Free Love Fifteen

played a double-bluff, pretending to wink at the oldsters while the bods all knew he was having them on. Once they’d reached the car, Theo made Fred swear by whatever gods he held dear never again to venture beyond the gates. Turning the ignition key and pulling the throttle knob, Fred smiled and shrugged, probably thinking Theo was really afraid of Sergeant’s put-on anger. Gawd strewth, strike me pink and luvaduck guvnor! Theo despaired of older people sometimes, even fairly decent ones like old Fred.
    *
    Kay, on the other hand, welcomed her father at her school and showed him off to her nubile classmates. She reminded Fred of that cat that walked alone in the
Just-So Story
he’d read them when they were nippers. She kept herself to herself, as in Kipling’s drawing of it on that long road through the forest. To assuage twinges of guilt about using the business car for pleasure, he sometimes gave her schoolfriends lifts home, even if they lived as far afield as Henleaze and other places Rose dreamt of moving to after the threat of Nazi Germany had been seen off. Her escape-by-marriage from the poor streets down near the Metropole (before it was de Luxe) wasn’t enough for her. She wanted to climb even higher, to Sneyd Park beyond The Downs. Fred had no such craving. Villa Borghese was more than elevated enough for him.
    Sometimes Kay and her friends were picked up before Theo got on. Then he’d have to climb in and sit beside them on the back seat, even have one of them on his lap, all the others giggling. In the rear-view mirror Fred saw his face, a study in scorn and loathing. Strange how boys of Theo’s age still scoffed at girls. Fear, probably.
    Theo couldn’t help getting the horn when one of these women was on him and he prayed she wouldn’t feel the knob pressing against her thighs through the skirt. He reckoned Kay knew this and encouraged her coven of professional virgins to make eyes at Fred while actually mocking Theo’s manhood by giving him the jack. They all did Vivien Leigh’s tinkling laugh, though Kay’s was best, and whoever was on his lap would roll about when the car cornered to make his horn bigger, probably on purpose. If he could keep it hard till they reached Villa Borghese, he’d toss off in view of all those starlets and Miss Poland on the walls.
    *
    Now, on the Sunday run, Fred looked across at beautiful Rose, glammed up in the passenger seat and his left hand moved over to caress her knee. She gave a warning look, rolling her eyes towards the back seat where the young ones sat. This afternoon they’d been to Blaize Castle (where Theo and Inky often played Robin Hood, swapping the Errol Flynn and Basil Rathbone roles, both liking villainous Guy of Gisbourne best) and back through Westbury where Rose could admire the beautiful houses, each in its own garden, with kids on swings or playing French cricket. Fred and Rose had looked over one that was for sale and she later told her mother with awe about the labour-saving hatch from kitchen to dining-room. Villa Borghese had once seemed to both women a hilltop palace. Now they complained of its dark corners and blessed up-and-down steps. Fred had come to the west country from Kent and with that move thrown off his own modest Medway upbringing. Mother-in-law Tilda embodied the poverty that Rose had risen above, the memory of it always threatening to climb the hill like floodwater and drown her again. The old lady’s lapses frightened them both. Fred had learnt the importance of props and gestures: fawn felt spats and Homburg hats that he wore for Business; bridge-parties and whist-drives; annual travellers’ balls where Rose could oblige with a ballad; and above all his imminent admission to the Masonic Lodge. It was a relief that Tilda spent weekends at her rented flat down the hill, as Fred made clear he liked to enjoy these with his family, not always to be reminded of Tilda’s