Writing for Fun
February 2017
Another World - Jenni Bowers
1962 was another world – Sally had just left school and was finally allowed to wear stockings. Throwing her white ankle socks in the bin, she picked up the comb and began to construct her beehive hairdo – it took ages backcombing the top of her newly copper coloured locks and getting the flick ups just right then spraying on half a can of lacquer to achieve the desired result.
Bopping around the bedroom she shared with her 2 younger sisters, hoping the new green winklepickers would be ok for jiving in, she listened to Elvis on the gramophone and looked forward to meeting the gang at the youth club later that evening. She practiced her best smile to bestow on Bobby the handsomest boy at the club, her secret crush.
Every church in the town had its youth club and these entertained hundreds of teenagers, preventing them hanging around the streets each evening. The local teenagers would flock there to play snooker, darts or sit around playing cards or board games or listen to music and dance with just a coffee or orange squash to sustain them for what would have been very boring evenings at home with their parents. Every year the highlight would be the Carnival – the Leigh club always entered a huge float, one of the dads being a lorry driver – this year they were depicting the stone age and Sally couldn’t wait to show of her new sexy bikini as it was leopard print and the boys would all be wielding large plastic coshes and dragging the girls around by their hair for authenticity – as seen on Fred Flintstone cartoons.
Sally had begun her first job, starting at the bottom with a locally based London insurance company, this was normal in the 1960’s although she was highly qualified as a shorthand typist, having spent a year at school under Miss McKrill and becoming quite fast at 110 words per minute and 40 in typing, she still had to ‘work her way up’. She was currently a Gestetner girl which involved turning the handle on huge copier machines which, when stencils were attached (typed by the typing pool) produced thousands of Policy documents whilst being driven by staff like Sally. It was hard and boring work and she’d be looking forward to jiving with her boyfriend and having fun – maybe even ending up at the local chippy for a bag of their gorgeous golden brown chips and a huge pickled onion.
Her Dad would be waiting at the gate 10pm and any boy who ‘walked her home’ would dare not touch her, dad was not a man most of the local youth would upset – in fact by the time she was 18 she was known by the local boys as ‘queen of all the fairies’! Her reputation unsullied. By then she was a Policy typist, top of the tree although she still aspired to be Executive Secretary, able to use the shorthand she’d spent a year learning.
That year boyfriend Kelvin dumped her, she was broken-hearted, he was so funny and the best jive partner she’d danced with. She had managed to lure Bobby for a few weeks during her seventeenth year but he’d dumped her for a blonde girl, her tears had not lasted long as Kelvin had been there with his strong shoulder and jokes.
Other boys came along but Sally still hoped Kelvin would change his mind, then one evening at the Friday club she met Eddie – a soldier on leave from Germany. He’d been brought along by his friend and sat twiddling his keyring, a metal fish which wriggled, on the table. He was quite handsome but looked lonely and Sally decided to chat to him, she accepted a lift home in his lovely car (knowing dad and mum would have a fit but risk it anyway) and asked her to write to him as he had to return to his base next day.
Eddie drove a flashy Zodiac and soon they were dating every time he came home on leave. Sally was bowled over, he brought her Chanel No 5 perfume and silver jewellery and asked her to marry him. She accepted the little aquamarine ring he produced from an envelope but felt strange, not happy and excited but overwhelmed really, she’d never met a ‘man of the world’ before and Eddie’s stories about his life abroad with the army had thrilled her, he was even better than Kelvin at telling amazing jokes but still she felt slightly worried gazing at the pretty ring.
The next time he was on leave she was invited to stay at his home and that evening, after a lovely meal, cooked by his ex RAF chef father, his parents ‘made themselves scarce’ – going to bed early. The couple sat on a studio couch, and as they sat with Eddie’s arm around Sally’s shoulders became tighter and telling her he loved her and that he wanted her to get pregnant so she’d marry him soon, instead of waiting a whole two years to Sally’s 21st birthday he lunged for her, his hands were strong and he forced himself on her ignoring her protests, it was all over so quickly she sat stunned then began to cry. Eddie apologised telling her, ‘But you owe it to me now you’re mine I bought you the ring.’ She slept in his parents spare room that night, he looked in next morning to say goodbye and returned to Germany, with his parents left to give her breakfast after which she resumed ‘normal life’.
But soon she began to feel sick every morning and at work some of the typing pool ladies were suspicious – they asked Sally ‘what happened when Eddie came home?’ She whispered to her friend Kay and Kay told Norma who advised Sally to go see a doctor. ‘Don’t you know how babies get made?’ Of course Sally had no idea – this was 1965 and her parents were quite Victorian in their attitudes.
She went to the doctors, had a test and wrote to Eddie asking him to come home when she went to get the result – Dr Riley congratulated her, ‘You’re having a baby how lovely.’
She sat in the car with Eddie in a state of shock. ‘I’ll marry you,’ he kept repeating – she didn’t want to marry him, she knew that now, but what to do apart from cry and cry and cry.
Advice from her friends to drink gin, sit in the bath – she tried nothing happened. So the day arrived when she told her mum, ‘Mum I’m pregnant’ was met with ‘Well get rid of it,’ and dragging Sally upstairs she tried to force a glass of Epsom salts down Sally’s throat, all the while Sally sobbed, ‘No mum I can’t get rid of it.’
‘Alright then you must give it away or get married quick. Such a scandal, what will everyone say?’
So a wedding was hastily arranged, Sally looked modern in her lovely white lace dress from an Oxford Street store called 5th Avenue, mum had taken her on the train and they’d had a lovely day, determined it was going to be a happy time her mum had insisted dad pay for a good dress and shut the neighbours talk up about ‘shotgun’ wedding.
In her room Sally cried every night for a month, people said, ‘It’s just wedding nerves.’ The day before the wedding Eddie’s mum drove her to the airport to meet him and his soldier mates in her Zodiac. The three men staggered from the plane drunk and that was the day; Sally knew it really was a mistake. However, she could not go against her parents, what little money they had, they’d used to give her a lovely wedding, so it went ahead and she flew to her new life, out of sight of neighbours and relatives who might talk, to Germany, an army wife now and another world.