I REMEMBER, I REMEMBER

William Cooper, the novelist best known for his tetralogy beginning with Scenes from Pro- vincial Life, recalls his child- hood before and during the

Great War.

I HAVE always said that I can't write my autobiography, for the simple reason that I can't remember what happened. When I was young my memory was below par; and now I'm old it's beyond hope. So, being persuaded to try and write something, I can't do more than dredge up random bits of debris from my past. I have no diary, no letters — and an aesthetic objection to eking out with 'research'.

I remember, I remember . . . . I don't remember being born. That happened, I'm told, on 4 August 1910. On the whole I don't regret it; nor do I bear it against my parents, intelligent and decent-minded schoolteachers both, who unfailingly did their best for me. I had a happy childhood, I think. My real name is Harry Hoff, and I clearly remember days when my schoolfel- lows called me Happy Hoff. (Needless to say I don't know the actual date of those days.) Astonishingly to me I can dredge up recollections from my perambulator, or rather pushchair, days, when I must have been aged two. The first has stayed as sharp and vivid as it was the day it happened, when I was being wheeled — I can't remember by whom — down a street with a high wall on one side and a roadway on the other, the road being crossed further down by a railway-bridge. (As the town was Crewe, it's not surprising that there were plenty of railway bridges around.) We stopped suddenly — 'Look, Harry!' I looked. In the stretch of grey sky above the bridge a black object was buz- zing toward us. 'That's an aeroplane. Do you see the aeroplane?' I saw it and have never forgotten it. (The year was 1912 and this must have been one of the first aeroplanes ever seen flying over the town. The name Harry Hawker floats through my memory — can that be so?) We watched it going overhead. Then `Oh, look at that!' That' was a blob of liquid on the oil-cloth apron covering my legs. 'It's come from the aeroplane!' I more or less understood. A drop of liquid, oil, from that buzzing object in the sky, had fallen on me. A souvenir! No wonder I have always remembered it, incredible and implausible though it seems. Of course one of the troubles with memory is that, given long enough, it ceases to distinguish be- tween what actually happened and what one has been told happened. My faith in the incident's having actually happened was partially shaken when I was sitting in a physics lecture at Cambridge, a lecture on surface tension; surely a large drop of oil falling from that height would have broken up into smaller droplets by the time it reached the ground? Yet I can still, I repeat still, see that black buzzing machine in the stretch of grey sky above the bridge, and the blob of iridescent liquid lying on the shiny black oil-cloth over my legs. I remember.

My second recollection from the push- chair days is trifling and common; it is of falling out of the said pushchair. It hap- pened in the backyard of my maternal step-grandmother's house. The yard was paved with bricks of bluish colour. I had been left on my own, and had managed to worm my way round in the harness which held me so as to be able to stand and face backwards.I leaned against the handle and the pushchair tipped up. My exact recollec- tion is not of the pain of hitting my head on the ground, not of the commotion of people rushing out to rescue me, but of the surface of the bricks as they came up to hit me. Unforgettably, a glistening slatey- blue . . . .

My third recollection is of a first encoun- ter with the Anglican Church, in the shape of a clergyman with red hair. To introduce, a touch of plausibility necessitates my coming out with a revelation which can't help but make me seem immodest about my physical appearance. My'parents told me that on holiday they once entered me in a competition for The Most Beautiful Baby In Blackpool and I won it. (That's as may be: in the matter of looks I can only say my career ever since has been downhill all the way.) It is not entirely out of the question, then, that a well-disposed clergyman, vicar of the church close to the school where my father taught, should stop us in the street and admire the child in the push-chair. He was portly, with small hands and feet, spectacles, and short, very red hair. He leaned over the push-chair, smiling at me — 'Hello, little man!' And I was terrified.

The incident recurred, on the same road leading down to the school, and I was terrified every time. When I started walk- ing to school I was terrified of going by myself. I had taken it into my head that he wanted to steal me from my parents, and somehow I was unable to tell them. My' terror lasted long enough to overlap my lighting upon the word 'abduct'. (At the age of six I loved picking up classy words; at 76 I love chucking them out — Make Things Simple.) I lived in terror when I walked to school of being abducted by the red-haired clergyman. As I have never employed an analyst I have no explana- tion. Fortunately it was what we writers call a 'one-off' experience: if I'd found I was terrified of being abducted by every red-haired clergyman I have ever met since, I should of course have employed an analyst.

I remember, I remember . . . . I can't remember the house where I was born, perhaps not surprisingly as we left it a few months later. But I can well remember the house we moved to, where we lived till I was 11. It seemed to me then pretty large. (I suppose if I went back to it now, being several times larger myself, it would seem several times smaller.) It was double- fronted, the larger of the two rooms at the front, the 'big sitting room', having a 4 We were caught standing side by side seeing who could wee highest up the coal house wall bay-window set back only a few feet from the pavement — a splendid vantage-point for observing passers-by. How many more rooms there were I don't recall — only that there were enough comfortably to accommodate my father's sister and her son, a little boy practically the same age as me, throughout the war. The Great War broke out on my fourth birthday. A few months later my father volunteered, was commissioned in the Royal Garrison Artil- lery, and posted to Flanders for the dura- tion. Meanwhile his sister's husband had been posted to West Africa, so she and my cousin came to live with us.

For the next four years we two little boys were brought up together — we were given our meals together, taken to school together, sent out to play together, sent off to bed together. Considering how much it meant to us, how much it meant to me, I find it strange that I remember so few specific incidents. I can call up a physical image of him — slightly taller and more gangling than me; with a rather high forehead, a longer face than mine, and both of his ears sticking out whereas only one of mine did; and a small anatomical difference, noticed when we bathed together and later to become the fascinat- ing subject for boyish comparison and speculation. We took to each other, and we became — this is what I remember extraordinarily, even ludicrously devoted to each other. When something made one of us cry, the other began to cry out of sympathy. A David and Jonathan, they said. As it were each other's alter ego . . . . When we played together in the garden we must have competed with each other, but I don't remember any serious trouble or fight breaking out. The only trouble I recall arising from our competing with each other was trouble from our mothers when we were caught standing side by side seeing who could wee highest up the coal house wall.

Such a relationship loosened, was bound to loosen, when we were parted after the end of the war. His father returned and they went to live in a different town. My cousin and I stayed with each other reg- ularly during our school holidays, but when we were 14 or 15 that lapsed — partly through the ill-will of my mother, who thought we had him to stay with us oftener and longer than his mother had me to stay with them. After that occasional meetings, family get-togethers, exchange of Christ- mas cards, then lapse . . . . Yet the rela- tionship lived on in my mind as a sort of ideal. As time went on I saw that it was pretty unrealistic to hold it as an ideal. Perhaps it could only come into being between children of that age . . . . I gave it up.

I now notice that I have given up my ideal of recounting memories in chrono- logical order. Remembering my father's being in Flanders, I'm reminded of our receiving from him 'field postcards', buff- coloured cards, presumably devised by the War Office, on which were printed simple statements, such as 'I am well', against which the sender put ticks. And I recall the 4 My mother's eyes were censorious: he had come back from the war bad-tempered and smoking too much cards ceasing to come . . . . Without put- ting two and two together, I sensed my mother's tension. It went on for weeks. (He must have been posted `Missing'.) And then came a day when my mother, weeping with happiness, held out another card in front of me, to read 'I am well'. A few months later he returned and I recall seeing him for the first time, standing on the corner of the street, waiting to meet me coming home from school. Civilian clothes, alert military stance. I felt it was the first time I'd seen him in civilian clothes, in a way almost the first time I'd seen him. He came back with me to the house. And there he was. To stay.

I suppose that after my father's being absent for four years I might be assumed to have become a mother's boy. I don't recall it as such. Obviously I was 'closer' to someone in whose company I'd con- tinuously been for four years than I was to someone whom I'd rarely set eyes on for four years; but I have no recollection of being indulged by my mother, though I loved her and I'm sure she loved me. What the effect of our closeness was was that I had become conditioned to see my father through my mother's eyes, an effect that I now realise to my dismay lasted for years. On his being established in the house two things were immediately noticeable: he smoked a great deal, a brand of cigarettes called Gold Flake, in bright yellow pack- ets; and he was inclined to be nervous and irritable. My mother's eyes were censo- rious: he had come back from the War bad-tempered and smoking too much, she said, with scarcely a glimmer of sympathy for him in the appalling things he had had to see and to hear and to smell and to do. Little impression was made on us by some pencil sketches — he had some gift as an artist — which he brought back with him, pencil sketches I possess to this day, of trenches, dug-outs, shell-holes, barbed wire . . . but no corpses. Poor devil. Bad-tempered and a heavy smoker, he had come back to live in his own house and to me he seemed a stranger, an interloper.

He began to teach again. I was now in the 'Big School' where boys and girls were taught separately, and where the boys were taught by women and men, my father being one of the men, yet I have no recollection of being in his class. The class I do remember, Standard III, was that of a youngish woman, Gertie Tipping, plump, lively and silly, lavish with her use of the cane. It is the only class in which I remember being caned, and I was caned frequently by Gertie Tipping — more frequently than the other boys and in my opinion more unjustly. One was caned by holding out one's hand for it. If the cane struck one's hand across the palm it stung and left a weal that lasted for a few hours:• if one flinched and drew back one's hand, or if the teacher missed her aim, the cane struck one across the fingers — horrible pain, lasting for days. I thought Gertie Tipping had a 'down' on me, and I hated her for it with a hatred that lasted untem- pered until I was freed by being moved up early into Standard IV. But I had come to hate corporal punishment with a hatred that has lasted untampered all my life. And yet I have one comic recollection. The headmaster used to stalk through the school with his cane under his arm. He achieved an immortal footnote in my family history by calling to order the assembled boys of the school first thing one morning — we began with a hymn and the Lord's Prayer — with the words: 'You're going to sing 'Oly, 'Oly, 'Oly,' — waving his cane — 'I'll cut some of you in two.'

I now come to my second encounter with the Anglican Church, being christened at the age of nine or so, an event which calls for some explanation. My father's family were all Baptists, my mother's all Wes- leyans. (On my mother's side there were local preachers and the odd parson; on my father's side not, I think.) However neither my mother nor my father were given to going to chapel, and my recollection of being taken there is solely for 'anniversar- ies'. A sort of grandstand was erected at the business-end of the chapel, and on it stood rows, one above the other, of chil- dren: the girls were all arrayed in white frocks, and I can't remember what the boys wore — if there were any boys. Behind the children stood the regular members of the choir, and the performance consisted of their singing hymns and anthems. I en- joyed it. Otherwise my experience of religious activities was pretty negligible. I was a nicely-behaved little boy, and it was a rare occasion for me to make such a nuisance of myself on a Sunday afternoon as to be threatened: 'If you go on like this, you'll be sent to Sunday school next week.' It never went further than threat.

Now, how did I come to be baptised into the Church of England? Well, at the age of seven or so my mother and father per- suaded me to have piano-lessons. In our sitting-room there was an upright piano: it - had a walnut case adorned by two swivell- ing brass candle-holders. My mother and my father played it a little and I think they both sang a little. I took my piano-lessons seriously even if I couldn't be persuaded to practise enough, and I was taught by the organist of an Anglican church. He came round to the house to give me my lesson, and chatted with my parents. He proposed that I should sing in his church-choir, not because I had a beautiful voice but because I could read music and hit the right note —

4 I was aware from the ritual that I had been the subj ect of an unusual occurrence and I felt rather pleased

thus giving the lead to boys who actually had got beautiful voices. (I learnt this later.) By chance he discovered that I had never been christened. In the Wesleyan Church I had missed being sprinkled with water when I was a baby: in the Baptist Church I might still look forward at a later age to immersion — I didn't like the idea of that. My piano-teacher proposed to my parents that the omission be rectified forthwith by the Anglican Church: they acquiesced, provided that I was willing. By this time I had been singing in the church- choir for quite a while, and I enjoyed it very much. I agreed to be baptised in the Anglican Church.

I can remember the ceremony. The participants, apart from me, were lined up across the sitting-room, facing the bay- window with the piano behind them. They were my mother and father; a couple, friends of theirs, who had lived next door to our previous house — the wife was to be my godmother. (I don't think I had a godfather.) And the clergyman, vicar of the church, which happened to be at the opposite end of the town, where my piano-teacher was organist. I stood facing them, my back to the window, in my hands a prayer-book with which I followed the service. I feel that water must have been sprinkled on me, but I can't recall the sensation. When it was all over they congratulated me in a general atmosphere of pleasure and affection. I was aware from the ritual that I had been the subject of an unusual occurrence, and I felt rather pleased with myself. I had been christened Harry Summerfield Hoff. And yet, and yet . . . I had always been Harry Summerfield Hoff.

© William Cooper 1987 Next week, William Cooper remembers his adolescence.