PART FOUR. 3 The Announcement

This is an instalment of  an as-yet unnamed autobiographical series that started in Australia in 1975.

Click here for the first instalment.

A link to the full list of instalments is in the sidebar to the right.

We may have been married but the battle wasn’t over. The next stage and my biggest mistake so far were still to come.

The honeymoon was a pleasant interlude, if wet. We spent several days on Bodmin Moor, with John glued to John Fowles’s The Magus and me sitting at the mouth of the tent, eating chocolate digestives and watching the rain. We were both still in shock, I think.

When we returned, I rang about a flat a few miles further west from Exeter than Liz’s cottage. Ironically, this time the landlady didn’t ask about our marital status.
    We went to see the accommodation. It was light and modern, on the upper floor of a barn, and we liked it immediately. Unfortunately, it was just outside our budget. We’d decided we could afford £20 (a month? a week? I can’t remember) but the flat was £22. When I explained this to the farmer, she said we could have for £20.
    Some good news at last.

In October, we moved in, with some more of John’s belongings, but not Kitten sadly as she wasn’t allowed. She, like the rest of John’s spare stuff, had to stay with Rod.
    At the same time, my job waitressing at the National Trust house was finishing, as the house closed at the end of the month. I volunteered to spend the first two weeks of November helping with a deep clean of kitchen and restaurant (gruesome, cleaning not being my favourite activity) and I then spent the next few weeks alone in the flat writing off for jobs, proper ones this time.
    I wrote to companies on spec, twice to a local publisher of non-fiction books, and after the second letter (and, I presume an interview, but I don’t remember it) they offered me a job as an editorial trainee, starting in January.
    Perfect.
    They said it was my typing experience that tipped the scales in my favour, even though they’d been suspicious of the green ink in which I’d written to them. (I was copying someone on my course at uni who wrote in turquoise ink.) So my time in London hadn’t been completely wasted.

One weekend we went to stay with Mollie and John T. As we sat at the table in their sun-filled kitchen, they pushed over to me a folded newspaper. One of the small ads was ringed.
    I read it in growing confusion. It seemed to be an announcement of our marriage but it said that John came from Luton in Bedfordshire whereas Mollie and John T lived nowhere near Luton.
    ‘I don’t understand,’ I said, shaking my head.
    Who would have done such a thing and why?
    ‘Do you think it was your parents?’ they asked.
    Things began to make sense. My parents knew John came from Bedfordshire but they didn’t know which part. They’d put the announcement in without consulting any of us named in it – Mollie, John T, John and me. They'd picked on Luton because it was the only town they knew in Bedfordshire.
    John T explained that someone at work had shown him the announcement and asked him if it was his son. After reading it, and beginning to suspect what had happened, John T had denied that it was anything to do with him. He couldn't account for the error without entering into a long unhappy story. What's more, Luton at that time did not have a good reputation. He was forced to lie.

    I was appalled that John T should have been put in that situation, at the disrespect shown to Mollie and John T, at the hurt they must have felt.
    My parents had obviously not softened in the slightest. And a few months later that was to be confirmed.

At the end of June we were going to have to move out of our lovely flat so that it could be let to holiday visitors – in the same way as most property in the county since visitors could be charged more than long-term tenants.
    We’d had enough of shunting from place to place, of the insecurity, of not being able to settle anywhere, and as winter drew on began to wonder if we should look into buying a house.
    Somehow we’d saved enough for a deposit, and with our combined incomes could apply for a mortgage for the rest of the cost. We found a semi-detached bungalow we could afford on an estate on the outskirts of a village a few miles from our flat. I wrote and told my parents of our plans.

By now we had a polite but meaningless relationship with my parents. We’d visited them and they’d behaved in the usual superficial way. I was unable to say anything to them of my seething emotions – I never had, I had no experience of doing so – and found it almost impossible to be like that myself. I couldn’t meet their eyes.
    Nevertheless I tried to carry on doing the ‘right thing’ by visiting and writing. I didn’t want to give them any more grounds for attacking me and John.

We didn’t have a phone in the flat so I’d given them my work number for use in an emergency.
    One day my phone rang at work.

    It was my father.

To be continued . . . 

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SERIES. List of Instalments so far

PROLOGUE

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PART ONE (AUSTRALIA 1975)

1  Sydney

2  The Murray River, Streaky Bay and Adelaide
3  Wilpena Pound
4  Melbourne, Brisbane and Mackay
5  Before
6  A Whitsunday Island
7  Lindeman Island
8  The Great Barrier Reef
9  The Letter
10 I’ll be back’

PART TWO (THE STORY CONTINUES)
1 Cloak-man
2 The Disco
3 The Party
4 The Supper
5 The Cottage
6 The Confession
7 February
8 March

PART THREE
1 Bedfordshire
2 En Route
3 Kent
4 Another Letter
5 Another Letter continued
6 June
7 July and August
8 Missives
9 Results

PART FOUR
1 A Late Arrival
2 The Pub and the Church

3 The Announcement

PART FOUR. 2 The Pub and the Church

This is an instalment of  an as-yet unnamed autobiographical series that started in Australia in 1975.

Click here for the first instalment.

A link to the full list of instalments is in the sidebar to the right.

I can’t remember much about my wedding day. I think I was numb. John and I had fought so hard for it and now it was actually happening it seemed unreal. Parts of it stand out, like sunbeams, and other parts are lost in the dusty corners of my mind.

Once in the village, my family and John headed for the church, while Jo and I hung back. I pulled him into the Tuns and downed two vodkas. I’ve no idea why. I think I thought they were part of the ritual. Jo didn’t join me in a drink but he stood by, offering his usual uncritical support.
    

All I remember of the service is John, me and the vicar going into some back room and signing the register, with Liz and Rod as witnesses. I suppose I went through the rest automatically, and it didn't imprint itself on my brain cells.
    Outside, we must have posed for photographs as I have a collection: some of me and John; some of me, John and Richard; and some group photographs.
    In these, John’s parents are one end, Mollie sweet and smart in a brown velvet jacket. John and I are in the middle, holding tight to each other’s hand. My mother is next to me with Jo behind her, bushy-haired and tall.
    I don’t like to look at those group photographs now. Perhaps because they’re a lie. We weren’t a happy group, at least I wasn’t happy to be next to my mother. I’m looking away from her, holding myself tight on the side next to her. She looks grown-up and confident. I look like an overweight child.
    My favourite photograph shows John and me with our back to the camera, walking away with our arms around each other. Safe at last.
    We didn’t have an official photographer but two friends with cameras were standing outside, waiting for us all to come out of the church. How did they know to be there? Such thoughtfulness. Such kindness.

I remember our rings, of course. John had designed them, and a silversmith he’d met at a craft fair on Exeter’s Cathedral Green had made them. His was a wide band with my name engraved on it in runes. Mine was three rings twisted together. It was heavy and clunky on my finger and I wondered if I’d ever get used to it.

Looking at my new wedding ring

Back at the The Three Tuns, Richard had chilled champagne ready. We sat at two tables, the young on one and the old (older) on the other.

    The older table was the noisy one. The vicar had joined us for lunch and he was regaling them with scurrilous stories (I heard something about him having to blow the smoke from his cigarette up a chimney) and they were all laughing loudly. In the pictures they are all smiling except for Betty who’s looking askance at my mother.

 

John T and Betty, looking askance

I sat mute in the centre of the other table.
    Friends of John’s from the pub joined the party and bought John and me brandies.
    Everyone was celebrating, except for John and me.

When we went outside after lunch we discovered that Simon had sprayed the Mini with ‘Just married’ in shaving foam and tied bells to its rear bumper. John was almost speechless with anger.
    ‘How could you,’ he shouted. ‘You’ve probably damaged the paintwork.’

He untied the bells immediately.

We went back to Liz’s cottage with Mollie where we found four congratulatory telegrams – from my father’s older sister who was also my godmother, my grandfather (my father’s father), my godfather (who was related in a complicated way to my mother) and his daughter who’d been to stay with John and me at Liz’s cottage over the summer. (She and her boyfriend had slept in our room and we’d slept in a tent in the garden.)

    There were presents too, from family and friends on both sides.

    I began to feel a little more conscious. The world came into focus again. I’d expected everyone to be on my parents’ side but perhaps I mattered to people as well.
    John wiped the Mini clean. The paintwork was intact, thank goodness. We changed out of our wedding clothes, shaking the confetti out of our hair and underwear, and packed the car. We were off to Cornwall for a week, staying for two nights in a B & B and then camping. John had all the gear.
    We kissed Mollie goodbye and set off, alone at last, married at last.

John cried all the way down to Cornwall. I wasn’t sure what to do as I’d never credited men with emotions, not subtle ones anyway, and I didn’t yet know what to do about my own.
    I kept my hand on his leg in what I hoped was a reassuring way, and passed him tissues when he needed them.

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PART FOUR. 1 A Late Arrival

This is an instalment of  an as-yet unnamed autobiographical series that started in Australia in 1975.

Click here for the first instalment.

The full list of instalments so far is in the sidebar to the right.

September 1978

‘Where’s Pa gone now?’ said John in an irritated voice – the one he always used when speaking of his father.
    ‘I’ll go and look for him,’ said Simon, leaping to his feet.
    We were in The Three Tuns having a meal with John’s parents and brother. Betty, his aunt, had retired to her room at the Bed & Breakfast where they were all staying.
    Simon returned.
    ‘He’s in the Gents,’ he reported. ‘He says he can’t come out because he’s “flatulating”.’
    Mollie and I looked at each other and, as one, we broke out laughing, and once we started, we couldn’t stop. We kept setting each other off.
    John and I had visited his parents a couple of times over the summer and I’d got to know them better. I never quite knew how to behave with John T or what to call him, but he was funny. He spent hours agonising over words and social conventions - and nearly always got them wrong. Mollie, on the other hand, had natural grace and I’d felt relaxed with her from the start.
    The whole family was more open than mine and they’d never judged me. I was happy sitting with them here in the pub. I felt like myself.
    It was the night before the wedding.

The next morning I hopped around on our mattress in Liz’s cottage trying to get dressed. I couldn’t find the white tights I’d bought to go with my pink and white dress but eventually they surfaced and I lay down and tried to pull them on. It was all so awkward. I was fumbling everything.
    John meanwhile dressed in the dark blue pinstriped suit, pale blue shirt and dark blue tie his mother had insisted - in spite of his protests - on buying him at Christmas when she’d renovated his wardrobe. He didn’t look like himself but Mollie would be pleased to see him in the suit and he didn’t have anything else appropriate. In a way I was proud of him.
    John’s family were going straight to the church, but my family who didn’t know the way were coming via the cottage so that they could follow John and me.
    John and I stood outside the front door waiting for them. I jiggled from foot to foot, peering down the dirt track that led back to the main road. They were long overdue.
    Sun shone through mist in an early-autumn way.

My brother Jo, child number two and the wise owl of the family, had rung me two nights earlier.
    ‘I’ve been speaking to Mum,’ he said, ‘and she wants to come to your wedding.’

    Which I translated as meaning that Jo had persuaded her.

    ‘We could drive down early on Saturday.' he continued. 'Mum says could you arrange some sort of lunch for us all afterwards. She’ll pay. And would you like me to “give you away”?’
    By then, so close to the wedding, I was finding it difficult to deal with anything practical so I agreed to the plans without thinking. But as soon as I put the phone down I regretted doing so. The prospect of seeing my mother cast a shadow over everything. Did she really think I would welcome her after everything she’d said?
    But it was a bridge of sorts, I supposed.
    It was certainly reassuring to know that Jo would be with me up the aisle. And helpful, as although John and I had had a run-through of the service with the vicar during the week I’d got no further with the ‘giving away’ part. It was appropriate too, in the absence of my father, not to say preferable because Jo was an equal so I would feel less like a parcel and more like a person.
    I’d rung The Three Tuns in a panic and Richard’s wife and the pub’s cook had risen to the occasion and promised to reserve tables for the party and cook the stew and baked potatoes that had been my unimaginative suggestion for lunch.

At last, in a swirl of stones, my parents’ turquoise Volvo estate car pulled up. My two sisters, my mother and Jo piled out.
    I hadn’t expected my sisters and tears pricked my eyes.
    Being so close in age (five of us in six and half years), we siblings had been a tight gang as children and the thought of losing them over this débâcle was almost the worst part of it.
    I wondered what story they’d been told.
    They’d dressed up for the occasion, Amelia – child number five - in a long checked dress and Cass in a smart white shirt and pink poplin skirt.

    Jo was in a suit, like John.
    ‘Where’s Danny?’ I asked. He was child number four.
    ‘He was already booked to play in a cricket match,’ said Jo.
    I hoped he didn’t feel left out.
    ‘Sorry we’re late,’ chorused my sisters. ‘Jo insisted on stopping for a full breakfast.’
    That was typical of Jo – timekeeping was not one of his strengths - but he got away with everything.
    ‘And I miscalculated the time,’ said my mother.
    I kissed her dutifully on the cheek and avoided her eye.
    ‘We’d better get going,’ I said, climbing into the Mini with John.

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PART THREE. 9 Results

 This is an instalment of  an as-yet unnamed autobiographical series that started in Australia in 1975.

Click here for the first instalment.

The full list of instalments so far is in the sidebar to the right.

My results arrived in the post. I’d almost forgotten about them with everything that was going on, but my hands shook as I ripped open the envelope. All I wanted was to have passed. The mark didn’t matter.

    I was astonished to discover that I’d received a 2/1, the second-best mark. I didn’t think I deserved it.

    I wanted to tell my parents – perhaps at last I might have done something that pleased them – so I wrote them a letter.

    At the same time I told them the date of the wedding along with the time and where it was happening. I’m not sure why I did that, as I knew my father couldn’t come and I didn’t want my mother to. Perhaps I thought I was covering myself and giving them a last chance. Or perhaps I was trying to take charge of the situation.

 

On Saturday, a week before the wedding, John and I were down in the kitchen having breakfast when we heard the ominous thump of letters landing on the mat in the hall. I fetched them. They were from my parents, of course, and I gave my mother’s to John.

    ‘I don’t want to read this now,’ I said. ‘I don’t think I can. Can you put it away somewhere I won’t find it and perhaps I’ll read it another time.’

    I took my father’s letter back to bed with me. I wanted to read it on my own. This was my problem, not John’s.

 

It was only two pages long and the handwriting was almost unrecognisable. It was larger than usual and untidy and it sloped backwards instead of forwards as it usually did.

  

25 August

 

My dear daughter

 

You have told us your decision and I am, of course, very sad. It is so far from the happy family occasion it should be but the abruptness of your actions have obviously made that inevitable.

    What is a major worry is the thought that you may be turning your back or opting out of many of the standards to which we did our best to bring you up. I don’t think we are old-fashioned. That is an accusation that the younger generation always make to the older when they want to do something without approval.

    If friendships wither it is not always the friend’s fault. It is even odds that it is caused by oneself. It is not clever nor tolerant not to respect and consider other people’s point of view. It is even odds that they are more right than you.

    Nor is it hypocrisy to observe the usual courtesies and respect the social graces and behaviour of the company you are in at any time. It is kindness and thoughtfulness. Many of the most courteous and well-mannered people are some of the poorest and their company some of the most delightful.

    Bigotry is the belief that you are always right. Honesty is to say what you think even if you accept that you may be wrong.

    Selfishness and intolerance are the bane of the world. Kindness and good manners the blessings.

    Sorry to be a pompous bore.

    With love Daddy

I could barely read I was so tense but words jumped out and they seemed to be a criticism of John and me – as usual. The strange thing was that everything my father was saying could have applied to my parents - as far as I could see.
     He sounded broken and the letter broke me too. I couldn’t bear seeing my father so unhappy. What had I done to deserve all this? 

    My opinion of John wobbled, as it always did when my parents described him from their point of view, but I didn’t waver in my determination to marry him. He was, I now realised, the only thing I had left.

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