During one breaktime, I was telling one of my friends that I had no intention of becoming a secretary, but rather saw the course as a stepping-stone to doing something more interesting, when I suddenly received a hard wallop to the back of my head. I turned around and was shocked to see the heavy typing manual in the hands of an angry-looking student.
‘How dare you presume that the rest of us are in the lucky position of having the option of doing something other than becoming secretaries?’ she hissed, before running from the room in tears. That encounter taught me a very humbling lesson.
During the holiday, on Christmas morning, I bent down under the kitchen sink to get the washing-up liquid and felt unexpectedly nauseous. While my family was joking around at the breakfast table, I managed to quietly throw up in the compost bucket. Did this mean what I feared it meant? ‘Don’t panic,’ I thought to myself, ‘you can deal with this’. Later that day, while singing ‘Away in a Manger’ in church, the full implication of the situation I was faced with began to sink in.
The house was full and the phone in the hall made privacy impossible – talking to Mags would have to wait. After the interminable festive period was over, she and I pored over a Predictor pregnancy test and watched as a blue line appeared. We called our friend Zoe, whom we knew had had a termination, but she couldn’t talk – again, the phone-in-the-hall problem. As soon as we returned to college, Zoe slipped me a piece of paper, on which she had written, ‘Wistons Clinic, Brighton.’
Over the coming days, I began to feel increasingly panicked. There was a distinct possibility that I was going to become overwhelmed by what I was facing. The main emotion I felt was humiliation: after all my posturing to my family about how grown-up and capable I was, to allow myself to get pregnant was idiotic. I wanted as few people as possible to know, and I didn’t want any fuss. I didn’t need counselling and I certainly didn’t want sympathy; I just wanted to get on with my life, and I knew what I had to do. I called Directory Enquiries from the college payphone, and then the clinic – I made an appointment and was told I would need to bring £68 in cash and an overnight bag.
I’d had a brief liaison with a racing driver acquaintance of Lindy’s. When I rang him to ask if he would pay for half the termination, he freaked out and told me he couldn’t raise the necessary £35. His conscience eventually got the better of him, but I realised that I was on my own with this one. I had no idea how on earth I was going to find the money, but then I remembered my childhood post office savings book, with its hundreds of tiny deposits.
Rather than going to stay with Mags for a weekend of revision – the excuse I’d given Mum and Dad – I went to the post office, slipped the book over the counter and withdrew my entire childhood savings.
‘I hope you’re going to treat yourself to something special with this, dear’ the postmistress said as she slipped the notes under the grill. And then, with all the effort I could muster and desperate to avoid a panic attack, I took the train to Brighton. It was then that I had to access the toughness that I’d learned when I’d called the knacker’s yard. Have courage and push on – there is no option.
Walking into the clinic was terrifying, and I felt agonised as I approached the reception and said, ‘I’m here for a termination.’ However, I was met with efficient kindness at every stage. No one judged me for my stupidity, no one showed sympathy and no one suggested I was doing the wrong thing. My ears rang with white noise and I could feel my heart racing, I was soaking in sweat and my temples throbbed. British law dictates that you have to talk to two doctors before a termination, who then sign a consent form, and each interview was blessedly perfunctory; the doctors understood that as a sixteen-year-old, I was incapable of being a good parent, and to carry an unwanted pregnancy to full term would be both mentally and physically devastating. I then dressed in a hospital robe; there were forty of us, all silent and stressed as we lay on hospital beds in a massive ward. We were then given a pre-med before being wheeled down to the theatre, one at a time, for a general anaesthetic and the ten-minute procedure.
The relief I felt when I came to was immense. The surgeon did a ward round before signing each of us out. The gratitude we all felt towards him was quiet and genuine. We shared our stories over a cup of tea and a biscuit before leaving: at least a third of the women had travelled to Brighton from Ireland. The extra expense they’d incurred, in addition to the guilt and secrecy that they’d experienced, made my story pale into insignificance. The majority of the rest of our group were perimenopausal women who had presumed they were past child-bearing age.
I vowed at that point that I would take no shame from the experience. Not one of us had taken the decision lightly – no one would have chosen to go through such a wretched operation, however respectful and professional the staff had been, had they had another option. Hundreds of thousands of women all over the world risk their lives by undergoing illegal backstreet abortions, and witnessing some people attempting to turn back the tide of progress and make terminations illegal once again fills me with both horror and sadness. The truth is that abortion is an unpleasant reality, but criminalising it will not make unwanted pregnancies go away.
While writing this book I’ve been reading excerpts to Mum, hoping to fill the expanding voids in her brain with vivid memories. She loves hearing stories of her youth, and giggles away when I read her the stories of how she met Dad, and of life at Tanyards. This morning, when I came to read the Brighton episode, I hesitated and considered skimming over it, but didn’t. I like the idea of having no secrets between us now.
‘Oh my darling Nessie,’ she said as I finished reading. ‘You poor darling – it must have been terrible for you.’
We stood up and she shuffled towards me, wrapping her tiny arms around my waist. She buried her head in my breast, and as we hugged I found myself silently weeping.
***
After leaving Guildford Tech, Sarah and I enrolled at Tante Marie Culinary Academy, a Cordon Bleu cooking school in Woking. We learned a great deal there, including how to make an array of different pastries, what herbs went with fish and what went with meat, and how to blend sauces, whisk mayonnaise and fold meringues. We dressed crabs, jugged hares, stuffed chickens, potted shrimps, cured salmon, devilled kidneys and learned how to bake the perfect Victoria sponge. I was now the proud holder of a Cordon Bleu Certificate – the key to financial independence.
We soon arranged to cook for the Whitbread family and their friends in their hunting lodge near the banks of Loch Ness. They were a generous and warm group of people and it provided a wonderful introduction to the world of work for two young, inexperienced chefs. Not all the cooking jobs I had subsequently were quite so happy, but living in a number of different houses was quite an eye opener, for kitchens are the beating hearts of every household. No one can keep a secret from a kitchen. I witnessed disintegrating marriages in Yorkshire, ambitious politicking in Kent and abusive employers in Dorset. It was fascinating stuff for a teenager, but not a job I could see myself doing for long.
Like many children, I had always loved building dens and would transform any space into a snug with the odd plank of wood or length of fabric, whether I was hanging a sheet over a table as a toddler or decorating the caravan and the cellar as a teenager. Could I possibly turn this interest into a career? To investigate the possibility, I enrolled on a three-month foundation course in interior design at the Inchbald School of Design in Chelsea, and went to live with Richard and Kristen in their house on Denbigh Terrace, just off the Portobello Road.
Where a sixteen-year-old fits into the home of her twenty-five-year-old brother and his new wife is an interesting question, and one I didn’t think about at the time. Kristen had designed the narrow four-storey house with classic American elegance and I lived on the top floor, with my own en suite bathroom, though the luxury never quite compensated for the lack of belonging I felt. I can remember their cleaner Mary harrumphing at my presence, and her precocious four-year-o
ld daughter would come and sit at the end of my bath, staring at me while I lay in the water, feeling distinctly exposed.
‘Mummy says it’s a real pest having you living here,’ she would say, looking for a reaction.
It was 1975, and the energy surrounding Richard and Virgin Records was incredible. I never knew who or what I would find on entering the house after a day at college – if only I’d kept a record or taken a snap of everyone who passed through the house. Richard was often away, signing up bands in the States or spending time in The Manor, and I barely saw Kristen. To earn some pocket money, I’d occasionally cook lunch or breakfast for Richard and Simon Draper, but I soon realised that living in London required serious money.
I began waitressing in the evenings at Monsieur Thompson, a small bistro on the corner of Kensington Park Road and Blenheim Crescent, fifty metres from the Portobello Road. That fifty metres would become the centre of my universe a few years later and still now, three decades later, joyous memories come to me whenever I walk those pavements. Everyone should wait tables at some point in their lives – you’ll forever be an appreciative diner afterwards. Serving in restaurants is hell; you’re either appeasing grumpy chefs or grumpy guests. I’d only eaten in a restaurant a couple of times and had little idea of what was expected of me. The Evening Standard got it just about right when they reviewed Monsieur Thompson. ‘The waitress makes up in willingness what she lacks in efficiency,’ wrote Fay Maschler. My first review.
One Saturday night around then, Richard and Kristen threw a fancy-dress party. I can’t remember what I dressed up as – to be honest, I might as well have been a wallflower, I was so deeply out of my depth. I wandered through the thronging mass, afraid to be seen standing on my own and thinking that no one would notice me if I moved around. Dominique, who would one day play a key role in my life but was Richard’s PA at the time, was there, the epitome of French chic in a tight striped T-shirt, with plaits, a miniskirt, and a string of onions round her neck, topped off with a beret cocked to one side. She was on the arm of Andrew Graham-Stewart, who managed the band Tangerine Dream. Also there was Ken Berry, Virgin’s new finance director, and his girlfriend Binna, Rod Vickery, the company ‘fixer’ and, of course, Simon Draper. All the acts who were signed to Virgin at the time turned up too, along with all the bands who had recorded at The Manor. Roger Taylor from Queen was there, as well as Kevin Ayers from Soft Machine.
The party was mayhem, as parties could be in the days before mobile phone cameras: a seething mass of rock-and-roll eccentricity. Some people were shouting over the thumping music, while others were standing around and smoking. A cascade of people spilled out down the stone steps from the open front door. Inside, the narrow staircase of the tall townhouse was chocked with embracing couples – no room was out of bounds. The basement kitchen was crammed with partygoers helping themselves to a generous buffet.
As I pushed my way downstairs, I noticed Richard looking at Kevin Ayers across the kitchen table and could tell that something wasn’t quite right. Richard flicked some rice at Kevin, who picked up a dollop of mashed potato and threw it at Richard. Before I knew what had happened, they were picking up handfuls of food and hurling them at each other, laughing but definitely aiming with intent. The kitchen went silent as they pounded each other with chicken, rounds of brie and soggy lettuce. There was laughter, but it felt strange and uncomfortable. Richard brushed past me on the stairs, wiping salad from his face.
‘I’m off to New York tomorrow, Ness, so I’m going to stay in a hotel near Heathrow. Can you lock up after everyone’s gone?’
As I was stood there, wondering how on earth I was going to deal with all these people, a bear walked up to me.
‘Can I help you, Goldilocks?’ he said, his kind voice muffled through the furry head of his costume.
‘Yes please,’ I replied. ‘But who are you?’
The bear took off his head. It was Mike Oldfield. We sat and talked until the party had thinned out and then were able to sweep the stragglers out into the street. Mike and I were both social misfits: he was overwhelmed by his new-found success and I was too young and unworldly to be in this environment. He invited me to stay with him at his newly purchased manor house in Slad in Gloucestershire the following weekend.
On his return from New York, much to his misery and bewilderment, Richard learned that Kristen, his bride of less than three years, had left him and gone to live in Majorca with Kevin Ayers.
My relationship with Mike was a short-lived affair. He loved driving and would pick me up from Denbigh Terrace in his embarrassingly loud red Ferrari, which once ran low on petrol when we were on the M4. We roared into a petrol station and pumped the car full of fuel. Since Mike was newly wealthy, his accountants hadn’t yet organised a way for him to carry cash, so I had to hand over my entire weekly pay from Monsieur Thompson, tips and all. We would spend weekends hanging out at his house and occasionally messing around in his recording studio.
Sally, his sister, keen to protect her brother from people whom she thought might take advantage, would sigh every time I walked into a room; as a result, I crept around the house, hoping not to bump into her. The one time I felt at ease was in the evenings, when we would walk to the friendly village pub and sit in the cavernous inglenook fireplace that was immortalised by Laurie Lee in Cider with Rosie.
Later, when we got back to his vast, under-furnished bedroom, our shy couplings were overseen by Mike’s curious Irish wolfhound, who would sit at the end of our bed like a giant stone statue guarding the entrance to a tomb.
It was only when my children were almost adults themselves that I owned up to having once made a record. It was the B-side to the single of ‘Tubular Bells’. I sang with Mike on a reggae version of ‘Froggy Went a-Courtin’. I was Little Miss Mouse to Mike’s Froggy. My goodness, I sound young.
8
FINDING BEAUTY
It was one of those spontaneous ideas you have while sitting in a pub on a freezing cold Friday night in the middle of winter. Hamish and I arranged to meet up in Florence, halfway into his month-long Italian ‘grand tour’, at midday on 1 April 1976, by the Fountain of Neptune in the Piazza della Signoria. A few weeks later, I’d saved enough money deep-frying chips and burgers at a tenpin-bowling alley for the airfare and booked myself an Alitalia flight to Pisa.
It took less than a minute to clear customs; my holdall contained nothing but a change of underwear, a toothbrush and a book – shamefully, given that I was about to discover the glories of the Italian Renaissance, The Pirate by Harold Robbins. I was wearing an ankle-length Indian cotton dress I’d bought from Kensington Market, black and red with an elaborately embroidered top panel inlaid with a twinkling mass of tiny mirrors, and a pair of vintage cowboy boots.
Once I’d left the airport, I flagged down a cheerful baker who was sputtering along in a three-wheeler van. On the way to Florence he offered me mounds of warm pastries and fired questions at me in rapid Italian. He dropped me off in the city centre, laughing and wishing me luck with my liaison. As I approached the magnificent stone fountain, I began to lose the confidence I’d possessed earlier in the day. After all, Hamish and I hadn’t confirmed our meeting – I’d simply taken him at his word. Had he been sober enough to remember? And if he had, would he have thought I was serious about joining him? And would his travel plans have worked out so that he was even in Florence at this time? Of course he wouldn’t be there – what an April fool I’d been! I sat for a while by the fountain, fantasising about picking up a dashing Italian one minute or of walking destitute around the city streets as if I was starring in a Fellini film.
Then I spotted my beautiful blond friend, tanned and leaner after a fortnight of lugging his art-book-filled backpack halfway around Italy. He stood smiling while brushing his unkempt fringe from his eyes. Of course he was going to turn up. After a minute of hellos he pulled out a map, laid it on the edge of the fountain and we planned our trip: five towns, including Perugia and
Assisi, each with a multitude of churches and galleries housing the masterpieces on Hamish’s ‘must-see list’.
Hamish was studying fourteenth-century Italian Art and, unlike most of his peer group, he knew what he was going to do once he’d finished: he’d agreed to be apprenticed to a painting restorer called Dick Maelzer, who worked for the respected Old Master dealer, Edward Speelman. An in-depth knowledge of the history of art is essential for any restorer, and Hamish was focused on becoming the best in his field.
Once again, love was my great educator: Hamish’s passion for both the history and the magic of creativity was contagious. Early on in our relationship we realised that keeping our love platonic was the best way forward, and we’ve remained firm friends to this day. On that trip he taught me that the fundamental lesson of art history is that artists are informed by the ideas of previous artists and movements. I also learned how much easier history itself is to remember when you can reference works of art: history comes alive in the clothes, traditions and battles laid out through oil on canvas. During that two-week expedition, I grasped the extent of the hold that religion had on Europe during the last thousand years and understood how the great dynasties exhibited their power in their patronage of the arts.
Hamish and I had virtually no money, and each evening we’d traipse around the less salubrious parts of the town we were visiting, knocking on the doors of guest houses and haggling with landladies until they reluctantly offered us rock-bottom prices. We’d then find the cheapest restaurant we could and sheepishly order plain spaghetti before smothering it with olive oil and the entire pot of grated Parmesan cheese left on the table. Hamish brought a book to the restaurant each night and would test me on what we’d seen during the day.
One Hundred Summers Page 17