About this: Some of the themes here are a bit touchy, it's not graphic
or anything, there's no violence or real unpleasantness but it might not
be suitable for light reading.
Better, worse, who knows? It's all just for fun anyway, have a gander at the first version
here if you're interested.
I
never lost the accent, the one I acquired in early childhood in
Middlesex, well not completely anyway, the memories linger longer than
they ought -- too. One of these recollections concerns an incident that
occurred close to the time I left the area. Sheridan's Garage was the
kind of establishment that's been extinct for some time now, a town
garage nestled between retail premises. Entrance from the street was
through a pair of large blue painted doors, arranged in what's known as a wicket gate, the door on the
right as you faced them from the street, had a smaller door inset into it
for the convenience of pedestrians and the proprietor. Even then, Mr.
Sheridan's business was less than thriving, there would be the
occasional cyclist with a punctured tyre the odd jalopy, the kind of car
that inhabited the roads back when you could travel in the country for
hour at night without dipping your lights.
The
seemingly permanently closed doors of Sheridan's is one of my most
prominent recollections from the period, those first few years in Talbot
Road. We're just around the corner from where Christie lived, the
serial killer who's earlier crimes had been attributed to an unfortunate
who paid with his life for the incompetence and bigotry of others. In
fact one of Christie's later victims had worked in our grocers shop for a
while, her disappearance had caused the finger of suspicion to levelled
at my father. Wagging tongues had taken their toll on his relations
with my mother. I imagine that's one of the reasons he developed a
strong streak of Anglophobia in his later years. He was a short man, a Lithuanian emigre who arrived in England during the war, whether he was in flight from German or Russian occupation I never knew. He spoke English badly, it wasn't that he had trouble
with the language, he was an intelligent man who'd aspired to be an
engineer in his youth but he was always trying to mask his accent.
A little further down the road from the Sheridan's, on the opposite side of the street is a basement flat, the home of another one of my father's occasional shop staff. The reason why this particular lady's noteworthy is somewhat less tragic. Her daughter, a little older than me, has become the focus of my very first romantic interest although that's no particular reason for notoriety. What is interesting, though only mildly so to anyone except myself. is what became of her. She became a model and with good reason, she grew up into an extremely attractive young woman, not that I ever clapped eyes on her again, aside from her appearance in things like the Pirelli calender. I would have been blissfully ignorant of such if wasn't for the intervention of my darling sister, who took great delight in pointing the fact out to me in my tender youth.
Father wasn't well suited to retail, didn't have the patience or absence of
thought to cope with the tedium, mother was much better at it and the
business soon folded after she left him. She'd often recall tales to me
in later years, how she'd mollify customers, pass a bar of chocolate to
their kids as they paid for their groceries with a, 'Say thank you to
the nice lady' never noticing that the price of the
gift had been
added to their bill. She'd tell of my father's incompetence with money,
on one occasion, she even recalled how they first met, she'd answered
the door to him as he was calling on a lady of a certain profession, who
lodged in the same house. Not something anyone really needs to know
about their family history that -- but she's forgiven, her mind lost a
lot of sharpness as she aged. I never asked why she should be lodging in
the same building either.
I don't recall the words
exactly, not all of them but they were loud, my father ended his
diatribe with, 'Get out -- go and stay with that Jew Sheridan next
door'. Not quite sure what logic lied behind that particular
exclamation, Sheridan was an old man, but the anti-Semitism expressed
was genuine and my mother complied with his wishes promptly. It wasn't
long before I found myself passing through Sheridan's blue threshold, my
mother's hand tightly grasping mine. Inside we were greeted with tea
and platitudes. Sheridan it seemed was a man of meagre means, his living
space was cramped and cluttered. Mother's lips pursed at the
unaccustomed taste of sterilised milk as she drank her tea. I'm not sure
what I drank, probably orange juice if he had any, maybe it was just
water. I was too interested in the terra incognita that was Sheridan's
home, strangely he had a large pile of comics, you know the kind we used
to have so many of then, The Valiant, Lion, Victor, The Beano and The
Dandy too, My reading skill were basic but the four colour process of
the covers was too alluring. I wonder what suspicions a man like
Sheridan hoarding such reading materials would arouse today. Whether
such suspicions were not such a concern then or if was because of some
other imperative I'm not sure but Mother soon left and I found myself
alone in the company of Mr. Sheridan. Don't worry, Sheridan's not a
nonce so this is no tale of childhood trauma.
Mother
left quite discreetly while I was busy with the pile of comics. I was a
child used to the absence of parental supervision, being left in the
care of my sister on many occasions. A sister who happened to be
latterly diagnosed as psychotic though, she disappeared at the first
opportunity, probably to entertain the local west indian youths who were
populating the area in increasing numbers. Even so if it hadn't of been
for the distraction of the comics I would probably have complained, as
this day had been marked by more stress than was usual.
Sheridan
Himself had left the room, happy it seems to leave me with his comics. I
became quite engrossed, the illustrated war stories, populated with
have-a-go stereotypes and Germans hiding under dark helmets was
successfully holding my attention. After a while, something a little
different caught my eye, it was a book, not a comic and I noticed it
because of its colourful spine, as it sat amongst Sheridan's modest
library of books on a shelf. Emboldened by the spirit of discovery I
didn't hesitate to prise it from its resting place. The cover struck me
as strange, the comics seemed prosaic by comparison, it was something
quite surreal. There was something immediately unsettling about it, with its lurid green and yellow lettering executed in a stylized
script. The illustration depicted some objects that I couldn't quite
make out but I could see they had faces on them. The only thing I'd
encountered like them before was the Homepride men or the Tate and Lyle
Mr. Cube. Despite my sense of unease I promptly opened the book and was
greeted by a curious musty odour, the illustrations inside though, where
quite pleasant to view. They depicted various scenes, usually with some
adults accompanied by one or two children. The text accompanying the
pictures was very strange, it was quite dense and set in what
seemed to me to be a rather baroque typeface.
Just
then, Sheridan entered in the room, he was quite disturbed when he saw
me reading or rather examining the book and he spoke to me sharply
enough to get my chin wobbling. Something that took me by surprise,
since he'd been rather sanguine about my interest in his comics. None
the less I complied immediately with his request to 'Put that book down'
and retreated, my interest in his collection of printed work curtailed.
That's probably when I noticed my mother had left and I started to feel
a little vulnerable, to his credit Sheridan picked up on my mood rather
quickly and apologised for his outburst. That's probably the first time
any adult had ever done that, said sorry to me, there's precious few
occasions that adults ever express any feeling of genuine regret, to
anyone let alone a child. We only say,
sorry because we're
coerced or we feel we have something to lose, lets face it, do most
adults even have any genuine regrets when they injure or cause distress
to others?
I responded rather well to Mr. Sheridan's
contrition, well enough to give my curiosity free rein and ask him few questions: 'What's that picture on the front?'
The answer, 'A grotesque caricature' wasn't a great deal of help to a person with my vocabulary.
'What's this word say?' I asked pointing at the script on the cover.
'Toadstool'.
I was still the none the wiser and I could see the patience borne through his contrition was wearing thin, so I opted to forgo the request for a definition and ask the pertinent question, 'Mr. Sheridan -- why shouldn't I read that book?'
He
answered me directly 'That book's evil, I would burn it, a child should
be reading it?' his words seemed contradictory to my ears, he
continued, 'It's propaganda.'
'What's propaganda?' I asked, I pronounced the word as if I was querying about a male goose.
'It's a weapon, a weapon used to do bad things, used by bad people to turn others like them, make them the same as them.'
The
concept of a weapon was something I could understand even in my
immaturity. The comics I had just examined had been full of heroes and
villains employing diverse examples of such: rifles, machine guns,
knifes but the idea that a weapon could turn your foe into an ally
seemed potent indeed to my young mind. I wasn't exactly sure how such a
device could reside between the pages of a book, so I set my mind to
discovering its secrets and chanced one last question, 'How can I get a propaganda?'
'Those comics you're reading, they have heroes in them -- those heroes have guns I suppose, what they do with them?'
'They kill the baddies.' I said triumphantly.
Then he looked at me in the eye, 'That's what weapons are good for boy, death'.
Of course a child has a limited concept of death, it's something that happens to people, you know that much. In the comics the heroes had won out and survived, as the they always do in a fantasy. Sheridan's lesson hadn't fallen on fertile soil, 'Kill
the baddies, kill the baddies' I exclaimed joyously, I'm sure he must have winced at my hubris but I'm speculating, just then mother returned. She probably
been gone less than an hour, she thanked Sheridan and we left.
