Jillian Lauren’s ‘Some Girls: My Life in an Harem’ is an easy holiday read with dark undertones of mental health and rejection. Being just over half way through, I can’t really comment on the ending or its purpose but it has taken me down the path of life’s of ‘What ifs?’
According to some ‘What if’s’ are the domain of historians, looking back on the past wondering how the future would have turned out if something had happened differently.
For me ‘What ifs’ have always been choices for the future, tools to put a story line in place. My choices of the past more resembling ‘There buts’, as in ‘There for but for the grace of God’, however today reading Jillian Lauren’s book, I allow myself to drift down memory lane.
Many decades ago as a young, some would say ‘pretty’, wife, mother and aspiring actress, a dear friend, Tony Arnold, a BBC producer and perfect gentleman, asked me if I would take part in a series of training films for new directors.
As all aspiring actresses will know more time is spent ‘resting’ than actually working, so any kind of contract is more than welcome. I grabbed the opportunity.
Groups of foreign students would come from exotic countries to learn about television at the BBC. They would direct actors in short scenes from well known plays, and film them. Shelagh Delany’s ‘A taste of Honey’ being especially popular; me, invariably playing Helen.
I ended up doing several of these training courses for Tony and, over the years became good friends with him and his wife, Elaine. Elaine came originally from Somalia. Highly intelligent, a career woman in her own right and devoted to Tony yet, in the eyes of the establishment at that time, not quite acceptable. Elaine was black.
Such prejudice would thankfully be despised today but in the early 70’s, despite professing to be the liberal face of Britain, the BBC was still clinging to its corduroy trousers of elitism. Tony wanted to buy a house in Surrey but was concerned about how the neighbours would react to him living there…with an African wife.
I was appalled and spent a drunken evening at their home in Holland berating the establishment as ‘hypocritcal’ and ‘bourgeois’. Tony, just filled up our drinks and smiled philosophically.
Tony could drink my husband under the table, which was no mean feat. In fact he could drink him under the table with dignity and aplomb. They would sink at least two bottles of excellent malt then Tony would stand up, seemingly stone cold sober, and announce he was ‘off to bed’, at which point he would fall face first onto the sofa and remain there till morning.
My husband, so impressed with this meticulous display of superior drunkenness, adopted the habit in later years, although he never quite perfected it, more often ending up in A&E as he fell over a low wall into a bed of brambles, or face first onto a concrete path.
I digress.
On one particular training course in Shepherds Bush, there was a young man called Ismail, who seemed not to have bonded with his fellow classmates and was something of a loner. Feeling sorry for this poor student, I suggested to my husband that we should have him round for dinner.
At that time we lived in a maisonette in West Norwood, our first home. My husband, believing himself to have a superior eye when it came to decorating than I, had decided the sitting room should be covered in hessian wallpaper. We had acquired an old green and teak Norwegian sofa and chairs from my parents, and the room was completed by the introduction of a Hammond electric organ, more suited to the Odeon Leicester Square than South London. I can’t begin to describe how hideous it looked. It was the only house I ever allowed him to decorate.
I was, even in those days of young enthusiastic wife, a domestic disaster, however I figured that as a poor student Ismail would be grateful for whatever was put in front of him. Quiche Lorraine, home grown new potatoes and salad (we were going through our ‘Good Life’ phase at the time), seemed safe enough.
Ismail arrived and a pleasant evening ensued. He was introduced to our son, a terrible two, and politely refused the gut rot Blue Nun we thought the height of sophistication.
The following week he came again and brought with him the most exciting toy a two year old could aspire to…A Batmobile! Son was in raptures. It was the ‘it’ toy of the day, black and shiny and firing little red rockets. It must have cost Ismail all of his student grant.
The training course finished and life returned to resting, one o’clock clubs and carting the laundry to the laundrette in the pram.
Six months later a letter dropped on the doormat. A letter more glamorous than any I had ever seen before. Crested, embossed and with stamps that, had I been a philatelist, I would have delighted over.
I was sure it was a mistake. It was from the Sultan of Brunei, inviting me to come on a two year contract to teach television there at salary that was in the ‘winning the pools’ parameters.
Straight on the phone to Tony.
‘Tony I’ve got a letter from the Sultan of Brunei! Where is Brunei for Fuck’s sake? He wants me to go there and teach television! What do I know about television? I don’t even understand that thing about the camera crossing the line’.
I could hear Tony’s gentle smile down the phone.
“You know at least 18 months more than they do” .
‘Why me? Why Brunei? Who the hell do I know in Brunei?’
“Ismail of course.”
Ismail? Our poor starving student. What on earth did he have to do with the price of a bar of soap?
“He’s the Sultan’s younger brother, Kim…Prince Ismail.”
Oh my god! The hessian walls, green sofa and chairs and Hammond organ blushed in shared mortification. We had given a muslim prince quiche Lorraine and Blue Nun.
I never did go.
To Brunei that is.
It turned out the contract was single status and Tony said that Ismail had ‘a thing’ about me (I never was any good at recognising that). Lord and master was having none of it.
Do I regret?
Not a jot.
Not everyone can say they have entertained a prince in a maisonette in West Norwood and frankly experience, and finishing Jillian Lauren’s book, has taught me that I would have been ill suited to life in a harem.