Eighty Not Out (8 page)

7

Marriage, Separation and a Radical Decision

T
here was a surreal element to the solemnising of our union. One of Rudolf's pupils, a Presbyterian minister, was approached. Palpably uneasy, he met us in the hope that we would demonstrate sincerity, and promise to raise any fruits of the union in the faith. We did not confess that children were not envisaged. Never having wanted a fairytale wedding, suitable clothes for the event were hard to find. Eventually I settled for a blue-grey crêpe silk dress under a three-quarter-length moleskin coat, an unforgiving black hat, and peep-toed black suede shoes with platform soles. After stubborn resistance, Rudolf agreed to buy a suit for the ceremony and chose brown. In the absence of a close male relative, my boss's father-in-law was pressed into service to give me away. Celia, as matron of honour, wore her New Look going away suit. Her husband, and several other men, declined the invitation, pleading pressure of work. Nevill, an artist with whom Rudolf had shared a house before the war, was best man and I suppressed the fact that he was physically more attractive to me than the groom. He remained distant and, in any case, had a French wife and two children. His marriage did not endure.

Less than a month later, when Rudolf announced that he expected his Aertex underwear to be boiled
twice
in a huge galvanised tub, deep misgivings set in, and I told him to do it himself. My mother had been urging us to move to a house nearer her own, and set about ‘managing' the change. An early Victorian semi was bought for less than £1,000: it had damp rising almost to ceiling height, dry rot, a flat-roofed kitchen extension, the ceiling of which amassed large drops of condensation, and a windowless dining room. Much time and money was spent by the three of us to make it habitable. Rudolf, to his credit, laboured hard, and my mother was in her element doing
DIY
jobs. I had finished my apprenticeship, finished the course in shorthand and typing, and was working for a firm of architects, typing bills of quantities and specifications in the mornings and working on the drawing-board in the afternoons, fired by the dream that in ten years' time I might have a Royal Institute of British Architects qualification. Fat chance.

Rudolf heard from the librarian at Queen's University that they were urgently looking for someone to take over the Department of Photography. Instead of hard-selling myself, I was engaged as a lowly technician, but was expected to knock the department into shape. Its reputation was so dire that orders were few, so with time to spare, I typed catalogue cards and acted as secretary to the librarian while the incumbent was on her annual month's holiday.

On a glorious summer day in 1955 I walked past the ancient laburnum tree that was a feature of the quad, to the basement of the Anatomy Department, which housed such basic equipment as the photographic unit possessed. I was met by Professor Pritchard, who was clearly ashamed of the dungeon that was to be my base until alterations to a house owned by the university in Camden Street had been finished.

By this time Rudolf and I were already leading separate lives under the same roof. Mutual indifference best describes the relationship. He had accepted a job as librarian at the Shell refinery on the Firth of Forth in Scotland, and my refusal to join him would later provide grounds for desertion.

Meanwhile, in the late summer I went alone from Edinburgh by rail and ferry to the Outer Hebrides, spending ten days on Barra, walking, bird-watching and reviewing my prospects. They were not good: now twenty-seven, the biological clock was ticking, although I do not recall much being written about the subject then. I was not an attractive prospect on the dating scene: separated but not to be free for at least three years – assuming that no hint of ‘collusion' impeded the granting of a decree nisi – the queue was not long in pursuit of my company. I played tennis only occasionally and had given up ice skating. Some men were discomfited, avoiding me; others were interested but tentative. There was a scattering of married men, potentially even more dangerous company than me. It was not a healthy scene, but belied Philip Larkin's claim that ‘sexual intercourse began in 1963'.

I joined a Workers' Educational Association field trip to the north Antrim coast, hoping to meet more university staff as well as students interested in archaeology, ornithology, botany and geology. The weather was wonderful and I learned a lot about the biological sciences and human nature. Evenings spent in a smoky pub in Ballycastle were lively, fuelled by live music and steady consumption of the national drink, Guinness, or, for the monied few, Bushmills whiskey. Carousing continued after hours at the field centre, where figures flitted stealthily between the segregated huts well into the small hours. On a walk from Murlough Bay to the top of Fair Head I saw for the first, and only, time a corncrake at close quarters. We ate our sandwiches looking down at a seal colony seven hundred feet below.

It must surely have been fate that brought Fergus into my life at precisely that time. He had returned to Northern Ireland to write a PhD thesis on field studies conducted for the Ministry of Health in the Gold Coast during the years just before it became independent Ghana. He had many rolls of negative film to be printed, so his mentor in the Department of Zoology suggested a visit to the photographic unit, which, it was rumoured, had been taken over by ‘a right looking bit'. Contrary to family prejudice, I had always been attracted by beards, and also liked suede shoes. Fergus ticked all the boxes. He was three years older than I, shy and largely unaware of how attractive he was to women, although he had a reputation for being elusive. Discreet enquiries revealed that he was unmarried, and had been allocated a small room over the main entrance to the university for the duration of his stay. Observation established where and when he parked his car, and at what time he was likely to appear in the Great Hall to queue for lunch. He, too, had been making enquiries, deciding to ignore gossip and follow his intuition: It was a
coup de foudre
and soon we met daily. At the newly established Arts Theatre we saw
Waiting for Godot
and
Look Back in Anger
, revealing that we shared more than physical attraction. Our reading tastes were similar. This friendship was going somewhere serious, but the path would be long and tortuous.

Having returned from watching a tennis match in the summer of 1956, we were finishing a meal when Rudolf appeared unexpectedly after a day's walking in the Mournes. Giving his customary short, stiff bow, he showed no surprise at the introduction. All three sensed a watershed, although the situation was not thrashed out formally until divorce proceedings were finalised. My solicitor was emphatic that any hint of collusion during the three-year separation period required prior to a decree absolute would jeopardise the outcome.

Fergus and I both had ‘baggage' to be cleared. One of his colleagues was an American woman with whom he shared many interests apart from their research. He was not in love with her and set about extricating himself the relationship. This drama was going on concurrently with several platonic work-related friendships – on my side at least – in Ireland. One was with an eminent scientist whose talented wife shared his interest in painting and the contemporary art world. They hosted lively parties at which much alcohol was consumed, but he was a background figure, while his lively, beautiful wife sparkled at the centre of animated groups. Two children made a brief appearance early in the evening before formality gave way to less inhibited behaviour. In all honesty I do not think it entered my mind how uneasy the wives of these men, whose company I found stimulating, may have felt. My self-esteem was low at the time – although fifty years ago that expression had not become a cliché.

Then there was the Pharmacist: he had been an acquaintance of Rudolf, who disliked him, an antipathy based, I suspect, on jealousy of someone better looking and better read. The sound of scrunching gravel, followed by a tap on the window, would announce his arrival at dusk for a chat about literature, cinema, arts in general. He was never in any way creepy – he had a devoted wife and, other than his house, was uninterested in material things, apart from a collection of old books unearthed during regular visits to Smithfield market. He formed a penfriendship with Ezra Pound, even flying to Italy to meet the great man. After qualifying as a pharmacist, his entire professional life was spent behind the counter of a chemist's shop; the interior was darkly panelled, with white china apothecary's jars on display, and two giant red and green bottles with pointed cut-glass stoppers in the window. He travelled to work on a temperamental Vespa scooter, or when the weather was vile, by bus. His appearance was eccentric: dark-skinned, he had a large head and abundant, springy, iron-grey hair, his ties were always loosely knotted, knitted silk, worn with a plain-coloured shirt, and he had a collection of three-quarter-length coats, ranging from reverse sheepskin to leather. His footwear never varied from styles of the Beatles/Teddy Boy era with heavy rubber soles; a stubby compressed umbrella completed the outfit.

We never exchanged more than a hug and chaste peck on the cheek, despite our corresponding for over forty years. When I returned on leave from Africa, we always met for drinks or a meal. No epicure, he would settle for fish and chips, finishing with coffee and a green chartreuse. On parting he would say: ‘Consider yourself kissed.' His handwriting was beautiful – thick black Italic – covering wide sheets of parchment-like paper, which he had liberated from Horatio's Pharmacy. Gradually, letters came at wider intervals and the writing became more difficult to decipher; telephone chats were less spontaneous while arteries hardened and recall became less sharp. Now history – the letters, which cover the years when the Troubles were at their height in Northern Ireland, rest among my papers, and another friend was gone for ever.

During the early days of my marriage to Rudolf, I met Fintan, a devout Roman Catholic, married with numerous children, while I was working in the typing pool of a local authority. His opening greeting was: ‘What the hell are
you
doing here?' He was tubby, pinkly balding with pebbly glasses and an impish sense of humour – he was a compulsive teller of jokes, the point of which often eluded me, delivered as they were in a conspiratorial hush against background noise in bars and coffee shops. We met regularly, but it was a very long time before he introduced me to his wife or children.

It was the Pharmacist who introduced me to the Poet, and we ‘clicked' instantaneously. A small neat figure in his late thirties, over whom I towered, he tried to cover advancing baldness with thin wisps of hair brushed laterally over the dome; his countenance, faintly mediaeval, reminded me of a portrait of Henry
VII
. A Jaguar only emphasised his diminutive stature, and I suspect his purchase of a Morris Mini as a second car was not unconnected. When we first met, I was living alone, finding it hard to make ends meet, even considering taking in lodgers. He lived with his wife and their brood of children. He was drifting, drinking too much, writing poetry, buying tranches of derelict property in insalubrious parts of Belfast – I accused him of profiteering. He socialised with writers, poets and journalists, as well as vintage car enthusiasts.

I hesitate to call these two misfits, but in many ways they were. Both admirers of Joyce, they used puns and bizarre names for people and places probably as a defence from any unpleasant repercussions that might result from their behaviour. I was complicit in the game-playing, and in retrospect ashamed: a strong element of
Liaisons Dangereuses
pervaded our activities.

By the autumn of 1956 Fergus had accepted a two-year World Health Organization consultantship with a Health and Nutrition Scheme in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). He spent some time in Lusaka, but was based at Fort Rosebery near Lake Bangweulu. He had yet to become the conscientious correspondent of later years, and there were often weeks between letters, sometimes just a postcard from a field trip. During his first local leave, he went with colleagues to the Ruwenzori range – known as the Mountains of the Moon – where he was an early visitor to gorillas in their natural habitat.

Home for leave in 1957, Fergus took me to Donegal for the Easter break; daringly we booked into the hotel as a married couple, risking our cover being blown, and divorce jeopardised. I flew to join him in Geneva late in 1959 – my first time outside the
UK
– for a skiing holiday, which we spent at the then modest resort of Verbier. Then Fergus returned to a new
WHO
project in Ghana, and I to Ireland. We had agreed I should resign my job at the university and sail to West Africa in May the following year on a six-month visitor's permit, hoping this would prove the strength of our relationship. Fergus was pessimistic about the effect Africa had on many women, having witnessed ‘Happy Valley'-style activities in Ghana, as well as during his stay at Fort Rosebery. Foolhardy, courageous, intrepid, whatever it was, there was no escaping the fact that I would be on approval.

My mother took the news with apparent equanimity, though she must have had many misgivings. She now faced the prospect of having to explain my departure to relatives and friends. There was a possible opening for me at Legon University in Accra, but the project for which Fergus had been recruited was based more than a hundred miles north of the capital, so this would be too remote. I told her to say that my ‘friend' would steer me through the corridors of officialdom, and it would be, after all, for six months only. To her credit, she made no effort to dissuade me. The Poet and the Pharmacist predicted disaster, Rosemary, now happily married, thought Fergus a distinct improvement on Rudolf, and Fintan, whose father knew Ghana and the West African coast from service in the merchant navy, blessed the enterprise and wished us well.