Bombsites and Lollipops: My 1950s East End Childhood (27 page)

Enjoying my job, the daily banter with the agents, the not-so-subtle flirting with the cheekier ones, the extra cash (it all goes on clothes), I’m also moving into a different social sphere: I’ve acquired a boyfriend, Bryan, met one warm August night in the De Vere Club, Kensington.

Bryan works in an advertising agency in town as something called a copywriter and drives around in a souped-up Mini. His parents live in Wimbledon, his dad is ‘something in the City’, but Bryan rents a flat with a friend in St John’s Wood. He’s pretty worldly, four years older than me, totally unlike anyone I’ve met. He’s not a toff. But he’s so obviously much posher than any other English boy I’ve known, I can’t fail to be impressed by his savoir-faire.

He takes me to riverside pubs, out for Indian and Chinese meals, and drives nervily fast. He also plays the drums sometimes in a jazz band. On the looks front he’s not in the same league as the beautiful Italian boys – a bit tubby, a bit slobby, no matter how fashionably expensive his gear – but his charisma somehow draws me in. After a brief, intense courtship in the back of the Mini, we finally consummate the relationship in his flat one weekend when his flatmate is away. After that, if his flatmate is around, we sometimes wind up making love in the car; uncomfortable, yes. But exciting, too.

Sex with Bryan is fast and furious, usually fuelled by drinks beforehand in the Bull and Bush or The Spaniards, though unlike Paolo he always carries ‘a packet of three’. Sometimes, as he drives me home to Hackney, speeding like a maniac, he’ll light up some ‘weed’, the word used to describe cannabis or dope back then. The smell is strong, heady. But I won’t try it. I’m too scared by the idea of drugs.

Bryan makes it very clear that he is not in the least impressed by my surroundings, my background. If he picks me up at home, he toots the horn impatiently in the car downstairs, as if he can’t stand to spend a minute longer than necessary in grungy Dalston. He won’t come up and say hello to my parents. I don’t encourage him to do this, naturally. But surprise, surprise, Ginger develops an intense loathing of my new friend. He insists, time and again, that he knows what Bryan’s all about, what he’s after.

‘He’s using her, that bloke,’ he tells my mum repeatedly if Bryan rings me and I rush to the phone.

‘He won’t show the respect, come up here, he’s just bloody using her.’

He meant, of course, that Bryan was ‘using’ me for sex. And though I hated him for being so vocal in his view, he had a point. Swinging London was, by now, poised to be the focus of the world, a combination of the phenomenal success of bands like The Beatles, the Stones, the soaring youth culture on the streets and the explosion of design and creativity coming out of the capital.

Yet it still wasn’t that simple, on the cusp of all this change, for an average-looking guy with a car, a good job and a flat to find a willing, young attractive girl to take out and about, be a regular bedroom partner without the rituals of going steady followed by an engagement ring. East-End girls my age still either lived at home or moved out to marry. We were at the very edge of the sexual revolution. But it hadn’t happened yet. And sure enough, after the initial few months when Bryan and I see each other two, three times a week he changes tack, starts calling less often.

‘I’m not ready to settle down,’ he tells me. ‘So it’s up to you if you want to keep seeing me.’

In my heart of hearts, I wasn’t that naive. The guy wanted to have me around, mainly for sex, when it suited him, and to keep his options open, see what was available elsewhere: pretty standard male opportunism really. Of course I wasn’t entirely comfortable with this – I wasn’t exactly sophisticated – but I was hooked on the excitement, the challenge of Bryan, the fast car, the posh pad, the sex – and the fact that he was a bit racy. The regular, steady guy was never going to keep me interested. So I made a decision. I’d play the same game. I certainly wasn’t going to sit around waiting for Bryan’s call. I too would be out and about.

This combination of having a regular, if erratic lover and earning good money proved to be the turning point I’d yearned for. At twenty, I’d finally reached the point where I could actually see my way out of Dalston. My big idea was to find a flat share, somewhere good in green, leafy north-west London, which I’d already acquired a taste for. I could afford to pay rent and I’d finally have my freedom …

I don’t say a word of my plan at home. I don’t even mention it to Bryan, whom I now see about once every few weeks. This about-turn in the relationship would have been seriously upsetting had I not been so preoccupied with my exciting escape plan. I start scanning the classified ads in papers, checking out rents for shared places. Within a couple of months I have found exactly what I want: a big, two-bedroom flat on two floors above a shop in Hampstead. I go along to meet the three girls I will share with, all from the provinces, working in London. My share of the rent, £4 a week, is affordable. My roommate, Angela from Manchester, is bright, lively and full of fun. We agree I’ll move in within a fortnight. A bright new world away from Dalston is opening up to me, just as I’ve dreamed.

But what I don’t know then is that another world is about to collapse, for ever …

T
he front door to the flat is wide open. It is mid-afternoon, Saturday, and I am finally going, taking just one suitcase with me. It contains all my worldly possessions, my clothes and shoes, packed that morning once I’d heard the front door slam behind my dad as he makes his way to the Lane.

My mum knows what I’m doing. I’ve primed her a few days before.

‘I don’t blame you, Jac,’ she tells me sadly.

‘You can come back if you don’t like it, you know that.’

I want to tell her I’m never ever coming back, not under any circumstances, but her face is so miserable, so forlorn, instinct stops me from blurting this out as I’d normally do. My dad will be told tonight, after I’ve gone.

‘He’s been so funny lately, I don’t know how he’ll take it,’ my mum says, shaking her head.

‘But there’s a phone in the flat, isn’t there, so he knows we can get in touch with you if we need to.’

‘I don’t want him ringing me, mum. I’ll ring you, I promise,’ I tell her.

We’re so selfish when we’re young. I have no inkling how painful this all is for them, losing me, their adored only child, watching me walk away.

Guilt, for me, at hurting her doesn’t even come into it. I have wanted out of this place for so long. I am blind to anything but my overwhelming need to separate, break the cord.

And so she sits in an armchair, watching me, trying to hold back the tears, as I go through the door, suitcase in hand, all the love in the world unable to stop me from doing what children must, eventually, do. Yet while I have a powerful desire for independence, I am not in the least prepared to fend for myself, either emotionally or in a practical sense. I cannot cook, have never cleaned, beyond a bit of washing up and am not used to sharing my life in any sense.

But leave I must. The practical issues will take care of themselves.

As I step outside, go to close the door, I hear my mother sobbing her heart out. It is a pitiful sound but, to my eternal shame, I do not look back. Down the stairs I go, lugging my case. Bryan, who has recently been told my big news, is waiting for me round the corner in Shacklewell Lane to take me to the new flat. My case just about fits into the car and we’re off, speeding down King Henry’s Road towards my future, away from the only world I’ve ever known – and cannot wait to put way behind me.

‘A girl like you should have her own pad, eh Jax,’ he says at the traffic lights, reaching out to briefly caress my cheek, a rare sign of affection – other than when we’ve just had sex.

‘Does this mean we’ll see more of each other?’ I snap artfully.

‘Who knows, kiddo, who knows,’ he says glibly, a typical Bryan response.

‘How about a quick drink at the Flask once we’ve dropped off your case?’

Three weeks later my mum rings me unexpectedly at the office. She has something important to tell me. Can she come and see me today in the lunch hour?

That day, she sits in the tiny café opposite the office, smart as usual in her navy blue suit, black patent handbag and pearl earrings and tells me exactly what has happened.

‘Your dad has lost his business, Jac. He started gambling heavily. I don’t know when, but once he started, it all went wrong. Thousands of pounds. He’s had to sign over the business to his partner. But he’s come away with nothing. A good job I’d managed to keep a little bit of money, it’ll just about get us through a couple of months. He owes the bank thousands too, but he seems to think he’ll get away without paying them back.

‘It’s terrible. I don’t know what he’ll do. He keeps saying he’s relieved it’s all over. But at least you’re OK, Jac. I’m so relieved it’s happened now, now you’ve moved away.’

I stare at her for a minute. It takes a while for it to sink in. Then we reach out simultaneously to hug each other hard. She doesn’t cry, like she did the day I left. She’s just her usual normal self, brave, uncomplaining, putting me first as usual. At the entrance to my office I promise her I’ll come over on Sunday. I don’t want to go there. But it’s all I can do.

I dread Sunday but my fears are groundless. Ginger is sober and rational. He talks quite openly about his crash.

‘Once you start laying out for the big bets, you can’t stop; it gets a hold on you. It was too much for me, running that shop. Everything’s changed now, anyway, now it’s legal,’ he says ruefully. ‘Only the big boys can make it work, you need a chain of shops, not just one.’

Incredibly, the bank have agreed to wipe the debt; they won’t be chasing him for the unpaid overdraft of several thousands of pounds.

‘’S’pose they know it’s not worth trying to get money out of someone who’s totally boracic,’ he tells me.

He’s spot-on there: Ginger’s lack of belief in mortgages, savings, insurance policies, jewellery or any form of asset have, in reality, saved him from Carey Street (the old nickname for being in serious debt or bankruptcy, named after the street near Chancery Lane where the bankruptcy court once stood). There’s nothing at all for the bank to retrieve, just a cash-only business with an oft-raided, now empty till.

I don’t tell him I’m sorry. I’m sorry for my mum but my loathing for how he’s been over the years is still strong; he’s brought all this on himself, I tell myself later. But a week later brings a surprising breakthrough. My mum, ever resourceful, has gone down Kingsland Road to visit her old employers, Jax at Dalston Junction, on the off-chance there’s work there. And yes, they need Molly’s experience selling lingerie and underwear, the new pantyhouse now replacing the rapidly going-out-of-fashion nylon stockings. Can she start next week?

And so, the years of plenty, the big wad of cash, the endless bunging, the big nights out with the punters, the chauffeur driven holidays, Wag, the human Ocado, the ‘have it now’, loadsamoney world of my parents’ post-war years finally ends.

My mum is grateful for the chance to work, to save my dad. Her earnings won’t be anything like what they had before but will cover their costs, feed them, keep the roof over their heads. My dad, bewildered by the loss of face, stunned by the reaction of his former friends, most of whom vanish, and confused at no longer having his self-employed status, stays at home, relieved that they can survive, that the slate is clean, at least. He still goes to the local, round the corner. But he’s pretty sober now. He can’t afford more than a drink or two.

As for their daughter, I am far too taken with my new sense of freedom, already peering round the next corner, hankering for the next adventure, the next discovery, to concern myself for too long with what has happened.

But who can blame me, a miniskirted, curious twenty-yearold girl living and working in the heart of the most happening city on the planet? They say the sixties didn’t really happen for you if you can actually remember being there. I too cannot remember all of it; there was too much going on, especially in the late sixties. But I can assure you that when I reflect on what I can remember, one thing is abundantly clear: it was a very, very good time to be young, free and female in Swinging London. Wherever you’d started out from.

Following his fall from grace and for the first time in his life, my father, aged fifty-three, found a steady job as an accounts clerk at the British Medical Association. He worked there for ten years until ill health forced him to retire. He died, following a stroke, in 1981.

My mother, widowed at sixty-five, found a new partner in due course and eventually moved from our ‘temporary’ home in 1990. She died in 2009.

As for me, after a hectic few years travelling around Europe, working on and off in a variety of different types of jobs, I left to see the world. In Sydney, Australia, I started writing, initially as a features writer for
Cosmopolita
n magazine, then as a columnist for
Rolling Stone, The Sydney Morning Herald
and a host of mass-market publications. Always restless, after many years overseas, I returned to London and forged a successful, long career in journalism as a magazine editor, newspaper columnist, bureau chief and author.