by Sylvia Smith
1987
BRIAN R
Brian was a thirty-eight-year-old Director of a local company, I was his secretary, aged forty-two. His wife Sue, aged thirty-six, was a solicitor. They had a four-year-old son called Simon. I worked for Brian for one year, until I was made redundant. The company eventually closed down.
Brian and his family went on a two-week package holiday to Spain. On his return to the office I asked him if he’d enjoyed himself. He replied, ‘Not really, no. The first week it rained every day and all day and the second week Simon broke his arm.’
Brian and Sue attended many official dos throughout the month. I asked him, ‘Wouldn’t both of you rather be at home of an evening? Surely all these functions are boring?’ He replied, ‘Some times they’re very interesting. For example, Sue went to an official dinner last Tuesday and she told me the highlight of the night was when a fellow diner vomited all over the table.’
1987
PAT
Pat was fifty-six. I was forty-two. We were secretaries in the Directorate of a local company and were both made redundant. The company has now ceased trading.
During one shared lunch break Pat chatted about her life. She told me she had been married twice. The first marriage produced a son and then a daughter, but ended in divorce. The second marriage was childless, finishing with widowhood. She now had a live-in boyfriend.
Pat told me her mother felt very proud when her grandson was born and insisted on pushing the pram on the child’s first outing. Pat said, ‘We were walking up the road talking away when we heard a terrific bang. We looked round to see the pram had hit a tree. We rushed to see how the baby was and he wasn’t there! We took the cover and all the blankets off and we found him right at the bottom of the pram. He must have had one hell of a shock and he was only two weeks old.’
After our redundancies I had a weekly dinner date with Pat and I met Brian, her boyfriend. He was forty-seven, divorced and the father of two adult daughters. Pat told me that Brian liked his drink. He would go to the pub after work and spend the evening downing pints of beer. He would stagger home to her and would lean on the street doorbell making it ring continuously until she answered it, despite having his own key.
Pat told me that Brian’s boozing got him into trouble. He had been to court several times on drink-driving charges and on his last appearance he had been sentenced to one-month’s imprisonment in Pentonville and banned from driving for two years. Released from prison, he sold his car but still continued his heavy consumption of alcohol.
Brian suggested the three of us should go to dinner as his treat and the date was set for the following Saturday. Pat booked us in to two restaurants, one Greek and the other traditional English in case we didn’t like her first choice.
She picked me up by car from my home in Walthamstow and drove to a pub in Hackney to collect Brian. We entered the saloon bar and heard Brian’s loud voice cracking dirty jokes with the barman and some of the customers, I saw he was having difficulty standing. Brian welcomed us and ordered a round of drinks, Pat and I choosing orange juices. After much effort we managed to drag Brian away from the bar. We returned to the car and travelled to the first restaurant with Brian sitting on the back seat telling more dirty jokes. At the end of each one he would burst into peels of laughter.
We ordered our drinks in the Greek restaurant with Brian still talking at the top of his voice. His conversation turned into noisy complaints at the poor service and fifteen-minute delay of our order. Pat decided we should leave and move on to our next reservation.
Returning to the car we walked through a small green just off the main road.
I noticed Brian was lagging behind and turned to see him relieving himself over a bush in full view of the other pedestrians and the cars that sped by. Judging by the torrent of urine coming from Brian I guessed he must have swallowed at least a dozen pints of beer.
At the second restaurant we were asked to wait in the bar until our table was free. Pat said, ‘I must go to the loo and I’ll get the drinks on the way back.’ In Pat’s absence Brian looked me over. Suddenly he reached out and squeezed my left boob and said, ‘Oh, what a lovely pair of tits.’ I was so surprised I made no comment.
Soon we were ushered in to our seats in the crowded restaurant. Brian was quite obviously very drunk and the other diners quickly became aware of that. By this time his speech was slurred and he was almost shouting but he did manage to choose his dinner from the menu unaided.
Despite Brian’s condition things went fairly smoothly until he spotted two black couples sitting at a table on the other side of the room. He yelled, ‘Niggers. I don’t like niggers. You dirty bastards. Why don’t you go and swing through the trees.’ Pat tried to quieten him down but he still continued with his abuse of black people. The other diners forgot their small talk and laughed as they listened to him. One of the black ladies passed our table on her way to the powder room. Brian bellowed, ‘Go home you black bitch. We don’t want you here.’ The woman ignored him completely and walked by without glancing in our direction. This state of affairs amused the other diners who sat in their chairs laughing. His racist remarks continued for the remainder of the evening and the entire restaurant became his attentive audience. Finally, Brian paid the bill and Pat suggested we leave. She helped him from his seat and eased him into his jacket. On the way out we had to negotiate twenty concrete stairs leading down to the street. Pat turned to Brian and said, ‘You hang on to my arm and watch where you tread otherwise you’ll have an accident.’ All three of us got safely back to the car.
She drove me home, she said ‘goodnight’ but I have not seen or heard from Pat since that evening.
1987
GINNIE
Ginnie and I met whilst on holiday in Cornwall with other members of a large social club. She was forty-four. I was forty-two. As we got on very well we went out together on our return to London.
Ginnie phoned me at work one day and asked, ‘Are you any good with problems? Because I’ve got one and I’m really fed up.’ I replied, ‘Well, tell me what it is and I’ll tell you what I think.’ Ginnie continued, ‘I went to see my doctor because I had earache and she said I had some type of infection and she gave me some drops to put in my ears. After I went swimming my ears got worse so I went back to my doctor and she said I’ve got to see a specialist because I’ve now got white spots in my ears and she doesn’t know what they are. And the last time I had to see a specialist was when I had a problem with my big toe and I had to have an operation on it. Now I’ve got to see a specialist again and I don’t want an operation on my ear,’ she moaned. I replied, ‘First of all, Ginnie, you shouldn’t have gone swimming if you had an ear infection, it probably made things worse. But your doctor doesn’t know what those spots in your ears are so she’s sending you to someone who will know and I don’t think you have a problem because if it was something terrible then I would think she’d recognise it. So it’s probably something quite simple.’
Ginnie went to see her specialist a couple of weeks later and phoned me at work after her visit. She said to me, ‘You were right. The specialist said those white spots in my ears were just my ear drop solution drying and sticking together in clumps so there’s absolutely nothing wrong with my ears now, and he said to me going swimming wasn’t a very good idea but everything should be alright now.’
Ginnie told me she was walking through Wood Green on her weekly shopping trip one Saturday afternoon when a young woman came up to her and asked, ‘Have you got a pound I could have?’ Ginnie continued walking up the road and replied, ‘Do I look as though I’ve just got off a banana boat? What do you mean “have I got a pound”? Have you got a pound to give me?’ The woman looked at her in surprise and said, ‘I don’t see why you’re making such a fuss about it. If I had a pound I’d give it to you.’ By this time Ginnie was some distance away and yelled at the woman, ‘I have to go to work for my money. What are you going to do – spend all day asking pe
ople for money? You bloody scrounger. I’ve seen reports on TV about how you beggars get more money than everybody else.’ The woman shouted back, ‘Piss off you old cow.’ Ginnie, still walking further away, hollered, ‘Piss off yourself, you fat slag.’ They continued hurling abuse at one another until they were out of earshot.
Ginnie phoned me at the office as usual. She said, ‘There’s a circus up Ally Pally, do you fancy going?’ As I thought this a good idea I agreed and it was left to Ginnie to make the booking.
On the day of the circus we went to the Box Office, only to find Ginnie hadn’t kept the reference number, which meant the clerk had difficulty finding our tickets. It would have helped matters if Ginnie had been polite, but she was annoyed and the following fifteen minutes were spent with Ginnie and the clerk exchanging snide remarks whilst he searched his records.
Our tickets located, we entered the Big Top.
The seating consisted of scores of long wooden benches joined together lengthwise. Our seats were in the last row at the back of the tent. Mine was on the end of one bench and Ginnie’s was on the other. Ginnie’s bench was empty except for a woman some ten feet away with a child on her lap. As soon as the band began to play the woman bounced the child up and down in time to the beat. This action resulted in Ginnie bouncing up and down too. I thought this to be hysterically funny but Ginnie was not amused. When the music stopped she retaliated by bouncing up and down on her seat. This did not alter the woman’s behaviour. Eventually I squeezed up on my seat and Ginnie sat beside me.
1987
ANDREA
Andrea was twenty-six. I was forty-two. We both lived in Jenny F’s house as lodgers. Jenny was forty.
Andrea amazed Jenny and me. She had a university degree in sociology but worked as a waitress. Jenny said to her, ‘Why don’t you write to some companies and tell them your qualifications and ask them if they have a vacancy for you?’ Andrea never bothered and continued in her menial job.
Andrea was not very hygienic. After work she would have a quick wash in the bathroom, cleaning just the basics and her dusty feet, leaving a tide mark all around the basin. Each time I shampooed my hair I had to scrub the bowl before using it. She would rarely have a bath. Although Jenny supplied a first class automatic washing machine Andrea would change her bed linen and bath towels very infrequently.
Jenny said to me, ‘Every time I come home I can see Andrea’s dirty net curtains upstairs as I come up the path. She hasn’t taken them down for months. I’m going to put them in the washing machine a couple of times.’ Jenny opened Andrea’s bedroom door and found the smell to be so bad she grabbed a bath towel from the airing cupboard and held it over her nose as she removed the curtains. I told her Andrea had spilt a can of lager on to the carpet but Jenny replied, ‘She’s just a dirty cow, Sylvia.’
Andrea and I would chat in Jenny’s kitchen after work. One evening we were discussing our backgrounds. She told me, ‘My father died soon after I was born and my mother died when I was four so I was brought up by my grandmother. As she’s now dead too my only other relative is an aunt I haven’t seen for years.’ She paused and continued, ‘I felt sorry for my grandmother. She was a very ambitious woman. She had tremendous drive and always wanted to get on in life. Unfortunately for her she married a man who was quite content to have an everyday job and to go up the pub for a drink as his social life. He never achieved anything at all and my grandmother had to settle for life in a council house and a humdrum working-class existence. She died alone and a very bitter woman.’
Andrea and I decided to go out one Friday and we chose ice-skating in London’s West End. We met immediately after work, dining in one of the many restaurants in the area, ending the evening in a local pub. The pub was very crowded. I noticed a group of five young men drinking at the bar. Suddenly four of them grabbed the remaining friend and tried to take his clothes off. The victim fought desperately to keep them on but he was outnumbered and was soon completely naked. His friends eventually tossed his clothes to him and he slowly dressed. The Manager of the pub went over to them and lightly said, ‘Now boys, no more of that. You’ll have to settle down.’
Andrea was very keen on a young man called Jonathon whom she had met at a folk club. He would telephone her occasionally but this didn’t suit Andrea and she would phone him every week. As Jonathon never asked her for a date she decided to go to the folk club by herself on the night he was usually there. She was delighted to see him and sat down beside him engaging him in conversation. She invited him to sleep at her home that night and Jonathon accepted.
The following morning I woke and heard a strange cough coming from Andrea’s room. I wondered who it was and if I’d been mistaken because Andrea did not have men stay overnight. I went to the toilet and saw a large pink condom floating in the water and I realised that she had a visitor.
I left for work without seeing her and looked forward to my return.
As soon as Andrea and I settled at the kitchen table with mugs of tea I asked her, ‘Who was that feller you had in your room last night?’ She laughed and asked, ‘How did you know?’ I replied, ‘Well, I heard someone cough and then I saw a pink Johnnie in the loo so I guessed.’ Andrea said, ‘That was Jonathon.’ I teasingly asked, ‘Did you have a good time?’ She laughed and replied, ‘We did but I was a bit embarrassed about the sheets, they could have been cleaner.’ She paused and smiled saying, ‘I wonder if Jonathon will see more of me now?’
Jonathon did not telephone her again and was very brief when she called him. He didn’t make any dates to see her and Andrea stopped going to the folk club. The relationship ended.
Jenny decided to modernise her house and make a proper home for herself instead of living downstairs in her divided Iounge-cum-bedroom. She said to me, ‘I’m going to take out a second mortgage to pay for everything and I want Andrea’s room as my bedroom so I’m going to give her one month’s notice and I won’t be sorry to see her go.’
On the day Andrea moved out I waited until she had shut the street door behind her and then examined her room. It was very smelly. I saw an eiderdown draped over the lower half of her bed. Curious, I pulled it off and found two-dozen deep-red circles of blood embedded in the mattress. Jenny returned from shopping a few hours later and I told her what I’d seen. She gasped when she saw the stains and said, ‘Andrea left me her new address so I could send her her deposit. There’s no way she’s getting a penny out of me. I’ll have to get rid of this mattress and on top of that the carpet stinks so I’ll have to do something about that as well.’ I thought to myself, ‘Did Jonathon see those circles? And how bad were the sheets he slept on?’
A few days later the builders began their work. Jenny said to one of them ‘Can you take the mattress out of my upstairs front room and put it in your skip? I’m sorry about the condition of it but we had someone dirty living here.’
1987
JENNY F’S NIGHT OUT
Jenny was an attractive blonde aged forty and my live-in landlady for two years. She was in the process of modernising her house so she could live more comfortably, only having one paying lodger, which was me, instead of the usual two. I was forty-two.
Jenny went to a disco one Friday evening with I her friend Lynne and didn’t return home until the early hours of the next day. As I had spent the week working hard and socialising I was tired and went to bed early. I woke the following morning around 9 a.m. and I was sipping my second mug of tea in the kitchen when the telephone rang. I hurried up the stairs to the communal telephone extension and found it was Jenny on the line. She said, ‘I don’t know what you’re on but do you think you can answer the street doorbell to me in about ten minutes’ time?’ I replied, ‘Yes, of course. What’s the matter?’ ‘What’s the matter!’ she repeated, ‘I’ll tell you what’s the matter! I came back from the disco with Lynne about three o’clock this morning and Lynne was going to come in for a quick cup of tea and I found I’d forgotten my key so I rang the street doorbel
l but it didn’t wake you up so both Lynne and me kept ringing the bell, banging on the knocker and yelling through the letterbox and that didn’t wake you up either. We were making the most tremendous racket and Lynne said to me, “How is it she can’t hear us?” You just didn’t wake up so I had no alternative but to go round Lynne’s. When I got round Lynne’s I telephoned you and I left the phone ringing and ringing and you still didn’t wake up and the telephone extension is only on the other side of the wall to where your bed is. I really don’t know what you’re taking but I’ve just had to spend the night on Lynne’s front room floor because I couldn’t get in to my own house. I’ll be round in about ten minutes. Since you are now conscious do you reckon you can let me in this time?’ I replied, ‘Yes, of course,’ as Jenny slammed the phone down.
I replaced the receiver and I laughed and laughed. I let Jenny in when she rang the doorbell. She was still very annoyed and stormed down the hallway into the kitchen. She sat down at the long wooden table and clutched her back and groaned, ‘Oh, I ache like hell.’ She said, ‘Lynne’s floor was very uncomfortable.’ She winced with pain again and I laughed out loud. She said, ‘It isn’t funny, Sylvia!’ I said, ‘When I go to sleep at night I don’t usually wake up until the following morning and I sleep through thunderstorms and more or less any natural noise. I’m sorry you’ve had a lousy night but I can see the funny side.’
