White Boots & Miniskirts (6 page)

I do tell Jeff exactly what has happened. The look on his face – sheer relief he hasn’t even been required to get remotely involved – says it all. He’s had a blindingly lucky escape. Had I been a different sort of girl, one who wants a baby, married or not, he’d have been in a right pickle. (The more I know Jeff, the more the details of his complicated private life puzzle yet elude me: I do not yet know he already has one illegitimate child. That he never sees. So he must have been exceptionally thankful that it hadn’t happened again.) He’s been irresponsible, but so have I, juggling two boyfriends in this way. My view is: I can’t really blame him for all this. He represents fun, laughter – and hot sex. But the thing is, I’ve known Bryan the Bastard over quite a long period of time. My attachment to him is born of familiarity. He wasn’t the first lover, technically speaking. But he was the first man I’d had sex with on a regular basis. Emotionally, there was bound to be some sort of attachment.

After a few months, I’m more or less back to my normal self. And I start to understand how different Jeff is from my previous lover, simply because he’s so much more skilled in bed. I’m an all too willing pupil, though he’s very consistent when it comes to using condoms. Bryan wasn’t even in the same league as Jeff, who knows by a combination of strong instinct and experience
what turns a woman on. Foreplay, beyond the initial lunge for my bra strap and a swift nibble, was a waste of time to Bryan (not that he’s alone in this, as I will discover in time). And he always needed booze or marijuana before sex.

His ad agency world of top-level contacts did give him access to the exclusive, inner circle of swinging London. He hung out in trendy places where the Beatles went, such as the Ad Lib Club in Leicester Square (though he never took me). Or frequented tiny exclusive clubs like the Scotch of St James or The Bag (The Bag O’Nails in Kingly Street, where, legend has it, Linda first hooked Beatle Paul). Once, in the very early days of our affair, Bryan escorted me to a party in an enormous, totally intimidating house in its own grounds in grandest Surrey, where Charlie Watts of the Stones was a revered if somewhat silent guest. At the time, I was both wildly impressed and totally overawed at Bryan’s connections. But that one-off party made it very clear to me: Bryan kept his worlds in totally separate compartments.

Jeff – much better-looking, 6ft 2ins tall, blond hair, hard muscled body, oozing sexual charisma – is a far less sophisticated man, quite working class. Think Michael Caine as the chauffeur lothario in
Alfie
– the movie of 1966 that daringly highlighted the emerging sexual freedoms of the era and the whole abortion dilemma in a scary way never seen on screen before – and you’d be fairly close to Jeff’s style. He’s more a quick half in the
pub, 1/6d pie and chips man, suits from Austin Reed (purchased on an HP account),
£
5 a week, not much of a drinker, more of an action man, in his mind at least. He sees himself clearly in bold letters ‘A Man Born to Shag as Many Women as Possible’.

At this point I haven’t quite worked it all out, though soon I will see everything more clearly. Eventually, the whole post-abortion emotional mess in my head starts to recede. With hindsight, I was incredibly resilient. Of course, I didn’t manage to brush it all off completely. I wasn’t that insensitive nor was I in any doubt that I’d deployed deceit of a questionable order. So any guilt I felt was around that, not around ending the pregnancy. But you do tend to bounce back quite quickly at that stage of life, especially if your personal default setting is not to take on responsibility – of any kind.

Funnily enough, Jeff always got slightly ratty at the merest mention of Bryan. I worked out that this had nothing to do with any real jealousy around me, you understand. More a bit of a class thing. Bryan had been privately educated, easing him into a really good job in ad-land. Jeff’s status, though he kidded himself otherwise, was more of Cockney chancer. Car ownership constantly troubled Jeff too, a typically male perspective. Bryan whizzed around swingin’ London either in the Mini, a present from his doting dad, or a newly acquired adman’s sports car, a gleaming red TR4. Compare that to Jeff’s much-prized company car, the Rover, which he banged
on about ad nauseum yet could never afford himself. Yet which one could really lay claim to having the biggest and best appendage?

‘It’s not the size of your knob, it’s what you do with it,’ was one of Bryan’s favourite quips. Perhaps this was a reassuring statement for a man who knew damn well he wasn’t generously endowed. But as I was starting to realise as I found out much more about the ‘what you do with it’ bit, the art of self-deception knows no bounds whatsoever when it comes to the fragile male ego.

CHAPTER THREE

RANDY SANDY AND THE CHICKENS

A
lone envelope lies on the mat. Still half-awake, I stumble bleary-eyed down the stairs from my bedroom the minute I hear the rat-tat of the letterbox. It’s Saturday and I’ve been anticipating this all week: the missive that will redirect the course of my life. For ever. Yes, it’s addressed to me. As I pick it up, even before I open it, I can see by the bold markings on the thick white envelope that this is it: the Big Plan is about to bear fruit. Until this moment, it has remained just an idea – someone else’s idea, at that.

Somewhat recklessly, I’ve agreed to go along with it. Why not? I’m free, white and 21 (an American saying never heard now, for obvious reasons, but one often used then). On the surface, at least, the plan is immensely appealing, adventurous, more exciting than anything I’ve
ever come up with. Yet in my usual slapdash fashion, I have not really thought it all through, gone into it in depth or given it sensible, serious consideration. Leaving me totally unprepared for what it all really means now that I’ve reached the final hurdle…

‘It’s a bloody daft idea, Jacky,’ Jeff had sneered that early spring evening a few months before when I’d outlined The Plan to him as we sat drinking outside the Bull and Bush, a handy local mainly because you could sit outside (al fresco eating and drinking in London was very much a novelty then, at a time when people could smoke themselves silly indoors in pubs and restaurants with no complaints at all about the accompanying unhealthy haze). ‘You don’t wanna go and do that, gorgeous – what about me?’ he smiles, lighting up his usual Churchmans cigarella (five shillings and tuppence for a pack of 20) to accompany his occasional bottle of Double Diamond (‘works wonders,’ said the advert, though what kind of wonders remained vague; for most men it was surely the hope of a swift leg-over after closing time). ‘Are you saying you can really live without me?’

‘Yeah, I can live without you. Don’t kid yourself,’ I tell him tartly. I’m not that surprised he’s shown no enthusiasm for The Plan. But his attitude isn’t exactly helpful. Nor does it help when he drops me off at my flat that night with a lingering kiss that leaves me weak-kneed, wet-knickered and hungry for the following weekend’s promise: conjugal bliss in his friend’s tiny
cottage in Kent. He’s blinding me with sex, I sigh to myself as I totter on my perilous Dolcis stilettos down the dark alleyway to my front door: he thinks I’m not really going to go through with it.

It’s funny, isn’t it? Here is Jeff, a regular if somewhat erratic fixture in my world, questioning my idea to really get out there and do something different with my life – even while there remain a number of big unanswered questions hanging over our relationship, the main one being is he really faithful, never mind, where does he really live?

We’re no longer working in the same sales office where we’d met. As a consequence, we see less of each other. Yes, he takes me on weekend jaunts: onto a friend’s yacht (I loathe every minute of it, cold, wet and at one point quite scary when we have to abandon ship and climb up a perilously narrow ladder on a harbour wall to safety). Or to motor race meetings in various parts of the country. Sometimes, on his sales trips, we drive north on the brand new M1, the UK’s first motorway, linking south to north via the Midlands. This means we couple up as Mr and Mrs Jeff in seedy provincial hotels. There’s a frisson of the forbidden, the sleazy, about such trips and while my taste for luxury and comfort has yet to be fine-tuned, I find this all exciting, a turn-on, if I’m completely honest.

He’s an ongoing stimulus, is Jeff. I have the serious hots for him, no question. Yet somehow, whenever I express a
doubt about him or ask a pertinent question, he always manages to head me off with a sexy or romantic gesture. And it’s always exactly the right one to throw me off balance, shut me up. He’s pitch-perfect at seduction, flatters outrageously, woos me beautifully (which means I find myself believing what he’s saying – at the time). Jeff is constantly telling me how gorgeous I am, how he loves my legs, adores my figure, and so on. He comes from a tough background. As a girl and an only child I was over-protected by my indulgent parents, shielded from the worst of the mean streets of Hackney. Jeff was one of three kids in a tiny cottage with a tough father who worked erratically and a mother who worked in a laundry. Yet Jeff knows and understands the value of the spoken word, the seductively pitched voice when it comes to the lists of love. Even from a distance, he uses the phone seductively.

Nowadays women can make a good living from just sitting at home, getting paid to talk men into orgasmic heaven on the mobile while cleaning out the kitchen cupboard at the same time. Everybody wins. Yet in the ’60s, before sex evolved into a packaged commodity for all comers, it was the guys who understood the subtleties of the chase – like deploying a smoothly sensual voice down the phone line – that frequently had the edge when it came to success with many women. Remember that hot, steamy phone call from Michael Caine to Britt Ekland in the early 1970s movie
Get Carter
? It was one of the first times Brit-style phone sex was openly celebrated on screen. (‘Just doing my exercises, darling.’) That was definitely a Jeff scenario.

Let’s be clear. I am not lacking in romantic impulse at this point. I am thrilled to be wooed like this – it’s so exciting. But at the same time, I don’t believe myself to be so in love with Jeff that I envisage a rose-tinted future, us bonded together, welded fast in some sort of sticky permanence. It’s never like that. It’s very much an affair of the here and now. I love the excitement of it all. Yet I also know what kind of man he is around women because I’ve worked with him. I’d see it with my own eyes. Loverboy Jeff aims to flirt with or chat up many women because he sees something attractive or desirable in practically every woman that crosses his path – and he sees no reason to hide it. For him, it’s all a joyful game.

This behaviour, of course, is not exactly reassuring. It’s quite unnerving – it shakes my confidence. I give a good impression of a confident, streetwise girl, hiding my insecurities behind my short-skirted armour, a sarcastic tongue and a cynical demeanour. Yet I am no different to most of my gender emotionally. It rattles me to know he’s appreciative of so many women in this way. But he’s cleverly manipulative too, always tapping into to my main character weakness, my undisciplined laissez faire, easily persuading me to overcome my reservations about his outrageously flirtatious behaviour – and keep going along with him on the ride marked Destination: Pleasure.

And what pleasure it is. It’s the beginning of what evolves into an intense attraction to sex as a hedonistic, recreational pursuit for me. It’s all wonderfully unpredictable too. Sometimes it’s urgent, passionate, speedy. But there are times when it’s tantalisingly slow and sensual, depending on the location (sleazy hotel room versus the back of the Rover – my shared bedroom is a no-go most of the time). He flicks the switch, I react instantly. Away from him, I’m often swamped with sheer physical lust, wanting touch, smooth flesh on flesh so much it almost hurts. This is all totally new for me, an unknown country. As is the not inconsiderable discovery that Jeff can bring me to orgasm quite easily – something Bryan never achieved, probably because he was pretty much a one-speed lover. If you like, Bryan was my first course, a mere appetiser. Jeff was the complete menu. As many delicious, lip-smacking courses as a woman could stand.

Yet his life was a blank canvas. I don’t have a home phone number for him and if I do ring his office, he’s never there, according to the secretary who answers the phone. He claims it’s his own business now, him and another guy ‘selling insurance’. That’s all I know. It’s not a covert situation: he proudly shows me off to some of his friends sometimes – they’re all a lot older than him, mostly established businessmen in their forties – and it’s obvious too that in their eyes I’m a bit of a catch, a ’60s babe with knockers. But there’s no point in grilling any
of them for guidance: they too are in on the act. Jeff’s a very naughty boy, that’s the underlying theme of their joshing and semi-lascivious, yet outwardly respectful glances at me around the pub bar. So how could I catch him out?

As for my life outside Jeff, sharing a flat with other girls has proved to be a big culture shock for me. Liberation from my dad and the grotty Dalston milieu had been easily achieved. I’d responded to a few newspaper ads and found a suitable locale, over a parade of shops fronting the Finchley Road. But now I was faced with day-to-day living with three other young women. And their underwear cluttering the place, their big, red hair rollers, their daily grooming rituals – hair in the sink and pubes in the bath, talcum powder all over the bathroom floor – and, on occasion, their trickle of eager suitors, mainly local guys in their twenties, eager for the promise of girl action. Now I am supposed to muck in, give room for others. It’s called sharing – unknown terrain for a spoilt, solitary kid whose mum ran round her like a virtual slave. I have to fend for myself food-wise, wash my own clothes, maintain a semblance of tidiness in my quarters and so on. This, of course, is not so different from the way many youngsters are today when they first swap the comforts of the parental home for university and rented places. Except that today the landlord (or doting parents)
might provide a labour-saving microwave, washing machine, even a dishwasher.