The Whites of Gold Read online

  Samuel Lock

  The Whites of Gold

  CONTENTS

  FOREWORD

  THE JOURNAL OF EDWIN CARPENTER CHAPTER I

  CHAPTER II

  CHAPTER III

  CHAPTER IV

  CHAPTER V

  CHAPTER VI

  CHAPTER VII

  CHAPTER VIII

  CHAPTER IX

  CHAPTER X

  CHAPTER XI

  CHAPTER XII

  CHAPTER XIII

  POSTSCRIPT

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Samuel Lock was born in 1926. He has worked as a painter and stage designer, and as a scriptwriter in documentary cinema. He is the author of five plays and two previous novels, one of which, As Luck Would Have It, won the Sagittarius Award.

  by the same author

  AS LUCK WOULD HAVE IT

  NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH

  for

  Alan Hollinghurst

  Observe yourself carefully. Of all the feelings you have ever had, has a single one disappeared? No – every one of them is preserved, is it not? Every one. The memories in one’s heart never fall into dust, and when you peer down the shaft they are there below; looking up at you with their open unmoving eyes.

  Gustave Flaubert

  FOREWORD

  The material for this book has been provided by an autobiographical piece of writing that came into my possession a long time ago – now almost ten years. It was given to me by someone I had then known for about eighteen months, the manageress of a small, bistro-style restaurant in South Kensington, where I had first been taken by friends who told me they liked the place a lot. Mostly, they said, because of Thelma, the manageress, who obviously enjoyed what she was doing and made her customers feel so welcome. Also, they said, because the food, though simple, was good, and reasonably priced as well; and because the people who ate there were usually rather interesting.

  All of which proved to be true; and which is why, after that initial visit, it quickly became a favourite eating place of mine; particularly if I was alone, when I knew that Thelma would greet me warmly and be attentive, finding a table for me in a corner where I could read or sometimes, when the need was pressing, even do a little work – a little writing, that is.

  Then one evening, as I sat scribbling away after supper, Thelma came up to me and asked if I was a writer: to which I answered yes, since it was pretty obvious from what I was doing that I was.

  ‘Have you always been one?’ she enquired.

  ‘Not always,’ I replied, ‘but for some time, though.’

  ‘Fascinating,’ she said with a generous smile, and moved away, showing me that she didn’t want me to think her too inquisitive. After that, I would often take a notepad with me when I went there to eat, or perhaps a few pages of something I had already written but with which I was not yet pleased.

  Then – this must have been about six months later, as I recall – Thelma suddenly asked if she could have a word with me – about something particular, she said – which naturally intrigued me, since she had always maintained a distance between us, as she did with all her customers.

  ‘It’s about this,’ she said, as she placed a brown paper parcel on the table in front of me. ‘It’s a kind of journal – written by a friend of mine who has died … He left it to me,’ she added; then went on to explain that she had been wondering what to do with it, since its contents seemed rather unusual; and she thought that with my being a writer it might possibly interest me; and might even be something I could use.

  In this way, through this very slight relationship with Thelma, the material for this book came into my hands. For on reading through what she had given me, I saw that the subject matter it contained might one day reach a wider audience; which I now hope that it will.

  Parts of the manuscript were written in a rather hasty, slapdash manner and the handwriting wasn’t always easy to read; but much of it had been written with care and in great detail; and with a certain neatness of expression as well; so that there were moments when I began to wish that I had been the author of it myself!

  Regarding the text that follows: I have had to re-work sections of it that the author left unpolished; and in order to fill out the narrative at times I have had to invent a few passages as well; which has meant that the style of the writing has perhaps become a little similar to my own. At first I believed that I would also need to re-shape the story the text has to tell, in order to give its seemingly irrational, haphazard sequences a more structured form of chronology. But in my attempts to do this, I learned that the book would quickly be spoiled, and that what the narrator sets down always springs from an inner, emotional centre to which he constantly returns; which in itself I think justifies the book’s general shape and pattern.

  It seems sad to think that Thelma’s friend was already dead when she put the manuscript into my hands, for it would have meant much to me if I could have met him. However, although it is suppressed at moments by my own, his voice is to be heard here in these pages, and my hope is that through them he will live on; and that the story he has to relate will continue to do so as well. Whatever, I feel proud to have been made the recipient of such a gift; and by someone who appears at times in the book’s narrative, by the way, but whose real name I haven’t used at her request. Thelma Rillington is an invented name; as, for that matter, are the name of the book’s narrator – Edwin, or ‘Eddie’, Carpenter – and the names of most of the book’s other characters as well.

  In my view, truthfulness and sincerity are what count in writing; and it seems to me that in this young narrator’s story (for he was just thirty-three years old when he was working on his text) there is a fair supply of both.

  Attached to the manuscript was a brief letter addressed to Thelma, which, with her permission, I have decided to use as a kind of frontispiece – partly to help lead one into the main text, and also because it offers a speedy snapshot, as it were, of the relationship that existed between Thelma and her friend.

  S.L.

  London 2001

  Dearest Thelma,

  You know just as well as I do how gravely ill I am and that I am unlikely to be here much longer – so I thought that I would add this to the things I am leaving you in my will. It is something I wrote when we were younger; out of a desire to clear my mind, I suppose, and to have set down somewhere upon paper a few of my little secrets.

  You’ve always said that you wanted to know more about me – so now you can! I just hope that my revelations won’t come as too much of a surprise, or too big a shock; but you’ve been my best friend for so long that I thought that you, at least, should be given the chance of gaining a fuller picture. Once you’ve read the stuff – if you can get through it all, that is! – just throw it away.

  We’ve had some really lovely times together; and you and Len have always been so kind and generous towards me, which I’ve appreciated a lot. What you will do with all the things in my flat (that I have left you in my will, I mean) I can’t think; for once you have read through what I say here, I am sure you will view them differently – or quite a few of them at least.

  I’ve been a disturbed soul and in a way, perhaps, not a very nice one. But we are what we are – aren’t we? And none of us is perfect, as they say.

  Be happy, Thelma, and think of me when you can. I am sure that once I am in the Great Hereafter, the thoughts of friends will count a lot to me as they fly upwards through the ether.

  With so much love to you; and to Len as well – that dear, sweet, lovely husband of yours.

  Yours ever,

  Edwin.

  P.S. I would have liked to have left some of my things to Mark, since, apart from Len and yourself, he is the only person I have e
ver cared for – cared for deeply, that is. But I am out of touch with him now, as you know, and don’t have his address: which means that he exists only in memory – as, it seems, do so many things.

  THE JOURNAL OF EDWIN CARPENTER

  I

  It is 1969 and I am writing this in the basement flat in which I live in London. Quite why I am writing it, I don’t know. It could be because I have reached a moment in my life when I need to look back, and to relate for a while to the past. Perhaps too, because it is only by writing things down that I can hope to make some sense of my life, and of the mixed-up muddle it is in my mind.

  But where to begin? I dislike writing – autobiographical writing – that begins with I was born on such and such a date, and then gives the exact place of birth, the town, city, county and so forth. It would be better, I think, if I began at some point, some specific moment, that holds a particular meaning for me – one that is fixed in time by an emotion that is attached to it – then have the story spread and grow from there.

  One of the strongest memories of my early years, and one that might easily be used as a beginning, is of how very nervous I felt, yet excited at the same time, when I finally took the decision to leave my father’s house and so rid myself of his tyranny. I know that is a strong word to have used, but it is more than warranted, I believe, by the negative effect my father had upon me when I was small.

  When I say my father’s house, that sounds as if my mother had died or wasn’t there, when in fact she was. It is just that she spent such a lot of her time in her room, reading or saying her prayers; and not going out very much, except to do a little shopping, perhaps, in the afternoon; and always to church on Sundays twice: at eleven o’clock in the morning, and at six in the evening for evensong, when her slightly shrill, reedy voice could be heard above the richer sounds made by the rest of the congregation and the choir.

  My father rarely went with her, church being for him only on high days and holidays, as he spoke of them – meaning Easter Sunday and Christmas Day and days such as those. And always on Armistice Day, or Poppy Day as we called it; when, being an alderman of the borough, he saw it as a duty of his to attend the service held at our church in honour of those who had died in the two world wars; in the first of which he had served as a soldier himself, and had suffered the shrapnel wound that had damaged his knee, and that caused him to walk at times with a stick.

  I can see him clearly. Tall, already grey-headed – and distinguished in a way; and certainly a very respected and respectable man, what one might call a real pillar of the community. But everyone who knew him knew as I knew only too well that there was something strange about his make-up: something cold, detached, that set him aside, and that made him seem different from the other local men of his age, the townspeople and various farmers of the area that he counted as his friends.

  The house we lived in was quite large. It had six bedrooms (three of which were seldom used) and a spacious sitting room (it was never referred to as the drawing room) that was seldom used as well – partly because we entertained so very little, and also because of it not being on the ground floor of the house where the large dining room and the kitchens were placed; and where, at the very back of the building, there was my father’s office-cum-study.

  I suppose that, in a certain way, there was something Whistlerian about my father, in the sense that he might have been painted by Whistler, or indeed might have stepped out of a picture by that artist, since the tones and colours of his skin and hair tended to smudge and fuse into one, offset by the crisp whiteness of the stiff collars he put on each morning before breakfast, and kept on throughout the day. Which meant that he always had a kind of well-cut look about him, even when wearing a cardigan, which he was inclined to do indoors, and not only in the neatly buttoned-up suits he wore whenever he stepped out into the street – to walk in the town, perhaps, or to go to the Castle Inn for a drink, or on Thursdays down to the cattle market, which was close to the town’s small railway station, and just a little over a mile away.

  It was an often joyless life for me – particularly when I was small. With no brothers or sisters to keep me company, and with just one uncle and aunt – my mother’s sister and her husband – with whom I used to spend a week or so in the summer, my early childhood days were passed in and around this house – which backed on to the churchyard, and from the landing windows of which I could see the tall, gloomy yew trees that lined the churchyard’s pathways and, above them, the sturdy column of the church tower that rose swiftly into the sky. Or rose against it, rather, since my memory is of seeing its rough-faced stonework in so many different hues and colours: dull pink when the skies were grey; paler and more golden when they were bright and blue; and in winter, when everything, even the sky, seemed to be white, almost no colour at all – merely a shape, a shadow, breaking through the mists, or seeming to dissolve and then to re-form itself as the heavens released their so often heavy falls of snow and the flakes flew swiftly down, flapping savagely against the window-panes and interrupting one’s vision.

  That was then, however, and now is now, so many years later. Yet I can remember it all so vividly; particularly one very emotional moment when (at the age of just fifteen I think it was) I finally made up my mind that I would leave, and that, unlike the boys of the town with whom I grew up, I would reject rather than cling to the bonds and ties of family life and set out upon the adventure of making a new life on my own.

  To reach the decision had not been easy. For weeks I had fretted about it, knowing the effect it would have on my parents. But as I approached my sixteenth birthday I realised that a plan had formed in my mind. Then – this was just a few months later, as I recall – I suddenly found myself in the stages of enacting it. First, by deciding on a suitable suitcase to use (we didn’t have grips or holdalls in those days) – one that would be large enough to contain the various things I thought I would need. Then, by hiding this suitcase in my wardrobe, beneath a tumble of winter sweaters. Then by gradually storing up money in it; part of which I had saved out of my pocket money, and the rest I had ‘borrowed’ from my mother, who, whenever she asked me to buy things for her in the town, never bothered to count the change.

  It was the act of gradually filling this suitcase that finally brought my project to a head, and helped me to take the difficult action I had pictured for so long. For, once the suitcase was full, and there was no further object or article of clothing that I imagined I might need, I knew that I was about to do what I so feared doing; and that on a night not far ahead – perhaps when my parents were asleep and the house and the town quiet – I would release myself from what I thought of as my prison. And by some means then quite unknown to me I would make my way to London – where, I imagined mistakenly, I would dissolve into its crowds; and, as far as my childhood home life and my parents were concerned, be lost to them for ever.

  Reflecting upon it now, I cannot help wondering why it was that not just my father but that both my parents were so distant and unemotional. Had both of them suffered some form of unusual mental damage when they were young? Or was it something they had inherited? I never knew my grandparents on my father’s side, because he was quite a lot older than my mother and his parents had died before I was born. But I did know my mother’s parents, and my memory of them is of two cheerful country people, who, on the rare occasions when I went to stay with them, or on the even rarer ones (I can recall just two) when they came to stay with us, always startled me by the effusiveness of the quick hugs and kisses that they instantly showered upon me, and that to a certain extent embarrassed me, and made me unable to respond.

  My mother hardly ever hugged me or kissed me, indeed never comforted me in any physical way, not even when she came to say goodnight. A pat on the head was the most she could muster, accompanied by a ‘sleep well, dear’ – said in such a tone, in such a manner, that I used to think it something she didn’t quite expect me to do, because she slept so badly herself.
And certainly my father never gave me a hug or a kiss. Except for the occasions when he called me into his study in order to beat me – usually for having stolen things and then hidden them (stealing was and still is quite a part of my life, I am afraid) – I cannot remember his ever having even touched me. And since he and my mother slept in separate beds and in separate rooms, I didn’t think that they touched each other either.

  Of course, they must have touched each other at some time or another, I can recall thinking when I reached puberty and my mind began to embrace the idea that for me to have come into existence my parents must have made love. But however much – even now – I try to picture it, such a conjugation seems improbable, so that at times I have the impression that I must have found my way on to this planet by some magical means or method, and that I am therefore not what one might speak of as a terrestrial human being.

  Having said all that, I mustn’t paint a picture of my childhood as entirely devoid of physical contact. Even if I had no brothers or sisters to romp and play with, I did have Mrs Gibson – or Amy, as I was allowed to call her – who cooked and catered for my parents, and who, with the help of one of her young cousins, cleaned and looked after the house. She was something of what one might call a rough diamond, I suppose, in that she was in no way refined in her expressions; spoke in a broad West Country accent; and sometimes – though not when my parents were around – broke wind.

  ‘Where’ere you be let the wind go free,’ she used to say to me with a laugh and then a quick kiss, as her bosom heaved up and down, and she would open a door of the big, black kitchen range, or perhaps stretch to a shelf in the kitchen’s pantry. And if her young cousin happened to be there – the one who helped with the cleaning of the house – the two of them would giggle about it for quite a while; as if what most people think of as being rude was, to them, just a pleasant, humorous feature of everyday life.