15

This time I am climbing stairs - not the angular sixties stairs of Kingsway - these are the curving Victorian stone stairs outside the roundhouse in Chalk Farm. I'm fifteen now. I'm with my best friend Miranda. I think she is much prettier than me. She's one inch taller, which I ache to be, and has jet black, shiny, poker straight hair and lots of freckles.

We go to school together in Victoria Street - it's part of a huge block of offices opposite New Scotland Yard. It isn't really a proper school - seven or eight rooms on the seventh floor. The lift is old and creaky and it's operated by a horrible little man who leers at us. He is balding and he has scabs on his head which he scratches. He asks us if we want to go to the basement with him. We often walk instead. The Misses Dixon and Wolfe tutorial college for young ladies. There are about fifty of us, all girls. most of us are there because we have been expelled from other schools. Our parents never say we were expelled - they say we were asked to leave - it sounds so much more respectable. For us it’s a badge of honour.

At Dixon and Wolfe we can choose what we want to do. So I only pick the subjects I enjoy: history, art, English, and French. I am so thrilled to be giving up maths at fourteen. We do our exams when we’re ready so I do most of them almost straightaway, and then I do hardly anything there - mainly art A level - it's the only A level they do. Endless empty bottles of Matteus Rose and fruit arranged on a table draped in crushed velvet. It isn’t very inspiring.

It’s the in between parts that interest me. Sometimes the Queen goes to meet someone at Victoria station and we are allowed to stand outside to watch. The road is always lined with Gurkhas and we try our hardest to make them laugh because we know they are supposed to stand poker straight with solemn expressions on their faces. We do the same with the policemen who have to stand on duty opposite our school, outside New Scotland Yard. We deliberately walk past them slowly, sharing a little white clay pipe we have bought. There’s only tobacco in it, but we think it’s hilarious to tease them.

The other girls come from all over. There are quite a few who come in chauffeur driven cars. They have competitions to see who’s wearing the most silk, who has the new Cartier tank watch. I laugh with them, but my real friends there dress like me in hand-me-downs – stuff we buy in Kensington market. I have this really cool long black cloak, and a pair of big baggy dungarees from slick willy’s on Kensington high street. We go shoplifting at Biba for makeup. I wear my grandmother’s clothes too – she has a Schiaparelli suit that came to England with her from Italy just before the war – skirt, jacket and top, in the most beautiful heavy crepe stitched over with black and bright flowers made of silk. I wear it with her ocelot jacket, and I pin my grandfather’s medal on the collar. I refuse to brush my hair, so it’s even curlier than before, and I put henna on it, so it gets a red glint. Later I bleach the henna so it turns the colour of a satsuma – it’s fun. I really enjoy dressing up.

Some of us have proper boyfriends, but mostly we just sleep around – it’s what everyone does. We boast about numbers. We make up little parties to visit the Brook Advisory Centre in Soho where you can get the pill. It’s meant for young women, but not as young as us so we have to pretend we are 16. We make a game of it. We all share the same fake surname – Hayward, but we each spell it differently – Heighward, Heywood – there’s great scope in that surname. My fake first name is saffron. We stand outside in a little group so they wont be surprised at how many Haywards climb the stairs, and we giggle as we try to remember our particular spelling.

I love the journey to school on the tube – except where | have to change at baker street, and the man selling the Evening Standard always shouts out “hello ginger” to me. Each time I go bright red and wish the floor would open up underneath me. I hate people who stare. I’m so glad I don’t have to wear my school uniform anymore. When I went to my first school on the tube dressed like that I was always being flashed at by men in suits. I hated that so much – the hidden erection behind the newspaper – for my eyes only. I just shut them tight and hoped they would get off soon. I had no idea what else to do at 12 and 13.

Once I get caught in a bomb scare at Oxford Circus. It’s terrifying, and for a while after that I take the bus across London. I love sitting on the top deck watching the city wake up. As we go past Hyde Park you can see soldiers on horseback rehearsing for parades and you can smell the horse manure mixed with the exhaust fumes of the traffic.

Life is a little more fun now. We’re all experimenting with drugs. A girl called Debbie has a party and I take too many downers by mistake. I go to the loo and I can hear people outside sounding worried, but I can’t get up so I lie there on the floor for a bit and then crawl out. It is two days before I can walk in a straight line. I am more careful after that.

I have a boyfriend for while when I start at Dixon and Wolfe . His name is Jon and he lives in a big, sprawling house. I kind of like watching family life. I have almost totally detached myself from my own family by now. I hate them and want only to grow up and leave but at the same time I feel quite lonely. Jon’s mother is Swedish and slightly mad looking, and his father is a professor of medicine and Jon steals mandrax from him. He has long blond hair and is impossibly glamourous. I adore mandrax. I take some to school for my friends but someone tells their mother and there’s a really sticky afternoon where I am almost thrown out but I eventually persuade them it was only aspirin and part of a game. the other girl doesn’t come back to school after that. Jon dumps me. He says he’s still in love with a girl who came to stay for a while, from Holland, and he always will be. I am devastated. It feels like the end of the world.

There’s a girl called Amanda who tells me she is experimenting at being a prostitute. She says it’s actually quite easy if you can separate your mind from your body. I want to see if I can do it too, so one day I go with her. I think we are in Kensington. We walk up and down a street and quite quickly two men approach us. It feels pretty easy so far. They’re at Sandhurst, training to be officers. We go to their hotel room and take our clothes off. I tell the one who has paid for me that I’ve never done this before and he’s really nice about it. I try so hard to do the mind/body separation part but it’s no good – I just can’t. I feel like such a failure. Amanda is managing fine in the other bed. I apologise profusely and he says it’s ok – really. I put my clothes back on and give him back the money but he absolutely refuses to take it – he’s really sweet about it, but I still feel I’ve let myself down. Afterwards I spend the money on Christmas presents for everyone. You can buy an awful lot with fifteen pounds in 1975.

At the weekends Miranda and I put our pocket money together and start Saturday with a line of sulphate. We go to the Portobello road market and stroll up and down. We don’t spend any money but we look at all the weird things for sale, and breathe in the strange smells – incense, joints, cooking food, musty antique shops all crammed with stuff. It’s lucky the speed means we don’t need to eat – we are saving our money for cigarettes and alcohol and more drugs.

Miranda’s father works at the foreign office. He has a red face and he’s quite scary. Sometimes he hits Miranda – cuffs her around the head. It frightens me to watch but neither of us talk about it – it’s just one more baffling thing that parents do – like both our fathers sometimes bring their mistresses on family holidays. Adults mystify us most of the time.

Miranda has a little sister – she’s twelve. A fortune teller told her when she was quite young that one day she would be famous. She wants to be an actress when she grows up. Miranda says she’s quite odd and pisses out of the bedroom window when she thinks no-one is looking. I like her – I wish I had a little sister too. Sometimes we let her come with us on Sundays to the roundhouse. We put her hair into tiny little plaits so when we undo them she looks like the Alice in Wonderland illustrations. We show her how to put makeup on and we say she can come if she promises not to tell about anything she sees.

So back to the Roundhouse and the stairs. We always get there early – everyone does. We stand all the way up the stairs, looking and looking at the people milling around. Everyone is really cool – the boys are all pencil thin and they wear tight jeans and black leather jackets – they have long hair or they spike it up with a mixture of soap and water made into a paste. Some of them wear black eye make up which looks really good. They stand in little groups watching the other people as they arrive. From time to time people break away from groups and go into another huddle. Money passes hands and they return to their group – they are sorting out their drugs for the evening. Sometimes we buy ours on the stairs, sometimes we wait until we’re inside

We come every Sunday – most people do. All sorts of bands play here - there are at least four or five each week. We do like the music but we come for the whole experience.

Inside it’s dimly lit. There’s a circular walkway that goes around the auditorium, and spaced out over this are small inset arches with seats where it’s even darker. People stroll around. The smells are a heady mixture – patchouli, marijuana and alcohol. It’s hot and noisy and exciting. You can buy almost anything you want here – uppers, downers, acid, weed. We sit in a huddle with our friends deciding what to take.

Mostly people look out for us. There is always someone to prop you up if you can’t stand. When we do our first acid trip here some of the older boys – they’re sixteen or seventeen – they make sure we are ok – they show us what we can do, follow us around. They take us out and say “look up at the sky – look at the stars”, then they bring us back in, to the loud music and lean us gently against the wall, watching us to make sure we’re doing ok. They look scary but they are gentle and kind. We feel safe there.