The next day I rose early. After breakfast I got out an A-Z of London and studied it. I needed to find the nearest Labour Exchange and would have to ask someone in a shop maybe or in the street. I also needed to find my way to the Polytechnic Jim had mentioned.
Putting on a smart navy skirt and pale cream blouse, which made me look efficient and capable, I sallied forth. On the way out of my door I bumped into a young, dark-skinned man coming out of the room next to mine. He raised his hat and apologised politely. I hadn’t seen many West Indian people before and the sight of so many in London fascinated me. I’d heard they’d been asked to come over and help boost the post-war work force. He looked a nice person, older than myself, maybe twenty-five or so. I couldn’t help staring at him but he seemed used to it. Feeling ashamed I said quite candidly, ‘I’m so sorry to stare at you, mister. It’s rude of me but I’m from the country and haven’t met a dark-skinned person before.’
‘Seems most people here haven’t,’ was his response. ‘We don’t get made that welcome either.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ I replied, ‘but I haven’t felt very welcome here myself, so don’t feel alone. It seems London isn’t a hospitable place.’
The young man smiled and offered me his hand.
‘I’m Luke McGraw. I see you’ve taken the vacant room next to me.’ His voice had an accent but was cultured and educated. I wondered what he did for a living and why he was obliged to live in a dump like this.
‘Bridie O’Neill. Pleased to meet you, Mr McGraw. Yes, I’m your new neighbour.’
‘Well, Miss O’Neill, I’ll welcome you to Portdown Road if no one else will.’
I smiled. ‘Thanks – those are the first kind words anyone in the house has said to me. That old fellow downstairs is really rude.’
‘What, old Dixie Dean? He’s harmless enough, just nosy and a bit of a scrounger.’
‘Mr McGraw, do you know where the nearest Labour Exchange is?’ I asked tentatively.
‘Oh, yes. Everyone here does. Most of us haunt the place. Just go right out of the door, follow Portdown Road to the end and you’ll find yourself in Holloway Road. You can get a bus from there to the Labour or walk, just ask anyone.’
We parted smiling. To think a foreigner was the only person to welcome me here. I didn’t count Jim who wasn’t a stranger.
I eventually found the Labour Exchange, a dark, forbidding Victorian building. I pushed through the swing doors and went into the waiting room where I saw a great many people seated on hard uncomfortable chairs and more standing. There seemed to be an awful lot of them, their faces tired, dispirited or just plain bored. A receptionist took my name, gave me a form to fill in and then pointed to the back of the room.
‘Have to wait a bit, ‘she said brusquely. ‘It’s a busy day on Fridays.’
As she turned away, I heard her remark to a colleague, ‘Another perishin’ Irishwoman. Why can’t they stay in their peat bogs?’
I began to discover that having the name O’Neill was not such a good thing round here. Almost every other name called out was Irish. The place was crawling with ‘potato eaters’. I stood and waited for what seemed ages. No one offered me a seat though plenty of hale, hearty men were seated, some with their feet up on another chair. I tried to brush off the feet of one of these men but he swore at me and looked so threatening that I backed off.
‘Better not cause trouble, dear,’ whispered a woman standing behind me. Specially him. He’s just out of the nick, he is.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Well, unless you’ve been on the bleedin’ moon, you’d know as well,’ was the reply. ‘Everyone here knows Piggy Daniels.’
I looked at Piggy Daniels and felt the name suited him.
‘What you starin’ at?’ he demanded but I said nothing and swiftly turned my eyes away. It seemed best not to get involved.
After a while another nasty-looking fellow came over to me and struck up a conversation of sorts. His hair was long and matted and looked as if he hadn’t had a wash in weeks. How could he hope to find himself a job looking like this? At first he smiled at me with discoloured teeth and weasel eyes and mentioned the weather, the economy, the shocking shenanigans of the government who put good men like himself into this unemployed plight and then touched upon the stupidity of the
‘bleedin’ bastards’ who’d thrown him off the site he’d been labouring on.
‘Doin’ my bleedin’ best, I was,’ he said, scraping at his teeth with a dirty, much used cocktail stick (heaven knows where he’d found that).
‘Why did they throw you off the site?’ I asked.
‘Punched the foreman, didn’t I? So would you if he kept tellin’you you was dead useless and not even fit to kick with his nice new boots – when you ain’t got no bleedin’ boots, new or otherwise. Day in an’ day out he cursed me and told me how bleedin’ useless I was. Kick a dog when he’s down if you must but in the end the worm turns.’
I tried to make sense of his mixed metaphors but understood that he was an angry man. In a way I almost felt sorry for him. Seeing some flash of sympathy in my eye he then tried to find out where I lived and offered me a drink ‘after I’d been sorted out.’ I smiled feebly and said I was grateful for the offer but no thanks. The smile disappeared and so did all pretence at being nice. Looking at me sullenly, he said, ‘Suit yourself, you fuckin’ bitch,’ and wandered off to another part of the room where he stood picking his teeth and glowering at me silently.
I felt lonely and afraid. I hated this place. There were other women there but they all looked at ease, some laughing and chatting with the men and giving as good as they got. I had no idea how to function in this environment. It was like being in another country. I watched appalled as one man, a huge burly-looking labourer, began to shout and swear at the desk clerk and make a rumpus. I could see why all the staff worked behind an iron grille. It had seemed so unfriendly but now I saw it was for their safety. Eventually the manager came out of his office and told the man he’d call the police if he didn’t shut it and the fellow subsided and allowed himself to be escorted from the premises muttering and swearing as he went.
‘Why’s he making all that fuss?’ I asked someone next to me.
‘Ain’t givin’ him no more dole, I expect,’ was the laconic answer.
When my turn came, I approached a desk and spoke to the job officer behind it. He was a tired-looking elderly man, brusque and disinterested, probably wearied with years of sitting there dealing with abusive, difficult customers. He filled in the form, barking questions at me, not even looking up.
‘This the first time you’ve signed on?’
‘Yes.’
‘What have you been doing since you left school? I see you’ve got four O Levels.’
‘I’ve been keeping house for my dad … oh, and baby-sitting.’
‘Bit of a waste of education, isn’t it? Why don’t you go for an office job? It’ll be better paid than a restaurant.’
‘I hate offices, that’s why. They deaden the soul.’
The officer wasn’t interested in souls, just facts. ‘If you’re used to housekeeping, you could try a job in a hotel … chambermaids are always wanted.’
‘I definitely don’t want to do cleaning work.’
‘Well, you’re mighty picky, Miss O’Neill, if you don’t mind me saying so.’ He sounded cross but I didn’t care. I wasn’t going to do what he wanted me to do just for the sake of it. I was sure I would find what I wanted eventually.
‘I want to be in catering. That’s what I want to do.’
‘So you want to cook or serve in a restaurant.’
‘Yes, but a café will do if there’s nothing better.’
‘Not much in the way of restaurants round here, more pubs and cafés. You’ll have to travel to Camden Town for decent restaurants and most of them are owned by Greek Cypriots.’
‘I don’t mind who I work for.’
‘Maybe not, but they’ll mind you. They always employ family, hardly ever outsiders. Close lot they are. Well, there’s De Marco’s, round the corner. I haven’t heard they need anyone but go there and ask for Queenie. She’s been serving there for years and you’ll be hard put to match her. She never writes a thing down but remembers what every single customer wants. Frank De Marco’s the owner, but Queenie hires the staff. And there’s also O’Reilly’s fish and chip place in Junction Rd. He wants someone to wash up and help in the kitchen. Here’s the addresses – off you go and see what you can do and don’t be so picky. Oh … I suppose you want an IP first.’
‘What’s that?’
He actually looked up at me in surprise.
‘An immediate payment, of course. It has to go to the EO to authorise it – so you’ll have to wait again.’
‘Well, I don’t need any payment,’ I said, to his astonishment. ‘I can manage for a little while longer on my savings.’
The officer regarded me as if I had just stepped off the moon.
‘Hear that, Vera!’ he called out loudly to one of his colleagues, ‘got a customer here doesn’t want any money!’
This remark produced a great deal of amusement amongst both staff and nearby clients. I turned bright red and gathered my papers together, stuffing them in my bag.
Still looking highly amused, the officer turned back to me and said ‘Okay, well, get yourself off and if you don’t have any luck you’ll have to come in again and see what else is on the cards. Next please.’
I thanked him politely but he had already waved over the next applicant and didn’t give me a further glance. I felt almost inhuman in this place, a name on a conveyor belt of names: English, Scottish and Irish names, African names, Cypriot names.
I went off to find the famous Queenie at De Marco’s. She was a pleasant woman in her late thirties, plump and motherly. She looked me over and shook her head.
‘You’d do fine, dear, but I’ve just hired a couple of new girls only the other week. Give me your name and phone number and I’ll let you know if one of them goes. Can’t always rely on these local girls, they can be a lazy lot. You do look willing. Shame, really. I’d like to help.’
‘I don’t know the phone number where I live.’ It hadn’t occurred to me to take note of the pay phone in the hall. ‘I just moved in, you see.’
‘Well, this is our number.’ She handed me a card. ‘Ring here in a couple of weeks and see what’s going on then. I’ll bet my boots one of these girls will have upped and left or spilled soup over someone.’
I liked Queenie and the restaurant too, which looked clean and well run. I left with regret. What bad luck! A fortnight. Could I wait that long? Dispirited and already tired, I went to see O’Reilly’s fish and chip shop but the mere look and smell of the place and its owner put me off so I didn’t even stop to ask about the vacancy. I didn’t mind starting with the washing up but something about Mr O’Reilly gave me the shivers and fish and chips weren’t exactly the sort of cuisine I had in mind. I went straight out of the place and wandering down Junction Road found another grotty local café where I ordered spam fritters and chips, the cheapest thing on the menu. The food was greasy and heavy and felt like a lump inside me afterwards because I ate too quickly. I hadn’t eaten much for breakfast in my eagerness to get going.
After my meal, I walked back down Junction Rd and found Archway Underground station. It was the first time I’d ever seen an escalator and I stood at the top of the moving staircase in trepidation, afraid to put a foot forward. A few people brushed past me until a young woman took me by the arm and pulled me on with her.
‘It’s not going to eat you, dear,’ she laughed.
It was weird, this sensation of moving without my doing anything. The nice woman guided me off at the bottom as well. I thanked her and she smiled and hurried on her way. Everyone seemed in such a hurry; it made me feel quite dazed at times. I managed to manoeuvre the Underground and arrived at Kentish Town where I asked around for the Polytechnic and was directed to an austere building with a pillared portico. Here I was to be disappointed yet again. The woman in the office informed me that all the catering courses were booked up for the next term.
‘You’ll have to try again in September and book up for next year,’ she advised me. ‘Sorry, dear. Your teachers should have advised you about that.’ But how could my poor teachers have advised me on any career move when I had no idea at that time what I meant to do? It was my own fault and I felt a fool.
On my return to Portdown Rd, I went slowly upstairs. I was sure I saw old Dixie Dean peering out of a crack in his door but ignored him and he didn’t come out. There was something malevolent about the old man and I was determined to avoid him. There wasn’t a sign of anyone else. I looked at the door next to mine and felt a sort of warmth that the nice West Indian man lived there. He at least had been friendly and helpful. Queenie was the only other person who had treated me like a human being with feelings and sense. I was upset at the way people spoke about the Irish. It was a mean and nasty world out there.
Entering my room, I sank down into the armchair and gave myself up to gloom. Eventually, I put on the kettle and then looked around me. My senses had been fine-tuned since childhood to anything out of the way through my fear of Millie. Something felt different about the room. I couldn’t put my finger on it but odd things seemed to have been slightly moved; a drawer was very slightly open, something I would never do. I had a thing about shutting cupboard doors and drawers properly. And the photos looked wrong. A couple of photos had been picked up and then put back but not carefully enough.
It made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. Someone had entered my room when I was out, but how? I had locked the door behind me. I took a good look around but nothing was missing. There was little to lose. My necklace was still in its box on the chest of drawers. Thank goodness I’d taken my money envelope with me.