-called smart provincial hotels, wore soup-stained dinner jackets, dribbled at the mouth, staggered about and, if you arrived at one minute to two for lunch, they wouldn’t let you in. As for the food, well that was mainly soup, tired watery cod and vegetables boiled until they screamed for mercy before being dumped on the table in silver dishes, their original features obliterated.
With the choice of venue for a slap-up do so limited, somewhere I could mark this auspicious, coming-of-age occasion, I decided to book my twenty-first dinner at the County Hotel. This was on the viaduct. Not quite as posh as the Crown and Mitre but still intimidating. I invited Margaret, my best friend Reg and his girlfriend Pat, Mike Thornhill and Margaret Crosthwaite. I paid for everything, gritting my teeth. I then went mad and told my second-best friends, the ones I could not afford to invite to dinner, that I would buy them a drink beforehand at the Friars pub, which was where the loucher grammar school masters and upper sixth-formers used to go. Anything you like, I announced to them, it’s on me this first round. All but one chose a half of bitter. His name, which I am not going to mention as it still rankles, asked for a whisky. The bloody cheek. He knew how I’d had to scrimp and save my money all over the Christmas holidays, yet he went and ordered the most expensive drink. I never spoke to him again.
The meal, of course, was appalling, horrible soup, then chicken, followed by ice cream, a set meal, which was the cheapest available. I was in a sulk all evening. Margaret was furious with me.
Oh, if only I had become twenty-one just ten years later. It was in the 1960s that things began to look up, food-wise. Chinese and Italian restaurants began to arrive in Carlisle and, out in the countryside, gourmet dining started at Sharrow Bay on Ullswater. It was first opened in 1948 by Francis Coulson, arriving from Euston with saucepans on his back, later joined by his partner Brian Sack, but it was in the sixties that it became nationally famous. Miller Howe on Windermere came a bit later, in 1971, but together these two wonderful hotels with their marvellous food attracted the local and then the national quality for the next few decades, spawning many imitations. Eating out in Cumbria had become fun.
Now, it often seems as if the national passion has become not just for eating food but looking at it – photographing it, doing books about it, advertising it, watching it on TV. The technical magic of TV has turned food and cookery into a form of soft porn. Not that I have ever watched a food programme. Or read the books. I grind my teeth in jealousy when I see cookery books dominating the bestseller lists. Restaurant critics and chefs becoming celebrities – how on earth did that happen? Why do we not have celeb plumbers or electricians?
Even if there had been a wider choice in 1957, with better food, more and varied types of restaurants, I would probably still have gone for the cheapest option. But it would have been a lot better.
Any road up, I did it. I managed to turn my coming of age into a modest occasion, for Carlisle, for someone turning twenty-one from the St Ann’s estate in 1957. I treated my friends, splashed out, tried to be generous. And sulked privately at the cost. Perhaps not so privately. It did seem to amuse them, my silent resentment.
Back at Durham, in the spring term of 1957, I was made editor of Palatinate. I had moved on to be features editor, writing even more columns and pieces, and at last got promoted to glory. Rapture. I don’t honestly think I have ever enjoyed any sort of job or position quite as much.
The thing about a student newspaper, amateur and chaotic though it may be, is that you have no real worries about circulation and advertising, no suits or lawyers hovering over you, no readers complaining or rivals bettering you, yet it is still real, a proper newspaper, only in miniature. You also don’t get pigeonholed, the people who work on it get to do everything, write for all sections, do the headlines, sub copy, report sport, write leaders, compose jokes, compile readers’ letters, lay out the pages, write posters, then go out in the street or to colleges and sell copies on publication day.
It was in those days steam printing and archaic production methods dating back to Caxton, with acres of galleys coming back from the printers which had to be read and corrected, then taken back to Bailes. The galleys were cut up and stuck on blank pages, headlines written in, hoping they would fit. You had to learn the basics of typography, type styles and sizes, all in a new language. Photographs were turned in blocks – lumps of solid metal. We could only afford two or three blocks per issue, so I devised a system of having certain blocks cut in half. If, say, there was a new president of the Union, I would have his photo made into a block, then cut it in two, right down his face. In the caption I would say, ‘Sorry, girls, you will have to wait for the next issue to see all of him.’ How we giggled, laying out the pages.
As editor, I found myself writing more and more, naturally putting in my own stuff, but using pseudonyms. I wrote a column called ‘Crumbs’, which w
as a gossip column, stories and jokes about people at the university, students and dons, sometimes too clever by half. Not all readers understood who or what it was about. Which saved us from being sued.
I saw myself mainly as a comic writer, that was the bit I enjoyed most. I loved the post-war American humorists, James Thurber and Robert Benchley, discovering them rather late, as Benchley was long dead and Thurber was by then pretty old. I used to read their short stories, working out how they did it, how they laid jokes and situations, so I could anticipate the payoff they were working up to. I admired their word play, turning clichés round unexpectedly. I never liked P. G. Wodehouse, I thought he was whimsical, but mostly I think I disliked the people who liked Wodehouse, considering them affected.
I could do serious stuff as well, if need be. I got into trouble with the authorities for running a front-page story about King’s College, Newcastle being separated from Durham to become a university on its own. They officially denied it, but I still ran it, and of course it came true. I also ran a story about Durham itself having a new college, which might be called Cromwell. That led to lots of controversy, people objecting to a college being named after such a baddie.
I got a letter from someone called Anthony Sampson on the Observer, who was writing the ‘Pendennis’ column. He asked me to ring him, reverse charges, as he wanted to write about the Cromwell story. I had not realised outsiders would be at all interested in our purely local content. Then I was told by Michael Bateman, my friend on the local rag, that there was money in it, national papers would pay just for a tip-off, even posh papers. The Observer would have paid, so they said, but they never actually ran the story.
The Co-Op's Got Bananas Page 21
