by Tara Hyland
So instead Cara spent the last of her money on a cheap hostel for women in Stockwell, South London. It was probably better than staying with friends anyway, she told herself. Hanging around with the old crowd would just remind her of Danny. And right now, she could hardly stand to think of him.
Getting some cash together was her most pressing concern. After examining her options, Cara realised she had no choice but to try to get her old job back at Eclipse. Not that she could pass for being glamorous, she thought, staring at her reflection in the mirror, as she got ready to go to see the club Manager. In the week since Danny had left, she hadn’t been taking care of herself, and it showed. There were dark circles under her eyes, and her skin was spotty and pasty from a lack of sleep and proper nutrition. There was a permanently nervous, sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, which made it impossible to eat. Always a thin girl, she was nothing but skin and bone now. The slashed neck of her dress revealed her collarbones protruding in an unsightly manner, and she pulled on a cardigan to cover up just how skinny she’d got. She forced herself to put on some make-up, but even she could see that she still looked rough. Nothing could take away the aura of sadness that seemed to surround her.
Unfortunately for Cara, one of the hostesses must have spotted her arriving at Eclipse and alerted the others, because by the time she got upstairs, all the girls were standing in the corridor that led to Ronan’s office, lined against the wall, waiting for her.
‘Heard from Danny, have you?’ Mel asked snidely as she walked by.
Her words set off a string of catcalls. Cara could feel her eyes watering at their nasty words.
‘Not so high and mighty now, is she?’
It took all of Cara’s self-control to make the last few steps to Ronan’s office without crying.
If Eclipse’s Manager was surprised to see her there after all that time, he made no comment. He was a fair man who didn’t bear grudges, and so despite the way they’d parted, he was good enough to hear her out. But he still couldn’t offer her a job.
‘You know I’d have you back in a heartbeat, love. But Finnbar wouldn’t stand for it.’ He spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness. ‘Not with you being so close to Danny.’
While Cara was disappointed, she understood his position. Danny had double-crossed the gang leader, and anyone associated with him was now persona non grata around here.
After that, Cara went to four other establishments, each increasingly shabby, but no one wanted to hire her. Everyone knew that she’d been Danny’s girl, and they were worried that by employing her they’d offend Finnbar. She was getting desperate by the time she got to Flirt, a sleazy hostess club, the last on her list. Buried in the middle of Dean Street, it was a dive, the bottom of the heap in an already vile industry. The cigar smoke barely masked the smell of sweat and worse. It doubled as a gambling joint, which meant it ran twenty-four hours and had no natural light. Sitting on the stained velvet couch for her interview, Cara felt dirty just being there.
The owner, an aging Lothario in a brown cord suit, with false teeth and a bad comb-over, was eager to take her on. ‘A babe like you’ll get on well here,’ he leered.
Cara carefully removed the hand that had strayed onto her knee, and wished she could slap his face and walk out right now. But it was the only place that would give her a job.
‘When can I start?’ she asked wearily.
Flirt was nothing like Eclipse. At Eclipse, there had been a bit of class, but Flirt was a grubby, sordid place. Gino, the greasy owner, tried to cheat the hostesses at every turn. He took half of their fee and deducted any drinks they had from their wages, even though the customers were also charged for them. If a customer couldn’t pay his bill or objected to the steep prices and hidden charges – something that happened often – the bouncers would take him out the back. The hostesses themselves were mostly older, worn-out types; a lot of them had been on the game and this was a step up for them. They were a good laugh, though, a cheerful bunch who made the most of their situation.
On her first night, Cara found out that two of the younger girls were looking for someone to share their basement flat in Kilburn, North London. They weren’t offering much – a foldout bed in the living room – but at least it allowed her to move out of the hostel. She still felt sad and beaten, and right now it was hard to see any good times ahead. But at least she’d started to get back on her feet.
Chapter Forty-five
London, January 1968
The man put his large, clammy hand on Cara’s knee and gave her what he obviously thought was a playful squeeze.
‘So what do you say we take this back there?’
He nodded towards a heavy red-velvet curtain. Concealed behind it were the back rooms at Flirt, where some of the women would take their customers for a bit of extra cash. Half of what they got went to the house. From the beginning, Cara had refused to have any part of it. Instead, she had to put up with the men rubbing themselves up against her. This guy, Frank Ellis, was typical of the clientele. A travelling salesman, he was in town for one night, and had wound up at Flirt. He was mostly lonely, which Cara could handle, but as he got progressively more drunk, his hands had started wandering.
He leaned closer now, so Cara got a whiff of his breath, which smelled of nicotine and stale onions. ‘Come on, sweetheart. I reckon we’d have some fun.’
Cara could stand it no longer. She got up abruptly. ‘If you’ll excuse me for just a minute,’ she said, as politely as she could manage. ‘I’m just going to nip to the ladies’ room.’
It was what she always said when she needed a break. The risk was that when she was away one of the other women would swoop in and take her client, depriving Cara of her hostess fee. But right now she wasn’t sure if she would care. It would almost be a relief.
But any hopes of unloading him were dashed as he gave her a meaningful wink. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll be right here waiting for you.’
Cara smiled her thanks through gritted teeth.
Gino, the owner, shot her a dirty look as she went. It was one of his rules – never leave a customer. But Cara was past caring. If she didn’t get away from Frank for five minutes, she was going to end up slapping him.
Instead of going into the toilets, Cara ducked to the right and through the adjoining door. It led to the women’s dressing room, as the place where the hostesses changed was optimistically known. Cara had been working at Flirt for nine months now. Those first few weeks after Danny left were a blank. She’d slept through the days, and at night she’d forced herself to go into work. It was money. That’s what Cara told herself every night, every humiliating night. It was a living, and there was no shame in that. But still, there were times, like tonight, when it got too much.
Cara headed towards the dressing room. As she walked in, the smell of hair lacquer and cheap perfume was overwhelming, as it was most evenings.
‘If one more guy humps my leg . . .’ Cara grumbled, as she sat down at an elderly dressing-table.
There were three other women in there, all taking a break, or cleaning up after a trip to the back rooms. Hearing what Cara said, they laughed knowingly.
‘Just give him a biff on the nose,’ Denise Brown, one of the old hands, advised. ‘That usually works for my dog.’
‘I swear I’ll do a damned sight more than that.’
Denise chuckled. ‘Wait till you’ve been here as long as I have, duck. Trust me, you’ll be delighted to have the attention then.’
The others joined in with the cackling. But Cara could only stare at the older woman, a wave of depression washing over her. Denise Brown was in her mid-forties. Her husband was in the Scrubs, halfway through an eighteen-year stretch for armed robbery. Working at Flirt was how Denise had kept a roof over her kids’ heads. With her dyed platinum hair and glittery dress, from a distance she looked attractive enough, but up close you could see the years of hard living on her: beneath the thick make-up, her cheeks were puffy and her nos
e broken with tiny purple veins; her forehead was etched with deep lines and her eyes were bloodshot. The dress she wore had been made for a much younger, thinner woman, and when she lifted her arms, the bingo wings were plain for everyone to see. Too many years of smoking, drinking and worry had done that to her.
And now, Cara realised, Denise was telling her that she would end up this way. ‘A lifer’, as the women jokingly referred to themselves – because working here was like being in prison, a place that you got trapped in.
It struck Cara then, in that moment. As much as she liked these women, she didn’t want to turn into them. All this pining for Danny had made her go backwards. She was twenty – she had her whole life ahead of her. She needed to take control of her destiny rather than waste away here.
That night was a wake-up call for Cara. The following morning, for the first time in months, she woke with a purpose: to decide what she wanted to do with her future. She’d spent years living on the fringes of society. Work had always been casual, cash in hand. If she wanted a good job, she needed to start being legit.
She went down to the Labour Exchange to find out where she stood. It turned out to be surprisingly easy. As her birth had been registered in England, she could get a National Insurance number that enabled her to work.
The next problem was deciding what to do. With no qualifications, her choices were limited. She needed a skill – the only question was what that should be.
It was on the way to work that evening that the idea came to her. On the tube, there were adverts for secretarial courses: pictures of smartly dressed women, looking bright-eyed and purposeful with their diplomas in hand. Before, she’d never dreamed that she could work in an office, but now anything seemed possible.
A month later she enrolled at the Pitman Training Centre in Holborn.
It was a gruelling four months for Cara. She went to classes during the day, and then worked at Flirt in the evening to support herself. By the time she got back from the club, it was usually three in the morning. That just gave her time for a few hours of sleep, before heading into college. It was a fulltime course, over sixteen weeks. Classes started at nine and went on until five every day, so there was only time to grab a quick bite and change before going back to Flirt. But somehow it was easier to do the hostess gig now that she knew it was just temporary. Maybe it was also because the hectic schedule gave her so little time to mourn for Danny.
Apart from learning to touch-type, all the girls were expected to master Pitman shorthand. For those lessons, a new group joined the secretaries. They were unusual in the building for being mostly male, and looking more like preppy university types. They wore cord trousers, blazers and brightly coloured college scarves, and kept to themselves.
‘Who are they?’ Cara asked Suzie, one of the girls she’d befriended on the course, who seemed to know everything.
‘Journalism students.’
Cara was impressed. ‘Bet that takes a lot of work.’
Suzie shrugged. ‘Not really. I know someone who went to work as a PA to the Editor at Woman’s Own. She’s writing her own stories now.’
‘Really?’ Cara said thoughtfully. ‘That’s interesting.’
Cara found she was doing well on the course. Although she’d had little formal schooling, she had good common sense, and realised early on that there was no short-cut to mastering the skills – it was all about repetition. Sometimes she thought that if she typed the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog one more time she’d go mad.
Shorthand was even harder to master than typing. It was like learning another language.
‘It’s all about practice,’ her tutor advised the class early on, as the new students struggled to translate another passage correctly. ‘You have to get into the habit of visualising everything in shorthand.’
Cara did as she was told, and started bringing out a notepad whenever she was sitting in front of the television, jotting down lines of dialogue from the programme.
One night at the club, the customer she was talking to stopped mid-sentence and frowned at the table. ‘What’re you doing?’
Cara followed his gaze. She’d unconsciously been tracing the words of their conversation onto the table in shorthand.
‘Sorry. Nothing.’ She hastily took her hands off the table and clasped them in her lap. ‘Just a nervous twitch.’
The man looked confused, but continued talking, and hidden by the table, Cara started sketching the words on her knee instead.
At the end of sixteen weeks there was a series of tests: typing, dictation, shorthand. Then there was an interview with the Head of the College, to make sure that the girls were ready to represent Pitman. Cara passed everything.
Receiving her diploma was a big moment: it was the first time in her life she’d achieved something that she was proud of. Now it was time to look for a proper job.
The secretarial college had links to a couple of recruitment agencies. Cara picked Girl Friday on the Strand, the closest one to Fleet Street. The office was staffed by three girls, all beautifully turned out in neat black skirts and white blouses. Cara was registered by Tracey. She had immaculately blow-dried hair and a perfect French manicure: a nail file and an array of brightly coloured polishes sat on her desk.
‘Temp or perm?’ Tracey asked, blowing on her nails.
‘Permanent,’ Cara said firmly. She needed some stability in her life. That’s what this was all about.
After a perfunctory glance at the form Cara had filled out, Tracey ran through the list of positions they were looking to fill. She had a snotty attitude, and at the beginning of the interview had looked down her nose at Cara’s East End accent, only thawing a little when she saw her test scores.
‘Anything in journalism?’ Cara asked once she was finished.
The other woman sighed, as though she was already tired of this difficult client.
‘Well, we’ve just sent a couple of girls over to Boyfriend. And jobs at the fashion mags, Marie Claire and Elle, go pretty quickly.’
‘What about the papers?’
Tracey wrinkled her nose. ‘Most of the girls want the magazines.’
‘Well, I’m not most girls.’
It turned out that there was a vacancy on one of the dailies – the Chronicle. It was a left-wing tabloid, somewhere along the lines of the Mirror, and known for its strong investigative pieces.
‘What’s the position?’ Cara wanted to know.
Tracey scanned the job spec. ‘Secretary to the News Desk.’
It sounded exactly what Cara wanted. Within twenty minutes, she was on her way to the interview.
Along with all the other nationals, the Chronicle was located on Fleet Street. Cara was met in Reception by an efficient-looking middle-aged woman named Barbara.
‘It’s my position you’ll be filling,’ Barbara explained, as she led Cara upstairs to the paper’s offices. After ten years as secretary to the News Desk, she was moving up to be PA to the Editor. ‘It’s a promotion, but I’ll miss the buzz.’
The newsroom was exactly as Cara had expected: large and open-plan, loud and busy. Ninety per cent of the employees were male. Most were on the phone or talking heatedly with each other; the rest were hunched over typewriters. About half were holding cigarettes. No one looked her way as Barbara ushered her into a free office. Even with the door closed, Cara could still hear the low drone of everyone working to get the paper out.
The interview was brief. Barbara seemed happy enough with Cara’s test scores: 60 wpm typing, 120 wpm shorthand.
‘That’ll improve with time,’ she said knowingly.
She ran through Cara’s duties – ‘basically, no day is the same’ – and warned her that the hours were long and unpredictable.
‘If you’re looking for nine to five, then leave now,’ she advised. ‘This isn’t just a job for that lot,’ she gestured at the journalists outside. ‘It’s a calling, and they expect it to be the same for you.’ She looked sharply at C
ara. ‘You’re single, right?’
Cara nodded.
‘Well, be prepared for it to stay that way. You won’t have time for men.’
That suited Cara just fine.
Once Barbara was certain that Cara understood the drawbacks to the job, she gave the girl her tacit seal of approval.
‘But before we finalise anything, let me get the News Editor in here. You’ll be working closely with him, so it’s important to make sure you get on well.’
Cara watched through the glass partition as Barbara went to fetch the News Editor, Jake Wiley. The secretary approached a tall, muscular man, who was standing up, clearly in the middle of a heated debate with one of his team. Seeing Barbara, he turned to her and said something like, ‘I’ll be right with you,’ before resuming his argument with the other man. He managed to keep on yelling, as he gathered up his notes and started to head towards the interview room. As he pushed open the door, he was still shouting back orders at the other journalist. ‘Check your sources. Check your facts. And don’t even think of moving from that bloody doorstep until you’ve got a quote out of him!’
With his piece said, he strode into the room, slamming the door behind him. At once his entire focus switched onto Cara.
‘Good of you to come in,’ he said, giving her a brisk smile, as though he hadn’t been engaged in a slanging match ten seconds earlier.
Close up, he was younger than she’d been expecting – in his early thirties, with short, brown hair and sharp eyes. A scar zig-zagged across his left cheek, and Cara wondered briefly where it had come from. He was good-looking, in a rough, unstudied way, with at least two days’ stubble and the look of someone who’d been up all night. At some point, he might have been wearing a suit, but he’d discarded the jacket and tie along the way, and now his shirtsleeves were rolled up and his trousers creased. Everything about his demeanour said that he was far too busy to care what he looked like, or what anyone else thought of him. Jake Wiley was the kind of man who didn’t need to make any effort in order to be taken seriously.
