White Boots & Miniskirts

by Jacky Hyams

  Food was a problem because I hadn’t considered it. I just had to trust to luck – dive off the train when it stopped at a big stop and find something quickly. Fortunately, the stops were often several minutes long – and there were sometimes small stalls on the platform, selling strange but edible snacks. At least I’d bothered to change up most of my money into escudos (the Portuguese currency of the time) and I still had a few pesetas hoarded from my Spanish trips.

  On the last leg, from Coimbra to Lisbon, I found myself alone in one of those old-fashioned, enclosed carriages. So unusual was it for a woman to travel alone, especially in second class, that two uniformed guards were posted to stand outside my compartment. They spoke to me in unintelligible, rapid-fire Portuguese. I tried a few English phrases, some French words. Nothing. They remained outside for the long journey, staring at me, this object of considerable curiousity, a Foreign Woman. Very unnerving. It should have warned me that attitudes to lone women were somewhat different where I was heading.

  Lisbon is one of Europe’s oldest and most beautiful cities. It has a magical charm that is quite unique. Europe’s most southerly capital, it has stunning old buildings, narrow, cobbled streets and a romantic atmosphere. But I was not in any way prepared for the reality of arriving there, into the bustling, crowded Baixa shopping area and Rossio Square, where Ines had booked me a room in a small, noisy pension. Heat, incessant clanging trams, unfamiliar sounds and smells: essentially, total culture shock. It left me in a precarious state emotionally. My attempts to use the phrases I thought I’d learned phonetically were laughable. Portuguese is nothing like Spanish, though I did pick up that some people understood a bit of my shaky French. Troubled, I tossed and turned that night in the tiny pension bed – at least the room had a window overlooking the noisy square. What would lie ahead?

  What faced me was a rather strange time. Ines wanted to help me but she was very much trapped by circumstance, living in her family’s big villa on the outskirts of the city. She arrived at Rossio Square the next morning to meet me, take me back to her home, a train ride away. The atmosphere in her house – a big, turn of the century villa, surrounded by beautifully tended gardens – was so daunting, unwelcoming and cold, I couldn’t wait to leave. I didn’t even meet her family, though I got the impression they were in the house. Surrounded by servants – older, unsmiling female retainers in dark clothing, women who knew only repression and dutiful service and who had virtually taken charge of her baby, Ines – a lively, intelligent and attractive woman – was stranded, an object of derision, not pity, in a wealthy home where her existence was now merely tolerated. She adored Luis. So how could she leave?

  ‘You are so free, Jacky,’ she told me sadly as she accompanied me back on the short train ride back to Rossio Square. It was then that I started to understand fully what it all meant. I’d blithely assumed that the sexual revolution and emerging independence for women existed for everyone around my age – you just had to take advantage of it, make your choices and run your own show.

  But of course, that was nothing like the truth.

  Yet for all this, Lisbon and the coastal resorts of Estoril and Cascais were – and still are – beautiful places: leafy resorts with broad sandy beaches, tinged with a long-lost former grandeur certainly but nonetheless pleasant, even idyllic havens to while away the last months of the year. One of the wonderful attributes of Portugal for the stranger is that its people are gracious, polite and reserved. They give the stranger their space, regardless of the cultural differences. I was certainly a real oddity back then as an unaccompanied female – but I never felt particularly threatened or in danger. No one came up and started hassling me on the street. And Lisbon’s winter climate is mild compared to northern Europe. I wound up sponging, living off the generosity of Ines’ contacts in the English-speaking expatriate community in comfortable surroundings, far more salubrious than my shared flats in London or the Dalston grot hole, if the truth be told.

  This was a relatively safe, middle-class world that I’d fallen into. They made me welcome because I was a young girl from the swinging city but also because well-travelled people in the small expat circle relished the diversion of someone from afar: the hippie traveller syndrome of young people moving around the world at will was well established now. While I was hardly a hippie, a guest from London with plenty to say, to boot, was a bit of a novelty.

  Lisbon has long had an English-speaking expat population. It was nominally a free port and, as a result, a haven for spies during World War II. Portugal itself remained very much under the restraining thumb of the dictator Salazar from 1932 until 1968 and it was not until a huge revolution in 1974 that the dictatorship era ended. So life there really didn’t change very much for nearly half a century, though it had always been a pleasant place for foreigners, given its beauty and Mediterranean climate. Through the friendly expat network, Ines immediately put me in touch with Alice, a blonde, smartly dressed American divorcee who cheerfully put me up for a week after my two nights in the Rossio pension.

  Alice, who lived in a large apartment quite close to the Estoril area, drove me round the area, fed me, showed me how to get the train into Lisbon on the suburban line that runs from Cais do Sodre station down the coast to the resorts of Estoril and Cascais, and explained all sorts of small things I needed to know. She even had a little evening gathering to introduce me to her friends. She warned me about the men too. English girls had a rubbish reputation.

  ‘They’ll think you’re easy because that’s what they hear – and they can’t get their hands on their own women,’ Alice said. ‘Be very careful what you do. If you sleep with one, they’ll treat you like dirt. And they’ll tell everyone, so you’ll be branded a whore.’

  What? Even knowing Ines’ plight, I hadn’t expected this sort of narrow attitude, mainly because I never considered others’ motivations, being far too focused on my own desires and emotions. And I wasn’t a small town girl, anyway. Suffice to say, I ignored her advice. By now, I’d long stopped taking the pill. I hated the symptoms, either blowing you up or, when trying the low-estrogen variety, Minovlar, reducing interest in sex – and had followed the advice given to me that summer at the Marie Stopes clinic in Whitfield Street, off Tottenham Court Road, to use a Dutch cap (or diaphragm to use the correct term) as a means of contraception. Using a cap was messy and it wasn’t good for spontaneous lovemaking. But for all that the little rubber cap had, sadly, remained unused after Michael’s departure, I’d popped it into my luggage, just the same. You never knew…

  The Portuguese men I met in Lisbon, introduced to me via Alice’s expat circle, were outwardly sophisticated, spoke excellent English, had good jobs and were well travelled. But the surface hid the truth: they were nothing like the men I’d known at home because their culture carried some very clear distinctions. Women were either sisters, mothers, fiancées, wives – or whores. Single women could flirt all they liked – that was accepted – but when it came down to it, the line was clearly drawn. If single women let go sexually, they’d be branded. Forever. Hence Ines’ plight because she’d been caught out, which was even worse. Rather than sensibly accepting Alice’s advice as a useful primer, of course I had to find all this out for myself. I had one brief fling, with Diego, a handsome airline captain in his thirties, a friend of Alice’s English boyfriend who worked for a big multi-national.

  Darkly handsome in the Latin way, with huge eyes, Diego was utterly charming, gracious and, in all truth, I couldn’t wait to get into bed with him after our second romantic outing. We’d been in a pretty restaurant in Lisbon’s fascinating, ancient Alfama quarter with its hilly, cobbled streets and atmospheric fado music bars. He drove me back to his bachelor apartment in a modern building in the suburbs, fondling my knee with one hand, smiling at me promisingly. This was going to be hot. I could tell. And it had been a long time between lovers. In his cool, tiled bathroom, I fiddled with the Dutch cap and readied myself for love.

  I need
n’t have bothered. It was awful. Clumsy. Far too quick. A sexual write-off. When I thought about it later, he made even Carnaby Street Dave look quite good (and he’d been pretty rubbish). Then, just as I’d been warned, Diego’s attitude changed immediately. He went into the bathroom, quickly showered, came out and coldly ordered me to get dressed now. He rushed me out of his place – was he scared someone might spot me? – and drove like a maniac back to Alice’s apartment, 15 minutes away along the Marginal, without a single word. It was pretty obvious he couldn’t wait to see the back of me.

  I said nothing, closed the car door quietly behind me, though I was sorely tempted to slam it hard. Mentally, I was seething, furious with myself. Some men are better lovers than others – that is a fact of life. Some fall asleep straight afterwards. That’s nature. But what I had never encountered so far was a total and very obvious loathing for my presence the minute the brief act itself was over. Was he disgusted with me, or himself? I never told Alice I’d indulged with Diego, but she seemed to pick up on what had happened, anyway. A few days later, she told me she had another Portuguese friend, Carlos. He was single, worked in a bank in Estoril near the casino and had a large apartment in Monte Estoril, a few minutes walk from the central part of Estoril. Staying there would be better for me because it was more central than her flat which was only easily accessible with a car. Carlos had told her there was plenty of room for the English girl if she wanted to stay there.

  I wound up staying in Carlos’ flat for several weeks. He was short, stocky, really lively company, had travelled a lot and seemed to get what I was all about. Still a tad confused by my initial encounter with the airline man, at first I assumed he would jump on me, so I’d have to be wary. Yet he didn’t. He had someone, anyway, a pretty blonde English girl who was living in Vancouver. He’d be going to see her there soon. Her photo, in a big silver frame, was prominently displayed in the living room of what was a comfortable, carefully furnished apartment with dark furniture and cool, tiled floors with a spacious, flower-decked balcony.

  The problem was, with nothing much to do in the day except sleep late (until the daily servant arrived to clean) then wander down to the seafront – it was mild and sunny in the daytime, even though it was November – my routine became a permanent loll around a café, reading or taking long walks along the coastline, returning to the flat just before nightfall, then hanging around for Carlos and dinner. Quite soon, a sort of Carlos dependency developed. I already had too much time on my hands to think about Michael and to wonder what had happened to him. I wrote him many letters, but never posted one. My usual confidence, so high when I had left London, had ebbed away after the Diego incident. I was staying in a smart area, in a pretty environment. But I wanted some comfort, some reassurance that I was still a desirable woman. None came. I became quite downcast. This wasn’t what I’d expected.

  Carlos did whatever he did at the bank in the day. Most nights, he’d phone a friend, Marcos, a skinny sidekick who worked at Lisbon’s Ritz hotel and usually the three of us would dine out, sometimes in places along the coast in Cascais, mostly in cheaper tiny local places around Estoril or Lisbon. The food was terrific: fish, rice, rabbit, liver and soups, all unfamiliar dishes but always tasty and, oh, so filling. But it was the Portuguese desserts that hooked me: the sticky, sweet cakes in the cafés and the hardy perennial, a caramel confection called a pudim flan, that satisfied my ongoing craving for sugar.

  Soon, it became a regular afternoon ritual as I lazed away my time. I’d point to a cream cake, bolo di crema, and they’d hand me half a dozen small, sweet, creamy delights, so I’d stuff myself with them, all in anticipation of more stuffing of my face at dinner. There wasn’t anything else to do. Sightseeing, guidebook in hand, to me, was something older people did, though I did manage to take the bus to the hill town of Sintra, a beautiful spot with the most stunning 19th-century buildings, Moorish palaces and exquisitely tended gardens.

  Such was my need for reassurance, I decided I wanted Carlos. He was really good fun. He flirted outrageously with me, sometimes leaving me little notes on my bed to deliberately wind me up: ‘I was here to screw the Mad English but she had gone out,’ he’d scribble. Or: ‘Today I went down to the beach and everyone said: “Where is the Mad English with the mad eyes?” Is she coming back?’ And so on… Yet there was no way Carlos would be having his way with me. In time, I suspected he thought I was a bit of a slapper, anyway, talking endlessly about London and ‘screwing’, wandering off each day to walk around Monte Estoril, basically doing sweet FA. And his passion for Vancouver Girl was evident. He wanted to marry her.

  So there it was, a rejection of my charms. Why did I care? I was having a free holiday, living in someone else’s apartment with a servant to clean up after me, dining out at my host’s expense, even getting a low level suntan by day – yet all I focused on for most of my time in Estoril was getting an amusing, yet not overwhelmingly attractive man into bed. And not quite accepting why he wouldn’t come near me, even though it was blindingly apparent from my one previous experience with Diego that this was a very different culture and I’d be wise to forget about it. Some men, amazingly, were immune to my charms. How bad could it be?

  Holidays are one thing, but stepping long term out of your normal environment into a totally different one, remaining totally unoccupied, just drifting along, is never a great idea. It happens all the time with people who rush off to live in sunny climes. It’s just too easy to lose yourself in over-indulgence, drinking, eating far too much. Yet I drank less there than I would at home. Carlos and Marcos didn’t overdo it, anyway, and it was just a glass or two of wine before or port after dinner. I couldn’t afford to booze during the day. So my real Portuguese indulgence, through sheer, total boredom, became eating. My waistline expanded. Everything got tighter, though I blamed Carlos’ faithful daily, the servant who took away all my dirty stuff and returned it washed and perfectly ironed. I went from shapely to chubby in a matter of weeks: she was shrinking everything. Portuguese hand-laundering was clearly not up to the same standard found in London launderettes. That was the problem.

  By December, my money had dwindled to virtually nothing. I’d spend during the daytime on everything from coffees, drinks and newspapers to stamps. I penned many letters home to friends, writing back to Molly and Ginger saying I was having a great time but didn’t know when I’d return. I’d already learned in the odd English paper I could buy that the country was poised for a dreadful winter of strikes. There’d already been a council worker walkout and overtime ban that autumn, with smelly rubbish piling up in the streets and troops even called out to clear the streets in some places. It was a good time to be somewhere else. Yet although though the Portuguese escudo bought quite a lot more than it would have back home, money was rapidly becoming a problem.

  I asked Carlos if I could I find some sort of work but he came up with nothing. ‘They don’t have jobs for Mad English, Jacky, it’s too risky.’ Then I rang Alice, asked her to put the word around the English-speaking community. She didn’t sound very confident. Yet a couple of days later, she rang back. She had something.

  ‘You may not be interested, Jacky, but it’s an artist friend of mine, Jeremy. He’s lived here for years but he always has problems finding models to pose for him – er – without clothes. The local girls won’t dream of it, of course. But I thought you might not mind…’ Alice had clearly sussed me out. Nude modelling? Sure. Ask the Mad English. Not much money in it? Never mind. This was not my proudest moment, since I had never considered removing my clobber as a money-spinner. Until now. I fronted up at Jeremy’s leafy studio near Cascais, posed for him with my wrapover printed top off while he drew furiously, silently, for about half an hour. A lean-framed, scruffy, slightly pongy English artist in his fifties, Jeremy made no attempt to touch me, thankfully. And the escudos – about the equivalent of £2 – were eagerly handed over. If I liked, he said, I could come back every week. A regular job.

&nb
sp; But afterwards, over my daily bolo stuffing session in my regular Monte Estoril haunt, I reflected that this was all a bit ridiculous. I’d come here for an adventure and all I was doing was getting fat, not getting laid and now posing with my tits out. An early, if plump, Page 3 girl. (Amazingly, the Sun’s Page 3 feature first saw the light of day that same month in 1970 – which resulted in raised voices in the Parliament and ever-increasing sales for the paper.) Perhaps what I was doing was some sort of respite from the loneliness of my dreary Muswell Hill bedsit or my life as an indifferent West End temp with a big clackety typewriter and a bad attitude. But this still wasn’t exactly la dolce vita. I wouldn’t have taken such a ‘job’ back home, would I?

  It was inevitable, really. I dug out my return ticket, took the little train that runs from Monte Estoril station to Lisbon the very next day and went to the ticket desk at the Cais do Sodre station. After an exchange consisting of a few badly pronounced Portuguese words, a sentence or two in French, a few Italian words and even a bit of English, I had a new return date, 24 December. I’d travel over Christmas but see in 1971 on home territory. Plenty of time to work out what I’d do when I got back during the long, tedious train ride. At least I’d be prepared for the marathon journey this time, with food and water packed, thanks to my last precious escudos. Now it was my turn to ring Ines to say goodbye.