In the sixties I went to school with children of the beautiful people. Only one other mother, apart from mine, wore knee length skirts. At night I would imagine my real parents, they were young Americans with big smiles and tight pants. They were Doris Day and JFK. In my prayers they would appear in a long shiny car bursting with gifts, for me their beloved daughter, and for the kind old people who had been caring for me in their absence. The tearful joyous reunion would end with a heartfelt promise to keep in touch with the Farquhars and then off we’d go into the future.
My dream parents were needless to say very brave people who were involved in top secret work of international importance. I have always been enthralled by espionage and double agency.
Anyway Humbert the lodger was no Bogart. He wore the belted up mac of a private detective but there his glamour ended. He was in his fifties when he came to stay. He chain smoked no.6 and I collected the cards. By cards I suppose I mean coupons. If you collected hundreds or thousands you could send off for gifts. As my real parents, the Farquhars, were not in favour of material goods I encouraged poor Humbert. When he was dying of lung cancer, ten years later, I lived in North Soho. He came on a farewell trip.
‘You killed me sweetheart’ he smiled.
Poor Humbert. He was in the house when my father died. He took me to school that morning and I asked him to stand at the end of the road. I didn’t want to be seen with him. I wasn’t told about my father till after school but thought something was different. The headmistress, a plump aristocrat in high heels and camel hair coat, hugged me. I smelt the gin and heady scent.
My sister collected me and blurted out the shocking news as we crossed the King’s Road. I screamed and can still hear it.
My mother looked amazing that day. I see her so clearly wearing sunglasses and a pale yellow linen suit sitting very still in the drawing room. She was crying as she embraced me and offered me strawberries. I didn’t want to eat. I only wanted to watch TV. I watched Morph, a shape shifting plasticine boy. It seemed the strict rules had been abandoned that day. I was in a trance when Humbert appeared and patted my head. I shouted ‘go away’ and never got told off. He went.
When I returned from a month’s exile, in the happy family lives of others, the death was never mentioned, in this way my father just vanished. My sister said she thought she’d seen him riding a bicycle but everyone silenced that one. I tried to talk about him but my mother said ‘time is a great healer’ and asked me to paint her a big bright field of poppies. She had found an unwanted frame outside an art gallery and thought it needed something cheerful that would go with the carpet which she called Spanish Gold.
She still has that painting. I look at it and think of poppies for remembrance, red poppies at the Cenotaph and the other poppies for forgetting. The field of poppies where Dorothy and her friends fell asleep is often on my mind as are the pipes of opium I have long romanced and never smoked.
Humbert stayed on as a lodger and I punished him, he asked for it. He liked to be smacked with a ruler and I obliged. I wonder what sort of life had brought this unlikely man to Chelsea in the swinging sixties.