*
Lloyd Williams asked Dave to step into his study on Saturday morning.
Dave was about to go out. He was wearing a horizontally striped blue-and-white sweater, jeans and a leather jacket. ‘Why?’ he said pugnaciously. ‘You’re no longer giving me an allowance.’ The money he earned playing with Plum Nellie was not much, but it was enough for Tube fares, drinks and, occasionally, a shirt or a new pair of boots.
‘Is money the only reason for speaking to your father?’
Dave shrugged and followed him into the room. It had an antique desk and some leather chairs. A fire smouldered in the grate. On the wall was a picture of Lloyd at Cambridge in the thirties. The room was a shrine to everything that was out of date. It seemed to smell of obsolescence.
Lloyd said: ‘I ran into Will Furbelow at the Reform Club yesterday.’
Will Furbelow was the head of Dave’s school. Being bald, he was inevitably known as None Above.
‘He says you’re in danger of failing all your exams.’
‘He’s never been my biggest fan.’
‘If you fail, you will not be allowed to continue at the school. That will be the end of your formal education.’
‘Thank God for that.’
Lloyd was not going to be riled. ‘Every profession will be closed to you, from accountant to zoologist. They all require you to pass exams. The next possibility, for you, is an apprenticeship. You could learn to do something useful, and you should think about what you might like: bricklaying, cooking, motor mechanics . . .’
Dave wondered whether Dad was out of his mind. ‘Bricklaying?’ he said. ‘Do you even know me? I’m Dave.’
‘Don’t sound incredulous. These are the jobs people do if they can’t pass exams. Below that level, you could be a shop assistant or a factory hand.’
‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this.’
‘I was afraid you would do this, close your eyes to reality.’
Dad was the one closing his eyes, Dave thought.
‘I realize you’re getting beyond the age where I can expect you to obey me.’
Dave was startled. This was a new approach. He said nothing.
‘But I want you to be clear about where we stand. When you leave school, I expect you to work.’
‘I am working, quite hard. I play three or four nights a week, and Walli and I have started trying to write songs.’
‘I mean that I expect you to support yourself. Although your mother has inherited wealth, we agreed long ago that we would never support our children in idleness.’
‘I’m not idle.’
‘You think that what you do is work, but the world may not see it that way. In any event, if you want to continue living here, you’ll have to pay your share.’
‘You mean rent?’
‘If you want to call it that, yes.’
‘Jasper’s never paid rent, and he’s lived here for years!’
‘He’s still a student. And he passes his exams.’
‘What about Walli?’
‘A special case, because of his background; but sooner or later he must pay his share, too.’
Dave was working out the implications. ‘So, if I don’t become a bricklayer or a shop assistant, and I don’t make enough money with the group to pay your rent, then . . .’
‘Then you will have to look for alternative accommodation.’
‘You’ll throw me out.’
Lloyd looked pained. ‘All your life, you’ve had the best of everything handed to you on a plate: a lovely home, a great school, the best food, toys and books, piano lessons, skiing holidays. But that was when you were a child. Now you’re almost an adult, and you have to face reality.’
‘My reality, not yours.’
‘You scorn the kind of work that ordinary people do. You’re different, you’re a rebel. Fine. Rebels pay a price. Sooner or later, you have to learn that. That’s all.’
Dave sat thoughtful for a minute. Then he stood up. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I get the message.’ He went to the door.
As he left, he glanced back, and saw his father watching him with an odd expression.
He thought about that as he went out of the house and slammed the front door. What was that look? What did it mean?
He was still thinking about it as he bought his Tube ticket. Going down on the escalator, he saw an advertisement for a play called Heartbreak House. That was it, he thought. That was his father’s facial expression.
He had looked heartbroken.
*
A small colour photograph of Alice arrived in the post, and Walli studied it eagerly. It showed a baby like any other: a tiny pink face with alert blue eyes, a cap of thin dark-brown hair, a blotchy throat. The rest of her was tightly wrapped in a sky-blue blanket. All the same, Walli felt an upsurge of love and a sudden need to protect and care for the helpless creature he had made.
He wondered if he would ever see her.
With the picture was a note from Karolin. She said that she loved Walli and missed him, and she was going to apply to the East German government for permission to emigrate to the West.
In the picture, Karolin was holding Alice and looking at the camera. Karolin had put on weight, and her face was more round. Her hair was pulled back, instead of framing her face like curtains. She no longer resembled all the other pretty girls in the Minnes?nger folk club. She was a mother now. It made her even more desirable in Walli’s eyes.
He showed the photograph to Dave’s mother, Daisy. ‘Well, now, what a beautiful baby!’ she said.
Walli smiled, though in his opinion no babies were beautiful, not even his own.
‘I think she has your eyes, Walli,’ Daisy went on.
Walli’s eyes had a slight Oriental look. He figured some long-ago ancestor must have been Chinese. He could not tell whether or not Alice’s eyes were similar.
Daisy continued to gush. ‘And this is Karolin.’ Daisy had not seen her before: Walli had no photos. ‘What a pretty young woman.’
‘Wait till you see her dressed up,’ Walli said proudly. ‘People stop and stare.’
‘I hope we will see her, some time.’
A shadow fell over Walli’s happiness, as if a cloud had hidden the sun. ‘So do I,’ he said.
He followed the news from East Berlin, reading the German newspapers in the public library, and he often questioned Lloyd Williams, whose speciality as a politician was foreign affairs. Walli knew that getting out of East Germany was ever more difficult: the Wall was being made larger and more formidable, with more guards and more towers. Karolin would never try to escape, especially now that she had a child. However, there might be another way. Officially, the East German government would not say whether legal emigration was possible; indeed, they would not even say which department dealt with applications. But Lloyd had learned, from the British Embassy in Bonn, that about ten thousand people a year were given permission. Perhaps Karolin would be one of them.
‘One day, I feel certain,’ said Daisy; but she was just being nice.
Walli showed the picture to Evie and Hank Remington, who were sitting in the drawing room, reading a script. The Kords were hoping to make a movie, and Hank wanted Evie to be in it. They put down their papers to coo over the baby.
‘We have our audition with Classic Records today,’ Walli told Hank. ‘I’m meeting Dave after school.’
‘Hey, good luck with that,’ Hank said. ‘Are you going to do “Love Is It”?’
‘I hope so. Lenny wants to do “Shake, Rattle and Roll”.’
Hank shook his head, making his long red hair swirl in a way that had caused a million adolescent girls to scream for joy. ‘Too old-fashioned.’
‘I know.’
People were constantly coming and going at the house in Great Peter Street, and now Jasper came in with a woman Walli had not seen before. ‘This is my sister Anna,’ he said.
Anna was a dark-eyed beauty in her middle twenties. Jasper was good-looking, too: they must be a handsome family, Walli thought. Anna had a generously rounded figure, unfashionable now that all models were flat-chested like Jean ‘the Shrimp’ Shrimpton.
Jasper introduced everyone. Hank stood up to shake hands with Anna and said: ‘I’ve been hoping to meet you. Jasper tells me you’re a book editor.’
‘That’s right.’
‘I’m thinking of writing my life story.’
Walli thought Hank was a bit young, at twenty, to be writing his autobiography; but Anna had a different view. ‘What a wonderful idea,’ she said. ‘Millions of people would want to read it.’
‘Oh, do you think so?’
‘I know it, even though biography isn’t my field – I specialize in translations of German and East European literature.’
‘I had a Polish uncle, would that help?’
Anna laughed, a rich chuckle, and Walli warmed to her. So did Hank, and they sat down to discuss the book.
Carrying two guitars, Walli left the house.
He had found Hamburg a startling contrast to East Germany, but London was unnervingly different, an anarchic riot. People wore all styles of clothing from bowler hats to miniskirts. Boys with long hair were too commonplace even to be stared at. Political commentary was not just free, it was outrageous: Walli had been shocked to see a man on television impersonating Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, talking in his voice and wearing a little silver moustache and making idiotic pronouncements; though the Williams family had laughed heartily.
Walli was also struck by the number of dark faces. Germany had a few coffee-coloured Turkish immigrants, but London had thousands of people from the Caribbean islands and the Indian subcontinent. They came to work in hospitals and factories and on the buses and trains. Walli noticed that the Caribbean girls were very stylishly dressed and sexy.