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Virago Press Limited UK, 1988 |
There's another side of life, where the husband and wife are very happy. My mate, Jackie, she's thirty something, they have it every night, they've got nothing at all. They haven't got a home, nothing, they've got four kids, but they're so wrapped up in each other. When I look at them I laugh, they have their ups and downs but they're so happy. And they'll tell you themselves, they can still have sex and enjoy it, they don't have to dabble in what it's like with other people. This is really what I want, a close intimate life and if I leave Tom –– I'm frightened. I'm frightened of being on my own –– s'posin' I don't find anyone else and ninety-nine per cent of the men I've been with are married and with their wives anyway –– so I'd be the odd one out –– I can't live on me own and Auntie Emm, well she drives you mad, it's no good living with a woman otherwise it would be one room and National Assistance and Jonny in a day nursery. Drive you up the wall and all she talks about is herself –– if I say I think I'm pregnant she lifts up her jumper and says, 'Well, look at me –– I think I am too' –– at her age, fifty-two. I think the world of my Auntie Emm but not to live with. I've got my Jonny and what I feel for my Jonny I could never put into words, but a kid, you want to share a kid, you can't live with a kid alone.
The Novel: In 1963 a young English writer named Nell Dunn published Up The Junction, a collection of interrelated short stories (some critics described them as sketches) which dealt candidly and unflinchingly with the lives of feisty working class women living in the South London suburb of Battersea. The book was greeted as a revelation when it first appeared, presenting these rough talking, fiercely independent women exactly as they were with no effort made to sentimentalize, romanticize or sanitize what were their drab, funny, promiscuous and occasionally brutal lives. The book became a bestseller and went on to win its twenty-seven year old author the 1964 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for Literature.
Dunn followed Up The Junction with Poor Cow, her debut novel published in 1967. Like its predecessor, Poor Cow was a startling and sometimes arresting piece of work, as blunt as it was compassionate in its depiction of the trials and tribulations of an ordinary working class girl whose dream of settling down into a 'respectable life' is continually thwarted by her upbringing, her environment and her unabashed love of sex.
The story opens with twenty-one year old Joy walking home from hospital with her week-old baby, 'her maternity dress hitched up with her coat belt' because her husband Tom hasn't bothered to come and pick her up. Joy wonders how she ended up with a baby –– a boy named Jonny –– and wonders what their future will be like given that Tom's a professional thief who could 'get done' by the police and carted off to gaol at any moment. But Joy is neither frightened nor depressed at the prospect of suddenly being deprived of her sole means of support. A survivor and a realist, she sees no point in worrying about might happen until it actually does happen and remains determined, in the meantime, to enjoy as much of her life as she can while she's still young enough to do so.
On Joy's twenty-second birthday Tom comes home and dumps a bag full of cash on their bed –– the proceeds from his latest robbery. Suddenly they're rich, so they buy a Jaguar and rent a luxury flat in Ruislip where Joy spends her days pushing little Jonny round in his pram and watching her snooty middle-class neighbours go about their business. Of course, this period of prosperity can't and doesn't last. Tom soon finds himself arrested, with their newfound wealth soon being gobbled up by lawyers' fees –– an expenditure that ultimately fails to deter the presiding judge from handing him a four year prison sentence.
Now homeless, Joy moves in with her half-mad Aunty Emm, only to find herself trapped in a social and psychological rut, missing sex and her husband (in that order) and spending most of her time daydreaming about meeting a rich older man who will love her little boy as much as he loves her. But the man she eventually hooks up with is neither rich, old nor particularly clever. His name is Dave and he's Tom's former partner in crime, another thief she's happy to share her life with if only to be free of her aunt and get the sex she needs on a regular basis to keep her from becoming, in her words, 'very perverted.'
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Pan Books UK, c. 1975 |
In the meantime, needing an income of some kind and something to keep her busy, Joy takes a job as a barmaid at The White Horse, 'a big modern pub with a lot of well-to-do customers.' She's young and pretty, meaning she soon becomes a favourite of the pub's regulars, earning herself the nickname 'Sunshine' while her fellow barmaid Beryl advises her not to sleep with any of them unless she can be certain of 'getting something out of them' in return for it. Despite her unshaken love for Dave, whom she continues to write to and visits in prison as often as she can, Joy finds herself becoming irresistibly attracted to a stocky bread delivery driver named Petal who sneaks into her flat each morning to bring her fresh rolls while she's still in bed.
But Dave's parole is still a long way off, so to make ends meet she follows Beryl's example and becomes a photographer's model, earning £2 a hour for posing in the nude for the exclusively male members of a local photography club. This job and the not unwelcome male attention it gains her begin to change Joy, making her more aware of her beauty and the power of her sexuality. 'Her body developed into a highly sensitive machine; she noticed the colour of leaves and felt her bare thighs touching where she wore no stockings. She noticed the faint dust on men's bare backs on building sites. When stripped before the cameras she was a queen.' Yet she remains unsatisfied, longing for Dave even as she dreams of meeting 'a man of position' who'll give her the sort of steady settled life she wants to start living as much for Jonny's sake as her own.
It's from Jonny, not from her incarcerated and increasingly depressed lover, that she gains the strength required to keep prostituting herself night after night to men she can barely tolerate the sight of. 'I try to forget there's anything to me –– I listen to his problems, his moans and groans then he gets undressed and I look at his body and smell the smell of his skin and I think suddenly what am I doing here with this horrible old bastard –– why aren't I at home with my little Jonny and his lovely limbs and hair and feet and sweet smell? Here I am touching up this dirty old man for a couple of quid when my Jonny's at home with his cod-liver oil breath.'
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Optimum Classics/Studio Canal DVD, 2008 |
This is, of course, too much for Tom, who accuses her of being a tart and hits her, regretting it almost as soon as he does. Joy, however, refuses to forgive him and leaves their flat, advising Jonny, who's playing with a neighbour's child at the bottom of the stairs, that he should 'see yer dad if you want anything.' Arriving home hours later, she finds Tom lying on the settee eating cake and no sign of Jonny anywhere. Frantic at the thought that her son –– the one legitimately 'good' thing in her life –– might have been abducted, raped and murdered by some psychopath, she rushes out to search for him, unable to stop imagining the worst until she hears him call out 'Mama' and forces her way into a dilapidated building, only to find him sitting in the dark with a black cat nestled in his lap. 'And she thought then that all that really mattered was that the child should be all right and that they should be together.' And they are together, come hell or high water, Jonny's presence in her life the only thing that gives it any true sense of substance or meaning.
Dunn's style, which alternates between first-person confessional and detached third-person reportage, is exactly the right one required to capture the subtle nuances of Joy's character, giving you direct access to her thoughts even as it places them in the wider context of what are, for the most part, the unpromising realities of her day-to-day existence. You like and admire Joy, not because hers is a particularly clever or unique personality, but because she refuses to pretend on any level and remains, despite everything, a warm, human and very courageous woman trying to retain some measure of autonomy in what, strictly speaking, is and will remain –– for her at least –– very much a 'man's world.'
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Bloomsbury Publishing first UK edition, 1996 |
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NELL DUNN, c. 1967 |
Dunn was born 'Nell Mary Dunn' in London on 9 June 1936, the second daughter of Baronet Dunn and his wife Lady Mary Sybil Saint Clair-Erskine. She was educated at a convent which she left at the age of fourteen, no doubt expected to follow the same 'debutante-fiancée-society wife' path her sister elected to follow. But the 1950s were a time of great social upheaval in Britain and Dunn, always a free spirit at heart who found in books a solace for what had often been a troubled childhood despite its ostensible privilege and luxury, never really felt comfortable with her wealth or the exalted social position which accompanied it. Her marriage to Sandford –– a genuine eccentric who, in later life, became an outspoken advocate for gypsies and the homeless –– came as a welcome opportunity to permanently break away from her family and its, for her, smothering expectations.
The couple's decision to move to Battersea would prove to be the right one for both of them from a creative point of view. Working in the local sweet factory, where she wrapped liqueur chocolates for a paltry wage of two shillings and sevenpence an hour, allowed Dunn to meet and mingle with the women whose lives she would write about so tellingly in Up The Junction –– a book that began as a series of four short 'sketches' originally published in a London newspaper. She and Sandford –– who would briefly find fame himself as the writer of the socially critical 1965 television play (and later film) Cathy Come Home –– remained in Battersea until they chose to separate in 1971. (They divorced in 1979 after producing three sons together.) By this time Dunn had published Talking to Women, a collection of interviews, and the critically acclaimed novel Poor Cow which she and director Ken Loach adapted into a popular 1967 film of the same name starring Carol White as Joy and Terence Stamp as Dave. A film version of Up The Junction, not adapted by Dunn and directed by Peter Collinson, was released in 1968, while 1969 saw the publication of Freddy Gets Married, her only book for children.
Dunn's third novel, Tear His Head Off His Shoulders, appeared in 1974 and was followed two years later by I Want, her first work for the stage. The 1980s saw her establish herself as one of England's sharpest and most successful dramatists, with her 1981 play Steaming –– about three women of different classes who meet at a Turkish bath where they're able to frankly discuss and compare their lives –– winning the Society of West End Theatre Award for 'Best New Comedy.' Other plays followed –– including Variety Night (1982), The Little Heroine (1988) and Consequences (1988) –– as did the script for a television film Every Breath You Take (1987) and the novels Grandmothers (1991) and My Silver Shoes (1996).
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NELL DUNN and her dog IRIS, 2011 |
Click HERE to read Is A Dignified Death At Home Too Much To Ask?, a 2011 article from The Guardian about NELL DUNN and her experiences as the partner, carer and enabler of DAN OESTREICHER. To read a 1996 article from The Independent about her long friendship with fellow novelist MARGARET DRABBLE, please click HERE.
The film version of Poor Cow, directed by KEN LOACH and starring CAROL WHITE as Joy and TERENCE STAMP as Dave, was released in 1967. It was re-released in a fully restored version for the home entertainment market by Optimum Classic/Studio Canal in 2007 and remains widely available as a Region 2 UK/Europe DVD.
Many books by NELL DUNN –– including Up The Junction (1963), Poor Cow (1967), My Silver Shoes (1996) and the plays Steaming (1981) and Home Death (2011) –– are still in print and readily obtainable via your local library, bookstore or favourite online retailer.
You might also enjoy:
LAURIE GRAHAM The Ten O'Clock Horses (1996)
KEITH WATERHOUSE Bimbo (1990)
JACK TREVOR STORY Live Now, Pay Later (1963)
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