Early childhood

I suppose I was six months old in the photo but it might be good to start when I was four. Some of the biggest dramas of my life occurred then and in the next three years. So I have some vivid memories. In writing a memoir there’s a lot to be said for working backwards, starting with your own experience before piecing together the jigsaw puzzle of hearsay.

I was happily living in Old Perth Road, Bassendean, Western Australia; a wooden bungalow with a tin roof and a veranda. My mother and I were lodgers in a house of women. I don’t mean that kind of house though my mother told me that the other girls had “gentlemen callers”. I was happy there till one cold wet morning three months after my fourth birthday, when a taxi took us to Fremantle Docks and we boarded the mv Rangitata bound for Tilbury in England.

I soon established a shipboard routine whereby I saw my mother at mealtimes and bedtime. For the remainder I wandered the decks, exploring every staircase and ladder. I was looked after by eight hundred war brides about to join their husbands. They were eager to practise being maternal on a chubby little boy. I felt safe, but liked to wriggle off their laps after being fed snacks and sweet-talked. (I don’t actually remember the latter, it’s more of a general impression..)

I liked the easy ways of Australian women. All the more shock when I met my upper-crust English grandparents. They didn’t conceal their horror at my wild ways and  what sounded to them like a Cockney accent. I now think the stain of my illegitimacy was part of it too: “bad blood”, but I knew nothing of this till I was fifty. My mother always told me my (official) father was a hero who had died defending the Dutch East Indies against the Japs.

We spent Xmas ’46 in an Edwardian house in Sussex. In the drawing room we sang carols round the piano. My grandparents were actually poor and the house was let out to tenants. We had to shuttle between rooms as they became vacant.

In the notorious freeze of February ’47 the house was so cold that some of the residents stayed in bed all day, for we couldn’t afford to keep running the little electric fires. What I remember best was the thrill of toboggan rides down a nearby hill with my cousin Mark. The novelty of snow outweighed what it did to your fingers and toes.

I first went to school at St Dominic’s, run by nuns, for a term. The next one was in Holland. My mother, officially widowed, took me to visit her sister-in-law, my official aunt, in Arnhem. I remember arriving there. I was given a nice box of mosaic pieces and was making shapes with them on the floor whilst the women drank tea and ate slices of dried apple. Bored eventually with my game, I looked up and found my mother gone, on the principle that slipping out while she had the chance would save another of my tantrums. The idea was to park me there while she went to Switzerland, where she planned to hang out in hotels till she found a rich husband. Her years in pre-war Singapore had given her a taste for servants and the high life. (It seems peculiar now. Why didn’t she leave me with my grandparents, in the school run by bigoted nuns, where I got bullied by older children? There’s nobody alive left to ask.)

After being escorted by my aunt on the first day, I was sent to school on my own thereafter, with a little tin of jam sandwiches for my lunch. I would pass the milkman’s pony-cart, fierce dogs and a smithy’s forge, where I would watch horses being shoed. I don’t remember life indoors. If it wasn’t raining, I would be shut out and let in at mealtimes. Perhaps that happened just once. Anyhow, on that occasion I wandered in the neighbouring wood feeding on bilberries and pretended to be a dog. I also remember on other occasions going on my own to many places, including a wharf where sacks of chicken-feed were winched from barges into warehouses. I had nearly forgotten my mother-tongue and even my mother, but one day she returned. Her romantic quest had not been successful.

One day, I was put on a bus to go and meet my mother somewhere. I got off at the wrong stop and wandered forlorn till my grandfather found me hours later. I had missed the tea-party where my mother was to introduce me to my future stepfather.

I was sent to boarding-school in September ’48, aged 6. It was better than being left home alone while my parents went to the theatre in the evenings—or quarrelled bitterly all day long, as they were soon to do.