Once her parents realised there was no persuading Lara to finish her studies, they offered her the hospitality of a dozen cousins living in the north-west suburbs of London: Kilburn and Cricklewood. Favourite among these was her father’s sister. ‘Auntie Una says you can stay with her as long as you like. You can share a bed with your cousin Eunice.’
Lara was having none of it. There was no point in leaving Ireland to go to a version of the same thing. Her mother, of course, was not happy. ‘Auntie Una just wants to help.’ Help. ‘Poor Lara. Her sweetheart ran off and left her to become a priest.’ Auntie Una would do the opposite. She would never let Lara live it down.
So, just two weeks after Matthew left her, Lara arrived in Chelsea with nothing more than a sewing machine, a satchel containing her sketchpad and a few bits of clothes. After an exhausting boat journey and a train to Euston station, she somehow managed to negotiate the mystifying tunnels of the tube and get herself to Sloane Square. As she emerged from the grey bowels of the underground into the blistering white sunlight, Lara couldn’t help but feel adventure opening up in front of her. She was here. On the most famous, fashionable street in the world. The Kings Road in London. Broad and magnificent, it stretched out in front of her – a cacophony of people, shops and stalls and a kind of cool craziness. She had read about it and yet the newspaper and magazine descriptions had not begun to capture it. Men wearing bright orange trousers, and black women in miniskirts rushed past textbook-stiff Englishmen in bowler hats. Patterns were everywhere: on shop fronts, jackets and the tablecloths of packed cafes. Everywhere people were running, smoking and shouting, the whole world crowded with colour and life. The very air was wide awake and Lara smiled. Her life would begin here. Even without Matthew.
Over the next two hours Lara tramped up and down the Kings Road looking for a job. She walked in and out of every hip boutique and some of the bigger fashion shops. The exploding fashion scene meant there were plenty of places selling clothes but also plenty of girls already working in them. Every wannabe model and It girl wanted to work on the Kings Road, in the centre of the booming Chelsea fashion scene.
The further away from Sloane Square that she went, the quieter the streets became. Near the end the number of clothes shops thinned out somewhat to make way for hair salons and food places. There were tall, ornate redbrick buildings that she assumed must contain flats and bedsits.
Her arms were aching from carrying the sewing machine so she walked into a small boutique hung with bright flowery dresses.
The English girl working there was very sweet but shook her head. ‘You’re out of luck, I’m afraid. We’ve got nothing at the moment.’
The day was not working out the way she had planned.
Perhaps she should give the Kings Road a rest and start looking elsewhere in London. Oxford Street, Portobello Road. Although Lara had set her heart on Chelsea – and now that she had actually been here, she knew it was where she wanted to stay – luck didn’t seem to be in her favour.
She was tired and hungry. Across the road from the boutique was a small row of shops and a friendly looking cafe with the name FRED’S above the door. She plonked herself down in a window seat just as the rain began to pour.
As she looked out at the water streaming down the outside of the steamed up window, Lara began to panic. She would have to book into a hotel for the night. She might as well have stayed in Dublin. With no work, her money wouldn’t last long and she would be with Auntie Una by next week.
Suddenly she felt lonely and exhausted.
‘Just got here?’
The waitress was a middle-aged woman. Friendly.
‘I know the feelin’. Bin a long time but I never forget the day I came here from Italy. Where you from?’
‘Ireland.’
‘Nice.’ The woman nodded, although Laura could tell she didn’t know anything about Ireland. Unlike Italy, with its Popes and volcanos and sunshine and pasta, Ireland had nothing of note. Just nuns, rain and potatoes. It was an unremarkable place to anyone but the Irish themselves. In fact, mostly to them as well.
‘You found work?’
‘Not today,’ Lara said.
‘Nev’ mind,’ the waitress said, ‘maybe tomorrow.’
Lara smiled weakly and ordered a cottage pie dinner and a pot of tea, which she wolfed down. Her belly full and the longevity of the journey hitting her, all she wanted to do now was to lie down and get some rest. Auntie Una’s was starting to feel like an option.
When the waitress came back and noticed the pretty Irish girl’s eyelids drooping she asked, ‘You found somewhere to stay yet?’
‘No,’ Lara said. ‘Not yet. Is there a hotel in the area?’
‘Rich lady.’ The waitress made a face. ‘Always plenty of rooms to rent on Beaufort Street,’ she said, nodding to a street just across from where Lara was sitting. ‘You can leave your bag here if you want to go take a look.’
It was the first bit of kindness, Lara noticed, that she had encountered since getting off the boat.
Hopeful, Lara took the waitress up on her offer and, quickly tidying her hair with a comb, buttoning and brushing down her coat, she walked across the road.
Sure enough, there were three or four ROOMS TO LET signs stuck along the basement railings.
Lara climbed up a rather steep set of steps up to the front door of the first option. She had her hand on the knocker when she looked to the left and saw a large sign in the window with large handwritten letters spelling NO DOGS. NO BLACKS. NO IRISH.
She was horrified. She had, of course, heard that the English didn’t like the Irish. Not really. To be truthful, the Irish weren’t crazy about the English either. They had a chequered history. But she never thought they might compare them to dogs. She understood, too, that a lot of people looked down on black people. But London was a melting pot of people from all over the world, so it hardly made sense. Surely that was what made London great? In Ireland there were no black people. Anywhere. They weren’t banned or anything, they just didn’t want to go to Ireland. There was nobody in Ireland but Irish people, and most of them eventually left to come here or go to New York. The Irish came to London for work, but they also came to escape the repressed boredom of living in a country where books were banned for mentioning sex, or criticising priests, or depicting anything that might be disapproved of by the grey, humourless dictates of a church-run state. The only escape was alcohol or burying oneself in the beauty of nature. Wild, alcoholic farmers were the Irish the landladies didn’t want, but Lara felt tarred with the same brush. The choice was to pass herself off as English, but she wasn’t sure she could do that either. Even if she had wanted to. The setback had made her too tired to check the other houses on the streets. Perhaps it was time to head to Auntie Una in Cricklewood after all.
‘No luck?’ the Italian lady asked her when she was collecting her bags.
‘No Irish,’ she said. Then by further explanation added, ‘no dogs or blacks either.’
The Italian waitress, Giuliana, didn’t know much about the Irish, but what she did know was that they were good Catholics. Some of the West Indians too. She felt guilty for having sent the nice Irish girl on such a disappointing and hurtful mission. Since she came here from Italy as a young girl, England had been good to her. If only it wasn’t for the bloody English. They could be so cold. Unwelcoming. Her husband, Fred, was English but he was from the East End and they were nicer. Suddenly, a thought popped into her head.
‘If you need work you could try Chevrons across the road. I know they’re looking for waitresses at the moment.’
Shirley had been in the day before complaining that they were short staffed. Giuliana did not wholly approve of the nightclub. Its waitresses wore skimpy costumes and it had a reputation as a gambling den. Sometimes she caught Fred in there pretending to deliver lunches. But what could she do? He was English! For all their corrupting influence on her husband, however, Chevrons was run by an East End family, and the manager, Coleman, was a decent man. Always well dressed. Good looking. Lovely manners. A gentleman. Shirley – the manageress – was a bit brassy but she had a good heart as well.
Lara shook her head. ‘I have no experience,’ she said. She didn’t come to London to wait tables. She came here to get into the fashion business.
Giuliana smiled. ‘This is London. This is where you come to get the experience.’
Lara shrugged, smiled politely, and stood up to leave.
‘Tell you what,’ Giuliana carried on. ‘You leave your bag here and go knock on that door over there.’ She pointed out the window towards a black door in a nondescript building across the road. ‘You ask for Shirley and tell her Giuliana sent you.’
Then, as Lara shook her head, trying to decline politely, the waitress added, ‘What you got to lose? Who knows? This is London. Anything can happen. You never know what to expect.’
Lara stopped for a moment. Anything can happen. The unexpected had already happened with Matthew. Maybe it was time to embrace the unknown and see where it would take her.
After all, the alternative was Auntie Una in Cricklewood.