Chapter 6: A Long Encounter

Chapters:

1: Beginnings, 2: Doreen, 3: Moving On, 4: War, 5: Peace, 6: A Long Encounter, 7: Family

	In 1949 my friend Catherine asked me if I would join her in a holiday to Portugal organised by the Ramblers Club. (I don’t know how she found out about it as I don’t recollect that she was ever interested in walking or joining me in youth hostelling). She had leave in July and asked me to take mine at the same time but I found I could not and had to ask her if we could go a bit later. She was not very pleased but managed to change her leave. When the day came to leave for this holiday we had to rendezvous with the rest of the party at Victoria Station. I took the tube train but unfortunately there was flooding somewhere eon the line and we were delayed. I arrived only just in time and Catherine was very cross with me. However we soon got over that and started to get to know the rest of the party – a good mix of young men and women in their twenties. The journey was long and tiring. The boat and the trains were very basic – nothing like the ones of today. When we reached the border between France and Spain at Hendaye we found we could not enter Spain the next day as planned because it was a Holy Day and the Spanish Customs were closed. So we had a day to spend as we wished in Hendaye. A few of us decided to go for a walk and the party included an Edwin and his friend called “Higgo” (I suppose his surname was Higgins) and a Scottish girl named Margaret. We had shared a railway carriage on the journey and now with this walk we became a little group within the group and stayed together for most of the holiday.
The next day we crossed the border into Spain where we were to get a train through to Portugal. We were supposed to have booked seats but the train officials denied that seats had been booked and our leader had to bribe them – our first experience of what seemed to be a fairly common practice and which I discovered many years later in Italy. We changed trains somewhere (I suppose on the border with Portugal) and had lunch in a station café. We remember it as awful (particularly a soup which had large blobs of what tasted like rancid oil). We finally arrived in Lisbon at one o’clock in the morning to be greeted by a smiling cheerful hotel staff and a very good meal. We could not imagine such a thing happening in London. We were told our room numbers and found that Catherine and I were sharing with Margaret. We were settling in when there was a knock on the door and there stood Edwin who said he had been given this room number as his. Amid much laughter we sent him on his way. We have often wondered since whether our fate had already been decided. We explored Lisbon the next day – a lovely city. We travelled by tram and once an elderly English woman passenger looked very disapprovingly at us and said to Edwin (who was wearing long trousers) that he should tell his friend Higgo that he should not be walking round Lisbon in shorts. In the evening we went out for a walk and looked for a café for a drink. It seemed strange that we did not see any other women but discovered later that no respectable woman would walk about, let alone enter cafes, in the evening. From Lisbon we travelled north, visiting Estoril, Coimbra, (where we visited the University and for a joke Edwin sat in a professor’s chair and had his photo taken). We travelled first along the coast and one day stopped for a swim. When we came out of the water we discovered we had an audience of men sitting silently watching us – perhaps it was something else women were not supposed to do. We travelled on into the mountains and stayed at a hotel and when we came down the next morning to go walking (all suitably attired in shorts) we found waiting outside an audience watching us silently. Since all the local women were wearing long skirts (sensibly I suppose in view of the heat of the sun) we must have been an exotic sight. When we were travelling there through the countryside we had stopped at a village to get something to drink and Edwin saw a barber’s shop and decided he would have his hair cut. Before long an excited crowd had gathered outside peering through the window. We think we must have been their first English visitors. Indeed everywhere we went we were the object of curiosity. We were struck by the obvious inferior status of women who seemed to work much harder than the men. They walked to market carrying huge baskets full of produce on their heads balanced on a sort of ring of soft material. The men rode behind on donkeys – we were very indignant. We were not exactly equal, as women, with men in our own country but at the time that did not seem to strike us! One afternoon, there being no organised walk, our little group decided to go on our own one. We got very hot and tired and started looking for a café. We found what seemed a very nice one with people sitting outside and so we sat down and asked for cool drinks. These were brought and when we had finished and asked for the bill it was explained to us very politely that we had in fact entered a private house. We were of course very embarrassed but they were so friendly and asked us if we would like to meet them the next day and look round the small factory they owned making clothing. We were entertained very well the next day and they asked for my name and address and I had a postcard from them when I got home. (We spoke French which seemed understood fairly widely, more than English – maybe today they all speck American English!). We had three weeks in Portugal (all for the grand sum of £39 – though it must be remembered that most of us were earning between £4 and £10 a week). When we were travelling home through Spain there were armed soldiers on the train and we were told they were to protect travellers from bandits who might board the train – foreign travel was still quite exciting then even in Europe. When we got back to London Edwin came with me to the tube station where I could get a train home. When we said goodbye I don’t remember that there were any promises to meet again though I hoped we might. My friend Catherine kept asking me if I had heard from him and urging me to write to him but I think I was too shy and afraid he would be embarrassed. Eventually Catherine organised a party at her home (perhaps it was her engagement party – I can’t remember) and sent an invitation to Edwin and then he started coming to London to see me but only occasionally. Eventually he stayed a weekend at my home and met my parents. I think they were a bit nervous at meeting him because he was “clever” and they thought they would not be able to talk to him. I’m sure he was equally nervous and so was I! When he came down to breakfast on Sunday morning my mother asked him rather sharply why he had his bedroom light on till about one o’clock and he said he was reading his Bible. He could not have said anything worse to my parents, who had no religious convictions. A bible reading Welshman was the last person they felt able to cope with! He had a laugh with me afterwards – he explained that his “bible” was an engineering text book. I showed Edwin around London and took him to restaurants, not realising that the poor chap, having no idea of London prices, was fast running out of money. He had to admit the fact saying he was sorry he would have to go back that evening as he was broke! I lent him some (and had to borrow five pounds from my father to do so). Edwin was not a great letter writer – I usually got a card to say he had got back safely and would see me again some time. After we had met several times in London and elsewhere (I remember Stratford on Avon and Oxford) Edwin asked me to stay at his home in Pembroke Dock where his mother and her two maiden sisters lived. My friends said they did not envy me – the widowed mother of an only boy was not likely to greet with much warmth a woman who might take him away from her. I have to admit I was nervous and when we arrived his mother opened the door and stood there looking rather forbidding. For one moment I thought she was going to send us away. Edwin admitted afterwards that just as my parents did not welcome “a Welshman” his mother wanted to know why it had to be a girl from London when there were plenty of nice girls at home, although of course he had been living away from home for some time. There was a tricky moment on the Saturday evening when I was asked if I would be joining them in going to church the next morning and I said no. “Oh, are you ‘chapel’?” I was asked, and I think his mother was relieved when I explained I did not go to any church – she knew I had been to a Catholic school and Edwin said she was afraid I was going to say I was a Catholic. I am not sure I was accepted on that visit but Edwin’s aunt Nell was very kind, and when his mother and I got to know each other I think we had a very good relationship – sometimes I felt, guiltily, better than my relationship with my own mother. In June 1950 Catherine was married and I was one of her bridesmaids and Edwin came and another time we attended the 21st birthday of one of my cousins, which was held at Kettners, a well known restaurant in London, where we had a wonderful time. We decided to have a holiday together in July 1950 in Austria going to the Passion Play in Oberammergau which is held every ten years. I booked the holiday and we had to choose the cheapest option because we could not afford the hotel, so expected to stay in what would be the equivalent to a guest house.
		I went to collect the tickets the evening before we were due to go only to be told they could not find them. Eventually they were found in the expensive tickets. I said I could not afford to pay for them so they said I could have them for the “cheap” price as it was too late to re-arrange the booking. So we had a wonderful holiday. One day we went on a ski-lift to the top of a mountain. While sitting there looking at the wonderful view Edwin proposed to me – very romantic – and set his camera to take a delayed action photo of us. When we got back to the hotel he said he felt ill – he said it was the descent on the ski-lift (which was a bit scary when it took off and we seemed to be poised over a great drop and were – as far as I can remember – just balanced on narrow wooden planks for seats). However it might have been the realisation that he had committed himself to marriage!
It was unusual in those days and considered rather daring to go on holiday with a man and when we got back my father asked Edwin when (or “if” I suppose) he was going to marry me and was, I think, taken aback when Edwin said at Christmas. Of course my mother was not pleased. What a ridiculous time to choose for a wedding was her comment! Edwin came to London one weekend and we went to a jewellers in Bond Street to buy an engagement ring. When trays of rings were presented to us we realised there was no way we could afford any of them. It was politely suggested we might look at second-hand rings as there was no “purchase” tax on them. We agreed but when they were produced we found they were beyond our means too. On the way home we called on my father at his office in the City and he suggested we looked at a small jewellers there who sold second-hand rings. We found one there but Edwin still did not have quite enough money so we went back to my father and borrowed from him – what an introduction to his son-in-law to be – a religious Welshman (all “communists” in my father’s belief after the 1926 strike started by the miners) and one who did not enjoy football – an even greater crime – and now borrowing money! When we collected the ring after it had been adjusted to fit my finger and cleaned, we went to the Albert Hall and after the concert we wandered through the park and there the ring was ceremonially put on! Married women were not employed in the Civil Service then and so I had to put in my resignation a month before I wanted to leave. My boss wanted to know who I was marrying and how much he earnt. He was not impressed on hearing he was lecturer at Birmingham University (which my friends and relatives were quite impressed by) – oh “Redbrick” he said. In his book only Oxford and Cambridge were Universities. On hearing what his salary was he said “how will you live on that, it is less than I pay in tax”. I thought £750 a year was good – not many of my friends had husbands who earned that much. There was a leaving party for me and the presentation of a canteen of cutlery (which we had chosen from Goldsmiths in Regent Street with the money collected by the staff for a wedding present for me). My mother, like all mothers, was insisting on a wedding with all the usual fuss. The dresses were a problem as we were still finding it hard to buy clothes – clothing coupons went on after the war. I made my dress and my bridesmaids (friends Catherine and Eileen got theirs made) from material bought at Libertys in Regent Street.
Hotel rooms had to be booked for Edwin’s mother and aunts who travelled from Pembroke Dock the day before. My father drove to Euston to meet them. They had had a miserable journey on a cold train but cheered up when they go into the car (he had a lovely Armstrong-Siddeley) and they asked if he would drive them through Trafalgar Square so they could see the Christmas tree which Norway presented to us every year to thank us for our help to them in the war. Edwin and I were at the vicarage going through the service. The vicar was delighted to deal with a young man who knew all about such things – a rare kind in his parish I should imagine! After a meal at my home Edwin and mother and aunts went off to their hotel. The great day 23rd December 1950 arrived. My mother of course was in a panic wondering if all the arrangements would work. My two bridesmaids arrived (Eileen and Catherine – the latter of course actually a “matron of honour” as she was a married woman. My poor father was sent hither and thither by my anxious mother collecting the cake etc while we girls happily stayed upstairs gossiping and getting into our finery.
When the cars arrived to take guests and bridesmaids my mother made them wait because she was not satisfied that my veil was properly arranged (it was a long one with a “train” lent by an aunt of mine). My father was getting cross, shouting at her to get in the car – poor man he looked worn out with rushing about and then having to hastily dress in his “tail-coat” etc – the standard dress then for the groom and best man and father of the bride. At last all was peaceful in the house while we waited for our car to take us to church. He looked so nervous and tired I was holding his hand to try to cheer him up! We had a reception at a nearby hotel and eventually the “happy couple” set off back to my house to change into our “going away” outfits. Catherine and her husband came with us and we were laughing and talking happily when my uncle shouted for us to hurry up and bring down our suitcase. In those days cars did not have luggage boots. Instead a kind of platform dropped down from the back of the car and the luggage was strapped on that. We drove back to the hotel where all the guests were waiting to say goodbye and wave us on our way in a waiting taxi. I got out of my uncle’s car and walked into the hotel, thinking Edwin was behind me, to be greeted by shouts of “where is the bridegroom – has he left you already?” Someone was despatched to find him to come back with the news that he and my uncle had driven back to my house because when they went to unstrap our case from the back of the car it was missing. They found it lying in the road and at last we set off for Victoria station where we were catching a train to Bournemouth for our honeymoon. We had originally thought of going to Paris but by the time we had bought a house and some furniture we didn’t have enough money left! There was no hiding the fact that we were newly-weds when we booked into our hotel because we had to produce our ration books and mine was still in my maiden name and when Edwin bent down to sign the register they could see all the bits of confetti in his hair. We had a happy week there and then travelled back to my parents where we learnt that my father had had his first heart attack the day following the wedding. They were driving down to my aunt’s house in Hampshire when he felt ill. They had to return home and spent a miserable Christmas because they had only the food in the pantry (no fridge or freezer then). However he had recovered from what was evidently a mild attack. He drove us to London the next day to catch the train to Birmingham and was tearful when saying goodbye to me. It is not easy being an only child – I don’t think my parents wanted me to ever leave them. Edwin’s mother, although saying she was glad he was marrying, cried when we were in the vestry signing the register but she may have been remembering her own wedding day and her marriage which sadly only lasted about 10 months when her husband died after an operation for appendicitis. We arrived at our home in 14 Victoria Road, Acocks Green in Birmingham about nine o’clock at night to find a freezing cold house (the previous owner had asked a woman to come in after they moved out and give the house a clean. Unfortunately she had left the windows open in the back bedroom and the whole house felt damp and cold). We were rescued by our very kind neighbours Molly and Grant Hudson who came round with hot water bottles and a hot pot of tea. They were the kindest and friendliest of neighbours we have had I think, though we have on the whole been fortunate in that way, and we still remain friends with Molly though her husband died a long time ago.

Chapters:

1: Beginnings, 2: Doreen, 3: Moving On, 4: War, 5: Peace, 6: A Long Encounter, 7: Family