Edith Grove

 

 

 June 7 1963 

SO THERE I WAS IN SWINGING LONDON 

I had just flown in on a plane

In the cargo compartment where I did most of my jetsetting.

I was 12 years old very tall and skinny.

I had been abducted the day before from a track and field event I was attending with my grade 6 class on the grounds of a reform school in the mountains north of Montreal.

I woke up in my dirty track clothes on a mattress in a dirty apartment 

I needed a bath and shampoo but there seemed to be nowhere to bathe let alone do laundry.

In the other room two young men were quickly getting dressed and going out the door.

I made my way to the kitchen where dirty dishes were stacked high in the sink and all over the greasy counter space.

It was building up to be a very hot day for June in London. 

A young man with sunglasses appears at my side and offers to take me shopping. We clatter downstairs and into the street, turning left up Edith Grove to the Kings Road.

I am sweating in my grey fleecy sweatshirt and pants as we labor along the busy street where cars approach from the wrong direction. Look Right!

We walk about a mile to a shop and turn in at the door.

My guide or chaperone whose name is Andrew, recently worked there and knows the staff.

He picks out a pink baby doll outfit from the rack and I go into the changing room to try it on. Yes it fits.

Now I'm ready for the 25c heat outdoors on this record-breaking day 

I am 12 but could pass for 16, they say.

My shoulder length hair is baby fine and hasn't been washed since i left home for the track meet three days ago... back in Canada where it was much colder. I didn't win any ribbons for high jump, ot at least I have none on me. 

Andrew finds me a green scarf to wrap around my head and now I look like Twiggy. Or some gazelle. Baby doll dresses by Mary Quant will be all the rage that summer. We exit her shop and stand around in the sun until we see Mick darting towards us through the traffic.

He can't get over how much I've grown since the last time. He can't stop covering my face in soft wet kisses. I'm nearly as tall as he is, but feel like his little sister. He takes my arm and we start walking east along the Kings Road, in the direction of Buckingham Palace. He's saving on tram fare and showing me the sights of London, risen from the ashes and quickly becoming the capital of the western world. 

No one back home in Canada has heard of the Rolling Stones yet but that will soon change... 

Not yet turned 20 and not famous yet, nevertheless Mick knows a lot of people. Everyone who stops to talk seems young and very switched on. I tag along beside him enjoying my anonymity, the British accents, the sharp dialogue and clothes.

Do my parents even know where I am? 

Who am I? No one cares and I would be hard pressed to answer their questions. I am a tall girl in a Mary Quant outfit. Everything is exciting and foreign. I intuit I'm a Canadian and we're known to be shy folk, lost for words until we open our mouths to unleash a torrent of blandness.

I'm from the great white water far away. Land of Lakes and opportunity. 

I intuit: I am not that Inuit. Actually I'm a Mohawk -- In my own mind at least -- allied with the English through treaties dating back to the 18th century. Survivor of genocide. Not prone to idle banter. Watch me vanish into the forest from which I sprang.  I am from that distant land over the sea to the west where long ago Mick and I met, as children....  Pocahontas and Hiawatha. Isis and Horus. 

Arriving at the university we enter a lecture hall with rows of seats ascending upward to the back wall. Andrew is already occupying a bench in the middle row as students file in. It's the last day of class and they're dropping off papers. The professor is late. I'm jammed in between Mick on my right, Andrew on my left. Then Mick remembers he must go see the Registrar - he's dropping out of school to go into music. To play in a band that today will release its first hit record, a Chuck Berry cover called "Come On." 

The flip side: "I Just Want to be Loved." 

It sounds hopeful. He'll be right back. I sit next to Andrew, who leans closer, his warm shoulder pressing on mine. Uncomfortably close. What comes next? What is expected of me? 

After that, there's just a blank. 

Even this memory will be erased by the time I am home in Canada in my pink room with the frilly  curtains... 

The doctors will make sure of that. 

They'll have told my parents some story to explain my unusual absence over the weekend. 

Likely it doesn't include sleeping on the floor on a filthy mattress at Edith Grove. Perhaps I was a chosen delegate at a UN conference for students. 

Dont ask me -- I'm none the wiser. As far as I know, my lost weekend never happened. When my mother knocks on my bedroom door and hands me the pink baby doll outfit, explaining "I sewed these for you. They're your new pajamas" I'm surprised. I thank her. Fingering the fancy trim that spells "factory made" -- knowing she could not do this type of stitching on her old  New Williams machine -- but who am I to ask questions? 

They fit me perfectly. I'll wear them through the hot and cold Canadian summer ahead. 

But first I have exams to get through.