It was painful to witness the deterioration of England. This was magnified by the eradication of my old London haunts. Surroundings succumbed to a decline probably in evidence since the nineteenth century, which accelerated throughout the twentieth century; not helped by two devastating wars.
My father was also deteriorating, having a heart condition for which medication had been prescribed. Yet he was fiercely independent and would not allow any interference. Knowing it would be fatal to stop taking his prescribed tablets, he nevertheless did stop taking them ― no longer able to live in a world without his first, last and only love whom in life he was unable to show the appreciation she perhaps deserved. Yet who are we to judge? Words that were her last eight years earlier nevertheless linger in the mind to burn away the veneer of romantic illusion that can grow like moss on memory.
In the weeks following my father’s death something happened that would provide a unique portal through which I almost glimpsed things as they had been in my youth. Following the discovery of my father’s body in the house where my parents had spent so much of their lives ― a house, moreover, now more resembling Mrs Havisham’s in Charles Dickens’ Great Expections ― an altered state of consciousness occurred which, coupled with the inevitable adrenaline surge that accompanies stress in crisis, found me walking the streets aimlessly, and calling on people I had not seen for decades.
Byron’s forbidden love with Augusta Leigh exacted from her a curl of chestnut hair with glints of gold, and the following lines tied with white silk:
Partager tous vos sentimens
Ne voir que par vos yeux
N’agir que par vos conseils, ne
Vivre que pour vous, voilà mes
voeux, mes projets, & le seul
destin qui peut me rendre
heureuse.
On the outside of the small folded packet Byron penned these words, followed by a cross:
"La Chevelure of the one whom I most loved +"
The equidistant cross now became their emblem. Curiously and coincidentally, I sign my own name with an equidistant cross preceding it; though for reasons entirely other than the mathematical symbol for the joining of two parts to signify sexual consummation. Byron made a note in his journal to have a seal made for him and Augusta with their “device.” This happened at the end of November 1813.
Almost one and a half centuries later, I met in the foyer of the Essoldo cinema, long since now demolished and developed like much else in London, the young sister of Pam, that establishment’s manageress. Every Saturday morning, Theresa and I would meet to attend the children’s matinée. Sometimes we would enjoy a more grown up film in the afternoon at the same cinema. The first of these was April Love starring Pat Boone and Shirley Jones. Theresa and I, seated in the near dark at the back of the picture house, tasted the sweetness of spring love ― our very first ― in all innocence.
Partager tous vos sentimens
Ne voir que par vos yeux
N’agir que par vos conseils, ne
Vivre que pour vous, voilà mes
voeux, mes projets, & le seul
destin qui peut me rendre
heureuse.
On the outside of the small folded packet Byron penned these words, followed by a cross:
"La Chevelure of the one whom I most loved +"
* * *
Almost one and a half centuries later, I met in the foyer of the Essoldo cinema, long since now demolished and developed like much else in London, the young sister of Pam, that establishment’s manageress. Every Saturday morning, Theresa and I would meet to attend the children’s matinée. Sometimes we would enjoy a more grown up film in the afternoon at the same cinema. The first of these was April Love starring Pat Boone and Shirley Jones. Theresa and I, seated in the near dark at the back of the picture house, tasted the sweetness of spring love ― our very first ― in all innocence.
It was the Victorian house of Mrs Murphy, the mother of my very first girlfriend that I called on at the turn of the new century. Martin and Pam, the girl in question’s brother and sister, were also visiting, but not Theresa. We spent an entire afternoon and evening reminiscing ― three weeks after my grim discovery ― and recalled happier times. Theresa, now ensconced in Dunstable, was absent, but it somehow mattered not. The family had once behaved as though they were my own. In grieving for the last of my blood family, I had revisited these surrogates from the past. I also visited an old friend and colleague. We talked at length. And so on. The intervening years became illusory, and I was back. Those I called upon welcomed me as though time had stood still. Some, of course, were ghosts, as I walked the streets. Yet it seemed as though I was experiencing it all over again for the last time.
Theresa was the first girl for whom I wrote poetry. Her mother held onto them long after her daughter married two decades later. I was touched by that disclosure. When I saw Mrs Murphy for the last time in the new century she was eighty-five. She recounted the occasion of clearing out the poems during a spring clean not that many years earlier, describing them as “passionate and beautiful.” Needless to say, none of them have survived. Theresa’s marriage did not survive either due to her husband’s infidelity. She later found someone else who valued her for the gentle and kind person she is.
We had met as virgins; we parted the same. Pure and innocent, uncontaminated by the complexities that often beset adult relationships, was the love we felt for each other. First love is unique to each who experience it in their lifetime. Ours lasted until I quit school, as my fifteenth birthday beckoned.
Life at school had grown unbearable as the “timid little fellow with a lively sense of humour,” as one early report would attest, underwent a complete metamorphosis. And I went out into the world.
Theresa was the first girl for whom I wrote poetry. Her mother held onto them long after her daughter married two decades later. I was touched by that disclosure. When I saw Mrs Murphy for the last time in the new century she was eighty-five. She recounted the occasion of clearing out the poems during a spring clean not that many years earlier, describing them as “passionate and beautiful.” Needless to say, none of them have survived. Theresa’s marriage did not survive either due to her husband’s infidelity. She later found someone else who valued her for the gentle and kind person she is.
We had met as virgins; we parted the same. Pure and innocent, uncontaminated by the complexities that often beset adult relationships, was the love we felt for each other. First love is unique to each who experience it in their lifetime. Ours lasted until I quit school, as my fifteenth birthday beckoned.
Life at school had grown unbearable as the “timid little fellow with a lively sense of humour,” as one early report would attest, underwent a complete metamorphosis. And I went out into the world.
Christine, a slim, blue-eyed brunette was still at school, but fast becoming grown-up, when I met her. We slowly grew serious, and regarded our relationship as permanent for a while. We took regular walks over nearby Hampstead Heath. This was made all the more convenient by the fact that I had left my parents’ home and was now living in a flat at the top of a rambling Victorian house owned by a family who lived on the ground and first floor. I shared the top flat with Gerhard, a German three years older than me, whose girlfriend from Oxfordshire, Judith, was an English rose. Christine’s house was half a mile distance; so we saw each other a lot; a most rewarding experience for us both.
She was very mature looking for her age, but, being a couple of years younger than me, her parents were understandably anxious about the intimacy that had formed between us. Here was their schoolgirl daughter spending every available moment with a musician and photographer in the 1960s ― a time when youth culture came into its own, along with the permissive age. The two occupations were already gaining a reputation, albeit undeserved in my case, as being the most infamous and fascinating anyone could have. But her parents need not have worried too much. The relationship was tender, rewarding and evolved in a natural way. Christine was a normal, healthy girl who had the same expectations as did many young teenagers. My dreams, however, were romantic ― far beyond the norm. We both realised this early on, but enjoyed each other too much to make the break sooner than we did. Even then, it was a slow drifting apart ― a growing out of each other ― rather than a sudden wrench. When it came in the mid-1960s, we were both ready to go in different directions.
The next two girlfriends would both become models that I helped launch. Jacqueline and I were as serious as any couple can be, but, again, she was just sixteen when I first caught sight of her. I was her first love, and I felt considerable joy when I recently learned that she is still with her second love all these years later. The person she met, and her ensuing career change, could not have been more removed from the life we had together. She had a sweet voice, and occasionally sang a couple of folk numbers at gigs where I was playing saxophone in a modern jazz group who also performed rock.
The success of my photographic studio offered many opportunities. I had gained independence, something many young people crave, at a very early age. My music performances and indeed compositions would develop and evolve into abstract expressionism with view to the transcendental.
If the 1960s was anything, it was a time for youth culture, created in part by the baby boom of the post-war years, whose cultural icons were now musicians, photographers and actors. I was all three ― discovering, whether I wanted to or not, that I was very much a part of the mini-renaissance now taking place in my midst. My photographic subjects included models, film stars, musicians, singers, dancers, and a host of young people who felt they could become the next Shrimp or Twiggy. Some, of course, did. Everyone was able to partake in the dream. But it was just that ― a dream ― and there would come the inevitable awakening as the decade drew to a close. So much happened in the Summer of Love that if it were all to be recorded in detail, I daresay no library could not hold the volumes that could be written. The old secure framework of morality, authority and discipline was crumbling, and in its place came one social revolution after another, casting as much shadow as illumination. Yet I have to mention one more relationship that at the time meant everything to me
I had become involved with a girl I barely knew called Mary who had a truly wonderful family, but, to my cost, was found to be incredibly unstable. She claimed to have had an intimate friendship with the singer Cliff Richard, and started writing letters to herself as if they came from someone else. I was understandably confused by what was going on, but also I was trying to run a studio, perform on stage in a repertory company and honour bookings as a musician. Notwithstanding my drift into a potentially disastrous situation, I was allowing myself to be carried by events and somnambulated into it with my eyes closed. By the end of April of 1967, however, I was awakened with a jolt, and discovered what it means to fall helplessly and hopelessly in love. Three decades later, I would write: “God help those who are hit by such an emotion ― there is nothing they can do. Nothing!”
The sun shone on that spring day when I first saw her with her, as we walked towards each other in the hustle and bustle of the crowd on the pavement, just around the corner from my studio. What I noticed first were here incredibly green eyes. Next I noticed her smile. Then came the golden glow of her hair, and the way the sun danced on those dark blonde tresses as they lifted and fell with each step. She walked with a bounce. Then those green eyes again ― eyes that would haunt me for years.
I felt absolutely compelled to approach her. Never had I known what romantic love was until that moment in which I caught sight of her. Who was she? I had to know everything about her. A voice that was soft and lilting issued from lips I yearned to greet with my own ― a voice as pure as herself. We ignited each other from the instant our eyes met. I drowned in her eyes. Suddenly life was joyful and bright in a way I had never known. The girl with green eyes ― was she the girl of my dreams?
Carmel was nineteen, and a secretary in a car showroom in Holloway Road. I respected her more than life itself, and at this time never allowed the ferocity of the passion I felt to more than smoulder beneath the surface. I wanted to protect and preserve all those qualities that made her so special. She came to the studio many times. Her portrait adorned the shop window and interior reception. She visited my flat, a mile north of the studio, and we drank wine. We saw each other for several months.
Then, suddenly, the girl with green eyes appeared to have vanished into thin air. All that remained was her vision ― etched on my mind ― and the many, many portraits that adorned the studio.
It was rumoured that she was now living thousands of miles away in America, but I had no idea of her exact whereabouts. I consoled myself by versifying, invariably romantically, my thoughts:
Her face a poem of great perfection,
She moves on silvery sunlit beams,
Bathing my days in her sweet reflection,
And come the night she fills my dreams.
This lithesome maid of fair complexion
With garlands of roses in her soft, bright hair;
Blest with grace and of pure conception,
The form of an angel and beauteous fair.
With the stars she sleeps; with the sunbeams rises;
She fills my life with her presence there.
A laugh, a smile, a kiss entices;
But never we speak of the love we share.
In my heart I love her, with my body I worship
This soft, gentle being, this woman so fine;
And well I may dream of enfolding her to me,
Whilst I know in my heart she will never be mine.
Well may I love her ― shall eternity know it ―
I reach for her now across space, across time,
A far away land holds this fair maid, my lady;
And to love from a distance am I ever to pine.
Music and its free expression was something in which I continued to immerse myself. Jazz venues, though less well remunerated, now held more appeal. My style, when occasion permitted, sometimes headed off in an avant-garde direction. The band for which I played saxophone was more than capable of adventurous music, which we allowed ourselves the luxury of exploring at certain clubs, having become the resident group Saturday nights through to Sunday mornings at the Club Le Care in Chelsea, where it was rumoured members of The Beatles and the Rolling Stones occasionally visited during the early hours. They would have certainly heard very different music.
That most innovative and influential saxophonist, John Coltrane, had died in July 1967. Numerous other musicians failed to survive the 1960s. Exciting and bursting with unrelenting optimism as it was, that fashionable decade unleashed a dark side with its embrace of drugs and debauchery on a scale hitherto unknown. Its shadow, ever becoming more dense and dark, is today cast across much of the globe. During all this I never stopped thinking about the girl with green eyes. Many years would pass before we restored any contact. An old work colleague of hers, whom I met accidentally, having given me Carmel's New York number. Within hours of the long distance conversation on the telephone, Carmel boarded a plane and came to visit me. I met her at the station, we walked hand in hand to street level, and then kissed. Her only words in that soft voice: "What took you so long?"
We stayed in touch and would meet again. She was very successful in fashion, and I was celebrated in my own way. Undoubtedly, there was mutual passion that had found fertile soil in our briefly being together, but, once again, circumstances acted like a poisoner to the blooms bursting from that rekindling. I moved to a new address at Hampstead Garden Suburb, and, due to my sensitivity over privacy, always remained ex-directory and not traceable on the electoral register. Fate conspired at that same moment of my moving to have Carmel relocate from the United States to an unknown destination in New Zealand, and from there was anybody's guess. She once told me she was very fluid regarding where she lives.
When we were together for the very last time, I discussed writing a novel where she would be central to the story, and that it would be called Carmel. She was greatly enthused by the idea. Yet we were already destined to never meet again. Years later I wrote the novel where she dies early on.
In the same year that Carmel was published my father died. I had quit London following the death of my mother eight years earlier; the place having become too polluted and altered for me to remain.
Subsequent visits to London, in the years that followed, found it had returned to a friendless, faceless city. But those weeks at the end of the millennium year were to offer a time warp where the past was almost witnessed through a weathered window. Thereafter I felt like a phantom, who was not even present in the capital, passing through sadly unfamiliar places. Indeed, I felt like a ghost.
She was very mature looking for her age, but, being a couple of years younger than me, her parents were understandably anxious about the intimacy that had formed between us. Here was their schoolgirl daughter spending every available moment with a musician and photographer in the 1960s ― a time when youth culture came into its own, along with the permissive age. The two occupations were already gaining a reputation, albeit undeserved in my case, as being the most infamous and fascinating anyone could have. But her parents need not have worried too much. The relationship was tender, rewarding and evolved in a natural way. Christine was a normal, healthy girl who had the same expectations as did many young teenagers. My dreams, however, were romantic ― far beyond the norm. We both realised this early on, but enjoyed each other too much to make the break sooner than we did. Even then, it was a slow drifting apart ― a growing out of each other ― rather than a sudden wrench. When it came in the mid-1960s, we were both ready to go in different directions.
The next two girlfriends would both become models that I helped launch. Jacqueline and I were as serious as any couple can be, but, again, she was just sixteen when I first caught sight of her. I was her first love, and I felt considerable joy when I recently learned that she is still with her second love all these years later. The person she met, and her ensuing career change, could not have been more removed from the life we had together. She had a sweet voice, and occasionally sang a couple of folk numbers at gigs where I was playing saxophone in a modern jazz group who also performed rock.
The success of my photographic studio offered many opportunities. I had gained independence, something many young people crave, at a very early age. My music performances and indeed compositions would develop and evolve into abstract expressionism with view to the transcendental.
If the 1960s was anything, it was a time for youth culture, created in part by the baby boom of the post-war years, whose cultural icons were now musicians, photographers and actors. I was all three ― discovering, whether I wanted to or not, that I was very much a part of the mini-renaissance now taking place in my midst. My photographic subjects included models, film stars, musicians, singers, dancers, and a host of young people who felt they could become the next Shrimp or Twiggy. Some, of course, did. Everyone was able to partake in the dream. But it was just that ― a dream ― and there would come the inevitable awakening as the decade drew to a close. So much happened in the Summer of Love that if it were all to be recorded in detail, I daresay no library could not hold the volumes that could be written. The old secure framework of morality, authority and discipline was crumbling, and in its place came one social revolution after another, casting as much shadow as illumination. Yet I have to mention one more relationship that at the time meant everything to me
I had become involved with a girl I barely knew called Mary who had a truly wonderful family, but, to my cost, was found to be incredibly unstable. She claimed to have had an intimate friendship with the singer Cliff Richard, and started writing letters to herself as if they came from someone else. I was understandably confused by what was going on, but also I was trying to run a studio, perform on stage in a repertory company and honour bookings as a musician. Notwithstanding my drift into a potentially disastrous situation, I was allowing myself to be carried by events and somnambulated into it with my eyes closed. By the end of April of 1967, however, I was awakened with a jolt, and discovered what it means to fall helplessly and hopelessly in love. Three decades later, I would write: “God help those who are hit by such an emotion ― there is nothing they can do. Nothing!”
The sun shone on that spring day when I first saw her with her, as we walked towards each other in the hustle and bustle of the crowd on the pavement, just around the corner from my studio. What I noticed first were here incredibly green eyes. Next I noticed her smile. Then came the golden glow of her hair, and the way the sun danced on those dark blonde tresses as they lifted and fell with each step. She walked with a bounce. Then those green eyes again ― eyes that would haunt me for years.
I felt absolutely compelled to approach her. Never had I known what romantic love was until that moment in which I caught sight of her. Who was she? I had to know everything about her. A voice that was soft and lilting issued from lips I yearned to greet with my own ― a voice as pure as herself. We ignited each other from the instant our eyes met. I drowned in her eyes. Suddenly life was joyful and bright in a way I had never known. The girl with green eyes ― was she the girl of my dreams?
Carmel was nineteen, and a secretary in a car showroom in Holloway Road. I respected her more than life itself, and at this time never allowed the ferocity of the passion I felt to more than smoulder beneath the surface. I wanted to protect and preserve all those qualities that made her so special. She came to the studio many times. Her portrait adorned the shop window and interior reception. She visited my flat, a mile north of the studio, and we drank wine. We saw each other for several months.
Then, suddenly, the girl with green eyes appeared to have vanished into thin air. All that remained was her vision ― etched on my mind ― and the many, many portraits that adorned the studio.
It was rumoured that she was now living thousands of miles away in America, but I had no idea of her exact whereabouts. I consoled myself by versifying, invariably romantically, my thoughts:
Her face a poem of great perfection,
She moves on silvery sunlit beams,
Bathing my days in her sweet reflection,
And come the night she fills my dreams.
This lithesome maid of fair complexion
With garlands of roses in her soft, bright hair;
Blest with grace and of pure conception,
The form of an angel and beauteous fair.
With the stars she sleeps; with the sunbeams rises;
She fills my life with her presence there.
A laugh, a smile, a kiss entices;
But never we speak of the love we share.
In my heart I love her, with my body I worship
This soft, gentle being, this woman so fine;
And well I may dream of enfolding her to me,
Whilst I know in my heart she will never be mine.
Well may I love her ― shall eternity know it ―
I reach for her now across space, across time,
A far away land holds this fair maid, my lady;
And to love from a distance am I ever to pine.
Music and its free expression was something in which I continued to immerse myself. Jazz venues, though less well remunerated, now held more appeal. My style, when occasion permitted, sometimes headed off in an avant-garde direction. The band for which I played saxophone was more than capable of adventurous music, which we allowed ourselves the luxury of exploring at certain clubs, having become the resident group Saturday nights through to Sunday mornings at the Club Le Care in Chelsea, where it was rumoured members of The Beatles and the Rolling Stones occasionally visited during the early hours. They would have certainly heard very different music.
That most innovative and influential saxophonist, John Coltrane, had died in July 1967. Numerous other musicians failed to survive the 1960s. Exciting and bursting with unrelenting optimism as it was, that fashionable decade unleashed a dark side with its embrace of drugs and debauchery on a scale hitherto unknown. Its shadow, ever becoming more dense and dark, is today cast across much of the globe. During all this I never stopped thinking about the girl with green eyes. Many years would pass before we restored any contact. An old work colleague of hers, whom I met accidentally, having given me Carmel's New York number. Within hours of the long distance conversation on the telephone, Carmel boarded a plane and came to visit me. I met her at the station, we walked hand in hand to street level, and then kissed. Her only words in that soft voice: "What took you so long?"
We stayed in touch and would meet again. She was very successful in fashion, and I was celebrated in my own way. Undoubtedly, there was mutual passion that had found fertile soil in our briefly being together, but, once again, circumstances acted like a poisoner to the blooms bursting from that rekindling. I moved to a new address at Hampstead Garden Suburb, and, due to my sensitivity over privacy, always remained ex-directory and not traceable on the electoral register. Fate conspired at that same moment of my moving to have Carmel relocate from the United States to an unknown destination in New Zealand, and from there was anybody's guess. She once told me she was very fluid regarding where she lives.
When we were together for the very last time, I discussed writing a novel where she would be central to the story, and that it would be called Carmel. She was greatly enthused by the idea. Yet we were already destined to never meet again. Years later I wrote the novel where she dies early on.
* * *
In the same year that Carmel was published my father died. I had quit London following the death of my mother eight years earlier; the place having become too polluted and altered for me to remain.
Subsequent visits to London, in the years that followed, found it had returned to a friendless, faceless city. But those weeks at the end of the millennium year were to offer a time warp where the past was almost witnessed through a weathered window. Thereafter I felt like a phantom, who was not even present in the capital, passing through sadly unfamiliar places. Indeed, I felt like a ghost.
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