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.
It all went so well at first.
We visited Richard, the pub landlord and someone John deeply respected and liked, and he agreed to be our best man.
‘I hope you’ll both be very happy,’ he said, putting his hand on my shoulder.
Being some ten years older than most of his clientele, Richard took a fatherly interest in them, and he seemed to have a particularly soft spot for John. I was honoured that he considered me the right person for John.
We wanted a church wedding. We needed the spiritual depth that would give us. It was a sign to each other of how important our marriage was.
We decided on the church in Silverton, the village where John had lived and where The Three Tuns, Richard’s pub, was situated, and went to see the vicar.
With its walls of books and the patterned dark-red Turkish rugs on the floor, his room reminded me of that of one of my university tutors.
There were some practicalities to discuss in that you had to have lived a certain amount of time in the parish, but luckily John’s time in the cottage could be adjusted to fit them.
We spent a good hour with the vicar, touching on the problems with my parents, and arranging for a wedding at the beginning of September – which would give time for the banns to be read.
‘Look after each other,’ he said as he stood on his doorstep waving us goodbye.
Of course, I thought. That’s what it’s all about. How simple.
Because of his position, I thought of him as a grown-up – unlike John and me – and it was a joy to have a grown-up respecting us and taking seriously our wish to be married.
Liz and Rod said they’d come to the wedding and gave us a collection of practical kitchen items for when we set up home together (many of which I still have). I was touched.
Mollie was excited when John telephoned her and said that she and John T would definitely be there, probably bringing with them Simon, John’s younger brother, and Betty, Mollie’s sister. They would book a B & B for a couple of nights and could they take us out for supper at The Three Tuns the night before the wedding?
I couldn’t wait to see them.
Now I had to decide what to do about my parents.
I took a train up to London for the day and went to Laura Ashley where I bought my wedding outfit, a long-sleeved, high-necked, frilled, pink-and-white-striped dress with a white lace-trimmed petticoat which purposely drooped below the hem of the dress.
And then, not sure at all if I was doing the right thing, but wanting to be friendly now I was in the vicinity, went to see my father in his office.
I told him about the wedding and found myself pleading again. I so wanted his approval but it wasn’t forthcoming. He was cold and distant and I went away with bowed shoulders.
My parents wanted to come to Devon to talk to me.
I’d read of parents kidnapping their children who’d been caught up in ‘cults’, and ‘reverse brainwashing’ them, and I was terrified my parents might try something similar. So I arranged that we should meet on Exeter’s Cathedral Green – a neutral spot I thought and a public one where I might be safer – and brought John with me.
The four of us sat on a bench together, with seagulls clustering around our feet waiting for food, my father at one end, John at the other and my mother and me squashed next to each other in the middle. I edged as close to John as I could and as far away as possible from my mother. I held tight to John’s hand.
I’d decided recently that good people made you feel better about yourself and bad people made you feel worse, but what did that make my parents? Criticising parents was not something you did. How could I be descended from bad people and not be bad myself?
Most of the arguing was done by John and my mother. I was proud of him. No one stood up to my mother except occasionally my sister Cass, child number three, who’d always been stroppy. Much of my childhood was spent keeping the peace between my younger siblings and, if ever there was an argument, Cass was in the centre of it.
Certainly my father didn’t stand up to her.
‘You’re thinking of yourselves,’ said John.
‘No,’ said my mother, giving him a hard stare. ‘You’re thinking of yourselves.’
Yes, I thought. But we’re the ones getting married, not you. Isn’t it our choice?
John told me later that when my mother said that, he knew the gloves were off and that he couldn’t afford to give her any quarter.
How fortunate it was that he’d had all that practice arguing with his father.
A few days after my parents' visit another missive arrived.
The four of us sat on a bench together, with seagulls clustering around our feet waiting for food, my father at one end, John at the other and my mother and me squashed next to each other in the middle. I edged as close to John as I could and as far away as possible from my mother. I held tight to John’s hand.
I’d decided recently that good people made you feel better about yourself and bad people made you feel worse, but what did that make my parents? Criticising parents was not something you did. How could I be descended from bad people and not be bad myself?
Most of the arguing was done by John and my mother. I was proud of him. No one stood up to my mother except occasionally my sister Cass, child number three, who’d always been stroppy. Much of my childhood was spent keeping the peace between my younger siblings and, if ever there was an argument, Cass was in the centre of it.
Certainly my father didn’t stand up to her.
‘You’re thinking of yourselves,’ said John.
‘No,’ said my mother, giving him a hard stare. ‘You’re thinking of yourselves.’
Yes, I thought. But we’re the ones getting married, not you. Isn’t it our choice?
John told me later that when my mother said that, he knew the gloves were off and that he couldn’t afford to give her any quarter.
How fortunate it was that he’d had all that practice arguing with his father.
A few days after my parents' visit another missive arrived.
To be continued . . .
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