I was never out of work. I took anything I could, and always enjoyed the experience, but I had a dream – a fervent but modest dream – and that was to work in the literature department of Dillons university bookshop in Malet Street, at the time the most important large bookshop in London. I rang weekly, but there was never a vacancy. I longed for this job like I’d longed for no other and so I persevered, and one day, just to be shot of me, I was given a date for an interview. I knew it would be difficult, with my non-existent exam results, to convince the manager to employ me in a shop where academics came to buy their books. At the end of a very pleasant interview I was offered a job, not in the literature department, but in goods inwards, where I would unpack books until someone decided to leave.
Goods inwards was far more fun than I had expected it to be, and it was a very sad day when a position in hardback literature eventually became vacant. People came in and out all day long to chat as I unpacked the books, and we danced to the music playing on my portable radio tuned in to Radio Caroline. On the shop floor I quickly noticed the difference between the assistants in the various departments and, without wanting to stereotype too much, the people in Education, Travel and Politics were a far more serious bunch than, say, Literature, Poetry, Paperback Fiction or Penguin up on the mezzanine where you could discuss ‘The Nibelungenlied’ and your lipstick tone and enjoy both discussions equally.
This was in the days of Laura Ashley dresses down to the ground and the natural look, which I’ve never been a fan of, much preferring the unnatural look and dyed blonde hair over the real thing. Desperate affairs were going on behind every bookcase, so much so that we’d get extremely irritated by the customers and their constant nagging for books. When we tired of kissing each other, we’d play Botticelli and mull over the question while pondering the intricacies of shipping thirty-five novels to Dubrovnik. We all had crushes on each other. I had an enormous crush on a boy in Paperback Fiction, mainly fuelled by his gentle and thorough explanation of ‘To His Coy Mistress’.
Early one morning, alone in my section, as I unpacked new books and dusted shelves in preparation for the slow but constant trickle of professors, browsers and new students of literature, I spotted a lone woman. She was pulling out books from the G–H section and I vaguely wondered what she was looking for. From her old-fashioned clothes and peppery bun, I unfairly discounted her as either a Hesse or a Gide buyer, but she didn’t look quite Galsworthy either. I was idly passing the time when my eyes wandered down her shapeless dress and landed on her legs. Bulbous purple stripes, which at first I took for perplexingly modern tights, caught my eye, and I suddenly realised with horror that these were varicose veins. I can hardly write the words without feeling faint, let alone have them so proudly on display. The prickly sensation began under my arms, and then it began. I could feel myself begin to swoon, but somehow I managed to crawl past this completely oblivious woman and into the tiny stock room, where I had a full-blown faint. I came round with my head placed on someone’s lap and a cold cloth pressed to my forehead as I took small sips from the obligatory glass of water. Unable to tell anyone what had happened (in case I fainted again), and making sure the woman had left, I returned to the world of hardback literature, helping the new girl with the authors she hadn’t heard of and trying to get her out of the habit of sending people to the wrong department for the books they were after. ‘Try the medical department,’ a poor customer was brusquely ordered when enquiring after Gwen Raverat’s Period Piece.
I tended not to let anyone know I was Mervyn’s daughter and it took a while before it was discovered at Dillons. The reason I never said wasn’t disingenuous, but it was self-preserving. Occasionally, people liked to give me their opinion of his work, letting me know where he’d gone wrong, and the authors they did have time for. It was unfair of me, though. I should have known that this was unlikely to happen at Dillons, because it had never happened at any of the other bookshops I’d worked in. It was in the outside world where the same stale sentences came out of the same stale mouths. ‘I found them impossible to read,’ little pause, coy smile, ‘I’ve tried.’ Or ‘No,’ big pause, shake of head, honest, emphatic opinion, ‘I didn’t like them at all.’ And the hardy perennial, ‘Was he on drugs?’
I was never sure what I was supposed to do with these comments – argue his case, nod in agreement or sympathise with the time they had wasted – so I just stood rooted to the spot as their superior opinions left me speechless. I am more sanguine now, and let them have their moment, if it makes them feel better, but when I was young I wanted to find a corner to curl up and die in, or better still, aim a perfect punch at their sneering faces. I wanted to say, ‘I wouldn’t stand there criticising your father’s work, so don’t criticise mine,’ but of course I didn’t, because it wasn’t the same thing and I knew it. However unrealistic it might have been, I found it impossible to be hardened to a certain sort of smug criticism. I wanted to protect him, and his work, from the clever remark.
My time working in bookshops had come to an end and London was emptying fast. My long-term friends were all travelling in the East, bumping into each other round the side of a temple in Afghanistan with as much ease as if they were having a chinwag on Fawcett Street. While my soul was still satisfied with London and what I knew, I realised with a tremor of failure that I wasn’t and never would be an adventurer. People seemed changed when they returned; whether it was drugs or whether it was a spiritual awakening is hard to say.
My relationship with Gerry was over. I had fallen in love with someone else. But I still missed him terribly, and was desperately sad at the end of the friendship that would naturally cease with the end of our relationship and the beginning of another one. I decided to go away and think about things, and meet my new boyfriend in Dublin a few weeks later when I felt more in control. I arranged to stay with my mother’s elder brother, Roderick, and his wife, Grace, at their farmhouse in Castelwellan, County Down. I hardly knew them, but I knew that Ruth, Maeve’s sister, was also staying. The prescription worked – the break from London did everything it was supposed to do. As the four of us sat in the sitting room every evening after supper, I slowly began to feel better. Getting to know my family did the trick in all kinds of ways. Ruth taught me to crochet, Roderick taught me to drive, Grace taught me to make pastry and all three got me hooked on The Archers.
While I was there, Mum wrote to me frequently.
My Darlingest girlie
Your letter arrived this morning and I was so pleased to receive it. It must seem strange to be where you are. It’s the Mountains of Mourn, not Morn, which somehow seems more beautiful in a way.
I expect by now you will be getting a feel of the place and I hope you won’t be homesick at all, at all!
Darling, I know things have been very difficult for you, and you haven’t been any trouble, it’s only that I hate to see you unhappy. I want to see you gloriously serene, and I hope perhaps the get away, into somewhere quite different, may help you to reach some kind of equipoise. I’m sure you are being a great success there. If you want to write something, why not simply make notes of things you see, or hear, or think, so that in time, when you really want to write, you can call upon such observations, as only too soon, impressions fade, never to be recaptured.
Dillons had a bad fire, the record department quite destroyed and the political department. It was the wiring apparently. Literature was alright.
I am going to the Paris Pullman next week to see a Russian film of The Cherry Orchard, which is apparently very good, and I want to go to see a film in Holborn, the something or other of the bourgeoisie. I’m reading Stevenson and I think he’s a wonderful author. I think Dad was rather influenced by him, both in the style of writing and his content; although very different, one can sense the mood that is so much part of Dad’s writing.
I am going to the BBC on Wednesday, to a rehearsal of the Flying Bomb. I hope there won’t be any about!
Darling I love you very much – I am so glad that you are my daughter, and I want you to be happy.
All my special love to you, and love to everyone from me.
From your always loving
Mum
X X X
My Darlingest Clarie
Thank you so much for your two loving, funny, interesting and informative letters. I haven’t rung because I thought it might be difficult for you to talk, but I’ll ring you on Wednesday evening.
I’m so terribly glad that you are happy there and that they are all so kind to you. I had quite a funny letter from Auntie Ruth. Now that she’s getting to know you, she’s becoming very fond of you. I think it’s really that you’ve always refused invitations that she hasn’t got to know you before.
I miss you very, very much, but I’m certain that the break was inevitable, and somehow, seeing and hearing and thinking new things is so good – otherwise one gets into a tiny little world and can only see one side.
It’s awfully good about the provisional driving licence, so funny, too.
The scaffolding is being put up – real hunky men, I don’t see them joining a poetry reading circle! I don’t know how long it’s all going to take, but there’s a great deal of tea-making throughout the day.
Sebby and Fay both ask a great deal about you. We all want to see you happy – as you should be. I’m so glad I’ve got a little daughter.
I’m going up to the BBC tomorrow for a rehearsal of the Flying Bomb and going to see The Seagull today.
I’ll write again soon darling and phone you tomorrow evening.
All my special love
from your loving Mum
My Darling Clarey,
It was lovely talking to you last night – and I do hope that you are still having a good break. At least it’s a new experience.
I hope you will be able to get a bit of driving in. Couldn’t you simply get a piece of cardboard and draw an L in lipstick, if there isn’t any chalk about?
It was very interesting at the BBC yesterday. It’s always strange to hear Dad’s words being spoken and interpreted by people, and becoming part of a programme, in a studio dominated by incomprehensible computer machines, and remembering how they had been written in silence and great urgency. It’s rather wonderful really, and I wish he could know about it.
Tristram Cary, who has done the music for it, has an idea of it being performed in a City of London church, but I’m not quite sure how the babe could be managed. I think it could be most wonderful. The wife of the man who reads the sailor is a niece of Dr Hewitt from Sark. Ah! It’s a small world, it is indeed!
Darling, I hope that you are being able to think a little about everything. I know it has been a terribly difficult time for you, and I want to see you having a life that is good and satisfying.
You are my darling daughter, and I shall always love you, but sometimes I think that too much may make it difficult for you to lead your own life. I hope not, though.
I have just had a nice letter from Auntie Grace, saying how well you have fitted in.
All my love darling
Your loving Mum
After a month or two I came home, refreshed, invigorated and on the look-out for work. Dillons had been a very happy experience, but I needed a change. I began working for Kate, Georgie’s mother, in her flower shop in Cheval Place, Knightsbridge. My knowledge of flowers was rudimentary, to say the least, and now, with a heart full of shame, I wonder what the poor paying customers thought when they were delivered my cone-shaped floral offerings. Pat, a large red-headed woman, who also worked for Kate, knew an awful lot about flowers, and occasionally I accompanied her to the mini-gardens of Knightsbridge to seed and sow. But gardening was tinged with difficulty from the start on account of my worm phobia. Every time my spade unearthed one I screamed with revulsion, but Pat was extraordinarily patient under the circumstances and, over the summer, we perfected a method where I would hand her the tools, like a nurse to a surgeon, and keep my eyes shut if a wriggler should reveal itself.
I was much happier working in the shop, serving the rich and emaciated women of Knightsbridge. Ava Gardner was the highlight of my day. She strolled past the shop most afternoons, sometimes alone and sometimes with the actor Charles Grey, with whom I think she was staying. She always gave a little wave as she walked by and I would wave back at this still-beautiful woman as I wrapped up some love-in-the-mist, or, as Kate called it, fuck-in-the-fog.
One morning, walking down Montpelier Street on my way to work, I saw Rod Steiger coming towards me. This synchronicity, this serendipitous crossing of paths was truly astonishing because I had just been thinking of him. I had been to see The Pawnbroker only the night before and had been extremely moved by both the film and his unbearably harrowing performance. Seeing him in a depressing pawnbroker’s shop in New York and a cobbled London street within twenty-four hours struck me as remarkable, so I waylaid him and told him of the coincidence. After I had congratulated him on his seminal piece of acting, he looked genuinely thrilled, kissed my hand and went on to say sweet things of a perfectly charming but less cerebral nature. His flirtatious grin and twinkling eyes were extremely provocative and, although I had never found older men attractive, I was surprised to find him and his short, sturdy body very sexy.
London was much emptier then and casual encounters with people you wanted to meet seemed easier. Popping out late one night for some New England ice cream, I had my second Beatles experience. A Rolls-Royce sidled up to the kerb just as Georgie and I were leaving the deli across the road from my house. John Lennon and Paul McCartney popped their heads through the wound-down, blackened-out windows. ‘Hop in girls, fancy coming to a club?’ they asked. My sluttish foot was halfway through the door when Georgie’s voice reverberated behind. ‘No thank you. C’mon Clare, let’s go.’ I edged the top half of my body back out of the car. ‘No, I’m sorry. Thanks anyway,’ I said as the lights turned green, and I watched in misery as they zoomed down the Old Brompton Road in search of girls with more on their minds than sitting in a kitchen with a tub of ice cream and two spoons, listening to The Beatles.