White Boots & Miniskirts (17 page)

What? Even knowing Ines’ plight, I hadn’t expected this sort of narrow attitude, mainly because I never considered others’ motivations, being far too focused on my own desires and emotions. And I wasn’t a small town girl, anyway. Suffice to say, I ignored her advice. By now, I’d long stopped taking the pill. I hated the symptoms, either blowing you up or, when trying the low-estrogen
variety, Minovlar, reducing interest in sex – and had followed the advice given to me that summer at the Marie Stopes clinic in Whitfield Street, off Tottenham Court Road, to use a Dutch cap (or diaphragm to use the correct term) as a means of contraception. Using a cap was messy and it wasn’t good for spontaneous lovemaking. But for all that the little rubber cap had, sadly, remained unused after Michael’s departure, I’d popped it into my luggage, just the same. You never knew…

The Portuguese men I met in Lisbon, introduced to me via Alice’s expat circle, were outwardly sophisticated, spoke excellent English, had good jobs and were well travelled. But the surface hid the truth: they were nothing like the men I’d known at home because their culture carried some very clear distinctions. Women were either sisters, mothers, fiancées, wives – or whores. Single women could flirt all they liked – that was accepted – but when it came down to it, the line was clearly drawn. If single women let go sexually, they’d be branded. Forever. Hence Ines’ plight because she’d been caught out, which was even worse. Rather than sensibly accepting Alice’s advice as a useful primer, of course I had to find all this out for myself. I had one brief fling, with Diego, a handsome airline captain in his thirties, a friend of Alice’s English boyfriend who worked for a big multi-national.

Darkly handsome in the Latin way, with huge eyes, Diego was utterly charming, gracious and, in all truth, I couldn’t wait to get into bed with him after our second
romantic outing. We’d been in a pretty restaurant in Lisbon’s fascinating, ancient Alfama quarter with its hilly, cobbled streets and atmospheric fado music bars. He drove me back to his bachelor apartment in a modern building in the suburbs, fondling my knee with one hand, smiling at me promisingly. This was going to be hot. I could tell. And it had been a long time between lovers. In his cool, tiled bathroom, I fiddled with the Dutch cap and readied myself for love.

I needn’t have bothered. It was awful. Clumsy. Far too quick. A sexual write-off. When I thought about it later, he made even Carnaby Street Dave look quite good (and he’d been pretty rubbish). Then, just as I’d been warned, Diego’s attitude changed immediately. He went into the bathroom, quickly showered, came out and coldly ordered me to get dressed
now
. He rushed me out of his place – was he scared someone might spot me? – and drove like a maniac back to Alice’s apartment, 15 minutes away along the Marginal, without a single word. It was pretty obvious he couldn’t wait to see the back of me.

I said nothing, closed the car door quietly behind me, though I was sorely tempted to slam it hard. Mentally, I was seething, furious with myself. Some men are better lovers than others – that is a fact of life. Some fall asleep straight afterwards. That’s nature. But what I had never encountered so far was a total and very obvious loathing for my presence the minute the brief act itself was over. Was he disgusted with me, or himself? I never told Alice
I’d indulged with Diego, but she seemed to pick up on what had happened, anyway. A few days later, she told me she had another Portuguese friend, Carlos. He was single, worked in a bank in Estoril near the casino and had a large apartment in Monte Estoril, a few minutes walk from the central part of Estoril. Staying there would be better for me because it was more central than her flat which was only easily accessible with a car. Carlos had told her there was plenty of room for the English girl if she wanted to stay there.

I wound up staying in Carlos’ flat for several weeks. He was short, stocky, really lively company, had travelled a lot and seemed to get what I was all about. Still a tad confused by my initial encounter with the airline man, at first I assumed he would jump on me, so I’d have to be wary. Yet he didn’t. He had someone, anyway, a pretty blonde English girl who was living in Vancouver. He’d be going to see her there soon. Her photo, in a big silver frame, was prominently displayed in the living room of what was a comfortable, carefully furnished apartment with dark furniture and cool, tiled floors with a spacious, flower-decked balcony.

The problem was, with nothing much to do in the day except sleep late (until the daily servant arrived to clean) then wander down to the seafront – it was mild and sunny in the daytime, even though it was November – my routine became a permanent loll around a café, reading or taking long walks along the coastline, returning to the flat
just before nightfall, then hanging around for Carlos and dinner. Quite soon, a sort of Carlos dependency developed. I already had too much time on my hands to think about Michael and to wonder what had happened to him. I wrote him many letters, but never posted one. My usual confidence, so high when I had left London, had ebbed away after the Diego incident. I was staying in a smart area, in a pretty environment. But I wanted some comfort, some reassurance that I was still a desirable woman. None came. I became quite downcast. This wasn’t what I’d expected.

Carlos did whatever he did at the bank in the day. Most nights, he’d phone a friend, Marcos, a skinny sidekick who worked at Lisbon’s Ritz hotel and usually the three of us would dine out, sometimes in places along the coast in Cascais, mostly in cheaper tiny local places around Estoril or Lisbon. The food was terrific: fish, rice, rabbit, liver and soups, all unfamiliar dishes but always tasty and, oh, so filling. But it was the Portuguese desserts that hooked me: the sticky, sweet cakes in the cafés and the hardy perennial, a caramel confection called a
pudim flan
, that satisfied my ongoing craving for sugar.

Soon, it became a regular afternoon ritual as I lazed away my time. I’d point to a cream cake,
bolo di crema
, and they’d hand me half a dozen small, sweet, creamy delights, so I’d stuff myself with them, all in anticipation of more stuffing of my face at dinner. There wasn’t anything else to do. Sightseeing,
guidebook in hand, to me, was something older people did, though I did manage to take the bus to the hill town of Sintra, a beautiful spot with the most stunning 19th-century buildings, Moorish palaces and exquisitely tended gardens.

Such was my need for reassurance, I decided I wanted Carlos. He was really good fun. He flirted outrageously with me, sometimes leaving me little notes on my bed to deliberately wind me up: ‘I was here to screw the Mad English but she had gone out,’ he’d scribble. Or: ‘Today I went down to the beach and everyone said: “Where is the Mad English with the mad eyes?” Is she coming back?’ And so on… Yet there was no way Carlos would be having his way with me. In time, I suspected he thought I was a bit of a slapper, anyway, talking endlessly about London and ‘screwing’, wandering off each day to walk around Monte Estoril, basically doing sweet FA. And his passion for Vancouver Girl was evident. He wanted to marry her.

So there it was, a rejection of my charms. Why did I care? I was having a free holiday, living in someone else’s apartment with a servant to clean up after me, dining out at my host’s expense, even getting a low level suntan by day – yet all I focused on for most of my time in Estoril was getting an amusing, yet not overwhelmingly attractive man into bed. And not quite accepting why he wouldn’t come near me, even though it was blindingly apparent from my one previous experience with Diego
that this was a very different culture and I’d be wise to forget about it. Some men, amazingly, were immune to my charms. How bad could it be?

Holidays are one thing, but stepping long term out of your normal environment into a totally different one, remaining totally unoccupied, just drifting along, is never a great idea. It happens all the time with people who rush off to live in sunny climes. It’s just too easy to lose yourself in over-indulgence, drinking, eating far too much. Yet I drank less there than I would at home. Carlos and Marcos didn’t overdo it, anyway, and it was just a glass or two of wine before or port after dinner. I couldn’t afford to booze during the day. So my real Portuguese indulgence, through sheer, total boredom, became eating. My waistline expanded. Everything got tighter, though I blamed Carlos’ faithful daily, the servant who took away all my dirty stuff and returned it washed and perfectly ironed. I went from shapely to chubby in a matter of weeks: she was shrinking everything. Portuguese hand-laundering was clearly not up to the same standard found in London launderettes. That was the problem.

By December, my money had dwindled to virtually nothing. I’d spend during the daytime on everything from coffees, drinks and newspapers to stamps. I penned many letters home to friends, writing back to Molly and Ginger saying I was having a great time but didn’t know when I’d return. I’d already learned in the
odd English paper I could buy that the country was poised for a dreadful winter of strikes. There’d already been a council worker walkout and overtime ban that autumn, with smelly rubbish piling up in the streets and troops even called out to clear the streets in some places. It was a good time to be somewhere else. Yet although though the Portuguese escudo bought quite a lot more than it would have back home, money was rapidly becoming a problem.

I asked Carlos if I could I find some sort of work but he came up with nothing. ‘They don’t have jobs for Mad English, Jacky, it’s too risky.’ Then I rang Alice, asked her to put the word around the English-speaking community. She didn’t sound very confident. Yet a couple of days later, she rang back. She had something.

‘You may not be interested, Jacky, but it’s an artist friend of mine, Jeremy. He’s lived here for years but he always has problems finding models to pose for him – er – without clothes. The local girls won’t dream of it, of course. But I thought you might not mind…’ Alice had clearly sussed me out. Nude modelling? Sure. Ask the Mad English. Not much money in it? Never mind. This was not my proudest moment, since I had never considered removing my clobber as a money-spinner. Until now. I fronted up at Jeremy’s leafy studio near Cascais, posed for him with my wrapover printed top off while he drew furiously, silently, for about half an hour. A lean-framed, scruffy, slightly pongy English artist in his
fifties, Jeremy made no attempt to touch me, thankfully. And the escudos – about the equivalent of
£
2 – were eagerly handed over. If I liked, he said, I could come back every week. A regular job.

But afterwards, over my daily
bolo
stuffing session in my regular Monte Estoril haunt, I reflected that this was all a bit ridiculous. I’d come here for an adventure and all I was doing was getting fat, not getting laid and now posing with my tits out. An early, if plump, Page 3 girl. (Amazingly, the
Sun
’s Page 3 feature first saw the light of day that same month in 1970 – which resulted in raised voices in the Parliament and ever-increasing sales for the paper.) Perhaps what I was doing was some sort of respite from the loneliness of my dreary Muswell Hill bedsit or my life as an indifferent West End temp with a big clackety typewriter and a bad attitude. But this still wasn’t exactly
la dolce vita
. I wouldn’t have taken such a ‘job’ back home, would I?

It was inevitable, really. I dug out my return ticket, took the little train that runs from Monte Estoril station to Lisbon the very next day and went to the ticket desk at the Cais do Sodre station. After an exchange consisting of a few badly pronounced Portuguese words, a sentence or two in French, a few Italian words and even a bit of English, I had a new return date, 24 December. I’d travel over Christmas but see in 1971 on home territory. Plenty of time to work out what I’d do when I got back during the long, tedious train ride. At least I’d be prepared for
the marathon journey this time, with food and water packed, thanks to my last precious escudos. Now it was my turn to ring Ines to say goodbye.

‘Say “Hello” to London, Jacky,’ she told me sadly. ‘Maybe they’ll let me come and see you one day.’ Carlos had to work, so he couldn’t drive me to Lisbon and wave me off. ‘I will miss the Mad English,’ he joked as we promised to keep in touch.

This time the long, long train ride didn’t seem quite so tortuous. I’d paid a small supplement to go first class for the Portuguese section, which meant a bit more comfort and I didn’t get the two miserable guards, grim-faced, outside. Christmas Day came and went as the almost empty train made its way slowly to the Spanish border and by Boxing Day I was nearly in France. My festive season lunch, stuffed into my case, consisted of spicy Portuguese sausage and bread, plus a couple of stale Portuguese cakes. Why is it that the return journey is always faster somehow, no matter how long the trip? By the time I’d reached Paris, almost two days later, and opted to walk, lugging my bag, from the Gare d’Austerlitz to the Gare du Nord for the train ride to Calais, I noted with total disgust that I could no longer do up the zip on my beloved tight, green velvet trousers from Fifth Avenue. I was just too fat.

A chubby, dishevelled size 14, my trousers held up only by a safety pin, I boarded the cross-Channel ferry at Calais on a wintry evening at the end of 1970. It was a
huge relief to chat to my fellow travellers without having to worry about making myself understood in another language. Yet my prospects, whether regarding men, money or job, were zilch. My country seemed to mirror this somewhat bleak state of affairs. The newspaper headlines warned that Britain was poised for more upheaval, disputes, union walkouts and worse, though I’d just missed the dreadful power workers’ work to rule that was almost as bad as an out-and-out strike. It had meant awful power cuts throughout the day and night and candles at a premium, soaring in price to 15 shillings.

It didn’t sound good. Yet with my vague but omnipresent optimism, I figured I’d overcome any problems. Somehow. But the extra weight would have to come off if I were to regain my old pulling power.