a regular bed partner. Once. She’s out there now, on the pull and loving it. He can’t find a replacement. Why? Because he’s morphed into a saddo barfly. I don’t bother to hide my opinions. ‘You’re only pissed off with me because no one wants to sleep with you,’ I hiss. No sooner do the words fall from my lips than I see by his expression that I’ve hit home. Hard. That’s my trouble. It’s one thing to see the truth but not everyone wants to hear it. Yet again, I say the unsayable without a thought for what happens next. My brand new, sleeveless skimmer dress from Fenwicks, costing nearly £ 10, is quickly dripping double scotch and ice. A dry-cleaning bill of three shillings and sixpence awaits me. A furious Bryan, frustrated male incarnate, has chucked the contents of the glass at me.
‘Bitch!’ he yells. ‘Fucking bitch!’ He lurches down the stairs, still clutching the empty glass, down past the doorman, out into Ken High Street. And out of my life. For good.
CHAPTER FIVE
BANDAGE MAN
R osemary isn’t just older, more experienced and worldly than my previous flatmates. She is a man magnet. Flashily dressed, a woman that men tend to gawp at on the street, she creates a considerable flurry of attention around her. I stop using clubs to meet men: at that point, they seem to be swarming around us. All the time. Parties. Friends of friends, determinedly collecting phone numbers, ringing up out of the blue, even if I don’t remember them. Men I’d run into at drinks after work.
Some just become friends. One long-lasting friendship comes about in a rather odd way, though the incident underlines my far-too-casual attitude towards going off into the night with total strangers. In a jam-packed hallway at a very noisy, crowded party in SwissCottage, I get chatting to Laurie, a journalist turned public relations man from West Hampstead. Laurie is a few years older than me and we have something in common: a shared appreciation of French and Italian movies. It turns out we’ve both worked for the same foreign film distribution company, Gala Films, in Soho at different times in the early ’60s. Soon, he’s proffering a friendly toke from a joint of weed, which I refuse. ‘I’ve just moved into this great place with my friend John,’ he informs me, taking a huge drag of the joint and nearly choking with the effort. ‘It’s a big mansion flat. We’ve both got our own space, so it works really well.’
I don’t fancy him one bit. So it is probably quite daft to accept his offer to drive me to West Hampstead to inspect his new premises about half an hour later. But I am an endlessly curious girl in many ways. I really do want to check the flat out, have a look round, see how others are living. And Laurie is Jewish, which to me is a sort of dating shorthand for safe, sober, highly unlikely to be a lunatic rapist. I’ll have a good look round. Then I’ll get him to run me home afterwards. But once inside his space, which is essentially a decent-sized bedroom masquerading as a studio, with armchairs and a sofa, things take a rapid turn for the worse. All conversation ceases. Laurie lies on his big double bed expectantly. I sit on an armchair. Now I’ve seen the flat – which is actually quite spacious, with stained glass panels in the front doorand an impressively thick carpet on the stairs – I’m ready to depart. Er… could he run me home?
Silence. The PR man’s eyes are now closed.
‘Look, I wanna go home. If you don’t wanna drive, you can call me a cab,’ I offer.
More silence. Then a gentle snore. He’s asleep. Or rather, I know immediately he’s just pretending to be asleep. He’d got my phone number earlier at the party. He probably had hopes of some action, but I’ve dashed them by making it clear I want out. Sorry, Laurie, but you don’t get off that lightly. Be a gent. Play the game. So I try again. Nicely. ‘Can you call me a cab, please?’ Nothing. Another fake snore
‘Bitch!’ he yells. ‘Fucking bitch!’ He lurches down the stairs, still clutching the empty glass, down past the doorman, out into Ken High Street. And out of my life. For good.
CHAPTER FIVE
BANDAGE MAN
R osemary isn’t just older, more experienced and worldly than my previous flatmates. She is a man magnet. Flashily dressed, a woman that men tend to gawp at on the street, she creates a considerable flurry of attention around her. I stop using clubs to meet men: at that point, they seem to be swarming around us. All the time. Parties. Friends of friends, determinedly collecting phone numbers, ringing up out of the blue, even if I don’t remember them. Men I’d run into at drinks after work.
Some just become friends. One long-lasting friendship comes about in a rather odd way, though the incident underlines my far-too-casual attitude towards going off into the night with total strangers. In a jam-packed hallway at a very noisy, crowded party in SwissCottage, I get chatting to Laurie, a journalist turned public relations man from West Hampstead. Laurie is a few years older than me and we have something in common: a shared appreciation of French and Italian movies. It turns out we’ve both worked for the same foreign film distribution company, Gala Films, in Soho at different times in the early ’60s. Soon, he’s proffering a friendly toke from a joint of weed, which I refuse. ‘I’ve just moved into this great place with my friend John,’ he informs me, taking a huge drag of the joint and nearly choking with the effort. ‘It’s a big mansion flat. We’ve both got our own space, so it works really well.’
I don’t fancy him one bit. So it is probably quite daft to accept his offer to drive me to West Hampstead to inspect his new premises about half an hour later. But I am an endlessly curious girl in many ways. I really do want to check the flat out, have a look round, see how others are living. And Laurie is Jewish, which to me is a sort of dating shorthand for safe, sober, highly unlikely to be a lunatic rapist. I’ll have a good look round. Then I’ll get him to run me home afterwards. But once inside his space, which is essentially a decent-sized bedroom masquerading as a studio, with armchairs and a sofa, things take a rapid turn for the worse. All conversation ceases. Laurie lies on his big double bed expectantly. I sit on an armchair. Now I’ve seen the flat – which is actually quite spacious, with stained glass panels in the front doorand an impressively thick carpet on the stairs – I’m ready to depart. Er… could he run me home?
Silence. The PR man’s eyes are now closed.
‘Look, I wanna go home. If you don’t wanna drive, you can call me a cab,’ I offer.
More silence. Then a gentle snore. He’s asleep. Or rather, I know immediately he’s just pretending to be asleep. He’d got my phone number earlier at the party. He probably had hopes of some action, but I’ve dashed them by making it clear I want out. Sorry, Laurie, but you don’t get off that lightly. Be a gent. Play the game. So I try again. Nicely. ‘Can you call me a cab, please?’ Nothing. Another fake snore
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