In My Wildest Dreams

by Leslie Thomas

  Difficulties then began. She grumbled that we had to go and sit up in the highest gods, clumping and complaining up the endless stairs. When Cedric had taken her, she moaned, they had sat in the front stalls, just behind the conductor.

  'You don't hear the music properly down there,' I argued with inspiration. We sat down. It was like peering into the mouth of a volcano. 'Up here the music floats to you.'

  She kept muttering through the first half of the concert and then horrified me in the interval by announcing that she really would like a drink. Dumbstruck I mentally counted the money in my pocket. 'Please, dear,' she said archly. A gin and ton.'

  A gin and ton! Christ, how much was a gin and ton? Trembling, I went towards the bar. 'And might we have a programme,' she called after me. 'We ought to have bought the programme before surely.'

  Sod the programme, I thought. But there was no escaping the gin and ton. I approached the bar. I had never bought a drink in my life. 'Gin and ton, please,' I mumbled.

  The lady had a suspicious eye and I had a sudden hope that she would refuse to serve me. It would, on the other hand, be a humiliation to have to admit that I had been turned away as being under-age. But that gin and tonic would mean that I would not have enough to buy her a ticket on the train home. I gritted my teeth while the bar lady hesitated.

  She made up her mind and said: 'All right then. How many? Two?'

  'One!' I bellowed. She fell back shocked. 'One, please, just one,' I whispered.

  It left me with only enough money for the bus fare to Waterloo and my own return ticket. I would have to give her that. Jesus Christ, a gin and ton, if you please.

  'Aren't you having one?' enquired the girl loftily when I returned.

  'Me? Oh no. I'm in training, see. For football, I've had to cut out drink. Especially gin and ton.'

  She sniffed. 'Did you get a programme? I'd like to know what they're playing even if we are a long way up.'

  'Sold out,' I said desperately. 'All gone. Anyway I think it's more fun guessing, don't you?'

  'Not really,' she said. 'I feel quite giddy up here, you know.'

  I was glad when it was over. We silently boarded the bus and she stared out of the window all the way to Waterloo. She took out a gold case and selected a cigarette which I tremblingly lit for her with her own box of Swan Vestas. I was so miserable.

  At the station I felt for my return ticket and prepared to hand it to her, planning to announce at the same time that, although it was eleven-thirty at night, I had remembered a sudden urgent appointment in the City. To my overwhelming relief she produced a season ticket from her bag. I wouldn't have to walk after all.

  At the other end she gave me a peck like a hen on the cheek before heading for home. So much for romance. I brightened when I was walking up Gloucester Road, though. I woke Nightshirt and told him how wonderful it had all been, the Albert Hall, the inspiring music, the gins and tonics. He stirred in the dormitory moonlight. 'That must have set you back a packet,' he mentioned.

  'Oh, it did,' I said, getting into my iron bed. 'But it was worth it. She's terrific.'

  Nightshirt sniffed over the blankets. 'That's the trouble with women,' he said wisely. 'It's the bloody expense.'

  Ever the romantic, my other early experiences with girls were not fulfilling. In the summer of 1945, the first of peacetime, I went for a holiday to my uncle's house in South Wales. Both my uncle and aunt and my cousin Adrian worked in Cardiff all day and sometimes stayed long into the evening. I went to their office on Cardiff Docks, Tiger Bay as it was called, and one day Adrian, who was two years older than me, took me to a cafe where he appeared to be on lascivious terms with a lush-looking girl with a flower in her hair. I could only gape as they clutched each other at the table. God, what would I have given for a girl with a flower in her hair.

  Most of that holiday I was left in the charge of the beautiful and benevolent granny – my aunt's mother – who realised I was lonely and several times took me to the pictures although I am sure she did not want to see either Hellzapoppin or The Picture of Dorian Gray. Emerging from the cinema on the latter occasion we agreed that neither of us had understood what had happened.

  To keep me occupied during my unaccompanied days my uncle bought an Eskimo canoe, a wood-and-canvas kayak. The beach was two miles away but I optimistically bought some pram wheels and dragged it there one evening, took my clothes off, stowed them and the wheels in the bow of the tenuous craft, and eventually launched out into the leaden Bristol Channel. I had no idea what I was doing but merely paddled the slim boat straight out to sea, intending to round the rocky headland of Gold Knapp and land on the pebble beach on the distant side. Out and out I went. The waves became morose and choppy and water began to slop over the side. While I kept the kayak's head into the sea it was not so bad but once I tried to turn the Knapp – which I now know has currents so notorious that even experienced boatmen shun it – I knew I was in danger. The boat began to fill with water. Desperately I paddled, trying to round the cape, looking for help towards the shore. Nothing moved in the lessening light. Not for the first time I was on my own. Eventually, battered, wet and weary, I made it and the ingoing waves carried me side-on to the stony beach. Tumbling from the boat, I managed to drag it clear of the waterline, and collapsed face down on the pebbles. It was late evening and I attracted no attention. Eventually I sat up and, shivering, managed to get my clothes on and go to the top of the beach where there was a telephone. No one was in my uncle's house. Unbelievably, I then decided I would have to get the boat back to the house. It proved impossible to fit the wheels so I picked up the craft and put it on my shoulder and set out to walk the two uphill miles. About halfway there I was staggering about all over the road when some youths came along, rough kids, smoking and joking. They took the boat from me and carried it to my uncle's front door. I was very grateful.

  It was during that August they had the swimming gala in the open-air baths which I have already described – when I came second in a two-boy race because my two swimming costumes had fallen off in the water. As I was proudly looking at my second prize and the local reporter was noting my name for his column a pretty little girl in a brown swimming suit came up to me and smiled: 'Hard luck.' That is all she said; they were the only words she ever spoke to me, but at once I was in love again.

  The following day I went back to the baths but she was not there. She had been sitting with her family outside one of the private chalets and, by dint of sly enquiries which augured well for my future as a reporter, I discovered the family's name and their address. That evening I loitered in the rain at a bus stop just opposite the house. Buses stopped and the conductors could not understand why I did not get on. I was there for hours waiting for her to emerge. 'Oh!' I would exclaim with many-times-rehearsed surprise. 'Fancy seeing you again!' When I was about to give up she came out. It was almost dark but I was sure it was her. She was with another girl and they ran chattering to another house across the road, so quickly that I had no time to arch my eyebrows or utter a syllable of my speech. I pulled up the collar of my coat and went moodily home. I suppose I was simply lonely.

  After four weeks at my uncle's comfortable house I was glad to get back to the rough familiarity of Dickies. There, at least, I knew where I was and I was never alone. We had a concert during which Boz and I performed a lusty song called 'Dear Old Donegal', not you might think the ideal choice for a blatant Yorkshireman and a boy from Newport. Two of the visiting audience, a pair of cosy sisters in their late twenties, invited us to tea at their house at Kingston. We jumped at it and on the following Sunday had a splendid time with lots to eat followed by singing at the piano. One sister played and the other put her arms about each of our shoulders while we chorused, pressing us close as she sang so that we were each aware of a large warm breast. Later they took me to hear the Messiah at the Albert Hall and I paid several visits to their house. I was harbouring hope that they might have similar designs as some of our slinkin
g male visitors but, unfortunately, nothing improper ever occurred. My run of ill luck with women was continuing.

  There was one further humiliation and it was again associated with swimming. (There is doubtless some Freudian interpretation.) We had gone camping on the Isle of Man – life was now much more free and enjoyable – and there I met a lovely dark girl, with long eyelashes, who was called Isa Luny. Determined to impress her I swam out one evening from the beach, out, out, far out, to where cormorants were diving. I turned onto my back and saw her miniature figure waiting on the shore. She must have been a mile away and I turned and began to return. It was cold and darkening now with the shore becoming indistinct; it was much harder swimming back. Eventually, out of strength, out of breath, I staggered up the sharp shingle. White, thin and shivering, water running down my long nose and my hair stuck on my forehead, I stumbled on. My beloved was waiting. 'You know,' she remarked thoughtfully, closely studying the sight. 'You look just like a crow.'

  Having told the story on a television programme, and mentioning the little girl's rememberable name and where she had lived, I had a charming letter from her. Thirty-eight years on, Isa Luny confessed she could neither recall me nor the incident, but she felt very sorry about it.

  Crow or not, I doubt if I was much to see, although we were being fed properly now and I was playing football and cricket, both at home and at school. Indeed I cut a fine figure, I thought, when I was a ball boy at the first Wimbledon tennis tournament after the war. Barnardo's traditionally provided the ball boys and it lent us a touch of glamour that was otherwise far beyond our reach. Seeking the limelight, perhaps, I one afternoon strayed onto the court when Colin Long, an Australian, was serving. The ball hit me in the seat of my shorts. Afterwards the player apologised and I apologised to him for spoiling the service. 'Kid,' he said. 'When that upsets me, then it's time I packed up.' I wonder what reaction it might have provoked today?

  Sheila Summers, a golden South African, and Kay Menzies, the British champion, played in that first postwar Wimbledon. Predictably I could not make up my mind with which one, the fair or the dark, I should get involved. Every day I turned up looking my smartest and one day when a door opened accidentally, I actually viewed Miss Summers in her brassiere, her sunbathed skin under the white straps. Oh God, I thought, nothing else matters now.

  There was a men's doubles couple called Cohen and Tallart and during one of their matches a spectator leaned into the court and asked me where they were from. 'They're Jews,' I replied confidentally. 'I suppose they're from Jerusalem.' I wondered why the man and everyone in earshot laughed uproariously.

  My efforts to be handsome, to prowl rather than walk, to stand my quiff on end (I prominently wore white gloves while fielding the tennis balls) were abruptly wrecked by a bump like an onion which blossomed on my forehead.

  This was the aftermath of a breakfast-time fight with John Brice, usually a friend, the boy who had first arrived with me at Dickies door. The battle ended with him delivering a well-directed left-hander to the side of my head, knocking me down. The bruise was bad enough but, I realised with gradual horror, it showed no signs of diminishing. A lump remained. An ugly lump that, even as I surveyed it in the mirror, seemed to be growing by the moment.

  In Kingston there was a man who sold newspapers who had an even bigger bump in the same place. A purple knob over his eye. He was obviously the one to ask, so I asked him. 'It's a cyst, son,' he informed me obligingly. He fingered it familiarly. 'Won't ever go down now. Not till I'm dead.'

  Horrified I went away, hands to my own bump. God, it was enormous! What was I to do? Without telling anyone I went to a local doctor. He was very doddery, so elderly he would have retired but for the war. 'Oh yes,' he said looking at the projection with interest. 'I think that will have to come off.'

  After all the other patients had gone I lay on his couch while he gave me a local anaesthetic and proceeded to saw and chisel into my head with obvious enjoyment. He went at it with such endeavour that he cut the main artery.

  Blood hit the ceiling, blood sprayed the wall. It was everywhere. Belatedly a nurse, not much younger than the doctor, came in and fell down in a dead faint on the floor. The ancient physician was clamping clips to the side of my head in an attempt to stop the flow. He kept muttering. 'I just can't find it. Ah, there it is. No, it's not.'

  I was the calmest person there. It occurred to me that there was a good chance I might bleed to death at this rate and I lay thinking over the few years of my life and coming to the astonishingly bland conclusion that I had experienced a pretty good time. My shirt, my trousers, and my new tartan tie, of which I was very proud, were soaked and scarlet. 'I think you'd better call an ambulance, nurse,' suggested the doctor, not before time. She had pulled herself together and went out of the room like an old rocket. Then, to general relief, he managed to get the clips on the right bits and I was carried to the ambulance with so many piece of metal on my head (he was not sure which ones had done the successful job) that I looked like a stuck bull transported from the ring.

  The ambulance man who sat in the back with us eyed me moodily. The doctor, trying to be bright, said: 'I've been asked to give a lecture on haemorrhaging next week.'

  The ambulanceman grunted: 'I should take 'im along with you.'

  To the end of my days at the Technical School I was never capable of building a wall that did not tumble down. They fell with all the readiness of those of Jericho, but without a trumpet. They were badly put together and the mortar was too wet or too dry. I was even less competent at metalwork and there was an uncomfortable incident due to my cavalier use of a blow torch and the vicinity of the instructor's backside.

  Few of my lines executed at the drawing board managed to proceed neatly on the intended course. Any form of mathematics left me thwarted. I would never have made a draughtsman. My mother's dream of long before came to naught.

  In the woodwork class I shared the dunces' bench with a resourceful and well-spoken chap called Harry Futerman, who became a London solicitor. The tight woodworking joints we were required to fashion tended to rattle like castanets, the gluepot was called for and often spread itself over bench, tools and pupils. Futerman and I were set the elementary task of planing the top of an ill-fitting door on the school canteen. Our passions were football and cricket and our conversation was directed on these subjects to the detriment of the job in hand. We planed away happily, a little bit more here and a little there, just a shade here to balance that bit where we seemed to have taken off too much . . . At the conclusion of the task a boy, or small man, could have slid through the aperture and that is exactly what happened, for the canteen was burgled that night and some buns and loose change stolen.

  In an attempt to carve out something more artistic than the required mortise and tenon joints I devoted a lot of secret time to an elegant miniature tombstone embossed with the slogan 'RIP', followed by the name of the woodwork master. This was discovered by the instructor himself who thought it in poor taste and hustled me to the office of a particularly obnoxious man, the deputy headmaster, who sported both a monocle and a sneer. His hair was always plastered down from a middle parting, like some antiquated upstaged actor. He wore pin-striped suits and spoke with a voice that squeezed from his nose. He was not a nice individual.

  'After this,' he pronounced, having been told of my crime, 'I shall never again denote a penny to Barnardo's.'

  This outraged me. 'If it's only a penny then you'd better keep it,' I answered. 'We don't depend on people like you.' Whereupon he hit me around the ear.

  There were others who were more sympathetic. The man who taught us plumbing was a companionable chap who liked me even if I never conquered the mystique of wiping joints or bending lead. When I had first attended the school he had set each of us the task of drawing a plan of the water system of our own house. For the majority of pupils this was reasonably simple. At Dickies, however, with its sixty rooms, passages and towers, the water syst
em was on an heroic scale. I asked Bosky, a cross-eyed teenager who stoked the home's boiler.

  'I'm not a Dickie boy,' he used to philosophise while squatting on the coke pile. And I'm not a master either. I'm a sort of in-between.' Inspiration would light his coaly face. 'I'm the boiler-master, see.' Bosky had no notion of how the water worked. He just shovelled the coke, quite often everywhere but through the door of the furnace. So I had asked the Gaffer who, liking to encourage knowledge, immediately showed me the plan of the water pipes from the tank in the tower through the labyrinth of curves and corners. It looked like the map of the London Underground. I copied this faithfully and handed it in with the more prosaic plans of suburban houses as offered by my schoolmates. The plumbing master mentioned that I seemed to live in a mansion and I explained where and what it was. After that he was always kind. One day when I had made a particularly monstrous mangle of a basic pipe circuit he sighed: 'What do you want to do as a job, Thomas?'

  'I want to be a writer, sir,' I replied promptly.

  'Good,' he said. 'Just as long as it's not a plumber.'

  I was better at some things. At the end of the two years I emerged with distinctions in English, History and Geography, coming last or next to Futerman, in all the other subjects. The Daily Mirror was running a series of very brief fiction called 'Story to Read in the Train' and I submitted one, tenuously typed on the old Dickies Underwood. It was not published but I had, in return, a wonderfully encouraging letter from a man called C.E.T. Field who was in the Mirror features department. It was very good, he said, but I was competing against professional writers. I must keep writing, and reading . . . write something every day . . . read something every day . . . I still have the letter.