“All right,” Tricia said. Mark often worked late now, and she appreciated it when he warned her. She stood a moment looking after him as he walked away, wondering how they had come to this. They were familiar sarcastic strangers, dealing with each other unkindly, working around each other. She had loved him once, she knew she had. Now she loved the children and her mother, and Mark was an obstacle she knew how to get around.
During the Easter holidays her mother’s house sold, and she had to go down to Twickenham to do the final clear-out. She considered taking her mother, but in the end she took Helen. Helen was thirteen and just on the edge of puberty. Her periods had started, and she was beginning to grow breasts. A spot on her nose had recently so blighted her that she demanded to be allowed to miss school on its account. On other days she lapsed back into babyhood and played with Cathy’s dolls. Tricia thought it would do them good for the two of them to have some time together.
Seeing her old family house finally sold made Tricia sad, but Helen was indifferent. Helen didn’t seem to care about anything except her looks. “Did you notice how the estate agent looked at me?” she asked her mother.
The money was safely banked and they drove home. “I liked my friends in Woking, but I like our house in Lancaster better,” Helen said, as they got back into the car after stopping for lunch in Evesham. Tricia realized how much her daughter’s conversation was focused on herself, all “I”. Had she been like that at thirteen? She tried to remember.
“I was your age the year the war started,” Tricia said.
“Mum! That’s ancient history!”
“Recent history,” Tricia said, and drove on northwards.
She had made some local friends by now, mostly through CND and teaching and the parents of other children. She joined a society to preserve and restore Lancaster, and was soon elected secretary. They campaigned for a one-way system with a ring road, with the whole town center to be pedestrianized. “It’s the latest thing,” the chairman said. Tricia wanted the toilets in the square replaced with a fountain.
Goliath got more local gigs that summer and autumn, and became locally popular. Tricia went to hear them play several times and noticed the crowds increasing, and the size of the venues. They began to sing more of their own songs, written by the three of them. Just after the New Year of 1968, they were, astonishingly, offered a record contract. Tricia had to sign, as Doug wouldn’t be eighteen until March. “And there’s no use asking Dad,” Doug said. Once she had signed, he told her he was going to be dropping out of school.
“I think you’ll be sorry if you don’t finish your A Levels and go on to university,” Tricia said. “I’ve told you what fun I had at Oxford.”
“But music is what I want to do, and this opportunity might never come again. Goliath could be big. We could be the next Beatles.”
The fight with Mark was spectacular and never seemed to stop—it smouldered away constantly whenever Mark and Doug were in the house together. She was glad Mark was working so hard and absent so often. Goliath put out a single immediately, which went to number 36 in the charts. In March, the moment Doug was eighteen, he moved to London with his girlfriend, to work on recording Goliath’s first album.
Tricia’s CND friends were excited about events in Czechoslovakia, the “Prague Spring” movement. “It’s happening everywhere,” Tricia said. “Young people want different things from what we wanted when we were young. They’re not going to put up with what we put up with.”
“But what if the Russians send the tanks in?” David asked.
“They didn’t in Hungary, they won’t do it now. We should start a letter writing campaign in support of Czech freedom.”
“It’s not nuclear,” David said. David was an Aldermaston veteran, and he credited himself with getting US missiles out of Britain, practically single-handedly to hear him talk about it. He didn’t want to widen the peace mission.
“Having peace in Europe is the best way to avoid nuclear war,” Tricia said firmly.
In May, Paris erupted in student riots. In July, Doug’s album was released, and a single from it went into the top ten. The Americans landed a man on the moon, fulfilling President Kennedy’s brother’s dream. In September there were elections in France and a communist government was elected. Mark was disapproving, but Tricia couldn’t see why it mattered. There had been several communist governments in Italy, and Britain had a socialist government. The Czechs had a liberal government. Tricia’s mother slowly became vaguer and started forgetting the names of everyday items.
15
Journeys: Pat 1963–1967