DIARY
BERYL BAINBRIDGE
L
ast week I went to watch my grandson Albert — known, after the Prince, as Darling Bertie — performing in a play at Ackland Burleigh School in north London. It was a much more important event than a mere entertainment, for it was part of his A-level exam and the adjudicator was sitting at a table in the front row. Yes, I know that some of us don't regard drama as having any part in what used to be the Higher School Certificate, but then times have changed. The play was Our Country's Good by Timberlake Wertenbaker, based on the story of the first British convicts exiled to Australia and their enacting of The Recruiting Officer by George Farquhar. The room in which the play took place was scruffy, the school itself a monstrous pile of stained concrete, and yet, in a matter of seconds, with few props, a bit of music and the minimum of lighting, imagination took hold and the audience was transported to Botany Bay. The acting, under the direction of Nicola Collett, was quite outstanding. There was a moment when one of the prostitute convicts removed her top and the Lieutenant — my Albert — took her in his arms. Though there was a slight intake of breath from one or two of the parents, not a sound, not a titter, came from the students. I couldn't help thinking that if that sort of thing had happened in my schooldays, not only would there have been a deafening outbreak of giggling but the police would have been sent for and the school closed down. Wertenbaker states that part of her reason for writing the play was to 'explore the power of theatre as a humanising force'; in other words, the tendency to use violence rather than debate can be overcome by theatrical education. I now wonder whether it wouldn't be a sensible idea for the House of Commons to have an amateur dramatic society, participation compulsory for certain members, for our country's good.
The weather being fine, I recently took a walk down memory lane, the one in question being the dirt track that branches left at the top of Church Row in Hampstead. I loitered in the graveyard first, stopping to read the inscriptions on the tombstone of Miss Joan Collins's dad and that of the father of James Barnes Lost Boys. Behind the church there's a downhill road in which, 200 years ago, Dr Johnson's wife, Tetty, used to live. No woman likes to take second place to a dictionary, and she was dispatched there after resorting to drink and opium to drown her sorrows. The dirt track leads down to Frognal and Arkwright Road, where I lived when I first came to London. Every day I walked my children up the hill to their school behind the Every
man Cinema and returned by way of this short cut. It has houses in it that look as if they were designed by Andrew Lloyd Wright — or someone like that — and I understood that they were very important architecturally and had to be regarded from that point of view. All I know is that, years ago, owing to affairs of the heart and worries over money,! very rarely saw anything clearly on account of the tears in my eyes.
I'm very interested in teeth, and last Wednesday visited the Hunterian Museum in Lincoln's Inn Fields to look at their dental department. A dozen or so children's skulls of the 18th century were on display, all of them sporting four grinning rows, one on top of the other, of more or less perfect molars. I thought that there must have been an outbreak of deformities brought about by the practice of giving gin to infants, but it was explained to me that the second crop of teeth are already there before the first lot fall out. I found that extraordinary, particularly as there seems to be very little space between a baby's nose and mouth. I tried to examine my youngest grandson, aged one,
who has two teeth at the top and three at the bottom, but he bit me. There was an embryo shark on exhibit, and its teeth were like tiny splinters of glass. Isn't nature wonderful?
Every night a group of youths, some of whom I've observed since infancy, gather across the road in front of my house. Sometimes they make a lot of noise, and sometimes they just sit there waiting for Godot. Two evenings ago four police squad cars screamed round the corner, at which the group ran off in all directions. Minutes later a boy was escorted back by three plain-clothes officers and shoved into one of the cars. He looked so terrified that I ran out to see what was wrong, and indeed asked if I could help by telephoning the child's parents. I was treated with such hostility that I was quite taken aback — and me speaking 'proper'. I gained the impression that I was regarded as an enemy of the people, or rather of the Metropolitan Police force. A motorbike had been stolen and all the kids had been taking it in turns to ride it round Camden Town; all, that is, save the boy driven off to the police station. I know that because once the squad cars had gone, the others in the group returned and told me so. When asked why they hadn't stuck up for their friend, they said that it wasn't on to `rat' on the real culprit. He himself hadn't ratted, even though he knew who it was. In retrospect, I realise that the coppers treated me so badly because they've become damaged by the aggressive reaction of the public to the enforcement of law and order. The mind boggles. Another amateur dramatic society may be needed at New Scotland Yard.
I've just been to my corner paper shop to tell my friend Mr Beloo what happened the other night. He didn't listen at first because he was worried about his phone bill. He's paid once, but they want him to pay again. He can't read or write, but his son has assured him that it's BT's fault, not his. Is he right? He lent me his glasses to look at their demand letter, and I told him that his son's verdict was correct, that he needn't fret. Then I repeated my story of the motorbike and the boys, and how scared I had been of the police. When Mr Beloo first came here from Uganda, his language was very restrained, very polite. Now he lets rip. He said, 'Fear is a f— bad thing, but there are many f— compensations. In my religion, if I am in my home and f— enemies are coming down the f— road to f— kill me, it is allowed for me to sleep with my sister.' There's not much you can reply to that — not even for the good of your country.
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