by Sylvia Smith
Lorraine began life in Canada living with her uncle, his wife and their two sons. Her relations showed her the sights and one Sunday her cousins took her to a lake for a picnic and swim.
They laid their picnic on the grass at the water’s edge and soon all three of them went into the lake. Lorraine didn’t know how to swim so she decided she would just have a paddle, but unfortunately she slowly waded out of her depth. By this time her cousins had returned to the shore and their picnic. As Lorraine was unable to rejoin them she frantically shouted and waved at them whilst she jumped up and down desperately trying to keep her head above water. Her cousins smiled and waved back at her until they suddenly realised her predicament and swam out to rescue her.
Thankful to be on dry land again, Lorraine sat on the grass getting her breath back. Her relief at being saved from near-drowning was marred when one of her cousins said to her, ‘Your bikini top is around your waist.’
Lorraine attended a family gathering at her Uncle Haddie’s house in the country. After a couple of hours had passed she paid a visit to the bathroom and discovered a huge stool floating in the toilet. She used the toilet brush and flushed the system several times to clear the stool but to no avail. Her visit to the bathroom was immediately followed by her Uncle Haddie and Lorraine told me, ‘I didn’t feel comfortable all afternoon.’
1977
NASRIN
Nasrin was Indian and the divorced mother of two teenage girls. We met through a social club. She was thirty-eight. I was thirty-two.
Nasrin and I sat beside each other at a pub event. We were soon in conversation and she told me of an unpleasant episode in her life.
Nasrin had a bad marriage for many years and eventually divorced her husband. The court decided she should have the family home and custody of her daughters. Her ex-husband was very bitter because he had lost everything; his wife, his house, to a certain extent his children, and his money, as he was forced to live in a furnished room because he still had to support his family.
One weekday when the family home was empty he let himself in with his key. He entered the lounge and removed two photographs from their frames and then went upstairs into the double bedroom he used to share with Nasrin. He opened the wardrobe door and picked out all Nasrin’s photograph albums and loose photographs which she kept in a box at the bottom of the wardrobe. He sat down on the bed and tore each photograph into fragments and cut through all the negatives with scissors. His task completed, he left the house.
Nasrin came home and saw the remains of her photographs on her bedroom carpet. She told me, ‘If my husband had wanted to hurt me then he found the perfect way of doing it. He destroyed all my photographs and negatives and now I have no photographs whatsoever to show my past life. I used to have waist length hair but I have no photograph to remind me, and I have no photographs of me as a child, or of my daughters as babies, or of my wedding, or of my relations. He completely ruined every single photograph I possessed.’
1978
BETTY
Betty and I belonged to the same large social club. We met when we joined a club party travelling to Yorkshire for a weekend break. She was forty. I was thirty-three. She had recently returned to the UK from the US to attend her mother’s funeral. She had emigrated to the US six years earlier with a girlfriend. They had made their home together until the friend married, leaving Betty to live alone in their apartment. Although Betty considered life in the UK to be dull in comparison, she did not return to the States as she had found it increasingly violent and felt she was too old to start again.
On Betty’s return to the UK she moved in with her father, sharing his council house in Dagenham. She told me, ‘My father had six children and apart from me they’ve all married and had families and he’s done everything for them. He’s helped all his children out whenever they’ve needed it and he’s made Wendy houses, cots and toys for all the grandchildren and apart from my sister Anne who does his shopping once a week, none of them phone him up to see how he is or to invite him over for the weekend. They don’t bother with him at all. At Christmas he goes to Anne for the day and she gives him a present but all he gets from the others is a Christmas card and that’s about their only contact.’
Betty put her name down for a council flat. She said to me, ‘There’s no way I’m living with my father until he’s too old to look after himself and I’ll be the one who has to nurse him.’
A few weeks later Betty was offered accommodation in Barking and promptly left her father’s home.
1979
GLYN
Glyn was a forty-year-old Jamaican who was self-employed as a car mechanic. He lived in the next street to me and occasionally worked for me. He was married with two young sons. I was thirty-four.
Glyn continually asked me to go out with him but I always refused. He would frequently complain about his marriage, telling me that his wife only allowed him sex once a month, how frustrated he was and that he was looking for a discreet girlfriend but had been unable to find one.
I moved away from the area and heard no more of him until I met one of the neighbours who told me that Glyn and his wife had divorced after he had poured a can of petrol over her and had tried to ignite it. Their house had been sold and his wife had custody of the children but Glyn did not go to prison.
1979
SAM
Sam was a fifty-five-year-old sales rep. We were both employees of the same clothing company. I was thirty-four and private secretary to the Managing Director.
As I entered the showroom I heard Sam talking to the Sales Director. He was explaining why he’d been late for an appointment with a client the previous evening. He said, ‘I broke down in my car last night.’ I interrupted and asked, ‘Didn’t you have a hankie?’ which brought some humour to the situation.
1979
MALCOLM
Malcolm was thirty-eight. I was thirty-four. We met at a social club event and dated for two months but there was no romance between us. We became ‘good friends’.
On our third evening out together Malcolm took me to the cinema to see the latest film. He bought our tickets and said to me, ‘I must go to the loo. I won’t be a minute.’ I waited in the foyer and looked at my watch as the time went by. Twenty minutes passed before he came out of the gents’ toilet. He was not at all embarrassed and simply said, ‘I’m sorry,’ as he led me in to see the film, which fortunately had not started.
On the way home from the cinema Malcolm and I were discussing our various romances. I told him I had dated over one hundred men before the age of twenty-five and that they had all been platonic relationships. Malcolm could not believe this at all and said, ‘You should have had sex with them all!’ I replied, ‘You must be joking! If I’d had sex with all of that lot I’d have a face full of spots by now. I prefer to have serious relationships.’ Malcolm said, ‘The next time you go out with a man just relax, lay back and let him do it.’
1979
BRIAN G
Brian, Phyllis and I were members of the same social club. He was a divorcee aged forty-two and had been engaged to and living with Phyllis for some time. She was ten years younger than him. I was thirty-four.
Brian and I attended a ramble event in Epping Forest one Sunday morning in summer. I noticed he arrived in a bright, shiny new car and without Phyllis.
The ramble was very well attended, making a group of twelve people. After struggling through the undergrowth and muddy footpaths we eventually stopped at a country pub to quench our thirst, choosing to sit on the wooden benches outside. I sought out Brian and settled beside him. I said to him, ‘That was a nice car you were driving.’ He replied, ‘It was. I only bought it about a month ago but some nut smashed into it, so the novelty has worn off.’ I said, ‘Oh, that was bad luck.’ He continued, ‘That car is the first car I’ve ever bought brand new. I literally spent weeks looking through catalogues to find myself exactly what I wanted. I was really pleased with it. Then this idiot crashes
in to me at the traffic lights. I was stationary and waiting for the lights to change and he comes along not looking where he was going and drives straight into the back of me. He made a huge dent in the boot. Alright, the garage did a good repair job but that car now seems to me to be second-hand and I’ve lost all pride in it.’ I sympathised and said, ‘Well, it’s still a beautiful car.’
I changed the subject and asked, ‘No Phyllis today?’ He looked down at his drink and replied, ‘No, she’s busy.’ I asked, ‘Is she cooking your dinner?’ He replied, ‘That’s right.’
We spoke to the other club members and I overheard Brian saying, ‘I’m living with my father at the moment.’
1979
CLUB ROW SUNDAY MARKET
Mr and Mrs Porter were the parents of my ex-boyfriend Neil who died after a long illness at the age of thirty-two. We became friendly and I called them ‘Mr and Mrs P’.
One Sunday morning I joined them on their weekly excursion to Club Row market, travelling there and back in Mr P’s car.
Mr P was a lousy driver, not being able to see too clearly, but apart from going through a set of red traffic lights and successfully avoiding a collision with the three cars travelling towards us, our journey was uneventful. We reached our destination and he parked in one of the side streets. Mrs P and I left him in the car and set off on our shopping trip.
As we neared the market we saw a traffic warden writing out a ticket for a vehicle illegally parked. A man from the group ahead of us called out to him ’Shouldn’t you be in church?’
1980
MR and MRS P
Mr P was Canadian. In later years he was crippled with arthritis – wearing leg irons and using crutches to help him walk. He had been a soldier based in London during the last war, where he met Mrs P. They began married life in Canada but Mrs P could not tolerate the isolation of the countryside and returned home with one-year-old Neil Her husband quickly followed her and they settled in London, having a daughter, Lorraine, some years later. Lorraine emigrated to Canada at the age of nineteen. I was twenty-seven when I first met Neil and his family.
Shortly after Neil’s death I fell out with my parents and moved into Mr and Mrs P’s home as a paying lodger, an arrangement that suited all three of us,
Mrs P worked part-time in a factory and spent the remainder of her life in her kitchen watching a black and white TV set. At this time Mr P was crippled and sat in an armchair in the lounge during the day watching a coloured television and eating the meals his wife served him on a tray. At night he slept in the second reception room downstairs as the upstairs bedrooms were too difficult for him to reach.
I found Mrs P to be a very unpleasant woman. After living in her home for a few months we ceased to be the good friends we had been and would simply acknowledge one another. Every Friday I gave her my rent I expected her to give me notice to leave but that didn’t happen.
Mr P and I had tremendous fun. I shared his lounge most evenings and we would make jokes and have two pence bets on whether a certain celebrity had died or who they had married. He usually lost his money. The day before I left for a skiing holiday he said, ‘I hate to tell you this Sylvia, but it’s been on the news that there are terrible avalanches in Austria and some people are stranded out there for possibly another week until they can clear the snow.’ I realised he was joking and laughed, but he continued, ‘If I were you Sylvia I’d contact your travel agent.’
It was a Tuesday morning shortly before Christmas. I was about to leave for the office when there was a knock at the street door. As Mrs P was still asleep and Mr P had difficulty walking, I opened it to see a middle-aged man holding out a cap. He asked, ‘Would you like to donate?’ Thinking he was some type of charity worker I replied, ‘No thank you,’ and closed the door. I hastened around, picking up my handbag and car keys, and left the house, saying ‘Goodbye’ to Mr P. As soon as I returned in the evening he called out to me, ‘Sylvia, that feller knocking on the door this morning was one of the dustmen and he was asking you to give them some money for their Christmas box. As you turned him away, when he emptied the dustbin in the cart instead of putting it down gently in the front garden he threw it all the way up the path until it hit the street door.’
All three of us became aware we had a problem. The electric light bulb in the lounge wore out and it was decided I was our only hope, despite the fact that I had no experience of looking after a house and was unable to do the most simple of tasks. Mrs P brought the ladders in – she was far too fat to climb them and Mr P couldn’t. I clambered up them whilst they held on to me as tightly as possible. Unfortunately I don’t like heights. The ladders were old and very rickety and the higher I ascended the more they wobbled. I managed to take the bulb out of its socket as the ladders swayed but I couldn’t fit the new one in. After several failed attempts we realised we would have to find another solution. As the days passed by all the light bulbs in the house slowly burnt out. Luckily, Mrs P had a great variety of bedside lamps and she placed one in every room.
Our next hurdle was the washing line in the back garden. The wooden pole shattered and the line fell on to the grass. Neither Mrs P nor I knew how to repair it.
The three of us had a meeting and it was decided we should wait until we had a visitor.
Eventually Mrs P’s sister and her husband called. As soon as her brother-in-law stepped into the house Mrs P persuaded him to replace all the light bulbs and repair the washing line.
We occasionally had a dinner guest. He was a young Indian Mrs P had befriended in the factory where she worked. At our request he would wander around the house carrying out minor repairs.
My relationship with Mrs P went from bad to worse and came to a head one Friday evening. I was frying sausages in the kitchen when she came in from work. She yelled at me, ‘You always rush home so you can get to the cooker before me and you always sit watching the TV in the lounge when Cliff goes to bed so I can’t get in there. Get out of my kitchen.’ I argued, ‘No, I’m cooking my dinner and I don’t rush home to get here before you and as far as the front room is concerned I don’t see why you don’t go in there.’ This upset Mrs P further. She screamed, ‘Get out of my kitchen and get out of my house this instant!’ She took two steps forward and lightly punched my shoulders. As I took this to be an invitation to have a fight and I didn’t relish rolling in the mud with her in the back garden, I vacated the kitchen and went upstairs to pack. As I passed the lounge Mr P said, ‘I’m sorry about this, Sylvia. If it was up to me you could live here forever.’ I packed my things and put them into my car parked outside, then I returned to the kitchen. Mrs P shouted, ‘And don’t send your father round here either.’ I picked up my frying pan with my uncooked sausages in it, placed it on the passenger seat in my car, and drove home to my parents as I had nowhere else to go at such short notice.
Despite leaving his house, I telephoned Mr P at regular intervals until he died a few years later.
1980
MICHELLE
Michelle was twenty-six. I was thirty-five, I had a two-week booking as a temporary secretary with her employers. I worked in the office she shared with two girls who were both in their twenties.
Michelle and the other girls made me welcome. We were soon in conversation and I settled down quite quickly. Michelle talked as she worked throughout the day and appeared to be very relaxed and at ease. I was surprised when she told me her live-in boyfriend had found himself another girlfriend and they were separating. I asked, ‘Surely you must be very upset?’ She replied, ‘Yes, I am but there’s no point moaning about it.’ She continued, ‘We bought a house together seven years ago and were planning to marry when we wanted children. I thought we loved each other and he liked to go out with his friends occasionally. It didn’t occur to me he was with another woman. Then last week he announced he’d found somebody else and wanted to sell the house and set up home with her. It was the most terrible shock. Ever since then I get myself drunk every night and I
usually have a few drinks before I come to work and some more in my lunch hour. Right at this moment I can just about see what I’m typing, but I can’t crack up. I’ve got to get through this and drinking helps me.’
At the end of the week nothing had altered for Michelle, who was still hiding her unhappiness with alcohol and idle chatter.
I took my time sheet into the agency on the Friday evening. My supervisor said, ‘You can’t go back there next week Sylvia because you are in your thirties and the girls you’re working with are all in their twenties. Their Personnel think it would be nicer if they had a younger temp.’
1981
THE INDIAN SHOPKEEPER
He was short and middle-aged. I was thirty-six
I saw a beautiful green handbag in the window of an east London leatherware shop, but without its price tag. I entered the shop and asked the Indian shopkeeper how much it cost. He reached for the bag and passed it to me, saying, ‘This is an excellent handbag in a very soft leather that I imported from France and I want seventy-five pounds for it.’ It was much more than I had expected and I told him so. He showed me various cheaper bags but I didn’t like any and left the shop.
