It's Only Rock 'n' Roll

by Jo Wood

  I would think of the Old Vicarage as home until my parents moved out 20 years later. It was a wonderful place. As its appearance suggested, it was alive with history, secrets and magic. The walls were built of stones from the ruins of Hadleigh Castle on the Essex marshes and were up to three feet thick in places. I remember exploring the attic one day, squeezing under the eaves to find a secret room in which there was a stack of great, thick Bibles and newspapers from the 1800s. There was even rumoured to be a body buried under the doorstep, which was a huge lump of grey rock that certainly had the look of a gravestone. I’m surprised we never ran into any ghosts.

  The house was surrounded by ancient trees, with thick, low branches that looked like they’d been put there for the sole purpose of climbing. One evening shortly after we moved in, I remember scaling the huge conker tree (it would later become the focal point of my teenage love life) at the bottom of the drive and gazing out at the sunset over Canvey Island, marvelling at how beautiful it was and wondering what extraordinary adventure life had in store for me.

  First, though, I had to get school out of the way. After screwing up the eleven plus at Lindisfarne College – I only wrote my name – I was sent to the local Catholic convent, St Bernard’s, in the nearby suburb of Westcliff. I still hated school, but was fascinated by the nuns. What did their hair look like under their veils? What sort of knickers did they wear? One day, curiosity got the better of me: I scrambled up the high wall that surrounded their living quarters and peeked over to see their pantaloons hanging on the line in the yard, billowing voluminously in the breeze.

  Although I had no interest in learning, I had a best friend at St Bernard’s, Dympna O’Brien, who looked as Irish as she sounded, and shared my dreaminess and love of adventure. We used to get up to all sorts of mischief together. When an extension was being built onto the school, Dymps and I spent the whole term flirting with the builders. This was a strict Catholic convent, remember, with male visitors few and far between, so to have a load of fit young blokes to gawp at was the best. Every break-time it was the same: ‘Ooh, let’s go and see the builders.’ We’d wave and they’d wink at us.

  One day we decided to go up and talk to them properly, face to face. It must have taken weeks of planning. On the fateful day, we rolled our pleated navy skirts above our knees (it must have looked horrendous, great rolls of material stuffed around our waists), then sneaked up the stairs – out of bounds – and into the newly built corridor where the men were working away.

  Dympna went boldly to the best-looking one. ‘So,’ she said, flicking her hair, ‘d’you have a girlfriend or a wife?’

  ‘Nah,’ he said. ‘But I do have a kid.’

  Dymps and I looked at each other, wide-eyed in disbelief. How on earth had that happened? Not even married and he’d got a child! We didn’t find out any more as, just then, Sister Mary caught us and put us in detention, but I remember being pretty shocked.

  Mum and Dad had tried to teach me about the birds and bees when I was nine, but it had gone in one ear and out the other. It was around this time I went back to ask Mum for a recap: I needed to check out a rumour doing the rounds at school that you could get pregnant by kissing. This time I listened to every single detail. I went to school the next day and told Dympna the whole thing. ‘I just can’t imagine doing that with someone,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘Your wedding night must be awful!’

  I loved Dymps – and we’re still friends to this day – but, sadly, we weren’t in the same class. I was in the stupid group. The only subjects I was any good at were art and cookery. (Ironic, really, as my least favourite teacher took us for Home Economics: a slim, grey-haired Welsh woman who was a non-nun or ‘regular’–she once gave me the ruler for making faces at Margaret Kennedy because she smelt of wee.) The teachers kept sending home reports saying, ‘Josephine doesn’t apply herself,’ and they were right. I just wasn’t interested in learning. My parents were so worried that they took me to have an IQ test and were surprised to discover I was in the top 10 per cent in Essex. But while Dad was tearing his hair out at my lack of scholastic enthusiasm, it didn’t worry me in the slightest.

  I was barely twelve when my daydreams began to sharpen into a single focused ambition – and I certainly wouldn’t need to know quadratic equations or the date of the battle of Hastings to achieve it . . .

  It was the end of the 1960s and everywhere you looked – on magazine covers, newspapers and our little black-and-white telly – you saw a model called Twiggy. From the very first moment I saw that girl with Bambi eyes on the pages of Jackie magazine, I knew I wanted to be her. I thought she was wonderful. I started reading everything I could about her (this must have been after my reading had improved!) and it dawned on me that the skinny Cockney kid who had come from nowhere to become a huge star was really just like me. Hey, Jo, I thought, you could do this, too!

  There was only one small thing standing between me and model superstardom. My face. I’d been an angelic-looking little girl, but since my second teeth had come through things had gone badly wrong. I was so conscious of my new, huge, gappy teeth that I wouldn’t smile with my mouth open. Around the same time, Mum started cutting my fringe really short–‘so we won’t have to do it very often’. Almost overnight I became this big-toothed, geeky-haired, skinny-legged kid. It was like the story of how the ugly duckling became a swan, but in reverse. All I needed was a pair of NHS glasses to complete the look.

  I was 13, at the height of my Twiggy hero-worship, when my class was asked to write an essay with the title ‘My Future Career’. With unprecedented enthusiasm, I wrote all about how I was going to be a top model and live in a flat in Knightsbridge, and how my brother Paul, a famous painter, would come to visit. The next day I came into class to find a group of girls reading my essay aloud in fits of laughter.

  Determined to prove the bullies wrong, that weekend I holed myself up in our bathroom, propped a picture of Twiggy against the mirror and got to work with a black kohl pencil. As I had fair eyelashes and small eyes, it was quite a transformation. I got rid of the hated fringe by pushing it to the side and put on some lipstick. If I kept my mouth shut so you couldn’t see The Teeth, I didn’t look at all bad.

  I walked into the kitchen where Mum was having tea with Auntie Lily, Linda’s mum. I’ll never forget the look on her face when she stopped mid-gossip to stare at me.

  ‘Oh, my goodness, doesn’t she look beautiful?’ said Auntie Lily.

  ‘She does,’ smiled Mum. ‘Just like Twiggy.’

  Suddenly – miraculously–I could see I had potential. Now that the idea of becoming a model didn’t seem quite so crazy, it occupied my every waking hour. I would stand in front of the mirror re-creating poses from magazines and daydream about being a model. It wasn’t the money or fame that appealed: I just wanted to wear fabulous clothes, be in beautiful pictures and shimmy down a catwalk. Celebrity had a certain innocence back then.

  I don’t suppose my parents ever thought I’d really make it as a model. Mum was more up for it than Dad, though. When I first told him what I wanted to do with my life, he said that modelling was just another word for prostitution. I was confused. ‘What’s prostitution, Dad?’ He shut up pretty quickly – but I didn’t, and when Dad realized that this wasn’t just a passing phase and that I really did have my heart set on the catwalk, he decided I should at least get some sort of qualification in it. To him, that made it more respectable. So, in the summer of my 14th year, my parents sent me – oh, joy!–on a course at the London Academy of Modelling.

  The academy was on Old Bond Street and every morning I would get the train up to London by myself, feeling so glamorous and grown-up, striding through Mayfair like some groovy Biba girl. The tutors were former models and taught us etiquette, makeup skills and how to walk with stacks of books on our heads. Back then it was all about deportment – keeping your shoulders back and chin up – and nothing like the slouchy strut of today’s models. There was no bitchiness or riva
lry among the other girls on the course, just shared excitement at the whole magical experience. At the end of the two weeks we had our graduation show in which each girl walked the catwalk in three different outfits to be graded by the tutors. Mum made mine: an orange velvet dress with a fishnet skirt, a red bikini in terry towelling decorated with white daisies, and a green mini-dress that I teamed with a pair of Mary Quant green suede shoes that had square toes and little heels.

  I was so nervous and excited, but as I sashayed along in my bikini, Mum’s big African straw hat perched on my head, I remember feeling I had found my calling. Out of the 10 girls on the course I came second, behind a statuesque 17-year-old blonde whom I saw later in a few TV ads.

  My blossoming in looks and confidence fortunately coincided with the realization that boys were rather interesting. As well as the school builders, Dympna and I had an ongoing flirtation with a cute lad called Andrew, who caught the same train to school as us in the morning. That ended abruptly after he showed us his willy. I was totally cool with willies because I had two brothers, but Dympna blanched at the sight of it. The rest of the day I’d catch her shuddering: ‘Oh, it was horrible . . . horrible . . .’

  Then there was the vicar’s son, Michael, who had abandoned indoor football for other interests. He was a strange kid. The new vicarage overlooked our house and whenever he saw me come into my bedroom he’d hold up a sign saying, ‘I LOVE YOU JO.’ I would smile and wave, just to be polite, but then one day I saw him at the window with a telescope trained on my room. From then on, I kept my curtains closed.

  My first ‘official’ boyfriend was Peter Beacroft, the son of one of our neighbours on Vicarage Hill. There was a little gang of us who would hang out ‘down the circle’, a patch of ground with the big conker tree around which the new houses had been built. I’d had a crush on Peter for ages, so I was giddy with excitement when he asked me on a date to the cinema. I spent ages getting dressed up in my green dress and shoes, but when he came to pick me up at four o’ clock (we had to go to the afternoon matinée, thanks to Dad’s strict curfew) I just froze. I had no idea what to say to him. It was never an issue when we were hanging out, but this was A Date.

  Things were slightly less awkward once we were sitting in the cinema because we could focus on the film, until Peter lunged at me for a kiss. I could feel the ice-cream I was holding dripping down my hand and all I could think was, What shall I do with the ice-cream? I’m getting it on my dress! It’s going everywhere!

  My first kiss, ruined by a 99.

  I was Peter’s girlfriend for the whole of the summer holidays. It was a very innocent relationship: just a lot of snogging. With Dad’s iron-rod style of discipline, we didn’t have a chance to get up to much more. To stop us spending too long on the phone, he had it mounted on the wall, complete with a coin slot that I had to feed with shillings as we spoke or risk getting cut off in mid-sentence. As was often the case, Mum sympathized and located the key so that we could open the coin-box and recycle a single shilling – a loophole that worked a treat until Dad got the phone bill a few weeks later.

  And then September came. Peter was leaving for boarding-school and suddenly started badgering me to have sex with him before he went. ‘All my friends have done it,’ he said, when I refused. I went right off him.

  A few weeks after Peter there was Paul Sidley, another of the boys from the circle. He and I were great mates. He built a platform in the highest branches of the big conker tree and would guide me all the way to the top. Then we would sit up there, chatting and laughing, hidden from the world far below. He was such a cool guy – and very cute. American, with blond hair, freckles and gorgeous lips, like a teenage Steve McQueen. He was the first person I saw smoke grass. I remember him up that tree, furiously dragging away on this weedy little joint. I had the tiniest drag, but I don’t remember it doing anything. Our romance fizzled out as quickly as that joint, but I have very fond memories of hiding in the branches with Paul.

  ‘Hi, Tony, how are you?’

  I was fifteen and a half, wearing my hottest hot-pants and clingiest top, leaning against the garden gate in what I hoped was a seductive fashion. Oh, God, I fancy him so much . . .

  Tony Wilson was yet another of our neighbours on Vicarage Hill. He lived with his parents, but he was six years older than me and owned a super-cool boutique called the Ragged Priest in nearby Leigh-on-Sea. In other words, he was way out of my league. Tony had fair hair styled in a mullet, was fashionably skinny and always had the coolest gear.

  I’d been trying desperately for ages to get him to notice me. Whenever he was outside his house, washing his Morris Minor – like he was today, in a pair of tight velvet flares – I’d be there, hovering around.

  ‘All right, Jo?’ He was polishing the bonnet, which was painted blue. Like his eyes, I thought dreamily.

  And then something amazing happened.

  ‘So, d’you fancy coming down the shop one day next week?’ he asked. ‘We’ve just got a new delivery in.’

  I couldn’t believe it. Was Tony flirting with me? ‘Sure, yeah.’ Yes!

  Dymps and I popped down in our school uniform, skirts rolled up to our armpits. The shop was painted black inside, Faces was playing on the sound system and there were rails and rails of the most fab clothes. Orange velvet bibbed hot-pants! A full-length Afghan coat! I was in heaven. I don’t really know which I fell in love with first – Tony or the Ragged Priest.

  Not long after that, he invited me to his house while his parents were out and we ended up snogging on the living-room sofa. Wow. My first proper passionate kiss: the sort of kiss that convinces you it’s LOVE.

  Well, after that the nuns of St Bernard’s didn’t get a look-in. It was my last year of school and I was meant to be studying for my CSEs but I skipped classes whenever I could to join Tony on his trips to the wholesalers in London, with Mum hiding me behind the couch in the morning until Dad had gone to work so I could sneak out. I still had a 9 p.m. curfew to stick to, but Tony would take me out to dinner to these fabulous places. I remember my first ever night out in London, at a Polish restaurant called Borscht ’n’ Tears in Beauchamp Place. I’d barely ever drunk alcohol, so I got paralytic on vodka. The next morning, Mum threw open my bedroom curtains and I felt like my head was actually exploding.

  It was on a warm spring evening a couple of months after we started seeing each other that Tony took me on a walk up to the top of the hill above our houses. We ended up in this overgrown field, shaded by trees, and I remember looking out over the Thames estuary as the sun dipped below the horizon. Tony pulled me down into the grass and started snogging me – and the snogging started to get more intense. And then: ‘I’ll only put it in a bit, Jo, don’t worry.’ And that was how I ended up losing my virginity. I remember walking home on my own thinking, Is that what all that fuss is about? It wasn’t that great at all.

  Then one day my period was late. Worryingly late. By this time Tony had a little flat in Westcliff, so I went round to see him. ‘Oh, Tony, I think I’m pregnant! What are we going to do? My dad’s going to kill me!’

  Tony was remarkably calm. ‘Don’t worry, Jo, we’ll sort it out. This is what we’re going to do . . .’ He made me drink half a bottle of vodka and have a scalding hot bath. I got my period the day after.

  Oh, how I adored Tony. My Ragged Priest! I was still at school, but now I had this super-cool boyfriend who owned a shop and introduced me to these amazing places. One day he took me to Biba in Kensington High Street and I felt like I’d just found Paradise.

  Over the next few months my life changed to such an extent that – although I would never have imagined it possible – Tony’s appeal faded into insignificance beside everything else that was going on. The extraordinary adventure that I’d suspected life had in store for me when I was sitting in the branches of the ancient conker tree? Buckle up, it was about to begin . . .

  3

  With trembling hands, I flicked through the pages of the
Daily Mirror until I found what I was looking for: a photo of a young girl wearing a simple white dress and holding a daisy, her long blonde hair falling about her shoulders. She was smiling coyly at the camera. The picture filled a quarter of the page and was captioned: ‘Jo Karslake, 15, from Benfleet in Essex’. I stared at the page in wonder. My dream had come true. I was a model.

  My big break had come courtesy of an amateur photographer called Robert Hallmann, who had heard about my modelling ambition through a friend at the local photography shop in Benfleet and offered to take some pictures of me. I guess this sort of thing might sound alarm bells nowadays, but my parents knew Robert, so they were happy to let me have a go. I’d been going on about wanting to be a model for so long they must have thought, ‘Well, let’s see if she has what it takes.’ I can remember the first set of photos I did with Robert, and we were both happy enough with the results to start working together regularly. Robert’s talent, combined with my endless enthusiasm (and Mum’s skill at re-creating the latest designer looks on her sewing-machine) proved a winning combination, and over the next few months we did loads of photos together around Essex. Me in a satin jumpsuit and knee-high boots posing in the ruins of Hadleigh Castle; me rocking hand-painted (by my brother Paul) flares outside a derelict farmhouse; me standing on a Canvey Island jetty, staring wistfully out to sea.

  After the Mirror bought the daisy picture, Robert regularly sent photos to the paper, which ran shots of pretty (clothed) girls in the same way as the Sun now has Page Three. In another of Robert’s photos that appeared, I’m wearing purple brocade hot-pants (made by Mum) and lilac boots, with the caption ‘Miss Hot-pants!’ You can imagine what a kick I got out of seeing my picture in print.