Misadventures (4 page)

E
arly in December Carol asked me, ‘What day is Christmas Day?' I replied, ‘I don't know.' The following morning she told me, ‘Christmas Day is on the 25th of December.' I replied, ‘I know that, but I thought you meant what day of the week.' She didn't believe me.

Carol and I shared our office with a girl called Jean. The three of us would go dancing on a Saturday night. Jean and I paid Carol's expenses because she told us, ‘I can't afford to go out.' It was some weeks before she told Jean, ‘I'm saving up really hard because I'd like a car, my own flat and some nice clothes.' Neither Jean nor I had any money in the bank so we stopped providing Carol with free entertainment.

Carol very kindly lived with me at my parents' house whilst they were on holiday. After an evening out we returned to my home and found we had no milk. She said, ‘I'll go to the machine in the main road and get a pint.' Half an hour passed and I began to wonder if she'd had an accident. Eventually there was a knock on the street door. I opened it to see Carol holding the milk and a blond young man standing beside her. She told me his name was Mick and that they'd just met. They went out together for several weeks.

Carol told me one of her father's funny stories. She said, ‘During the war my father was in the army and his unit was based in England. They had a fierce battle with the Germans flying overhead dropping bombs on them. One of our fellers took fright and jumped into a truck and drove away. My father said it was funny because the feller had jumped into the ammunition truck and hadn't realised it.'

Carol decided to learn to drive a car. On the day of her test she left the office early. The following morning I asked her, ‘How did you get on yesterday?' She replied, ‘I had the most terrible examiner and he failed me. As far as I'm concerned I should have passed. I answered all his questions correctly and I didn't do anything wrong. I was just unlucky to have a test with a creep like him.'

A few weeks later Carol invited me to the home she shared with her parents, brother and sister. I discussed her driving test with her brother and I commented, ‘It was just hard luck she got a lousy examiner.' He laughed and said, ‘The real reason why she failed was because she had a crash half way up Tottenham High Road. She was told to take the next left but she was in the overtaking lane and the car beside her wanted to go straight ahead. She should have let him go first but she didn't. She crashed straight into him and made a dirty great hole in the door beside the examiner. Her instructor was livid when he saw the state of the car.'

Carol married at the age of nineteen and her son, Larry, was born in the first year of the marriage. He was three months old when Carol told me, ‘I thought I'd give Larry a bath in the baby bath. I put it on the kitchen table and I dipped him in it, then I covered him with soap. My hands were soapy too. I picked him up to give him a rinse and he slipped straight through my fingers and went crash on the floor!'

Each Christmas I would buy Carol some type of toiletry set. She told me her mother would say, ‘Well, you know what you're going to get off Sylvie this year – another bar of soap.'

M
ick and I were sitting approximately ten rows from the ringside. The wrestling was first class.

The third bout of the evening was between two heavyweights who were fairly evenly matched. It was a close fight until one wrestler hurled the other into the air. All fourteen stone of him flew across the ring, with legs wide open, until he crashed down on to the top rope, landing on his scrotum. At that very moment his eyes met mine. I was standing up with the rest of the crowd, clapping my hands, cheering and smiling, completely delighted at his misfortune.
He made no sound as he fell off the rope onto the canvas clutching his testicles. His pain must have been tremendous but still he was silent. Eventually two Seconds carried him to the floor. They walked down the aisle to the dressing rooms backstage, each man standing either side of the wrestler, holding an arm, while he walked like a Cossack dancer, unable to stand, without making the slightest murmur.

U
rsula was dark-haired and very attractive. She had come to London from Liverpool with her fiancé Eric as his job as an engineer required him to work there for six months. They were living together in a furnished flat in Streatham. Ursula told me this was against her parents' wishes.

We were both newcomers to the company. Ursula arrived two weeks after I had been employed. We hit it off from the start and as our jobs did not require much concentration we spent most of the day in conversation.

Every evening we would leave the office together, walking to Baker Street tube station,
and would say ‘goodnight' in the entrance, Ursula would take the right tunnel down to the trains and I would take the left. Our nightly ritual continued for some three months until one Thursday evening. I had boarded my train and was standing by the doors as they were closing, idly watching the crowds filling the platform. To my amazement I saw Ursula walking through the passageway. She saw me too. We burst into laughter as we realised we both wanted the same train. The doors closed and I jokingly waved to her as we left the station. It was several minutes before I stopped laughing, much to the puzzlement of the other passengers.

T
he beautiful waitress who served me was Italian and aged about twenty-two. She had long dark hair, huge brown eyes, a smooth olive skin and a very slim and attractive figure. She was engaged to marry another Italian and the marriage took place some months later. She soon became pregnant with her first child.

Every lunchtime I spent in the Italian restaurant I would see the beautiful waitress tucking into plates of pasta or eating large dishes of peaches and cream. As well as her expanding pregnancy she began to get very fat and once her child was born she didn't diet to lose her excess weight. Her beauty was destroyed by layers of
fat around her cheeks and jaw, under her chin and all over her body. Gone was the beautiful face and slim attractive figure.

I continued eating in the Italian restaurant and the beautiful waitress became a fat Italian mamma.

G
loria and I shared an office and we would chat to each other as we worked. She told me, ‘At my last job the accommodation wasn't up to very much and we had single toilets in the passageways. One day one of the male clerks went to the loo. The door was unlocked so he opened it and saw one of the Directors sitting on the toilet with his underpants and trousers around his ankles. He said he was sorry and closed the door but he told half the office and the story spread like wildfire. It must have been very embarrassing for the Director but we all had a good laugh.'

T
he tube trains in the rush hours were packed solid with passengers travelling to and from their workplaces. I would rarely find a seat and no man would offer me his so I would usually spend my journey ‘strap hanging'. During these years men stealthily assaulting women in the crowded aisles was commonplace. If I was unfortunate enough to board a full train and had to stand in the area by the doors I could expect some man to misbehave himself, unnoticed by the people around me, as we swayed to the rythmn of the train.

I can remember two incidents that happened to me. On the first occasion it was winter. I was squashed against the doors with the man to my right staring at me. I avoided his gaze and concentrated on looking through the windows. As the train drew into my stop I looked down
to step over the gap between the doors and the platform and saw my admirer gently playing his fingers over my crotch. I realised he must have been doing this for some time because he smiled at me and followed as I left the train, giving me the impression that he thought I'd enjoyed his attentions and wanted more. I ignored him totally and lost myself amongst the crowds. I had felt nothing through my thick coat.

Another time I was ‘strap hanging' in the aisles and a man of Eastern appearance was thrusting himself against me, again without anyone else noticing. I lost my temper and elbowed him in the stomach as hard as I could. I looked round at him in time to see his face contort and he made a whooshing noise as my action forced him to breathe out. He did not trouble me further.

Travelling at night had its hazards.

At weekends my last overhead train left the main line station in the City at 12.50 a.m. I did not experience any problems from the other passengers as I travelled the twenty-minute journey to my home town but as I walked through the side streets there was always a man behind tracking me, presumably having fun, because no one ever caught up with me or spoke to me. If I walked faster so did he. If I slowed down he did too. This game of ‘cat and mouse' would continue until I reached the main road near to
my parents' house. Then I would run the short distance to them.

Travelling on the last bus from Ilford was again problem-free but walking the fifteen-minute journey from the depot was unpleasant. I can remember a scruffy man aged about forty-five following me. Once again, if I walked faster so did he, if I slowed down he did and if I looked in a shop window in the hope that he would pass me, he would stop and do the same until I moved on. This behaviour continued along the main road but as I walked through the dark back streets to my parents' home he began to catch up with me. I became very angry and silently thought, ‘Oh, so you think you've got me, do you! Well let's see what you are going to do!' I spun round to face my assailant and marched straight up to him. He dashed past me, turning right into one of the streets ahead of me. As he had worried me I thought it wise to walk the long way round where there was better lighting and continue along another main road. This road had a hill, a valley and another hill. I reached the top of the first hill and I could see my would-be attacker walking up the far hill. I realised he must have run half the way there. Yet again I reached home safely.

T
o my disappointment I found I had an embarrassing complaint that needed medical attention so I made an appointment to see my doctor.

I sat down in his chair and said, ‘I appear to have some growths immediately outside my backside and they itch.' He asked ‘Could you be more specific and describe them?' I replied, ‘They're very large bubbles of skin that look like pink grapes.' He replied, ‘You quite obviously have piles. Ill write out a prescription for some cream and I want you to squeeze it into the opening of your back passage.'

A few weeks went by uneventfully until my father found he had the same problem. On his return from the surgery I asked him, ‘What did the doctor say?' He replied, ‘He said I had piles
but he didn't ask me to describe them as he did with you. He said, “Drop your trousers, bend over and part your cheeks.” So I did.' He laughed and asked, ‘Supposing he'd said that to you? What would you have done?' I replied, ‘I'd have kept my lumps to myself and come back home immediately.'

I
found Jean Pierre to be very courteous and considerate. I would see him three evenings a week and each night he would take me somewhere expensive in London's West End.

On one of our dates he told me he had taken a girl in Switzerland to the cinema and she had fallen asleep half way through the film. He was so annoyed he didn't disturb her at the end of the picture but quietly vacated his seat, leaving her to wake up alone in an empty theatre.