London

A story from when I first visited the capital aged 16 with my friend.

“Jules, why don’t you come to London with me? We can stay with my dad and his new girlfriend, Carole.”

Nicola suggests one Sunday afternoon as we lounge on sequinned scatter cushions in her Prince postered palace of a bedroom.

I’m sixteen and this is by far the best offer I’ve ever had.

Nicola, is that one mate your mum likes.

So much so, I myself, almost want to dislike her in protest. But when she calls me ‘Jules’ in that soft voice that knows me as oak trees know seasons, she makes me feel like I’m the most important person in the world and my pupils glaze as though brushed with apricot jam.

Everyone loves Nicola. She personifies ‘girl next door’. Her long hair is a sweep of cockle shell bay whilst pyjama-stripe blue eyes sit brightly upon a fresh, make-up-free face. She appears physically younger yet is emotionally more mature than her sixteen years. She is sensible - doesn’t dye her hair “silly colours” as I apparently do - and is most at home in casual jeans and a faded denim jacket.

Nicola lives in a glass slipper light magnet of a house in the best area of town - another reason my snob of a mother adores her. There are log fires and en-suites, bidets and numerous concealed kitchen appliances that can be pulled down from walls - Tomorrow’s World meets Famous Five. She has a ‘kitchen island’. I don’t know anyone else with a kitchen island.

There is a white fluffy cat with a slightly evil looking squashed face and cruel green eyes that looks ready to hiss at anything less than poached salmon.

Her house is the sort of place that in my younger days, my Barbie lived in -  all cream sofas and high ceilings.

And Nicola’s mum does indeed look like a Barbie. She is the lady I’d like to be when I grow up - a pantsuited, bronze shimmer of a woman. She’s cheekbones, peep toes and Farrah Fawcett flicks. Nicola and her sister Andrea (who is 14 and going through a phase of calling herself An-DRAY-a) both look like Skipper dolls. There they reside, a trio of Timotei in Rochdale’s answer to Southfork.

I’m sure the three of them stay home watching ‘Dirty Dancing’, giving each other manicures and applying home made face masks. I imagine them to own heated eye lash curlers and multipacks of foam toe separators.

I don’t know much about why Nicola’s mum and dad split up, only that it happened about a year ago, she loves them both dearly and feels very bitter about it.

Her feelings about her father seem to splutter as a faulty mixer tap from hot to cold.  I can tell she thinks the world of him but I always sense there’s more I don’t know. Still - she likes him enough to want to visit him in London and seems to be okay with this Carole woman, so who am I to look a gift horse in the mouth? Job’s a good ‘un.

I put the idea to my mum who is both worried and perplexed at the prospect. Mum has neither been nor had desire to ever visit ‘that London’.

The capital city is her worst nightmare. She loves to share stories of gang shootings, stabbings and riots. She also warns me that “Southerners are known for being funny with northerners. They don’t like us”.

Nicola, however gives the proposition the required likeability factor.  Mum is certain her dad must be alright because Nicola is ‘such a nice girl’.

The deal is sealed. I am going to London!

I remember a treasured postcard my dad gave to me a few years earlier. He’d often visited London ‘on business’.  “Going to see a man about a dog” he’d say. I never knew if this were true because although I was aware this was a line adults said when they cared not to elaborate, I also knew he did indeed talk to men about dogs as he traded greyhounds.

I, collected postcards.

“Would you bring me back a postcard back of London?”

I’d said and he’d obliged. How pleased I’d been to see him pull from his coat a creased gold tinted photo of a pigeon on the edge of Trafalgar Square! ‘London’ it simply said in a white looping font. It had been enough to light me - like swallowing a star!

The entire journey there, I gulp down my bubbly little heart again and again as it rises as frothy cream soda up from my fizzing chest.  I imagine the names of the stations enroute said in southern accents. Ooh! ‘Stevenage’, *warm glow*

Finally, we arrive and head for the underground. There are escalators the sizes of water slides. Squeaks and zips of brief cases serenade clatters of heels whilst dark little mice bumble around by the tracks. I immediately understand now why there is a cartoon called ‘Tube Mice’! They’re adorable!

There are people of many skin colours, talking in tongues that span linguistic possibility like lithe gymnasts.  I am mesmerised by widened mouths, the rasps and rhythms that tap out from throats like dust from beaten carpets.

I am glanced at briefly, then gaze is averted politely, the way one does when you get in a lift. I deduce that unsurprisingly, for most, tube stations are functional places, to get from A - B. For me however, they feel very much a part of my rounded London experience - a delicacy to be relished.

Carole and Leslie live in a tower block in Putney. It’s more ‘Only Fools and Horses’ Peckham than swanky waterfront penthouse but that doesn’t matter. I am in London! London! My heart chirrups giddily for all my London fantasies. I hear ‘Portobello Road’ from ‘Bedknobs and Broomsticks’! I visualise Terry meeting Julie at their ‘Waterloo Sunset’. I am Julie and I too, can be in a real Waterloo Sunset, I muse! I have the urge to buy ‘apples and pears’ in a rustling brown paper bag and call someone ‘treacle’…..

Nicola’s dad greets us at the Tube Station and I am instantly struck by what a dashingly handsome figure he cuts! He has messy, salt n pepper curly hair and the same twinkling blue eyes my friend has. He has natural ease, is chatty and charming. Actually, I decide that Nicola’s dad is the bomb, the whole package. I’ve never fancied anyone that old before - he must be what, 45 - but damn - he’s the hottest old giffer I’ve ever met!  I make a mental note to myself to mosey around slightly longer than is necessary ‘making coffee’ in the morning in my Etam lavender nightie.

Carole is all lipstick and leather boots. Tries hard to  do the ‘cool big sister’ bit as she’s canny enough to realise Nicola does not want a ‘step mum’. This is her flat and Leslie has moved in. As such, it very much reflects her music and fashion loving personality.

The living room wall is an “I was there’ photo montage tribute to various eras she wore in as new heels. There, Carole is, a time loop ‘Where’s Wally’ - Mary Quanting about down Carnaby street in the 60’s, carrying off a kaftan rather well in the 70’s and doing her best ‘I’m with the band’ pouts in the 80’s, all belt-for-skirt and bandana. Now it is 1990, and here she stands, an amalgamation of all the decades before her, and probably stronger for it.

Carole used to date a member of ‘The Who’ and is keen to tell us tales of ‘swinging’ London; *nudge nudge, dirty laugh* - love ins, mods, Biba, marijuana, woah…. had to be there, man….Mick and Keith…..

“It’s not the same these days, London…”

She moans, wrapping up ‘anecdote afternoon’ in tired tones of ‘Pauline Fowler’.

“Lived ‘ere all me life but it’s not ‘ow it used to be. Community……”

My only frame of reference is that time in Eastenders when ‘Wilmot-Brown’ bought the wine bar and attracted all the yuppies and pissed off the locals. Maybe that’s what she means….

“Not how it used to be” feels like something all adults say, no matter where they live. Passion for the past is strong and stubborn.

Yet somehow, I know that had I been alive in the 60’s - fabled golden time - I’d have also met people saying exactly the same. Nostalgia constructs cloud castles from sepia smiles and saccharine sound bites. The ‘we woz poor but appy’ ear worm has hooked itself into national psyche as we all hanker after the crock of gold we never found but are somehow, certain was there. Well, maybe the gold was there- fleeting as buttercup glow beneath a fatty’s double chin - until he dropped the flower and shovelled in another dripping butty.

Still, let’s slam on Mary Hopkin, pretend we knew a tavern and declare “Those were the days”, yeah?

The next few days feel like a whirlwind of slamming black cabs, ‘look at me’ shop windows and both velvet and vinegar voices.

Nicola and I ride red double decker buses and head for the arcade where Carole works in South Kensington which is like a bigger, funkier version of Manchester’s ‘Affleck’s Palace’. The place is shrine to music and fashion, plastered with signed LP sleeves, iconic Athena posters and photos of leather clad moody looking rockstars. I buy Hanoi Rocks “Two Steps from the Move”, a skull scarf, a mood ring and proceed to lacquer the crap out of my dyed black hair before back combing it, adding the scarf and swanning about town high on swagger and possibility. We head to Camden where I buy even more shit - pink round glasses, Patchouli oil and a studded belt.

I survey myself in shop mirrors and see a shiny, gothic kingfisher of a girl. Yes! Crushing it in the city!

On the way back to Putney, a rich Arab with an entourage attempts to lure the two of us into his black limousine to ‘spend some time’ with him. Nicola looks frightened we’ll be dragged into the car, but I’ve dealt with similar from Asian taxi drivers in Rochdale for a few years now. It’s just a posh London upgrade. I politely decline the banknotes being presented, smile sweetly and we’re on our way.

Saturday night is spent in a live music venue. Leslie pays us in and proceeds to offer me a drink . “Malibu and Coke” I say brazenly, half expecting an unwanted lecture, but instead he winks, makes it a double and I decide I like him even more. Look at him - treating us  both like grown ups, hanging out with us as……well…..equals!  I would never hang out with either of my own parents but Leslie and Carole are different. Unstuffy, liberal.

Leslie asks me about my studies, the music I like, my plans for the future. Seems genuinely interested in what I have to say. Although he’s slightly cheeky in his banter, I observe he never oversteps the mark to become sleazy or creepy.

Every now and again. Nicola shoots her dad a dagger look I feel is unjustified. I wish I knew what the deal was there. Whatever went on with him getting together with this Carole woman, surely she needs to let that go? Move on….

It’s Sunday morning and we are finally heading home on the train, our trip complete.

Perhaps I sing his praises a little too loudly. Leslie who has taken us out, splashed the cash showed us around the big smoke. Maybe I gush a little too much of how I consider Leslie the coolest dad ever and how wish he was my own. How she’s so lucky having this home from home in London….

Whatever it is, Nicola has had enough. She’s sick of hearing about him and her angel face cracks.

“Oh! I’ll tell you about him.”

She says. Her sunny demeanour hinting at clouds ahead.

“About the night he left us.”

She sips from a buffet car cup of tea, her story brewing like a storm. Nicola seldom gets serious or emotional so this is big.

“I could hear them down stairs arguing. Mum and dad. Andrea and I were supposed to be in bed but we couldn’t sleep. They were loud, ornaments were being knocked over.”

I remember the many times I too had heard my own parents rowing - mum accusing him of lying, my dad insisting all he did was for her, suggesting anything he’d messed up was her fault….

“Dad was calling my mum a slag, a whore…it was horrible. We were scared and went to the top of the stairs to see what was happening and…..”

Her voice quivers.

“And then we saw……”

Nicola pauses to swallow, fighting back tears as she does.

“Jules…..”

She whispers.

“He was on top of her…..holding my mum down. Jules….he was raping her. My dad was raping my mum on the rug.”

“Shit, Nic….no…”

“Yes - and she was yelling for him to stop but he wouldn’t stop. Andrea and I were just frozen, watching through the bars on the landing. They didn’t see us. We couldn’t move, paralysed. It was our dad! You’ve met him now…...you know what he’s like. We’d never seen him like that before. Mum was in tears…..but we didn’t know what to do……We should have done something but we didn’t know what. Oh Jules….why didn’t we stop it? Ring the police? Do something?”

My 16 year old brain is struggling to take this in.

I’m used to harrowing tales by now but not from girls like Nicola. The stories I’m used to hearing are from tough cookie council estate kids, the have nots.

Suddenly, Nicola doesn’t seem quite so privileged.

Suddenly I no longer want to be her model mum - her beauty feels like a curse. I am yet to learn that rape has nothing to do with how you look and is everything about power.

“Shit”

It’s all I can say over and over, but hopefully my eyes say more. They frantically scribble bridges.

“He doesn’t know…..that we saw it.”

Nicola says.

“And neither does my mum. Andrea and I went back to bed.  Cried with each other all night- she’s my little sister, I had to comfort her, tell her it would be okay. He moved out the next day and we decided we’d never mention  it. Didn’t want my mum to feel bad….that we’d seen it…I know she’d feel awful if she knew”

The rest of the journey home is beyond awkward. I want to talk about Tube Mice, my new Hanoi Rocks LP, Camden market, to point out ‘Stevenage’……

But how can I, when I now share this sordid secret? This burden this young girl and her sister have carried for over a year. Her blue eyes are misting. I know that telling me has dragged it to the surface like a dirty tide. But what else could she do, seeing me sing his praises like that?

I picture my own dad, doing his ‘Robin Hood routine’. Trotting out his well-used monologue to try to justify his own crimes.

“Whatever you think of me, Julie…..”

He’d always finish with.

“…….just remember I’ve never murdered anyone….. never raped anyone…..”

He’d often say it. As though I should be grateful he wasn’t an even bigger screw up than he was.

“No dad!”

I want to scream.

“You did a fucking armed robbery with a sawn off shot gun, and THAT IS ALSO NOT OK!”

But he’s not here. He’s serving 16 years, and so instead I reach across the table on the train, hug the life out of my dear friend, and we both declare that dads are shit and we’ll do just fine without them, thank you.