Eighty Not Out (7 page)

Thus began a hectic social life involving many drinks parties both at the captain's flat and in the ward room of the
Magnificent
. Captain Balfour, of Scots descent, was a towering figure with what can best be described as a rough-hewn countenance, rather like the Easter Island statues. Renowned for a fiery temper, and unpredictable outbursts of venom, I was warned that being female was no barrier to becoming a target. His wife, of the same craggy build, wore little make-up, and in contrast to the other officers' wives, dressed informally, preferring tweeds and jerseys to more feminine styles. When she came under fire, rather than engaging in fruitless defence or argument, she ignored him, knowing he would soon turn on another victim. Having no experience of the dramatic changes in personality and behaviour excessive drinking can provoke, I did not recognise the mood swings were due to a prodigious intake of alcohol. The officers under his command were in no doubt, but accepted his abrasive personality without apparent censure – heavy drinking, after all, was the norm in all naval circles.

For the first drinks party I attended I wore the blue taffeta Gainsborough dress, sensible that it emphasised my youth and compared unfavourably with the more svelte styles worn by the wives of other officers. A few of the junior officers were unaccompanied, and Harry was the only senior one to bring a local girl – me. Rum and Coke was a favourite tipple, and at one point I remember being asked: ‘Just how much does it take to get you drunk?' I despised those women who became giggly and unsteady on their feet, or worse, would disappear in haste to the ablutions, emerging looking pale and sweaty. My mother, despite the fact that alcohol had been the root cause of her failed marriage, had little experience of social drinking, but had warned me that drink affected one's judgement and lowered female resistance to opportunistic advances: she did not mention its effect when the advances were welcome. I suspect most of the advice was based on hearsay, as apart from the cider at Christmas, she never drank, explaining that even a glass of sherry made her feel out of control and slightly dizzy.

My deflowering took place early on New Year's Day in a jeep parked in the Castlereagh hills: the temperature hovered around freezing, and the stars were brilliant. The vehicle was a pioneer jeep with canvas seats stretched tightly on metal frames, the sides open to the elements. It was an urgent and uncomfortable experience, during which I climaxed while precautions were being put in place: such was my innocence I did not realise it was an orgasm. By the time we got home sobriety was setting in, along with guilt when I saw the light in my mother's bedroom. After some difficulty getting the key into the back door lock, I slunk to my chilly bed, dreading having to appear at work by nine thirty on the first day of January, which in Northern Ireland was not a general holiday. For the first time I had a hangover, and a face reddened by what was popularly known as ‘stubble trouble'. There was, however, a distinct feeling of achievement, and from then on I thought of myself as being a fully fledged woman – not to mention one up on Celia.

During the next couple of weeks, I agonised about the efficacy of the condom, and the awful possibility of being pregnant. In those days the dread was ever present, and continued so until the Pill came into general use. In fact, sex, both illicit and within marriage, continued to hold an element of apprehension for many years – particularly for those who abhorred condoms and relied on the ‘safe' period or sundry unreliable sponges, gels and foams.

The likelihood that Harry might be married had, of course, occurred to almost everyone but me: his fellow officers all knew, and had been waiting for the denouement. One of them, kindly, middle-aged and patently uneasy, turned up at the ice rink to convey the message that Harry had left that morning to attend the funeral of his mother-in-law in Portsmouth, but would get in touch with me very soon. Memory possibly deceives me, but I like to think I did not give any hint of the shock inflicted: I just thanked him, suppressed tears, and with a pounding heart went to remove my skates and leave the session early. During the journey home by tram and bus, I tried to analyse what I felt – not angry, just numb, and conscious for the first time of my naïvety. I dreaded his return, uncertain what attitude to adopt. I do not remember any profound apology for the deceit, but he spun a pathetic story about his wife preferring to remain in England with her mother and two children – already in their teens – and her refusal to join him in Belfast. The marriage had been dead for some time, and he spoke of divorce. I planned to join the
WRNS
as soon as his tour of duty finished with the commissioning of the aircraft carrier in May 1948. He wrote frequently and at length, while the ship was on trials off Newfoundland, and I believe he was in love, or thought he was, with me. There were glimmerings of dissent, however. His politics were fascist, even racist – I remember remarks about having had to share lodgings with ‘coloured' sailors while he was in Vancouver, and how ‘they' had a special smell. When I voiced my intention to continue working after marriage, the stuffy response was: ‘Naval officers' wives do not work.' When we met six years later, after I had, in his words, ‘thrown myself away' in marriage, we were awkward with each other, finding little in common, although he insisted on making a visit to pay his respects to my mother.

Ego led me to think of myself as the lead in a romantic drama on the lines of many films of that era. I remained an avid cinemagoer, adoring Trevor Howard, James Mason, Eric Portman, Rex Harrison and George Sanders, and had a penchant for the elusive bounders they played. I chose to ignore it, but my liaison had caused much adverse comment within the conformist tennisplaying fraternity. A degree of ostracism could be detected, and invitations to dances, cinema and theatre were few during the summer of my laments. To my mother's relief I did not join the
WRNS
, but continued my photographic apprenticeship.

Meanwhile, preparations for Celia's Big Day reached a peak. A mutual friend, not long returned from a ‘finishing' establishment in Scotland, and I had been chosen as bridesmaids. The social polish her parents sought remained elusive, and the unfortunate girl was for the most part mute and uncomfortable during the selection of suitable material, patterns and seamstress. I was equally miserable, if for different reasons, but vocal when it came to suppressing some of Celia's more grandiose ideas. My mother was outraged that the bridesmaids were expected to pay for their dresses, furious at the choice of silk chiffon to be tortured into complicated draped bodices, and, in particular, the choice of a dressmaker affiliated to one of Belfast's leading stores. The wedding took place at one of the few parish churches whose minister agreed to marry divorced persons. Celia was radiant in oyster silk, Douglas my ex-would-be ravisher, was an usher, the best man, also an ex-
RN
officer, was the suave commodore of the yacht club. After a reception at the country club, the bride appeared, elegant in a dove grey New Look ensemble trimmed with black velvet. A crowd of us saw them off at the station, where the long journey to a luxury hotel in County Cork began. In the evening a dance was held, at which copious amounts of alcohol were downed. I must have been dreary company, hoping that I exuded a sophisticated aura of mystery. One of the ushers saw fit to advise me to ‘beware of those Canadian wolves'. Too late – the
Magnificent
had already sailed down Belfast Lough for the last time.

After her marriage, Celia and I drifted further apart, although I was asked to be godmother to their first child, a compliment I should have refused, but did not know how to decline. They lived in one of the first ‘executive style' red-brick houses to be built in prosperous north Down during the early fifties. Their life revolved around bridge and dinner parties, regattas and involvement in fund-raising for local charities. Celia's mother, now retired from teaching, occupied a granny flat, from which, though a convenient baby-sitter, she emerged more often than was good for marital harmony. She voiced open criticism of their drinking habits, while Celia bleated: ‘What's the matter with a wee drink, if it makes the party go?' A lot, as it turned out.

A period of reappraisal followed when I began to face the fact that there was now no environment in which I felt at ease. Memories returned of the headmistress who had dubbed me a bad mixer – she may have had a point. Tennis continued, but I now had a ‘reputation' and this brought me to reflect on my mother's admonitions about ‘shop-soiled goods', and not ‘flying in the face of convention'. Maybe she too had a point. When the skating season began in September, I continued to practise figure skating after work before the now lonely public sessions began.

I ‘trifled with the affections' of a self-taught artist a mere six years older than me. He was tall, reasonably personable, but afflicted by contorted diction, hampered further by the pipe that seldom left his mouth. He had a natural talent for drawing buildings, and had toured Ireland sketching ancient monuments. He liked classical music and ballet, although due to his perpetual penury, we seldom went to the theatre. He was not in the least athletic – so tennis and skating were out. He lived with his parents and sister in a council house on the opposite side of town. His father, a retired riveter in the shipyard, had a large library and was a devotee of Dickens and Galsworthy. His mother and sister regarded me with suspicion when, during my visits, we disappeared for long periods to the front room, which was the ‘artist's studio' and strictly private. The relationship went no further than protracted snogging on the hard floor. Shortly after his declaration of profound feelings, I felt it was time to put an end to his misery: so, while conceding his natural talent for drawing buildings, I urged him to take lessons in life drawing, as it was clear he knew little about ballet positions, and less of human anatomy. Spoiled at home by uncritical adulation, he was hurt by my cruelty and withdrew to lick his wounds.

Rudolf had been a third-year student of botany when his Jewish father, a leftist political writer, fled Berlin in 1933 to settle in London with his Catholic wife and five children. The patriarch got a job at the London School of Economics, two older sons, already graduates, found employment, their elder daughter joined a kibbutz in Israel and the younger, a talented violinist, went to Singapore and married, much to Rudolf's disgust, a Chinese pianist. Rudolf joined the Berlitz school of languages, which sent him to Belfast. Too proud to accept the offer of the Jewish community to support continued university studies, he opened his own school near my workplace. We met when he brought films to be developed and printed; he was a finicky customer, with an inflated opinion of his photographic skills.

What motive I had in pursuing him eludes me even now. Born in 1909, he resembled a young Bertrand Russell, wore glasses and had, as both my mother and aunt were quick to point out, a Prussian-shaped skull. He was dogmatic, self-satisfied, and patronising, but his manners were irreproachable. He was musical to the extent of writing an article for the
Music Review
, in which he challenged the views of Hans Keller on the function of ornaments in mediaeval English music. He was interested in painting and sculpture, good food – for what that was worth in 1950 – and the Great Outdoors, Donegal in particular. He had also been through a catalogue of women – the most recent, who had just ditched him, was a member of the Savoy Players. The whiff of bohemianism may have been part of the attraction. Anyway, I began to study German as a means of getting to know him better, and soon we were what is now known as ‘an item'. At lunch time we joined a table of middle-aged people at Anderson & McAuley's top floor restaurant. The acknowledged head of our group was the writer Denis Ireland, a senator in the Irish parliament; his partner was Mary Hawthorne. Others were Thea Morrow, who lived in a threesome relationship with another woman, and George Morrow, son of the cartoonist, who held court at his house in the Holywood hills where writers and artists gathered at weekends. I tagged along, out of my depth, more conscious than ever of my limitations: illconcealed amusement at Rudolf's latest appendage did not escape me. Drink mostly flowed, but he was abstemious, almost puritanical in his attitude to alcohol, so I did not dare resort to that. We went for brisk walks over hills last visited with the Guides, and I was shocked by his nonchalant farts as he springheeled along rocky paths, goat-skin rucksack, a relic of the Great War, bouncing on his back: he claimed to average 1,000 feet in half an hour. We attended meetings of the Gramophone Society, string quartets, and lieder recitals.

Rudolf's teaching schedule meant that he did not return home until almost ten during the week, so any socialising took place at weekends. Soon a ritual was established: I cycled to his flat near my old school about midday, and back home in the late evening. If the weather was good, we put our cycles on the train to Bangor, from where we would go by the lovely coastal route as far as Groomsport and Donaghadee, often finding a sheltered spot near Portavoe for a picnic and quick swim in the icy water. Excursions further afield to Whitepark Bay on the north coast, or, at Easter, to Dunfanaghy in Donegal, involved my mother and her car to put a stamp of respectability on the relationship. Amazingly, Rudolf accepted this intrusion, and they formed an odd relationship; once, much to her annoyance, he described her as ‘a thoroughly good woman'. After our engagement, marked by the purchase of an Edwardian sapphire and diamond ring costing £18, an unescorted holiday was sanctioned in the summer of 1950. The ring, however, did not ensure lack of curiosity at our hotel in Glencolumbkille, where a small boy greeted my appearance for pre-dinner drinks, in front of a blazing fire in the lounge, with ‘Hello, fancy lady'.

A date for the nuptials was set for 28 December 1950. Celia thought Rudolf a comical choice; San and my mother kept their counsel; but Auntie Rosemary's dislike was such that she ostracised us. He viewed her with faint amusement, mocking her mud-coloured Fiat 27, and nicknaming her ‘Juml' after the number plate JML. Hers was an extreme reaction, adding to my mother's worries for years. I was hurt, as she had been more like an older sister, teaching me how to knit, sew, look after my nails and, with Annie's help, rudimentary cooking and cake making. Only after we separated, Rudolf having got work in Scotland, and Rosemary was engaged to marry in 1956, did she extend an olive branch to ensure I would attend her marriage to a really nice man, Uncle Arthur, who survives to this day. My mother's comment: ‘He'll need to be a saint.'