After the war, my family had this mantra: “One day we’re going to America.” When we tried to plan anything, it was always: “Well, we can’t do that — we’re going to America.” My American cousin Morris, who was in the army and stationed in London, would give me Superman, Batman and Captain Marvel comics. And by the time I was 10, I’d been virtually brainwashed with Americana.

Then one day my mother said: “We really are going to America.” My father was joining us later, when he’d sold up his little tailor’s shop. So my sister, my mum and I all went to Southampton, with me wearing a new navy-blue serge suit with short trousers. And there was this huge grey building — it was the Queen Elizabeth. Astonishing! On board it was as if I’d entered another dimension — a vast fantasy world.

Arriving in America, I remember the strange, wondrous spectacle of those ginormous buildings near Battery Park. It was transcendental. America was my holy land, where I could be supernatural, where there’d be no limits. A utopian universe where I’d do whatever I wanted.

We descended the gangplank, and there were my wonderful relatives, all crying and shouting. We drove in their huge car through Manhattan — just like I’d seen in comic strips — and they gave me a Hershey bar. It tasted heavenly — the taste of America. At their home in the Bronx they’d laid on this spread — things like ice cream, which I’d never seen before. That night, I was sick.

The next day they took us to Nyack in New Jersey, to my Auntie Ray’s lovely old house, where she gave me icy-cold milk from the fridge. Back in England we didn’t have fridges; we simply stood milk bottles in cold water. When my relatives saw my short trousers they took me to a men’s shop, where they outfitted me with a suit with long pants. The feeling of them around my ankles and calves was like entering manhood. Then they bought me a trilby, so I was dressed like a little man. I was walking on air — feeling totally grown up. Since then I’ve always had a thing about clothes that give you confidence and cover the cracks.

I helped out at their drugstore, but after a couple of weeks of this little paradise, we were told there was an apartment for us in the city, and that Dad would come over and find a job. We stayed in a rooming house belonging to my Uncle Joe, a grisly, tough old Russian. And I went to school in the Bronx. My teachers in England had been nice, but this teacher was really loving. When I said, “Excuse me, sir,” the whole class burst into laughter, saying: “He called him sir!” The girls wore lipstick and had red fingernails, and I loved the way that each day we’d start assembly with everyone singing a hymn, whether you were Jewish, Italian, black…

After a month or so, Dad arrived. But he couldn’t find a job or a house to buy — though I think if he’d wanted it badly enough he could have. “We have to go home,” he said. We spent four months in America — a lifetime for a child.

Arriving back at Southampton, I saw all these low buildings, crummy factories and funny little streets. It was horrible. Dad, who’d returned home first, met us off the boat and we took the train to London. As a cab took us towards the East End, the buildings became lower and lower. Then they were all bombed out. I thought: “This is hell.” It was like a negative version of our arrival in America, as everything became lower and darker and more depressing, closing in on us. And it was a very fierce winter.

In my Auntie Betty and Uncle Sam’s flat on Cannon Street I had to share a bed with my cousin Barry. At school everyone stared at me in my long pants and smart jacket, and laughed and called me Spiv — a name that stuck. At lunch, when I asked for the salt, everyone fell about laughing: “Spiv wants his salt!” It was like Oliver Twist. Again I thought: “This is hell.”

Two difficult years followed. I slept in the kitchen on a Put-U-Up. It was a traumatic time, especially for my mum, to whose feelings I was very sensitive. She’d been so happy in America. But now her relationship with my dad got worse. Then he didn’t live with us any more, and I virtually looked after her.

For about five years I dreamt of America every night, the same dream — that I was walking down the street, looking for the house in the Bronx. America had an enormous and lasting importance for me. It inspired me. It made me think about things being bigger — not just in size, but majestic, awe-inspiring and dynamic. I read the literature, saw the movies, heard the music. And when eventually I did go back to New York in 1974, in my thirties, it was every bit as awesome as I remembered. I stood looking at the Empire State and thought: “I have returned to nirvana.”

Steven Berkoff’s My Life in Food (ACDC, £10) is out now

Interview by Ann McFerran.

Portrait by Dylan Thomas

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