Conspiracy of Secrets. Bobbie Neate
Ernest, and how he grabbed the boat from under her nose and set off without her, then lay in the punt listening to his records on his wind-up gramophone, while eating quantities of the richest Sutton Coldfield chocolates. He deigned to give her an occasional wave from behind the horn of the gramophone, as she stood stranded on the lawn. But by now Louis was tapping his teaspoon on his cup and she drew to a halt. He had grudgingly agreed to these stories from her childhood but she appeared to be barred from reminiscing about her earlier adult life when we were very young.
It seemed so strange that Stepfather never recounted any incident from his early years. If I turned and asked about his childhood he never replied, so I soon learned that questions about his previous life were unwelcome. Even a mild ‘Where did you go to school?’ might provoke a thunderous look, but if I ventured to ask, ‘Where did you live?’ his mood would darken further. Yet his silences only increased my curiosity. Was childhood too demeaning for such a great man? As I grew older and perhaps a little braver, while my knees still knocked I would ask the two questions that utterly infuriated him: ‘What did your father do?’ and ‘What did you do in the war?’ These often made him strike out in rage.
On one occasion after I challenged him hard about his past he finally snapped angrily at me, ‘My father was a cotton broker.’ Those few words stopped me prying for some months. Then, years later, when we boldly pushed him about his lack of relatives, he lost his temper and swung his arms out in a mock, or perhaps real, attempt to hit us. ‘I had an Uncle Oliver. You must have heard of him.’
For all that, Stepfather could not resist occasionally tantalising us with a boast about his past years. If Question Time was on TV he might brag, ‘Of course, it’s not as good as when I appeared on it. The programme was called The Brains Trust and was on the Light Programme. In those days, just after the war, everybody listened.’ When I was older the question of why he had been selected was on the edge of my lips, but I resisted the temptation. I didn’t want to hear another torrent of bragging stories, which always appeared too fanciful to be true. However, years later he could not resist showing us a huge antiquated audiotape in a metal circular box with ‘BBC’ written on it. Stepfather also seemed to know many TV personalities. He rarely liked them. The journalist and author Malcolm Muggeridge had once been his friend, but not any more; and when the politician Roy Jenkins or the historian A. J. P. Taylor appeared he always made some derogatory remark.
Stepfather’s name fascinated me. Why was he called Louis? It was such a strange-sounding name. None of my friends’ fathers had French names. Why did he? And why did nobody address him as Louis? Even my mother avoided using it. And pronunciation of his name caused all sorts of problems to others.
My stepfather was a romantic and always seemed fond of my mother, and she shyly returned his affections. He bought her endless bunches of flowers, showered her with expensive presents and never let her leave the house without a kiss. He always watched her walk through the painted blue gate from the landing window if she was nipping out with us children.
Of course that does not mean they did not have quarrels. There were lots, especially in the early years. When I was older, the rows were either about our behaviour or about a woman called Auntie Mamie.
When I was little my mother went shopping every day; of course, Stepfather came too. She rarely went out on her own. Our first stop was the baker – Mum would chat to the lady behind the counter as she passed me armfuls of bread to carry home. But there were other, more worrying, conversations that I overheard on the Cambridge pavements.
‘Yes, of course, I’m still going to do the baking for the Mission to Seamen. Some of my charity works will stop, but not the one most dear to my heart.’
Even when I was that young, all did not seem right. Why did she have to repeat this to so many people? I wondered if my mother was somehow disgraced. There were other whispered asides that I didn’t understand.
It was my mother who had to deal with the running of the house. She paid all the bills. There were times when Louis wanted more control. This always proved disastrous and he ended up exploding with anger with one of the poor individuals who were trying their best to help. My mother would then be called upon to use her charm to encourage the tradesman back to his job. But Louis’s behaviour lost us the services of many local businesses for ever. Builders, plumbers, florists, stationery and book stores all experienced his wrath, but the biggest loss of all was the large department store Eaden Lilly. They banned him. It proved a great inconvenience to us all and slowly my mother began to do more and more of her shopping in London. But he even managed to destroy some of her fun there. There had been some sort of argument with the Harrods management about money owing. As a result, Louis refused to shop there any more. Little did I know that he had been refused their credit.
In the afternoons when I was very small Louis used to cycle into Cambridge. He first topped up the air in the tyres of his extra-sturdy bike, fixed with dynamo lights and three thumb-click gears, then he would wrap the bottom section of his russet corduroy trousers into tight tidy folds and clip each ankle with a black sprung clip. If it was colder he would wear his fawn duffle coat and Emmanuel scarf. As he opened the blue gate he would turn and wave at my mother who stood at the landing window. When he came back, I remember, he reported to my mother he had collected his post from his old college, kept in a strange box in the porter’s lodge. He would also tell of visiting his mother and strange sister in Newnham, where they lived before they permanently moved in with us.
For, unlike like my friends’ fathers, Stepfather did not leave for work in the mornings and return tired in the evenings. Instead, he lurked at home writing about golf. Then, as he became more interested in his wife’s passion for motor racing, he developed his already well-honed photographic skills to publish a yearly account of the season’s Grand Prix races. Each year he became more adventurous with his pictures and text and the racing circus began to fear each new edition, in case an individual was featured in an unflattering or derogatory manner.
Mum had been a proud housekeeper and Stepfather greatly increased her work. She always had a freshly ironed tablecloth at every mealtime. In those early days she must have washed and ironed a mountain of linen every week. She had needed a survival strategy. It evolved over the years. She subtly looked and waited for the opportune moment when Louis might be in a good mood – it would eventually come and then she would pounce.
One Thursday, after she had come home from her weekly shopping trip to London, she produced a big parcel, which she had bought at one of the smart stores she visited. She allowed us to unwrap the packet and, as we opened it, the unaccustomed waft of an oily product hit our noses. It was a plastic tablecloth. Stepfather looked thunderous. ‘I’m not eating with that sleazy object on the table,’ he said.
‘We’re trying it out while I iron the embroidered tablecloth. There isn’t a clean one at the moment.’
I can remember mum’s sheer joy at only having to wipe away drops of gravy, the odd piece of roast potato after it had shot off our plates, or spills from the water jug. Slowly the plastic cloth replaced the embroidered ones. She had won a small battle. Her victories were subtle, but they began to work for her. I watched her manoeuvre him to her advantage and I believed that, when I needed help, she would always do her best to win a small contest against him, for me. He was manipulative, so she became crafty.
Now I can write quite confidently that Louis Stanley was my stepfather, but as a child I was perplexed. And there was nobody I could ask. He insisted on telling everybody else that we were his children and, as nobody ever mentioned a father other than this stranger, who had once given me a huggable teddy to replace my stiff-jointed monkey, I was confused. I don’t remember asking questions when I was told that this massive, balding, thick-set man was suddenly to be known as Papa and not Uncle Louis. Nobody liked the name ‘Papa’, so Mum tried to use Poppy. But nobody liked this version of his name either.
I was always too frightened to ever ask questions about a real father. But I remember querying with myself whether I really had a proper father or not. I wondered where I had got the notion he might have been a vicar. There were times when I overheard gossip about a father having a possible fling with a maternity nurse. Was this my father?