Of Elves and Teddy Boys

    My Aunty Marge and her husband Fred, a taciturn, growling cockney, lived in Fairfax Road, Hornsey, although at the other end of the street to the house where I was born. I adored my Aunty Marge, a slight, rather mousy woman who was troubled by a stomach ulcer in later life. For many years she had worked for Marks & Spenser. As the eldest of her siblings, during the war she would make treks out to the countryside with ferrets, which she kept for the purpose of hunting rabbits in order to supplement the family's rations. She and Fred would a few years later retire to Clacton-on-Sea, where Marge was knocked through the glass kitchen door by an over-exuberant Boxer dog named Sheppy. Fred had been captured by the Japanese during the war and had endured unspeakable indignities and torture, the details of which he never divulged to anybody.

    The house in Fairfax Road was situated near the end of the street, next to an alleyway. I remember as a very small child being walked down to the corner shop, a few doors from my aunty's house, and there was a machine standing on the pavement which dispensed cartons of delicious orange juice, the taste of which I can remember to this day.

    As a very small boy I had sometimes been taken down the road to be looked after by Marge if my mother went out. On one of these occasions I made my way to the toilet on the upstairs landing and, glancing past the lace curtains of the hallway window, I was almost paralysed with terror. Across the alley, there on the roof, were two evil-looking Siamese cats lying on the tarred surface, beneath some blackened and broken Victorian chimney-pots. A thin scribble of grey smoke drifted up from one of the chimneys. Something about this scene filled me with fear; I had a sensation that it was unutterably evil and that I shouldn't look upon it. (Make of that what you may, Dr Freud). I covered my eyes and ran to the toilet. Much later, my aunt had come up to see where I was, as I had been too terrified to leave the safety of the tiny, lavender-scented room for fear of encountering the scene again.

    Marge always had grapes and other fruit in a bowl on the kitchen table. This always seemed very exotic to me, as it was far from the norm in my own household, where an occasional browning banana might be sometimes available, or a tangerine at Christmas. She also kept china rabbits on the windowsills. To my shame, on one occasion, I accidentally knocked one of these rabbits onto the floor where it broke into four pieces. I left it where it had fallen and although nothing was ever said about it I was filled with crushing guilt for the rest of the visit.

    In December of 1965 we were to spend Christmas with Marge and Fred. My family drove up to London from Heathfield, in Sussex, where we then lived. There was much hugging and welcome kisses from Marge to me and my two sisters (my two brothers were born later). I was to sleep on my own in the small front room, on a fold-out sofa bed. My two smaller sisters were to sleep upstairs with my parents. As I lay in the makeshift bed, having been tucked in by my mother, my head filled with the unfamiliar scent of somebody else's freshly laundered sheets, I looked out of the window. It was raining, and the orange glow of a streetlight was fractured across the windowpane. I was beginning to get excited at the thought of Father Christmas' visit later in the dead of night, and still marvelling at how he would manages to find me, so far from our house in the country. My uncle Fred stepped into the room and strode over to the window. His short, squat figure was framed by the dark, velveteen curtains.

    “If you ‘ear any teddy boys aht there in the night, turn over and go back ter sleep! Don’t look aht of the winnder!” he warned, “They can be vicious bastards! Oh, yes, very nasty!” At this, he gave his characteristic Sid James laugh. My aunt, who had followed him into the room, quickly responded, “Fred! Don’t tell him that! You’ll scare him witless!” I was then left alone in the dark room, the sound of rain pattering down outside. My heart pounded in my ears as I strained to hear the sound of these strange boys - who were also teddy bears - as they crept up the road to do their vicious business outside the house. I was scared, but I was also aware of an erotic thrill: I wondered whether they would allow one to cuddle them, as with a real teddy, and I played this possible scenario over in my mind. The odd mixture of comfort tinged with danger made it all seem deeply fascinating. It was only much, much, later that I realised how out of touch Fred was with society. By 1965 teddy boys really were a thing of the past.

    The next morning when I awoke, having not heard any commotion in the street overnight, I found that Father Christmas had left me, amongst other things, a large, colourful soap in the shape of Noddy sitting in his little car. I mistook it for a strange kind of sweet - as might well be manufactured by North Pole elves - and I took a big greedy bite out of it, which I immediately regretted.