My Story

by Jo Malone

  Everything was going to plan – and then Dad received a phone call from school that forced me back into class. I suppose I had been lucky to get away with being an absentee for so long. Maureen said she’d check up on Mum in the mornings. That didn’t stop me worrying, though. I couldn’t concentrate in lessons. All I could do was wait until the bell sounded for the one-hour lunch break. School was a fifteen-minute run from door to door so I’d pelt it home, spend half an hour with Mum, and then sprint back to class, clock-watching again until 3.45 p.m. when lessons ended.

  I hadn’t enjoyed school before and I certainly didn’t enjoy it now. The fact that I can’t remember any of my teachers’ names tells its own story, even if the smells still linger: the leather of my school shoes; the polish we used to cover up scuff marks; the baking of cupcakes and chocolate cornflake cakes; and the burnt dust of the oil heaters in the chilly classrooms.

  Only one experience at the hands of a female teacher would stay with me.

  I was sitting at a desk, taking a test that must have meant something because everyone had their heads down. The only audible sound was the ticking of the wall clock and the odd chair leg scraping across the floor whenever a pupil shifted position. As so often happened, I looked at the paper and saw jumbled words, and I felt that familiar clammy sweat at the top of my back.

  I looked over to my left and noticed the girl ticking boxes on a series of multiple-choice questions, seemingly breezing through the answers. So, I leaned over and matched her ticks in the boxes – and that was when the teacher caught me.

  ‘JO MALONE!’ she boomed. ‘Stand on your chair this minute!’

  She loomed over me, interrupting the test. She had wicked-looking eyes and pinched features, and spoke in a haughty, clipped tone. I climbed on to the chair, looking down on the rows of faces that turned and looked up at me, sniggering at my humiliation. I felt one of my white knee-high socks slip halfway down my shin and, as the teacher was admonishing me, I kept trying to bend down and pull it up with one hand.

  ‘Stand up!’ she bellowed. I snapped to attention, ram-rod straight. ‘Jo Malone,’ she continued, with real anger, ‘if you cheat, you’ll never make anything of your life! Do you hear me?!’

  I nodded, feeling my cheeks glow crimson.

  ‘I said, “Do you hear me?!”’

  ‘Yes, Mrs [Whateveryournamewas].’

  A boy behind me kept whispering, ‘I can see up your skirt! I can see up your skirt!’, so I kept patting it down at the back, fearing his words were a gust of wind. The teacher left me standing there until the end of the hour, when she took my paper and put a red line right through it, confirming my fail. I couldn’t wait for the sound of the bell to get out of there, eager for the next class and the more comfortable waters of English. I didn’t drown when it came to that subject.

  I walked home convinced that I was stupid and that everyone knew it. But I kept that thought to myself. I tended to keep a lot of thoughts and emotions to myself, never really allowing what I call ‘the luxury of feeling’. If a sad thought popped into my head – and many did – then I’d go downstairs and find something to do: read a book; find a chore; bake a cake. I didn’t like how sadness took me down – it untangled me and brought on anxiety – so I learned to detach myself and place sad thoughts into mental boxes that I’d push away and refuse to open. Dad had always said that thinking about a headache can bring on a headache; it therefore made sense that thinking about sadness would bring on sadness. So I didn’t think about it.

  Mum’s gloom eventually lifted. She appeared downstairs one morning looking refreshed, as if her missing spirit had found its way back and turned all the lights back on. I can’t explain it now, and she couldn’t explain it then, but she felt like her normal self again. She gingerly stepped back into her old routine, taking a good week or two before returning to work full time. I told her how busy I had been and showed her the duplicate invoices, explaining who had ordered what and how impressed her clients had seemed.

  She smiled. ‘That’s good,’ she said. ‘Thank you, Jo.’

  I didn’t expect anything more than that. No gushing thanks. No huge recognition. I don’t think Mum wished to focus on how well I’d been doing because it underlined what she had been unable to do. Mum wouldn’t want to be reminded of this time. It became one of those periods we never talked about again. That’s how black and white things tended to be in our home. There was no inclination to go back and figure out the whys and wherefores. Don’t look back. Keep moving forward. When there’s a business to run, run it – that tends to be the best approach.

  EIGHT

  1979 brought the Winter of Discontent, when everyone but Mum and Dad seemed to go on strike in Britain. As mountains of uncollected rubbish bags built up in streets and parks, and as schools closed and hospitals were reduced to emergency operations only, Margaret Thatcher was voted in as Britain’s first lady prime minister, vowing to restore order. But she could do nothing about me downing tools on my education. I didn’t sit any exams, not a single mock CSE or O-level. At the age of fifteen, I gave up on school, eager to live my life.

  I honestly didn’t see the point any more. It’s like I told Dad, kids get an education to learn how to earn money and cope on their own in ‘the big wide world’. Well, I had already been doing that, making face creams, tonics and a profit. In maths, all I could think about was calculating the precise quantities of product needed. In science, all I could think about was what ingredients I’d mix together. And in home economics, when we made dishes such as chicken casserole, I thought, ‘Great, we have dinner tonight.’ My head was everywhere but school and I didn’t see how staying on would accomplish anything. I didn’t sit a single exam because failure was guaranteed, so it made more sense for me to focus on the family business, which made me feel like I was worth something. My parents didn’t seem overly concerned by my grades and, as far as I can recall, even the truant officers had stopped noticing my erratic attendance, probably because the public sector had more important things to worry about. As a result, I was allowed to drift away without anyone blowing the whistle. Ironically, in the months after leaving school, I discovered there had been a good reason for my academic limitations.

  Mum had noticed my struggle with telling the time, figuring out left from right, and reading books where sentences bled into one another. I ended up seeing our GP and, after a few routine tests, he said, ‘I’m afraid that this is looking like dyslexia.’

  He said it so gravely, and the word sounded so serious, that I panicked. ‘What does that mean? Am I going to die?!’

  ‘It means your brain thinks differently to other people, and, no, you’re not going to die, Jo,’ he said, smiling. His explanation to Mum was fuller than that, but I can’t remember anything except the feeling of relief. Not because it wasn’t life-threatening but because the diagnosis meant I wasn’t stupid and wasn’t lazy. It made sense of why every class was challenging and every page of text appeared jumbled. In later years, I would come to understand that my brain actually had its own unique structure and organisation but, back in the 1970s, dyslexia wasn’t afforded much general awareness. Teachers and parents often mistook this cognitive impairment as a sign of a lapse in education. There were no neuroscientists referring to the hidden potential of dyslexics; no Alan Sugars or Norman Fosters to trump the stigmas; no books like The Dyslexic Advantage to explain how ‘individuals with dyslexia aren’t defective; they’re simply different’. None of that.

  Our doctor seemed encouraged that my form of dyslexia could process letters and read large amounts of text uninterrupted; words only started to look confusing when the text was technical or dense, or when I was tired or stressed. Mum told me not to worry. Plenty of other teenagers have the same thing, she said. But that wasn’t my experience, not at my school. And if it was such a common occurrence then why, in her telephone call with a neighbour that night, did her voice fall quieter at the mention of my name and ‘dyslexia’? I was embarra
ssed. Had it been up to me, no one would have known because it felt like a handicap of sorts. In the weeks and months afterwards, I’d scour the agony aunt pages of magazines and newspapers to see if there was any mention of the condition, but I found nothing.

  My dyslexia isn’t severe but it can be erratic. To this day, I have to think through certain situations ahead of time. In business meetings, if someone unexpectedly places a complex-looking graph in front of me, I can momentarily panic, unsure if I’ll be able to process it. The inner schoolchild rears her head and worries that she’ll be laughed at or mocked. Usually, someone on my team will have requested that any graphs or charts are presented in bright colours or illustrated with an easy-to-follow pattern.

  My dyslexia affects me in numerous ways but it is easily managed. Sometimes, it can take me a minute to distinguish left from right, or tell the right time. In public, when giving speeches, I cannot read from a prepared text so I’ll use index cards with ‘reminder words’. When reading documents, I’ll print out a large-font version and use colourful highlighter pens to pick out key phrases. At the bank, when they ask me to fill out a form, I ask if someone can help me. I do the same at airports when I need to use a self-check-in machine. I have learned to remap almost everything, and I’m unafraid to explain the reasons why. I stopped hiding my dyslexia when my business started to take off. It has not hindered me. It is no longer a cause of embarrassment. It is part of who I am and, I like to think, an ingredient in the success that I, and the teacher who made me stand on that chair in class, never thought possible.

  For my sixteenth birthday, in November 1979, I had already received the most amazing Ravel clutch bag from Mum, plus a Star of David silver necklace (due to a fleeting wish to convert to Judaism). I thought I’d done well with those gifts until Dad arrived home from work and, as I sat in front of the fire, he leaned down and handed me £100 in ten £10 notes – the equivalent to about £300 today. ‘You’re an amazing daughter, you know that?’ he said, kissing me on the top of my head. ‘Happy birthday.’

  Mum, standing in the kitchen doorway, literally gawped as she watched me count the money, laying out Monopoly-crisp notes on the carpet. I don’t know who was more surprised: her or me. Yet Dad, as nonchalant as ever when it came to cash earned or won, was already in the kitchen, making himself a cup of tea.

  That evening, I went to sleep wondering how I was going to spend it. Then an idea came to me after reading a copy of Drapers’ Record, a directory for the rag trade. ‘What if I went out, bought some t-shirts, penned some designs, and sold them?’ A warehouse-type place in London, opposite Olympia, sold blank t-shirts of different colours and sizes, and you could choose from a collection of transfer designs, so I took the train the next morning, pulling my wheelie shopping trolley for my bulk purchase.

  For some reason, I also decided to smoke for the first and only time in my life. Maybe it had something to do with wanting to act like a grown-up before entering a grown-up’s world, but I bought myself a box of matches and a pack of ten More cigarettes at the station, took my seat on the train, popped one in my mouth, crossed my legs like a lady, and puffed away, without inhaling, thinking I was some glamour-puss. That notion soon faded when a wave of nausea swept through me after my second cig. If I didn’t turn green then I felt green, and I tossed away the rest of the packet. I also loathed the cloak of tobacco it left on me. Two cigarettes would be the sum total of my childhood experimentation with any substance, including alcohol. I never did drugs and never got drunk, because I hated the prospect of not being in control.

  Within thirty minutes of arriving at the warehouse, I had spent most of my birthday money on £1-a-piece, white, black and red t-shirts. I chose four or five different transfers but the only one I can remember is a vivid Union Jack. Once home, I spread out my haul, covering every inch of floor space, and signed my name on each one – ‘Jo Malone’.

  I spread the word and, over different evenings, most of the kids in my street came round to buy a t-shirt, priced at £2.50 each. I also went house to house in the surrounding neighbourhoods, and even sold a few in Bournemouth when Mum took Tracey and me to see her old friend Irene. I think my initial outlay was about £80 and I made a handsome profit of £120. I bought two fancy grey skirts with pleats down the side and saved the rest. I didn’t reinvest in new stock because that didn’t interest me. I think I had been testing myself to see if I could make money on my own, without Dad at my side, without Mum’s product. I was proving a point to no one but myself, and I lost interest as soon as that motivation had been satisfied. Mum asked what I was going to do for the rest of the summer, but I hadn’t really thought about it, so she suggested I find a junior’s job somewhere.

  ‘I’d love to, but where?’ I asked.

  ‘I know just the place,’ she said.

  I could smell the giant warehouse of Fields & Co., in Ruislip, west London, before it even came into view. This was the headquarters of Fields, where they formulated and compounded fragrances. As I approached the building on foot, I could smell the exquisite fusion of extreme jasmine, rose, and lavender from one hundred metres away.

  Mum had lined up one month’s work for me, and I would love every minute of the experience, understanding more about the methods and science behind handcrafted fragrances. I was basically the runner, carrying out errands, cleaning up, and helping to fill anywhere between 250 and 500 miniature bottles. I viewed it as an extension of the methodical work I’d carried out at home, and that’s probably why my ready knowledge impressed Rose, a red-haired, pencil-thin perfumer whose wrinkly hands and kind manner first demonstrated how they made the compounds.

  When I string together all my experiences – from Madame Lubatti in the salon and Mum and Dad in the kitchen, to my brief stint at Fields & Co. – I see that I must have breathed in so much know-how as well as all the wonderful scents, an unconscious bank of information that would come to the fore in later life.

  At the end of my month’s work, I was keen to move on and land proper, paid employment – and that was when another lovely gentleman who knew Mum extended a helping hand, inviting me to work in one of his shops in Belgravia.

  Justin de Blank, an architect turned entrepreneur, ran an eponymous, high-end grocery store at No.42 Elizabeth Street, a shop regarded as a mini-Harrods of its time, drawing in gourmet food lovers from all over London. He stocked some of Mum’s face creams and I had previously been despatched on the train as an occasional delivery girl, so we had met in passing before.

  He was the most unassuming, humble of men, even though ‘JUSTIN DE BLANK PROVISIONS LTD’, as written on the shop’s yellow awning, was constantly featured in different periodicals, from Country Life to New York magazine. Food critic Fay Maschler described his operation as ‘a gleaming good deed in a then-very-naughty gastronomic world’, and yet no one seemed more grounded than the shopkeeper himself. His name was synonymous with quality, which was why he attracted the custom of royalty, aristocracy, and film stars, such as James Stewart and Ingrid Bergman.

  The first job he gave me wasn’t actually at the delicatessen; instead, I became a junior at his equally busy flower shop, a few doors further down on the corner of Ebury Street and Elizabeth Street. For £19 a week, I swept the floors, cleaned the toilets and generally assisted the staff, and it felt so liberating to be out of school, working in the capital, earning my own wage.

  In the same way that I had found the markets mesmerising with Dad, I loved the buzz of being on the shop floor, and I can still conjure the subtle scent of the tuberose, lilies, freesia, roses, together with crushed green stems on the floor and the smell of twine and brown paper. It’s hard not to feel happy in such an environment when, in the main, customers are buying bouquets for birthdays, anniversaries, marriage proposals, weddings, celebrations, retirements, and Valentine’s Day. Florist’s shops are feel-good factories, filled with wonderful aromas and contagious smiles.

  Sometimes, I’d join a member of staff at the flowe
r market in Covent Garden. What a treat that was, entering that damp-as-a-cave atmosphere to be met with a fragrant air of summer, the electrifying colours of every conceivable fresh flower, emitting different layers of scents, from the soft to the potent. Even as a teenager who often felt sleepy and not too talkative in a morning, that assault on the senses was a more effective wake-up call than a splash of cold water or a cup of coffee.

  Back at the shop, I’d fill different-sized buckets with the assortment of flowers for the window display. On the pavement outside, I’d put out the trays of geraniums and begonias, and then line up the jasmine plants either side of the doorway. I liked to create a mini-walkway of jasmine so that each time I brushed past, it would leave its scent on my skirt. I loved that smell – jasmine – reminders of Mum and Elizabeth Street.

  I also experienced a mad crush on an unbelievably good-looking, twenty-something French man who was recruited for two weeks to help me sort and pack different sachets of seeds for a mail-order deal with the National Trust. He smoked the French brand of Gitanes and there was something dreamy about the way he trapped each cigarette under his top lip. When he caught me distractedly gawping at him, he winked – a sure sign, I thought, that my feelings were reciprocated. As we sat in the basement eating lunch one day and he started telling me how much he enjoyed working with me, I performed an awkward lunge and planted a kiss on his lips, trying to wrap my arms around his neck. He pulled away, looked horrified, and ran upstairs. I suppose that was the price for being a hopeless romantic who was desperate to fall in love, and be loved. Oh, the humiliation. His brief stint ended soon afterwards, but rejection isn’t easy as a teenager, so I was a little sore in the days and weeks that followed.