New years Eve 1986

I just had been searching for the whereabouts of my daughter Helen for sixteen years. That was a pin in my heart and it hurt. Silly of me all that time wondering and thinking and being restless. When I boarded that plain in Barajas only had an address in Epping obtaining though a letter from a relative in the Telegraph a year before or so. The Bolton’s were a close knitted family, had a kind of allegiance stemming from their old clans. They were mixture of Welsh and Irish. I took a plane with a meagre sum of a few pesetas ignoring that the standard of living has gone up, too. England had joined the Common Market, an I remembered – how could I forget- that New Years Eve, Edward Heath being premier, it was an obscure day with an early sunset and London looked a ghostly town, and it went to bed English and dawn found the big nation European. However they never ceased to be British. Union Jack, John Bull, Christmas Pudding, bacon and eggs, porridge, the bath on Sunday Evenings and Psalms, and No Sex, please, we are British, as the title went of a famous comedy by Michael Douglas Hume staged at Soho theatres in may days, the good old days. Off course, England went European but the Red Lion continued non-stop in its insularity. Yes I remember that Sylvester Evening of 73. Loneliness at my digs and I went looking for Helen.

My life those days was a recipe of mischievous sequels of complains and grudges without following the recommendations of never complain never explain. Suzanne who was a good observer made a good remark about us. “You are a bunch of complainers or quejicas, she said it in Spanish and to a certain extent she hit the nail right on the head. Nevertheless our lack of constancy, our apathy that certain tendency of blaming somebody else’s for our own failures is nothing compared with perfidy the passionate coolness of John Bull looking at every one with high brows. The British could be very supercilious and hypocrites. We, Spaniards, are big liars.

Thoughtfulness had been one of my defects, but, full of courage of determination, I felt like an Spanish conquistador when boarding that Jumbo full of madrilènes going, as usual for the Christmas shopping Oxford Street like in the good old days and English Nationals from mixed families.

The woman next to me was a teacher in Torrelodones and I think she was going through a bad patch on her marriage coming back to mother I suppose. Innocent and careless as I always used to be and thinking that everybody is cheerful and in a good mood – in my youth I read a lot the Gospel and thought that the true life had to be the perfection Jesus taught in his parables thus I became an utopian a dreamer and also naïf or rather a practitioner of panphilia (in the Greek meaning of the word) and that believe or philia turned to phobia when I grew older but I cant get rid of those spells of good expectations and believes in mankind, they sometimes appear when I feel in good mood. With that attitude you are bound to disaster, Hillary. You build walls without countermark. Houses of sand but the Lord forgives you, idiot

I also thought and was mistaken that planes going to Heathrow were like those friendly trains I took when I was living in Doncaster where everybody talked to each other offered cigarettes and partook sandwiches with cups of tea from the thermos apart of confess to strangers the sins of your life. So here you are again sitting in a plane that is taking you to Perfidy Albion. I always liked impossible things; perhaps was the reason of my infatuation with that country. In the University took Anglo-Saxon for speciality and dreamed of that paradise of robin hood’s wood, full of bishops, courtiers, minstrels, castle, the lady leaning out of the window, Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare, the chants of the Beowulf, English tea, Alec Guinness, London fog, the shoes of a bobby, Alf Garnett, the carry on films, pints of bitter, rides in the double-decker bus, travel with my aunt, squalid living in digs, the smokes of a pipe, Anglican priest and sextons extinguishing candles in old cold churches neither cibary nor remonstrance no images nor saints no rosaries the cult of the Lady finished, Our Lady’s chapel closed for good. Henry the Eight and Anna Boleyn. Crammer and Thomas More. I had confusing idea of all that. May be my perception was misgiving. Bur I always was the odd man out. I liked things my way. Larry, you are going to be dashed to pieces. No. England was much less convivial. The good old days of the post-war year the swing sixties and the couldn’t-care-less seventies had given way to the iron days of the Iron Lady the flogging of the TUC and the mind of the I am alright Jack. More individualistic and rich mouths became more reserved.

I did not try to chat the bird but I explained to the woman that I was going to England trying to meet my estranged family. Oh God perhaps she was in the same boat. Her marriage was falling to pieces like mine was years ago and I could not recover from the psychological impact on me. I gathered she hated the Spaniards. She talked to me in Spanish but when the plane reached the English aerial dominion she shifted to her mother tongue and became derogatory and incriminating almost rude.

        “Oh dear. Larry, you always get yourself into trouble. Better you should have kept your mind shut”.

We went into an aerial bump and the whole plane started to shake. Bad omen. We landed in Gatwick with nearly an hour delay. The schedule was a Heathrow landing but three was something wrong with one of the engines or the wings the pilot did not explain and the crew were also a bit shaky. It was a freezing day. Took one of my expensive cigars and started to puff in the middle of the arrivals area. People looked at me startled as if I were a Martian or something.

        “People don’t smoke tobacco nowadays in this country. Only cannabis”

        “Oh dear Larry you always landed into trouble. Su said that you always land in your feet –it was one her favourite ready made phrases evaluating me-.

But elle etait trompé. I have been an unlucky sod most of my days but it serves me right for moaning all the time as if I were Jeremiah. Never explain never complain, the old adage goes. We live in a classless society and, since childhood, the Spaniards of our generation believed in rank, hierarchy, suffered from piles, insecurity complexes and guilt and were under the rod of confessor-maniac. We had no principles, only those of the Catholic Church. And those big words and ready made speeches deliver to our under conscience in remorse, oh you dirty rascal, you have wet dreams and scatology by degrees. We believed in rank, hierarchy, principles, those big words and ready made speeches delivered to our subconscious in long academic evenings of tedium only to fodder our indomitable ego.

Needless to say, excited as I was in that winter morning [December brings with the dew of the cold night melancholy of time past] in 1986 a year after than we moved house and went to live outside Madrid before the flood of immigrants in our capital and I felt on top of the world. At last travel as in the good old days. I have become a no person since Franco died. But now I was roaming the spaces holding tight in my pocket that letter in which a Heagerty, senile, with bending and not so firm scripture, gave the address of the Hughs. Pie and the sky around the world was mine. Trouble with you matey is that you have watched many a film and through that you lost contact with the real world. The image of Britannia o Baodicea ruling the waves represented to me. I was the lord and master of my destiny. I saw looking below the big waves like tiny spots of froth and the Ocean a big mass of dark blue magma, the morass where our fight began. The vertical pond hiding the Infinite. The horizontal flatness portraying the idea of endless purposeless. It must be cold down there. There I was riding the storm. Very excited