That summer became very hot ... spent rather less time driving about the desultory streets... more in our really magnificent Caravan overlooking the 'sea'. We bought a battered old boat with a Seagull outboard, regardless of the looks from everyone; we cruised up and down the Blackwater with the tide. Jenny, Mark and I ... never really reminded me of my Navy days. ....Virginia at Seacliff ... Ruth immaculate on Regent's Park Lake ... Never really thought of all that so very long ago ... Jenny had breathed new life into my body ... the past, so remote.
Wide open water, clear warm skies. Jenny with Mark cradled in her arms enjoying every moment of it. The thick clinging mud which I always managed to encounter, no problem, no deterrent to them they always stayed spotless. Yellow, Sun streaked evenings, she thought nothing of giving Mark a sip of whisky, we would put the boy down, wait till he dropped off and wander away, arm in arm, remains of the light wreathed about us.
It appeared inconceivable that a whole new existence had blossomed from the meeting of one young woman. I had lived other lives with other female faces, their existence, although still quite clear, no detail lost, now another segment of my being, totally remote, the only real factor being, time, yet, never feeling older... the years had flowed by me, the wrong side of forty, nothing... simply nothing, to show for my visit to this Planet.
Children...? A natural outcome. No man can have any say once a woman decides to go for reproduction... their fulfillment, always regarding each child completely the property of the mother, never intervened, never demanded
Charlie's child ... never knew the boy's name ... My only daughter, never to see her beyond the tenth day of birth. She was to visit England twice in my lifetime, yet never venturing ever near Clapton Common. Only momentarily considering this... wondering what she would be like. A photograph of her with her four brothers, shaken by it, so well matched, each looking so like the other. Never allowed myself to dwell on it ... nothing to be gained, no way rectifying what had been ... most certainly the clock could not be twisted back.
For some reason I had, unlike other people, not been allowed to live the so called 'normal' life, instead, spending my years falling down and picking myself up without any help from anyone ... in silence.. in isolation... and, at times... in turmoil.
Our speculation on the stock exchange went quite well, a few pounds coming in almost every day ... the shares we bought and sold miraculously increased in value. Jenny never made noises at all about leaving the flat, buying a house; maybe she thought that our rent of three pounds a week was good value........... We looked about.... went down to Kent.... evidently the thing to do.
Leave London to the disenchanted from other Countries. Hackney embraced all and sundry from any part of the world. The indigenous population fled. Overnight, Mosques and Temples sprang up mushrooming from the earth. Whole districts suddenly yielded to alien cultures. To me, moving out was no great deal. I calculated traveling time and diesel fuel ... hardly took much to see that with a mortgage these factors lumped together came down to my having to work quite hard. Leaving Jenny alone for long periods ... where I came in. No, I had suffered the War in Hackney, running and hiding behind tomb stones when the flying bomb's engine cut out. Not running and hiding now, would take more than a culture shock to shift me out ... besides began to admit... more than a fleeting attraction in Black females, my mind going back to Navy Days, The Virgin Isles ... could have any woman for one Navy Issue, pure cotton, white handkerchief....went through many handkerchiefs, soon realising, that as they were so big, could cut them in half, still get takers. But this all pure conjecture, encased in Jennifer and Mark, my subconscious remained simply that.
Time passing. Summer, all too quickly turned to winter. Caravan closed up, gripped tight in the early evening October frost, our small boat looking forlorn, upside down on the patch of grass. The water, a flat mirror, reaching towards the last of the Yellow Sunlight. Only a few big ships remained, rusting at the end of their stretched taunt anchor chains against the tide. Silence, darkness, descending along the coast. Small lights flashing monotonously, endlessly across the estuary. Thought of 'Tumby Bay', of Max and the 'Hawk', had been no guiding lights on that particular night, the baker, whose job it had been to turn the beacon on, had become drunk, forgotten that there might just be a visitor from across the Gulf. We spent that brilliant moonlit night watching the shags fly up off the rocks as we cruised nervously up and down, waiting for the dawn.
That part of my existence appeared light years away, the old cab trundling towards Hackney, Jenny and Mark fast asleep in the back.
The caravan period.... a lovely chord in our three lives.
Jenny became more confident with the passing of time, her appalling injuries gradually forgotten; she had thrown her sticks away in early pregnancy. The security that this flat gave her, produced a poised, quite beautiful, young woman, intent only on her child and myself, only occasionally did she slip back, her memory would suddenly lapse, the criss-cross scars beneath her face appearing faintly.
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