It was in the garden of that inn where we first saw the snobbery and class consciousness so regrettably a feature of some aspects of the social intercourse of the time. My two brothers and I emerged from the building and ran, as children do, shrieking with delight at the prospect of romping on the lawn. An RAF Wing Commander nursing a drink with his wife, affronted by this intrusion, screamed a choleric, “Oh, do shut up!” at us. My father, who had previously expressed to us his unconcealed disapproval of the wife for reading a gossipy letter aloud in the bar to a circle of sycophantic listeners, was enraged. Nothing annoyed him more than an assumption of superiority born of rank or privilege. He approached the man. “If you have any criticism of my children’s behaviour,” he told him icily, with an edge to his voice, “you would do well to refer the matter, first, to me. Will you do that?” There was a strong implication of a threat in both his bearing and his words, and the Wing Commander, so addressed by the staff by his rank alone, and not by name, was cowed. After appearing to struggle to control his reaction, he muttered truculently, “I will.” My father, the son of a warehouseman, and born into rural poverty, had also been in the RAF, as a Typhoon pilot in the war. “I’ve met his type before,” is all he said. The man had met his match, and his wife was visibly and gratifyingly shocked into silence both deserved and overdue.
We eventually found a house in West Byfleet, a few minutes’ walk from main-line service to Waterloo where the Shell Centre was located. It was about fifteen minutes’ bike ride from the fee-paying private school that had been selected for us: Dane Court Day School in nearby Pyrford. Desmond and I were to be there for two life-changing years, while Nigel, then an infant, was to go to the Marist Convent half a mile distant. By then, I was overjoyed to be re-united with our Vauxhall “estate” as a station wagon was called, with its shiny new number plate, 21 BXP, back in the country that had manufactured it, but with its steering wheel on the wrong side. Curiously, this was not only legal, but my parents adjusted easily to driving on the left side of the road. At some point that summer, we drove to the seaside. I had looked forward to this. What I saw at the beach at Rustington in West Sussex was cruelly, crudely disillusioning. There WAS no beach, only a foreshore of pebbles called “shingle,” leading to a cold grey sea, flat and sullen, under a cloudy grey sky. No sand, no palm trees, no sun or warmth, no ‘true blue’ surf: this was a parody of Macuto, Chichiriviche, and Borburata on the Caribbean. Yet people were shrieking with delight, emerging shivering from a sullen sea, arms crossed against a stubborn wind. How could they enjoy anything so horrible? Yet there was worse to come. I recall my bitterness at the cold, the rain, and, above all, the perennially leaden skies. No wonder everything was so green. Sunny days were rare. The temperature hovered between 40 and 60 degrees for much of the year. My mother, born and bred here, was even more unhappy with the lack of sun. She complained about the house’s coal-fired heating system, had central heating installed, and set the thermostat high in a futile attempt to re-create the tropics indoors. Then she found fault with the neighbours’ insularity and petty-mindedness. One of them she reviled as a snob: he had inveighed against the proposed opening of a Woolworths in the town: “it will lower the tone of the district,” he had fumed. Another visitor, dropping by out of nosiness had noticed, she said, that the house was but barely furnished, and had asked, impertinently, “Is this the first instalment, or all of it?” I don’t recall her reply, but he never re-appeared. She defiantly re-named the house “Quinta Tecka,” replacing the wooden “Apple Tree House” nameplate with a bronze one. She disliked the uninvited soliciting of a shop owner, “Yoo-hoo!” he had called out at the open door, “I’m Mr. Summers!” Indignantly, she added, “As though I cared, or knew he managed the local grocery shop,” she snorted. My brother Nigel suffered from the cold and damp, missed a lot of school, and was a source of concern to Mum.
