Breaking Out

by Janice Nix

  Some days, we’d meet the team of girls Sugarlips managed and all go for coffee or for lunch. On other days, the men who paid her came to visit, collected their goods and gave us our new orders. They were detailed and specific on the brands and styles they wanted – and off we went to source them for our clients.

  Sugarlips was friendly, but as the weeks went by I still knew almost nothing about her. We lived so close together, but she was always secretive and quiet. She was all alone in the city, just as I was. She never talked about herself or asked me any questions – why I’d run away, or where my family lived. But she noticed when I was feeling sad. ‘You and me against the world, chuck,’ she’d say with a quick little smile.

  She noticed that I knew my way around, and I explained that although I’d run away from Leicester, I grew up in London. I told her a bit about my past. She frowned as she heard about my parents’ one-roomed flat in Notting Hill, which was a poor and working class area then.

  ‘Daddy came here to work,’ I explained. ‘Not on the Windrush – you know, the famous boat that came over, but not long after. He had friends who came as well. This country needed workers – it was after the war – and there were opportunities here. But then – you know, the way they got treated, it was like they weren’t welcome after all. People put signs up in the guest houses – no blacks, no Irish.’

  Sugarlips shook her head. We were taking a break in a coffee shop in Selfridges.

  ‘What job did your dad get?’ she asked me.

  ‘The Walls factory first, then Nestlé in west London. He used to do the night shifts, and when we came home from school we had to be quiet because he was sleeping. That was later, though, when we’d moved to Southall. We had a house by then.’

  ‘He must have worked hard.’

  ‘He did. They both did. And long hours. They’d change his shifts sometimes, right at the last minute. That’s why he was tired – it made him lose his finger.’

  ‘What d’you mean – lose his finger?’

  ‘He caught his hand in some machinery – it should have been covered, but it wasn’t. It tore the top two joints off.’

  I saw Sugarlips shudder.

  ‘We had a paraffin stove to do the cooking, and Mummy made us sit on the bed to make sure we didn’t touch it, but one day she went outside – it was only for a minute, and Terry – that’s my little brother – climbed down and tried to put his hand in the pot. He nearly tipped it over – all the liquid poured out and it was hissing and smoking. Daddy got back home just at that minute and saw the smoke out the window. He was really shouting, but I think it was because he was scared. After that we moved.’

  I hoped that if I talked, she might do the same and let me get to know her. But Sugarlips would never drop her guard. She wouldn’t even tell me her real name. I wanted to find out how she’d started to live her strange life. She was quick-witted and observant – I remembered how she’d spotted me at Euston – so surely, I thought, there must be other ways apart from crime that she could earn a living. One day, I asked her nervously why she didn’t get an ordinary job.

  ‘D’you think I have qualifications, Jan?’ she answered abruptly.

  ‘You’re smart,’ I told her. It was true.

  ‘No, I’m not. Not like that, anyway. I didn’t pass exams.’

  Now I was worried I’d upset her. ‘Sugarlips, I didn’t mean to –’

  ‘So what else can I do? I can’t go back to Bradford, not after –’

  Sugarlips stopped speaking. I felt a jolt of darkness in the room. It was as though the lights had flickered.

  ‘Is that where you come from – Bradford?’ I asked.

  But she’d said too much already. She pressed her lips together and turned her head away. She quickly forgave me, though, offering a smile and a packet of Jaffa cakes.

  Sugarlips didn’t want to remember her past. I understood how she felt because in Leicester, before I ran away, things happened that I didn’t want to think about either. Things that made me feel dirty. A friend of my uncle’s quite often came to visit. He’d come upstairs to find me when I was on my own. It made me feel sick when he’d put his hot, dry hand on my knee. I didn’t dare ask him to stop. The only escape was to pretend to hear my mother calling for me. I’d shout, ‘Yes, Mummy?’ then jump up and quickly leave the room.

  I felt glad to be in London with Sugarlips to look after me. I was better off in charge of my own life, no matter what. I was never going home, I decided. No matter how many risks we were taking, it was safer for me here.

  One day in D H Evans on Oxford Street, I crotched four bottles of expensive aftershave. They were safely up my skirt and I wanted to leave, but I noticed a detective who was working the floor. She was suspicious and extremely persistent, her eyes on me wherever I walked. I hung around, pretending to browse while I watched her reflection in the shiny displays. If I tried to step outside, I knew that she would pounce.

  After half an hour, I gave up. Today’s take would have to go back on the shelves. I returned to the perfume hall, stooped to examine something on a lower shelf, slid my bottles of aftershave carefully out of their hiding place and left them there. Completely clean and carrying nothing, I approached the exit to Oxford Street.

  ‘Excuse me, madam. Could you step back into the store, please?’

  ‘Of course. Is there a problem?’

  ‘I’d just like to ask you a few questions.’

  ‘Sure. Certainly.’

  ‘I believe that you put something in your bag.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘If you don’t mind, madam, I would like to take a look.’

  ‘In my bag? Well, of course.’

  We were standing next to a glass perfumery counter. With a clatter, I started to pile up my possessions on its surface.

  ‘Please tell me if there’s anything belonging to you here,’ I said to her. There wasn’t. By the time the bag was empty, she was getting annoyed.

  ‘Would you step into the office for a moment?’

  She was joined by a male colleague. I thought quickly.

  ‘Do you want to search me?’ I asked them.

  They frowned at each other. I took off my jacket, then started to unbutton my blouse.

  ‘Madam, there’s no need …’

  I slid the blouse off my shoulders and reached for the zipper on my trousers. Now there was consternation.

  ‘Madam! I assure you, you don’t –’

  ‘But I’m happy to be searched,’ I announced.

  ‘No – ah – no, no, that really won’t be necessary.’

  My attempted striptease flummoxed them completely. They banned me from the store, but they’d found nothing on me. There wasn’t any action they could take. When I told Sugarlips about my quick thinking, she hooted with laughter.

  ‘Good for you, chuck!’ she said. ‘That’s the way to do it!’

  We were a team now. You an’ me against the world. I knew that there was no going back, even if I’d wanted to.

  I heard a rough screech of brakes and a shout of ‘Hey! Watch out there!’

  The bumper of a car came to a halt just inches from my arm. Although I jumped with fright, I made sure I kept my legs pressed tightly together. I had to, with a stolen Dior handbag firmly crotched between my thighs.

  I’d left Bourne & Hollingsworth in a hurry with the bag well in place, right up inside my skirt. Then I noticed the security guy on the door. His eyes seemed just too careful as he studied me, then studied me again. He was suspicious. Once I was out in the open, I needed to move quickly away. In the dazzling morning sunlight, the car seemed to come out of nowhere.

  The driver wound down the window, but before he could say anything, the back seat passenger leaned out. I saw a dark-haired man with a familiar thin face and a short black beard. It was Paul McCartney, the world famous member of the Beatles and Wings.

  ‘Are you alright there?’ he shouted, with a worried expression. I couldn’t believe it wa
s really him. But my real concern was that the Dior bag had slipped down as I jumped with fright. To hold it in place, I had to clamp all my muscles so tightly that it made it hard to speak.

  ‘I’m – ah – oh! I’m fine! I’m okay!’

  ‘Good!’ He looked relieved. ‘You take care now!’ Paul McCartney ducked back inside the car.

  I gave him a bright and cheery wave and wobbled on, with my stolen Dior handbag still firmly lodged in place.

  ‘Jan, did you notice the furs?’

  Sugarlips and I sat in her room eating Jaffa cakes. I’d certainly noticed that the furs in Harrods weren’t well secured on their rails.

  ‘Well, yeah, but …’

  ‘The boss wants us to get more like the ones you got last week. I think that fur room’s pretty easy.’

  ‘What about all the staff?’

  ‘They’re old ladies! They’re sweet, but they won’t be on the ball.’

  She was right. We found that the best time to hit the fur room in Harrods was early in the morning. While the ladies were distracted, trotting back and forth across the shop floor setting up for the day, we could take whatever we wanted. There was a security camera – the first one I’d ever seen in Knightsbridge – but only one, right over the main door. Once the goods were crotched, we could safely walk right underneath it.

  But a few weeks after that, we discovered a new problem. Someone had been working on security, and suddenly the furs had all been wired – connected together with electrical alarm cables running over to the department’s main desk. ‘Dammit,’ said Sugarlips when she saw them. We went to get ice-creams in the sundae bar downstairs while we decided what to do. I glanced across at her as we sat at the high counter, and noticed how determined she looked.

  ‘Janice,’ she said, ‘we need pliers.’

  ‘Seriously?’ I asked her. ‘You think we should cut the coats out?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘As soon as we do that, the buzzers will go off. Then won’t security come?’

  ‘Not straight away. When they hear the alarm, the old dears will all get into a tizzy. They won’t be looking at us. We’ll have a couple of minutes before anyone comes. We can lift our stuff and then get clear.’

  We got some pliers and headed back to work. One quick snip, the buzzer sounded, and the fur ladies rushed about the floor. In all the fuss and confusion, I stepped behind the counter and grabbed as many green plastic bags as I could reach from the pile on a shelf below the till. Once we had those, all we needed to do was take our goods into the changing rooms and get them into the bags. A brand new store carrier bag was never examined. We packed up our goods and strolled freely out of Harrods.

  I started to hang out with Sugarlips’ team of lifters. I was amazed and impressed by the luxuries they all seemed to have – beautiful possessions and fashionable clothes by Dior, Gucci and Louis Vuitton. Babs’s flat in Brixton Hill was crammed from floor to ceiling with expensive cosmetics. In Patsy’s house, a television set hung from the ceiling and the drinks were kept inside a painted globe with a top that lifted up. Their lifestyle was worlds away from anything I’d ever seen before, and so much nicer than the cramped little room I shared with Sugarlips. As the long hot summer ended, I decided it was time to move on from the YWCA.

  When Babs had a baby – a gorgeous little girl called Aaliyah – she asked me to live with her and help. Instead of paying rent, I tidied up and minded the baby. Babs gave me presents to make sure I stayed around. I liked being part of their gang. The only thing I didn’t enjoy was their teasing – ‘Janice – you’re not ready for the road!’ they would say to me. They talked as though as I was an innocent, still unaware of the realities of life. ‘You’re just a country girl – you’ve still got an accent from Leicester!’

  I tried to smile and shrug it off. After all, I was new to the group. I still had a lot of things to learn. I didn’t understand at first how useful my innocence was. When we’d meet up after working in Oxford Street or Regent Street or Knightsbridge, the others passed their bags of hot merchandise straight into my hands.

  ‘Can you carry for us, babe?’ they’d ask. ‘Janice – you’re the best!’ ‘Thank you, darlin’! How did we manage all this stuff before we had you around?’ I wanted to belong, to be helpful, to fit in. But I was holding everything that everyone had taken. The way they were working it, the risk of being caught fell entirely on me.

  Slowly I realised that my new friends were using me. If anything went wrong, it was the country girl who’d carry the can.

  SEPTEMBER 1977

  Out clubbing with my friends, I met a guy called Emmanuel. He worked as a chauffeur for the High Commission of Trinidad and Tobago. He was streetwise and he knew what I did for a living, but he was following the straight life now – working his hours at the job then heading home each evening to his house in south London. He was divorced but very close to Nicholas and Alicia, his young son and daughter.

  Emmanuel asked me for my number. A few days after we met, he picked me up and took me out to dinner. Then he invited me back to his place and played me his jazz music – before offering me a lift home. He really was a gentleman. He asked me out again, and then again. I was starting to like him.

  As we got to know each other, I told him how I’d run away from home and never heard from my family. My story seemed to upset him. He asked me to make contact with my mother.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Things weren’t good in Leicester.’ I wasn’t sure how to tell him just how bad they’d really been.

  ‘But she’s still your mum, Janice! She must miss you. And she’ll be worried. Everybody will be.’

  He wouldn’t take no for an answer. As I got to know him better, I learned that this would always be his choice – the peaceful life, the family. It made him happy, and he wanted the same happiness for me. He was trying to be kind and I was grateful, even though he’d never understand just how complicated family can be.

  I let him drive me up, and he waited in the car while I knocked on Mummy’s door. When she answered, the two of us went in. She seemed happy to see me and pleased to meet my boyfriend, but she didn’t ask me anything – not why I’d left home or even where I’d been all this time. We didn’t really talk. We never had, and now it seemed too difficult to start.

  For me, the best part of the day was seeing my little brother Terry – except he wasn’t little any more. He gave me a great big hug the moment I walked in. Within minutes we were talking just as though I had never been away.

  As he drove me home again, Emmanuel was smiling.

  ‘See, Jan, she was made up. That’s much better – having peace with your mum.’ He hadn’t noticed the tension in the air.

  He was close to Ida, his mother, and she was very proud to be a grandmother, visiting his house and always bringing presents for her grandchildren. When Ida looked at them, I could tell that she was bursting with pride. I found myself wishing that I’d had a childhood like that, and memories of someone who was proud of me in the way that she was.

  1966 – SOUTHALL

  ‘Mummy,’ I said, ‘I’m going to be a singer and sing like Sandy Shaw.’

  I’d seen her on the telly and I really, really liked her. I pulled a pair of tights onto my head so that the empty legs would whirl about like hair, and danced around pretending to perform with a hairbrush for a microphone.

  ‘Janice, Sandy Shaw is white and barefoot,’ was all my mother answered. I didn’t understand what she meant. She was telling me that white girls can sometimes break the rules. But that’s because the rules were made for them in the first place. Black girls couldn’t ever do that. Black girls got picked on in school. No one expected them to have important jobs, or be successful in the world. So I mustn’t hope to do what Sandy Shaw could do. Nobody would even let me try.

  Mummy said I was an ugly little girl. She was trying to keep me in my lane, in my place, not believing in myself too much, or holding high hopes for my life. She didn’
t want me to be hurt by disappointment. If I had no hopes in the first place, then she thought that I would always be safe.

  So when Emmanuel told me I was beautiful, I found I could hardly bear to listen. I still heard my mother’s voice telling me I was an ugly little girl. I didn’t trust his words and I turned my head away.

  Ida welcomed me warmly to her family. I started to look forward to our chats and our trips out to play bingo. I noticed there was lots and lots of money in her house – sometimes thousands of pounds. She ran pardners – saving schemes for her and her friends. Each week, every person in a pardner put in a cash contribution, then they each took turns to benefit. Ida was the pardners’ banker because everybody trusted her. But I hadn’t realised yet just how shrewd she really was.

  ‘You wear lovely clothes, Janice,’ she said to me one day. We were cooking together in Emmanuel’s kitchen. ‘And jewellery. Always such nice things.’

  ‘Thank you, Mums.’

  ‘I don’t think Emmanuel buys them for you.’ I realised she was watching me carefully.

  ‘Er – no, well – sometimes he gives me presents. But – uh – most of this is mine.’

  ‘Get them from your own family, do you?’

  ‘Uh – sometimes.’

  She turned to face me, putting her hands on her hips. She smiled, but I could see it was a serious smile.

  ‘Oh, Janice – what are we going to do with you?’

  ‘What do you mean, Mums?’

  ‘When are you going to stop this lifestyle?’

  ‘Uh –’

  ‘I’m not a fool, Janice. I know you’re up to something illegal. I’m glad that Emmanuel is in a good job and able to support you. He’s never got into any serious trouble. He wouldn’t risk it – Nicholas and Alicia are far too important to him. His kids are his world.’

  ‘Um …’ I was extremely taken aback.

  ‘There’s some kind of anger in you, Janice,’ Ida said. ‘I don’t think you recognise how angry you are. Anger can eat you up for years. It can do things you can’t even imagine.’