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I looked at my
boyfriend who was beginning to drink his third pint of Black and
Tan and didn't like what I saw. Earlier, before we
had visited the pub' on the rough council estate where Harry was
living, he had taken me to meet his mother who was getting ready
to go to work. She was a nurse at the local
geriatric hospital, doing the night shift because it paid so
well. She looked old for her age, her face was creased with
worry and I thought that thirty years on, I
might end up looking like that. Harry's brother and
sister were ignorant people, who had looked me over then turned
back to the television. His mother had been distant to the point
of rudeness and Harry had been embarrassed at her lack of
sensitivity.
That was why we were sitting in the pub, because Harry had
said they wouldn't get any privacy at his house. He'd have to
wait to invite me back there when he knew we could be alone.
I sighed. What was I going to do about the
situation? Maybe I could run away to Scotland when
I'd had got some money saved?
My job at the Kardomah was still very pleasant. I had
made friends with another cashier called Joanna. She was pretty
in a doll like sort of way and liked to spend her
lunch times walking around the clothing shops.
We never managed to have lunch together though, because we
had to cover each other's breaks, but sometimes our shifts would
finish at the same time, if one of us was working an hour's
overtime.
Joanna was only working at the Kardomah until her papers
came through to join the Navy. She had applied six months
earlier, but she couldn't begin her training until she was
seventeen and a half. I was so envious
and toyed with the idea of applying to the Navy also, but Joanna
put a dampener on it when she told me I would
have to learn to swim. I was fearful of water and
had been ever since my swimming lessons in the icy baths near my
school.
When Harry was on the late shift at work and if Joanna's and
my finish time coincided, we would go to the pictures together
or make up a foursome with any fellows who asked us
out on date. One of the dates was with a couple of
handsome Swedish sailors who had called in for a coffee
on a cold and rainy day. Their ship was docked in
Liverpool while the cargo it was carrying got unloaded, then
something else was loaded on to be taken to Gothenburg. The
sailors spoke good English and we girls were totally smitten by
them.
That was when I decided that I was
having the time of my life! Why should I give all
this excitement up and settle for Harry? He didn't take me
dancing, never treated me to the pictures anymore, because he
was saving up to marry me and going to the pub' was all he could
afford.
Now he was trying to get a deposit together so
that he could move into a bedsit'. His mother had
been nagging him to give up going out with such a young
and innocent girl.
Innocent wasn't a word that would describe me
any more. If Harry had known about the dates I was
having behind his back, then he would have chucked me over there
and then!
He managed to find a bedsit' in a large
Victorian dwelling that had been converted into two self
contained units on the first floor, while the landlady lived
downstairs. He proudly invited me to come and see his little
love nest. It would do for now, but he was going to save even
harder so he could put a deposit on a house.
It was a Saturday afternoon when I
knocked on the door of Number 26, Glasgow Terrace.
A woman answered and announced she was Mrs. Johnson, the
owner of the flats.
“I've come to see Harry, I'm his girlfriend,” I said
confidently.
“I thought I'd made it clear to your young man that I
don't allow women in the bed sitting rooms.”
“Well, I'm only staying for a minute or so, he
wants to show me around, but then we'll probably be going out
for a mooch round town.”
“And who am I speaking to, I can't
let just anybody in?” she asked suspiciously.
“My name is Vivienne Dockerty and I live with
my parents near Heswall. Harry and I have been
friends for a long time now so it's not as if
you're just letting anyone in, is it?”
The woman stood aside to let me pass and pointed to the
steep stairs behind her.
“His room's up the stairs and first on the right.”
I ran up the stairs two at a time, thinking
what an old battle axe the landlady was.
“Viv', come in,” Harry said, delighted to see me. “I'm just
making a cup of tea on this Baby Belling so I'll
make you one as well, shall I? You'll notice that I've got the
place furnished though it's not much to look at I'm afraid.”
I looked around at the dingy furnishing in the rectangular
shaped room. The brown velvet curtains at the tall bay window,
the high yellowy ceiling with the paint flaking off, an old
green moquette sofa and a creaky looking table,
with a couple of plastic chairs painted in a
horrid lime green. The floor was bare, except for a
large Persian rug that had seen better days and at the
back of the room under a soot marked sash window
was a double bed, with a grubby bed
cover thrown over it.
That was where Harry was leading me to and asking me to sit.
“We'll leave the tea 'til later shall we and make ourselves
comfortable on here, then we'll get ourselves down to some
serious loving, because it's just been fumbling when we've been
alone at home.”
“But I've just met the formidable Mrs. Johnson and she said
she doesn't allow young women in her bedsits.”
“Oh well, she'll have to get used to it, I've paid the rent
until the end of next month. Come on, Vivienne, that's why
I moved out of my mother's house so you and I can
be together. Don't tell me I've wasted my time and you're going
all frigid on me.”
“It's not that, Harry, I'm not ready to do things with you
in a bed. We're not even engaged yet and I'm not
sure that I want to,” I ended
desperately.
“So you don't love me, is that it, Vivienne? I've gone to
all this trouble to get this place for us and now I find
you don't love me.”
“But Harry, I've just told you why.”
“Well if it's an engagement ring you're after we'll go the
jewellers this afternoon.”
So I meekly took my dress off and got under the
grubby covers of the distinctly smelly bed.
I sighed and closed my eyes as Harry took his shirt and
trousers off and got in beside me.
If I thought of something nice, whatever he was
planning to do to me would soon be over, so I thought
of sitting on Hilbre Island feeling the sun on my face.
Two weeks later a thunderous looking Father
stood waiting for me when I came in from work.
“Do you know a Mrs. Johnson?” he asked sternly.
“Er, a Mrs. Johnson, why Dad?”
“She's your boyfriend's landlady so you should know her.”
“Oh, that Mrs. Johnson. Why, do you know her as well, Dad?”
“I do now, she's been on the telephone telling me about what
you and lover boy have been up to in his bed. It seems she
warned him not to have young women in his flat, but he seems to
have gone against her rules.”
“Bloody old tittle tattle.”
“What did you just say?”
“Well, she must have rung up every Dockerty on the telephone
in Heswall just to get back at him.”
“Anyway, he's getting a month's notice. It's
her house and her rules and she wants him out.”
“And what's my punishment?”
“You, young lady, have been booked into a Clinic
in Birkenhead and if I find out you've lost your
virginity, I'm going to have you sectioned and put into a
Mental Home. You're promiscuous, Vivienne, so I
might decide to have you locked up until you're twenty
one.”
I sat down with a clump onto the settee and
looked at my Father disbelievingly. This was the 1960's, we
weren't living in the Dark Ages anymore.
“You can't do that!” I shouted when the import
of his words began to sink in. “I'm sixteen now, I'm working,
old enough to leave home if I wanted to.”
“That's true, Vivienne, though I can have you
made Ward of Court if you don't agree to go to the Clinic.”
“What does Mum think of all this?” I asked
looking for an ally. “Surely she's not willing to let you do
this and make a show of me.”
“Irene get in here where I can see you, I
know you're listening by the kitchen door,” my Father
said triumphantly.
My Mother came into the living room. She looked as if she'd
been crying and she wouldn't look me in the eye.
“Are you going to let him send me to the looney bin, Mother?
Are you in on this too?”
“Well, Vivienne, we think it's for your own good,” my Mother
said quietly. “You have been a bit naughty lately
and if your Father thinks his actions will be for the best in
the long run, well I'll go along with him.”
“And what if I say I won't go to
your rotten clinic?”
“You've no choice in the matter,” Father shouted. “If you're
not willing to go in the morning with you're mother I'm going to
telephone the Police and have that man you've been seeing hauled
up for interfering with an under age girl.”
“You don't have to do that,” I replied icily.
“I take it that you won't be allowing me to work at the Kardomah
either if you're intent in putting me in a Mental
Home. I'll go to my room now, but before I go let
me tell you this, Dad and Mum, I'll never forgive you for as
long as I live.” |
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