Alan Johnson - The Long and Winding Road

This Boy

Please, Mister Postman

TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS

6163 Uxbridge Road, London W5 5SA

www.penguin.co.uk

Transworld is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com

First published in Great Britain in 2016 by Bantam Press

an imprint of Transworld Publishers
Copyright Alan Johnson 2016
Cover image Rex Features
Design: Stephen Mulcahey/TW

Alan Johnson has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

Every effort has been made to obtain the necessary permissions with reference to copyright material, both illustrative and quoted. We apologize for any omissions in this respect and will be pleased to make the appropriate acknowledgements in any future edition.

Between The Wars Words and Music by Billy Bragg 1985, reproduced by permission of Sony/ATV Music Publishing (UK) Ltd, London W1F 9LD.

Lines from The Road Not Taken from Poetry of Robert Frost by Robert Frost, published by Jonathan Cape and reprinted by permission of The Random House Group Ltd.

Lines from Night Mail 1938 by W. H. Auden from Collected Poems by W. H. Auden, reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd.

Extract taken from Here from The Complete Poems Estate of Philip Larkin and reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd.

Extract taken from Bridge For The Living from The Complete Poems Estate of Philip Larkin and reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Version 1.0 Epub ISBN 9781473526761

ISBN 9780593076033

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the authors and publishers rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

For Natalie, Emma, Jamie and Oliver

I KNEW I shouldnt have gone. It was my sister Linda who persuaded me. Seven years after emigrating to Australia, she and her husband Chas were returning to England for the first time, to attend the wedding of our half-sister Sandra on 25 August 1990.

Sandras father would be giving her away. The problem was that Sandras father, Stephen Johnson, was also my father. He was, of course, Lindas father, too, but while she had re-established contact with him, I had not. In a different context I suppose he gave us away, or at least left us to our own devices. I was eight when he walked out and thirteen on the only other occasion Id seen him since, at my mothers funeral, where hed hovered on the periphery. It seems over-dramatic to say that, as far as I was concerned, I didnt have a father; as if Id grown up emotionally damaged by his departure, by his rejection of my mother, Lily, and of us. But I bore no shoulder chips, carried no burden; there were no scars on my body, or on my soul. I was completely and entirely at ease with being fatherless. I accepted it as my natural state, like having blue eyes and dark chestnut hair the colour of Lilys. Steves was ginger.

It wasnt as if Steve had broken some kind of bond between us when he left. Wed never been close. And Linda had always said that she hated our father. Indeed, shed once tried to stab him with her Girl Guides penknife. He was a boozing, gambling womanizer who abused our mother physically as well as mentally. If he hadnt been so feckless she wouldnt have had to ruin her already fragile health by scrubbing and cleaning other peoples houses for a pittance. Yet hatred was not an emotion I ever felt capable of summoning up. Lily had ensured that the misery in her life didnt transfer to mine. She and my sister absorbed it. Theyd kept things from me so that I wouldnt be aware of the full extent of Steves behaviour. Still, I knew enough to feel elated when he left. No more shouting matches that could be heard by all the other families living around us in our west London slum. No more attacks on my mother. No more creeping around in silence on a Saturday morning while he slept off the excesses of the night before.

At that time, in the 1950s, the Home Service would broadcast appeals for information about missing people. Every morning our big, old wireless, hired from Radio Rentals, would solemnly urge the likes of Mr Gerald Smith, formerly of Sunbury-on-Thames, to please get in touch with his mother, Gladys Smith, who is seriously ill. I remember wondering if, one of those mornings, just after Lift Up Your Hearts and before the eight oclock news, would come the plea: Will Mr Stephen Arthur Johnson, of Southam Street, North Kensington, London W10, return home, where his wife, Lilian May Johnson, is waiting to hear from him. Steve had slipped away on a Saturday morning in 1958 while the three of us were down the lane in Portobello Road market. My mother had no idea where hed gone.

In the end, he was tracked down to Upland Road, East Dulwich, the home of Vera, the barmaid at the Lads of the Village, one of the various pubs across Kensal Town where Steve played piano to an appreciative audience. It was always a mystery to me how Vera managed to get to and from work in North Kensington from East Dulwich, which must have been at least ten miles away. Aged eleven, and an avid collector of football programmes, I once made the journey to a shop in Dulwich where, I was reliably informed by Charles Buchans Football Monthly, there were thousands for sale. The bus ride took so long that I was amazed to find I was still in London. Having no understanding of population density or the vastness of the city south of the river, the whole time I was there I was nervous I might bump into Steve.

And now the wedding invitation arrived from that same house in Upland Road. Mr and Mrs Stephen Johnson request the pleasure of the company of... After thirty-two years he wanted the pleasure of my company. Linda was coming all the way from Perth, Western Australia for Sandras special day and she had been so afraid of flying that even when she and Chas emigrated shed insisted on going by sea. Apparently, she had conquered her phobia on several holiday flights to Bali, but this was a gruelling journey just to attend a wedding.

Sandras our sister, Linda reiterated needlessly over the phone. Our flesh and blood. It would make her day if we could be there for her. She was as determined and as persuasive as ever. I was cornered. Against my better judgement, for Sandras sake, I would have to go.

I wouldnt have as far to travel. By 1990 I was living and working in south London myself. My job with the Union of Communication Workers was based in Clapham, and home was a flat in the urban sprawl of Thornton Heath, at St Christophers Gardens, a new development bordering the A23, the Brighton Road. I was a forty-year-old divorcee and grandfather, my daughter Natalie having given birth to her own daughter, Carmel, in 1987. If I could summon up hatred for anything it was that word grandfather. It made me feel like an ancient clock, or a grey-haired pensioner in a misshapen cardigan pottering in his garden.