A Curious Boy Page 5

  We were a tight nuclear family. My mother’s devotion to her two children was absolute. My sister Kath is two years my junior, and I was evidently not pleased when she arrived, displacing me from the centre of attention. There has been an undertone of competition ever since, but we played together well in our early years, so long as Kath tagged along behind me. She had her revenge much later. Few relatives visited Ainsdale Road: both of my grandfathers had died young and my mother’s mother was to follow suit before I was three. My mother’s maiden name was a distinctive one: Wilshin. There had been Wilshins in the old county of Middlesex[2] for several centuries. The youngest Wilshin and the most regular visitor was my mother’s younger sister – known to us forever and mysteriously as Auntie Bo – who was always described as the goody-goody, the favourite when they were young, while my mother cast herself as the rebel, the one who got into scrapes. Grandfather Wilshin had several sisters, most of them unmarried, and as the male in the family he had to take responsibility for them when his father died. They were said to have lost their hopes of matrimony in the 1914–18 war. Collectively they were known as the Wilshin Aunts, and they had the full set of names: Jessie, Madge, Gertie, Doris, Marion … They always called my mother ‘Peggy’, which is the name that is engraved upon her christening spoon. The Wilshin Aunts were occasional but memorable visitors to Ainsdale Road, and when they arrived they all carried with them the same smell of lavender bags placed in neat drawers. They tended to wear slightly billowing dresses with flowery designs. They all had terrible sight (‘the Wilshin Eyes’). My memory of them is dominated by their glasses, which were as thick as bottle bottoms and made the pupils enormous and shining like an owl’s. I had to smile convincingly while they peered through their optical contraptions and commented on the surprising fact that I had grown since their last visit. Auntie Jessie was a sweet soul who sent me a savings stamp worth half a crown on my birthday for as long as she lived. I had to stick the stamp into a book untiI I was ready to cash in the total. Auntie Marion went mad and was convinced that people were breaking into her house, so she tied strings of cotton all over the windows and doors to catch them out. Both my mother and Auntie Bo had the Wilshin Eyes and wore thick, if more fashionable glasses. My mother was terrified that the curse of the Wilshin Eyes might be passed down to yet another generation, but we Fortey children had perfect sight. This was a fortunate gift for any aspiring observer.

  On the Fortey side there was just one visitor. My father had a sister called Anne, who looked after Granny Fortey in Worcestershire. If Aunt Anne arrived in London for a couple of days she would storm out in tears and leave early. Brother and sister did not get on. Return trips to Upton-on-Severn were as bad. My sister and I sat on uncomfortable chairs trying not to move. A clock ticked loudly and slowly, and the daylight was filtered through maidenhair ferns in pots on the window ledge. The only good thing was the garden, on which Anne lavished her attention. I asked the name of a mat-forming creeping plant in one of her flower beds. ‘Mind your own business,’ replied Aunt Anne, cackling vaguely. It was a joke of sorts. This little (Soleirolia) herb’s common name really is ‘mind your own business’. My aunt repeated the joke several times, amused on each occasion. She was briefly married to a Mr Hill who died young. ‘Nagged to death,’ said my father.

  So our small and rather fractious family was not much visited, and my father’s fishing friends hardly ever appeared away from the water. Social life centred on my mother’s old school friends. She had been sent to a well-known private school, Haberdashers’ Aske’s School for Girls, near Ealing. Tales about her terrifying headmistress, Miss Sprules, were part of our childhood lore. My grandfather never offered Mother the chance to go on to university after matriculation, something she was angry about for the rest of her life. The ‘old girls’ remained her best friends. Like ‘Uncles’ Eddy and Arthur in the fishing-tackle shops several of them became fake ‘Aunties’. One of them was to play an important part in my journey to science. There were tennis friends who went to play on Saturdays on the Haberdashers’ school tennis courts (a privilege of old girls). I was often taken along and mooched about the school grounds, but never took up a racket, rehearsing my lifetime role as a refugee from sport. There was a gossipy friend who was gooey about a crooner called Johnnie Ray, which my mother found rather absurd. Another friend certainly never became ‘Auntie’ Barbara. She was, my mother declaimed, ‘man mad’. Barbara had lots of lovers, married a postman, and had plenty of children. Although my mother professed disapproval, I detected an undercurrent of admiration for rebellion against the social norms. She ‘didn’t give a damn’. The only social norm we flouted at 40 Ainsdale Road was painting the exterior woodwork of the house mustard yellow. The other houses on the road were black and white or generic green. The next-door neighbour was vocal in disapproval.

  ‘Auntie’ Katharine was mother’s best friend. Unlike the other school chums she had a career, as a small-animal vet, so she had the higher education my mother had craved. Her maiden name was Morley-Jones. Her parents lived in one of the finer Victorian houses in the older part of Ealing. They were ‘intellectuals’ according to my mother, a term which seemed to embody both complexity and mystery to a young mind. I visited their house with my mother on several occasions. Mrs Morley-Jones was a ‘bluestocking’, I was told, which had me looking for her well-concealed legs. There was a kind of seriousness to the Morley-Jones household that was at the same time intimidating and seductive. Katharine’s brother Robert had been sent to Bembridge School on the Isle of Wight, a pioneering place for a liberal education. He was a mathematician of some kind, and rather shy. Mr Morley-Jones was tall and courtly and addressed this small child as if he were an adult. Mrs Morley-Jones had her long hair curled up into two whorls on either side of her head, a little like earmuffs. I never did discover the colour of her stockings. The day that matters most in my story was when Mr Morley-Jones asked if I would like to see his study. I did not know what a study was, precisely. This was the first one I had visited: a small room, rather dark and with one wall lined by cabinets, holding ranks of very thin drawers. Books took up another wall. Our house was far from devoid of books but I had never seen so many together. On a square desk there was a piece of apparatus: a microscope of shining brass above a small revolving stage. Mr Morley-Jones invited me to look down the eyepiece. A bright lamp was switched on to direct light through a slide already mounted on the stage. I squinted to get my eye in the right position, which took a little time. Then I saw the most marvellous things: elliptical plates penetrated by dense pores looking somewhat like colanders, but wonderfully symmetrical. ‘Diatoms,’ said Mr Morley-Jones, ‘that one is about a four-thousandth of an inch long.’ I knew only that whatever-it-was was very small and very beautiful. Mr Morley-Jones removed the slide and replaced it with another: this time it held ornamented triangles displaying perfect symmetry. Then came exactly circular wheels with what looked like spokes between a wealth of perforations. I understood that the cabinet behind me with its dozens of drawers must have held thousands and thousands of these tiny objects. Nature operated at all scales, not just as birds and fishes and trees. You could go down and down, smaller and smaller, and there would still be more to see. Mr Morley-Jones had selected these tiny algae from the infinity of living things to make them his own. Those ranks of books must have been part of his quest for knowledge. The Observer’s Book of Everything could not exist; there was simply too much to know. That microscope was a magic portal into this other realm.

  ‘Auntie’ Katharine also helped to complete our little family. She married a farmer – ‘Uncle’ Phil – a countryman with an accent as rich as well-rotted compost. They lived on a spectacularly unmodernised farm deep in the country near Petworth, where instead of having children Katharine bred Shetland sheepdogs for show. The dogs were fed on ghastly bits of sheep that hung up in their cavernous scullery. She worked for the People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals, and sad rescue dogs were part of the j
ob. Several of them became our pets. A small fox terrier named Sue was the most beloved member of our family. She arrived as a shivering wreck, and little by little lost her fear to become totally devoted to us. She loved coming to Woodspeen Farm, where she would tackle rats almost her own size. No small dog has ever had more affection heaped upon it. We knew nothing of her history, but one day we discovered something by mischance. My sister and I had realised that by blowing up a brown paper bag and twisting the top to stop the air escaping we could generate a satisfactory bang by bursting the bag. Once, when we started this process with Sue in the room, the little dog went berserk with terror, yelping and scrabbling at the door to escape. She must have been tortured that way by her previous owner, and repeatedly. At that moment I understood what cruelty was, and it was not taking an egg from a nest. It was several days before Sue could forgive us.

  Coronation Day, 1953, was not only a big day in the life of the nation it was a big day in the family, because a television set was purchased. It was a small screen in a big box, and those without television squatted down rapt before it, including Auntie Bo and her dog, a big chow-chow. The dog and I soon became bored. I offered to take the chow for a walk on its lead, and my offer was accepted with a wave as the royal coach made its encrusted way to Westminster Abbey. The problem turned out to be that instead of me walking the chow, the chow walked me. It tugged me up Ainsdale Road and into Birkdale Road beyond, and it dragged me onwards past Sandall Close, the site of the maisonette I was born in, where a doodlebug had demolished a neighbouring house during the war; I could not stop the dog marching me ever onwards into unfamiliar territory. Fortunately, there must have been virtually nothing on the roads (everyone was watching the Coronation) because dog and boy somehow breached the Western Avenue, with me hanging grimly on to the lead, and onwards into the Haymills Estate. I was now completely lost and frightened, and probably weeping. The only republican in Ealing W5 was cutting his hedge and realised something was wrong as I shot past. I could just about say where I lived: ‘40 Ainsdale Road,’ I gasped, between sobs. I arrived home in a police car. That is all I recall about the day our monarch came to the throne; the Queen who still reigns as I write these words. Nor can I remember the name of Auntie Bo’s chow.

  In these early days BBC television programmes were not broadcast all day. They were interrupted by restful shots (‘intervals’ they were called, in black and white of course) of potter’s wheels turning or of wind playing over reed beds. When nothing at all was showing there was a curious, semi-abstract, but entirely motionless image called Test Card C. I assume it was supposed to demonstrate the range of grey shades the TV could encompass. I loved the new television, and if I had had the chance I would doubtless have gawped at it all day. As it was, after about an hour of sitting in front of Test Card C waiting for something to appear, I gave up. That was an excellent thing to happen in Ealing, W5. I was forced to do something, or read. I invented a game of my own based on the famous London Underground map. I would draw up new lines carefully on the map connecting Piccadilly and Bakerloo with District and Metropolitan Lines in ways undreamed of by town planners. On my new line a passenger could travel from Upminster to Uxbridge, by way of Bounds Green, East Finchley and Harrow & Wealdstone, in a great loop circumscribing North London. Or he might wish to go from New Cross Gate to Hounslow by way of Lambeth North and Wimbledon Park in the south. The new route might be called the Lakerboo Line or the Dillypically Line. For some reason, few of my passengers wanted to go into the middle of London. My idiosyncratic invention may, or may not, have something to do with my subsequent development. Bertrand Russell wrote an essay In Praise of Idleness arguing that lack of frenetic activity, or even boredom, may actually be a stimulant for the creative instincts, and this was about the best I could do. I began to devour books with complete lack of discrimination: Just William and Biggles and The Child’s Garden of Verses and The Water Babies and books from the grown-ups’ bookshelf. The oldest book was very old indeed, so old that ‘s’ was printed as ‘f’. It was an illustrated edition of Aesop’s Fables (‘The Town Moufe and the Country Moufe’ was included) and I marvelled at its antiquity. It was also the smallest of any of our books, almost a miniature, and the simple, tiny illustrations – woodcuts possibly – headed up a tale that invariably finished with a moral: hard work defeateth sloth (or something like that). I don’t recall the Devil maketh work for idle hands but Bertrand Russell would certainly have disagreed, which is the problem with morals in general, unless you are Miss Long. From the grown-ups’ shelf, and quite high up, was The Psychology of Insanity by Bernard Hart, full of intriguing words like ‘psychosis’ and ‘Oedipus’. Much later, I learned that my father had had some kind of nervous breakdown before the war: Hart’s book must have been purchased at a time of crisis.

  The Second World War left behind one memorial at Ainsdale Road. At the end of the garden was a miniature Anderson Shelter. It was half a tunnel roofed with overlapping sheets of corrugated iron. When the bombs arrived the family was supposed to crawl into the shelter until it was safe to go out again. In its redundant state it made an ideal ‘camp’ for a small boy. I retreated there on uneventful days to make what I termed inventions. They were combinations of bits of wire, old springs, string and whatever else I could find. I may have invented a time machine by accident on a wet afternoon, but if so I have forgotten how it was done. The inventions probably had more to do with Rowland Emett’s mechanical marvels and crazy machines that I had seen at the Festival of Britain in 1951. Let us be kind, and call the inventions works of art.

  For two years I took the District Line train from Ealing Broadway to Blackfriars to the City of London School. Very little about that journey has changed on that old line, although I do not see many ten-year-old boys travelling alone, as I did. The school was on Victoria Embankment in the middle of the City by the River Thames close to Blackfriars Bridge, and boasted a rather grand entrance, complete with columns. It was decidedly impressive after Pitshanger Lane. A splendid hall housed assembly for the whole school in the morning, when Dr Barton, the headmaster, addressed us from the podium. The little boys were at the front. The many achievements of the bigger boys were announced. It was all rather awe-inspiring. I encountered a foreign language for the first time, when Monsieur Field encouraged us in oral French. ‘Ou est le plafond?’ ‘Je m’appelle Fortey’ – that kind of thing. Mr Lewis, the form master, taught almost everything else. My fellow pupils were from wealthier families. I was once invited to a birthday party at a large house in North London, where there was a conjurer who took out coloured ribbons endlessly from an empty hat, and made coins disappear. This sort of thing did not happen in Ealing, even in W5.

  One day I did not go to the City of London School. Instead, I went back to Pitshanger Lane to take a test called the 11-plus. Miss Long was there, and even smiled wanly and said it was good to see me back in her school. I found a place in a room full of other children sitting at desks and went through various interesting exercises on paper to decide which number came next in a series of numbers, or what pattern fitted into which template, and then some fairly simple stuff with words. I did not realise the result was important. I passed the exam quite comfortably. I think both my parents were surprised to discover that I actually had a brain. They were probably relieved in equal measure that they could stop paying school fees when I was admitted to Ealing Grammar School for Boys. I was sad to leave the school at Blackfriars; Mr Lewis said how sorry he was to lose me from the class. After my last day I looked so bereft on the way back to Ealing Broadway station that a lady on the Tube gave me two shillings. I must have that kind of face.

  * * *

  Nothing was said, but the family must have been getting more affluent through my early life – the television set was an early indication. The post-war years were increasingly optimistic, and Prime Minister Harold Macmillan informed us all in 1957 that we had ‘never had it so good’. Anglers had more money in their pockets to
buy superior rods and more luridly coloured gentles. Machines freed women from boring chores like sweeping and washing. Every time we went fishing we passed the splendid art deco Hoover factory in Perivale, on the Great West Road. The building – a palace, more like – carried the legend: ‘It beats as it sweeps as it cleans’ in great big letters, which description of their eponymous appliance neatly encapsulated domestic liberation. Our first family vehicle was a black affair with a small, oval back window, an automobile in which George Raft might have fled a heist in a dozen of his movies. A series of shapely Austin cars followed, each a little larger and faster than the last. At some stage a second car for my mother appeared, an ancient 1930s Morris with the registration number beginning ALD, and immediately nicknamed ‘Oldie’. The old crock gasped and wheezed westwards to take us kids to Ruislip Lido on hot summer afternoons, where we could splash around and get cool and look for dragonflies. Then its ‘big end’ went, and the car expired on the A40 uttering a series of spectacular thumps until it ground to a halt and the dog jumped out of the window. Undeterred, my mother bought a limousine for a song, an Armstrong Siddeley Sapphire coupé, no less, with real leather seats, and a top that folded back in the sunshine. It could accommodate all our young friends on the way to the lido. I believe these were the best days of my mother’s life: children who adored her, driving an Armstrong Siddeley, which she would have described as ‘mad’ in an approving way.

  There were several caravans in succession on Woodspeen Farm, ranging from spartan to quite luxurious. The first caravan was impossibly small and there is no record of its title; the next one was called the Eccles Elite and had tables that turned into beds and a kitchen that folded out of the walls; the largest, the Stanmore Deluxe, was almost comfortable. From anonymous to elite to deluxe – what could better summarise material progression? When the rain pummelled down on the roof of the Stanmore my sister and I played board games, or headed for the barn to find the Pococks.