A Vintage Friendship

their socks up. Her stuff is everywhere! In the bathroom, in the sitting room. And what’s hers is hers and what’s mine is hers too. She’s helped herself to my towel, my Clarins, my make-up, perfume. I even caught her wearing one of my tops yesterday. She has no sense of personal space. And Sara talks, from the moment she’s had her morning coffee until the moment she goes to bed, and she follows me round the house to do so, appearing behind me in the bathroom when I’m cleaning my teeth. She doesn’t talk to Jo and me, she talks at us. Maybe it comes from having lived on her own for so long, but I am out of here as soon as it’s polite to take my leave. I’d give anything to know how Mitch managed in those communes she lived in. They were spilling out with people as far as I remember.

Jo

Present day

Hil-bloody-arious. The three of us, that is, sharing a house. Sara can barely contain her fury at finding things in her perfect home have been shifted. She never was any good at hiding her feelings. Her left eye begins to twitch if she’s annoyed, and it’s so obvious she is at the way Ally has rearranged her home. Ally has become more anally retentive than ever – she always was a born organizer but she’s forever putting things away, in their place, tidying. I think she needs to chill and let go for a while. Doesn’t really bother me, though. Personally I love it and don’t miss home for one single second. I shall stay for as long as Sara will have me.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Mitch

January 1975

‘It’s only temporary,’ said Andrew when I returned to the house at Fairfax Street.

‘And it will give you a chance to try our lifestyle and see if it’s for you,’ said Karen, a woman who appeared to be the housekeeper.

I’d paid a visit to the house where the commune members lived. Karen had greeted me and told me about the routine of daily life there.

‘We work long days, starting at six a.m. with group meditation. We’re vegetarian and we also agree to be celibate so we avoid the problems and distractions that relationships can cause.’

As she told me this, my heart had sunk – not about the celibacy rule, as that part of me had shut down after Jack had died, but I did like my lie-ins at the weekend. Apparently there were thirteen men and six women in three bedrooms, so there wasn’t exactly room or privacy to hook up with anyone, in any case; it was more the lack of personal space that put me off.

*

A week later, I heard that Andrew and Karen were off to Amsterdam for a week-long conference and needed someone to look after the house and cook for those who were remaining while they were away. I can do that, it’s only for a short while, I thought, and went back to Fi’s to collect some clothes.

Fi shook her head. ‘What’s happened to you, Mitch? That you would seek a life of denial?’ She’d heard all about the living conditions at the house and the celibate rule.

‘I don’t see it that way, Fi,’ I told her, although there was a small part of me that heard what she was saying. ‘It’s only for a week, and something really big is happening. I want to be part of it.’

‘There are other ways to change the world and do your bit, Mitch. You don’t have to give everything up.’

‘I won’t. It’s only temporary.’

‘At least talk it over with your friends. Ally, Jo and Sara – what do they think?’

‘Same as you, probably, though I’d hardly call them my friends anymore, we’re barely in touch. They don’t get what the Rainbow Children are trying to do and they don’t get me any more.’

I asked my friend Tom what he thought. ‘Give it a go. It’s not a prison. You always have the option to leave.’

I gathered the few possessions and moved in with my new family.

*

The week that Andrew and Karen were away went by quickly; when they returned, it was taken for granted that I’d be staying on. It was easier to go along with it than object, plus, unexpectedly, despite the spartan conditions, I liked the camaraderie. For the first time in ages, I seemed to spend the week laughing. Plus I didn’t really have any place to go to, apart from back to Fi’s and she had a new boyfriend, so I’d been feeling more and more in the way there. Some distant cousin on my father’s side still lived up on my parents’ street, just down from the old family home, but she was a sour-faced old puss even though she was only in her thirties. She made her feelings very clear when I was pregnant and still living with my parents. It wasn’t an option to ask her for any kind of help either. No. I’d do another week in the commune. I told myself I could always leave if I wanted to and, in the meantime, the endless tasks that needed doing in the Rainbow house went some way to filling the empty hole I felt inside at having given up Sara Rose. There still wasn’t a day that went by when I didn’t think of her, wonder what she’d be doing, how she’d look now, if she was being well looked after. I justified the lifestyle I had chosen by telling myself that I couldn’t be a mother to her, but perhaps I could do something about the kind of world she’d be growing up in by giving my time to the Rainbow movement and furthering their message of peace.

At the commune, there was an infectious sense of belonging and purpose. I was one of them, and quite soon the thought of leaving and setting out on my own felt like a lonely place to go. The commune