Читать книгу Sun On The Water - The Brilliant Life And Tragic Death Of My Daughter Kirsty Maccoll - Jean MacColl - Страница 15

1963–1968

JEAN: Do go to sleep.

KIRSTY: I can’t.

JEAN: Well, count sheep.

KIRSTY: All right. One, two, three… thirty-five… forty.

Oh, there’s a sweet little black one. He can’t get over the hedge to join the others. He’s running away.

He’s going to get… oh, now I’ve lost count.

JEAN: There aren’t any black ones, and they can all go through the gate.

KIRSTY: The black one couldn’t.

BEDTIME CONVERSATION, C. 1965

In the early days of my separation from Ewan and, before my second trip to Poland, I read in the local newspaper that a large area of Croydon, including my road, was due for demolition. The large old Victorian houses and their mature if somewhat unkempt gardens would give way to smart new estates for London commuters.

Numerous architects’ sketches showed that the detached properties would be surrounded by communal gardens comprising mostly of lawn and a few carefully arranged shrubs – a ‘tasteful’ look that would require all the old fruit trees to be cut down and disposed of with the rest of the rubble. One thing was plain: the available properties would be too expensive for me, and I would have to start looking for alternative accommodation for the three of us, near enough for Hamish to travel to his new grammar school. After living in a sizeable flat which, although very difficult to keep warm, had the great advantage of a large garden, I was looking for a smaller place but still with a garden. After weeks of looking at various properties, however, I realised that not only did I not particularly like what was on offer but all the prices were beyond my means. It was time to put Plan B into operation.

I had always dreamed of finding a plot of land on which to build my very own house and this seemed the opportunity I had been waiting for. I went with Kirsty in her pushchair to Croydon Town Hall and asked to look at the large-scale planning maps of the region to find out if there was any vacant land for sale. They were neither entirely helpful nor particularly optimistic and so I started to widen my search, scouring the southern outskirts of Croydon. Whenever I came across a likely piece of land, I would return to the planning department to ask who owned it and whether it was for sale. The regular replies either pointed out that there was no public access, or else there were electrical substations on the site.

After working my way through the first of these maps, I asked if I could look at the adjoining one. It was obvious they were getting tired of my search for land when they told me that the map I wanted was stored in the cellars and they couldn’t get it out. However, quite by chance, I bought the local paper on the way home, and there I found an advertisement of a plot of land for sale. I phoned them up, took down the details and within a few hours travelling with Kirsty to Beech Way, an unmade road in Selsdon, about four miles south of the centre of Croydon. Here was the plot of my dreams.

We looked across acres of woodland that dipped into a valley before rising again to the skyline. It was so exciting that we both attempted to walk through the briars for a little way. Kirsty was a willing little companion but very soon we had lost sight of civilisation – our car, the road and a nearby house had all disappeared. With more luck than judgement I eventually found our way back to the car, excitedly returning home to tell Hamish all about it.

We were eventually the owners of an acre of land – now all I had to do was find an architect and see if my small budget would be sufficient to build a house for the three of us. When I took Joan Littlewood to see the land, she told me, in typical Joan style, that she knew just the man for the job. If my long association with her had taught me anything, though, it was to add a smidgen of caution to her wonderfully exuberant remarks – and so it proved.

The design her architect came up with was for a five-storey building that would have completely blocked out the view for the two houses on the other side of the road. Joan had told her architect, Cedric Price, that I needed a studio and this had been designed for the fifth floor: there was a ground floor, a mezzanine, then the children’s bedrooms, then my bedroom, and finally my grand fifth-floor studio. He had also proposed under-drive heating, after I had told him of the difficulties with ice in bad weather. Alas, I was not ready for Cedric Price’s vision of my future – and nor, more to the point, was my bank balance. I later learned that my neighbours had complained to the planning office. Joan’s architect subsequently went to America, where he collected a number of awards.

I was driving with Kirsty through Biggin Hill in Kent one day when we caught a glimpse of a very nice chalet-type house, set back from the road. A large notice announced: Eric Mayne, Architect. Without thinking twice, I turned into his driveway, Kirsty and I got out of the car and we rang the bell. The door was opened by a bearded man. ‘I like your house,’ I said.

‘And I like you,’ he replied with a smile. ‘Come in.’

I had found my architect.

And it was in this utterly random way that I eventually realised my dream of a warm house with large garden – and the total cost came in at only a fraction of the price of the properties for sale in Croydon. The house was scheduled for completion by May 1965, but in the event it was another four months before we moved in. The three of us, along with our cat Solomon, briefly joined my mother in Croydon.

I found a little time for my own leisure activities. Tosh Rapoport was a willing and reliable babysitter and I would occasionally go out for dinner, but usually preferred to invite friends over. Once a week I would go with a friend to classes in central London to continue my study of the Russian language – a discipline I had imposed on myself as a child, when I thought my ballet studies would take me to Moscow. But the Russian classes stopped abruptly when Kirsty fell ill again. When things temporarily improved, I tried a life class at Croydon Art College. Tosh’s brother David joined Hamish in babysitting Kirsty. They got on very well. At the age of twelve, David asked his mother if it was possible for a man to marry a woman ten years younger than himself. Many years later, when both he and Kirsty were each married with children of their own, David and his wife Sandy came to a party Kirsty held for me. When I reminded them of this, Kirsty laughed and turned to Sandy with a single word: ‘Jezebel!’

Hamish invited me to a social event at Trinity School – a film show – and we sat together on hard benches to watch Alec Guinness in Kind Hearts and Coronets. In the interval between reels, Hamish bought me a cup of tea and a biscuit, and after the show he escorted me home. We had both enjoyed the outing tremendously and his manners had been meticulous. Ewan bought him a motorised go-kart at around this time, and I remember a few exciting rides on it, whizzing round a track in the old school playground.

• • •

The three of us – four, with Solomon II the cat – said our goodbyes to my mother and finally moved into Coombe Cottage, as our new house in Selsdon was to be called, in the summer of 1965. Hamish carried Solomon in his basket and settled him comfortably near the central heating boiler in the laundry room. Meanwhile I carried Kirsty into the house, encouraging her with tales of the foxes and badgers that lived in our new garden. But she was not well enough to respond with her usual enthusiasm. Under normal circumstances this would have been a joyous day and I would have attempted some small celebration to mark the occasion – but Kirsty was clearly unwell, and I began to worry that we were now five or six miles further out from Croydon, and I would need to change to a local GP.

I got her to bed as soon as possible in her new bedroom and was delighted that the house was warm throughout – unlike our old draughty flat. Kirsty lay down facing the large windows that overlooked the garden, which stretched for an acre or so before disappearing into woodland. I left the curtains open so that she could look out, and I talked to her not only about the animals she would be able to see in the morning but also about the stars. My knowledge of astronomy was not great but I could still show her the North Star and the Plough. I also told her about the small shed in our garden which I promised to clear out, and which would be for her use only: she would have to think about what she wanted to put in it.

The bedrooms were on the ground floor, and Hamish and I went upstairs to the lounge to start some unpacking. He was very impressed with his new surroundings. Would Kirsty and I mind spending the night with my mother, he asked casually, so that he and David could have a party there? I thought about it, and agreed – at least someone was in a celebratory mood. It was a couple of weeks before everything was in place and I kept my promise, though I must say I was rather nervous that things might get broken or damaged. In fact, everything went very well: those 60s teenagers all had a good party – and the girls loved playing house, continually wiping up and tidying in the kitchen. I was quite impressed – and quite relieved too.

There is no doubt that Kirsty was frustrated at not being able to explore her new surroundings as much she would have wished. I remember looking at her pale, slight figure, in her blue dressing gown, as she fought for breath. It didn’t seem fair that all her friends were outside playing while she had to spend so much time in her bed. I kept reminding myself that Kirsty was physically strong: it was just this crippling asthma that was holding her back. Sitting on the end of her bed, I sensed her weariness and determined to try some gentle encouragement. While eager to learn, she had been disappointed with school. I started to talk about people’s talents. Some were good at music, I said, others at mathematics; some could design houses and others became surgeons. Some people were born lucky, with more than one talent, and I told her I thought she was one of them: it was important for her to enjoy trying out anything that interested her. We would get over the asthma eventually, I said; nothing was impossible. I tried to encourage her by telling her about Albert Schweitzer, explaining that he worked as a doctor in Africa but was also a famous musician who toured the world, playing the organ to fund his medical work. This mixture of music and politics, as it turned out, seems to have stuck in her mind. A few years ago I came across an interview she gave in a German magazine where she recalled the story and ended by reflecting, ‘I didn’t know who the hell Albert Schweitzer was, but I thought, if it’s good enough for Albert, it’s good enough for me!’

• • •

Kirsty returned to her primary school in September 1965. In her first year at her previous school she had only attended three full days. Mr Norman at the Great Ormond Street clinic wrote to the headmistress of the new school advising her not to send Kirsty out during inclement weather, but the advice of the top consultant in the country was apparently ignored. Kirsty, who had been very keen to go back to school, now became a very reluctant pupil. She seemed extremely nervous and during the car ride and walk to the school gates Horatio came to my aid once more. Again, I promised to carry on with the story on the return journey. When I saw the headmistress I asked her if she had taken note of Mr Norman’s letter. She laughed rather unsympathetically and said, ‘I know how to treat these children – they’re sent out with a coat on.’ I began to realise why Kirsty was so fearful, for she was clearly not ready for the rough and tumble of school life.

Leaving Hamish in charge one night, I attended a parents’ evening at the school. Chatting to her form teacher, a middle-aged woman, I found myself listening to her complaint that Kirsty was ‘always asking questions’. I sympathised with her, knowing that, if she had a large class, such behaviour might be difficult. I therefore suggested she might ask Kirsty to wait until the end of the lesson and have her questions answered then. I told Kirsty what the teacher had said. I knew she was used to having my complete attention at home, so I asked her if she expected the same from her teacher.

She looked me in the eye and said scathingly, ‘Certainly not! If she’d told me exactly what she wanted me to do, I’d do it – but she waffles! Also, if I’ve been away, she won’t give me the book the class is working from until the end of the lesson – so even when I am there I don’t have the right book!’ As far as I could see, Kirsty’s description caught the teacher’s attitude perfectly.

At the end of her second year in 1966, Kirsty’s attendance totalled three weeks. She didn’t return as I had lost all confidence in the establishment and it was obvious to me that her well-being was more important than anything else. Without the burden of getting an unwilling child to school I was now able to enjoy her company and introduce her to all sorts of stimuli. We would go into the garden and look at the wild flowers, discover slow worms, enormous snails and, miracle of miracles, at night we had glow worms in the garden near the front door. Kirsty wanted to know much more about these creatures than I was able to tell her, so we would go to bookshops and she was allowed to choose more or less any book that interested her.

She once chose a textbook which was meant for GCSE biology students. I asked her if she was sure that this was the book she really wanted. After all, she was only seven and it was written for 16-year-olds. But no, she assured me that this was the one she wanted. I’m not sure she could follow it all, but I know that it gave her a great deal of satisfaction and she used it for several years. Soon she was able to tell me about the habits and behaviour of slow worms.

Once when I was looking out of the window and saw Kirsty playing in the garden I was thrilled to see a little fox cub only a yard or two from her also playing with a piece of stick. They suddenly turned to face each other and I wished I had a camera to catch that moment of surprise before the little fox cub ran away. As I was writing this book, I read in the papers that a vixen had made a home of Kirsty’s memorial bench in Soho Square: the locals christened her Kirsty – ‘She’s even got the same colouring,’ said one of them.

In bad weather we had a lot of activities to keep her interested. She experimented with paint, gouache and watercolours; as I had never painted with oils, I thought we should try that too. She made collages and wrote her first little book and illustrated it (I still have it). When she heard that Arthur Ransome had died without finishing one of his books, Kirsty wrote a letter to his publishers volunteering to finish the book on his behalf – though I didn’t send it.

When she wasn’t feeling very well, there was a thunderstorm which seemed to be immediately overhead as it was deafeningly loud. I thought Kirsty might be rather apprehensive and so I told her what little I knew about forked and sheet lightning. This didn’t satisfy either of us and so I went upstairs to find an encyclopaedia and we sat in bed together and read all about the causes of thunderstorms and the difference between sheet and forked lightning. She was also interested to know if thunder preceded the lightning and became quite an authority in our household.

Life now slowly became a little easier. Kirsty had been promised a dog when she was able to look after it and the time seemed appropriate. Anya, a honey-coloured Labrador joined our family; Hamish’s black cat Solomon was not impressed and showed his superiority whenever he could. He would hide behind the ceiling-to-floor curtains and stick out a front paw as the unsuspecting Anya went by, making her yelp in surprise, or he would sit high up on a glass shelf above the fireplace and push ornaments over the edge when she passed below. She was sweet-natured dog, though, and never retaliated by growling or chasing her antagonist. With hindsight it seems surprising that the medical authorities didn’t warn me against allergies caused by the dander from animals, but Solomon hadn’t affected Kirsty and during our first visit to Poland we had been constantly accompanied by our hosts’ family dog with no problems at all.

What the specialist did recommend was that Kirsty, now six, would be better off if she went to a school for physically handicapped children. ‘Let the other schools wait for their bright child,’ she said. I thought this was a good idea, since Kirsty would have the companionship of other children. She seemed to settle into her new routine of school life quite well. A car collected and returned her each day, which took some pressure off me, and there was also the reassurance of knowing there was always a nurse on hand at the school itself. Each child’s health was tested weekly. I was also told that it was customary for every new child to have an IQ test, but their policy was not to advise parents of these results. When the child had been at the school for about a month, the head would invite the parents in.

On my day I was greeted by a smiling headmaster. ‘Kirsty is quite a character, isn’t she?’ he said. After my previous experience with school teachers I was not sure whether he looked upon this as a bonus or a hindrance. Fearing the worst, I started to apologise but he interrupted me by saying, ‘Oh no! If we could run the school exactly as she would wish it would be excellent, but we can’t. Her complaint is that they start a subject and get very interested in it, but then the bell goes and they have to change and do something quite different. Her idea would be to do the same lesson all day and make real progress.’ He understood that Kirsty would be a real asset, and not a problem. The only thing I was told about the IQ test was that her standard of reading was already up to that of a nine-and-a-half-year-old. I came home greatly reassured that people were friendly and that despite her long absences, her reading age was ahead of her peers. I was not entirely surprised at this, since I had seen Kirsty with my copy of Male and Female, Margaret Mead’s book about sexuality.

I felt confident enough in the summer of 1966 to arrange a summer holiday at Renvyle on the west coast of Ireland for Kirsty and my 77-year-old mother, while Hamish went camping with a friend. Our animals were looked after by friends. It was a great holiday, as Kirsty was completely healthy throughout the trip, which I put down to the clean air and outdoor activities. As it happened, no dogs were allowed in the hotel although she did play with one outside and I didn’t see any cats. We would go out in the hotel’s rowing boat and attempt some primitive fishing and other days were spent on the seashore collecting shells or touring the area. In the early evening Kirsty socialised a lot with the guests and told them about her granny’s forthcoming birthday. One evening, a cake with lighted candles was carried into the dining room and everyone sang ‘Happy Birthday’.

In 1967 I read in the Observer that they were holding a writing competition for children aged 11 to 19. The title was ‘The school that I’d like’: the children were encouraged to write about their own schools in a critical fashion and to make suggestions as to how things might be improved. Kirsty was under the age but entered just for fun. We did not expect to hear anything, but when she was nine her piece was published as part of a collection of the best. She even received a postal order for her contribution. When we bought the book, though, she was mortified to spot mis-spellings. I had not attempted to change anything because this was her own work, even if ‘poem’ was spelled ‘poim’. Kirsty was the youngest contributor to the book. Its editor, the great champion of children’s literature Edward Blishen, said he couldn’t resist including her piece, and nor can I:

I would like a school that did not tell you off much and when it did tell you off theyd only tell you what youd done wrong and not do it again. They only say your nauty you shouldnt have done it but quite often we don’t know what weve done wrong.

I wold like a school that some times let you writ out work for other children in other schools. I wold like it espesherly becos I get tiyed of having work givern to me to do and I think as i am a child that I now how other children feel and so i can make it eseyer for them and its youshuly only seniers that visit other schools and hospitals and places but we now just as much as seniers and if we cold visit all these places wed now how other children feel a lot more and I think it wold be nice if we cold sugest things for ourselves to do.

Wy cant we have one lesson for each day and coldent we keep our own clay and stuff, and coldent we have classes of speshel things lik modling, music, poims, and dansing of diforent cinds wich we cold chos to do. Id like us to have mor nature lessons out side and id prefer not to keep together as animals don’t come out wen thers lots of people.

Her seven-year-old spelling may have been ‘creative’, but the voice can only have been Kirsty’s – feisty, anti-authority, sympathetic to the needs of others, independent-minded and in love with ‘modling, music, poims, and dansing’.