“No, Gran, Mum’s right. She does sound stuck up,” Cathy said. Cathy was ten now, in her last year of junior school.
“It’s ridiculous for people to think I’m stuck up. My father mended wirelesses and my mother was a nursemaid.”
“But you went to Oxford and married Dad,” George said. “Try to talk more Lancashire. I do in school, and people like me better.”
But Tricia couldn’t deliberately change the way her voice came out of her mouth. Instead she tried to find things to talk about to them that cut across barriers. Childcare, illness and her mother’s senility worked for this, as her chilblains had long ago in Oxford.
In 1969 homosexuality and marijuana were legalized by the Labour government, and the death penalty was abolished. Mark saw the first of these as signs of the forthcoming apocalypse, but Tricia was delighted about all three. The Americans broke ground on a moonbase. Tricia watched the men walking on the lunar surface and wondered what use it was to anyone. George went briefly astronaut mad and spent his pocket money on magazines and books about space and trips to the moon.
In January of 1970 Helen turned sixteen. She took her O Levels in June and did well. Nevertheless she insisted that she was not returning to school. “I’ll get a job,” she said. When her father raved at her she threatened to move to London and stay with Doug. Helen had always been her father’s favorite, and he seemed devastated that she was abandoning his ideals, as he put it. He blamed Tricia, although she disapproved of Helen’s decision as much as he did, if more quietly.
Helen got a job in a coffee bar in town. She back-combed her hair and bought tie-dyed clothes. She looked like a hippie princess. She found boyfriends and spent a lot of time out with them. Tricia wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or horrified that she went through them so fast, and always had two or three of them ready to take her out. Tricia took her to the doctor and begged her to prescribe the pill for Helen. Tricia still took her own pill every night, though it had been a long time since Mark had brought home a bottle of wine. She thought about that as she walked back from the surgery with Helen. Perhaps Mark believed she was too old for more children? Perhaps he would leave her alone now?
Tricia worried about Doug, worried about drugs and the price of early success. She went to London, or somewhere he was playing, every few months and saw him, and he always came home for Christmas. He and Sue were as settled as a married couple, although they were not married and there was no suggestion of marriage. Mark refused to countenance the relationship, but Tricia saw no point in closing her eyes to it. Sue wasn’t what she’d have chosen for her son, but she was clearly his choice. She wrote the music for their songs and Doug wrote the lyrics.
Back at home, Tricia was working at Morecambe Grammar School for a few months as the English teacher was on maternity leave. She enjoyed teaching the same girls over a period of time, and they seemed to like her. She liked Morecambe out of season, the deserted sea front with the clacking flagpoles, the distant water, even the way the sea came in sideways over the sands. She had always loved the sea. She didn’t like the way the place was decaying. She suggested that the Lancaster Preservation Society take an interest in it, and found herself alone. You could walk from Lancaster to Morecambe in an hour, but they were worlds apart emotionally, and the people of Lancaster wanted nothing to do with it. Undeterred, Tricia started a Morecambe Preservation Society by putting up a notice in Morecambe Library announcing the first meeting and then seeing who showed up. She served as secretary for that society too.