Page 160 - Michael Frost-Voyages to Maturity-23531.indd

The door partially opened, and there she was, looking, I thought, a bit wan. I
mumbled something, she said she had received no letters or telegrams, and that
we should meet in a coffee bar down the street in a couple of hours. Without
seeing anything, I sensed a presence behind her in the flat, and away I went. I
probably need not add that she did not show up; the torch was quenched. I stayed
overnight in a sleazy hotel, the pleasures and elegance of Geneva quite lost to me
and boarded the train the next morning.

Life, of course, had to continue; one probably learns more from such experiences
than from even the most pleasurable revelations, Nietzsche notwithstanding.
Back in England, and deciding that I needed a brief change of scenery, I took
an enjoyable drive up to Father’s cousin’s home in Suffolk, a delightful little bit
of antiquity that was part of Lord Somerleyton’s estate and for whom my ‘uncle’
worked as a gamekeeper/carpenter/groundsman. This was really a scene from
the past; only a few years before our family had spent a week in their cottage,
and the manner in which the estate looked after its employees could be partly
gleaned from the fact that there was an outside toilet (straight into a cesspit) and
no running water (there was a communal pump on the adjacent village green).
By 1965 things had been modernised, but not by much. Anyway, this did not
much bother me, as they were good company and he was a Jack of all Trades (he
was an actual ‘Uncle Jack’) and able to explain to me a few of the intricacies of the
MGA, not all of which were welcome news. I drove it around the area, saw the
Broads in greater detail, and visited Oulton Broad and Lowestoft, all the while
becoming more acquainted with the interstices of this car. Worryingly it had a
tendency to stall for no reason and to re-start only after a hammer blow upon
the battery, which was uncomfortably located below and behind the driver’s seat.

Driving back to Sussex, I diverted to London, headed for Leadenhall Street,
and applied for a job with P&O’s Marine Superintendent (this was the position at
the head of all seagoing staff, usually a retired senior Captain or Commodore). I
did not know my august interviewer, but his questions were desultory, I was sent
downstairs for a medical, and twenty-five pounds later (for the medical, I believe)
I was back with P&O-Orient Lines. I celebrated by deciding to spend the evening
with Anne, of Oriana and Palma history, whom I knew to be in London – and
without her father! – and we went to the play “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”
By this time I was actually quite familiar with London theatres; when we had lived
in Woolwich, David and I went to quite a number of plays on Jacqueline’s behalf,
as when a trainee nurse at Guys Hospital she frequently received gifts of surplus
tickets (naturally, these were not the ‘hot sellers’), which she forwarded to us if
she could not use them. Anne and I went to the original 1964 production with
Uta Hagen and Arthur Hill, one that was thereafter seared into my consciousness
but not with particular pleasure; Albee’s supposed subplot of the state of the
union was quite lost to me in light of the real vitriol that I saw as being the play’s

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