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UNCOLLECTED GUARDIAN PIECES

JTS columns from the Guardian newspaper

 
14. Past Imperfect


Let other people review 1972. I'll pick a reasonable year. Take a na
me and a date from the dead mail, dead flies and dust in the hall. The worst example of socialism and the community spirit lies in the decay and neglect of mansions now divided into units where nobody accepts responsibility for the bit he's not paying for. Mine and Maggie's mail will soon be lying here together, unburied with the rest.

"If you guys do this bit we'll do the stairs and maybe who's that with the helicopter cleaner will take care of the trash area..." Unsigned treaties of good intent that never last but it takes me to 1971, the summer of the American invasion which has at least one happy ending. David and Genevieve are getting married today in San Francisco. Their "joyous invitation" classically illu
minated by Greg arrived and I sent in on to Brussels as a possible "somewhere to slip across to" this weekend.

The European tour is so
metimes and endurance test for young Americans and this union was not predictable. "We've got nothing in common except a weight problem," Genevieve confided to Maggie. And David, explaining why he couldn't finish his play, told me: "I can't write unless I'm totally in love."

Love as a required condition would be hard to maintain. Like money, all you need is enough for comfort. I find that the broken relationship provides a good head of creative steam over a far longer distance. David found this too for when they returned to the States they split up. Genevieve going home to Chicago and David starting work in a small room near Golden Gate Park.

"Wouldn't it be awful if that happened to us?" Maggie said. "I'm okay alone but you've got something I need," sang Melanie from the flat upstairs. I managed to calm Maggie's unlikely fears. From the sheer emotion of it I wrote a story of young love called "Native Air" which you may have read in the Guardian last April (Gout Easter).

Later in 1971 there were a couple of letters from Greg's mother. The first was about a recent tour of
Germany when she failed to find a single friend or relation who could remember her dead uncle, Herman Goering. The second said that David had written a play about a porpoise stranded on a beach.

"It's really a nude actress who listens to a long discussion by some socially confused trippers about whether to put her back in the water or leave her to die. Vern says come on out here and bring your guitar..."

Only Americans have parents who play jazz guitar, run a nightclub, organise community theatre or are related to Herman Goering. So Maggie and I decided to do our American tour with the possibility of something more permanent. There was no shortage of hosts: Ian and Judy in
Ohio, Larry in LA, then up to Palo Alto and San Francisco with perhaps the chance of meeting William Saroyan in his home town, Fresno.

But reading Saroyan is going to America. Well it is to me - it wasn't to Maggie. Instead of meeting him in California I take him now from an Advance Laundry box; how to pack seven years in the boot of one car. The white American convertible is part of the Hollywood dream and just two years ago I waited with some excitement for Maggie to come out of Terminal 1 after spending Christmas in Scotland. I'd bought the car as a surprise.

"It's that one," she said, unerringly.

Well, the rest were taxies. And anyway Poodle was skidding around trying to find out where she was supposed to sit now. I remember no books in 1971, no plays or films memorable enough to survive the night, no songs except the ones we sang. We saw snow on Snowdon that Easter, lit out first calor gas stove for a blowy cup of tea by Lake Bala and the clutch went in the Black Mountains. But wait a minute, that was with the old Capri so it couldn't have been 1971. But we did see the first
moon landing through somebody's parlour window as we walked up from the North beach at Salcombe. That's not quite right, either; if we were walking it was the year I lost my licence, 1969.


"The first
moon landing was 1968," says Ellie. She has come to say goodbye to Poodle and take down her drawings. She has already started her first novel.

"That's only fact," I told her.

Last year, whatever wonderfully reasonable year that was, turned into 1972 as day turns into night. There was the New Year's party in the hotel at Puerto de la Cruz with strea
mers, pea-shooters, bugles, paper-hats, funny noses and too much champagne. Maggie was so ill I should have guessed that 1972 was coming. If you want to find out how welcome you are at a package tour hotel, have a sick guest in bed when she should be at the airport on change-over day.

"You're not co
ming in and we're not coming out," I told a succession of Spanish idiots.

At various times I have nursed eight children through a lot of sickness without losing one. We got to the airport by last call.

"You did it!" Maggie said, flying back to winter. She was not talking about her recovery, but
mine. This was a holiday I'd cancelled three times at the thought of a crowded charter flight. Then Peter got back from taking advertising pictures at Fyffe's banana plantation - rather inconsiderately I thought - and it had to be on. It was not just a holiday but a test flight that might make the world available.

"Now we can fly anywhere," Maggie said, on
Saturday the first of January, 1972. On this subject Rupert Brooke, who seems to have got into the food box, says:

"Proud we were
And laughed, that had such brave true things to say,
- And then you suddenly cried, and turned away."



(The Guardian, Saturday 23 Dece
mber 1972)

 

Jack Trevor Story's texts copyright ©  the estate of Jack Trevor Story 2002. Not for reproduction. Copyright in all work by Jack Trevor Story is the property of the author's heirs. Permission for use of this material can be obtained through Jackie Edwards (Story), Peter Story, Lee Story or Michael Moorcock. Reproduction of copyright material whether in text, visual or audio form by unauthorised sources strictly forbidden.

 

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