Disintegration

Very little disturbed the calm which settled over Clapton Common.. leaves fell from the long line of trees stretching across the road. Heavy lorries, cars, busses passing with not too frequent regularity, having worked their way up from Aldgate, past the Town Hall and Morning Lane, past 'Clapton Pond' where I sat so still waiting for my parents to finish their Guinesses, refusing to be rushed by the sirens and gunfire, past Lea View, through the Common to Stamford Hill.

My mother found another 'boy friend'. An Irishman, about thirty two, standing six foot in his socks against her five foot nothing. He made himself at home in her flat. This in no way improved her temperament, she tired of the man very quickly. Her regular boy friend had died quite suddenly from cancer, she never discovered this for weeks, which had taken her down a peg, having known the man for donkey's years. The arrangement had gone along well enough, although he resisted all attempts on her part to divorce his wife whom he lived with. The man, enormously fat, drank consistently which suited my mother to the ground, kind, looked after her, his death, a sharp blow. Never known her not to bounce back, assumed she would on that particular occasion.

But, other factors had crept in. For the first time, ever, saw her become afraid, afraid to go out on her nightly trot to the watering hole, this, one of the reasons, the reason, for latching on to the Irishman. No ethnic would attempt to snatch her bag with her few bob in it with the Irishman about. At the height of the blitz, she was defiant, but the thought of some alien, someone who she had no understanding of, creeping up on her and taking whatever she had and giving her a wallop for her trouble was too much, she could not stand anyone touching her at the very best of times.

Fear permeated into every crevice of the community. What two successive wars had failed to do to her, had been achieved through a bonus side effect of deliberate Government Policy. She, and most of the working class, had been successfully subdued, unable to walk the streets. .day ..or night, the working class… prisoners in their own homes.
Always considered, with regards to my mother, subjugation a total imposssiblity.. my father had tried, to his cost on various occasions and had finally given up, finding someone more pliable, no doubt.
Hackney quite so low as it could possibly sink,. the feeling of disintegration more pronounced than ever. The 253 bus passing to and fro, nothing more than a mobile assault course, streets, running with rubbish, the prolific spawn of thousands of council estates had started to change colour quite noticeably.
The estates themselves had become filthy ghettoes... being said quite openly that Hackney had become the 'dumping ground' of the World's disenchanted.. little evidence to dispute this. Lea View at a all time low.. the blight had hit every surface, Mattresses, no one, no longer, wanted to fornicate on, clothing no one wanted to wear scattered indiscriminately amongst the accumulated rubbish On the walls, long white stripes where water from broken lavatory cisterns had seeped down, year in, year out.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *


In Lea View there were, apparently, only old people "waiting" ... besieged by time and the twist of circumstance. Hope gone past them, they knew no one would come, no one would do the slightest thing for them, the Council, name only ... they were abandoned, incarcerated. Old ladies would watch me cross the estate from their windows. Going up the stairs to my mother's flat, they would unbolt, unbar, unchain their street doors, just wide enough to make sure it was me.
"Would I?..Could I? ... Would I mind? ... sorry to ask, but could you possibly put a globe in my light? I have it here ... it will only take a moment ... Would you like a cup of tea?"
I felt guilty, not quite sure why ... the collapse of everything I had been brought up on ... everything ever known.
I had gone, looking for the Sun, turning my back. attempted to think who was guilty of all this degradation, dirt, humiliation. Never once occurred to me to return to Australia. Australia held other terrors ... Hackney had never done anything to bring me to my knees. Knew every nook, every cranny. Victoria Park, my other dreamland, there, I became lost, my imagination carrying me far off, with my little sailing boat. Must have been all of six when my father finally found me over there, he had been so pleased, dressed in his Anthony Eden hat and best suit. Time never really mattered in Victoria Park.... source of endless fascination on my solitary wanderings. The disintegration only started with the repercussions of the blitz.
No, I would never leave Hackney. completely convinced of it ... I could think of no other place to go.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *