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lived on the same street and went to the same Hebrew school and high school; her father was Leonard’s pediatrician. “It was a very strong community, inbred in many ways, but in no way was he the usual person you’d find in the Westmount crowd. He was reading and writing poetry when people were more interested in who they were going to date for their Sunday school graduation. He pushed the borders from a very early age.” What made it more curious was that Leonard was not openly rebellious; as Arnold Steinberg noted, he seemed conventional, respectful of his teachers, the least likely to rebel.
    â€œHere you have the contradiction,” says Bacal. “Leonard was embedded in religion, deeply connected with the shul through his grandfather, who was president of the synagogue, and because of his respect for the elders; I remember Leonard used to recount how his grandfather could put a pin through the Torah and be able to recite every word on each page it touched, and that impressed me enormously. But he was always prepared to ask the hard questions, break down the conventions, find his own way. Leonard was never a man to assault or attack or say bad things about anything or anyone. He was more interested in what was true or right.” She recalls the endless talks she and Leonard would have in their youth about their community, “what was comfortable, where it left us wanting, where we felt people weren’t penetrating to the truth.” Their conversation had taken a break when Bacal left for London, but when Leonard moved into the Pullmans’ house, it picked up where it left off.
    Stella Pullman, unlike most residents of Hampstead, was working-class—“salt of the earth, very pragmatic, down-to-earth English” is Bacal’s description. “She worked at an Irish dentist in the East End of London; took the tube there every day. Everyone who lived in the house used to schlep down there once a year and have their fillings done. She was very supportive—Leonard still credits her with being responsible for him finishing the book because she gave him a deadline, which made it happen—but she was not what you’d call impressed by him, or by any of us. ‘Everyone has a book in them,’ she’d say, ‘so get on with it. I don’t want you just hanging around.’ She’d been through the war; she had no time for all that nonsense. Leonard was very comfortable there because there was no artifice about it. He and Stella got along very, very well. Stella liked him a lot—but secretly; she never wanted anyone to get, as she would say, ‘too full of themselves.’ ” Leonard kept to his part of the agreement and wrote the required three pages a day of the novel he had begun to refer to as Beauty at Close Quarters . In March 1960, three months after his arrival, he had completed a first draft.
    Late at night, after closing time at the King William IV pub, their local, Nancy and Leonard would explore London together. “To be in London in those times was a revelation. It was another culture, a kind of no-man’s-land between World War II and the Beatles. It was dark, there wasn’t much money and it was something we’d never experienced, London working class—and don’t forget we’d started with Pete Seeger and all those workingman songs. We’d start out at one or two in the morning and wander way out to the East End and hang out with guys in caps with Cockney accents. We’d visit the night people in rough little places, having tea. We both loved the street life, street food, street activity, street manners and rituals”—the places and things Leonard had been drawn to in Montreal. “If you want to find Leonard,” says Bacal, “go to some little coffee bar or hole in the wall. Once he finds a place, that’s where he’ll go, every night. He wasn’t interested in what was