Am too technically incompetent to reduce the size of this outrageously large picture
A Life – another instalment of my autobiography before I revert to my normal blogs
I loved my time in the army. I made friends I still have today. I could afford holidays with them in Provence, and Majorca when it was still empty and unknown. I had beautiful clothes. I had a social life that swung between visiting married friends at weekends, to parties with dashing cavalry officers and staying with their titled parents, to holidays on my own roaming the beloved dales and the moors of Swaledale, or riding across Exmoor and Lorna Doone country on my best friend’s horses with her family.
My army career blossomed, I received promotions very early and was given responsibility far beyond my rank and years, being promoted to captain when I was twenty- two. My last dream job was lecturing all over England and Wales armed with a car and a driver, which also meant staying in the best hotels and in my spare time exploring cathedral towns and remote villages in glorious country-side.
It all came crashing down one day at home on leave. A letter arrived for me from my step-grandfather. I thought it might be a suggestion to meet for lunch as we sometimes did. But it was a deeply underlined request to come to his flat secretly one evening – and tell no-one – in capital letters.
My stepmother saw her father’s hand-writing and insisted on reading it. She hit the roof and accused me of having a fully- fledged affair with him. Her dislike for me – we could only be in each other’s company for short periods before her hostility began to manifest – now crystallised into loathing, and she blamed me for leading him on, and aiming to get my hands on his money – a gold digger she called me.
I left home feeling I could never return, and when my father, who had never taken the episode seriously, began secretly coming to see me I felt that I must be causing trouble between him and my stepmother. I felt the only way out of the impasse was to get married and make a home of my own, and then it would be natural that I wouldn’t be coming home.
With that intention I soon met someone, convinced myself that I loved him, and we became engaged. The engagement survived the freezing legendary winter of ‘62/63, driving around in his unheated MG in a sheepskin coat, and I was grateful too, that this was the year woolly tights were invented.
My engagement ring somehow symbolised the future. I had just wanted an in-expensive antique ring, but my future mother- in- law apparently deemed this unsuitable. She invited me to tea, and as we finished our cherry cake, a knock on the door produced the local jeweller with a tray of conventional rings with no price tags. I was mortified, but chose the ring I disliked least, feigning delight, and knowing that she was paying for it, not my fiancée.
Trying to be like all my friends and pretending that I had a normal loving home like everyone else – it had always felt so shameful not to be loved – I organised a traditional wedding and paid for it…from the engagement notices in the Times and Telegraph and printed invitations, to the flowers and church, the wedding cake and reception, the cars and the white satin dress. During this time, I had returned home, and paid my stepmother an in-ordinate sum for the privilege of sleeping on the sofa, since my step-grandmother now lived in my bedroom.
My new husband had grandiose ideas, so we were booked into the Savoy Hotel for the first night of our honeymoon, before travelling first class to Cornwall, where after a night in another expensive hotel we caught a plane to the Scilly Isles for two weeks in another expensive hotel.
Our first night in the Scilly Isles life came crashing down again. My husband asked me for a cheque to pay for the honeymoon, pay off all his debts, and his overdraft at the bank. “I promised the bank manager I’d pay it with your money as soon as we were married”, he told me. (I’ve sometimes wondered what the bank manager must have thought of this promise)
The amount swallowed nearly all my savings after the expense of the wedding. It felt as though a prison cell door had just banged shut behind me. I wept and rolled around on the bed in agony. My husband simply couldn’t understand why I was so upset. He simply couldn’t see why it felt like a betrayal. And I was right to fear the future. This was only the first of many betrayals awaiting me.
Somehow, I put the misery to one side, and tried to make the best of things. Just as well, as within a couple of weeks I was felled with morning sickness. Only it wasn’t morning sickness. It was all day sickness. I carried a saucepan around with me, in the house and in the car. In 1963, two years after thalidomide had been withdrawn, the doctor was not going to give me anything to help, he just said it would pass, so I tried every folk remedy from raw carrots to ginger biscuits!
I also got hopelessly behind with things like the washing! Being something of a dandy, my husband owned fifty- two shirts, and one hot June day we came to the end of them. They were all piled into the dirty linen basket. With a handful of other young married couples, we had gathered in someone’s army quarter to pass round The News of The World and read the latest instalment of the Profumo scandal.
My husband was down to his last shirt – so old it had no sleeves, but he’d hidden this deficiency with a tweed sports jacket. Everyone ribbed him mercilessly until he ruefully took off the jacket – with an apologetic glance in my direction – revealing the humiliating shirt and my in-adequacy!
It was worse when we were visiting his mother at Christmas. She was a perfectionist who ruled her family with an iron hand, but not with that velvet glove. She found her precious son was wearing summer pyjamas in winter. She was mystified – I gave him lots of warm viyella pyjamas – she kept saying until I confessed they were all stuffed in the dirty linen basket… but pregnancy was no excuse for not looking after her son properly!
Towards the end of November, sitting on the sofa, feeling ill as usual, and waiting for my husband to come home, he arrived through the door in some haste at twenty-past seven. He hurried to the radio and turned it on saying President Kennedy had been shot. As I was pooh-poohing any truth in it, citing De Gaulle’s escape from 140 bullets the year before, the Archers – the long running farming serial – was interrupted.
An announcer told us that President Kennedy had just died. Like everyone else, we were stunned – it seemed unbelievable. The life and light of a leader who personified hope for the world just snuffed out. The inspiration of our generation gone, with no warning. Only grief and disbelief left to us.
Two days later we were at dinner in Winchester with my oldest school friend from Malaya. Her husband turned on the television to watch the news. As we watched, still shaken and shocked from the assassination, we saw Jack Ruby shoot Lee Harvey Oswald, there under our very eyes as we watched – at that very moment in time. That, too, seemed unbelievable. The whole world seemed to rock.
Lack of money beset us from the start of the marriage, as my new husband was a year too young to receive ration allowance, which started when officers were twenty-five. The idea was to discourage early marriage so young officers were keener to go out and be killed fighting than if they had a wife and family!
With all my savings gone, in the last few weeks of pregnancy we were so skint, that I gave my husband the only good piece of jewellery I had ever bought for myself – an amethyst ring – to go and sell to raise some money. Predictably we didn’t get very much… just enough to buy food for that weekend.
We had moved house, from a posting in Wiltshire to an army quarter in Essex, in the last month of pregnancy, and I had managed to get a bed in a London teaching hospital. Still vomiting to the last, I weighed a stone less the day after the birth. To the envy of the other mothers, my clothes were hanging off me after the baby was born – unscathed by her mother’s ordeal- bouncing, bonny and over seven and a half pounds.
I had never gone back to the unhelpful doctor, so had missed out on pre-natal information, and had no idea what birth was actually about, my best information being from’ Gone with the Wind’ and Melanie hanging onto a knotted towel so as not to groan.
No knotted towel, but gritted teeth meant that I heard the nurse in the labour ward tell my husband he might as well go home since I was asleep. So he did, even though I raised my head and said I was awake! When the baby was born later that night, it was one of the most beautiful moments of my life when she was placed in my arms already sucking her thumb.
That beautiful moment was somewhat marred some hours later when a trainee African doctor from Khartoum who hardly spoke any English, and didn’t seem to have heard of anaesthetics, marched in, ignored my protests and sewed me up with nothing to dull the pain.
When that was over, I was handed a telegram which had just reached the hospital. The words simply said: “Gone to Cyprus”. My husband’s regiment had been sent – as the last men standing – to douse the flames of civil war in Cyprus. The month before in January, after Zanzibar had exploded, the armies of Tanganyika, Uganda and Kenya had mutinied over pay and conditions, and each government had asked Britain to send troops to help. It felt as though half Africa was in a state of insurrection with British troops flying everywhere.
My husband’s regiment was on standby for the next emergency, and it had arrived- Greeks and Turks at each other’s throats in Cyprus. The Daily Express wrote that “25,000 Turks have already been forced to leave their homes”, and the Guardian reported a massacre of Turkish-Cypriots at Limassol on 16 February 1964, the day my daughter was born.
It’s hard to explain how vulnerable I felt – psychologically I needed someone to care for me while I cared for the new baby, while we were suddenly much worse off financially with me in one place, and him in another. I hardly knew the house we had just moved to, and I was terrified of my new born baby, not having any idea how to care for her.
I left hospital after a week and went to stay with my in-laws for two weeks. Then my father drove me back to the army quarter I’d briefly lived in. Painters had come in while I was away, and the house was cold, damp and depressing with white paint spots over everything, including my bright new, stainless steel, wedding present pop-up toaster. The painters had obviously not bothered to use drop cloths. All my neighbours – other army wives – had packed up and gone home to their families, so I was high and dry and alone.
I couldn’t drive the car parked in the garage, had no phone, and had to walk pram and baby through the cold foggy February weather to the village shop two miles away, to get shillings to feed the gas meter for heating. I was frightened and depressed. And the baby had colic. She cried for most of the day and night while I paced up and down with her in my arms, before collapsing with a fierce migraine when she was six weeks old.
So now, like the other wives, I packed up too and went to stay with my in-laws in London for a few weeks before taking the train to Manorbier at the furthest tip of Wales, where my best friend from our army days now lived. Her baby was a year older, and the weeks spent here were full of joyful jokes, as though we were still carefree and unmarried. Her friendly husband watched us in tolerant amusement. We still hark back in our letters to the fun we had then, and I turned my life around in that time. My daughter thrived and I got my courage back again.
When I returned to the house in Essex, I had enough energy now to tackle the over grown lawn, mowing three square feet with a push lawn mower every night after the baby was in bed, until I completed it. I began walking the pram into town a couple of miles away and attending the baby clinic every week for weighing and measuring, until they said I only needed to bring the baby every two weeks. It never occurred to me to tell them that this was the only time I saw anyone to talk to.
And now a few old friends came to stay, and one or two families trickled back into neighbouring army quarters. I stopped fearing that my husband would be shot by Greeks or Turks. His regiment had now become part of the UN peacekeeping force, patrolling the Green Line.
After six months he returned and I was rather taken aback to find a cache of new clothes made by a local tailor in his luggage, and also to discover that he had learned to swim, thanks to the friendship of a girl from the Foreign Office. He hadn’t mentioned either of these things in his in-articulate weekly letters, but I pushed my surprise to the back of my mind. The second day he was back, I realised as we sat in the sunshine in the garden, that I was bored, and supposed that this was one of the inevitable stages of marriage.
To be continued…
Food for threadbare gourmets
I’m not really a meat eater, especially when it comes to beef. So cooking one of Himself’s favourite things – spaghetti Bolognaise – is always a bit of a chore. But I’ve just discovered the answer for me – in the Daily Mail of all places. Only three ingredients needed, and the whole thing can bubble away while I beef up the Bolognaise! I halved the amount, so used one tin of tomatoes, the recommended onion, and three tablespoons of butter. For four people, double the ingredients, apart from the onion. Don’t chop the onion, just peel and cut in half. Put everything in a saucepan and let it all bubble gently for forty -five minutes, stirring occasionally. Just before serving, fish out the onion. The resulting rich smooth tomato sauce over pasta and sprinkled with freshly grated parmesan is food for the gods. Who needs beef?
Food for thought
‘Life beats down and crushes the soul, and art reminds you that you have one.’ Stella Adler – actress and acting teacher
valeriedavies 
How absolutely disgusting that a man should marry you having given a bank manager an assurance that your money would clear his debts, Bloody cheek.
xxx Massive Hugs xxx
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David, how lovely to hear from you… I’ve tried to find you, and can’t seem to get to your blog any more… Hope all is well with you, and with Joey, and with the gorgeous grandies..
Yes, life turned into a bit of a boo-jum back then – to quote Lewis Carrol in The hunting of the Snark l!!
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Ohh Valerie, my heart squeezed for you as I read this. Sharp pains created for you around that time. Circumstances causing you to tumble like that into life with a man making very poor choices. Your best friend is an earth angel and I applauded the time you had together. That one line when you found your courage again, says it all. I know it is many years ago now, but I am wrapping you in love. Xx ❤
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Jane, thank you for your lovely loving response to my story… yes, my darling friend has indeed been an angel to me, especially in the last few years which have sometimes seemed like the worst in my life – but that’s another story – or a later story !!!!
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Dear Valerie,
I am breathless with the wonder of those early years and all that went with them. The thought of all the disillusionments you suffered and the loneliness you endured hurts my heart. It is somehow too bad that you’re such a fine writer, because you make the experience so real that it is painful. Yet I anxiously look forward to reading the next installment of your gripping story.
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Ronnie, thank you for all the beautiful and empathic words in your response to my story… strange how comforting it is to be heard and understood even after all these years… I begin to see why they encourage people to write their stories in rest homes and so on..there’s something very healing about telling one’s story….
Anyway,’more to come’, as we used to write at the bottom of each page of an article when writing in the newsroom i the old days before computers… and on the last page putting ‘ends’…
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Dearest Valerie,
This article brings back some memories of my own. It never occurred to me that the Kennedy assassination took over your media as well as ours. True story…as they were about to bring Oswald out of his cell, my father said to my mother, “It would be something if someone shoots Oswald.” Directly after that my mother and I left the room only to hear my father shout, “Someone just shot Oswald!” Of course we thought he was joking.
I’m sorry you endured such hardships as a young woman. Your stepmother sounds like something out of a Grimm’s fairy tales. Grim indeed.
Two of my children were very colicky babies. I could feel your pain.
The Stella Adler quote just might become my mantra.
Again, thank you for sharing you life with the rest of us.
Shalom,
Rochelle
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PS I adore the photo in any size. 😉
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Thank you.. you are so sweet to be so enthusiastic !
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Oh Rochelle, so much to reply to in this lovely comment… what an intriguing story about Oswald,,, such a tragic chapter in the lives and deaths of all those involved…
Unless you’ve had to cope with the anguish of a suffering baby, whether coliic or anything else, it’s hard to explain to anyone else isn’t it… the helplessness and suffering of a mother unable to help her suffering child is terrible isn’t it…
So glad you loved the Stella Adler quote – it’s wonderful isn’t it…
and it’s wonderful too, that you enjoy reading my story – many many thank you’s…
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To escape the unjustified accusations of your stepmother by getting married was perhaps the worst decision of your entire life. With profound sadness I sense how this story will end, Valerie. I like your portrait very much. Resizing it should not be a problem. Any cheap photo editing program will do it.
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Dear Peter,
Thank you for your thoughts… yes, I think you can guess how it will end, but the funny thing is that no-one was much the worse for it… certainly not my husband, who has thrived and prospered mightily. For me – I don’t regret it, as I adored my children…hard though things were….
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You were (and still are) beautiful. I’m stunned that there weren’t tons of deserving men falling all over you! Your writing paints a very sad picture with a few spots of happiness.
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Thank you Kate for your lovely words…I actually had so little self-esteem that I don’t think I noticed any men “falling all over ” me!!
But I like the thought in retrospect!!
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‘Life beats down and crushes the soul, and art reminds you that you have one.’ Stella Adler – actress and acting teacher
I love your photo! It’s always nice to see your smiling face.
This place…this land between the rock and a hard place…is so, well, sad. I just know how this is all going to end. And I am hoping it’s turns out to be a good thing for you…he was NOT worth the money, the time, or energy you put into him. But, of course you know that now.
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Dear friend, thank you for your loving support… yes, it ended in tears for me – but funnily enough not for him, and he has prospered mightily ever since !!! – no come-uppance there !
For me, I look back on it as part of my learning process…
and I adored my children, and you know that story !
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The children make it ALL so worth while!
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I’m sorry my comment was so negative…I just wanted to reach right in there and throttle that man…so if you want to delete both comments my feelings won’t be hurt.
Love YOU!
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I didn’t think your comment was negative – it felt supportive to me, and after all these years, that’s still precious to have ! XXXXXXXXXXx
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Oh good! I’m glad. Hugs!
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Thank you for sharing your experiences. I have enjoyed every moment of your journey backward. I keep on thinking of this quote by Søren Kierkegaard – “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” We are the sum of our experiences – your experiences have built an enormous internal resilience. Many hugs.
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Dear Rebecca, I always love hearing from you, and thank you..
Yes, it was another huge learning process for me, and not one I regret, since I adore my children…
Loved the Kierkegaard quote… it’s many years since I read him, but I always had a soft spot for him…Go well… XXXX
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I am overwhelmed with your generosity of spirit. It is truly a privilege to be connected. Many hugs!
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It is really horrible to contemplate how many women were used and abused by men, and still are. You have triumphed but not without great effort, I’m certain. I love that quotation. Thank you Valerie, I look forward to the next instalment, especially the part when that man gets what he deserves.
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Thank you Ardys… I love your responses to my story, and I love it that you understand and percieve so much…actually my ex-husband never did get what he deserved, in that sense – he’s been happy, successful and prosperous ever since… I on the other hand have continued to be challenged and to learn !
Yes, that’s a magic quotation isn’t it….
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Oh Valerie, I was saddened for you reading this, after such a positive period of independence, but I know you’ll come out of the other side stronger.
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So good to hear from you Andrea… and thank you for your support… you’re right, these sort of experiences are the things we learn from and grow from… and I think I still am…
I obviously had a lot to learn in this life !!!
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Another riveting roller-coaster of a read!
It is hard to understand how you were such a tiger in the army but such a pussycat at home.
I love that picture and think it deserves to be that size, but if you want it smaller just click on it in ‘Edit’ and drag the corners to the size you want.
I really think your memoir needs publication.
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Leslie – you’re wonderful the way you are so enthusiastic about my story-telling…
I thought about your remark, but I don’t think I was a ‘tiger’ in the army, just conscientious, well groomed, well mannered, good at my job, enthusiastic and full of joie de vivre, so that people liked and approved of me… while at home, I was criticised, sabotaged, put down, and was anxious to please the people I loved… even though it never worked with my all-powerful stepmother !!! ( at the end of her life, we actually had a beautiful relationship for a few short years..)
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That was a very odd reaction from your stepmother. Other people’s brains are bizarre, monsters lurking everywhere. What must it be like to live with such fear and suspicion?
It’s a shame that you can’t find out who’s trustworthy without taking a flying leap of faith and trusting them… People ought to come with labels attached. ‘Drip Dry’, ‘40% Viyella’, ‘Do Not Allow To Drink Gin’, ‘Will Spend The Lecky Bill Money On The Gee-Gees’.
Your hubby sounds a bit like my old dad, who was, ahem, somewhat unreliable in the early years of marriage. My mum survived, though: learned to manage him with tact, affection, reversing the pin-money arrangement, and occasion ruthless bouts of putting-my-foot-down-and-banging-things-on-the-table.
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MMMM lots of threads in your comment – thank you so much for taking the time to write such a long comment ..
.first of all… stepmother – she had always disliked me ..jealousy re my father… this was just a bit more grist to her mill of loathing… plus the righteousness of being loyal to her mother.. so many different strands…
Yes, I loved your witty suggestion about warnings- in this case beware other wimmin, ignore the charm, and don’t let him out with the cheque book ….
Your mother sounds great,and sounds as though she loved her ‘other half’ – in the end, we were too different to make life together work… the disparity between our mental ages, as well as our emotional ones, made it too difficult to find common ground…
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Sometimes it is better to let go. (My mum’s like a pitbull in that respect: my dad wasn’t going ANYWHERE, whatever he might have thought at times.) I got cut loose by a fiancé at one point, and can only thank heaven fasting, looking back. Narrow escape!
You don’t have to hate someone to disapprove of them, is what’s been running through my mind, lately. I think it’s applicable.
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Know that your posts are always a high point of blog reading. Your story’s honesty is both searing and healing.
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Jadi, your comment is such a gift, I have such respect for you as a writer, so to know that you find my story a ‘good read’ is both immensely validating and encouraging. Thank you so much, I treasure your words, Valerie
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The miracle is that somehow we come through it all; we survive. Art does help but it’s small kindnesses and little acts of love and generosity which stop complete disintegration. Powerful memoir, Valerie.
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I knew that I had to resist the temptation to delete every blog post that was jamming my special WordPress inbox. I knew it! What an amazing post! Someone above says that your blog is a high point in blog reading and she’s right. I cannot wait to read the next one as you leave us at a crucial point of your marriage.
There are so many episodes that I haven’t lived personally but are part of our human collective.
I’m not a beef eater, so I’ll skip the recipe for once. But I love the quote!
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Dear Evelyne – what a delicious comment – thank you… more in the pipeline !!!
Re the recipe… it’s a vegetarian one BEcause I have to do the beef thing for my love… gorgeous sauce with only three ingredients.. it’s divine and I bet you’d love it with pasta and parmesan !!!!
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Oh I love pasta and parmesan 🙂
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Wow, that was so fascinating, Valerie, and it flowed so well for the amount of information delivered. I read it really fast, and that’s a compliment, because it was urging me on. I enjoyed it immensely and you are now creeping into a time zone that is more familiar to me from my childhood in the 60s
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It is such an amazing story, and the fact it is true, fits.
Because truth is always so much stranger than fiction.
You write well. You live fully. I’m impressed with you.
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Cindy, good to see your beautiful face. I always love your pithy perceptive comments – thank you.
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