My Secret Sister: Jenny Lucas and Helen Edwards' Family Story (19 page)

My mother always invited him in and put on her best act as she passed him the biscuits. ‘I’ve opened the chocolate bourbons for you,’ she would say, tilting her head and smiling.

Tappy always wore a trendy denim jacket and scruffy jeans, even under his milkman’s white coat. If my father was there, he used to tell him, ‘Get that hat off in my house!’ This was his joke. The ‘hat’ was the milkman’s thick, curly hair. Thick or long hair on a young man shocked many of the older generation in those days, but Tommy had taken to this maverick and enjoyed chatting with him.

Tappy used to tell me about the Animals and what gigs they were playing. Then fame took him away, but I still felt like I was part of it. Many years later I would hear about Tappy again. He worked with all the top artists, including Elvis, Barbara Streisand and Jimmy Hendrix. In fact, it was Tappy who brought Hendrix over to Britain for the first time and made him internationally famous.

My friends and I used to spend quite a bit of time at the funfair, and those of us with money to spare used to go on the rides, listening to rock music playing in the background. It was the best place to hear all the latest groups. When the Animals went to number one in the charts, it was announced over the loudspeakers and we all cheered for our local lads.

I was fortunate to have such great friends to take me out of my turbulent home life. As well as sharing the school activities, my friends and I went swimming when we could, and I got heavily involved in ice skating. Horse riding, too, though I didn’t have to pay. I was the kid that hung around and helped to clean out the stables. For that privilege I would get a free ride.

Soon I found myself a part-time Saturday job as an ‘assistant shop assistant’ in a local fashion shop called Michelle Boutique. It was next door to Woolworths and there was a solicitor’s office upstairs. The fire station was down the back lane, so fire engines often came flying past, with their big silver bells ringing when we were least expecting them.

I was the junior, responsible for cleaning the shop inside and out first thing in the morning. I had to polish the door handle and clean the windows till they sparkled. I swept the pavement from the shop to the kerb and sluiced it down when it was particularly bad. Next, I vacuumed the floor throughout, removed the dust covers from the clothes rails, dusted the surfaces and tidied the back of the shop from the previous day. Finally I had to make sure that all the hangers pointed in the same direction. No deviation allowed.

Once we were open, I was sent down to the local café to collect the bacon butties for us and for the solicitors upstairs. I still remember them – salty, succulent and dripping with ketchup. The lean bacon we have nowadays bears little comparison.

We were a groovy boutique, with lots of fab clothes for teenagers aspiring to Mary Quant fashions at a fraction of the price. As well as bell-bottoms or cigarette-line jeans, we sold courtelle twin-sets and the popular turtleneck sweater. We stocked a good range of multi-patterned stockings, including some with the Beatles woven in, which Joan loved to wear. Our ‘Mod’ A-line shift dresses sold well, mainly in black-and-white block patterns. We even had the famous paper dress and knickers, which were a big novelty that brought people in to look, but they didn’t do very well.

Our fastest selling item was a silky nylon ‘non-iron and uncreasable’ mini shift dress which came in a vast range of paisley patterns and colours, folded into a tiny plastic bag with a drawstring. They were cheap and sold like hot cakes. But when you think about it, they were so short they probably didn’t cost much to make.

I liked the job, but it was hard work and a long day. For this I earned seventeen shillings and sixpence (88p), which I thought at the time was a small fortune. It was, for a girl whose parents never gave her pocket money. There was a building society across the road from the shop and I opened a savings account – the first one I ever had.

Once I had saved enough, I decided to treat myself. I went to Newcastle on the bus and bought a pack of seven pairs of pants, every pair a different colour, a pair for every day of the week. As I rode home on the bus again, I smiled to myself all the way. I walked into the house clutching my pack of pants, wrapped in a little bag.

‘What have you got there?’ challenged my mother.

‘I’ve bought myself some knickers. Seven pairs of pants, so that I can have a clean pair every day.’

She gave me such a look. ‘Oooh,’ she smirked. ‘Just look at you. Aren’t you the fancy one, then?’

Whitley Bay was quite a vibrant seaside town, with lots of summer visitors. There was a Scots week, when traditionally all of the factories in Scotland would close down and workers migrated south for their brief holiday. The boutique was always particularly busy then and we sold a lot of bikinis – usually cotton and no stretch.

I was gradually establishing a life of my own away from the problems at home – growing up with my friends, engaged in activities and doing a part-time job I enjoyed.

At fifteen I had to leave school. All my friends would soon be going on to college to do their A levels. I wasn’t even allowed to finish my O-level year.

‘You will not be going to college,’ my father said. ‘It’s time you got out and earned some money to pay your way in this house.’

‘But I have to do my exams to be a nurse,’ I wailed.

‘A ridiculous idea!’ he said. ‘You’d spend all your time cleaning up old men.’

‘Can’t I even do my O levels before I leave?’

‘No. You have to pay your keep. You can stay in your job as shop assistant and do it full-time. I’ve arranged it all for you.’

This was my future. All my hopes and ambitions of training to be a nurse were wiped away in that moment. I knew it was no use protesting. I felt empty and helpless – distraught. It seemed that every good thing, every opportunity I’d ever had in my life, was snatched away from me. I did well at school. I wanted to go on to college with my friends. But no. I had to give up education the moment it was legal. No choice.

Mercia and Tommy had no aspirations for me. Except as a work-horse.

So now I worked full-time at the boutique. But my pay was not my own. I didn’t even know how much I earned. Every week, when I picked up my sealed wage-packet, I had to take it home unopened and hand it over to my father. He opened it and gave me just five shillings (25p) ‘pocket money’.

One day, I came home from work straight into another situation.

A few years before, my parents had applied for a council house. Today a letter had arrived to say they could have one . . . back in Seghill, the mining village, home of my first memories and the extended family all around. As I took my coat off, I heard the raised voices. The argument raged for a long time, to and fro.

‘I will not go back to that bloody place,’ fumed my father. ‘It’s a backward step. My job is here, in Whitley Bay. Why should I travel to work when it’s just round the corner here?’

‘You and your precious bus-driving. What about me? Don’t you think I should have a say in this? After all, it’s me that has to do all the skivvying at home.’

‘Listen to you! You never do any housework. Helen does it all.’

‘You’ve no idea how hard I work every day for you, and no thanks I get for it.’

‘Stop playing the martyr, pit-yacker.’

‘They’re offering us a whole house with a proper garden, not a flat with a shared back yard. I’ve never had that since we got married. Only one that I had to work my fingers to the bone for. Left to you, we could never have a house with a garden again.’

‘Stop your nagging, woman. We’ve got a perfectly good place here. I’m not moving, and that’s that.’

But in the end, my mother got her way. She wheedled him round to saying yes.

That was it. We were going to move house again. I went to my room and slumped down on my bed. I did not want to move anywhere. But I knew that, once again, I had no choice. I would be moving away from my friends, my social life, my job in the boutique.

It was a 1950s council house, a two-bed semi with a large kitchen and a through-lounge the other side of the railway tracks from where we’d lived before. A lot of the aunties and uncles still lived in the village, about ten minutes walk away.

The day we moved was a nightmare. I was at work, so I didn’t see much of it. My father had got hold of a van from somewhere. My mother’s family turned up to help. When I arrived home, Auntie Dorrie was there with Auntie Nancy and Uncle James. Auntie Dorrie was a person who liked to take charge.

She stood with her hands on her hips, giving orders. ‘Now you bring that sideboard over here, man,’ she said to James, who was coming in through the front door backwards, with Tommy at the other end. ‘Put it against this wall here. Left a bit. Mind the lamp-stand.’

Auntie Nancy moved the lamp.

‘No, James,’ said my father. ‘We’ll put it over here, man. By the window.’

Auntie Dorrie scowled.

‘You needn’t make that face,’ barked Tommy.

‘Less of your lip, man,’ replied Auntie Dorrie, pulling the sideboard down the wall to where she wanted it.

‘You leave that sideboard alone.’

‘Haaway. It’ll look better here.’

‘This is
my
house,’ he shouted in her face. ‘And I will decide where it goes.’ He pulled it back over to the window.

At this point, my mother walked in from the kitchen. ‘Just ignore him, Dorrie. I like it where you put it.’

‘You can stay out of it,’ Tommy barked, prodding her and pushing her back to the doorway.

He turned to Auntie Dorrie. ‘As for you,’ he stormed as he walked across the room and started to push her towards the hall, ‘we don’t need your help – interfering, more like. You can get yourself off home.’

‘After all I’ve done for you!’

‘Much good it did,’ he scoffed.

As he gave her a final shove, she stumbled and collided with a tea chest full of pots and pans. She picked up the frying pan on the top. ‘How dare you treat me like that!’ she yelled and hit Tommy over the head with it.

He yelped, put his hand up and steadied himself, then took hold of her arm and frog-marched her to the door.

‘Let go of my arm,’ she spluttered. ‘You’re hurting me.’

Tommy’s face was set and his eyes started to bulge. He propelled her down the front path to the gate and shoved her through it so hard that she had to hold onto the post to stop herself from falling. Then he slammed the gate behind her. ‘And you needn’t bother coming back! I won’t have any interfering in this house. You can tell them all. This is
my
house and I’ll have it how I like.’

This was the start to life in our new home. From then on, the aunties and uncles kept their distance. Most of my older cousins had moved away, and the ones remaining in Seghill were a tight-knit group. They had their lives here, but all my friends and my social life were in Whitley Bay. I felt marooned. That evening my father sat me down. ‘I’ve arranged an interview for you tomorrow. Fill in this application form tonight.’

It was for another job as a shop assistant, but this time it was in Newcastle. I filled in the application form as instructed and was asked to go for an interview. On the long bus journey I built up a sense of excitement at the idea of going to work in the ‘big city’.

The interview went well and I was duly offered the job. I travelled to work every day on the bus and soon made new friends. I was in the ladies’ coats department of C&A in Northumberland Street. It was a popular store in those days, with all the latest fashions at reasonable prices. I remember the huge window displays and snooty-looking mannequins positioned throughout the store. I had to wear a formal black dress or skirt and top, with black shoes and stockings. We had to look smart at all times.

My supervisor was a real-life version of Mrs Slocombe from
Are You Being Served?
She looked immaculate every day, with lots of make-up and permed hair in a bouffant style. She wore one of those gold chains on her spectacles and watched us like a hawk. If she saw any of us doing something wrong, she slowly raised the spectacles in the air and placed them on the bridge of her nose, with the expression of someone lining us up to face a firing squad. She was very strict, but not unkind, always making sure we took our breaks at the proper time, which she timed to the second. It was quite old-fashioned in some ways. We were all required to call each other ‘Miss so and so’ or ‘Mrs so and so’. If she caught us using first names, she sent us to the stockroom to tidy and dust the shelves.

‘Customer service must be second to none,’ she insisted. ‘If the customer requires you to stand on your head, you must do so immediately!’

We had half-hour breaks for lunch. I usually went to the staff dining room and had a cup of tea, maybe with a packet of crisps or an apple. I had to be careful because I had my bus fare home to pay and if I ate lunch I wouldn’t have enough money left.

The job was tolerable, but nothing special. However, it was fun to be in Newcastle, an exhilarating place for a teenager in those days. I loved the bustling atmosphere, and there always seemed to be something going on: buskers, street people, mods and rockers, hippies. We used to go to a coffee bar called The Pit in the basement of a shop on the main street and stay for hours to watch all the Bohemian characters congregating there. They fascinated me. I don’t know how that coffee bar ever made any money, as we kids only ever bought one cup of coffee and made it last for ages. The other club I loved going to when I could afford it was the Club A’Gogo on Percy Street, where the Animals had begun their career.

One morning I was on my way to work when the bus jolted over a railway crossing much faster than usual. It juddered and shook, and the next thing I remember is lying on the floor in the centre aisle. I had fainted. I levered myself up gently, sharp pains shooting down my spine. The conductor helped me off the bus at my stop and I forced my legs to walk me to work. It was clear to everyone when I arrived that I was struggling. By now my back was on fire and I could barely move. I tried to find a comfortable position to alleviate the worst of the pain, but it was no good. Suddenly I felt nauseous, and my supervisor was called.