by Anne Bennett
But, there were other types of teenagers. Whether boy or girl, these wore their hair long and like a throwback to the beatnik era, they wore ‘bower’ boots, jeans and large baggy jumpers called sloppy joes.
Hannah seldom saw teenagers without wondering what Angela wore, what Angela liked doing, what music, films, books she enjoyed. The only time that Hannah was sad in her new and very happy life was when she thought of Angela.
In the summer of 1963, Hannah, desperate for news of her daughter, wrote to Pauline and asked if she’d had any contact with Arthur or Angela. Her daughter was now going on for sixteen and she longed to hear about her life. Many times over the years Hannah had thought of trying to find out what had happened to her daughter and had always been stopped by the threat of Arthur informing the Medical Council about her and Vic. She didn’t know if it would matter as the years passed, but with Vic’s livelihood at stake, she couldn’t take the chance. Writing to Pauline was a long shot for she didn’t know whether or not she’d kept in touch with Angela or Arthur but now, her daughter teetering on the verge of adulthood, she was desperate to know how she was. Hannah didn’t know just how much of a long shot it was, for Pauline hadn’t kept in contact with the family and had heard nothing of them until a fortnight previously when Arthur had written to her pleading for help.
He’d been asked to remove Angela from the convent school before she was expelled, he wrote. He was distraught. Angela had been accused of unacceptable behaviour, obscene language and a flagrant disregard of school rules. Pauline hadn’t been surprised. She’d seen the way Angela was heading when she’d left the house, but took no pleasure in being able to say, ‘I told you so.’
Arthur told her that in September he’d decided to send Angela to a boarding school in Hastings, famed for its academic achievements and discipline, but Angela was proving difficult and refusing to go. Pauline felt her heart plummet. Angela had been raised in a way where she had everything she wanted just by a click of her fingers. If she’d bucked against rules at the convent school, what would she do when she was sent to an even stricter place?
Arthur wanted to know if Pauline would come back for a while through the summer and talk to Angela. Maybe she could persuade her to go to the school to secure her future? He said he would make it worth Pauline’s while.
But Pauline’s sister had died the previous year and she was financially independent now, older and softer, and had little desire to try and talk sense into a resentful, truculent teenager, however much she’d loved her when she was younger, and she wrote a tactful refusal to Arthur’s offer.
She thought long and hard when she received Hannah’s request about whether she should tell her of the letter Arthur sent. She decided it wouldn’t help Hannah to know her daughter was going off the rails. She’d had little to do with her daughter’s upbringing and virtually no influence on her behaviour. Angela was the product of her father. She knew if she was to tell Hannah, though, she’d be racked with guilt that it was somehow all her fault. She remembered the radiant joy that had shone out of her on her wedding day. She deserved happiness and had found a fine and decent man who obviously loved her to bits. So why land this cloud on her horizon? No, she decided, she’d not tell Hannah anything about it. And she folded up the letter and put it away in a drawer.
Angela was desperately unhappy at her new school and she showed her unhappiness by cheeking and disobeying the teachers, being disruptive in lessons and using obscene language and gestures and being generally objectionable and aggressive. Each time she was punished her behaviour deteriorated.
But this school was of sterner stuff than the convent and didn’t give in easily. On Angela’s sixteenth birthday in November, they wouldn’t allow her to leave the school with her father, as was usual, because her behaviour had been so bad. Arthur would not go against the school, for he hardly knew how to handle his unruly, angry daughter.
Angela took little interest in the gold watch and matching bracelet her father had given her for her birthday and her behaviour became worse than ever. While the rest of the country was reeling from the shock of President J.F. Kennedy being gunned down in Dallas, Texas on 22nd November 1963, Arthur was reading through another letter from the school, detailing Angela’s latest misdemeanours.
He dreaded having her home for Christmas and was right to dread it. Not really understanding Angela’s tastes now, he asked for Elizabeth Banks’s help and she chose pretty underwear and perfume she was sure Angela would like, while her sons advised on the latest records. Arthur bought everything they suggested and hoped to appease Angela with them.
However, Angela liked nothing and the holiday was a disaster. They celebrated alone because Angela was so unpredictable that Arthur was too nervous to take up the Banks’ offer to go there for Christmas, or even book into a hotel. He had a horror of being embarrassed in front of people whereas his daughter didn’t seem to care. In fact, having her brooding, complaining presence in the house was like walking around an unexploded bomb that might erupt at any time and Arthur was totally exhausted.
He tried to hide his sigh of relief when the holiday was over and he could return his daughter to the school. But his relief was shortlived for in late January he received a telegram demanding that he come to the school and remove his daughter, for she had gone beyond the bounds of decency.
This time she had teamed up with another girl and the pair of them had actually left the school, sneaking away after lights out, using a convenient drainpipe as their means of escape, and gone into town and undoubtedly got up to all sorts of mischief, the headmistress was sure.
When she was missed at breakfast and the teachers then discovered that her bed had not been slept in, they were thinking of contacting the police, but then she and the other girl returned dishevelled, their clothes in disarray, and in an intoxicated state. They could not keep such girls in their school, they said. They were a bad example to the other girls and in moral danger themselves.
Arthur was now a worried man for he was at a loss to know how to deal with his daughter. If he’d had his way, he’d have locked her in her room, for much as he loved her, he thought she’d inherited bad blood from her mother. But he doubted Angela would stay in her room or obey any order she didn’t agree with.
The housekeeper, Mrs Mackie, who had come to look after the house after Hannah left, took one look at Angela’s petulant face and curling lip and said she’d been engaged to look after the house, not baby-sit teenagers who didn’t know when they were well off.
‘I didn’t ask you to bloody well look after me, you stupid old cow,’ Angela cried, turning on the woman she’d never really got on with. ‘I don’t need a bleeding nursemaid.’
‘Angela, please!’ Arthur said, shocked to the core at his daughter’s angry outburst.
‘That settles it,’ Mrs Mackie said. ‘I’m off. There’s plenty of jobs where you don’t have to stand the likes of language and behaviour like that.’
Angela laughed at the housekeeper’s outraged face and with a baleful look at his daughter, Arthur rushed from the room to mollify Mrs Mackie who’d gone off to pack her case.
Mrs Mackie stayed, persuaded with a substantial pay rise, and Angela was left to her own devices while Arthur looked for some other place to send her. Not that he had much hope of another school keeping Angela, for she refused to conform. ‘You send me to another bleeding prison and they’ll just throw me out again and I’ll make sure of it. I’ve had enough of sodding education!’
‘Please Angela. At least modify your language.’
‘Why? Shocks you, does it?’ Angela said and added, ‘You’re easily bloody shocked though, aren’t you? If you knew half of what I got up to your hair would turn white.’
Arthur didn’t doubt it, but refrained from asking Angela to elaborate and didn’t object when she suggested staying with her friend Hillary in Yorkshire for a while. In fact he was quite relieved: Hillary had been expelled from the school in Leeds along with Ange
la, but she wasn’t sent anywhere else. Arthur had no idea of the laxity of the home Angela was going to. He had no idea that her mother, never one to bother with her daughter when she was younger, had even less to do with her as a teenager. Hillary’s father, even when he was home, which wasn’t often, didn’t take much notice of her. On her removal from school he’d just remarked that Hillary had probably learnt enough to get by and hook a wealthy husband and that anyway most men didn’t like brainy girls, so maybe it was all to the good her schooldays were over.
Hillary’s brothers had finished with school too and were now encouraged to sow their wild oats before settling down to further study at university or entering their father’s firm. They attended many wild parties and were not that averse to their pretty sister accompanying them. Hillary’s letters to Angela, while she was incarcerated on the south coast, told her of a life she could only dream of. Hillary’s parents, like many more of her friends’, were just the means of financing a life full of fun with no worries and no responsibility.
Hillary spoke of the lavish parties that went on all night and where the drink flowed constantly. She spoke of the little pills called ‘purple hearts’ that everyone took that made you feel wonderful and the other pill that she took each day now that she was sixteen, which meant that there was no possibility of pregnancy after her nights of steamy sex with all and sundry.
And this was the world Angela entered and threw herself into, though she was shocked at first by some of the things that went on. But she didn’t want to appear square to her new friends.
‘Are you sure those contraceptive pills work?’ Angela asked Hillary not long after her arrival. She watched Hillary popping one into her mouth and couldn’t believe such a tiny thing could stop pregnancy.
‘Course I am.’
‘How do they work then?’
‘How the bloody hell should I know? They just do, that’s all.’
‘And the doctor gave them to you just like that?’
‘Not the doctor,’ Hillary said. ‘I mean, they might, but we go to the family planning clinic. There’s a Marie Stopes place in York. They don’t ask many questions.’
‘And they don’t care that you’re not married?’
‘They don’t know,’ Hillary said. ‘At least … Look, I’ve got my great gran’s wedding ring, but lots of the girls just get a ring from Woolworth’s for a tanner and call themselves Mrs Something. They know at the clinic, they must do, but they don’t say anything.’
Angela found it was just as her friend said. Armed with a bogus wedding ring and fictitious husband, she came away from the clinic with three months’ supply of pills for twelve and six.
‘Now you can really let yourself go, girl,’ Hillary said in delight.
‘Not for the first month,’ Angela said. ‘She said to be careful.’
‘Careful be damned!’ Hillary declared. ‘Plenty of time to be careful when you’re old and past it.’
‘Yeah,’ Angela said. ‘Yeah, you’re right.’
‘Anyway, there’s a big party Saturday,’ Hillary said, handing Angela a glass of cider. ‘It’s at Charlie’s place and his folks are away for the week. God knows how long his party will go on. Certainly all night.’
‘Won’t your parents …?’
‘I’ve told them to expect us when they see us.’
Never had Angela experienced the freedom Hillary enjoyed. Whether at school or home, her movements had always been carefully monitored. She couldn’t believe that Hillary’s parents were not the least bit interested in her movements, or those of her brothers. The cook complained she never knew how many to cook for, but her voice was the only one to raise any sort of complaint and one Hillary didn’t care about anyway. Since Angela’s arrival the week before she’d seen neither parent. There was always booze available and Angela, desperate for excitement, was ripe to try it all: cider, beer, wine, vodka, white rum, gin and brandy, or even the lethal cocktails Hillary’s brothers made called punch. Angela would drink glasses of it and she liked the effect it had. It tasted sweet like fruit juice, but had a kick like a mule, laced as it was with anything to hand.
Angela was also smoking heavily, but so far she’d refused the purple hearts and the odd joints that had begun to appear among some of Hillary’s friends which they passed around the group. ‘Lighten up,’ they encouraged her. ‘Live a little.’ Angela didn’t know why she continued to shake her head, for she longed to experience all life had to offer, so she took her first joint at the party and mixed with alcohol, it had a dramatic effect.
On Saturday evening, Charlie’s house was softly lit, there was a pungent smell of joss sticks smoking on the mantelpiece and ‘She Loves You’ by the Beatles was pulsating around the room. Angela had met many of Hillary’s friends in the days when she’d stayed at her friend’s house regularly and she was introduced to many others and had a glass thrust into her hand.
It was a good party and two hours into it, Angela had danced and drunk more than she’d ever done in her whole life. As the night went on, she noticed couples detach themselves from the group and drape themselves over sofas or armchairs, or cuddle up in corners of the room. She saw them strip off clothes and though she couldn’t see much, she knew most of them would be naked or virtually naked and from the cries, moans and groans, it was blatantly obvious what they were about.
It didn’t bother Angela, or any of the others. Her initial shock had disappeared at Hillary’s, where her brothers would often come in with a girl they’d lead upstairs by the hand and even Hillary had told Angela to get lost a couple of times when she took a boy to her room. ‘It’s been the prerogative of a man for long enough,’ she told Angela, who hadn’t yet experienced sex. ‘The pill has opened life up for girls too now. You don’t know what you’re missing.’
Angela thought she might be right, and no one seemed to worry about it and that night, anaesthetised further by alcohol, she began to giggle as a couple in the throes of intercourse rolled into her and almost knocked her over.
The boy beside her steadied her and she stopped and put a hand to her head. ‘All right?’ he asked.
‘Yeah. A bit drunk, I think, my head’s spinning.’
‘Rubbish,’ said the boy. ‘You’re just relaxed that’s all. But I’ll give you something that will relax you more,’ and Angela saw a little pile of purple hearts in his hand.
Without thinking about it, Angela took two and washed them down with half a pint of cider. Almost immediately, she felt as if she was lifted up, hovering above the party, part of it and yet not. She felt marvellous, wonderful, and nothing seemed to matter, certainly not the boy who had wandered away from his previous partner and led her to a vacant sofa and began to kiss her and fondle her as he removed her clothes.
She didn’t stop him, she helped him, and then pulled his clothes off and gazed in awe, seeing a man, an aroused man, naked for the first time. When his arms came around her and his tongue teased her lips, she felt an explosion inside her.
They fell to the floor, but it hardly mattered, nothing mattered to Angela, but satisfying the throbbing ache inside her. She cried out just once and then was overtaken by waves and waves of exquisite joy and over and over she moaned in ecstasy.
She danced some more afterwards until another boy took her in his arms. She lost count of the times she sank willingly to the floor. She didn’t feel tired, but alive, wonderfully alive.
Around dawn she found herself sitting on the floor beside Hillary. She was naked and had no idea where her clothes were and had wrapped a throw from the chair around herself. Hillary, semi-dressed, gave her a lopsided grin. ‘You okay?’ she said, her voice slurred.
‘C … couldn’t be better,’ Angela said, taking a sip from the glass in her hand. She had no idea now what she was drinking and neither did she care.
‘You’re smashed,’ Hillary said.
‘So are you,’ Angela retorted and both girls fell against each other giggling. ‘Here,’ Hillary said.
‘Look what I’ve got,’ and she produced a joint from her pocket. ‘Want a smoke?’ she asked. ‘This will blow you away.’
Angela nodded and between them they finished the joint and their drinks and afterwards Angela could remember nothing until she woke up naked in bed beside a man late on Sunday night.
Afterwards back at her house, Hillary told her she’d shed the cover and danced naked around the room. ‘You were wild,’ she said. ‘You even got up on the table once, but you nearly fell off.’
‘Oh God, I’ll never be able to look people in the face again,’ Angela said, embarrassed. ‘I’ve never behaved like that before.’
‘Don’t be bloody stupid. No one will care what you did. They were doing the same or worse. God, I’m just glad you decided to let yourself go a bit.’
‘I know but …’
‘But nothing,’ Hillary said. ‘We could be blown to bits any day. Look at the cockup our parents made of the last war and now they have the bomb no one’s bloody safe. Even the President of the United States isn’t safe these days.
‘So the thing to do is eat, drink a lot, have great sex, enjoy yourself and don’t feel guilty about it, right?’ Hillary told Angela, handing her a glass of cider.
‘Right,’ Angela said. ‘Bloody right!’ and the two girls clinked glasses and giggled together.
Angela had been away three months, it was now mid-June and yet she showed no sign of coming back home. In Harrison Road, Erdington, Arthur worried about his daughter and what she was doing and he wondered where his little girl had gone, the child he’d wanted to raise in innocence and purity. He faced the fact that she was innocent and pure no longer. Any girl that sneaks out from a school in the dead of night and doesn’t return till morning is up to no good.
No, it was definitely better to have her away from the house for a bit and though Hillary hadn’t proved a good influence at school, now she was at home, he was sure her parents would see that she toed the line.
At least, he consoled himself, she wasn’t mixing with the hooligan element, the mods and the rockers that had come to blows in Clacton, Margate and lots of other coastal resorts that spring. Nor had Angela asked for a scooter and a parka, favoured by the mods or, Heaven forbid, a motorbike and leather gear the rockers preferred. He couldn’t have borne that she’d go out dressed in such a way, and he’d never have a moment’s peace if she had one of those death trap machines.