PART THREE. 8 Missives

 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.

We found the letter on the doormat when we returned from work. We both recognised it instantly from the blue envelope and the scrawled address. It was from my mother.

    It was beautiful summer’s day so we took the letter, a blanket and a cup of tea each out into the garden and sat in the shade of the old apple tree in the far corner.

    I leant into John. I was so tired of all this. 

 16 August 

My dear Belinda

 

So be it. I think you are putting us all in rather an invidious position. Why this unseemly haste? Either you should have got married quietly without telling anyone beforehand or you should give everyone due warning. Don’t forget that we are all very fond of you and it is a big day. Have you considered Grandpa, H & Minda, Dennis & Peta etc? I think this hole and corner business is most unsavoury. Unless you are pregnant, why do you have to rush it so?

 What unseemly haste? It was now six months since we’d been to see my parents and eight months since John and I had first realised we wanted to marry.

    Yes, we should have got married without telling them.

     No I hadn’t considered the wider family. I hadn’t been married before. I didn’t know how one was supposed to behave. And anyway, I didn’t think our marriage concerned anyone except John and me.

    The word ‘pregnant’ hit me like a punch to the gut. My mother never normally used it. It was too crude. She always said that someone was ‘expecting a baby’. I knew she was using it to hurt.

    Apart from anything else it is a little unfair to Daddy who has already made all his travelling arrangements for the business trip which you have known about for a long time.

That was puzzling. I didn’t know anything about a trip. Had I missed it in one of the letters of the ‘usual mundane gossip’ or had my mother forgotten to tell me? She did sometimes forget to whom she’d told what, telling one child something twice and another nothing at all.

    I felt bad about the clash as I didn’t want my father to think I’d deliberately excluded him but I couldn’t change the date of the wedding now. It was only just over two weeks away.

 

    You are our oldest and first born and of course we want to be at your wedding, whoever you marry. We may not like John, but you have rather taken it for granted that we wouldn't ‒  you said so before we even met him ‒ and we’ve never had a chance to get to know him better and change our minds.

 

I never said they wouldn’t like him. I said that he was ‘unsuitable (exclamation mark)’, by which I meant that he was unsuitable by my parents’ standards, not by mine. I wondered if that had been a misunderstanding all along.

    Somehow, though, I couldn’t be bothered to correct anything. What would be the point? They wouldn’t listen.

    And no, they hadn’t had a chance to get to know him better. That was my fault. I was a coward. I couldn’t risk any more criticism of him. I was afraid of what that would do to me.

    Anyway this is my immediate reaction and I won’t write any more at the moment. If you feel like it, ring up and reverse the charges.

    Love

    Mummy

 We put the letter down and looked at each other.

    ‘We’re not that poor,’ said John indignantly. ‘Why’s she put in that bit about “reversing the charges”?’

    ‘God knows,’ I said.

 

The next day when we returned from work we found a letter from my father waiting for us. Usually we left the sitting-room to Liz as it was her house, but she was upstairs, so we huddled together on the sofa. I felt slightly sick.

My dear Belinda

There is of course nothing we can do if you decide to go against our wishes except to convey our real sorrow at such estrangement. But if you are looking for our approval then I feel bound to say that, at this stage, I am unable to give you away.

I hadn’t asked him to give me away. I was hardly aware of that part of the wedding service as I hadn’t been to any weddings as an adult. Our friends didn’t get married, or at least weren’t married yet. John and I were an exception.

    What was this ‘giving away’ bit, anyway? It struck me as rather quaint.

    But I was sorry to have upset my father, if that was what I’d done.    

We hardly know John although we are aware that you come from different backgrounds. I do find him very difficult to talk to and while that is partly my fault he does not seem to be forthcoming in general conversation. Of course he is nervous but we cannot make a real judgement if he will not talk. About his home and family, interests, sport, holidays he’s had, school, training – in fact anything. He doesn’t necessarily have to talk to me but some initiative is essential if we are to get to know him.

       ‘I ballsed it up, didn’t I,’ said John.

       ‘You didn’t play their game,’ I said. ‘And why should you?’

       ‘I didn’t know there was a game to be played,’ he said. ‘I was out of my depth.’ 

    I don’t want to repeat all I’ve said in my previous letter but I do think that you yourself will not know your own mind if you stay at Exeter where obviously you will see John all the time and think of little else. If you get a job well away from Exeter, you and he would be welcome to see each other at weekends and hopefully here at home as often as you like. If you do this, and if your mind remains unchanged and we know more about John, we shall feel properly placed to be fair and reasonable. You must know our only concern is your long-term happiness. I also trust that John will appreciate all this, that he will be fair to you and not wish for hasty and irreversible action.

    

    With much love

    Daddy

 We hadn’t spent a night apart since the snow in February. It would be unbearable to do so. How could my father not realise that?

    Perhaps we were rushing things but I was so frightened – of being prevented from marrying John, of having my mind changed. 

 

Something horrible was starting to happen to me. I was flipping viewpoints. Sometimes I saw John as this extraordinary person I loved and sometimes I saw him as my parents did – useless, ‘common’ (as my mother would have put it) and boring.

    I didn’t know how to stop it. I didn’t know what it meant.

    Was I being worn down? Was this ‘reverse brainwashing’?

    Which was the real John? Which was the real me? How could people have such different views? Which viewpoint was right?

    How could I be so weak?

 

If anyone had ballsed things up, it was me. I’d done everything wrong.

To be continued