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Chapter One

The vista of a cobbled road stretched ahead of Margaret's gaze. It was a solemn gaze observing only as Margaret could not yet speak and words had no meaning for her. She could only look at shapes and forms. The sun was setting winter early but low and bright and the cobbles were pearly and gleaming in the sunlight in spite of their grey colour. Margaret noticed this because she was only one foot plus inches from the ground, which seemed almost eye-level to her. She sensed the dying light and dying day and the feeling of one day passing, and knew that one year had already passed with the changing light and sun, and another one was half-way through, and then that year would have ended and two turning years of her life would have passed. She had a sense of arriving in the street from somewhere beyond the sunset.

On the other side of the street a green parrot swung chained to a ring outside the grocers, high, high above her head, impressed in her memory as a green wonder for ever.

As it was sunset she was summoned indoors by her mother. She could have only stood for a second or so unattended but time is long for childhood. She dragged a tiny doll's pram up the garden path. The step into the house was a steep obstacle for her and the pram lodged beneath it. She had no words to express this problem but had learned that making a grizzling grinding noise somehow brought results. So noisy she was her grandmother appeared in the doorway and manoeuvred the pram into the narrow hall.

The whole house was narrow and dark. It had been built before the first World War, unfortunately, of an enduring quality as the design of the houses and this older suburb was oppressive, functional only as a living environment, one of the ever-increasing rings that circled central London, each ring getting progressively newer as the heart of London grew more distant.

The rooms seemed huge, however, to Margaret and, in memory, always seemed dark. This was before the architectural love affair with glass. She looked at the table, high above her head so that the surface was a mystery to her and she had to be lifted up to smell the flowers if there was a vase on the table. There were always flowers. Generations of women past and future in her family had to have flowers around them. They were a necessity, a passion. Her high chair gave her a clearer view and stood awaiting her, with gummy beads rattling on little rods either side of the tray. There was a painted picture on the tray showing great activity on the part of depicted individuals. For some reason she associated this later with the name "Cuthbert", without knowing why.

The house was considered quite adequate for family needs then, indeed, more than adequate. It had two rooms downstairs, the living room and the lounge. The lounge boasted a carpet, fairly rare in such a home then. Most people had oilcloth or lino, polished with mop heads and Mansion policy and warmed by skidding mats. The mats could be removed bodily, hoisted over the clothes line, and the housewife clad in Amazonian domestic armour of cross-over pinafore and mob cap, belaboured the dust out of the mats with a long-handed cane beater. Such a way to get rid of inhibitions! Margaret noticed and remembered her parents sitting on the three-piece suite in the lounge and playing on a deep blue carpet, which precious and impressive object was carefully shaded from the sun with wooden Venetian blinds at the windows.

Water was heated by a range in the back living room, a tyrant fed by anthracite or coke, and Margaret had another early impression of her mother in the cross-over "pinny" and gloves, black-leading the tyrant with a brush. It smelt delicious.

Behind the downstairs rooms there was a scullery, bleak and strictly functional, unadorned by pretty china on display, spice jars, or any form of plant life, sportive ornaments, information tea towels, but there was one great luxury, an indoor bath No zinc tub hanging in the back garden for Margaret's parents to be filled and emptied for the Friday night ritual cleansing. No, a real indoor bath in the scullery. To be sure, it had a board cover which served as a kitchen table where the tubes of Vim scouring powder, the knife cleaning machine, and other domestic facilities lived and which had to be evacuated before immersion could take place.

Now it was tea-time. Margaret was hoisted into the high chair where she had a good view of her parents, James and Edith. James worked at nights on a national newspaper in Fleet Street, that street of shame, or Adventure Street, according to view, and was home ad odd hours and often during the day.

He came from a Scottish family, although in the way of families then, his parents lived nearby, the ideal distance, "enough to put a bonnet on to visit". Their home was a corner of a foreign field that was forever Scotland, set unchanging in the habits of their youth. Scottish high tea was an unchanging ritual - no dainty decadence for them with bread and jam. Consequently, a savoury mash was set before Margaret replete with gravy. She was armed with her miniature fork. Experimental possibilities opened up before her. Enthusiastically, she splashed the fork in the mixture, enthusiastically she stirred and scattered. Two disapproving faces looked at her. Animal-like she sensed something was wrong. Innocent of any guilt, she continued the experiment. Sterner still the faces said, "No, no". It conveyed nothing to her. She knew no words. "Stop it, you naughty girl". This, too, meant nothing to her. Puzzled, she looked at them uncomprehendingly, trying to penetrate some meaning. Their faces spoke disapproval and like an animal, she instinctively sensed this, but without the words she could not understand the reason. And so we learn somehow.

They were talking to one another, discussing family matters until it was time for James to walk to the newly-constructed Underground station, Wood Green.

They were discussing James' sister who had emigrated to Canada after the First World War, the last generation of the family to follow the Highland tradition of automatic emigration. "Canada, Canada", the words sounded in the baby ears. That, too, was just a sound without meaning but an impression arose in her mind at the sound of the word - a red shimmer like a glowing sunset in the sky. They continued to talk of the word on everyone's lips, of unemployment. "Jobs, jobs", she heard the word and a vision of a red cone arose in her mine. Childlike, she repeated the words and her parents laughed but only the imaginary visions could be attached to them. Her mother felt the cold and interspersed he domestic routine with comments, "Jack Frost is outside. It's jolly cold". Margaret heard these words constantly, but there was no connection with the sensations. Surrealistic visions arose at the sounds and she imagined Jack Frost as a severed heard of an old man with silver whiskers and hair perched on the window sill outside and jolly cold was a severed head too, a lady this time, in a close-fitting black swimming cap such as women wore then, and a bland face, side by side with Jack Frost. Was it the rolling sound of the phrase that suggested something rounded? Are all very young children fascinated by the sound of words and love to repeat the phrases over and over again, liking the sound of sound, but not know the meaning?

It was time for James to leave the table high chair, range, the dining room and go to the station. The Underground was the suburban wonder, dragging London ever further into their suburbs, Middlesex and Hertfordshire, sprawling pretty estates in the green fields towards Southgate, Cockfosters. Wood Green station had been excavated and the London clay transported to an open site between Wood Green and Palmers Green, which became progressively less green…

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