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Hand of a Stranger

Lasna’s story of life and loss in 1970s London

This is a second fictionalised account that includes elements of many people’s stories, including my own. I have heard these in the private space of my therapy room and amongst friends and family. These experiences are all too common, deeply personal and often held in secrecy. Becoming whole involves retrieving and transforming what has been banished.

Heather and Lasna were so lucky to get after school jobs at Sainsbury’s in the baking section at 90p per hour, everyone says so. Intoxicated by daring, they cultivate a language of sneaky eye rolls as they serve the customers. Out the back when they have their ciggie breaks and scoff sticky buns, they regale themselves with imitations.

“Ooooh I’ll ave four dinner rolls, no five, no six duckie. My Erbert’s very ungry with his tea you know…,” Lasna declares, with exaggerated Yorkshire enunciation.

Heather slaps her legs. “Eh by gum, you better give me eight now, he’s such a big oaf, he’ll eat the lot.”

They giggle uproariously, until Heather starts choking on her ciggie and Lasna has to bang her vigorously on the back.

Sauntering up the street after work, still in their uniforms, they feel ever so grown up and proud to be earning. They can’t afford to shop in the usual Kings Road boutiques but the vibe of the swinging 70s culture promises all kinds of excitement for two London schoolgirls. In amongst the shops is the Oxfam thrift shop. Playing at being working class girls, they go in. In the same spirit of exclusive hilarity that characterizes much of their interaction, they try on all manner of items — men’s hats, old leather gloves, a giant overcoat, even a discoloured, Edwardian wedding dress.

Lasna flicks through a row of jackets. Some are from the 50s, some even earlier from the 40s, styled in the new look, with pinched in waist and shoulder pads, from just after the war. Heather is preening in front of the mirror, a giant, cracked, crocodile skin handbag hanging off her shoulder and a moth eaten fox fur stole, complete with glass eyed head, draped across her shoulders. As Lasna parts the tightly packed items, a shock of watermelon pink emerges from between the sober ranks of gaberdine and tweed. It is shiny and trimmed with soft, white feathers. She pulls it out and silently shrugs into it. It is surprisingly heavy. Cold, voluminous sleeves puff out from the shoulders and fall in swathes down her arms. The feathers tickle her neck and cheeks. She smooths the fitted satin bodice over her breasts and into her waist, where the jacket is cropped and trimmed with small beads. A faint, evocative smell of a spicy perfume still hangs amongst the folds.

“Now that’s glamourous!” says the elderly volunteer behind the counter, peering over her glasses. “Them jackets used to be worn by the gentry in the old days. The lady of the house would ring her bell, tinkle tinkle and sit up in bed wearing her silky bolero over her nighty, then she’d eat her breakfast in bed. They was trying to copy the movie stars. Mind you they were all blond. But an Indian girl like you would look right exotic in that.”

“Oooh yes like Jean Harlow,” Lasna says, breathlessly. She has been reading a book about the silent movie era in Hollywood, ostensibly for an essay for school, but she spends long, dreamy times, gazing at the black and white shots of the old stars, with their pencil thin eyebrows, exaggerated black lips and sculpted hairdos.

“Lasna you look so, so glam. You should get it and wear it when we go out on Saturday.” Heather comes over, and runs her fingers through the feathers. “It’s so nice to touch, kind of frothy.”

“Three pounds, its genuine silk satin see, a real antique,” says the volunteer, becoming business like. “And perfect. Looks like it’s been hanging in a movie stars mansion for forty years. Moths never even got at the feathers.”

Heart pounding slightly, Lasna hands over three crisp, precious and hard-earned pound notes.

Under the new antique jacket Lasna wears her tiered Indian muslin dress, infused with Patchouli, that she bought at the Camden market. It’s a maxi, so it artfully hides her muscular calves. It laces at the back and this makes her torso slimmer, more like Andrea, the rich Italian girl at school. Andrea is tiny and childlike, with cascading blond curls to her waist, and great big brown eyes like a puppy. Her family owns the shoe shop and Lasna secretly holds her in her mind as the gauge of all things delicate and beautiful. Andrea’s got the look that makes the fellas be all protective. Like I’m so big and strong you know, and I could tuck you under my chin and fold you in my arms. Precious, like a doll. You would never hurt her. You could put her in a glass cabinet, with the other dolls wearing their solid china, pastel crinolines, like the ones Lasna’s mum has, trying so hard to decorate her home like a British lady. Heather of course is in a mini, and her precious, white patent boots, because she has good legs, long and skinny like a model. Blokes like that too. Models and dolls.

They buy a bottle of Asti Spumante from the off license and walk boldly down the high street, swigging, passing it back and forth. Ciggies too. By the time they get to the tube station, they are already tiddly. There are some blokes on the other side. A shout comes across the lines.

“Here darling, how about you both come over here and go with us!”

“I’ll have the blond one and you can have Paki in pink eh?”

Loud guffaws follow and a someone attempts a wolf whistle.

The girls turn to each other.

“Shall we?”

Next thing, they are on the other side, breathless and excited, set to go with the four boys, in the other direction.

They all get off the train and climb on a bus, marching single file, with a bum slap or two up the stairs to sit on the top deck. Heather is now sitting on one of the boy’s laps. There is one quieter boy. He looks directly at Lasna without smiling and moves his knees so that she can sit comfortably next to him.

“Ooh you’re the mysterious one, are you?” Lasna says flopping down. He nods and smiles faintly.

“And you’re half cut,”he responds.

She giggles and bats her eyelashes.“Not really.”

He reaches and grasps a fold of the satin jacket curiously. “Wow, where’d you get it?”

“Well, I inherited from a movie star,” she says, warming, forgetting to be drunk and silly but still disinhibited. Lasna has been going to drama classes this year. She loves acting. She’s currently playing a minor character in a local theatre production of Westside Story. “You see my mum was a makeup artist to the Hollywood stars and this was from a filmset, so she got it.”

“Never,” he says, grinning.

“No, you’re right I was having you on, it’s from Oxfam up on Kings Road.”

“Hah, well it looks great on you, with your black hair.”

“Thanks.”

There is a pause and then they smile shyly at each other.

“I’m Michael by the way. Michael Stuart.”

“I’m Lasna, Lasna Aziz.”

“Pleased to meet you, Lazna.”

“Pleased to meet you, Michael.”

Her brown hand and his freckled one close in a handshake.

The bus lurches to a stop and they all pile off in a little crowd, the boys, strutting, their collars turned up and their hands in their denim pockets, flanking the two girls, who hold hands in the midst. Purposefully they make their way somewhere. You would think they knew each other well.

They are in a house in the suburbs. Hash is being spotted off the stove and a bottle of spirits is passed around.There is talk amongst the boys, then they pile into someone’s car, jammed in, all six of them, plus one more, who’s is the driver. Lasna and Heather thread themselves into the gap above a row of denim thighs in the back seat and perch, necks bent, with their heads pushed into the roof of the car.

“Argh!” The boys groan, in mock discomfort at the enforced intimacy “You two must’ve been eating too many cream doughnuts!”

The girls giggle as male arms find their way around waists. They are speeding through streets of terraced housing. The car lurches and brakes and Lasna spews out the window. Cheap sparkling wine and whisky bubble up through her nose. Her hair blows round her face in the cool air and the streetlights seem for a moment to leave liquid trails. Now they are in another house, this time dimly up and pumping with music. Lots of people are there, shadowy, anonymous, and Led Zeppelin is pounding out of the stereo.

I don’t know but I’ve been told, a big-legged woman ain’t got no soul

In a crowded passage, a bong is passed round.

Oh yeah, oh yeah, ah, ah, ah

Lasna is shouting dramatically over the music. Her audience is some bloke, his eyes shadows under the brim of his cap. She is an actress, playing up her prop of the feathery trim. Then she becomes a damsel in distress, falling down gracefully, arms above the head. The large warm hand of a stranger grasps her hand and pulls her to her feet. Meekly she follows his leather clad back as she is lead to a dark room, in which there is an unmade bed and a couch. Configurations of other people, some still, some moving are barely discernible. An erotic sensation tugs at her — deep, internal, pagan. It rises simultaneously to her chest and kicks at the muscles of her heart. Right on its heels anxiety blasts her. But the multiplicity of chemicals that have crossed her blood brain barrier conspire to block all sensations out. She has no awareness of what she is feeling. She crumples backwards onto the dark and tumbled surface of the bed under him.

The crowd has grown and Lasna is in the hallway, being tossed this way and that, like flotsam in the currents of a choppy sea.

“Hey, Lasna are you OK?” Her hand is taken, urgently. “We need to get out of here,” says the fella from the bus, that’s right Michael was his name. “There’s a fight about to happen I can tell.”

Turn round quick and start to run

Fleetingly, Lasna notices angry male voices raised above the sound of Black Sabbath.

Satan’s coming round the bend. People running ’cause they’re scared

She is squeezed into a corner of the outside porch by a jolt in the crowd.

“Wait here, I’m going to get your friend.” Michael disappears between leather-clad shoulders and shaven heads and emerges again with a disheveled Heather. Her fingers are plucking twitchily at the hem of her mini. Silently and swiftly the three of them walk to the nearest tube station. Their footsteps are loud on the pavement and the night seems eerily quiet and still.

“You OK to get home?” asks Michael. He awkwardly backs away from the girls.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Lasna says a little brusquely, “See you round sometime.” He turns on his heel and she watches him stride away, disappearing quickly round a corner. She never sees Michael again.

It is morning. Dad opens the door and shakes Lasna’s foot.“Lasna, you’re going to be late for work,” he says.“What time did you get in from Heather’s house?” Reverting to Urdu, he adds, “in Pakistan the young girls get up in the morning and help their mother!”

Lasna knows her parents are awed by the educational opportunities available to her in their new country. “Oh, yeah, sorry Dad, we wanted to finish our homework,” she lies in her native language, with practiced ease.

Schooled to be grateful for work and respectful to authority, Lasna is out of the door, empty bellied and hung over within thirty minutes. She smiles her way through the day at the supermarket. Heather does not come to work and Lasna thinks, as she expertly packs groceries, that Heather doesn’t even need the money. Her parents have already said that they’ll pay for her to go on a working holiday to France when she finishes school.

As long as Lasna is doing her schoolwork, helping her mother in the house and going to work, her parents do not question her movements very much. The milieu she lives in is so far out of the reality they know as recent immigrants from Pakistan, that she is free to live in it virtually as she pleases. Her world is boundless but hidden. She exists in bubbles of excitement with Heather and other girls. The tube pops them up out of the ground all over London, disconnected from each other and disconnected from Ilford, the area where her parents landed, and have settled in their new country. Made bold by the cheap wine they can procure, and the marijuana that circulates freely, they cannot see themselves from the outside, their naivete, and vulnerability.

There are other sexual encounters for Lasna, it is hard to say how many and how they might actually be defined. These events are unshared with anyone and dismissed in herself. What do you expect, sometimes it’s the price for going out and having a good time. Unintentionally, she hardens a part of herself, and in doing so, sets the trajectory in place for a lifetime of confusion about her sexual self and the meaning of choice, intimacy and trust.

By the time she meets and marries London born and bred David, she is a seasoned British girl who still talks in Urdu to her parents and their community. She takes part in weddings, funerals and religious celebrations with good humour, entertaining David afterwards.

“You should see how many gold bracelets she has,” Lasna jiggles her arms dramatically and speaks loudly with a strong accent. There is glimmer of the theatricality of her teens. She is an excellent cook and hostess, and David appreciates her culinary attempts at Asian and European fusion.

David goes away on business trips. Some of the things that Lasna will not do sexually, he does in a marginally satisfying way elsewhere. Naturally this cannot be shared with Lasna, although he wishes he could sometimes. She is his best friend; he doesn’t mind at all that she’s got fat. He doesn’t know why she is so unadventurous in bed. She can be so funny and flirtatious when she’s had a few.

Lasna’s kids have got to the point that she can leave them in the evenings. She has previously been to an Italian cooking class and this time she decides to try creative writing. They have been asked to compose a piece called ‘A stand out moment in time.’

It was the first time I ever won anything at school…

She pauses. Boring. She tries again.

The moment I saw my eldest boy after he was born, I knew I would never be the same. I loved him so much…

She chews the pen. It’s kind of sentimental. I don’t know what else to say, she thinks. No one would be interested in my life. Lasna procrastinates until the night before the next class. Finally, she admonishes herself. I paid for this; I must write something. At the table with a cup of tea, while the kids watch TV, the finds herself ruminating about the approach David made last night before he went away on business. She pretended to be asleep, but they both knew she wasn’t. Lasna finds herself writing.

I can still remember it from all those years ago, and I’m forty-five. I have no memory about how I got into the room. He just pulled my underpants to the side and tried to stick it in sideways. The penetration was momentary, but I remember it so clearly. It stands out as an actual physical feeling. I’ve never told anyone.

She feels sick. Did it count, she thinks? Maybe it was nothing. But the penetration — I was a virgin. Why is it so important? Was I still a virgin afterwards? Why am I remembering this? She carries on writing, compelled now by something more than the prompt. The words tumble out.

I push him off remember saying “no, NO!” Managed to get out of there I don’t know how. I don’t think he followed me. Its heaving with bodies, so many blokes stinking of booze and smoke and sweat. I was pushed back and forward in the crowd. Another guy tried to rub his genitals against me. It was horrible and scary. I distinctly remember thinking ,everyone knows what just happened to me. I’m branded.

She takes a shaky breath and continues to write.

Are they taught to be predators? Or is it seen as just completely natural that they would push like that to get into a girl’s body, take advantage of her intoxication?

She shakes her head, angrily and sighs. It’s all so fucking tiring and stupid. Why did we get so drunk and stoned? It’s like time got lost, and we got lost in time, we just gave it away. Lasna stares into space, remembering being young and wanting someone to really like you and always having to be on guard in case they were just sweet talking you. It was so exhausting being awkward and hopeful. Easier to be easy, to just obscure fear with intoxication. Lasna writes again.

I got home and only then I realized that I’d lost that beautiful pink jacket. It must have come off in one of the blank spots. Maybe I would have forgotten the whole thing if I hadn’t lost the jacket as well. The next day I can remember being at work and I kept on thinking about that beautiful thing lying probably on the floor, trodden on and ruined in some house that I’d never even be able to find again. It makes me feel sick with disappointment even writing this.

Lasna is crying. Muscles that she did not realise were so tight start to release. Tears flow out of an inner place of loss that she only dimly knows exists. The remembered pink of that piece of femininity and fluff fills her consciousness. She can feel the slipperiness of the silk, the soft tickle of the feathers. The pride of spending her money on it, her money, that she earned, makes her heart swell again, twenty-eight years later. She is filled again with the sense of daring at wearing something so glamorous, so womanly, so theatrical.

“I just wanted to be pretty,” she whispers softly to herself through her tears.

“And stylish.” Tears drop onto the paper. “I still do.”

Her fledgling adult self of seventeen floods into her. She remembers the deep thrill of acting on a stage and being spellbound at the cinema , transported by the tragic romance of ‘Love Story’, the fantasy of ‘A Star is Born’.

“I wanted big things to happen to me,” she says to herself out loud, through her tears.

Lasna and Heather still have an occasional friendship in the 90s. They send each other snaps of holidays and family occasions. They have been to each other’s weddings and made witty speeches, suggesting, but stopping short of revealing to the guests the wild times each bride had as teenagers. Lasna made sure she showed up at Heather’s mum’s funeral a couple of years back. Sometimes, they catch up for a meal without spouses or children, spending a lot of the time reminiscing about their late teens and early twenties, focusing mostly on the fun they had. They commiserate with the same rolling of eyes as in the old days on the boredoms of marriage and motherhood. Each time they exclaim how easy it is that they just pick up where they left off, and that neither of them has changed.

This time, Lasna calls and Heather can tell straight away by the tone of her voice that this is a serious meeting. They meet at Regents Park and stroll, paper cups of tea in their hands.

“Everything alright love?” asks Heather, “You sounded so nervous. I hope nothing’s gone wrong with David.”

“No, nothing more than usual,” Lasna attempts to be flippant. “You OK?”

“Yeah, yeah sure. Still missing mum of course.”

They chat for a while, until Lasna says hesitantly, “Do you remember that party we ended up at somewhere, may be Barking or somewhere out there? We got in some car with a bunch of boys, all jammed in.”

“Oh god, yes. Driving pissed, I’m sure. We were so stupid; I don’t know how we survived our teens.”

“Do you remember the party with the skinheads?”

“Yes.” Heather stops walking.

“Let’s sit down,” says Lasna.

“I don’t even know if it’s such a terrible thing that some bloke managed to get his thing in me for a moment. He was probably hammered as well. It was the 70s, we were supposed to be liberated and all that. I’ve been thinking about it and trying to separate the physical feeling of the penetration from this other feeling. Scared, ashamed. Like What if everyone would know that I was hunted? And caught. That’s far worse”

They have been talking about the party, how they became separated, and Lasna has confessed, in a low voice, looking into her empty cup, what happened to her. “I couldn’t tell you. I was too ashamed. I blamed myself for being so stupid,” she says.

Heathers reaches for Lasna’s hand. “Hey,” she says, her voice slightly strange, “I saw you come into that room with this huge guy with a handlebar moustache.”

“What?” Lasna’s head jerks up. “Were you in there?”

“His friend got me first,” says Heather flatly.

“Oh god,” Lasna says, slowly.

“I saw you push him off and get out of there,” continues Heather.

“So…,” says Lasna, “Heather did we get raped?”

“As far as I’m concerned, we did Lasna. I was so confused because I was really bloody turned on initially when I could see there was some sort of orgy going on in there. But I was so wasted too, and then I kind of tried to stop him, and then he kept pushing so I just sort of gave in. I suppose I thought I didn’t have a right to change my mind. It messed me up for a long time afterwards.”

“I always thought nothing like that would happen to you because you were slim and delicate and may be even because you were white,” Lasna says, incredulity still evident in her voice .

“I always felt too ashamed to tell you because I saw that you didn’t let it go the full way and I did,” replies Heather sadly.

They sit together in silence, newly intimate and at the same time, strangers to each other.

When they part, their hug is long.

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