White Boots & Miniskirts - A True Story of Life in the Swinging Sixties. Jacky Hyams

we phone each other about the worst of it: the husband who pleads with us to refund the money because he’s so terrified of his wife’s vitriol, the screaming mum whose teenage daughter is in floods of tears because she wanted to wear the new stilettos on Saturday night, the posh woman who believes it’s her right to order ‘you shop people’ around and who claims all sorts of political connections with Churchill’s family to get her £10 back.

      So there they all are, frustrated consumers in a world where there are no other means of redress other than firing their verbal bullets down a big black Bakelite phone on an unsteady wooden desk. And a 20-something girl in a thigh-high dress who doesn’t give a toss, feet up on the desk, as the frustrated customer screams themselves hoarse. Into an empty drawer.

       CHAPTER TWO

       A SECRET TRIP ON THE CENTRAL LINE

      I am facing a shocking moment of truth. There is no escape from this. I have been stupid, careless and, typically, blindly convinced that it couldn’t possibly happen to me.

      But right now, in this miserable, freezing cold surgery, with its slippery vinyl couch upon which I have just been probed, eyes glued firmly to the cracked grey ceiling, small fists clenched more in anger than fear, I am stunned into silence by the doctor’s words. And he isn’t bothering to be kind. Or sensitive. Why should he? I’m an unmarried young woman who has fallen into an old trap: I am pregnant. A heated, immensely pleasurable but nonetheless speedy exchange of bodily fluids, deshabille, on the rear seat of a parked car near Haverstock Hill, has led me here. Into the pudding club. Many women dream of this moment, this amazing discovery of the creation of life. But some don’t.

      ‘You’re probably about eight weeks gone,’ Dr King says, coldly, not even bothering to look at me as he scribbles on the beige card in front of him. I have come here, to the NHS GP’s surgery in Dalston, a 22-year-old who doesn’t know where to run, what to do. I left home many months before. But officially, I’m still on King’s ‘panel’ because I haven’t bothered to sort out a doctor near my new flat. In 1967, despite all the brouhaha around the ‘permissive society’ there were no over-the-counter pregnancy tests available, purchased from Boots, to conduct in privacy. If you missed one or two periods, your breasts started to swell and you felt overwhelmed by lassitude in the middle of the day, there was only one route ahead for confirming what your body was already telling you: the NHS GP. And mine, while a respected man in the area, is no moderniser. He’s not on side with the politicians already looking ahead to actually changing the draconian laws that made pregnancy termination or abortion an illegal and often dangerous practice for women.

      In fact, King is very much a religious man, born in regimented Edwardian days when the very worst that could befall a young unmarried woman was pregnancy: whatever the circumstances, even rape, society insisted then that the man was never ever culpable, held to account. A child born out of wedlock was a complete no-no. To this man, I’m a fallen woman, a social disgrace. ‘You can make arrangements for adoption,’ he tells me. ‘There’s plenty of Jewish families wanting to adopt.’ I stare at him. He stares back, the iceman. To him, I’m a just an irresponsible girl, all the stuff the papers allude to in the dawning of flower power and psychedelia. We might be reading about it all, yet such fantastic American notions as ‘Make love, not war’ haven’t yet made it across the pond to Dalston. Nor are these ideas likely to affect this man’s beliefs.

      If he could, I think fleetingly, he’d probably throw me out. My parents, like so many older people who thank their lucky stars for the still relatively new NHS, think he’s God, not King. Until today, even I thought he was OK, old fashioned but… he knew his job. ‘But… there must be something I can do,’ I plead. ‘I can’t have a baby, I can’t.’

      Even now, in the midst of my turmoil, what he’s suggesting about adoption is anathema to me. I just don’t want to have a baby. Full stop. Go through with it? He must be crazy. Yet at this point in time, he’s my only hope in the world: this grim, ageing figure of rigid authority in his stiff, three-piece suit, the remnants of his dark wavy hair plastered carefully to one side, his hateful rubber gloves now lying in a steel bowl on a side table. I detest him, his judgement from on high, his power over everyone round here. Yet he and he alone has the knowledge, the power to help me. I ask him again, what can I do? ‘No. There’s nothing,’ he says, his words clipped and curt. ‘Girls like you should be grateful for whatever help you get when you have the baby. You can to go to the hospital and get it all checked out in two weeks time.’ More furious scribbling on the beige card.

      He doesn’t say, ‘Get out now.’ But his body language as he continues to write, ignoring my presence, nudges me to leave. So I teeter out in my brown pointy stilettos, through the packed surgery, past the wailing Bash Street kids of Dalston, out on to the grey, ever-depressing world of Sandringham Road, its once proud and splendid Victorian family houses now derelict and war-ravaged, crammed with immigrant West Indian families dreaming of the balmy Caribbean world and the happy life they’ve left behind – having reached the revered mother country only to be ripped off outrageously by greedy, uncaring landlords. And treated like pariahs by most of the population round here.

      My parents’ flat is just up the road. But there’s no way I’m going there. I’ve taken the day off work to do this, see the doctor. They’d ask questions if I turned up midweek. Instead, I walk in the opposite direction towards Ridley Road market, thinking hard, pushing myself to come up with something, anything that will help get me out of this situation. I’ve told no one at all about what I fear is happening to me, not my flatmates, who are provincial, middle-class girls in London to work and find husbands, nor the man who got me here, my new squeeze from the office, the gregarious Jeff. Jeff is a bit of a secret lover, anyway. No one knows I’m sleeping with him. The girls in the flat and my friends know about my on-off (mostly off) boyfriend, Bryan, the adman. He’s still an Official Boyfriend. But that’s it. What a mess.

      Then, at the junction of Ridley and Sandringham Roads, where you encounter the market itself, the rickety stalls, the slimy, mucky muddle of urban street trading, I remember a conversation I had ages ago, with an old friend from Hackney schooldays, Doreen, a girl I rarely see now since I’ve moved to a different world in north-west London. The connection with my old life, growing up here, these familiar streets, opens up a flash of hope. Yes. Doreen. She knows someone. She told me all about it over the phone. This happened to her. But her boyfriend’s uncle knew someone and her boyfriend, a wealthy foreign student, paid for it all. It was fine. Oh, how lucky I am that troubled day. Salvation is merely round the corner. Doreen, a tiny, skinny girl with a curly short crop, lives in an old block of flats in Dalston Lane with her dad and her younger brother. She’s had a rotten deal. Her mum died when Doreen was small, so she’s more or less had to bring up her younger brother and look after her dad, who is now quite old. Education never featured large in Doreen’s life and she doesn’t work, apart from occasional part-time hours in a high street dress shop.

      She’s home, cheerfully offering me a cup of lemon tea and a rich tea biscuit in the cluttered front room of their cramped flat. Her dad remains, as ever, inert in the bedroom. I give her a brief version of events. Does she still know that man? Does she still have the number? Yes, she’s got it. ‘But it costs about £80,’ she warns me. ‘How you gonna pay for it?’

      ‘I’ll find a way,’ I tell her, carefully writing the number down. It means deception of the worst order. But I’ve already come up with an idea about getting the money for an abortion – way beyond my own resources since I never save a penny out of what I earn.

      The next night, when the flat I share with the three other girls is temporarily deserted, I dial the number from the coin box in our hallway. Push button A. A man with a foreign accent answers. I don’t beat around the bush. ‘I’m pregnant and I don’t want it. My friend says you can help me,’ I say boldly. I’m not in the least bit embarrassed about all this. I want what I want: to get out of this fast – and I’m told this man can do it.