Fred's New Life

Late October, trees still green, brown flecks breaking through. Hazy Sun, hung low, casting deep shadows. Gold rays between high buildings.

We drifted idly nowhere, the solitary sail stretched, just enough to give momentum through the flat reflecting water.

From across the park, the muffled roar of the traffic, shunting its way along Marylebone Road, contrasting sharply with our languid isolation.

Ruth and I had taken the easy option. Why struggle? She sat forward in the thwarts, four inches of black, high heels, leather coat and matching skirt. Her hands, immaculately manicured, long cigarette held between her first and second fingers, bright red paint on the nails.

Thought of the 'Hawk' ... and the 'hardships' of H.M.Navy. I had never visualised anything like this. Today, Regents Park, tomorrow? ... who knows? ... an easy ride out to lunch? provided she manages to get up from bed in time ...

With Fred, things changed dramatically. The Borough Council had come jumping down on him, complete with compulsory purchase order. By way of getting him out faster, they had moved a couple of bulldozers into the street and had started the flattening process. Fred charged about 'Don Quixote' fashion, from this department to that department, this lawyer to some other. He refused to see the clouds of dust and rubble being pushed irrevocably towards him, the whole area being systematically erased. Nothing, no trace of the past would remain, the quiet streets gone, to make way for the future, a future of towering blocks and turmoil, a future of strange faces from far away countries.

Hackney borough Council believed that they were manifestly and morally right in creating this vast transformation, to break up and clear the path to a Utopia where all races would unite. Hackney would be the focal point of the changing world. Hackney would accept all comers, no one would be turned away, they would be given the new homes, flats, the like of, beyond their imagination, they would be given furniture, cooking ustensils, television ... money, whatever, they would want, for nothing.

Fred and all whom opposed this metamorphosis, must be made to go ... those that were able, did. The rest simply had to swallow.

Hackney Borough Council gave Fred four thousand for the house, nothing for the trouble they had inflicted on him.

Pickfords came, came in two trucks ... one for the 'good gear' the other for the 'not so good.' With the mother, wife, children and dog stowed in the car the convoy set off. When they arrived at the three storey house in South Woodford.. had cost them seven thousand, it became apparent the van with the good stuff in it had gone adrift, disappeared without trace, heard Fred muttering about if only he had let his mother ride with them ... without her he would not have needed to buy such a monstrosity of a house. Vie, with her chinchilla coat and round matching hat, rushed to her new neighbours and started telephoning for some whereabouts of her expensive maple furniture, the piano, not forgetting the chandelier, with no result.

Fred unimpressed by the start to his new life, he moaned about the necessary size of the building, the cost of keeping it warm, the rooms were large, huge, the stairway, high, wide and draughty, built when coal was thirteen shillings and sixpence a hundred weight.
No, Fred was not happy at all. Naturally, he made all the appropriate noises ... showed people all over the labyrinth. In the upper part of the house, he laid out for his son the most elaborate and expensive train set possible to imagine. The lounge, finally, was set up, an exact replica of Nightingale Road. Fred never took to it, not the slightest, he became morose, more than ever before, never going near the typewriter. Finally had his first heart attack, which was to take him 'off the hook'. Had the best treatment ... first at the Middlesex, then, at the insistence of his agent, the London Clinic. I had only ever met his agent once, but we had an instant, mutual dislike.

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