Chalcot Crescent E-Book

Fay Weldon

• Herausgeber: Corvus
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

Meet Frances, one-time national treasure, former famous writer... and Fay Weldon's might-have-been younger sister. It's 2013. Fay has long since emigrated (wouldn't you, if your imaginary sister stole your future?), and eighty-year-old Frances, her glory days gone, is savouring a slice of National Meat Loaf in her once-magnificent house. Communism's dead, capitalism's fallen, and now government bailiffs are banging on her door... How did it come to this? When did CiviCams and powdered egg replace gossipy dinners and chocolate mousse? As Frances tries to make sense of her story, fact and fiction begin to implode. What secrets are her family hiding? Is her skunk-smoking grandson plotting revolution upstairs? And just what makes National Meat Loaf so tasty?

Leseprobe

Chalcot Crescent

‘Reads like a first novel… it’s so fresh and vibrant and funny. The funniest dystopian novel I’ve ever read.’

BOYD HILTON

‘This legendary English author really opens up in this wickedly sharp story of her imaginary sister Frances… Riveting!’

Look Magazine

‘A great scroll of memory, skewed history and canny observation. Wonderfully imagined, constantly surprising.’

Saga Magazine

‘In this novel we are back to the bohemian, anarchist, feminist, audacious Weldon of old, mischievous and funny… A sparkling read, this is Fay Weldon back on top form.’

Good Book Guide

‘It fizzes! The great thing about this book is that it isn’t written by someone who’s twenty-five.’

JOEL MORRIS

‘Frances narrates much of the novel with a twinkle in her eye… knowingly light-hearted and tongue-in-cheek… As it careers towards a seemingly apocalyptic ending, the book reveals a healthy cynicism about men, women, feminists and the alternative.’

Independent on Sunday

‘Wildly imaginative and satiric… We could almost be back in the land of J.M. Coetzee for the convolutions of narrative identity but for the fact you’ll laugh out loud a whole lot more at Chalcot Crescent.’

Dove Grey Blog

‘A saga that has more than a touch of the dictatorship doctrine of Orwell’s 1984 about it… [Weldon’s] dazzling skill in mixing her personal facts with creative fiction provides its own frolics in [this] eclectic fantasy.’

Camden New Journal

Fay Weldon was brought up in New Zealand. Creator of the slogan ‘Go to work on an egg’, writer of the first ever episode of ‘Upstairs Downstairs’ and currently Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University, Fay is best known for her novels Praxis, The Life and Loves of a She-Devil and Worst Fears. In 2001 she was awarded a CBE. She has eight children and stepchildren and lives on a hilltop in Dorset.

CHALCOT CRESCENT

Fay Weldon

First published in Great Britain in 2009.

This paperback edition first published in Great Britain in 2010 by Corvus, an imprint of Grove Atlantic Ltd.

Copyright © Fay Weldon 2009.

All rights reserved. The moral right of Fay Weldon to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents act of 1988.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

For permissions please see page 280.

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-84887-306-3

eISBN 978-0-85789-491-5

Printed in Great Britain.

Corvus An imprint of Grove Atlantic Ltd Ormond House 26-27 Boswell Street London WC1N 3JZwww.corvus-books.co.uk

The following works have been quoted in this book:

YELLOW SUBMARINE Lyrics by John Lennon/Paul McCartney Copyright 1966 Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC. All rights administered by Sony/ATV Music All rights reserved. Used by permission.

IT AIN′T NECESSARILY SO (from “Porgy and Bess”) Words and Music by GEORGE GERSHWIN, DU BOSE, DOROTHY HEYWARD and IRA GERSHWIN © 1935 (Renewed) GEORGE GERSHWIN MUSIC, IRA GERSHWIN MUSIC and DU BOSE AND DOROTHY HEYWARD MEMORIAL FUND. All Rights Administered by WB MUSIC CORP. All Rights Reserved.

I’M MY OWN GRANDPAW By Moe Jaffe and Dwight Latham

THE BALLAD OF JOE HILL By Alfred Hayes and Earl Robinson

Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders. However, the publishers will be glad to rectify in future editions any inadvertent omissions brought to their attention.

Contents

Surprises

The Way We Live Now

O, What A Noble Mind Is Here O’erthrown

How I Come To Be Amos’ Grandmother

And As I Was Saying

Stealing Karl

Becoming Amos’ Grandmother

How Amos Came To Be Born

The Stairs

A Pattern Of Surprises

The Wickedness Of Men

Amos’ Tirade

How Well We Lived Then

Venetia’s Lovely Home

Another Scene From Venetia’s Life, According To Her Mother, Who Wasn’t There But Can Imagine

Sitting On The Stairs Waiting For The Bailiffs To Go

Amos’ Genetic Inheritance

Why People Get Together

Do You Remember Florrie?

A Brief History Of My House

Back To The Point

Death Of A Sitting Tenant

It’s House Prices, Stupid!

Breakfast With Amos

Amos The Outsider

A Brief History Of My First Daughter Venetia

An Evening At Venetia’s

No End To The Surprises

Another Surprise

Son Of The Dumpling

A Strange Request

Carmageddon

A Conversation With Polly

What Is Going On?

Victor Getting Dressed

What’s Really Going On

A Visit From An Ex-Husband

A Visit From Amos, Ethan And Amy

In The Name Of God, Go!

Henry Intimidates, Or Thinks He Does

Escape

A Conversation With Polly

Surprise

A Flurry Of Slippages

Victor At The Office

Visiting Venetia

Marking Time

A Story For Feminists: Skip At Will

Polly In Another Sulk

Polly Tells The Truth

Surprise, Surprise, Surprise

Karl And Venetia

Action, Not Reflection

A Useful Conversation With Amos

Dr Yuk

The Battle For Muswell Hill

In The Facility

Le probleème avec notre époque est que le futur n’est plus ce qu’il était.

Paul Valéry

Two years after I was born, my mother had a miscarriage. Had she not, I would have grown up with a younger sister. This is the sister’s story, set in an alternative universe which closely mirrors our own.

Surprises

Is there to be no end to the surprises?

I had a good friend who said to me, ‘But I always thought by the time you got to forty everything would be sorted out. You’d have a husband and a home and children and there’d be no more trouble. But now look!’

Her name was Cynthia. It was her fortieth birthday. Her husband was divorcing her, not without reason; her love life was in chaos, and all three of her children were proving ungrateful. I remember replying that so far as I could see very few things in life worked out the way they were meant to. Age didn’t enter into it.

‘A friend’s offered me a week in a holiday cottage in Turkey,’ she said, ‘only it would mean leaving the children. Do you think that’s okay? I deserve a break.’

And I said no, it was not okay, the children were upset enough as it was and now was not the time to leave them. ‘And as for deserving,’ I said piously, ‘there is no such thing. Just because you’ve had a hard time doesn’t mean an easy one ought to follow. There is no automatic system out there which keeps good and bad in balance.’

But Cynthia went anyway and a plane crashed outside Paris on the day she was expected back and as I was watching the TV news I saw one of her Victorian-style buttoned boots in the foreground of the mess of charred metal and scraps of flesh and scattered possessions strewed over the forest floor. Which was how I knew she’d been on the plane.

That was a nasty surprise. I always thought perhaps there was a bit of foot left in the boot. Eighteen little leather buttons, each one to be attended to. I always marvelled at how she found the time to put them on, being a mother of three with a home to run. That was in 1974.

On the other hand the children came into a great deal of compensation money, and their lives may have turned out better for the loss of a mother. Who is to say? All is surprise and paradox. I was no better for the loss of a friend, of course, friends being rare and valuable, and not imposed by chance, as mothers are, but there was no compensation for me.

‘Gran,’ said Amos, ‘you’re shivering. Should I wriggle down on my front and fetch a blanket?’ We had been sitting on the stairs for some three hours waiting for the bailiffs to finally accept that we are not at home and go away. But their persistence was extraordinary. They would knock – the peremptory knock of an authority not to be denied – only police and bailiffs have this particular knock – bang, bang, BANG de-bang – wait some three minutes and retire to their car. They would not drive away – we could hear Love Radio – and after some twenty minutes they would return and knock again. How could they know we were in the house? It was beginning to get dark. The street lights had not gone on so presumably there was another power cut: and both our mobiles were out of juice. If we stood up we could be seen: so we sat on the stairs and waited, one eighty-plus grandmother and her handsome grandson.

Mind you, Amos was not quite as handsome as he once had been, but still okay, I supposed, even impressive. Just rather less like the blond Jesus than before, with flowing golden locks and a beseeching look: now the hair was cropped and receding, and the look, though still expectant, was interwoven with disappointment, as must, I suppose, happen to everyone as the years pass. As a child he had been glorious; now, in his mid-thirties, he was strong-featured, good-looking, but a little mad-eyed. Genes will out. I was flattered that he had bothered to come to my aid. That had always been Amos’ way, even as a small toddler. Stocky and blond and laughing. You felt gratified when he bothered to acknowledge your existence, come to you and shove a small sticky hand into your big one.

‘Good idea,’ I said to Amos, and he slithered down the stairs on his stomach towards my bedroom, now set up on the ground floor, along with kitchen and bathroom, to save my eighty-year-old knees from too much work. This is as far up the stairs as I can get. My knees will not turn the corner beyond the landing to reach the rest of my domain, where I ruled for fifty years, through good times and bad. I will be glad of a blanket. It is true Amos may be as much interested in taking the opportunity of rolling himself a spliff as in bringing me warmth and consolation, but never mind.

The Way We Live Now

The people next door at No. 5 have a generator and would be happy enough to let us plug in and recharge our mobiles, but all down the Crescent back doors have been sealed, fences removed, and back gardens combined to create a communal allotment. So now we can use only our front doors. It was a small price to pay for the vegetables we produced, or so I had thought until now, when I realized there was no way Amos could nip next door unseen. Our friendly local Neighbourhood Watch had talked about breaking through doors to connect the first floors all down the Crescent, and it had seemed to me a fine idea, though currently illegal according to the new Fire, Health and Safety Act 2013, but it seemed so drastic a step we had never got round to actually doing it. What, live communally, as people once had in Soviet Russia? It was voted out: the young people, oddly enough, were against it, the old for it.

It has been hard to accept, especially for the young, that the sudden change in the way we live is not a passing phase, a matter of a couple of years, but is going to continue, and will probably see me out. But we are getting ourselves together – the vegetable field out the back flourishes under NUG’s CiviGro scheme, and ration books have finally been issued, or so the blogs tell us, though few have turned up on our doorsteps. Apparently they are hijacked by ‘organized gangs’ between printing press and distribution. Personally I am thankful that someone somewhere is organized. Governments – we have had three elections in the past two years – have failed us until now. But the new regulations that flow from NUG – the National Unity Government, composed not of politicians but sociologists and therapists – as a tap flows water, seem finally to be softening and fertilizing the ground. Necessity makes a harsh but fair master.

‘Necessity,’ says Amos darkly, ‘is the argument of fucking tyrants and the creed of slaves. Just you wait.’

I am glad the lad has had some sort of education and it comes naturally to him to quote William Pitt. It is more than either of my children can do. But then Amos, he went to a ‘good’ school, paid for by his stepfather. My girls went through the State system, not from any necessity but because my then husband Karl was socialistically inclined: a leftie, as my second husband described him.

Amos may be right about NUG but such is the pace and nature of the new legislation I suspect much of it gets forgotten accidentally on purpose.

When people complain that I am cynical, I say, but I am not cynical, I am just old, I know what is going to happen next. That is what experience does for you. Mind you, there are still surprises, like my friend Cynthia falling out of the sky. The plane broke up in mid-air, and many on board were returning from the Paris fashion shows. Beautiful girls showered down from the skies, still strapped to their seats. Cynthia was no model – indeed my mother spoke of her ‘having an unfortunate face’ – but it did not stop her having an emotionally tumultuous life. Some people are born to it.

There can be good surprises, in case you think I am a miserable person. I am not. This grandson of mine, Amos, the one the family had given up as a hopeless case in his teen age, a drug addict, a drop-out and a disgrace to the family, who’d even at one time joined the BNP – even though, or perhaps even because, he has a Jewish stepfather – is prepared to sit on the stair below mine and offer me help and company in this my hour of need and distress. That’s a surprise. I don’t see Venetia or Polly, my daughters, sitting here. Perhaps they’ve given me up too as a hopeless case. It is not a pretty thought. I have lived and breathed for my children, or so I tell myself. They may see it differently and probably do. ‘Bailiffs at Mum’s door’ will not sit well with them. It smacks of mismanagement, and they are both very managing girls.

Astonishing how Karl and I, with our lovers and divorces and dysfunctional carryings-on – though I am sure we never failed in love towards our children, just each other – have produced such functional children, so ready to condemn. ‘Mother, a store card? You have a store card? Nobody with any sense has a store card! A store card up to its limit?’ Gasp.

Yet they are the generation, not me and mine, who have brought this country to its knees. We brought freedom of thought, sexual liberation, imagination, creativity, wealth – they just spent. Well, true, I did too but they did it worse.

On cue, bang, bang, bang-de-bang – the very stairs tremble, the paint on the porch will flake. Authority has a heavy knock. They use their fists – they do not even bother with bell or knocker, though the knocker is antique and heavy, a brass fish with a curly tail, overlooked by my husband Karl when he stripped the house of his belongings, long ago, in revenge for my daring to buy him out of a property he felt to be intrinsically his, although the law disagreed. Work that sentence out for yourselves. The memory of these events makes me breathless. I will not rewrite it.

I would normally have had the front of the house repainted this year had the bank not decided to call in the overdraft and my mortgage not gone into arrears. Bang, bang, bang-de-bang. Come out of there, you cheat, you wretch. Show yourself, antisocial element that you are! Oh, I am, I am; forgive me, NUG.

‘Fucking banksters,’ Amos had said when we fled our lunch – National Meat Loaf and the last of the tomatoes from my window box – for the stairs, where we couldn’t be seen. ‘They still own us and control us. NUG will never get them under. Their scabby minions will forever be banging on the door.’

Amos has an admirable way with words, laced through though they may be with profanity. Literacy is in his blood. Am I too not a writer, albeit a forgotten one? Frances Prideaux, CBE? Remember? And Amos’ great-aunt Fay, though she was reduced to cookery books, and his great-aunt Jane, the poet? And his great-grandmother Margaret Jepson earned the family living through writing, and Margaret’s brother Selwyn and her father Edgar as well. The particular talent seems to have bypassed Venetia and Polly altogether, which may be why they live such settled lives. Venetia paints, but I sometimes think it is an affectation rather than the real thing.

‘It is in the leech’s nature to go on sucking blood,’ I respond, ‘until the last possible moment.’

The bankers serve very well as scapegoats, but what can they do if the world turns out to be bipolar; if one day the sunspots flare again, the polarity reverses, the nations of the world shut up shop, put up the barriers, each looking after their own as best they can? One day mania switches to depression; in individuals it can last years, on a global scale how long? It doesn’t bear thinking of. Our currency under NUG is so without value not even food can be imported; let alone oil, let alone electricity from France. North Sea gas has finally gasped its last. And were not those whom Amos insults the cream of our youth? They too are victims, lured into a world of money which represented neither toil nor value. Bound to fail: bribed, used, betrayed, and then ruthlessly discarded. I speak strongly because Ethan, Amos’ young half-brother, my other grandson, with his First in History, bright and innocent, was one such. He is a Ministry chauffeur now: at least he had a father, my son-in-law Victor, well up in NIFE, the National Institute for Food Excellence, to pull strings.

Even so, Ethan was angry. He is a young man. He lost his Porsche and his string of girlfriends. He blames the bankers of the past – thus letting himself off the hook – the Bilderbergers and their kind, for setting up a universal Ponzi scheme and knowing very well what they were doing. He joined Redpeace, an angry Greenpeace breakaway group, and through its webpage circulated the facsimile of a letter written in 1838 by Amsel Rothschild to his New York agents, introducing the idea of ‘the mortgage’. The letter turned up on my computer, I am on Redpeace’s mailing list but do not download – it seems dangerous.

The few who can understand the system will be either so interested in its profits, or so dependent on its favours, that there will be no opposition from that class, while, on the other hand, that great body of people, mentally incapable of comprehending the tremendous advantage that Capital derives from the system, will bear its burden without complaint and, perhaps, without even suspecting that the system is inimical to their interests.

Well, well, he was right, we did not suspect. But it’s not, I think, that we are mentally incapable. We would just rather not comprehend, and spent the money while we could, in our two-hundred-year patch of mania.

As it happened, Ethan’s moment of anger and indignation quickly passed: he unsubscribed from Redpeace. Their missives still come through to me, but mostly I delete them unread as they arrive. I cannot bear a screen cluttered by irrelevancies. One day, one day, when I have the time to work out how it’s done, I will actively unsubscribe.

Ethan likes being a Ministry driver, he tells me. You get to speed down the centre lane in cars not quite as good as the old Porsches – after the Volkswagen takeover they are not quite what they were, being more sedate and social – but good enough. The VIPs he drives confide in him. And he now has a less glossy but far nicer girlfriend in Neighbourhood Watch, whom I have not met but of whom he speaks in admiration, and only one, and so no longer has the emotional strain of juggling his affections as once he had to, checking over the Porsche for stray thongs in case one of the others found out. That kind of thing.

O, What A Noble Mind Is Here O’erthrown

Take no notice of me. I was pretty smart in my heyday, I daresay, but thinking Amos has left me on the stair just to roll a spliff is as likely to be the paranoia of old age – the carer is a thief; someone is trying to poison the cat; my metal fillings are broadcasting messages – as a rational judgment.

What continues to worry me is why the men at the door don’t go away. Why are they so sure we’re in here? Why should they be so interested anyway in an aged lady novelist has-been? I got a glimpse of them as they arrived and got out of their car – two guys in a grey executive Lexus – a sure sign of an authority about its righteous business. One was large, young, black and handsome, shiny as a panther, the other small and white and undernourished. They wore suits and ties – almost as if they were in fancy dress, bringing a kind of bizarre Clockwork Orange formality with them. But you, dear reader, will be too young to remember that prophetic Kubrick film, and the sense of menace, of frightening times to come, of a world barely in control, that it brought with it.

Bang, bang, bang-de-bang. I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down.

My home, which I always thought so charming and so very me, so very much mine, so redolent of cultural superiority, turns out to be just a house of straw, built by selfish little pigs who once lived off the fat of the land, and need now to be brought to justice. See how I veer between a helpless defiance and an acute sense of guilt? Mea culpa, me and mine. Amos may be right: the admen have brought us to this state, where we side with those who have taken us hostage. The Stockholm syndrome of the debtor. I am on the side of those who persecute and damage me. Many a wife, of course, is in the same state.

Outside the street lamps flicker on, and go out again. The light on the CiviCam at the end of the street stays off: that means it isn’t functioning. We’re meant to report it but nobody bothers: it’s a concrete monstrosity, quite out of keeping with the original Victorian gas lamps – which the Crescent is lucky enough to still have, albeit converted to electricity. This is a conservation area, and posh, or at least was, until a couple of years ago. Now pavements are beginning to crack and rats come out and stare at you, and no-one bothers to hammer out the dents in the Saabs and Mercedes that still line the street. Most turn out to be in negative equity, like the houses behind them, and there are no buyers. For years pundits kept saying things would pick up, that people were postponing buying until prices came down, but the fact turned out to be that people had just lost interest in buying things they didn’t need. Consumerism just went out of fashion one day, like the hula hoop – one day everywhere, the next nowhere, for no apparent reason, and after that there was no going back.

Economists presuppose a population ruled by the rational self-interest of individuals, but alas, it is not the case. Societies are no different from the individuals that compose them, and are as likely to be ruled by Thanatos as Eros, to be periodically seized by the urge to self-destruct; just as the sun is given to a plague of sunspots from time to time for no apparent reason.

There was a brief period, some three years ago, when deflation began to flatten out, hailed as the Recovery, but it was short-lived, and merely triggered off inflation.

And inflation no longer had the charm it once had in making light of what one owed. The small print at the bottom of the credit agreements, by which everyone lived and no-one ever read, gave an option to whoever bought on the debt – ‘the banks, the banks,’ as Amos would cry in triumph, ‘the blood-sucking scum’ – to index-link existing debts. A rare person it was who could live free of debt, free of anxiety, free of fear of the future. The dread of nuclear war back in the sixties and seventies was nothing to it. But perhaps every decade chooses its own anxiety.

Amos wriggles up with the blanket and tucks it round me. I had misjudged him. He loves his old gran.

‘Do you think they have heat sensors?’ I whisper.

‘The filth do,’ he murmurs, ‘so these shits will be next. All the agencies are now one and the fucking same.’

Now I too had fallen for the attraction of bad language in the sixties, when the hippie classes associated it with the vital primitivism of the working classes, and envied it, and stole it as our own, along with people power, long unwashed hair, torn jeans and other accoutrements of poverty. For some reason we believed the non-thinking classes were more highly sexed than the bourgeoisie. My family complain I am foul-mouthed, and I do try not to be. A fuck or a shit when I drop something on my toe is about as far as I go. But I wish Amos wouldn’t do it: it somehow undermines his cause, his complaint against society.

‘But we’re still all right so long as we don’t open the door,’ I say. ‘They’re not allowed to break in, are they? It’s only if you let them in the first time they can come in any time, break the door down if necessary.’

‘Don’t fucking bank on it,’ says Amos. ‘Debt collectors now have powers once reserved for the police under the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005.’

This child knows so much. He spent a year in prison for drug dealing, and was lucky it was not longer. I paid for the best lawyers, the best barristers. Ten years back I was wealthy. Now I live as others do. I can no longer protect my family. Nor could Victor at the time: he was then a scientist working with Cancer Cure and did the job for love rather than money. If he said the boy should face the consequences of his actions, it was because tough love was the prerogative of those with no money to spare, rather than from conviction, and both, I believe, were glad when I stepped in and helped. Venetia loves her son and Victor did his best to do so, though I daresay Amos was not the easiest of stepsons. We all love our children when they are born, sometimes quite passionately. I know I did. I know Venetia did. Yet so many children complain so bitterly about how their parents failed in love. I don’t know where it goes wrong.

Victor is one of the few people I know who is flourishing under the new NUG regime: he is no longer a struggling research scientist but works for the National Institute for Food Excellence: his salary is inflation-linked. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. He is in a position, thank God, to help his family face bad times, as I no longer am.

But it’s no use bleating to Amos about mother love. He has resisted all society’s attempts to feminize him: he is a triumph of testosteronic impulse. He was always the bad boy of the class, the one who fought in the playground, dealt in football cards, buying cheap and selling dear, for all his gentle looks. He may have a girlfriend but if he does he does not mention her.

‘Amos,’ I say now, or words to this effect – ‘we are not terrorists, simply law-abiding citizens hiding from our creditors. A civil offence, probably, but hardly criminal. It is not as if I am a non-entity. Am I not Frances Prideaux, a declared national treasure – albeit some time ago – her plays in the West End, her popular novels translated all over the world? I am not defenceless. I have the power of public opinion behind me. I could ring The Times if the landline hadn’t been cut off, and they’d have their people round in no time, to watch another national treasure bite the dust of bankruptcy.’

But even as I make my speech my voice trails away. I know what Amos is thinking but is too nice to say. How long since you had a play on, Gran? Twenty years? A novel published? Five? Forget it. The luxury trades are over, and that means you. You were a competent enough writer but you never rose to great heights: the world has forgotten you, as it forgets poor widow women since time began. You made a lot of money once but you spent it. Forget it.

‘Power’s back on,’ he says, and so it is. The street lights stop flickering and glow. Kettles can be boiled, mobiles recharged, computer work caught up with, shop tills worked again. The hospitals have priority, and generators, but there is a shortage of doctors and nurses. Those who came to us from overseas have gone home, where the climate is better and the wages turn up on time.

But yet, sitting here on the stairs in hiding at this advanced age of mine, under siege, in the company of this errant, druggie, foulmouthed grandson of mine, I am almost happy. This is the greatest surprise of all. I really do not care what happens next. Jimmy crack corn and I don’t care, Jimmy crack corn and I don’t care, Massa’s gone away. Massa’s gone away. History will wash over me like a tide and take me with it. I haven’t so long to live: I am not so eager to stay alive, though I will miss knowing what happens next. ‘They’ – the forces of law, order and financial stability whose representatives are at the door – also have their kind side. Their committees will decide I am daft, provide me with a bed, warmth, a television set and even these days, I daresay, a computer. I can become a blogger whom nobody reads. I can fade away silently.

My daughters may come forward and offer to take me in, but really I would rather they did not. They have husbands and their duty lies towards them. I realize in retrospect I married my husbands mostly to get away from my mother. Perhaps they did the same to get away from me. Bang bang BANG de-bang. Nemesis at the door, and I don’t care. We all live in a yellow submarine. The tune runs through my head.

And our friends are all on board.

Many more of them live next door.

As you get older, songs from your youth run through your head unbidden. You think they are irrelevant but actually they are not. They’re like dreams, waiting to inform you if you will only take notice. Hymns are there a lot, these days. See here hath been dawning another blue day, Think ’fore thou let it slip useless away, as I wonder whether I can be bothered getting out of bed in the morning. Thus reproached, I rise and get on with this novel, or diary, or memoir, or whatever you want to call it. ‘I Vow to Thee My Country’ is another one. And soul by soul and silently her shining bounds increase, And her ways are ways of gentleness and all her paths are peace.

Where does that come from, I wonder? I’m sure I love my country. I do, though it has become a hard place to love: going through a bad patch, as they say of marriages. I’ll work on it. One must not give up hope. I remember all those Marxist groups of my youth, the firm belief that capitalism must destroy itself in time, and all you needed to do was destroy the old institutions from within and, phoenix-like, the Glorious New Society would arise. A likely tale, as it turned out. But it is not finished yet. It is too early to tell the forest from the trees.

How I Come To Be Amos’ Grandmother

Okay, let’s get it over. There is a lot to be told in this tale of the past fifty years. I had hoped to keep myself out of the history but I see I cannot, without exempting myself from guilt, which is hardly the point of a confessional. I have become very conscious, now I am old, as I remember being when I was a young woman and sex and babies were so closely bound together, of the interconnectedness of everything – the interplay of the gear wheels and cogs of acquaintance, the pistons and levers of event, that lead to forward motion. We do not have the visual images of connectedness that once we did: a sight of the ship’s engine on the Channel crossing, the polished brass, the thrusting levers, the pounding sexual power; or just how you had to wind the handle to make the car engine spring to life on a cold morning. It was obvious then how all things connected. The stray kitten that mewed on your doorstep, decades back, as you cooked fish fingers for the children’s tea, would turn out to belong to your long-lost best friend and the acquaintance would be resumed and then you’d run off with her husband. Fate determined all things. What happened was meant to be. With the advent of the computer that sense faded away. Engine units are sealed: robots made, replaced rather than mended. We email rather than meet, connectedness is electronic, there are few stray kittens because the cats are sensibly neutered. It has been a relief as well as a loss.

Actually, in the last year, the kittens have begun to appear again. No-one can afford to have cats neutered, or keep them alive when their kidneys fail, and the town vets are going out of business. The country vets prosper, as once again the nation has to feed itself. But that’s by the by.

And As I Was Saying

I was born in 1934 in New Zealand to Dr Frank and Margaret Birkinshaw, younger sister to Jane and Fay, whose portraits can be seen in the Wellington Art Gallery even today. (New Zealand has weathered the last five years rather well: at least it has enough food to eat, though petrol is severely rationed, air flights are limited because of cyber attacks from one militant group or another, and pirate ships from Indonesia torment the Pacific. There was even some talk that cowrie shells were to be the new international medium of exchange, but I think it was fanciful.) Rita Angus, the artist who painted my sisters Jane and Fay, decided that I was too noisy and fidgety a child to include in the picture and that I spoiled her composition. I was only two. I have always felt the exclusion, and I daresay resented it.