by Sylvia Smith
I walked along the High Road and the Indian shopkeeper caught up with me. He fell into step beside me and we strode along the main road together. He asked, ‘Can I take you for a coffee?’ I replied, ‘No thank you.’ Undaunted he asked, ‘Can I take you for a drink?’ Again I replied, ‘No thank you.’ He then asked, ‘Would you like to be my wife?’ I was very surprised but once again I replied, ‘No thank you.’ He returned to his shop as I continued on my way.
1983
AUNT MILLY
My aunt Milly was a prim and proper old lady of
seventy-four, despite having been married twice
and the mother of two adult sons. My mother was
seventy. I was thirty-eight. The three of us had a
night out together.
All three of us decided to have an evening out and we chose to go to the cinema. As neither my mother nor my aunt had much idea of what film to see the selection was left to me. I picked a Monty Python film thinking it would make us all laugh. It certainly made my mother and me laugh but not my aunt, who sat in her seat in quiet disgust with a stony expression on her face all the way through the film.
One particular tract of the film I guessed was a little too much for my aunt. Two men appeared on the screen and climbed into a cloth suit of a cow and hobbled around a field which, unfortunately for the man in the rear end of the cow, had a live bull in it. The bull didn’t realise the cow was not real and galloped across the field and had sex with it. Immediately the bull had finished, the cloth cow made its escape and staggered out of the field. The man in the rear end stepped out of the suit and, after the violent thumping he had received from the bull, he was unable to walk properly. The lower half of his body appeared to be twisted and he winced as he walked with a pronounced limp. My mother and I thought the entire scene extremely funny and laughed our heads off. I turned to see my aunt’s reaction. She was sitting motionless in her seat, her eyes glued to the screen without even a flicker of a smile.
After the film had ended we left the cinema and I drove all three of us home. My mother and I were still laughing about the man in the cloth suit but my aunt sat quietly in the car without making any comment.
That was the last time I took aunt Milly to the cinema.
1983
GHALIB
Ghalib was an Iraqi who had lived in London for twenty years. We met at badminton classes and became friends. He was forty-three. I was thirty-eight.
Ghalib decided to emigrate to England from Iraq and he chose London as his home town. Unfortunately on his arrival in the UK he did not speak any English. He enrolled immediately in English lessons. He told me it was one year before he was fairly fluent and able to stop asking people to repeat themselves. He also told me of his first trip on the London Underground. He said, ‘I went down the tube to go on a fairly short journey and I got totally lost. It took me four hours to find my way out again.’
Some time later Ghalib entered into a disastrous three-year marriage with an English woman. He described the relationship to me saying, ‘She stepped into my life, ruined it and then stepped out again.’
Ghalib also told me of a recent relationship he’d had with an older woman. He said, ‘She was fifty-six, divorced, and had a thirty-year-old son. Our sex life was usually good but one evening we were in bed having sex together when she suddenly “blew off” and I found it so off-putting I was unable to perform and that was the end of our sex that evening.’
I used to play badminton at the sports centre every Monday evening until I sold my car and the journey became too lengthy. Ghalib very nicely offered to take me in his car every week so my badminton evenings continued. He was always asking me for a date despite my continuous, ‘No thank you, Ghalib, I don’t want to be anything other than friends.’
One Monday evening as Ghalib was driving me to the sports centre I noticed how crestfallen he appeared and I asked him what was wrong. He said, ‘I have just fallen in love with the most wonderful woman, Sylvia, but I am almost ill with worry because she has run away from me and I can’t find her. I’ve tried phoning her lodgings but she’s not there any more. I feel so bad I’ve been to see my doctor and he’s given me tranquillisers. I just cannot bear this.’ I looked at his ashen face and said, ‘I’m very sorry, Ghalib, but instead of having her on your mind all the time why don’t you try forgetting her?’ ‘I just can’t,’ he replied. Our evening continued but he played badminton in a very subdued fashion and he drove me home making only brief replies to my conversation.
As I was worried about him I phoned him later in the week and asked, ‘How are you, Ghalib?’ He replied, ‘Oh, I’m feeling better now but the situation has not resolved itself. I managed to find my lady but she refuses to see me. When I finally managed to speak to her on the telephone I told her how overwhelmed I had been by my feelings for her and she said the reason why she’d run away from me was because she’d been overwhelmed as well and had been unable to cope with her feelings for me.’ I asked, ‘How are things now?’ He replied, ‘I’m afraid it’s over, Sylvia. She just won’t see me any more because it’s all too much for her. But, oh, I remember how we hugged each other in the moonlight. It’s so very sad.’
To a certain degree this put my nose out of joint as I had always thought Ghalib was mad about me. It was a slight shock to find he had amorous thoughts in another direction and I was no longer on his mind. Curious, I asked, ‘How long did your relationship last, Ghalib?’ ‘It was only one date,’ he replied.
1983
JENNY H
Jenny and I became friends when we lived in the same furnished house. I had the bedsit downstairs in the front of the house and Jenny shared the garden flat behind mine. One year later she bought a one-bedroomed flat a short walk away. We continued our friendship. She was thirty-two. I was thirty-eight.
Jenny had a long-term boyfriend called Dave who owned his own property but preferred to live with Jenny in her small apartment. She told me, ‘He’s a lousy lover. He smokes thirty cigarettes a day and when we have sex he has to stop halfway through and have a rest for ten minutes to get his breath back.’
Jenny told me Dave was filled with remorse when his father died. She said, ‘Dave’s father suffered from depression. Dave saw him talking to someone in the street about a week before he died and Dave walked straight past him, ignoring him completely. A few days after that his father went to Dave’s flat but Dave wouldn’t let him in and told him to go away. The following week his father hanged himself and Dave can’t get over his guilt. It plays on his mind that he should have helped him and perhaps if he had then his father might still be alive today.’
1984
IAN
Ian was an eighteen-year-old bank clerk who wore Brer Rabbit fun slippers behind the counter as he served his customers. The other bank staff voted him ‘the sexiest backside in the bank’. I was thirty-nine and a temporary secretary for the same bank. He had a flair for telling jokes. Here is one of them.
‘There were two punk rockers strolling through Trafalgar Square. One punk rocker said to the other, “What would you do if a bird shit on your head?” The other punk rocker thought for a minute and then said, “If she did that to me I don’t think I’d want to see her again.’”
1984
JANET
Janet was a married woman In her fifties and the mother of four adult children. I had a three-month booking as a temporary secretary in her office in the probation service. I was thirty-nine.
Janet was a very kindly and pleasant woman. Despite knowing me for ten days precisely she bought me a pot plant on my birthday.
One of Janet’s daughters took a year out of university to teach English in China whilst improving her Chinese. As Janet and her husband hadn’t seen her for several months they decided to holiday there. Janet flew, arriving many hours later, but her husband was so frightened of flying he travelled by train, arriving a few days later.
Janet said to me, ‘My second daughter told me sh
e was leaving home to share a flat with some friends and I said to her, “Good luck dear, and don’t forget you will always have a room here.” Then I fell asleep in the armchair whilst she was packing. She came to say goodbye to me and I was still asleep. She woke me up and said, “When my friend June left home her mother was in tears,” and I said, “Oh, I’m sorry dear.” She was quite offended.’
My booking finished and my agency sent me to various other probation offices as I understood the work. Occasionally I had reason to telephone Janet and I noticed how abrupt and barely polite she was. I eventually returned to her branch but worked elsewhere in the building. I asked one of the secretaries, ‘What’s the matter with Janet? She’s not at all like her old self. Every time I speak to her she’s just about civil and she gets rid of me as quickly as possible and doesn’t really want to talk to me.’ Her colleague replied, ‘Her marriage is finishing. She’s getting divorced and she’s sorting out with her husband who gets what and I don’t think Janet wanted the marriage to end.’
1985
THE PROBATION SERVICE
had a three-month booking as a temporary shorthand secretary in a branch of the probation service. I was aged forty.
I found working in the probation service very interesting but it also had its darker side. In this particular branch, thirty chairs were nailed to the floor in the large reception area as a past offender had smashed a chair on top of a probation officer’s head, fracturing the man’s skull.
I shared the office in reception with five other secretaries. Halfway along one wall there was a wide opening where we would speak to the clients as they came in. It was fitted with iron shutters to be pulled down and locked should there be a disturbance.
One afternoon all the probation officers were out attending meetings or appearing in court, leaving the six secretaries on their own with just a middle-aged clerk in his office in the long passageway adjacent to reception. A drunk stumbled in asking to see his probation officer and was politely told by a secretary that the officer was in court and no one else was free to see him but he could leave a message. This infuriated the drunk who shouted abuse at the secretary and started thumping the frame of the opening with the flat of his hands. At the same time the clerk stepped out of his office to go on an errand. The drunk turned and saw him and lurched towards him, focusing his shouting and swearing at him. This frightened the clerk who ran up the corridor desperately trying all the doors to find one unlocked, with the drunk now chasing after him. He frantically tried another door and, to his great relief, it opened. He quickly entered the office and locked himself in at top speed. The drunk, still shouting abuse, pounded his fists on the locked door in the hall while the clerk remained inside, too frightened to face him. Eventually the drunk stopped his pounding and staggered down the corridor, past reception, still shouting abuse, and out into the street. Hearing the drunk walk away and silence in the hall, the clerk unlocked the door and went about his duties. The comment from the supervising secretary was, ‘He’s not much of a man, is he? He leaves us secretaries to cope with an aggressive drunk while he hides himself away trembling with fear.’
* * *
Another afternoon all the probation officers attended an AIDS-awareness demonstration. Each officer was supplied with a banana and a condom and they were taught how to use a condom with the banana representing a penis. Once they had mastered this art the idea was that they would show their clients how to do so correctly, thereby reducing the risk of them catching AIDS through casual sex.
I was offered a job at that probation office but I considered the salary too low and I didn’t like their set-up of a supervising secretary being in charge of the daily workload and of all the other secretaries, which would have included me.
1985
MY INVESTMENTS
I reached the age of forty. It was such a milestone I took a hard look at my past life. I felt I hadn’t done very much with it. I had never married or lived abroad. I had led the life of a single woman, having nice clothes, nice holidays, nice cars, nice evenings out, and, despite the fact that several men had fallen in love with me, I’d had few romances. I thought to myself, ‘What can I do about this? I don’t want to get to sixty and find I still haven’t done anything worthwhile.’ I decided I would like to achieve something and I thought, ‘What can I achieve?’ My next thought was, ‘How about I make myself rich.’
I decided to make long-term investments which I hoped would eventually make high profits. I bought one hundred shares each in five leading British companies and I slowly bought large blocks of Premium Bonds because I thought ‘How else can I make a hundred thousand pounds?’ Also, I saw an advertisement in a newspaper which stated that if I invested in a leading bank’s investment scheme and put down at least a one hundred pound deposit and invested a minimum of twenty pounds per month over a period of nine years, my money would treble. I considered this investment to be a first-class idea so I filled in the bank’s form, enclosed my deposit and sorted out a Standing Order with my bankers.
Six years passed by. During this time I made approximately sixty pounds a year in premiums from my shares. I won fifty pounds four times on my Premium Bonds and I had continued investing my twenty pounds monthly. Then the recession caught up with me. I was made redundant by a building company and I returned to temping halfway through the summer, which is usually the busiest time for temps, only to find there was no work available. Despite trying my best to find work, I was to be unemployed for the following two years.
Faced with unemployment pay of thirty-nine pounds a week to live on I decided to look at my investments to see if they were worthwhile.
I went to my bankers and spoke to one of their executives. I said, ‘I have a lot of shares in various UK companies and I’d like to sell them subject to the shares being worth at least as much as I paid for them. So could you tell me the selling prices before we start filling in forms?’ The executive consulted a newspaper and informed me that all my shares were currently selling at half their original value. As I couldn’t afford such a loss I chose to keep them in the hope that at some time in the future they would return to the price I had paid for them.
I kept my Premium Bonds as I still considered them a good idea despite only winning a total of two hundred pounds during the six years I had owned them.
I telephoned the famous bank whose investment scheme I had joined and discovered I had not trebled my money but had actually made a loss of some twenty-six pounds. I decided not to lose any further monies and cancelled the agreement. I received a cheque for the amount I had invested minus twenty-six pounds.
It was quite obvious to me that I would have fared better if I had put all my money in the Post Office and had not attempted my ‘get rich scheme’.
1985
ELAINE
Elaine was a bank clerk aged twenty-seven. I worked for the same bank as a temporary secretary with a three-month booking. She was married but had no children. I was aged forty.
Elaine and I shared the same lunch break and we would chat to each other. During one of our conversations she told me she was the youngest of five children and her mother had died whilst they were all of school age. Her father didn’t think he could cope with raising a large family single-handed and working full-time to support them so he gathered his children around him and said to them, ‘I don’t see how I can look after each one of you and keep you at the same time. I’ve thought about it very carefully and I’ve decided you will have to go into a Home until you are teenagers.’
Elaine laughed as she told me, ‘We all burst into tears and cried our eyes out until my father felt so terrible he couldn’t go through with it and he said, “Alright. I’ve had enough. I won’t put any of you in a Home but well have to look after each other as best we can.”’
Elaine told me her father continued working and managed to cook the dinner every evening and get the shopping at the weekends, leaving the children to share the household chores, with the el
dest supervising the younger ones. She said that despite this she had a very happy childhood.
1986
THE NEIGHBOURS
I was aged forty-one.
A middle-aged woman and her elderly mother moved into a newly refurbished house in ‘our’ street. We saw beautiful furnishings being carried up the path by various deliverymen.
Both women lived together very quietly, not mixing with the neighbours. The older woman was never seen and it was rumoured that the younger woman only left the house for work in the City or to buy the weekly shopping. We did not see any visitors.
The following year the elderly woman died of natural causes. Some weeks after her funeral a neighbour told me the daughter had committed suicide by jumping off the roof of the office block where she worked, the assumption being because she could not face life alone.
