by Sylvia Smith
1970
JOHN H
John was someone I met at a dance when I was twenty-five and he was approximately twenty-eight. Our relationship lasted precisely three dances.
John had a strong cockney accent and his chat up line was, ‘I work for the BBC.’ I looked at him in disbelief and he explained, ‘Barking Borough Council.’
1970
HERACLES
Heracles and I met at a dance at the Café de Paris just off Leicester Square. He was a Greek aged twenty-seven. I was twenty-five. He had a university degree in Economics and had moved to London for three years to perfect his English. He worked in a Greek shipping office in the City during the day and studied at college two evenings each week to learn the language. He shared a flat in Tottenham with another Greek and he made a lot of friends in the Greek community in London. We fell in love but we both hurt each other. He forgave me but I was unable to forgive him and he returned to Greece at the end of three years.
Heracles introduced himself to me as ‘Hercules’ as he found people had difficulty in pronouncing his name. I laughed and said, There’s a TV programme called Steptoe & Son and Hercules is the name of their horse.’ So he told me his real name. It’s very easy to say. The ‘H’ is silent. You then say ‘error’ and join it to the surname of John Cleese the actor and you have the name ‘Heracles’.
Heracles’ command of English was always very good and I don’t remember a time when he misunderstood me, but little problems would arise. Tuesday night was the evening he chose to study and I was invited to his flat if I sat quietly beside him while he did his homework. I didn’t stay silent very long but the invitation remained. He would ask me questions, one of which was, ‘How do you say, “sit on the bitch”?’ I replied, ‘You can say, “sit on the beach” spelt B E A C H, which is the sand beside the sea, or you can say, “sit underneath a beech tree”, B E E C H, but you can’t say, “sit on the bitch,” B I T C H, because it’s a female dog.’
I taught Heracles to drive my car and he passed his test first time. This was strictly a result of my tuition as he only had two lessons before we decided I should teach him. Every Sunday we would go out for the day, frequently to Windsor, with Heracles at the wheel. On one of our weekly excursions we were travelling through central London when I suddenly doubled up in agony with fierce stomach pains. The pains did not subside and were so intense Heracles decided the best thing we could do was find a hospital and get me there as quickly as possible. He saw the ‘H’ sign and followed the directions, taking me straight to Casualty.
One of the nurses took charge of me. She ushered me into a cubicle and told me to take all my clothes off, put on the paper dress she passed to me and wait for a doctor to come and see me.
The doctor was absolutely beautiful. He was aged about twenty-eight, blond with blue eyes, very handsome and Australian. He asked me to lay down on the couch and he examined me over my paper dress. He pressed different parts of my stomach and asked, ‘Does this hurt?’ and, ‘Does it hurt now?’ Each time I replied, ‘No.’ He looked down at my legs and said, ‘No wonder there’s no pain, you have your legs crossed. Would you please uncross them?’ which I did. He touched me again and this time it hurt.
The doctor put on a pair of transparent rubber gloves. He said, ‘Now I’m going to give you the examination that Princess Anne had recently when she had an ovarian cyst. Would you open your legs please?’ As I realised he was going to put his hand inside me I exclaimed, ‘Oh, no! Do I really have to go through this?’ He replied, ‘It will only take a minute.’ I resigned myself to my fate and silently allowed the doctor to do as he thought necessary. When he had finished he took a brown medicine bottle off one of the shelves and gave it to me saying, ‘I want you to take two teaspoonfuls of this medicine every four hours and if the pain goes away within three days then all you have is wind. But if the pain does not go away then you have appendicitis.’ He paused and said, ‘You can put your clothes on now and go home.’
Back in the car with Heracles I took a huge swig of the medicine. One hour later I had no pain. As the day passed by and still I had no pain I slowly realised that I’d had wind. I said to Heracles, ‘I went all the way through that terrible examination by that tasty doctor and all I have is wind. Why couldn’t he just have told me to go to the loo and do my best to have a good blow?’
Heracles went home on the third Christmas and I received a letter from him in mid-January. He had worked out all the numbers for me to dial on my telephone in London and had written, ‘When you are alone in your office please dial the following numbers and I will be at the other end.’ I didn’t do as he told me. I thought to myself, ‘There’s no way I’m going to misuse an office telephone by phoning Greece.’ Instead I wrote him a polite and friendly letter, not mentioning the telephone.
A few weeks later I received another letter from Heracles, this time suggesting I had a holiday in Greece, staying at a hotel. He wrote, ‘Then perhaps I will have the honour of showing you around.’ I didn’t take up his offer because I thought I should have been invited to his home, and again I wrote a polite and friendly letter but not mentioning the holiday.
I didn’t expect a Christmas card from Heracles and I hadn’t bought him one. When I received his card four days before Christmas I rushed to the card shop and sent him one but I must have been far too late for the last post to Greece so my card probably reached him some time in January. Heracles stopped writing to me and I guessed he must have decided I didn’t want to hear from him.
I kept his photographs, letters and cards in a box in my dressing table. They stayed there untouched for twenty years before I looked through them again. I re-read the last Christmas card Heracles had sent me. He had written, ‘Time is passing by, but memories remain. I remember you and every moment of the quite long time we spent together …’ Then for the very first time I realised how much he must have loved me and I sat and cried.
1970
HERACLES’ FRIEND CHRIS
Chris was twenty-seven and a Greek living in furnished accommodation in Hackney. He was a friend of my Greek boyfriend, Heracles, who was also twenty-seven. I was twenty-five.
Heracles, Chris and I would go out together occasionally. One evening Chris told us of an accident he had experienced in his bedsit. He said, ‘I decided to cook my dinner and I chose sausages and baked beans. I had the sausages cooking slowly under the grill and the tin of baked beans was in a saucepan of water on a low gas. I thought I had time for a shower whilst my food was cooking. When I was in the shower I heard a big explosion. I grabbed a towel and went running back to my bedsit to find the tin of baked beans had exploded. There were baked beans up the wall, baked beans on the ceiling, baked beans up the curtains. Everywhere I looked there were baked beans. It was then I realised I should have pierced the tin before I heated it in the saucepan of water.’
1975
PETER
Peter was aged thirty-six. I was thirty. We both belonged to the same social club. He was a northerner living with his sister and brother-in-law in London.
I frequently saw Peter at club events. One evening I sat beside him at the dinner table in a Greek restaurant. We were deep in conversation and he told me, ‘I don’t really like London. I much prefer the north but I was forced to come here. In my home town I had a girlfriend who I was potty about and she lived at home with her parents. Every night I saw her her parents would go to bed early and leave us alone downstairs. As soon as they went upstairs me and my girlfriend would have sex in their lounge. I really loved her and wanted to marry her but in the end she chucked me in. I was alright about things to start with but she found herself another boyfriend and it really did my brain in because I realised she was having sex with him in her parents’ lounge as she’d had with me and I just couldn’t handle it. I used to go to her house every night to see her but she’d shut the door on me and leave me on the doorstep. I’d keep banging on the door and her father used to come out and he’d give
me a good talking to and then he’d shut the door on me. I’d still keep banging but they all ignored me. Then I’d phone her all hours of the night but they’d just slam the phone down. I was in a right state and I couldn’t stop myself. In the end her parents called the police and they sorted me out. I still couldn’t handle the fact that she was having it off with someone else but I knew if I made a fuss about it I’d have finished up in court so I came down to London.’ He laughed and said, ‘I couldn’t give a damn about it now.’
1975
PAULINE
Pauline was a sixteen-year-old office junior in her first job from school We both worked for the same refrigeration company. She soon found a boyfriend in Clive, one of the young men working in the Stores Department. I was thirty years old and shorthand secretary to the Company Secretary.
Pauline started dating Clive. As he was her first boyfriend she very sensibly went to see her doctor and arrangements were made for her to go on the Pill.
After taking the Pill for three months Pauline realised something was wrong and returned to her doctor convinced she was pregnant. The doctor asked her why she thought this and soon discovered her mistake. ‘My dear,’ he said, ‘when you take this particular Pill you are not supposed to take it every day of the month. You are supposed to take it for twenty-one days and then stop taking it for seven days and during these seven days you should have a period. The reason you have not had a period for three months is because you have taken the Pill every day. I am quite confident you are not pregnant.’
1975
JOSIE
Josie was twenty-five. I was thirty. We met at a charity club and became friends. Every Friday evening we would go to a local disco. At one of these evenings Josie met Ken. He owned his own house two streets away from my parents’ home and was a divorcee with two young children, who lived with their mother. He let furnished rooms in his home and had two male lodgers. The following is what happened on Josie and Ken’s first date.
Josie and Ken liked each other from the moment they met. On their first date Ken collected Josie from her family home and drove her to a country pub. At the end of the evening he invited her to his house for a coffee.
They sat in Ken’s lounge sipping coffee and talking and listening to the music playing on the stereo. Eventually Josie sat on Ken’s lap and they kissed and cuddled. After some time had passed Josie broke free from Ken’s embrace and looked at her watch, to see it was early morning. She said, ‘I’ll have to go, Ken, as it’s very late and my mother might worry about me.’ She stood up and her eyes focused on a large red bloodstain on the left leg of Ken’s white trousers. Josie was terribly distressed and blushed furiously. Ken looked down at his trousers. Josie said, ‘I’m sorry, Ken. I must have cut myself or something.’ Ken replied, ‘I don’t think so. Don’t forget I’ve been married and I know what it’s all about. I know what you’ve got.’ ‘Well, I’m really sorry,’ stuttered Josie. ‘This has never happened to me before.’
Ken said, ‘I’d better take these trousers off and put them in the washing machine and find myself another pair to wear.’ He left the room saying,’ I won’t be a minute.’
Unfortunately, Josie didn’t have any more tampons with her, thinking she was sufficiently protected. She turned her skirt round, only to see it was very messy at the back. Ken returned wearing blue denims and said, ‘I’d better put some newspaper on your seat in the car just in case.’
Ken drove Josie home while Josie sat on several sheets of newspaper. He stopped the car outside her house. She said to him, ‘I’m really sorry about this evening, Ken.’ Ken smiled, kissed her on the cheek, and said, ‘Don’t worry about it. I’ll phone you.’
Josie alighted from the car and to her acute embarrassment she found the sheets of newspaper had stuck to the back of her skirt. She eased them off and took them into the house, waving goodbye to Ken as she walked up the path.
Despite this eventful first date, Josie and Ken dated for three months.
After their relationship had ended Josie said to me, ‘Do you know, I never saw Ken’s white trousers ever again.’
1977
THE MAN AT THE FUNFAIR
I was thirty-two.
It was a beautiful summer’s day so my friend Linda and I decided to go to the funfair. It was very crowded and noisy with the different music and sounds of the fair. Linda and I played on the various stalls and slowly walked around the fairground looking at all the amusements. We stood near the swinging chairs and watched the people get into them. Once they were full the music started up and they gradually swung out higher and wider. Underneath them stood a middle-aged man with his suit jacket over his arm. He looked up at the chairs now swinging directly over his head. At the same time somebody above him vomited. The vomit landed on the man’s face and trickled down his shirt-front and on to the jacket he was holding. Linda and I grimaced as we watched him wipe himself with his handkerchief.
1977
HILARY
Hilary and I met through a social club. She was twenty-six. I was thirty-two. We went out together until her marriage to Mike and the births of her two children, a boy called Elliott and, two years later, a girl called Francesca. We are still friends today but only see each other occasionally.
In her single days Hilary owned a car that the garages appeared to be unable to repair. She would drive for twenty minutes and then the engine would cut out and she would slowly come to a halt. Hilary tried several garages but still this fault was not rectified so she decided to sell the vehicle privately for the large sum of eight hundred pounds without telling the prospective owner of this defect. She provided a test run and luckily this went without a hitch. The buyer was delighted with his purchase and paid Hilary the requested amount. The negotiations completed, Hilary watched from her front gate, heaving a sigh of relief as her car disappeared in the distance. She heard nothing further of her sale.
Hilary and Mike decided that Elliott should have a first birthday party. They invited close friends and family, and several mothers and babies Hilary had met at the Welfare Clinic, accompanied by the fathers.
Halfway through the party Elliott’s grandmother picked him up from the carpet where he had been playing with his little friends, sat him on her knee, and spoon-fed him a strawberry yoghurt. Elliott very contentedly sat on her lap eating the yoghurt. As he finished one spoonful he opened his mouth wide waiting for the next one. All was well until he had emptied the tub. His open expectant mouth turned into a pucker and he sat on his grandmother’s knee sobbing his heart out.
On one of my rare visits to see Hilary she told me, ‘I took Elliott and Francesca swimming when Francesca was four years old and she shit herself in the pool. I don’t think anyone noticed because most of it was in her swimsuit but I got her out of the water as quickly as possible and took her to the loo.’
1977
JOHN S
John was forty, I was thirty-two. We both belonged to the same large social club. He frequently organised weekend trips in Europe for other club members. I met him when I joined his party on a trip to Belgium. He was tall dark and handsome. He loved women, and they were attracted to him. I heard rumours that on every trip he organised he always found a lady to share his bed.
John was a very good tour organiser although he charged everyone a few pounds extra so that he had a free holiday. Our trip that weekend was to Brussels and we were a party of twelve.
On our last night we dined in an Indonesian restaurant and the food was excellent. I noticed John continually glancing around the room. He finished his dinner and left our table to join two unknown foreign girls seated in another part of the restaurant. At the end of the evening he returned to pay his bill and left with the girls, taking them to our hotel. He persuaded his room-mate to squeeze into another room with two other men from our party and John spent the night having sex with both women. On our return to London the following morning he slept the entire journey on the coach, only waking when we reached t
he ferry.
Ten years passed before I saw John again. This time he was organising a club disco. He was still a very attractive man but unfortunately he was almost bald and this did not suit him. His baldness obviously embarrassed him as he had grown long locks of hair on the left side of his head and had brushed them over his crown in an attempt to disguise his lack of hair.
I felt very sorry for him because he was very much a ladies’ man and his bald head showed the beginning of his decline.
1977
LORRAINE
Lorraine was my ex-boyfriend’s sister. She emigrated to Canada at the age of nineteen and lived with her Canadian father’s relations. We met when she was twenty-six and on holiday in London for two weeks, staying in her parents’ house. In Canada she ran a second-hand clothing store with one of her Canadian uncles. I was thirty-two.
