by Gary Couzens

(for Laura Mauro)

First published in Roads Less Travelled Volume 1, edited by Trevor Denyer (Midnight Street Press, 2021), and reprinted in Best of British Science Fiction 2021 edited by Donna Scott (NewCon Press, 2022)

I was very young when we moved into the house. The back had been hit by a bomb during the Blitz and had been hastily and cheaply rebuilt, so it looked different to all the others in the street. I don’t know if Adam was nearby then. Maybe he was, or someone like him. I wasn’t thinking of the future then.

My father remembered seeing a television before the War. He was about twelve, staying away from home with his parents in a hotel. In the corner of a large room there was a strange boxlike object on a stand, with its screen – a mirror, reflecting a picture sent upwards from inside – far smaller than those we have today. Moving across that screen were a pair of ballroom dancers, the man in a black dinner jacket leading and the woman in a white gown following. Of course nothing was recorded then, and those dancers have long since vanished into the ether, their elegant turning and returning across the floor existing only in the memory of those who saw it, the signal vanishing into space and now nearly seventy light years away. I have always wondered if, one day, if we could ever travel faster than light we might be there to receive that signal when it arrived from Earth, and those dancers, many years if not centuries in their graves, would live again

Dad was twenty when he came home from the War and married my mother. Derek arrived and a year and a half later I was born, into a country still in the grip of rationing and austerity, its people wondering if they really had won the War

“Look, Eileen! This is the future!” I see him now, proudly showing Mum his new acquisition. We were the first family on our street to have a television set. Mum wasn’t convinced. It was ugly, it took up too much space, how could we afford such a thing and why did we need it when no one else we knew had one? But Dad wouldn’t be swayed. He picked me up, his hands about my waist, my slippered feet dangling in the air. “Look, Barbara – the future!”

I was one and a half then, no doubt crawling into places I shouldn’t. I don’t remember that scene, but from being told about it several times, I now see it: Dad, still in the suit and tie he wore to work, his hair slicked back, his mouth split into a grin under the moustache he wore at the time. Mum, in a white summer dress, her lips pursed in exasperation, knowing that she wouldn’t have her way this time. I was in a checked knee-length dress, my hair, much longer then, spilling loose over my face and shoulders. Dad lifted me up to gaze at this wonderful new device. I don’t see Derek, but he’s no doubt somewhere nearby, three years old, playing with his toys, put out by the arrival of an annoying younger sister and trying his utmost to keep me away from his things. I see this. And of course, though the world is in colour, this scene is in black and white.

The rest of the street caught up with us a couple of years later. The country was more confident after the Festival of Britain and a new Queen was on the throne. Many people acquired television sets in time for her coronation. Dad had always read science fiction, from Verne and Wells to the American pulp magazines he’d bought in Woolworth’s, so a month later he and Mum sat down to watch the first episode of a new serial called The Quatermass Experiment. Derek and I had gone to bed but somehow I couldn’t sleep. I tiptoed out on to the landing. The crashing opening chords of Holst’s Mars, The Bringer of War came around the door of the front room.

I must have sat there for a full half hour, because Dad came out into the hallway and looked up. He saw me in my nightie, halfway up the stairs with my arms looped around my calves. “What are you doing there, Barbara?”

“I can’t sleep, Daddy.”

He sat next to me, chucking me under the chin with the side of his hand. “You must, you know. You’ll be all tired tomorrow. Look.” He stood up again, taking my tiny hand in his larger one, walking with me up to the landing window at the top of the stairs.

I wasn’t tall enough to see out, so he lifted me up. We lived on a hillside and I could see rows and rows of houses in the darkness, their lights twinkling into the distance like a scattering of diamonds on black velvet.

“All those people were watching the programme,” he said. “The actors are in Alexandra Palace. That’s over there. All those people were watching them on their television sets. Think about that, Barbara. What amazing times we live in.”

Was Adam was one of those many people out there?

I don’t feel old, though my body tells me I am more often than my mind does. Unless I live into my twelfth decade, which I doubt I will, I have more of my life behind me than ahead. Who knows what medical science might be able to do? Maybe they’ll freeze me and wake me sometime in the next century or beyond, just as they did in the magazines Dad used to read.

I wonder where Adam is now.

***

This was how I met him.

On the day the planes crashed into the World Trade Center, my older daughter Lucy, seven months pregnant with my granddaughter, was on the phone to me in tears, terrified beyond belief by what was happening. Was World War III upon us, and what future was she about to bring a child into? We spoke for two hours, as the events unfolded on our televisions in front of us. I was old enough to remember an earlier time when the world changed, and television schedules were altered by the breaking news. I was a week and a half away from my fifteenth birthday when Dad called me downstairs. President Kennedy had been assassinated in Dallas. Mum was crying, a handkerchief pressed to her face. Dad put his arms around both of us as we watched the news come in throughout that evening.

The following morning, I took Freddie, our black Labrador, for his walk on Acton Green Common. It was a cold November day. Freddie bounded across the grass. A tall man in a coat started as Freddie hurried up to him, sniffing at his trousers.

“Oh, I’m so sorry!” I said, rushing up and reattaching Freddie’s lead.

“That’s okay. I was just taken by surprise, that’s all.” I couldn’t quite place his accent.

He straightened. He was more than six feet tall, towering over my five feet five. His hair, fair verging on mid-brown, was cut short-back-and-sides and he wore glasses. He was somewhere in his twenties, I guessed. I knew I shouldn’t speak to strangers, but something told me he had no bad intentions. Besides, I was in public and had a dog with me, though Freddie was far from the fiercest protector I could have had. 

“Could you tell me the way to the library, please?” he said. “I’m…new here.”

“Certainly. It’s this way.” It was in the direction I was walking, so with Freddie on his lead I walked with the man to the edge of the Common. “Isn’t it terrible news from America?” I said, in an effort to make conversation.

“Oh, of course. Absolutely devastating. Trust me, you’ll remember this day for the rest of your life. You’ll remember where you were when you heard the news. They’ll make films and write books about the events of yesterday.”

I said nothing to that. All I knew was that someone had been assassinated who had been an emblem of hope to much of the western world. That hope had now been brutally dashed to pieces.

We continued to the High Street and I pointed him in the direction of the library.

“Well, thank you for your assistance,” the man said. He had a rolled-up copy of Radio Times in his pocket. It was open to today’s date. I noticed, in that brief glimpse, that there were pencilled Xs against several programme titles.

That evening, Dad, Mum, Derek and I watched the first episode of a new television series called Doctor Who. I was very impressed that one of the Doctor’s companions had the same name as me.

***

A few months later I went to the library. After I’d returned all my books and picked out a batch of novels to read in the next month – all historicals, including a Jean Plaidy, a Mary Renault and a Daphne du Maurier – I wandered upstairs into the non-fiction section, which was next to the reference library. And there he was.

With my family around, a strange embarrassment overtook me, and I hoped he hadn’t seen me. But he had. “Hello again.”

He was dressed in a jacket and tie, his hair slicked back. He was more handsome than I’d thought at first. But there was still something about him that didn’t seem quite right, and I couldn’t put my finger on what it was.

“Do you spend a lot of time here?” I asked.

“Quite a lot, yes,” he said. “It’s my research, you see.”

“What are you researching?”

He pushed a magazine across the table to me. It was a copy of the latest Radio Times, open at today’s page, Saturday. Also on the desk were copies of TV Times, The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph, open at the television listings.

“You’re researching what’s on television?”

“In a sense, yes.”

“Why would you want to do that?”

“Tell me – do you watch any of these programmes?”

I glanced down the page. “Doctor Who. We watch that.”

“So do I. It’s good, isn’t it?”

“I suppose so. It’s really a children’s programme, though we all watch it.”

“Children’s programme? Why, how old are you?”

“I’m fifteen.”

“Look, they’re starting a new story today.” He pointed to the listing.

“Yes, they go back to meet Marco Polo.”

“I’m particularly interested in that one.”

“Why? Do you like history?”

He smiled. “I am a historian, yes.”

“Barbara!” Derek called behind me. “Hurry up – we’re going!”

I glanced behind me. “I – I’m sorry. I’ve got to go.”

“Well, once again it’s nice talking to you, Barbara. I may call you Barbara?”

I almost said, No – call me Miss Ashton. I actually said nothing.

“You can call me Adam.”

I turned away, each stride longer than the rest.

“Who’s that you were talking to?” said Derek, as I met him at the head of the stairs.

“Oh, no one,” I muttered. “Someone I met before. When I was taking Freddie for a walk.”

***

Every month. I saw Adam in the library, always in the reference section, more often than not reading that week’s copies of Radio Times, TV Times and two or three of that day’s newspapers, a large hardbacked notebook on the desk beside him.

I mentioned this to my best friend Yvonne. We had been to the same infant and junior schools, but I’d passed my Eleven Plus and she hadn’t, so I went to the local girls’ grammar school and she didn’t. We still kept up with each other outside school. On this day, we were alone in the house one day during the Easter holidays, facing each other in the bathtub, sitting in rapidly cooling water in an effort to shrink our jeans. She was reading a fashion magazine while smoking and I had a novel from the library, Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Eagle of the Ninth, careful not to drop it.

“Why didn’t you tell me about him earlier, you dark horse you?” she said. “You don’t know who he is?”

“He said he’s a historian,” I replied. “Maybe he’s from one of the Universities round here?”

“Makes me wish I did better at history, if I had teachers like that. We’ve got Miss Parfitt, dried-up old spinster she is.” Yvonne reached up above her head and tapped out her cigarette ash through the partly-opened window. I’d tried smoking once but never again: it had made me feel sick.

“He’s a bit old – he must be in his twenties, I think. Actually I’m not sure how old he is.”

“Shame. Twenties isn’t too old though.” She took a drag on her cigarette.

A month later, I took some books out of the history section. There was a gap in the shelves and I could see Adam at his desk through it.

Derek spotted me watching him. “Who is that man?” he said, from behind me.

I started. “No one.”

“He’s here every time we come here.” A whole head taller than me by then, he bent down and whispered, “Do you fancy him, Barbara?”

“No I don’t!” I felt myself blush.

“I don’t want you talking to him,” he said. “He could be a spy for all we know.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Derek.”

“You could say all sorts of silly things to him. I know you. You’re a girl.”

“He’s not a spy.”

“How do you know? Where does he live? Where does he work? He just seems to sit here all day.”

“Why don’t you ask him, then? I’m sure he’ll tell you. I’ll ask him if you won’t.”

Derek straightened. “You’ll do no such thing. You shouldn’t talk to strange men. You know what they do to young girls.”

“I’m fifteen, Derek.”

As we went downstairs to check out our books, Adam glanced up. Seeing me, he smiled.

***

I saw Adam briefly here and there in town. Once Yvonne and I were queueing up outside the cinema to see The Carpetbaggers. It was an X-certificate film and we were neither old enough to see it, but we’d put on makeup and were ready to tell the woman in the box office we were sixteen if she asked.

“Who’s that?” said Yvonne, lighting a cigarette. “He’s ever so good looking.”

“Who?”

“Him, dummy.”

“That’s Adam. I told you about him.”

He was sitting at a table outside a cafe, reading a copy of that day’s newspaper: I couldn’t see which one. He looked up and waved.

“Hey, he waved at me!” said Yvonne. She waved back.

“How do you know it’s you he’s waving at?”

“Well, it wouldn’t be you, would it, Barb? A mousy little thing like you?” Yvonne stood straight, putting back her shoulders to emphasise her not inconsiderable bust.

I must have looked offended.

“Oh come on, Barb. I’m only joking.”

“He’s the one I’ve seen in the library, several times now. That’s Adam.”

“Ooh, so he’s your secret boyfriend then?”

“Don’t you start. I get enough of that from Derek. He thinks he might be a spy.”

“Well, if a spy looked like that, I’d defect in a heartbeat. Forget James Bond.”

***

Later that year, as Derek and I were walking to the bus stop on our way to our schools, he said it. It was an autumn day, a breeze tugging at my slate-grey school skirt. Derek, two school years ahead of me, was walking proud in his senior uniform. We had just passed Adam in the street.

“You know, Barbara,” he said. He had a habit of starting sentences with You know. “I reckon that man’s queer.”

“What do you mean?” I was naïve then: I thought for a moment that Derek meant Adam was unwell, and he hadn’t looked that way to me.

He snorted. “Don’t you know anything? Don’t you know what queers are? They…” and he whispered the rest in my ear.

I grimaced. “Ugh! That’s horrid!”

“Well then,” he said. “That could be the type of person we’re dealing with. You shouldn’t talk to him. You’ll only encourage him.”

To this day I have never understood the logic of that.

I didn’t have a boyfriend then. I wasn’t quite sixteen. For all Yvonne’s and my whispered talk of sex, when we were alone together in my room or hers, neither of us had yet done it. She had a crush on Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones while I was more of a Beatles girl. You were one or the other in those days.

Derek and I waited at the zebra crossing and I changed the subject,

***

It was a year later, a chilly November Saturday. I was sitting in the library with a volume of Encyclopaedia Britannica open in front of me.

“Do you mind if I join you, Barbara?” said Adam.

I glanced up. “No, please do.”

He sat at the next desk, spreading out three newspapers – The Times, The Telegraph and The Guardian – and Radio Times and TV Times. He glanced at what I was reading: the article on Homer and The Iliad, which I was reading for A-Level.

“Hmm. I suppose you saw Doctor Who, when they went back to the Trojan War?”

“Yes.” I hadn’t been too impressed by that story. We still watched the programme as a family, although I was beginning to feel I was becoming too old for it. Having said that, Dad was the keenest of us all to see it, but he was the science-fiction reader. My boyfriend Simon also watched it, coming over to our house just in time on a Saturday evening.

“I wanted to make sure I saw it.”

“Why? It’s a children’s programme.”

“A lot of adults watch it.”

“I’m sure they do. It’s a bit silly really. It’s just entertainment.”

“Don’t dismiss popular entertainment, Barbara. It has a way of lasting.”

I looked up at him. “Really? It’s not meant to last.” I tapped my copy of The Iliad. “That lasts.” At just a few weeks short of seventeen, I must have sounded very earnest.

“That was popular entertainment in its day. So was Shakespeare. So was Dickens. Television’s popular entertainment. We watch it and it’s gone, but in days to come we’ll wish we’d kept more of it.” He paused. “I can see you’re not convinced.”

I wasn’t.

“In the year after next, Barbara, we’ll have television in colour. They’ve got that in America now and they’re working on it here. In the future it’ll have surround sound. Do you know what that means?”

I did. For my fourteenth birthday, we’d taken the Tube into the West End and watched Lawrence of Arabia at the Odeon in Leicester Square. I remember those vast desert vistas and Peter O’Toole’s beautiful face. And that music score, all around me.

“They’ll have 3D television eventually.”

I knew what 3D was. They’d had that in the Fifties. “How do you know all this?”

“I keep my eyes on what’s going on. Look…” He pointed to the television listings. “Do you see that?”

It was a programme called BBC-3, showing at 10.25pm on BBC1. “What about it?”

“I’ll be watching that tonight. They’ll be talking about this programme, I’m sure.”

So, that evening, Simon came round. We watched Doctor Who, the first of a new story with the Daleks. Derek went out to meet some of his friends. Later on television was the Festival of Remembrance. Simon, Mum, Dad and I played Scrabble. Then, after ten o’clock, I suggested we watch BBC-3.

Satire was particularly popular then. A couple of years earlier, there had been That Was The Week That Was. I’d been a little too young for that, and most of it had gone over my head. BBC-3 was, as far as I could tell, much the same thing.

“I didn’t know you watched this, Barbara,” said Simon.

Between some comedy sketches was a live discussion on censorship. Kenneth Tynan was one of the participants. I knew who he was: a theatre critic. He was asked if he would allow a play representing sexual intercourse on stage and he replied, “Well, I think so, certainly. I doubt if there are any rational people to whom the word fuck would be particularly diabolical, revolting or totally forbidden. I think that anything which can be printed or said can also be seen.”

I still remember the silence in our front room. I don’t know who was more shocked, Dad or Mum or Simon. No doubt Dad had heard far worse in his army days but he would rather have died than utter any profanity in mixed company. Mum’s lips were pursed, her face darkening. I’d never seen her so angry. “Well, that was quite disgusting,” she said, switching the television off and glaring at me. “Did you know about this, Barbara?”

“Of course I didn’t.”

“Of course she didn’t, Eileen,” said Dad. “It was a live programme.”

“Well, so much for standards these days.”

“I – I think I’d better go, Mr Ashton, Mrs Ashton,” said Simon.

“Okay, son,” said Dad. “Barbara will see you out.”

Simon and I broke up soon afterwards. I don’t think the two events were connected, but I was never sure about that.

There was a furore. The BBC’s switchboards were deluged with complaints and they had to broadcast an apology. The newspapers fulminated about a word none of them would print. Mary Whitehouse, a morality campaigner, declared that Tynan ought to have his bottom spanked, which as we learned much later he might well have enjoyed. He received death threats and also letters congratulating him for making a stand for free speech. The controversy was all over school come Monday morning. Many of us had seen the programme, and I’m sure quite a few pretended to have done so. Derek and his friends had been watching Match of the Day on the other side. At a time when it was never heard in cinemas, not even in X films, someone had said That Word. On television.

As I lay in bed that night, it occurred to me: the programme had been live, so how had Adam known about it in advance?

***

The following Saturday, I went to the library. Adam was there in his usual seat with his usual newspapers and magazines open in front of him. He looked up as I approached. I must have had a particularly determined expression on my face, as for a moment he seemed worried, without the usual ironic smile on his lips, the one that in retrospect always said to me I know things you don’t know. I’d walked very briskly into town and was a little out of breath.

“Well, well, Barbara,” was all he said.

I was in no mood for anything but directness. “How did you know?”

“How did I know what?”

“How did you know what would happen?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“That television programme you told me to watch, Adam. How did you know Tynan would say that?”

“Well, he’s often controversial, Barbara. I thought you might find it interesting.”

I wasn’t totally convinced, but I relaxed a little, pulling up a seat and undoing my coat. “You should’ve seen Mum’s face. I thought she was going to throw the television out.”

“Better than kicking the screen in, though. Some people might have done that.”

“There wasn’t any excuse for it.”

“You don’t think Tynan had a point?”

I paused. “I suppose he did. It’s fine saying those words in a novel like Lady Chatterley.” Yvonne and I had read that novel together in secret. “But we don’t hear those words in the cinema and we don’t hear them on the stage…”

“That’ll change, sooner than you might think.”

“…so why should we hear them in our own home?”

“Don’t tell me you didn’t know that word.”

“Of course I did.”

As I checked out a couple of books about Ancient Greece, Adam said, “That must have been something to see. Santorini. It destroyed the Minoan civilisation and they think it caused the parting of the Red Sea.”

I was a little shocked to hear that. I was nominally Church of England though had more or less lost any religious faith, but I wouldn’t have said something like that out loud. The woman stamping my books was a churchgoer in her fifties, and I had no doubt she didn’t approve. My talking unaccompanied to a man who was clearly older than me was probably undesirable too.

“Wouldn’t you like to go back to see that, Barbara?”

“You’ve been reading too much science fiction.”

“You’d need earplugs, though. You could hear Krakatoa over three thousand miles away and this was bigger, if anything.”

As I remember this, I think that some years later I married a man, Brian, six years older and nine inches taller than me, who was very clever, who knew all sorts of obscurities. Sometimes, like Adam, he had that air of saying things because of knowledge he possessed but I didn’t, but I would spot it and keep him in check. Brian liked doing pub quizzes and sometimes when I could arrange babysitting for our daughters I often went along to help out in history and literature rounds. But I never did know as much as him. Adam was his predecessor in a way, a type of man I’m clearly attracted to. Back then, at just short of seventeen, there was something glamorous about Adam, not just in his looks but because he clearly did know more than I did.

“Barbara – Ship of Fools is on at the Odeon. Would you be interested in seeing that with me?”

And I said yes.

***

The only person I confided in was Yvonne, whom I met once a week. She had left school after failing most of her O-levels and was partway through a secretarial course. She and I had been all but inseparable in junior school and had remained close while we were at our different secondary schools, but this was the first sense I’d had that we were moving apart.

“Well, you’ve got a brain in your head, Barb, unlike me,” she said, tapping out her cigarette in the small glass ashtray. We were drinking coffee in a small place at the edge of Soho. “All that studying, not for me.”

“There’s an old word for it,” I said. “Bluestocking. Old Mr Smythe at school called me that once. Do you think he was making fun of me?”

“Just as well you don’t wear glasses, Barb. Then you’d really look the part.” She shrugged. “Still, I hope you do go to University. You’ve worked for it. But you need to have fun too. Anyway, how’s your boyfriend Adam?”

“Is he my boyfriend?”

“Well, you’ve been going out for a few weeks now. Have you kissed yet?”

“No.”

“No? Come on, girl!”

I knew that Yvonne had had several boyfriends by then, and she’d kissed them and more, as she told me in confidential whispers when we were alone.

Mum asked me next. It was a Tuesday night; I’d come home from school, changed out of my uniform and was helping her cook dinner.

“Are we going to meet this young man you’re seeing, Barbara?”

Clearly my expression gave me away. I said nothing.

“I hope you don’t think you’re keeping him a secret, are you?”

“It’s early days yet, Mum.” And then, now that the secret was out, the rest followed in a rush. “His name’s Adam. He’s… twenty-two. I met him at the library.” That wasn’t entirely true, I know – I didn’t know exactly how old he was – but it seemed a story I could tell. “He’s a historian.”

She chuckled. “Well, you’ll have something in common there, won’t you? I do hope we can meet him.”

“I hope so too, Mum.”

There was a long pause. “I know you’re a sensible girl – not like Yvonne. I did worry sometimes she’d…lead you astray. But you will be careful, won’t you?”

“I will, Mum.”

“That’s good. Derek will do well, I’m sure. But if anything, Barbara, you’re the really intelligent one of my children, and hopefully you’ll be going to University in a couple of years. You have an opportunity I never had. I don’t want you to lose that by…doing something careless.”

“I know. I’m very grateful, Mum.”

And I was. I’ve always been grateful for Mum and Dad in encouraging me in my education. They didn’t think it would be wasted on a girl, who’d only want to get married and have children as soon as she could. The Education Act was passed four years before I was born, and I was well aware of the opportunities I had. Like many women of her generation – and many of mine as well – she was a mother by age of twenty.

Adam came round for dinner the following Saturday evening. He was dressed in a jacket and tie, his hair slicked back. I’d bought a new dress during the week and this was the first time I’d worn it.

I sensed a tension in Mum and Dad as I opened the door, and that went double with me. But Adam immediately took charge. “Delighted to meet you, Mr Ashton.” He shook Dad’s hand. Then he turned to Mum. “Barbara, you never told me you had a sister.” Behind his back, I winced – that was overdoing it. But Mum giggled girlishly, quite disarmed.

We sat down to dinner, Adam, me and Mum and Dad – or Eileen and Tony, as they soon insisted Adam call them. I’d never seen Mum in particular drop her reserve so quickly. Derek wasn’t with us, as he was spending the evening in the West End with his girlfriend. Mum had made the dinner on her own, refusing any offer of my help: a prawn cocktail, chicken with potatoes and Brussels sprouts, a lemon meringue pie.

“Thank you, Eileen, that was delicious,” said Adam.

We sat in the front room, Adam admiring the photographs over the mantelpiece: Mum and Dad on their wedding day, another of them with young Derek in short trousers and younger me in a plain white dress. I was holding Mum’s hand, blinking against the sunlight at the camera, a doubtful smile on my face.

“So, Adam, do you think there’ll be a man on the Moon?” said Dad.

“Well, President Kennedy did say there’ll be an American on the Moon by the end of the decade. That will happen.”

“So a base on the Moon by the year 2000?”

“Dad, that’s only thirty-five years away.” I made a quick calculation: I would turn fifty-two that year. How unimaginably old that seemed. For most of my life, 2000 was The Future. How quickly it’s become a future passed.

“Do you think we’ll see a mission to Mars in my lifetime?” Dad went on.

“Mmmm. I’m not sure.” Adam was clearly too diplomatic to say an outright no. Dad was obviously disappointed. But he rallied when Adam told him all the things we would see: heart transplants, telephones you could hold in your hand and take with you everywhere you went, computers small enough to fit on your desk and with which you could communicate with people all over the world. We’d recently seen the Berlin Wall go up: Adam suggested we’d live to see it come down. Even Mum, who usually dismissed Dad’s science fiction reading as at worst childish nonsense and at best a harmless foible, seemed fascinated. She tolerated Dad’s interests until he spent what she thought of as too much money on items we didn’t need, the puritan ancestry in her coming forth. Colour television within a couple of years clearly made her nervous enough; the prospect of huge sets that you could hang on your wall was unconscionable.

I don’t know how fanciful all this was. But I do know my head was spinning by the time Adam excused himself and left, just after ten o’clock. I saw him out.

“I think you made a great impression,” I said.

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“They were eating out of your hand, Adam.”

I walked with him to the bus stop. There was no one else around and it was a cold night.

“Barbara…?” he said. “I’m going to be away for a little while. Just a month or so.”

“Oh…?” I was a little disappointed.

“Have a good Christmas and New Year. I’ll see you in 1966.”

“What sort of year will that be, then?” I said, ending with a grin.

“A good year for football, I think.”

“Oh that’s so boring.” I’ve never been a fan.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the lights of a double-decker approaching.

“Thank you for a lovely evening,” I said.

“You’re welcome.” And then, as the bus came nearer, he whispered more urgently, “May I see you again, Barbara?”

“I’d love to.”

And then, with the sigh of the bus’s brakes loud in my ears, he kissed me on the cheek.

It was a brief kiss, and I was disappointed it couldn’t last longer. I momentarily closed my eyes.

“Barbara… I – I’ve got to go. I’ll see you in the New Year.”

He waved at me as the bus pulled away, and I waved back. There were several others on the same bus, staring at me, some of them with outright disapproval. But I didn’t care. I had a big grin on my face as I walked back up the road, breaking into a skip.

***

I saw Adam again in the new year. We went to the theatre, to the cinema, to art exhibitions. He took me to the National Film Theatre on the South Bank. I hadn’t seen films in foreign languages before: some I loved, others I didn’t, but always we’d discuss what we’d seen over a drink afterwards. He took me to restaurants and he paid: there was no question in those days of splitting the bill. Sometimes I’d meet him as we first had, while I was walking Freddie on the Common on a weekend morning. Frequently we’d meet outside Mylo’s, the Italian-owned ice cream shop which had been on Chiswick High Road since before I was born; we were both fond of what they sold. Sometimes he’d meet me outside school and we’d go for a coffee, me still in my school uniform.

Of course my schoolfriends were endlessly curious and I’m sure rumours circulated quickly. Were we doing it? No, we weren’t. After our coffee, he’d walk me home and depart with a kiss on my cheek. 

Mum and Dad were aware of this, but they liked Adam and were fine with my seeing him, as long as I didn’t neglect school and was careful, as Mum had discreetly put it. I remembered the scandal when the head girl had fallen pregnant, a year earlier. And another girl at Yvonne’s school had died as the result of an abortion, which was illegal at that time. I was still a virgin but I had a There but for the grace of God feeling when I heard about that, although she had not been a friend of mine. But then, from a young age, I’d always been a Sensible Girl and had Common Sense running through me like the lettering in the sticks of rock I’d eaten on holidays to the seaside. Sometimes I was glad of that and at other times found it irksome. So, in a way having a man friend like Adam made more people pay attention to me.

I didn’t go to his flat as he told me his landlady wouldn’t approve of his taking me there. She also had a sign which said No Irish No Blacks No Dogs, much to my disgust when he told me. So I accepted that. I did wonder if at some time we might possibly make love. But maybe he wasn’t interested in me that way? I’d been just a few weeks short of fifteen when he’d first met me, after all. Or maybe he was gay – a word I didn’t know in that sense then – and only saw me as a friend. I did value his friendship and the conversations we had, and the kisses goodbye, even if they were platonic ones. One boy I knew – his sister was in my year and I’d gone out with him briefly – tried to put his hand up my skirt when were were in the back row of the cinema, and frankly I’d been more interested in the film than in him. I went out with a few boys from Derek’s year: they were a year and a quarter to two years older than me and seemed less childish than the boys my own age. Even so, if any of them had bought me dinner as often as Adam did, they’d feel entitled to unbutton my blouse, if not take my bra off completely. So I was glad that Adam behaved like a gentleman.

I often wondered where he worked. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he had money – he certainly seemed to have enough when we were out together – and didn’t need a job, his being a historian was a hobby he had the time and means to pursue.

This continued though most of 1966. After the summer, I was in the upper sixth form and was a prefect. We had sometimes been to see live music, and in November Adam asked me if I wanted to see a band, with a guitarist people were talking about. So I said yes.

That was how I saw Jimi Hendrix.

*** 

My younger daughter Isobel’s boyfriend Mark is a guitarist, who has played in several amateur bands. As someone who taught herself to play but was never much good, I can see his ability. When Brian and I first met him, he was polite but when he found out I’d seen Jimi Hendrix live, everything changed. I suddenly became cool in his eyes, rather than just being the middle-aged woman who was his girlfriend’s mother. Sometimes Isobel felt left out. After they had been going out for a while, I sometimes went with them to see live bands, and sometimes when Isobel was away at a meeting or a work conference, or simply didn’t fancy the act in question, Mark and I sometimes went on our own.

I bought all the Jimi Hendrix Experience albums when they came out and still have them, though play them more often on CD these days. I first heard of his death from a newsstand headline; the sun went behind a cloud at that very moment. Mark knew all the details, including that first London gig that Adam and I went to, on Friday 25 November 1966 at the Bag o’Nails club.

It was a cold evening, so I wore a coat over a hooped top, a black miniskirt and grey tights. I’ve never been one for wearing much makeup, though I’d put more on that evening and heels added an inch or two to my height. I had on the earrings I’d been given the previous Christmas. I glanced at myself in the mirror before Adam knocked at the door, wondering if I’d be let in the club or if I’d be turned away. Adam had suggested I say I was eighteen if anyone asked: I wasn’t yet, though my birthday was only eight days away.

We didn’t say much as we sat on the Tube, leaving at Green Park and walking along Piccadilly, up Regent Street and into Kingly Street. Adam greeted the doorman by his name, Mario; he nodded and we went inside. It was much warmer than the cold November air outside.

“Have you been here before?” I asked in a whisper, as we sat down. He nodded. There was a group of women, four or five of them, standing around one in the middle: she was, I later found out, a well-known lesbian, out for the evening with her coterie.

When Adam was at the bar, buying himself a pint of beer and me a glass of white wine, I glanced round, trying not to stare at the famous faces I saw around me. That dark-haired man sitting in a corner on his own, with a Scotch…I was sure I recognised him. Maybe he sensed me looking at the back of his head, as he suddenly glanced up, and I hurriedly averted my gaze. He was Paul McCartney.

I glanced around. The thin-faced man with collar-length hair, standing not far away from us? Jeff Beck. A dark-haired man with sideburns? Eric Clapton. The tall man with the long nose? Pete Townshend. All I thought at that moment was how on earth I was going to tell Yvonne about this, and how jealous she’d be.

Soon after Adam brought the drinks back to our table, I excused myself and went into the Ladies’. I sat in the cubicle, thinking for a moment I was going to be sick with nerves, but it passed. As I redid my lipstick in the mirror, two women were talking to my right. One of them was tall and fair-haired and had an American accent; the other was admiring her snakeskin boots. Neither of them noticed me as I finished with my makeup and went back out into the club. It was about five years later, when I saw the American woman on television, that I remembered where I’d seen her before. She was Linda Eastman, soon to meet Paul at this very club and become Linda McCartney.

I could say more, including naming the man, from a band who’d had several top ten singles, who pinched my bottom as I slipped through the crowd back to Adam.

“Are you all right, Barbara?” he said as I sat down.

 I nodded, clutching at my handbag, crossing one leg over the other.

“You look nervous.”

“I am nervous, Adam.”

His hand brushed my forearm. “Don’t be. Enjoy this. You look really nice.”

In the semi-darkness, I felt my cheeks burn.

He brought me another glass of wine. “This evening’s on me. Think of it as an early birthday present.”

Later that evening, Adam and I were standing in the middle of the crowd. There was some jostling; I clutched my handbag to my side, suddenly wary of pickpockets. Adam slipped his arm about my shoulders. I was happy for him to do that: no doubt everyone there thought we were a couple anyway. It was close, sweaty, with so many people crammed into a small space, mostly men, not many other women.

I could just see the stage past the man in front of me. An announcement was drowned out by a roar from the front. Hendrix stepped onto the stage. He was thin, and looked taller than he probably was. I’d never seen anyone like him – not because he was black, as I’d seen black people before. His hair was in a tightly-curled Afro; he wore a frilled shirt and tight trousers.

And then he started playing.

“It’s ‘Johnny B. Goode’,” Adam whispered in my ear, but I knew it anyway.

It was loud. I couldn’t see either Noel Redding, the bass player, or Mitch Mitchell, the drummer, but I could hear the crack of the snare drum. The bass pummelled me in the stomach. Hendrix’s singing was more hesitant than his guitar-playing. I watched fascinated as his fingers raced over his fretboard. He played it lefthanded and upside down. He played it behind his back and with his teeth, feedback howling in my ears.

He introduced Redding and Mitchell, then they played “Killing Floor”, which I didn’t know but which Adam told me was a Howlin’ Wolf song.

At one point, Hendrix stared straight at me.

When we left, I was drenched in perspiration which rapidly became very cold outside. But I didn’t care. You don’t care about things like that when you’re just short of eighteen and your head’s spinning. I wasn’t sure if I could still hear.

“This way,” said Adam, slipping his arm through mine. I’d been going the wrong way.

“That was astonishing,” I said. “Thank you for inviting me.”

“You’re welcome. That’ll go down as one of the great gigs. A pity no one was recording it.”

I said, “How do you know that?”

He didn’t answer. He stepped into a road, waved his arm. “Taxi!”

As we sat in the back, I said, “You can’t take a cab all the way to Chiswick.”

“Yes we can.” He patted me on the knees. “This evening’s on me, remember?”

I said nothing. The cabbie spent the journey chatting with Adam anyway until he pulled up at the end of our road. I got out while Adam paid. In the cold, I began to shiver, my toes rapidly becoming numb.

Adam walked me to the door. The lights were off inside: Derek might be out but Mum and Dad hadn’t stayed up with me. I reached inside my handbag for my key. “Thanks for a wonderful evening, Adam.”

Our eyes met. A pause. This is it. There was a tightness in my chest. I reached my arm up about his shoulders, my fingers on the nape of his neck. And I kissed him on the mouth.

At first he resisted, then his mouth softened against mine. Then he jerked his head away, a smear of my lipstick on his lips. “Barbara, no…I can’t.”

I said nothing. I looked down. My heart was racing. Had I just done something so very very stupid?

“Barbara, you’re a friend…but we can’t. I’m sorry.” He gulped. “I’ll see you again.” He turned down the path to the pavement. He waved, then hurried away out of sight.

Stupid stupid stupid. I’d ruined everything.

I let myself into the house, kicking my shoes off, not worrying where they lay. I tiptoed up the stairs so as not to disturb Mum and Dad, though I suspected they were lying in bed waiting for me to come home. In my room, I undressed in the dark. I hardly slept that night.

*** 

The following morning, I took Freddie for his walk on the Common. As I let him off his lead, I saw Adam standing nearby.

“Barbara, can we talk?”

I nodded. We sat on a bench, ancient love messages carved into the wood. Freddie ran free across the grass. He was older now and not as fast as he used to be. I folded one leg over the other, my arms across my chest.

“Barbara, I’m sorry about what happened.” He was clearly uncomfortable. “I – I have a lot of respect for you, and you’re a friend, but…we can’t make love. I’m sorry.”

I said nothing for a while, a sinking feeling inside me. “Adam, are you a homosexual? I won’t tell anyone if you are. I know it’s illegal. You have my word on that.”

He turned to face me. “It won’t be illegal for much longer. But I’m not gay.” That was the first time I head anyone use the word in that sense. “Barbara, I’m married.”

I was suddenly very angry. “Married? We’ve known each other how long? Three years. And you decide to tell me this now?”

“I’m sorry.”

“How can I believe you? You live with a landlady.”

“That’s true – I do. I haven’t seen my wife in several years. She left me. I don’t know where she is.”

“Are there any children?”

“No. No children. Fortunately.”

I said nothing, gazing out at the Common, minded to call Freddie and walk him home. I was furious at have been lied to, by omission if nothing else. And feeling stupid and embarrassed at the thought he had any sexual interest in me, that I’d thought our making love was what we ought to do.

“Barbara… I know you’re angry.”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

“I’m really sorry. Please accept my apology.”

I said nothing.

“But you’ve become a friend. Can’t we just be friends like we were?”

I left a long pause. “Okay. Just friends.”

I reattached Freddie’s lead and walked him back home. The sound of my shoes on the pavement was loud in my ears. Damn him. Damn him. Damn him.

 That afternoon, my lack of sleep caught up with me and I dozed on my bed, fully clothed. I came downstairs before tea to watch the that evening’s Doctor Who with the family, partway through the new Doctor’s first story, which featured the Daleks. I was distracted from it as I couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened.

Somehow I wasn’t entirely convinced by what Adam had told me.

***

“Dearie me, Barb. You get your bum pinched once? Mine’s so bruised at the end of every week. The girls told me to keep out of this guy’s way and they weren’t kidding. ‘Take a letter, Miss Gilmore.’ Yeah, how about I stick this fountain pen up your arse?”

We were in a coffee shop. I was in my school uniform and I’d met Yvonne off the bus. I almost didn’t recognise her. Not just because of her smart white blouse and grey A-line skirt, but because she’d dyed her hair peroxide blonde and cut it short into a bob. I realised that it had been a while since I’d seen her. As she spoke, she drew on a cigarette. There was already a little ring of lipstick on the side of her coffee mug.

“Still,” she said. “Not every day you get your bum pinched by a pop star, eh?” She was agog for details of the night. And then I got to what had happened between Adam and me and the end.

“Oh dear. Married, is he? All the best ones are. Unless they’re queer. But he’s a bastard for not telling you. When did you meet him, a gain?”

“Three years ago. I was walking Freddie. It was the day after the JFK assassination.”

“Good Lord, is it that long ago? Well, if he wanted to screw you, he’d have made a move by now. Even if you were only fourteen.”

“Don’t remind me.”

“Hey.” She touched her hand to my forearm. “You’re a bit sore, obviously. But there’ll be someone else. Auntie Yvonne knows these things.”

***

It was a Saturday afternoon in December. I was standing outside the library, far enough away not to be immediately visible. When Adam came out, I followed him. It was a long walk, and a couple of times when he crossed a road I had to hide quickly behind a car or bus shelter so he didn’t see me.

He finally stopped at a cul-de-sac full of terraced houses. Halfway down on the left-hand side, he turned a key and went inside. I stood at the end of the road for a few minutes, looked left and right – no one in sight – and hurried up to the door. There were two bell-pushes by the door and a row of names handwritten in the same copperplate – the landlady’s, no doubt. One was MR A MANN. 

“Can I help you, Miss?”

I started. At the side of the road, just behind the first gate, a plump bald man with a moustache had just got out of his car, his furled umbrella pointing at me like a weapon.

“Can I help you, Miss?” he repeated.

“I – I’m sorry. I think I’ve come to the wrong place.”

“That’s quite all right,” he said, more grumpy than was warranted.

It was a long walk back to Chiswick High Road and then home. But at least I now knew where Adam lived.

***

I did see Adam from time to time, but I didn’t tell him I’d followed him home. The only one I did tell was Yvonne. “Ooh, a proper little Nancy Drew, you are!” She leaned forward, so close that I could see her laugh lines through her makeup. “So, do you think he really is a spy?” she said in an urgent half-whisper, ending with a grin.

Of course I didn’t. But I didn’t know who or what he really was.

School broke up for Christmas. My mock A-levels were in the New Year so I should have been studying. I was, but during the week I walked to Adam’s road. It was quiet at that time of day. If the men were at work maybe their wives would be at home, though I suspected that much of the road was rented to single men.

I stood on the pavement, gazing up at Adam’s house. I’d been so bold, striding this far full of purpose. But now I was at the front door I hesitated at ringing the bell. The side of the house overlooked an alley. A fanlight was open: presumably the landlady, if she didn’t approve of unaccompanied women, blacks, Irish or dogs – just as well I hadn’t brought Freddie with me – did approve of fresh air, even on a cold December day. A drainpipe clung to the brick wall and was in reach of that fanlight; I wondered if I could climb it.

I was a lifelong city girl, a born and bred Londoner, and I’d never been a tomboy. I’d never climbed trees for fear of falling and breaking an arm. I had jeans on rather than a skirt, but even so could I scramble up that drainpipe, reach inside the fanlight and let myself in? Without anyone seeing?

“Barbara, what are you doing here?”

Adam was standing on the doorstep, the door open behind him.

After all I’d prepared for the possibility of meeting him here, all I could say was, “I want to see you.”

“We do see each other. We’re friends.”

“I wanted to see where you live.”

“Well, now you have. You know my landlady doesn’t approve.”

“Is she here?”

“Well, no, she’s out actually.”

“That’s all right then.” And I pushed past him and went into the house.

“Barbara…”

I hurried up the stairs to what I guessed was his room.

“Barbara, you can’t go in there…”

As I reached the top of the stairs, I looked back over my shoulder at him. He was following me and in a couple of strides he could catch me. “Adam, who are you really?”

The door to his room was ajar. I pushed it open.

In the centre of the room was a Formica table. On it was a machine, a tape recorder of some kind, its reels slowly turning. But I knew it wasn’t an audio tape recorder. We had one of those at home. This was a video tape recorder. I knew nobody who had one, as they were very expensive. Not even Dad had expressed a wish to own one.

From the recorder, a lead ran to something I’d not seen before. It was smaller than the recorder, made of some metal or plastic, flat and rectangular. It had a shiny surface and on it there was a moving black and white picture, no sound. I recognised it: United!, a drama series which had been on BBC1 the night before. Derek, the football fan of our family, had watched it.

I stood there, gazing blankly at the moving picture. Adam caught up with me and took hold of my forearm.

“Barbara, you shouldn’t have come in here.”

“What is it? What’s happening?”

“Look.” He touched the bottom of the picture and the picture froze. His fingers moved too quickly for me to follow, but small boxes with words in them, short arrows appeared and disappeared. Then another moving picture: Kenneth Tynan on BBC-3. There was no sound, and I was no expert at lipreading, but it was clear what he was saying.

Then another picture: Doctor Who started, the first episode of the story where they met Marco Polo.

“Barbara,” Adam was saying. I’d been so distracted by what I was seeing that I hadn’t taken in a word he’d said. “In years to come, people will curse the television companies. All these programmes which future generations would give anything to be able to see, all gone. All destroyed.  Or never kept in the first place. They’ll only exist in the memories of the people who watched them. I want to do something about it.”

“Adam,” I said quietly. “Who are you?”

“I’m from your future, Barbara.”

I laughed. “Adam, please. I may be an eighteen-year-old girl but please don’t insult my intelligence.”

“I would never do that.”

“Then why are you telling me this stupid story?” I shifted my handbag on my shoulder. “I’m sorry. I – I’d better go. I shouldn’t have come here.”

I hurried down the stars, hoping the landlady wouldn’t return soon. I was so preoccupied that I didn’t notice the two men standing on the doorstep until I bumped into them.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said. One of them grasped hold of my arm, hard enough for it to hurt. “Let go of me!”

They were both tall, both dark-haired, wearing some grey two-piece garment that looked like a uniform, but wasn’t made from a fabric I recognised.

“Let her go,” said Adam, standing behind me. “She hasn’t done anything.”

“Adam, what’s happening? Who are these people?” I was panicking.

“Barbara, go home,” said Adam. “Forget what you’ve seen here. I’m the one they’ve come for. They’re going to take me back where I came from.”

“Adam, what have you done?”

“Something I’m not authorised to do, put it that way.”

“This way,” said the man who had taken hold of my arm. He tugged me so hard that I almost tripped over, leading me away from the door, down the crazy-paved path to the gate and the pavement.

Standing there was a police constable. He took hold of my arm, gentler this time, as the man in the grey uniform let me go. “Come this way, please, Miss.”

“What’s going on? Where are they taking him?” My heart was beating fast. What was going to happen to me? I hadn’t tried to break and enter, or had I?

“Come with me, please.” He led me to the end of the road where there was a police car, another constable behind the wheel.

***

I sat in the police station for about an hour. Mum and Dad were called, as I was a minor. Someone brought me a cup of tea and a plate of Digestives. No one would tell me what I was being accused of. The father of one of the girls at school was an Inspector; if word got out that I’d been brought here it would be all over my year by the time the new term started. And if I was charged with a crime I’d likely be expelled and that would be the end of any hopes of going to University.

Finally Mum and Dad arrived. Mum’s lips were pursed and she said nothing. Dad said, “Barbara, love, what’s going on?” And with that I hugged him and burst into tears. He patted me on the back, clearly as out of his depth as I was.

“Mr and Mrs Ashton, Miss Ashton, could you come with me, please? I’m Detective Sergeant Williams.” He was a barrel-chested man, shirt straining at his paunch, a thick black beard flecked with grey. Under the fluorescent light of the interview room he led us to, his bald scalp gleamed. I sensed he had dealt with many a hardened criminal over the years in the room, but he was much less at ease with an eighteen-year-old girl and her parents. He passed me a box of tissues to dry my eyes with.

I gave my name, address and date of birth for the records. Mum said, “Sergeant Williams, would you please tell us what is going on?”

Sergeant Williams sat across the table from me, his hands steepled. He left a long pause. “Mrs Ashton, Adam Mann – and no one is certain if that is actually his name – has been under investigation by us for a long while.” He coughed. “He first came to our notice towards the end of November 1963, so it has been three years.”

“That was when I met him,” I said. Mum glared at me, clearly not having realised just how long I’d known Adam, and maybe just how young I’d been then. “I was walking Freddie – that’s our dog – on the Common. It was the day after President Kennedy was assassinated.”

“Indeed.” Sergeant Williams didn’t seem to like being interrupted by me. “It was noticed that he was winning large sums of money at betting shops on the horses. He did this at several different bookmakers’ in different parts of London, as if to avoid anyone noticing any pattern to this. Some of these wins were at quite long odds.”

As if he knew in advance which horse would win, I though. No wonder he didn’t need to work.

“So are you suggesting he was involved in race fixing?” said Dad.

“That was our thought,” said Sergeant Williams. “We know there are criminal interests in horse racing and in betting. But we have not been able to link Mr Mann to any of them. It seemed he was working independently, or maybe for someone else we’re not aware of. Mr Mann has been under surveillance for the last year. Let us say a government department not generally known to the public has involved us with us in this matter.”

They’ve come to take me back where I came from. My mind was racing. “So you think he was a spy?”

“Barbara, don’t be silly,” said Mum.

“I cannot say,” said Sergeant Williams. “But it had been noticed that you and he have spent a not inconsiderable time together over the past twelve months.”

“We were friends.”

“Are you suggesting that Barbara’s involved in whatever Adam’s involved in?” said Dad.

“That is what I am trying to ascertain,” said Sergeant Williams.

“That’s utter nonsense, Sergeant.”

“Tony, we let this man into our home,” said Mum. “He ate dinner with us.”

“Eileen, whatever he’s done, we weren’t to know.”

“I am not in any doubt of that, Mr Ashton. Now, if your daughter would tell us how she met Mr Mann and their meetings over the last…three years.” I noticed that pause: the unexpected length of time had clearly wrongfooted him.

I told them almost everything, from my first meeting with Adam on the Common to my approaching him on his doorstep earlier today. I didn’t say what I’d seen inside his room. Sergeant Williams took notes, said he would talk to Adam’s landlady and asked to see my diary to confirm the dates I had given.

When I’d finished, he closed his notebook. “Thank you, Miss Ashton, for giving me such a full answer. I’m satisfied that you are innocent of any wrongdoing. You have been, I may say, a naïve young girl caught up with Mr Mann but have not been involved in his activities.”

I bit my lip. I’ve never appreciated being patronised by men.

“There is a rather delicate question, but I have to ask it…did he take advantage of you?”

I knew what that meant. I said nothing.

“Sergeant Williams, is this necessary?” said Mum.

I gazed levelly at him. “No. He did not take advantage of me.”

From his expression, he wasn’t entirely convinced.

“Sergeant,” said Dad. “If Barbara said he didn’t, then I believe her. I trust my daughter implicitly.”

Sergeant Williams sat back. “Thank you, Miss Ashton. Soon you may go and return to your studies. I understand you’re hoping to go to University next year. But first there is a little mystery I wonder if you could comment on.”

He pushed a folded-up copy of a local newspaper across the table to me. Facing upwards was a black and white photograph of a bride and groom standing hand in hand outside a church on what looked like a sunny day. It wasn’t the most clear picture but I could see who the man was.

“That’s Adam.”

So he had been married. That at least had been true. There was a tightness in my stomach.

“That is a photograph of the marriage of Mr Adam Mann to Miss Catherine Buxton. She was eighteen years old, your age.”

“He never said he was married,” said Mum. “This gets worse.”

“That photograph was taken in the August of 1938. So it would appear that, if this is indeed him, Mr Mann is much older than we thought. In fact, he appears not to have aged in twenty-eight years.”

“Lucky bugger,” said Dad.

“Tony,” said Mum.

“That’s definitely him,” I said. My head was spinning.

“Don’t be silly, Barbara. It can’t be. He wasn’t that old. He’d have to be nearly fifty now.”

“In the September of the next year,” Sergeant Williams went on, “this Mr Mann disappeared completely without trace. There is no record of him whatsoever – no War service, which you would expect of an able-bodied man of his age. In fact, no trace of him at all, at least under that name, until three years ago, around the time you met him, Miss Ashton.”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“At the time of Mr Mann’s disappearance, Mrs Mann was expecting.”

I went cold. “Have you spoken to her?”

“Sadly, that is not possible. Mrs Mann and her son were killed in the Blitz.”

I blinked. “That’s horrible.”

So Adam had been telling the truth, or some of it. Maybe he’d never known he’d fathered a child. And he’d disappeared around the time when War had broken out, when the television service had been abruptly suspended for the duration. When I’d kissed him, he’d responded; I had no doubt of that. If what he said was true, he had to live in this time and become involved with people as little as possible. But he’d failed in that then, and he might have failed again, with me.

What if we had become lovers? What if we’d married? What if I’d borne his child? Would he have disappeared once again?

Such a trail of devastation he’d left behind, without meaning to. In a way I feel sorry for him. But in other ways I can’t forgive him, the same I can’t excuse someone who knows how fallible they can be but still goes ahead and fails again, when other people are involved, like someone behind the wheel of a car after drinking.

I felt hollow inside.

Soon afterwards, Sergeant Williams let me go. Mum and Dad drove me home.

***

When I returned to school in the New Year, what I’d feared had come to pass: what had happened to me was now common knowledge. I saw girls laughing behind their hands as I passed.

The first thing I did was to clear out everything that had Adam’s taint in it. Presents he’d bought me for my birthday and Christmas, programmes for the plays and films and concerts we’d seen together…I threw them all away. I didn’t want to hear Adam’s name mentioned, and Mum, Dad and Derek never did again.

The important thing for me then, as Mum and Dad both made clear, was my studies. I didn’t go out much, except to walk Freddie at weekends. He was becoming slower with age and although I didn’t know it then, had just six months to live. I saw hardly anyone outside school; I didn’t want to. I did meet Yvonne a few times and spoke to her on the phone a few more times. But mostly I retreated into myself. Nowadays, I’d suspect I was depressed.

On a Saturday in early July, I took a break from studying and travelled by Tube into the centre of London, walking among the shoppers in Oxford Street. It was busy, but there was a particularly large crowd in front of one window. I moved among them to see what they were looking at. 

There, inside the shop, was a television set. Nothing unusual about that. It was turned to BBC2 and on the screen was a men’s singles match from Wimbledon. And it was in colour.

I stayed there to the end of the match, pressed against the window glass, sometimes forgetting to take a breath. I marvelled at the players’ flesh tones, the way they darkened as the sun went behind a cloud. The grass, green with patches of a brownish hue. Even the orange juice and barley water the players drank during the intervals. It was somehow more vivid than life, more so than the crowds around me. I thought of Adam, wishing he were still there to see this.

***

I passed my A-levels and was accepted by Goldsmith’s to take History. I even had my photograph in the local paper. That summer I took a secretarial course and learned typing and shorthand – something to fall back on if you need to, Mum and Dad said – and worked temporarily for a nearby company in the typing pool. I was still numb, and quite happy to be anonymous, one amongst several women, all of them older than me. Take a letter, Miss Ashton. I went back there during the University vacations to earn some extra money.

I lived at home while at University, but spent a lot of time in central London, making a lot of friends and sleeping with several of the male ones. During that time, I thought of Adam only fleetingly. I saw quite a few live bands with whoever was my boyfriend at the time. I took some drugs, mostly pot but did try LSD once. Slipping a curtain ring on to my finger, I pretended to be married so I could obtain the Pill. I read The Golden Notebook and The Feminine Mystique and bought Sexual Politics and The Female Eunuch when they were published.

By the time I graduated, I was ready to leave London, the city I’d lived in all my life. I did a year’s teacher training and took a job teaching History and English at a secondary school in York. I had tears in my eyes as the train left King’s Cross and I waved goodbye to Mum, Dad, Derek and his girlfriend – soon to be wife – Frances, but I knew I had to do it. After a couple of years I met Brian, a tall ginger-haired Scot, and we were married in the summer of 1974; I’d finished the school year as Miss Ashton and I returned in the autumn as Mrs Ellis. I was twenty-five, an age when people were wondering if I’d ever marry or would remain a spinster all my life.

I was heavily pregnant during the very hot summer of 1976 and didn’t go back to work after Lucy was born. Isobel arrived at the beginning of 1979, during the Winter of Discontent which helped bring down the government and paved the way for Margaret Thatcher to become Prime Minister. Soon after, we moved to Glasgow, Brian’s home city. After Isobel started school, I returned to teaching.

The first children I taught are now well into their forties and each autumn I see a new batch to teach English and History to. I sometimes wonder if young Adam is one of them and even if I’m instilling a love of history which would lead to his actions later in his life and earlier in mine. My hair would be mostly grey if I didn’t dye it back to my once-natural shade of brunette, and I’ve worn it short for decades. Swimming, jogging and walking my Red Setter Rosie keeps me trim and I let myself be girlishly flattered when someone doubts that I’m in my mid-fifties and a grandmother. I have my friends and I have my family. Sadly, in the early years of the new century, we lost Mum and Brian. I am glad that they both managed to see and hold Charlotte, her great-granddaughter and his granddaughter, before they passed away.

Dad still lives in the house in Chiswick, a creature of habit. I’ve tried to persuade him to sell up and buy a flat or to move in with me in Glasgow, but he won’t. I speak to him on the phone every week and these days we exchange emails almost daily. During the school holidays I often travel south and stay with him in the house I grew up in, sleeping in my old room. Some of my books are still there, on the short shelf above the headboard of the bed. When I was little, I wondered if there ever was an earthquake it wouldn’t be that which killed me but the heavy encyclopaedia falling on my head. It has Mum’s neat looping handwriting inside the front cover: To Barbara. Happy Christmas 1958 Love Mummy and Daddy. In the mornings, I walk before breakfast to the Common where I used to walk Freddie and where I first met Adam, along Chiswick High Road, past the library. Buildings I remember are no longer there, bomb sites from before I was a teenager cleared up, grass grown over them or rebuilt. Mylo’s, where Adam and I often met, is no longer there. Places are still present, but not where I remember them. And those I’m sure I’ve never seen before, strange efflorescences which have bloomed between my visits.

When I was a girl, this was my landscape and this landscape was me. Now I’m separate from it, as if looking at it through glass, unable to go back again. There’s a rupture. From around the age of eighteen, everything I remember is part of the process which led from the Barbara Ashton I was then to the Barbara Ellis I am now. Before then, Barbara is an alien creature who once inhabited this body. Sometimes I dream of her, call out her name, wanting to tell her what she should do and not do, but I know she can’t hear me.

***

Derek, Frances and I take Dad out for a meal the evening before his eightieth birthday and on the day itself we hold a party for him in the house. Lucy stands at the side of the room, a glass of Diet Coke in her hand, in a lavender top, black trousers and deep-blue buckled court shoes, ankles crossed, balancing on the toe of one foot, a leftover pose from girlhood ballet lessons. But she was always too tall for that: six inches taller than me, she inherited her height from Brian as well as his red hair, loose to her shoulders. She’s pregnant again, has only just told me: she’s not showing yet. Isobel, only an inch shorter than her sister, in an ivory top and a short red skirt over black tights, is with Mark. He’s put on some weight and his hair is beginning to recede. I keep Charlotte near me, sometimes holding her hand, grandmotherly duty so that her parents can circulate. Now three and a half years old, in a pale green dress, her hair in a plait, she’s a chatty girl and has just been told she’ll have a new brother or sister by the end of the year. Derek, stouter now than he was, planning for a retirement from the civil service hopefully only a few years away, is making sure people’s glasses are full. Frances, short, birdlike, bracelets she made herself jangling on her wrists, is with Alex, their one child, standing shyly to one side, a glass of beer in his hand. Dad, in a blue jumper and coal-grey trousers, his beard now all white, is in the corner talking to an old army friend and his wife.

Later in the afternoon, before the catering buffet we’d ordered arrives, we show a presentation Derek and I had put together. It starts with photos of Dad as a baby and a child, then only just out of his teens in his army uniform. His wedding day, Derek and I as children. Still black and white images change to colour and begin to move: the grainy flicker of the Super 8mm film Dad took on holidays and filmed Derek and my weddings on, then the flat look of videotape and the smoother, slicker, brighter texture of digital later on. Towards the middle of the Sixties, there’s a photo that had escaped my purge and without blinking I included it: Adam and me in our front room, just about to leave for the Hendrix gig. I close my eyes briefly as it appears and a couple of seconds later it’s gone.

As everyone leaves, I kiss and hug them all and wave them away into the night. And I embrace and kiss Yvonne, her hair dyed blonde again, her mid-Sixties taste for bright red lipstick still in force. She’s there with her second husband, co-director of the clothing company they run. She has no children and never wanted any, but is godmother to Lucy who has Yvonne as her middle name.

My family and friends. Most of what I’ll leave behind when the time comes, in their memories until the time when they too pass.

One of my presents to Dad is the new DVD of the Quatermass serials I’d been too young to watch at the time. In the evening, we watch the surviving two episodes of The Quatermass Experiment. After they finish, an announcer in an evening dress tells us to tune in next week for the next episode. But I can’t. All those television programmes, the Doctor Whos, Kenneth Tynan saying That Word, even the first day of colour television…all gone, all lost, with only memories left.

Dad tuts. “I remember that like it was yesterday.”

He goes to bed soon afterwards, tired out by the long day. I stay up for a little more. As I climb the stairs to my room, I stand on the landing, looking down the hill at all those houses, all those lives, a dense scattering of lights. 

I think of Adam again. I wonder where he is now.

© Gary Couzens, 2021