Three Day Week

Chapter 1- Turning point

I am 63 years old. Sounds old, doesn’t it? Unless of course you’re my age. But I’m going to take you back to when I was about as young as an adult can be. Past the death of Diana, the Great Storm of ’87, the miners' strike and the Falklands War. Past the murder of John Lennon, the drought of ’76 and the three day week.

It was 1970. I was 17, I’d just left school and was walking down the road I’d walked down for many years. The sun was shining on a wintry fresh day in September and I was in two minds about what lay ahead. I was meeting a new date at the railway station in Guildford but still unsure whether I should have chosen him or another young man who'd asked me out. The one I turned down was in a band, the one I’d chosen worked in the same department store as me. I was a newly appointed display assistant and he was managing a travel bureau.

My friends had said choose Robert, the travel bureau manager, because he was bound to make money. I wasn’t sure if I’d made the right decision because I’m not the type that chooses money before anything else. However, the time for thinking was over now. I had a bus to catch.

When I got to the railway station the 21 year old version of Robert was standing there dressed in colourful casuals. He had a navy blue shirt with white swirls, turquoise cords, a flamboyant green tie, red socks and black patent shoes. I was a little overcome by his appearance because at work he normally wore quite low key, formal clothes. As I approached and stood beside him he said, “Give me your hand then,” which I thought quite abrupt but put down to nerves on his part.

We finished up going to London and went to Lyon’s Corner House, a famous chain of restaurants at the time. He also took me to Westminster cathedral, bowing at the altar and kneeling down to make the sign of the cross on one knee. I think that’s the last time I ever saw him in a church and I have no more memory of that trip now. I don’t think it was important.

The key thing I recollect about the time is when he took me back to Guildford he insisted on walking me all the way home to Shalford; about two and a half miles away. He accompanied me to the gate but didn’t want to come in. Sounds chivalrous, but looking back on it now I think he wanted to see what kind of home I lived in, which happened to be a Council house. That was used as a weapon against me later but back then it all seemed so innocuous. My father was peeping round the corner of the curtain upstairs and he would have noticed Robert was dark skinned.

I’d had no thoughts about Robert’s skin colour. Not once. He was just what he was, even though this was 1970. I did notice his effeminacy but again it made no difference. He was very attractive, in his way, and that’s all that mattered.

Next I remember Robert visiting my house and meeting my mother and brothers. He made a lot of fuss about my mother’s dogs, who were naturally boisterous and welcoming as dogs are, as he couldn’t bear to have them touch him, so my mother had to put them on leads as he cowered in the corner, squealing. That was not an issue, though; I found it funny and my mother seemed to get on very well with him subsequently. He was intelligent and knowledgable and this suited her exactly.

On the other hand, my father met him only briefly; partly because he was not at all well then, and died the following year. But what he had seen of Robert he didn’t like, which was strange, as he accepted everybody.

In time, Robert invited me to Liss Forest, where he lived alone. He had a little annex he rented in the grounds of a large white house lived in by a Mrs McCrumb. And later he invited my family for what he called ‘a smorgasbord’, in an affected foreign accent. It turned out to be scrambled egg on a piece of ham on toast garnished with a piece of crest.

At this point, we’d been dating a couple of months and the person I knew was a smart, charming chatterbox who showed no inclination towards losing his temper. The first time I ever caught wind of his nastiness was from one of his employees in the travel bureau, Margit, a German woman in her twenties. She begged me not to continue going out with him, saying he was awful and really horrible to women. Of course I hadn’t come across any of that so I wasn’t sure whether to believe her.

Robert first stayed over around November and before long he began to show signs of deep depression. He would stay in bed all weekend and mum would take him up coffee in his favourite china coffee set. He also made me feel bad about his colour.

It’s actually quite hard to explain the situation. Robert’s ancestry is certainly caucasian for the most part but what Indian portion there is has proved surprisingly dominant and he looked Pakistani in spite of having a completely Anglo-Saxon father and a mother with reportedly mostly white ancestry, who was also very dark skinned. None of this mattered to me but it mattered a lot to him. This man that sounded so quintessentially like an English gentleman was painfully aware that he was different and proved to be on a very short fuse.

And there was the issue with his sexuality. I don’t imagine all gay men make poor lovers to their female wives but he was the most inconsiderate I’d ever have. He liked gratifying himself but sadly I was just a slab of meat. At the time I didn’t think much about it or know any different but now I think he may have chosen me on the basis that I looked a bit like a boy. I had narrow hips, long legs and the figure of my ballet days.

In February we went to Portugal on holiday for a week. There was a very young Portuguese boy that was our waiter and Robert encouraged him to flirt with me but I didn’t reciprocate. Then one night he disappeared with the holiday rep and didn’t get back until the early hours of the morning, when he turned up drunk. I was annoyed but I had no suspicion that he may have had any sexual interest in the rep. Really, looking back, all kinds of alarm bells were ringing but they weren’t loud enough to wake me up from my girlish dream.

I was still very much in love with Robert and I believed any problem could be overcome. I could help him change, I could be there for him. I could make it better somehow.

In the Spring of 1971 Robert took me to the castle grounds in Guildford, telling me he wanted a serious talk. He was changing his name and made it sound very mysterious and top secret. In fact, I got a big story, but cutting it short his family were important and needed to have a surname worthy of them. So he changed his entire moniker, first, middle and family to one that sounded far posher and more exclusive. In fact, nobody else has that name.

The other thing he told me was he was going to university in Northern Ireland to do a degree in Education and Social Administration but he flunked it, in the end. Perhaps it was then that we talked about us getting married. He certainly didn’t get down on his knees to me although he did to my mother, asking, “May I take your daughter’s hand?” My mother burst out laughing and said, “I think you’ve already done that.” He wasn't amused. He was doing his melodramatic turn and wanted her to join in.

Meantime, I’d gone to live with Robert in Liss Forest and caught the train every morning with him to Guildford. That didn’t go well. I was always ready before it was time to leave but he would push me to do things and then we’d have to run for the train and I’d get the blame. Perhaps I should have thought twice about our relationship at this stage.

Of course, it wasn’t all bad. One day he suggested I go shopping in Petersfield. I bought the ingredients for a roast dinner and a cookery book. Though I'd never cooked before the results were perfect and Robert was very appreciative. That made me feel good about myself but when I think back it’s surprisingly hard to find really happy memories. It’s as if that girl thought that happiness was just around the corner, as soon as we got some awkward preliminaries over with. A fairy tale can be a hard thing to give up on.

We visited Northern Ireland before we went there. The Ulster people were very hospitable and accepted us completely. We stayed in a guest house run by a lovely lady that cooked us lots of home grown recipes. Typical Ulster food, like balm cake, scones and potato cakes.

Then in June we got married in Guildford Registry Office. The guests on Robert's side of the family were his mother and her partner, brother and Aunt Bunty. I invited my brothers and their girlfriends and my mother. My father was too ill to attend.

After the wedding Robert’s mother and partner took Robert and I out for a meal. I’d not met his mother or her new husband before (Robert’s father died when he was twelve), as they’d come over from Ibiza. I liked his mother, though. She was pleasant and she gave me some moral support. When we’d walked her to the railway station and were saying goodbye his mother put her hand on Robert’s arm and said, “Now Robert, if this goes wrong I shall know who to blame.” I could tell by his expression that he was livid and I wondered what she meant by that. There was no honeymoon. Robert announced that the holiday in Portugal had been the honeymoon.

In September, a year after we met, we settled in Colraine, Northern Ireland. I mis-carried that month. I was sad but I knew it wasn’t a pregnancy right from the beginning because I had unnatural pains in my womb. Robert left me at home when the miscarriage started and I began bleeding. Back in those days we didn’t have a phone, so the girl downstairs ran to a phone box whilst I looked after her baby, then an ambulance came.

In the hospital they thought my womb was retroverted, so they put a ring on the neck of the womb and put me to bed. By that time Robert arrived and I told him to get the doctor when I started experiencing severe pains, as he needed prompting. The doctor came and took the ring off the neck of the womb and I hemorrhaged, by which time Robert had disappeared.

I expected him to come back during visiting times but he didn’t and I started to cry. The lady opposite me, who was from Ballymoney, got her husband to drive over to Colraine and fetch him, for which I was thankful but when he saw me he was cold and businesslike.

Thankfully, my mother sent me a bouquet of flowers. Copper-coloured chrysanthemums.

Next time I'll tell you about how Robert sent me back to England so he could be with his friend, Billy and how I wrote Robert many letters, begging him to let me return.

Thanks for reading.