White Boots & Miniskirts

by Jacky Hyams

  The sense of being part of an important enterprise was also very obvious to me. I was a cog, certainly, just one in a big wheel, but one whose role required a professional approach and a certain amount of maturity. I couldn’t have appreciated this environment in my early twenties. I’d never run across any feeling of belonging in a job before or taken anything like a sense of pride in my work. Yet here, where the unspoken emphasis was on working as a team, I did. Moreover, the office hours were unusual: Mondays off, work on Saturdays, amble into the deserted newsroom at 10 am, a welcome start for anyone with a late night reveller’s habit. It all added up to something quite different, though it took a while to get used to my new environment.

  I’d paid my dues, in a sense, to get there. Out of economic necessity I’d again moved back to Dalston, planning to save up until I could afford another flat share. Through that miserable winter and spring of 1972 when the miners went on all-out strike for more money and power cuts became a feature of everyday life, I’d done my own time at the coal face: turning up at Tower House for the dull job, slowly recovering my equilibrium after the Frank fiasco, already scanning the lists of newspaper editorial vacancies posted by my union, NATSOPA (National Society of Operative Printers, Graphical and Media Personnel), long before I’d even completed my obligatory, slow-moving six months. But once I was through that and I spotted the Sunday Mirror job description, I knew it was for me.

  I got the job quite easily. The news editor, Monty, was incredibly cheerful, genial and happy to hire me at my interview. Yet for some reason there’d been no mention of the fact that I’d be part of a double act, working with a more senior girl, Jenny, who’d been on the paper for many years. Fleet Street over-manning practices (in this case meaning two people doing one person’s job) meant that the news desk merited two secretaries – just in case.

  Jenny was on holiday on my first day in the newsroom. Everyone was polite and welcoming as I settled behind my big typewriter. But I was quite worried when I learned I’d be one of a pair. I often made friends at work: sometimes these turned into established friendships. But I knew that the dynamic between two women working opposite each other every day in what I believed was a lively environment was one that had to work: if she’s a right bitch, I thought, it’s going to be hell. I needn’t have worried.

  Enter Jenny, a very pretty, slender, long-haired girl around my age, trendily attired in a cheesecloth skirt, espadrilles and pretty stripy top, showing off her suntan that first morning back from holiday. Everyone welcomed her back, made a huge fuss of her: it was clear she was a much-loved institution. Her boyfriend, Roy, a northerner, worked on the art desk on the other side of the huge, open-plan office. Fair-haired and slim, he was also super-trendy with tiny John Lennon style rimless glasses – indeed, the pair were dubbed John and Yoko around the office. And it was true: the similarity was striking, given Jenny’s long hair, very high cheekbones and slight build.

  We circled each other warily for the first few days. I soon gleaned that one girl who’d worked in my new job had been a great beauty who sulked a lot. Phew. I was neither a beauty or a sulker. After a few days our initial wariness turned to laughter. You couldn’t help it. Monty and Jenny shared a sharp, cutting wit. You could tell from Jenny’s jokey exchanges with everyone in the place that this witty repartee was part and parcel of the news desk environment. So what was effectively a job share for two full-time employees would work: I could watch Jenny and learn too.

  Apart from Jenny, there were three other people on the news desk: Monty, his deputy George and a much older man called Brian. Monty was something of a joker, but underneath his laugh-a-minute personality was a highly talented journalist. He’d been one of the youngest men ever to run a big Fleet Street news desk. Sports mad and outspoken, Monty tended to tell it like it was. Which is why the impressionable new girl on the desk never ever quite forgot Monty’s war cry when he read a piece of reporter’s copy that wasn’t up to scratch: ‘Who wrote this fucking intro? Fucking Noddy?!’

  The hapless reporter would scurry up to the desk from the far end of the newsroom, duly abashed and shamed before his peers. ‘Sorry, Mont, sorry…’ A few hours later, Monty would be down the pub, buying the reporter beers, laughing and joshing with him. I’d heard that news editors were mostly grumpy people, too harassed and worn down by the rigours of the job to bother with pleasantries. Monty definitely confounded the stereotype.

  As for George and Brian, effectively Monty’s back-up team, George was a fairly low-key, modest Scottish man, his quiet manner deceptive: terrier-like when nosing out a story, his persistence was legendary. Brian was somewhat patrician, a silver-haired elder statesman of the newsroom with a plummy, educated accent and a shrewd way of sizing things up. Brian had seen it all and done it all. He’d even given up drinking many years before – which made him quite unique and a great leader of the boozy troops (the reporters). ‘I’m going to be happy, chummy,’ was Brian’s mantra if there was an editorial crisis or a union dispute with an unclear outcome. Everyone was ‘chummy’.

  Exactly how the unions maintained their stranglehold on the proceedings was demonstrated to me just a week or so after I’d joined. Jenny and I were having a chat about a document that Monty needed to take into conference. The problem was, it was in an office several floors down. ‘Oh, I’ll just get a messenger to bring it up,’ I said airily, already having noticed the two older men seated at desks near the Lamson Paragon overhead tracks and its chute which transported copy and general paperwork to the editorial floor from elsewhere in the building. I’d seen them bringing things to people’s desks. So they were messengers, weren’t they?

  Never assume. A few minutes later, I looked up from rolling a letterhead into my clunky Remington to see a deputation of three men standing by my desk. They were all union representatives, dark three-piece suits, starched collar and tie, full of their own importance. What followed came straight out of I’m All Right, Jack, the late 1950s’ movie where Peter Sellers plays a left-wing union shop steward in a satire about workers and unions.

  ‘I have come to tell you that you have been overheard describing one of our union members as a messenger,’ said the oldest one, a man called Tommy who had worked on the paper since the death of the old King, perhaps even before. ‘Unless you cease using this kind of term to describe a union member who is called a tape room assistant, we will have no choice but to take serious action.’ Then they all walked away. It’s amazing they didn’t click their heels, so militaristic was their body language.

  Unwittingly, in conversing with my colleague, I had breached union regulations. Later, in the ladies, Jenny explained it all to me: ‘You can’t upset them, they’ve all been here for years and if you’d argued back it would have got worse. They could walk out over something like that.’

  Walk out? Go where? What was this all about? This wasn’t The Rag Trade, was it? (The Rag Trade was an early 1960s BBC TV sitcom set in a clothing factory where a militant shop steward, Paddy, repeatedly blew a whistle, shouting ‘Everybody out!’ at the slightest incident. So popular did the phrase in the strike-bound 1970s that the sitcom wound up being revived in 1977.) To me, this was beyond ridiculous. It was staggering to think that just one word, used in error by a secretary, could create a kerfuffle – or a walkout.

  From then on, I treated the tape room ‘boys’ (none of them under 50, all dreaming of retirement from their very cushy job) with jokey but polite respect. This union stuff was way over my head. I’d had to be part of it to get myself here, but I really didn’t want to get caught up in it in any way beyond that. It was just too… arcane.

  It’s bizarre, isn’t it? Here was a very popular newspaper that, just like its rivals, ran sensational stories about sex, sport and murder, campaigned on its readers’ behalf on all manner of issues and generally reflected the views and attitudes of the society of the times. Yet underneath what was essentially free speech in a centuries old democratic system was a tautly wound under
current of restriction. One wrong word from a clerical worker to a time-serving man waiting for his pension (and doing little else) and the entire enterprise wobbled. Madness (this national malaise was even echoed in a pop hit of 1973, The Strawbs’ ‘Part of the Union’).

  For most of that first year at the paper, I kept myself to myself socially, mostly because I had acquired a regular boyfriend, whom I saw two or three nights a week. James, in his mid-thirties, worked in a busy ad sales department in a magazine group. We’d met at my leaving drink in Covent Garden after my last day in the dull job. Nothing like my previous amours, he was upright, respectable, good looking in a formal sort of way with neatly trimmed dark hair and smartly dressed. He didn’t have long hair over his collar like virtually all the other men, which troubled me a bit, but he was eager to take me out, mostly to restaurants, usually on his expense account, whenever I felt like it. If it sounds a bit one-sided, it was. He wasn’t my type. Meaning there was no hint of danger, no sign of bad boy behaviour or subterfuge, no hedonistic dope-smoking or boozy habits – he restricted himself carefully to one beer in the pub, two glasses of wine at dinner – and therefore no challenge or excitement whatsoever involved in being around him.

  At that point in 1972 – meeting James, starting the new job – I was still in a kind of limbo. Part of the plan in my reluctant move back to Dalston had been to save up enough money to get back on track and to share a flat again. This didn’t quite happen as quickly as I’d planned because I’d run up a substantial bill on my first ever credit card, the Access, which had been launched to great fanfare that year alongside a mini-boom in banks releasing credit to the masses.

  I’d gone mad with the new plastic, of course. I’d piled into pricy gear from Young Jaeger and expensive Missoni tops from South Molton Street. Paying it all back was a struggle. It took ages. Yet I was determined to square things, no matter how much I hated being back home. Molly and Ginger, now resigned to my topsy-turvy behaviour, had remained sanguine. They seemed pleased when, months after I’d moved back, I told them about landing the job on the paper.

  ‘Fleet Street? You mean Flea Street, doncha?’ quipped Ginger.

  This brief hiatus of stability – dating James, meeting him after work and heading for dinner in Soho to places like L’Epicure or the fashionable Carrier’s restaurant in Islington’s Camden Passage – was too safe, too predictable for me to ease into and be happy that I’d found a pleasant, easy, untroubled relationship for a change. In truth, there was nothing to criticise about James. An attractive bachelor boy, he was obviously intent on settling down, judging by the broad hints he’d drop from time to time, which I ignored.

  For me, James was a sort of staging post, a place to stop briefly until I was ready to move on to another adventure. Yet the odd thing was, he didn’t seem to pick up on my lack of enthusiasm for Project The Two of Us. It went right over his head. Over those lengthy dinners – he did enjoy his food – I’d told him much of my past history, none of which seemed to concern him. Or put him off. He’d just laugh and say something like. ‘Well, you didn’t know anyone like me, then, eh?’ Meaning, ‘I am your white knight, here to rescue you from all those pathetic bad boys.’

  One topic that preoccupied him was buying a home. He was far from alone in this. By 1970 almost half of all British families were home-owners and a short-lived mini housing boom took place a couple of years later. James insisted on taking me to see his first purchase the minute he’d completed the transaction – a roomy, three-bedroom apartment in a red brick Edwardian block in north London.

  He’d paid £15,000 for it, though in a few years’ time the property market would crash and he’d be forced to sell it for the same price. It was a good apartment and, centrally located as it was, he hinted it would make a great first home for a working married couple. ‘Yeah, if you’re into that sort of thing,’ I told him. I was more interested in finding a new flat to share now than following any dreams of domestic permanence via the housing ladder. Though I did condescend to stay there with him on the odd weekend. That suited me fine.

  By summer 1973, a year after I’d joined the paper, I moved out of Dalston for good into a great new flat. Still in the St John’s Wood area, this was a big, three-bedroom place above an estate agents’ office in a small parade of shops in a pretty, tree-lined part of Boundary Road. Two sharers: a pretty, dark-haired Australian receptionist, Raelene, and a rather shy accountant, Richard. More maisonette living: an enormous kitchen and living room on the first floor and the bedrooms, two of them doubles, on the top floor opposite the loo and bathroom, plus a tiny box room.

  Raelene had kept the lease on the place for some time and had originally shared the place with four other women. She told me she preferred to sleep in the box room to cut costs. The rent, £17 a week, meant Richard and I forked out £7 a week each for our big double rooms and Raelene the rest. A short walk from the bus stop and a five-minute ride to Baker Street tube, this was a steal. There was even an Indian restaurant below us for takeaways. Such eateries were now gradually making their mark on the nation’s dining habits, alongside the boil in the bag Vesta curry, a culinary development I’d adopted with some enthusiasm. There was also a little French bistro in the parade of shops below us, La Goulue, for cheap candlelit dining if the situation demanded.

  And it did. For Christmas 1973, I scooped up some bargain lurex leggings and a silky bronze crossover top from Martha Hill’s little shop in Marylebone High Street and boogied the night away at the big office Christmas bash at the City Golf Club. From then on my partying habit resurfaced: pubs, drinking, followed by dinner in tiny restaurants. The exciting, thrill a minute, unpredictable times were back, fuelled by my new working environment where drinking was a way of life after work and where women who cared to participate in Fleet Street’s drinking contest were made welcome.

  There were quite a few one-night stands: I was even more indiscriminate than I’d been in the past, now that I had the freedom of my own big space again. It was a way of life I knew and, in all truth, enjoyed. The sheer unpredictability of social drinking and the way it loosens inhibitions still appealed to me. A lot.

  Sometimes the one-nighters turned into friendships. Jose, a journalist in the London bureau of a big Spanish paper – rail thin, dark, suave but very, very serious, a political thinker – eventually became a good friend. All these encounters went into the social pot pourri with my old friends from around north London, the Fleet Street journapists (as Jenny dubbed them) and, of course, James, whom I still saw on and off.

  For most of the time, it was pretty hectic. I’d often wind up stumbling into a taxi in the morning to get me to work quickly (price £3) because I’d been out partying until close to dawn. Sometimes I’d get home from the office, collapse into bed at 8 pm and sleep for 12 hours, just to catch up.

  The Boundary Road flat was a shabbily furnished place but the big space and the two floors meant I never really saw much of my co-sharers. Which was just as well, because not long after moving in, I realised that Raelene was an unusually active woman. She was gorgeous looking: pint-sized, long, fair hair, slim figure and permanently tanned. But her baffling lifestyle made my own partying instincts seem quite tame by comparison.

  She wasn’t the type to get pissed after work and see what happens, as I did. Oh, no. In fact, she didn’t drink at all or do any drugs. Raelene was a collector. A collector of men, with whom she traded, non-stop, 24/7. Goods for services rendered is one polite way of putting it. But the actual nature of the transaction was unclear: I was never sure if she demanded hard cash – it seemed more like amateur hour: she wasn’t a professional out-and-out hooker. She seemed to just collect men, taking whatever she could get from them at the time – a bottle of perfume, a scarf, a miniature liqueur bottle, anything. The receptionist bit was official cover for her other, collector-type activities. She hadn’t worked full-time in any office since leaving her home town of Adelaide three years before. The girl was far too busy colle
cting men for a conventional nine-to-five job.

  The first inkling of Raelene’s trading practices came just after I’d moved in. Sound asleep, I was woken around 3 am by the insistent ringing of the phone, inconveniently installed at the foot of the stairs. Stumbling down, half asleep, I picked it up.

  ‘Iz zat Raayleene?’ came the voice loud and clear. ‘Zis is Avi: I hav just arrived: you come see me now?’

  ‘No it’s not! She’s not here, OK!’ (Loud slamming of phone.)

  Exactly the same thing happened again in the wee hours a few nights later. Again, Raelene wasn’t in her box room. Another foreign accent, another guy claiming he’d ‘just got in London’, obviously hoping to ‘just get in Raelene’. Raelene was never around for me to ask her what this was all about. Then, about a week later, the same thing: a 2 am call. Yet this time, the voice had a distinctly Aussie drawl. Pissed off at being woken again but nonetheless curious, I grilled the guy. Yeah, he’d just got into London. Worked for Qantas. One of his mates had given him Raelene’s number.

  ‘Oh, so you know her from Adelaide?’ I queried.

  ‘Nah. Never met her. I’m at the Britannia. D’you fancy a beer, then?’

  Now the penny was starting to drop. At work, I discussed it with Andrew, one of the younger reporters in the newsroom. Andrew wore white John Lennon-type suits and fancied himself as a bit of a raver, though personally I had my doubts about this. ‘It’s obvious, isn’t it? She’s handing out her number to all the airline crews,’ he chortled. ‘Gotta meet this girl. Can you bring her down the pub?’

  Conversations with Raelene never seemed to get you very far, so I didn’t bother to question her. I couldn’t work out if she just acted dumb or really was genuinely quite dumb. Richard seemed very timid, quite in awe of us, scuttling away into his room the minute he got home, so I rarely engaged in much talk with him. Typically nosy, I peeked inside Raelene’s little cubbyhole one day when she was out. What I found was startling confirmation that I really was sharing with a collector.