White Boots & Miniskirts

by Jacky Hyams

  In another inspired move, Jenny soon amended the toady board and labelled it ‘Toad of the Week’, flashing it up and down for the reporters to see. More hilarity. We were always laughing – at someone else’s expense, of course. It was quite childish. But then offices where people muck around a lot are often childish places, aren’t they?

  As for the reporters and photographers, their day to day exchanges – beyond office politics – mostly involved swapping yarns about jobs they’d been on, last night’s leg-over or gleaning advice on the fastest way to achieve this. Here’s a sample of a pub conversation between a youthful red-headed snapper, nicknamed the Orange, and Norman, one of the veteran Cockney reporters.

  The Orange, chubby and very much single, fancies a holiday on the French Riviera. What does Norman, a well-travelled hack who knows all the fleshpots of Europe, think his chances of pulling are? ‘If you go hunting for nookie on the Riviera, you’re up against the best-looking French and Italian waiters,’ warns Norm. ‘You’ll only get shitty tables and you’ll end up having a wank. Go to Ireland instead. All you’ll need to do is buy the bird a couple of gin and tonics and you can’t miss. Go to Monaco and you’ll end up wanking.’

  Yet outside the confines of the cosy, close knit, joke-infested world of the newsroom and the pub, the bold black headlines of all the newspapers were repeatedly telling a somewhat depressing story: the notion that Britain was going to the dogs had started to become all-pervasive. Not just the strikes and the three-day week (of January to March 1974) to save electricity supplies, the soaring oil prices and the almost daily carnage of the sectarian war in Northern Ireland, now spilling over onto the mainland. That was all bad enough but prices had gone up 20 per cent in 12 months. Crime had risen alarmingly and the economy was in dire straits. I had mostly ignored all this, busy organising the next party, the next trip to the sunshine, my horizons virtually unaltered since the heady days of the late ’60s.

  In one way, I had prolonged my youth way beyond its sell-by date. So almost imperceptibly, at some point in 1975 the effect of what was going on in the wider world started to sink in and made me question my environment. At the same time, there was an increasing realisation that this Fleet Street life, certainly the best fun at work I had ever known, was a bit of a cosy trap. My restless nature, propelled by a determination to have no responsibility other than to enjoy myself and put myself about, had been given free reign. I’d morphed from ’60s Cosmo girl into ’70s pub girl, landing in a place where a secretary couldn’t be thrown out for taking a three-hour lunch. With any number of funsters around me to share the party. Yet eventually I started to wonder about what lay ahead. Of course I did. I was nearly 30.

  What I didn’t understand about myself until much later was that I thrived on fresh challenges, not comfortable landings. I got bored far too quickly. I didn’t do complacency. I also didn’t realise that intellectually there was zero satisfaction in my work, so virtually all my nervous energy went into being a party animal – because I didn’t know what else to do. It was the easiest option.

  I wasn’t struggling for some sort of career because the idea of a career, either in journalism or anything else, just didn’t come into the equation. As for real independence, unwittingly I thirsted for it – but I didn’t have it. I paid my own way for the basics – rent, clothes, bills and holidays – but everything else, all entertainment costs if you like, came from the opposite sex, who didn’t question this. I would have loved to rent a nice flat on my own but I didn’t earn anything like enough to cover the rent. I wasn’t a Raelene. But neither was I financially independent. Ordinary secretaries didn’t go out and buy flats, cars, or trips to the Caribbean then. The only available option for me if I wanted to sink into some sort of comfortable, alternative niche was… marriage.

  I am wide awake at 3 am, Sunday morning. Next to me, James is snoring his head off. I’ve been staying with him this weekend, a fairly rare occurrence after several months of just seeing him for the odd dinner date, slotting him in occasionally, knowing full well that while I’m fond of the guy, respect his stability, his plodding determination to do a good job at work, make his way up the ladder, I am just dangling him, keeping him interested while I enjoy myself elsewhere.

  He knows and understands this. But he loves me. That’s the nub of it. Typically English, he only blurts this out when he’s had a few. I boozily mumble something in return, like ‘Yeah, me too.’ Hardly a declaration of passionate devotion. Yet he is blindly impervious to the fact that essentially this feeling is not mutual – he’d be better off looking for love elsewhere.

  There are very rare moments in life when a brief flash of insight stops you in your tracks and you fully take in the truth of where you are heading. Or how you are really feeling and how you should proceed. About half a dozen of these moments have been significant personal signposts in my life. This is one of them. I lie there, staring at the moulded ceiling, thinking it all through, for once managing to ignore the irritating snores. Fact: marriage to James is on the cards. He hasn’t done the bended knee, formal thing but he’s made it glaringly obvious that’s how he views us, that’s what he wants. He doesn’t want children. He knows I don’t want children. He likes the good life, the comfortable home in the smart area, the lively, expense account working life in publishing, the regular travel and so on. I like these things too, of course. Who doesn’t?

  So why on earth shouldn’t I do this? Why don’t I join the respectable, the conventional throng, pair up, do the expected thing? By then, I have quite a few girlfriends who have waited until their late twenties or early thirties to tie the knot. Some have had to wait for a divorce to come through now that the laws have changed. Others have gone out and enjoyed themselves while a long-time love has remained in the background, dithering endlessly until the final decision.

  The glib, snap answer to my dilemma is: well, you don’t love him, so forget it. I don’t have this romantic, girlie attachment to such easy answers. I’m enough of a cynic about love to know that it may or may not last, whatever the circumstances. I know for sure that my parents would be over the moon with sheer relief if I marry utterly respectable, responsible James. He’s made it plain he is desperate to meet them, show them he’s my protective knight in flared trousers, a kipper tie and even a Jason King moustache (which doesn’t suit him, though he has grown his hair longer, at my insistence).

  ‘Just do it,’ a little voice tells me. ‘It’s time, isn’t it?’

  Then, with a flash of clarity, it strikes me. If I do this, do I make myself happy? No. I’m merely observing the convention, doing the convenient thing because I’m 30. And James? Will I make him happy? Of course not. I’m too restless, too all over the place emotionally, never mind my penchant for sleeping with whomever I fancy. That’s two unhappy people. It would be utterly, totally selfish to take this man’s offer to satisfy convention, give my parents what they crave: a sense that I’m stable, looked after.

  ‘I wouldn’t give it more than a year,’ my other, rational voice whispers in my ear.

  It’s a truly big moment for me. Many people view my party girl instincts with wry amusement. ‘But what do you really want, Jac?’ I’m asked over and again. I can never answer them. I honestly don’t know what it is I do want. It’s out there, somewhere, this thing that I do want. But it is not, alas, contracting myself to a man who is a safe bet and loves me. I can’t do this to him or myself.

  My decision made, I decide to say no more, just keep him at arm’s length until he gets the message. Wrong. All this does is prolong the agony. He’s so patient. James phones, I say I’m busy. He keeps trying. And so on. Nearly six months passes. In the meantime I’m embroiled in yet another diversion with a twice-married northerner, Clive, a reporter on the Sun. He’s a lively, sunny Leo who suits my fiery Sagittarius temperament perfectly. (I’ve been very keen on star signs and their significance ever since reading the massively popular American book called Linda Goodman’s Sun Signs in
the late ’60s.)

  Clive’s a lively chatterbox – and chatter-upper. He’s down to earth, open, affectionate and a very enthusiastic lover, unlike the other Fleet Street men I’ve sampled, most of whom are far too under the influence to even perform, let alone properly. I don’t trouble myself overmuch that he’s married with a wife in a distant suburb because a) it’s much more exciting not knowing for sure when we’ll meet up and b) in a way, it’s a safer option right now than a single guy with marriage on the brain. And it suits me: I still want to hang onto my freedom of choice.

  We fight a lot, Clive and I. Then we make up passionately. Anyone who has ever read Charles Bukowski, the American postman-turned-author (played by Mickey Rourke in a movie called Bar Fly) will know the scenario. Fight. Shout. Yell at each other. Make up. Screw. And so on…

  One night, I’m waiting in the Printer’s Devil wine bar for Clive to join me. Everyone knows about us, mostly because we fight so much in the pub. Even the barman starts singing ‘Oh, I’ve got the Sun in the morning and the moon at night,’ when I walk in. As I wait for Clive, my eye settles on a secretary I know. She works for one of the editorial bosses and has done for years. Their long-term affair (he won’t leave his wife) is known to all. And there she sits on the bar stool, her gin and tonic half drunk, neatly dressed, patiently waiting for him to finish work at 10 pm. She’s much older than me, mid-forties, a really nice woman. They’re together during the week in a flat he rents nearby, then on weekends he’s back in his lovely home, 30 miles outside London with his family.

  We have the briefest of chats. She shrugs, a wry half-smile. ‘They’ve got problems with the printers tonight. I s’pose he’ll turn up in a bad mood,’ she says gloomily, staring into her glass.

  This is no way to live, I think to myself, even if you do love someone to bits. And there and then, just as I’d had that flash of insight in James’ flat a few months before, I get another flash. It’s obvious. This stuff can’t go on, I tell myself. There’s no way I want to be like her, sitting on a bar stool in Fleet Street at 40.

  Fine. You don’t want marriage and you don’t want to remain in Fleet Street – even though it’s a fairly cushy niche with a ready-made family of colleagues to laugh and gossip with. Can you come up with a good alternative? The answer, of course, is always the same. I want to travel and be free. Nice. ‘But where will you go and how will you do it?’ asks the little inner voice. Brick wall. I have no idea. Then Clive, curly-haired and thirsty after his shift, is at my side.

  ‘’Ello luv, sorry I’m late,’ he says, rumpling my hair… and my big question remains dangling, unresolved and unanswered. For now. Off we go, out into the chilly night, hailing a taxi to Boundary Road, temporary partners in an inky dance of lust and living for the moment hedonism, our destinies propelling us forward towards two sides of the same coin: tragedy and success await us both, in a manner neither of us can predict. And it will all be happening quite soon, because neither of us is destined to remain working here, in this place, the land of the legless and the long lunch. That night, in a way, I spot my real future. I just don’t know enough about the world, or myself, to be able to read the map.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  MANY RIVERS TO CROSS

  The food is going in the bin. Half-cooked sausages, blackened lamb chops, tomatoes, the lot, dumped straight into the garbage. The garden looks like a bomb has hit it. Chaos. Plastic chairs and beer cans litter the lawn. Mustard, tomato sauce and relish now mingle with the grass. Susan sighs heavily, stomps into the kitchen and starts to attack the washing up, venting her feelings on the greasy crockery. In the bedroom, the culprit, Ronald William, lies on the bed in T-shirt and shorts, out cold. A planned Sunday summer barbecue in Hampstead village has turned into a lost weekend. Ron, returning from the Wells after a heavy session, decides to get the barbie going. Susan, sensibly, suggests he wait until the guests arrive later on. A noisy argument follows. Ignoring Susan’s entreaties, Ron lights the barbie, cursing its inefficiency, starts plonking the food onto it, pushing it around, even though the barbie’s not quite hot enough.

  Then the guests ring: ‘Sorry, can’t come.’ By this time, Ron has chugged more Fosters. Then, rather predictably, he loses it, both with the somewhat useless Brit barbie and the ungrateful guests for whom he shopped heavily the day before. ‘Fuckin’ Poms! Typical!’ he rants, picking up and throwing the half-cooked food around with considerable abandon. ‘Give ’em a decent feed and they can’t be assed to get out of fuckin’ bed!’ And so on.

  Now he’s sleeping it off, the sleep of the outraged and very plastered Aussie male. Susan fumes while I make coffee in the tiny kitchen, trying to bring her down. She sheds a few tears. Again, I do my best to console her. Just a few hours later, we’re all three glued to the news on the telly: there’s a big siege taking place right in the middle of London. The Spaghetti House Siege, as it became known, started that Sunday night when a trio of gunmen attempted an armed robbery in a Knightsbridge restaurant, holding nine Italian staff hostage in the restaurant basement for six days until the staff were finally released unharmed. When the news ends, Ron leaps up, switches off the TV. He is now completely sober, showered, dressed – and hungry.

  ‘C’mon, you two sheilas! Let’s go down the Shahbag for a tandoori!’

  Susan and I look at each other: can you believe this guy? Then we all burst out laughing. It’s a typical Ron scenario. Get pissed, create havoc, shout, rant – and pass out. Then it’s all over. And quickly forgotten.

  I’ve been close friends with these two for well over a year now. This kiss-and-make-up barbie-bashing is not unfamiliar. Ron is a wild child, a 6ft 3in reporter, mid-twenties, from a distant place called Broken Hill. He’s been creating mayhem from Melbourne to Hong Kong and then London for a few years. The stories about him are legion. One night in the Melbourne newsroom at The Herald he decided to ring a former prime minister of Australia to blast him with a four-letter word invective. Later, while working on a Hong Kong radio station, Ron headed for Macau one night and a gambling session. Afterwards, well oiled and curious about what lay beyond the Macau border with China, he picked up a bike on the street and cycled across the border into China, a somewhat risky manoeuvre back then. Crashing his bike into a tree, he passed out. He awoke in a Chinese jail, surrounded by somewhat bemused Chinese guards, wondering what on earth they could do with this strange giant of a man. While the People’s Republic deliberated, Ron played cards with the guards. The story made headlines across Australia. IT WAS THE BEST CHINESE MEAL I EVER HAD ran the strapline.

  Since then, he’s been employed as a casual in Fleet Street, mostly on investigations for the News of the World. He adores Susan, met in a Fleet Street bar not long after he arrived. They promptly set up home together in Willow Road near Hampstead Heath. She’s a copy taker on the Evening Standard, the first woman to be permitted to do this job (someone took on the union and won). A lean, tall, glamorous, late 20-something from Kent, she’s fallen heavily for her antipodean giant. When he’s pissed, Ron is the archetypal Aussie oaf, smashing, crashing and cursing the Poms, their grey skies and warm, watery beer. The rest of the time, he’s terrific company: witty, gregarious, kind-hearted and surprisingly domestic – he’s a superb cook. In true Aussie style, Ron tends to tell it like it is. Susan is equally down to earth, though she’s not anything like as personally insulting as Ron. I find the razor-sharp insults hilarious but many people can’t handle it (think of the crushing honesty of a blast from Simon Cowell and you get the general idea).

  ‘Agh, you expect every bloke to put the hard word on you,’ he admonishes me when I complain that so-and-so seems immune to my charms. The ‘hard word’ is Aussie for attempting to proposition someone. (This is a pretty mild insult but it gives you the flavour.) He’s so right. I can’t quite get it into my head that I’m no longer 21 and sylph-like: I now teeter precariously between a size 12 and l4 (more l4), thanks to my eating and drinking habits. Yet only Ron throws the truth
at me in this way, makes me see myself head on.

  I enjoy hanging out with them: their smart little garden flat in the basement of a big house has become a weekend refuge for me when my own adventures start to pall. I confide in them too about my love life, though it’s mostly Susan who listens and offers advice. Because we all work newspaper hours, we usually share our Mondays off, mostly spent lunching and boozing, ringing other lunchers to join the party or organising big meals in my flat (I even cook a bit now) and taking the piss mercilessly out of Raelene’s antics.

  Yet if Raelene is hopefully not a typical representative of her homeland, the lively young Australians I meet in Fleet Street strike me as being somewhat refreshing compared to the motley crew of hacks crowding the pubs in and around the Street. The Aussies are on a holiday of sorts, in London to work casual shifts for a while, getting a taste of the Fleet Street experience for their CVs before travelling on or moving back home. They don’t take it all seriously – unlike all the staff journos or local freelancers who are completely wedded to their jobs and what the bosses are saying, to the point where the endless shop talk becomes irksome.

  Aussies adore nicknames: the Chook, Argos, GB and Harpic (meaning round the bend) are Ron’s gang. Ron’s nickname is the Stone Fish, after a species found in Australian waters and one of the most dangerous fish in the world (its venom contained in its spine). It’s easily trodden on because it looks like a rock. And it can kill. To be honest, I don’t think Ron is truly dangerous: more an incautious boozer, a wild man. But also one who’s a dab hand with a roast dinner and has an obsession with a clean kitchen plus an endearing habit of jumping up and reciting Aussie poems at the dinner table. I’d never heard of Banjo Patterson until then, Australia’s famous bush poet. It’s all hugely entertaining. Through my friendship with Ron and Susan, I relate to these Australians as instant party people, laconic humorists, turning up at the door en masse, grinning and clutching their cans of Party Four.