by David Lodge
– It’s a shame they don’t give cups for lessons, his mother would say. Then you’d win something, Timothy.
But Timothy coveted athletic success, and coming first in Art or Maths gave him only a fleeting satisfaction. Sport was his chief interest in life. Sometimes his father took him to watch Charlton Athletic in the football season, and Surrey in the cricket season. He followed the fortunes of these teams in the Daily Express with passionate interest, and enacted their triumphs in fantasy, kicking a ball in the street against the front garden fence, or batting, for hour after solitary hour, a sorbo-rubber ball suspended by a string from the clothes-line in the back garden. But his achievements stopped short in the street or the playground. They passed into no records, were engraved upon no trophies, brought no credit to his school, and reflected no glory upon himself. He was resigned to a life of humble obscurity.
Kath came back for Christmas 1947. Timothy and his parents went up to Victoria Station to meet her. The train was late, and while his parents sat in the buffet drinking cups of tea he walked about the station to keep warm, investigating the automatic slot-machines that stood, empty and neglected, near the entrances to the platforms. They bore faded legends offering chocolate bars and caramels and nuts and raisins for one penny. The slots of the pennies were sealed up. Behind their grime-encrusted windows there were only empty metal racks, but he pulled experimentally on the drawers, hoping, though not really hoping, that one of them would open and yield up a piece of forgotten pre-war confectionery.
At last Kath’s train came in, drawn by a Battle of Britain class locomotive, and she alighted like an exotic bird on to the grey winter platform, slippery with mud and litter. She wasn’t wearing her khaki uniform, but a green tartan costume with a cape and fur hat. The costume had a very long skirt, reaching almost to her ankles.
– You’ve gone in for the New Look, then? was his mother’s first comment.
– Yes, like it? Kath pirouetted on the platform. She had a lot of cases with her of all kinds and shapes, round ones and square ones as well as the usual oblong ones. She hired a taxi to take them home, and she talked all the way. Timothy thought she was talking posher than she used to, and when he answered her questions she mimicked his accent and said:
– You’re a proper little Cockney, aren’t you, Timothy?
Kath had brought them a lot of presents again. Some were not to be opened till Christmas morning, but she brought out at once bottles, tins of food and cigarettes and sweets. Some of the sweets were British kinds that you couldn’t buy in the shops even on points, because they were for export only: Olde English Butterscotch and Mackintosh’s Toffees and Original Pontefract Cakes, luxuriously packed in stout painted tins and gay wrappings. The sweets had travelled halfway round the world, via America and Germany, before coming into his hands. He consumed them reverently, like a persecuted Christian receiving the sacrament.
– I don’t know what Christmas would be without you, Kath, his father said. There’s nothing in the shops.
– Rationing’s terrible – worse than the war, said his mother. Bread’s the latest, if you don’t mind.
– I don’t understand it, said Kath. You seem to be no better off than the Germans.
– That’s what I say, said his mother. What use was it winning the war if we still have to pinch and scrape for every meal?
– It’s this Government, said his father. You won’t catch me voting for that lot again.
His father was always grumbling about the Government. So was the Daily Express. Timothy picked up the sarcastic phrases of his father, and the caricatured likenesses of Strachey, Shinwell and Cripps in the newspaper became part of his private mythology, like Hitler, Goebbels and Goering in the war, less evil bogeymen, but equally available for ridicule and abuse. Timothy was also aware of another, more disturbing variation on the emotions of the war. It seemed that the Russians, and Stalin (Uncle Joe, as people used to call him) were not friendly any more. They were Communists, which meant that nobody was allowed to have anything of their own in Russia, and they wanted to take over other countries so that nobody could have anything of their own there, either. Sometimes they sounded as bad as the Nazis. They were atheists, and persecuted the Church. Every Sunday, at the end of Mass, there were prayers for the conversion of Russia.
Despite all the presents that Kath had brought, it wasn’t a very merry Christmas. There was a power-cut on Christmas Day which spoiled the dinner. Kath kept complaining of the cold, but they didn’t have much coal and his parents kept bickering about the fire, whether it should be poked or not. Kath didn’t stay for very long because she wanted to get back to Germany for a fancy-dress ball she was going to, as the Statue of Liberty, on New Year’s Eve. She was living in Heidelberg now, which she liked much better than Frankfurt. She said it was a picturesque little town on a river, between mountains, with a ruined castle and lots of old buildings, and it had hardly been damaged at all in the war. She lived in a hotel converted into a hostel, and had lots of nice girl friends.
– Any boy friends, Kath? his father asked.
– Well, I don’t have any trouble getting escorts for parties and so on. There aren’t so many girls around, you see – apart from the German ones, of course. So I do all right for dates. It’s a good place to be for a fat girl, I always say. The girls in the office get a laugh out of that.
– I wouldn’t say you were fat now, said his mother.
– Well, I’m not exactly slim, am I? Kath smoothed her skirt over her hips.
– As long as you don’t go marrying a Yank, his father said.
Kath laughed.
– All the nice ones are married already, she said. And the others aren’t interested in marriage.
– What are they interested in? Timothy asked.
Kath laughed again, but didn’t answer, and his mother told him it was time he went to bed.
It was rather dismal seeing Kath off at Victoria. She had a cold and kept blowing her nose and complaining because she couldn’t get any paper tissues in London.
– I think it’s disgusting the way people use these cotton hankies. Just carrying a lot of germs around with them.
– I’m sorry if I disgust you, his mother said huffily. She too had a cold.
– Oh, I don’t mean you, Mum.
– And I always boil them to get rid of the germs, his mother went on fretfully.
– Kath, what about coming over in the summer, when it’s a bit warmer? his father said.
– Well, I don’t know, Dad. A girl friend of mine in Heidelberg . . . we were thinking of making a trip to Italy this summer.
– Italy?
– I’ve always wanted to see Rome and Florence and all those places.
– Oh well . . . You’ve got to do these things while you’re young, I suppose. He picked at a hole in his glove.
– We thought we’d try and get a holiday this year, his mother said to Kath.
– Oh good – where?
– Worthing. We used to go there before the war – Mrs. Watkins, remember?
– Yes, I remember, said Kath.
– She’s still there.
– Why don’t you go somewhere new?
– Oh, I wouldn’t like to go somewhere I didn’t know.
A whistle sounded shrilly and doors began to slam.
– You’d better get in, Kath, his father said.
– I’ll let you know about the summer, she said, as she kissed them goodbye.
Timothy ran beside the train until he couldn’t keep up with Kath any more. He walked slowly back along the platform to where his parents waited disconsolately, breathing plumes of steam into the cold air. It was snowing and a few flakes were falling through the holes in the station roof that had been made by the war. He looked up at the roof to see where the snow was coming in, but in the grey, dirty light it was impossible to distinguish the panes that were missing from the panes that were in place. Against the expanse of grey glass the snowflakes th
emselves looked a darker grey as they floated down towards him. It was funny standing under a roof while the snow fell on you.
Kath didn’t come home in the summer. She went to Italy with her girl friend, and they had a succession of postcards from Lake Como, Florence and Rome, and later a letter with a photograph of Kath and her friend pretending to be holding up the Leaning Tower of Pisa. She said she wouldn’t come home for the following Christmas, because it was so cold in England in the winter, but wait for the spring. But in the spring she was invited to join a party on a Mediterranean cruise, which was too good a chance to miss; but that used up her leave and her money, so her visit would have to wait for another year.
Kath sent them long typewritten letters describing her holidays and weekend trips. Timothy found them boring – catalogues of foreign places and foreign meals – but he derived a vague satisfaction from having a sister who led such an exotic and adventurous life. In part he acquired this attitude from his parents. Kath’s letters and postcards, kept behind the clock on the dining-room mantelpiece and produced for the enquiring visitor, were a source of quiet pride, evidence that they had lines of communication with a larger and more glamorous life than their own. Yet at the same time he knew that his parents missed Kath, and his mother, particularly, was bitter sometimes about her long absence.
They decided to go to Worthing again that summer, 1949. Timothy was pleased. It seemed natural and inevitable, part of the rhythm of his life, a rhythm so simple and orderly that it was difficult for him, looking back over a year, to distinguish one week from the next, except by the seasonal changes of sport. School was always much the same, and he arranged his weekends so that they conformed to a timetable almost as rigid. On Friday evening he got most of his homework done and had a bath. Saturday was given over entirely to pleasure. In the morning his mother brought him breakfast in bed, and he lay in, reading comics, until about eleven o’clock. In the afternoon he and Jonesy and Blinker went to watch Charlton Athletic, or Charlton Reserves if the first team were playing away, and he asked for no greater happiness than to watch Charlton win. He hadn’t, of course, been able to watch their greatest victory, against Burnley in the Cup Final of 1947. He listened to the radio commentary in an agony of suspense as the game went into extra time with no score. Then Duffy, the little bald-headed left-winger, scored a fantastic goal right out of the blue, taking a cross from the right wing on the volley, and with his right foot too. Duffy ran the length of the pitch to embrace Sam Bartram, Charlton’s goalkeeper, the commentator said. Charlton never rose to such heights again, but they were always an interesting team to watch, fickle and unpredictable, but capable of heartwarming flashes of brilliance. More than once he and his friends had left the Valley a few minutes before the end of a game, dispirited by their team’s poor performance, only to hear, as they passed through the quiet, car-lined streets, a huge explosive roar filling the air behind them, indicating that Charlton had scored a last-minute goal and snatched a point.
Coming home on the smoke-filled top deck of a swaying tram, he would dispute the critical points of the game with Jonesy and Blinker. Usually, instead of changing trams at New Cross, they would get off at Deptford High Street, and walk the rest of the way home through the back streets, kicking an old tennis ball between them, for watching a good game produced a kind of ache in the legs, a longing to kick and dribble, that had to be satisfied. They would play in the street until it got dark, and then, tingling from the exercise in the cold, damp air, he went in for his tea, baked beans on toast with a rasher of bacon, usually, on Saturdays. After tea he took down the football results from the wireless and helped his father check his pools coupon. In the evening he would meet Jonesy and Blinker again – they went to each other’s houses in turn – to play cards or Monopoly.
Sunday was mainly devoted to Church. They usually went to the ten o’clock Mass on Sunday mornings, unless they were going to Communion, in which case they went to the eight-thirty, because of the fast. Sometimes they went to Benediction in the afternoon. On Sunday evenings, after high tea, there was usually some homework to finish off, and after that he would listen to Variety Bandbox on the radio, with his parents. It was a safe, orderly life.
So he was glad that they went to Worthing again for their holiday. It was a change from home, but it was also familiar. They had the same rooms at Mrs. Watkins’ and the same table in the dining-room, at the window. It looked out on to the bus shelter and the bowling green. Everything was the same.
But somehow, after the first few days, it wasn’t as enjoyable as the year before. He was fourteen, too old to play with the sand at low tide – on his own, anyway; and he was too shy to make friends with other children on the beach. He was too old to paddle, and he couldn’t swim. There seemed to be nothing much to do except mooch about the pier playing the pinball machines. In one part of the pier they had machines that you looked into to see pictures of bare women. He walked past them every day, longing to have a look, but afraid that people would stare, or his parents come past by chance. One afternoon when there weren’t many people about, and his parents were listening to a concert at the bandstand, he sidled up to one of the machines, inserted a penny, and pressed his face to the viewer. The machine whirred and a succession of faded sepia photographs flicked past, depicting young women larking about on swings and seesaws. It was true that they were bare, but the parts you wanted to see had been blanked out. The hairstyles reminded him of snaps of his mother and her friends when she was young, in the album at home. He left the pier feeling both guilty and cheated, and went to sit on the beach. Sometimes when the mothers changed their little girls out of their wet swimming costumes, you could glimpse the little cleft between their legs. But the big girls kept towels wrapped carefully round them when they changed and stared if they caught you looking.
The second week of the holiday was better. His parents made friends with a Mr. and Mrs. Clements, who were staying at the same guesthouse. Mr. Clements was a big man, with hair on his shoulders as well as his chest. He offered to teach Timothy how to swim, at the baths, and Timothy was so bored that he agreed. He didn’t enjoy the lessons, but by the end of the week he suddenly got the hang of it, and could swim the width of the pool. Next year, he thought, as the train drew out of Worthing station, next year the holiday will be more fun because I can swim.
But the next holiday was just as disappointing. It was a bad summer all round. Kath had been going to come home at last, but her leave was cancelled at the last moment because the Korean War broke out. The English football team, incredibly and humiliatingly, was knocked out of the World Cup, by America of all countries, one-nil. And he should have taken his O-Levels in June, but the Government had passed a stupid rule that you couldn’t sit the exam unless you were fifteen before the first of January that year, and he was fifteen on the tenth of January. Timothy now had a personal grievance against the Government, and took a keen interest in the election in February. Labour won again, but with such a narrow majority that everybody said there would have to be another election before long. Timothy drew some satisfaction from the swing against Labour, but it didn’t help his personal situation. He sat the mock O-Levels at Easter with the rest of his class, and his teachers reckoned he would have passed with several credits. With those results he could have left school and started his apprenticeship as a draughtsman. If that was what he was going to do. There was a certain amount of doubt about it.
On his fourteenth birthday his Uncle Ted had asked him what his best subjects were and he had told him Art and Maths, and Uncle Ted said that in that case he had better be a draughtsman. Somehow the idea had stuck. Timothy liked drawing and making diagrams of things, and it pleased him to have some definite idea of the future, something to tell people when they asked, as they were always asking, what he was going to do when he left school. I’m going to be a draughtsman. It sounded quite impressive – something a little out of the ordinary: professional, specialized, and yet sensible, not t
oo ambitious, something he could be reasonably sure of attaining. His father thought it was a good idea. His mother wasn’t so sure. She had always wanted Timothy to be a teacher.
After Timothy had taken the mock O-Level exams, the Headmaster, Brother Augustine, asked to see him with his parents. He said there was no point keeping Timothy in the Fifth Form for another year. He suggested that he should go into the Sixth Form and sit his O-Levels at the end of his first year, then A-Levels the year after that, when he would be seventeen.
– We hadn’t thought of keeping him on at school for another two years, said his father. He’s set on being a draughtsman, and he might as well start his apprenticeship as soon as he can.
– A draughtsman? Brother Augustine raised his eyebrows. I think Timothy might set his sights a bit higher than that. I want to get a proper Sixth Form going at St. Michael’s – put the boys in for University. Timothy’s one of the boys I had in mind. What d’you think, Timothy?
