Paper Houses

St George's Square offered seedy grandeur. The ornate classical fagades of what had been individual mansions now concealed multi- occupied rented flats and bedsits. Frances lived on the first floor of number 24, in what must have been the drawing-room but which, on account of its size, we called the ballroom. This imposing space had been unevenly divided by thin partitions. Frances had a large room: I slept in the high-ceilinged shoebox walled off on one side of it. We both had access to the balcony, overlooking the square, on which Frances grew flowers in big pots. Behind our rooms, a windowless space led to the tiny galley-style kitchen, in the former conservatory, enclosed by old frosted-glass doors. A deep old porcelain sink nudged a 1950s cooker, opposite a bath which could be covered by a board in the daytime and function as a work surface. Clothes dripped from wooden racks hung from the ceiling. Frances displayed on shelves her collection of green and turquoise speckled and stencilled Chinese enamel mugs, plates and dishes. She made coffee in an alarming screw-up aluminium pot which, at the vital moment, had to be turned upside down if it weren't to spew boiling coffee across the kitchen. She cooked well: the peasant dishes then in vogue along with stripped pine and brown pottery, a certain view of rustic simplicity created by Habitat - which of course had nothing to do with how the real peasants I knew in my French grandparents' village in Normandy actually lived, longing for hot water, indoor lavs, central heating and carpets. When friends came to supper we ate proper minestrone, proper soup with pistou, proper Parmesan. Some of the highly educated, well-mannered male visitors were sexist in a particularly gentle way, deprecating the fact that so many really nice girls were unliberated and boring.

Frances, black-haired, clever and funny, wearing chic Chinese silk jackets and trousers, laughed and barked out jokes and challenges and tolerated the streams of male admirers drawn by her beauty, originality, way with words. She was the Lady of the troubadours, calling down to her knights: boys, boys, just form an orderly queue. Her large, low double bed sported an apple-green seersucker duvet. This bright green flag to me signalled Frances's unconventionality. The favoured chap of the moment was called Mark Le Fanu. A postgraduate student and film critic (and cousin of the Mark Le Fanu who ran the Society of Authors), he was as clever as Frances. They argued passionately. Frances could always go one better and drop into Mandarin to find good insults: you're not worth the stomp of a duck's foot! Mark's twin brother James visited and captivated me immediately with his bright blue eyes, twisted smile, energy and charm. He talked as rapidly as machine -gun fire. Just down from Cambridge, studying to qualify in medicine, an ardent Communist, he edited the Communist medical students' magazine Needle.

With my short hair, unmade-up face and feminist politics, I sometimes felt like the dragon who guarded Frances's door (of course, when I look back at photos of that time, I seem merely sweet and ardent, sitting cross-legged on a mattress on the floor, wearing a long skirt and a multicoloured striped scarf, arguing shining- eyed, clutching a spliff). Frances was the queen of the flat and I her handmaiden. This was a role I had played before and would play again vis-a-vis charismatic, powerful women who stood in, on one level, as mother-figures, however unmaternal (in the conventional sense) they actually were. I admired Frances. Sometimes I envied her. Sometimes I wanted to fight her. She didn't toss and turn at night agonising about the feminist revolution. She was deeply interested in the Maoist revolution taking place in China but also strongly individualistic: that was her appeal. She was from a solidly academic and upper-middle-class background and seemed certain of her place in the world: aiming to become a Keeper at the British Museum, perfect her knowledge of Chinese, work as a Chinese scholar. I was opposed to this "straight" world and to the privileges it dispensed to those who inhabited it, even though, of course, I had briefly been part of it. My politics would not allow me to re-enter it.

Deeper than politics was the sense, hardly articulated, that I was, in any case, shut out from it. It wasn' t just class; that I came from a more ordinary middle-class background than Frances, Mark and James. Interms of class I was, indeed, privileged compared with many others: I had won a scholarship to grammar school, been encouraged to take A levels and S levels and apply to university, and had got through Oxford helped by a grant from the state, which my parents topped up, and by my own earnings from vacation jobs. I could subsequently have got a "good" job, got a mortgage, but had not done so. Why was that? Why had I chosen to stay outside the system? Why did I feel outside, in the wilderness?

My disquiet had more to do with my sense that I had removed myself from being loved and accepted by my parents. I had left the Catholic Church, did not believe in God, had become a feminist and a socialist, refused to get a proper job, had lived in "squalor," was determined to write, whatever the cost. Nana sent me a sweet letter: they will always forgive you, whatever you do. I didn't believe her. The Mother Superior in my head snarled that I was wicked because I was trying to think for myself, follow my own desires, find out what I wanted to do and act on it. I tried to ignore her. She surfaced at night, in bad dreams.