things to me, right at the same time; first it makes my stomach flip over with pure pleasure, and second it makes me feel intensely self-conscious, wiping out any thoughts of what to say next. Nervously I lick my lips, and hear myself say,
‘Well I’m going in now. Thanks for the fish and chips.’
‘You’re welcome. Maybe I’ll see you in the Albert – if I can bring myself to drink the beer.’
‘Right. Maybe,’ I say, as nonchalantly as I can manage. As he turns to go I put my hand on his arm. ‘I just worked it out,’ I say. ‘Who you remind me of.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yeah. It’s one of those old pop stars, can’t remember the name, my mother has all his records. You look just like him. You’ve even sort of got a quiff.’
He laughs, then pats my hand, and walks away. I could kick myself. Why the hell did I say that?
Kathleen
1963
There’s always an ‘if’, isn’t there? But some ‘ifs’ seem more crucial than others.
If I hadn’t been so ill with measles just before the Eleven Plus.
If my parents hadn’t accepted my fail so readily.
If they’d insisted on my retaking it, or some special dispensation for my condition.
But no, you didn’t do that then; you took what came to you and got on with it, or the neighbours would think you were getting above yourself.
I wasn’t a really clever child, but I do think that if my head hadn’t felt like it was stuffed with cotton-wool I would have passed that exam. And maybe then life would have taken a totally different path.
My mother always said that I was lucky to have been at Page Road, as though I should have been grateful for the chance to learn to type. Unlike some secondary moderns, Page Road offered a few City and Guilds courses, for the boys in metalwork or woodwork, the girls in shorthand and typing. So when we left, most of us walked straight into a job.
In June 1963, at the age of fifteen, I walked through those school gates for the last time, having acquired a grand total of just two CSEs (in English and housecraft) and my City and Guilds. The following Monday I joined the typing pool of Harrison & Sons, an engineering firm. On that first day I was so sick with nerves I couldn’t eat breakfast, but I was excited too. I’d be a working girl, not a schoolgirl, I’d have my own money to buy what I wanted, and I’d be able to wear my own clothes and not that disgusting bottle-green uniform, with its skirt all shiny from sitting on hard, wooden chairs.
The expectation was that I’d stay at Harrison’s until I married and had kids. That was what my mother did, working in one of the shoe factories until she had me and my brother, John. ‘I couldn’t see any point messing about, looking for other jobs,’ she’d once told me. ‘I was happy there so I stayed put.’
At that point the idea of marriage was a very remote one – a desirable but far-off state that I might one day find myself in. Of course I’d had boyfriends; for most of us at school acquiring boys had been more important than acquiring qualifications. The one had brought kudos and immediate gratification; the other seemed unnecessary, promising us work that we were all expected to give up at the first sign of babies. Still, when I thought about marriage it seemed to have no connection with those boys, the shy, awkward ones or the brash, loud ones, all of whom seemed to laugh like braying hyenas. I couldn’t quite see how I was going to bridge that gap, but I did believe that somehow it would happen.
My first day at Harrison’s was spent trying hard to absorb a million facts, all the routines and procedures – where to find this, where to find that, which stationery to use for which purpose, who was who and how to find them and then how to address them, or not – until my head was clogged with facts like an overstuffed suitcase. I was shown round by the Personnel Manageress, a brisk, scary woman with a beehive hairdo. She said that I’d be working mainly for the draughtsmen, typing up the specs for their drawings, and that sometimes I would have to go down to their department to fetch last-minute jobs and alterations. We stopped off on our little tour to look down on the drawing room from a windowed corridor above, where twenty or so men sat in rows at their boards. One or two of them glanced up, and one put his thumb up and grinned. I gave a faint smile back. The idea of walking in there and asking for anything was terrifying.
The factory itself was huge, but the offices and drawing department were all huddled together at the front of the building, so I thought I’d find my way round all right. In the typing pool there were about nine of us, and one girl was assigned to look after me. She was called Mary, and I took to her straightaway. She had vivid green eyes and a gutsy laugh.
At first I was quite timid and hardly dared speak to anyone apart from Mary, let alone ask for anything I might need. When I had to go down to the drawing room it was all I could do to say what I’d come for. But gradually, as the weeks went by, I got to know the men and started to chat back to them. They relished having us girls come along to relieve the boredom, and it was all just a bit of fun, they weren’t rude or dirty… well, except for the odd one or two, and I tried to avoid them. I hated being made to blush, and then hearing them laugh when I went out.
I tried hard to save money, which is what my dad said I should do – for a rainy day, he said. But it wasn’t easy when every Saturday all I wanted to spend my money on was records and clothes, the only two things I was really interested in then. Beatlemania had swept the country (pushing out singers like my idol, Billy Fury, who I still adored) and fashion had hit the High Street. It was as if I’d been half-asleep, as if my life had just properly woken up and I could see my sedate twinsets and tweedy A-line skirts for what they were: staid and deeply boring. I even began to think I looked worryingly like my mother. So now, on Saturdays, I went shopping with Mary, who I’d become good friends with. There was a new shop in town called Lewis Separates, where you could try things on without the assistant looking down her nose at you. Everything in there was so new and fresh, it was as though colour had been thrown down from the sky and landed right here on our High Street. I can still picture some of the things I bought: a lilac dress and matching coat; a tight houndstooth skirt that came above the knee and which I could only take small steps in; a cherry-coloured blouse with a ruffled collar, which I wore over a pair of black ski pants that my mother denounced as ‘unfeminine’. I kept going back, and what I couldn’t afford to buy I eyed up for making. Then I would get cheap material and Butterick Patterns off the market and run things up on my mother’s old sewing machine. It was mostly shift-dresses, which were so easy to make. With each one the hems rose a little further above the knee, and the skirts got a little tighter. To complete the look I learnt how to backcomb my hair into a blonde bouffant, and experimented with make-up. I piled it on – heaps of mascara, thick black eyeliner and pale, glossy lips – until my father muttered that I looked like a panda and my mother said I was showing them up. I didn’t really care about that. I was sixteen now, and turning heads. I had my mother’s eyes (baby-blue), my father’s full lips and a swing to my hips that I practised at home.
It worked, the look I’d perfected. I got chatted up at work, or at the dances Mary and I went to, and was asked for dates quite often, some of which I accepted – to films, or to a milk bar, or maybe a walk in the park on a Sunday. It was all very tame, and I didn’t find any of the boys especially interesting. So I didn’t go for long with anyone; I was always looking for the next conquest.
Months passed like this. By Christmas, Mary was engaged to one of the engineers on the shop floor, who she’d had her eye on for some time. She said she was sure he was ‘Mr Right’ and that all she wanted to do was leave work and have children. Some people thought it was too quick and there were rumours about her being pregnant, but no bump appeared. I hoped she wouldn’t have babies yet; I thought I’d be lost without her at work.
In January 1964 a new junior manager started at Harrison’s. His name was Rick Boutell and his family had moved to Harborough from London, which gave him an air of cosmopolitan glamour. Not only that – he was achingly good-looking. He had thick, glossed hair swept up in a quiff and