More Than Just Coincidence

by Julie Wassmer

  At the front door we promised to keep in touch but although Lil was to live for another five years it didn’t happen. Perhaps we had been estranged for too long, and the connection was just too tenuous, with my father gone, for any of us to make the effort to maintain it. I never saw my grandmother again.

  More lost opportunities. I consoled myself with the thought that, while it was too late for Lil Wassmer to be reconciled with her lost child, I still had a future ahead of me, and in that future rested the chance that I might one day be reunited with mine.

  Having had my fingers burned by my relationship with David, I was keen to steer well clear of romantic entanglements for a while. I had a circle of good friends in Wimbledon, established over the years I’d spent there since first meeting David, and, though my flat was tiny, I now had my own space. I also had a surrogate family. My close friend Maria was the mother of three small daughters, Debbie, Lizzie and Kate. After Kate’s arrival in 1972 they had all been christened in one ceremony, in which I had stood godmother to the three of them.

  Seeing the girls almost daily, I witnessed the milestones and landmarks of their young lives, listening to Debbie reading aloud from a favourite storybook, sharing the pleasure of Kate’s first steps and words. Lizzie, just four months younger than my own daughter, was in particular a constant reminder of how Sarah Louise would be growing and developing. Maria was the most beautiful and most generous woman I would ever meet. She was half Chinese and half Portuguese, an orphan from Macao brought to England as a baby to live with foster parents. She’d had a tough childhood and still needed a proper family. I was a part of it. When she went on to have two more children, Joe and Suzie, I became their godmother, too.

  Yet in many ways my function in my goddaughters’ world in the mid-1970s was more older sibling than surrogate mum. In an echo of my years as the class clown, I assumed the role of mad auntie and played it to the hilt. I resisted behaving too maternally with all children. I had put the adoption behind me now and had moved on in perhaps every way but one: with the passing years, I was becoming increasingly certain that I could not contemplate the idea of having more children myself.

  In the Children Act of 1975 and the new Adoption Act of 1976, adopted people over the age of eighteen were given the right to apply for their original birth certificate. Under the changes to the Adoption Act, they were also able to go to the courts for information about the agency and local authority involved in their adoption. While I nurtured the hope that once she reached eighteen Sarah Louise would come looking for me, I could not bear the thought that she might knock on my door one day to discover me with other children. How would I find the words to explain how one child could be kept and another abandoned?

  A more recently acquired friend was Mark, a guitarist who had just dropped out of an architecture course at Kingston Poly. Mark was six-foot-four and so goodlooking that my friend Theresa dubbed him Goldenballs on first sight, decades before Posh told the world it was her nickname for Becks. Mark was handsome all right, but he was a best buddy, not a boyfriend. He was charming, witty and talented—and married to his music. He played reggae and funk almost every night in a popular London band called the Strutters. He was on the dole, I was scraping by on my grant and meagre barmaid’s wages so money was tight, but we had great fun together, and plenty of adventures, driving around the city from one music venue to another in a classic Volkswagen convertible that needed pushing almost everywhere we went.

  Mark was living in an overcrowded college flat share at the end of my street. As the weeks went by, he began to spend more time at my place than in his own. Late at night, I’d hear the familiar rumble of his car engine arriving outside after band rehearsals. It wasn’t long before he had taken up residence, slowly but steadily having transferred his few possessions from the flat down the road to mine. I wasn’t complaining. I loved his company. Besides, I was with my mother at weekends and during the week I spent most of my free time with Mark anyway. It would be a temporary arrangement, he said. He ended up staying for nine years.

  Studying for my degree, doing my bar job, going around with Mark’s band and sharing my life with my mother was something of a juggling act, and from time to time I dropped the balls. One day my college tutor tackled me for not working hard enough and I was forced to come clean. I explained that I was having trouble keeping up as I needed to supplement my grant with evening shifts in a bar in order to meet my mortgage payments. When my tutor suggested I tried switching to weekend shifts I had to tell her I went home then to be with my widowed mother. I had no choice but to knuckle down, and in the end I got there, gaining my degree in the summer of 1977.

  On graduation day, I saw my mum sitting proudly among the other parents. I also saw the space beside her where my father should have been. Posing for the customary photograph in mortar board and gown, clutching a scroll in my left hand, I smiled for the camera. But inside I felt torn. I wondered why I hadn’t done this while my father was alive to see it. Why was it always so important to me to go my own way? I didn’t have an answer. All I had was the sense that I was constantly searching for the right path, for a road that might take me to the life I felt was out there somewhere. The life I should be leading. Aimless as it was, I couldn’t deviate from that quest.

  Chapter Nine

  Into the Westy

  I had my degree, but I didn’t have a clue what to do with it, or what to do next. I found myself writing short stories, some of which were published in the free magazines aimed at young women that were handed out at tube stations in those days, consisting mainly of ads for secretarial jobs and flat shares. But they were never going to pay the mortgage, and I didn’t have enough success to give me the confidence to believe I could make a living out of writing. Mark was moving on with his music, now fronting a new-wave band called the Sinceros, but earning very little from it. So we were struggling and constantly on the look-out for schemes that would give us the chance to make what we called ‘easy money’, though it was rarely easy and sometimes not even money.

  One evening I was cooking while Mark was telling me some news about a mutual friend, Paul, who worked for a record company that re-released old blues and soul records. Apparently, Paul was organising a moraleboosting convention for his sales team and had the idea that some form of musical interlude, complete with floor show, might grab the reps’ attention and spur them on to achieve greater targets. He had decided that Nina Simone’s ‘I Put a Spell on You’ fitted the bill perfectly. He’d told Mark that he now needed someone to play the part of a red devil, who would enter the conference room in a cloud of swirling smoke to perform a spellbinding dance and then pin a promotional badge on the lapel of each sales rep. Unfortunately, Paul’s budget didn’t run to the cost of hiring a professional entertainer.

  I stirred my casserole, only half-listening to this story, which had nothing much to do with me. Mark leaned closer. Wait till I heard exactly how much Paul’s budget was. A hundred pounds. Didn’t I think that might go a very long way in the hands of two broke young people with the initials M and J?

  I looked at Mark and saw his smile. The penny dropped. Me? A red devil? It was an absurd, if not outrageous, proposition. I thought about it a little more. Maybe if Paul could stretch to £150, we’d have a deal.

  A few days later Paul called me to confirm a few details. We would get half our fee up front. The day before my performance, the company’s head of sales promotions was to accompany me to a theatrical hire store, where he would take care of the cost of an impressive costume. Mark would be responsible for transport, as well as the hire and operation of a smoke machine. I duly met up with Rob, a young northerner sporting shoulder-length hair and a mouthful of chewing gum, outside a famous costume-hire store in North London. As he looked me up and down it was clear he wasn’t totally convinced of my suitability for this inspirational piece of theatre, but, there again, the right outfit might help.

  Rob explained to the store assistant what we requi
red and a selection was duly made. I took an outfit into a changing cubicle while Rob waited for me outside. As I pulled the costume out of its protective bag my heart began to sink. It wasn’t even red, more a faded orange—and bri-nylon to boot. I got into it to discover it was far too large and bagged unflatteringly around the bottom and crotch. I tried on the pièce de résistance, the accompanying headpiece, and checked the result in the cubicle mirror. Two knitted horns on my skull were facing east and west.

  When I came out of the cubicle, Rob stopped chewing his gum and his jaw dropped open. ‘No way,’ he protested to the store assistant. ‘You’re going to have to do better than that. We’re supposed to be a top-class record company!’

  It took a while to find another outfit that was any more suitable but we were running out of time and eventually we opted for the best of a bad bunch. Rob paid the deposit and fee and we parted company. Back at my flat, I put on my costume again and stood in front of a mirror trying out various demonic poses. At that moment, Mark arrived home, carrying something that resembled a portable heater. This, I learned, was the smoke machine. He studied me from all angles. Ever the perfectionist, he suggested I might try to lose half a stone overnight.

  The next morning we set off in the Volkswagen. It was a clear, sunny day so we took down the roof and made our way to a depressingly soulless motel on the M1. There we discovered that Paul had coerced a colleague into lending his two small children for the occasion, a boy and a girl aged between about five and seven. They had been painted green and were dressed as imps. Paul, a cool character at the best of times, was uncharacteristically animated.

  ‘Right. So you’ll burst in with the kids either side of you, sort of sheltering under your cape as you do the dance. Got it?’

  ‘Got it.’

  In a dressing room, I changed into my outfit, loading on plenty of thick make-up to make sure I would never be recognised by any member of my audience should our paths cross again. Then I went downstairs with my imps.

  I found Mark in the hallway, outside the door to the conference room. He was setting up the smoke machine.

  ‘Remind me again why we’re doing this?’ I was losing confidence with each second that passed.

  ‘Easy money,’ Mark replied. He offered me an encouraging smile. ‘Cheer up. It’ll all be over in a few minutes. Just wait for the music, then I’ll switch on the machine and you go in and do your bit. Those reps probably won’t even see you as the room’ll be full of smoke.’

  I managed to raise a smile now. He was right. It was easy money.

  The first few bars of ‘I Put a Spell on You’ struck up on the other side of the door. Everyone sprang into action. I gathered the imps under my cape and Mark pressed the button on his machine. In a matter of seconds we were all engulfed by smoke. ‘Go!’ said Mark. I leaned forward, searching blindly for the door handle. Having found it, I turned and pulled it but the door wouldn’t open. I couldn’t see a thing. Nor could anyone else. Then a loud fire alarm began to sound. The imps screamed in fright and took off back down the hallway.

  ‘Come back!’ I yelled, but they were long gone. Nina Simone was still singing on the other side of the door.

  ‘Go on!’ urged Mark.

  I struggled with the door handle again.

  ‘It won’t open!’ I hissed, still trying to pull it.

  Mark pushed instead and the door finally flew open in front of me. As I entered the room, a single puff of smoke followed me before being extinguished as the fire door swung shut on heavy hinges. After a few fumbled attempts to prop it open, Mark gave up and it closed behind me.

  I was standing in a huge convention room. On a stage, Paul sat with Rob and some other record company officials. I offered him a limp smile but he showed no spark of recognition, giving only a slight jerk of his head as if to remind me what I was being paid for. As Nina continued to sing, I threw myself around the room, cavorting among several rows of sales reps. Some looked bemused, others embarrassed as I pinned, with shaking fingers, small badges to their lapels. As the record finally stopped playing, my imps showed up at last and stood uncertainly on either side of me. I took a bow, but Paul’s head was in his hands.

  Rather than return to the dressing room, Mark decided it might be better if we just left the building. I wasn’t going to argue. Still wearing my costume, I hurried through the hotel towards the car park, leaving Mark calling after me that he’d catch me up once he had talked to Paul and Rob. Aeons passed before he appeared. In the meantime numerous hotel guests came over to point and gawp at the red devil seated in the passenger seat of an ancient VW convertible. When Mark finally arrived, he quickly turned the key in the ignition and we sped off, racing as quickly as possible back down the motorway.

  ‘What took you so long?’ I groaned.

  ‘I wanted to get the rest of the money.’

  ‘Where is it?’

  Mark ran his hand through his hair, something he always did when he was anxious. There was a slight grimace of unease on his face.

  ‘Rob forgot his chequebook,’ he said. ‘But he swears he’ll post it to us on Monday.’

  A lorry honked loudly as it passed us. It sounded very much like a burst of laughter, which was appropriate, considering that the promised cheque never did arrive. Instead, after paying for the hire of a smoke machine and petrol—we were each about a tenner up. Easy money indeed.

  Not surprisingly, I was eventually forced to go on the dole. After a few months went by with no sign of me getting a proper job I was offered ‘suitable employment’. It was an offer I couldn’t refuse as it came accompanied by a warning that turning it down could result in my benefit being stopped. I was obliged to become the roundest peg in the squarest of holes: a clerical officer at my local Social Security office.

  At my new workplace, mired in benefit rates, assessments and guidelines, I found I had less in common with my fellow employees than I did with the claimants on the other side of the counter. It appeared to me that most of the staff felt the power they wielded over the finances of others gave them a licence to treat hard-up claimants with contempt, and in some cases you’d have thought the money was coming out of their own pockets. I seemed to be the only one who actually preferred sitting on reception, dealing with people, rather than fiddling with forms and calculations back in the office.

  The option of flexitime, which enabled me to start work late at 10am and leave early at 3pm, was my salvation—but only until the last week of the month, when I would have to make up my full quota of hours. That week was like a prison sentence. If I had committed a crime, I reflected ruefully after my escape, I might have served less time than the two years I ended up spending at the Social Security office.

  The staff were expected to participate in various extra-curricular activities, presumably designed to motivate us, bond us and perhaps to relieve the tedium of our jobs. This depressing period was enlivened for me only by the area office drama tournament, in which we won a trophy—the Silver Rose Bowl—for our entry, a play called The Waiting Room in which I took the role of a crazy old lady who sat there the entire time knitting a large, unrecognisable item of clothing. Years later I was to use the whole unhappy experience of working at the Social Security office in a play of my own, One of Us, about an out-of-work actor pressganged into the civil service to help win his boss a coveted drama prize.

  In the summer of 1979 I was finally sprung from jail by a request to tender my resignation for the cardinal sin of absconding from the field on our annual sports day, an event for which there had been a tacit three-line whip.

  Once liberated, I quickly signed up for a secretarial course to increase my job options and avoid having to become a ‘claimant’ all over again. I soon learned to type with ten fingers instead of my usual two, and began to master Pitman’s shorthand, though not before dismaying my teacher with some atrocious errors in translation. I managed to read ‘balance sheet’ as ‘bullshit’, thanked a fictional company for ‘apricots’ rath
er than ‘products’ and described a man ‘peering behind a hedge’ as ‘peeing’. Despite my shortcomings, I qualified and managed to get a secretarial job working in a BBC Radio outpost called Transcription Services in Shepherd’s Bush.

  The main role of this department was to update and edit radio programmes for transmission overseas, taking out contemporary references that were too English to mean anything to people in, say African countries, though some original programmes were made, too, including a radio version of Top of the Pops. I was secretary to a group of producers in the fields of light entertainment, classical music and drama, all areas which interested me.

  It wasn’t long before one of my bosses approached me to ask if I would do him a favour: though it wasn’t part of my job, he wondered if I could possibly write a publicity blurb for The Goon Show, an old series, slightly rejigged, that was being sent round the world. I was hardly going to complain about spending an afternoon listening to a comedy programme I’d enjoyed with my parents as a young kid. In no time I was doing most of my boss’s comedy publicity—actually being paid to chuckle away in an empty office to the likes of Tony Hancock. The wages weren’t great but I enjoyed what I was doing and the department was lively. It also had a subsidised bar, which may have been a factor in my remaining there for nearly four and a half years.

  For Mark, success was proving elusive. In spite of securing a record deal with CBS, completing a US tour and releasing three well-received albums, the Sinceros still hadn’t had a hit. Although he was still being encouraged by the CBS executives to stick with it, he was beginning to consider throwing in the towel. On one occasion, the head of A&R tipped him off that a rhythm guitarist was being sought by a band he was certain had huge potential. They were due to play at Nelson’s, a music club on the premises of Wimbledon Football Club. It was suggested he should go along and check them out.