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Chapter Fifteen - Romance - The Final Solution

I decided to join a Telephone Dating Club. I was very afraid of getting involved with a peculiar sort of man who might know where we lived or be near enough to be a nuisance but the club I joined only gave out Christian names and telephone numbers to other members and not addresses or surnames. Every member was sent a list of names that vaguely matched what he or she asked for and they could either telephone someone or wait and see if anyone telephoned them first.

A few people phoned me. I met a very nice but too young Jewish man at Liverpool Street Station. I obeyed advice and arranged to meet in public places preferably at a busy time. I liked this chap but told him he must look for someone younger. He seemed desperate to find someone quickly; maybe he wanted to prove to some ex-girlfriend that he was OK. I met a very strange man at Waterloo Station after work one evening. He looked a little like the Yorkshire Ripper and wore a long black leather coat and seemed very disturbed and trying to convince me that he was manly despite what his ex-wife said. It was very embarrassing and I got away as quickly as I could. I think I phoned three men altogether. One I invited to one of Jennifer's Aba Daba shows at King's Cross.

He lived in town and had no transport so was quite safe. I liked him actually but he was still grieving over his divorce and ex-wife and I don't think he really was ready for anyone new. We met a few times and it was quite pleasant. Another I met at Victoria Station and I got the feeling he was already interested or involved with someone else on the list. However again, I liked him and he was interesting and intelligent.

And the third one I rang was Ted. He sounded ideal from his printed description. He lived much further away than the others, in Tunbridge Wells in Kent in fact. So I knew that would be very safe and we could just speak on the telephone and see if there was any point in trying to meet. He liked music and humour and films. I liked the sound of his voice when we spoke. He had had a large response to his advert in the club, although he was tactfully reticent about this at first. Having been a salesman most of his life, I think he knew how to sell himself and make a good impression. I found out a lot of his astrological details and did his horoscope to see what I thought of it so we did not meet for quite a while and after several phone calls.

When we did try to meet, he said it would have to be his side of the river as he was doing some building work for someone and would not be finished until about 3pm. It was the August Bank Holiday weekend and we arranged to meet at Lewisham Station. I was looking particularly nice at that time, mainly because I had lost so much weight during the silliness over JG. I had a new yellow and white blouse and white skirt and my hair had just been done, and yet I could see when Ted saw me that he was disappointed and did not find me attractive. He hid it well, and was very polite and friendly but nothing could erase that first flicker that I noticed in his eyes. I must point out that he was not exactly my type either, but then I had not expected him to look any particular way, so I was not disappointed. I had always obeyed the rule about not going in any stranger's car but in this case, he had told me the registration number of his car and I had left a note at home and also had told Cathy where I was going before I set out. I had spoken to him several times over quite a long period remember, and I thought from his horoscope that he was unlikely to be a mad rapist.

We drove to Greenwich Park and sat in an open-air cafe for tea and cake. When he told me that he had been divorced, lost his job and his home all at the same time, I laughed. It was something about the way he said it. It sounded so terrible it was funny. I found he liked Cole Porter and 'Kiss me Kate' and he seemed very pleased that I knew the words to 'Brush up your Shakespeare'. We sat on a bench in the park and he held my elbow. I remember not liking this and feeling it would have been better if he had not touched me at all on our first meeting, but I suppose that was ridiculous. Later I told Jeff about meeting Ted, and he, being the good friend he always was, seemed encouraging about it and thought I should give the man a chance. Of course I realised that it would probably be a load off Jeff's mind if I disappeared happily into the blue anyway.

A little while later and after several more telephone chats with Ted, we met again, this time in Tunbridge Wells. After lunch he took me to his flat of which he was obviously quite proud, and I knew somehow he would not make any sort of pass at me. When it was time for my train home he took me back to the station. I think being a clever salesman, he knew how to go about things without putting pressure on anyone and knew it would be more successful if he held back at certain times. Anyway it impressed me that he was a decent type and eventually he said he would come to my side of the river and see my flat.

Astrologically he was Sun in Gemini and that is why I liked his humour so much, but what I did not at first realise is that the strong Taurean influence in his horoscope made him extremely set in his ways. He had totally fixed ideas about all sorts of things and thought that people and places North of the River Thames were strange and almost foreign. I found this astonishing. He hated London although it was his childhood home, and could simply not see that London was an enormous city with dozens of different types of areas and that although he came from a poor part, it bore no relation whatsoever to attractive parts. He was mad about the County of Kent where as a boy he had gone hop-picking with his family as many poor people did at that time. I thought it was very nice that he didn't mind admitting openly what sort of background he came from and could speak with such enthusiasm about his early days in a large family. He had very set ideas about food too. There seemed to be rules about everything. He couldn't eat salad or anything cold, his plate had to be very hot, he didn't like Italian food but loved Indian food no matter how hot. He only liked rice if it was yellow in colour. He seemed unable to taste the milder delicate flavours of food and poured salt and pepper and various hot sauces over food.

At first when he visited, I tried to cook the sort of things I had always eaten and liked but realised that although he was very polite, he simply couldn't eat them or finish them. So I had to stop making fish kedgeree, macaroni cheese, risotto or having salad which I loved. I found all this very strange, as John had been one of the most difficult men I had ever known, but never about food. He had liked everything I made and had always eaten it up with satisfaction.

This was a very hectic time in my life as the move to the new flat was about to take place. I went through all the usual stress and anxiety until contracts were exchanged and completion at last took place. I had quite a lot of help with the move. Jennifer and Trevor came and helped clean up the old flat as we moved things out. Angela had the day off and came with her small nephew who was very keen to help carry what he could. Cathy was at school that day and knew she had to come to the new flat afterwards. I felt very sad leaving the flat, the first place I had ever personally owned. I knew it was quite scruffy but I went down the back steps and took a last look at the shed and then wandered about the rooms upstairs and hoped I would not regret the move. I was very concerned about moving at a suitable astrological time. It is said that one should begin things when the Moon is increasing in light, in other words going from new to full and not waning. I had tried to ensure that the completion date for the flat was at the right time as apparently when you start things at the right time, they grow and succeed, which is why farmers sow seeds at the time of the new moon.

However, the Vendors and their Solicitors did not see it my way. They insisted on a completion date before I felt it was right, so I decided not to move in completely for a few days. Once the furniture was installed, Cathy and I went back to Ilma's house down the road to sleep. This went on for about four days and must have caused a lot of derisive amusement and comment amongst my friends, but I did not care.

At most weekends Ted came to visit. Since being made redundant he had started his own little enterprise and was buying potatoes and other vegetables from a farm and then selling them around the local villages where housewives found it difficult to get to the shops. He had bought a van and although it was a cold muddy job in the Winter he was managing to make a living. He had really enjoyed being a salesman at his last job where he had driven all over the South Eastern corner of England, and it was sad that he had been made redundant. Predictably although he was very polite, it was obvious that he was not as entranced with the new flat as I was. He was simply unable to like anything if he knew it was in London and more so if it was North of the Thames. Had he been blindfolded and taken to it by helicopter and told it was in Kent somewhere, I am sure he would have been very enthusiastic about it. Ted's elder daughter, Joanne was married and living in Edenbridge in Kent, and had just had her first baby. She was friendly to both her parents so Ted took me there quite frequently. She was a pleasant very polite girl a year younger than Jennifer. The new baby daughter was called Gemma, and was of course Ted's first grandchild.

In November, about a month after moving into our new flat, Cathy and I had the housewarming party that had been planned since long before we moved. Eighty-one people were invited but only fifty-nine people came. I made name badges for people with additional comments so that people who did not know each other would have a base to start up a conversation. I put funny signs on the walls too. It was a lovely party. It went on from a Sunday afternoon to a Sunday evening so that people with children could come earlier and leave earlier if they wanted to. The Visitors' book was packed with entries. Mary was there with Don; I'm not sure if his wife came or not. Angela and her recently acquired Geoff, Janice, Eddie and Dave from BT were all there. Little Roy, Lorna and Lynette (plus her dog, Russell) from the Union, June and Ilma from the Accountants (Margaret was invited and got the day mixed up), Jennifer and Trevor, Michael, Cathy and several of Cathy's school friends. There were several people from both Operatic Societies, Pam, my old neighbour from Woodford with her daughter who was one of Jennifer's old junior school friends and also Cyril and his wife Rebecca. It was a shame that Shirley was not visiting from Texas at that time, but her daughter, now with a baby son and living back in England, did come and so did Shirley's sister Pauline.

It was at the party that Ted had a chance to meet some of my friends for the first time. Angela and Ilma both liked him. The kitchen was the Bar; the largest bedroom had a table with all the food set out on it. The back living room was mainly for Cathy and the teenagers and had another table of food in it. Michael joined some of the mothers who were looking after the younger children in the smallest bedroom, as he wanted to record their speech. This was something to do with his Linguistics course. There were some toys, dolls and children's books in that room. There was a long wide passage through the flat and a lot of people milled about there too. Two of the families from the adjacent flats came; it seemed tactful to invite them in case the noise bothered them. For some reason Barbra did not come. I did invite the gorgeous JG but he lived near the South Coast and did not drive, so I did not expect him to come.

We were very happy at the new flat although it was a much further walk to the station for me. Cathy was by now at a nearer school in Walthamstow, where she had transferred at fourteen. She was earning a little money with the piano teaching both at the College and also from teaching Angela.

At times when Cathy was spending the weekend with John, I went down to Tunbridge Wells to see Ted. Although his actual flat was not very comfortable and rather bleak, the building was in spacious attractive grounds and the town was lovely. Ted had friends nearby and sometimes we went out to dinner in a foursome. As soon as my love affair with Ted started, I stopped seeing Jeff immediately. I had never been the type of person who would carry on with two people at the same time. I wrote a note to Jeff and left it with his post in the lobby of the Covent Garden building saying that I would not be able to see him again.

I really enjoyed weekends in Tunbridge Wells. The first time I went down overnight, I felt very excited. I was nearly 50 and going away for what used to be called a 'dirty weekend', something that had never happened to me before. I had also had very little experience of being taken to restaurants by a man, although that same year Jeff had taken me out about three times, but when I had been married to Graham we had never had much money and John had not seemed to like eating out. Of course we had had young children and were without transport anyway. But now for the first time, I was free on certain occasions. No one would care what I was doing and I had a man who paid for me and we sat in nice places at candlelit tables and I felt I was living in a romantic and wonderful way that previously I had only known about, but never experienced. I thought 'at last I am like other people I have worked with who have talked about going in cars to restaurants and laughing and talking with their friends and maybe drinking wine'. At weekends when Cathy was at home, Ted crossed the river and came to our flat.

Ted grew very fond of Cathy. He was so very interested in music and he liked it when she played and sang at weekends. Also he was sad at his estrangement from his younger daughter, Lesley, who had stayed with her mother at the time of his divorce. They had since moved back to a flat in South London. Maybe having Cathy in his life was a tiny compensation for the loss of his daughter. He still sent Lesley birthday and Christmas cards and money but at first did not get any response.

At the operatic society we were doing 'My Fair Lady'. This was the second time I had been in it, and I was very pleased to be one of those picked for the dancing. I knew I would soon have to give up being in shows as I never really relished the thought of being one of the lumpy old ladies who stand at the back in the chorus of amateur musicals. I liked dancing or being in the forefront of the chorus most of all but knew that at 49, my days were numbered, so I really enjoyed being in the knees-up for 'Get me to the Church on Time' and the other dance numbers. I suppose the cockney chorus who are supposed to be market sellers can be of any age and size, whereas in some shows it's important to have young pretty girls in the dancing chorus.

I started to ask my mother if she would like to come back now there was so much more space, but at that particular time she seemed to be enjoying her life back in Durban with her friends and did not seem at all keen. Maybe it was still because she knew Cathy would be there. This was a problem to me because money was very tight now I had a larger mortgage to pay. I managed to let out the garage to a lady down the road, but still could not easily manage. I knew that with three rooms I could try to get a lodger but did not want to unless I was sure my mother would not come. Then I tried to get promotion at work which was another way of improving the financial situation. So I applied to be a personal secretary. I was so happy at Gresham Street working for the Finance group; I did not really want to leave at all. However I got the secretarial job and had to go to Mobile Comms. This was the division dealing with pagers, and the early mobile phones which were large heavy things, quite different from the pocket versions which everyone has now.

I was very interested in the work actually. I loved the new technology and was excited at the thought of being contactable at all times. I went to product meetings where new products were explained to us and never dreamed that within less than ten years thousands of people, including me, would have mobile phones in their pockets and bags. What I did not like was my boss or even the other secretaries. At previous jobs I have always made and kept friends. But I never became really friendly with any of the people there and some I found positively hostile. There was a nasty smell in the building and I think something must have been wrong with the air conditioning ducts. Sometimes my office smelled of cabbage from the canteen several floors away. For the first time I used a real computer and not a dedicated word processor as previously. I often wished I had stayed at Gresham Street, happy though with less money. And even with the rise in salary I still did not manage very well financially.

I asked Ted if he would like to move in with me. He would have had a garage for his car and I felt he did not have much of a job in Tunbridge Wells and was only living in a rented flat anyway and it would have been a great help to me. However he stressed again that he could never live in London, not in any part and certainly not North of the river. I found this very difficult to understand but over the years I have tried to come to terms with it mainly by imagining what I would feel if asked to go to say, Saudi Arabia or India where it was very hot and live in a totally alien country far from everything and everybody I knew and loved. Maybe I would not ever love anyone enough to go with them to live in such a place. This reasoning doesn't quite work because I can't see that living in a much bigger more comfortable space only about an hour's drive away from where he was anyway was that much of a contrast.

Angela and Geoff from Gresham Street had decided to get married. I was quite surprised. Angela was a really party girl type. Although she was not conventionally pretty, she was a sort of sex symbol type at work. She was interested in other men that I knew about and maybe as I did not find Geoff particularly attractive, I had not realised how she felt about him. I must admit he has grown on me over the years. As Angela lived near me in Walthamstow, the wedding was to be at the Registry Office there and the family lunch and then the evening reception afterwards just across the park from our flat. Cathy and I were invited to everything and we had a lovely day. Ted came to us as usual in the evening. It was one of the nicest weddings I have ever attended.

Some weddings I have been to were, well, sort of pretentious. Ordinary working people dressing up in top hats and often looking uncomfortable as if they were not even used to wearing suits, let alone morning dress. This wedding was so natural and happy. We all did 'Knees up Mother Brown' and everyone was friendly and jolly and joined in all the fun. Ted drank too much and Cathy and I almost had to support him, one on each side, on the walk home.

Ilma had met a man at work who was younger than she was, but very well suited to her, and she decided to sell the Browns Road house, and move to Kent with him. She made a large profit as she had improved the house greatly in the few years she lived there. She was still married to Richard but he had moved to Croydon and managed at last to get another job in the City, but at a lower salary than he had previously earned in the bank.
She and Rob were both very fastidious types who liked perfectly kept houses and were both extremely energetic and ambitious. I was sad that the two friends I had had living nearby in Walthamstow both moved away. Angela only went as far as the far side of Ilford but that meant two buses for me and where she lived was not near any shops or places I might need to pass normally. Although I had quite a few friends only a bus ride away, it had been really nice having such very local friends.

Ted took me to North Wales, one of the few places apart from Kent and Sussex that he loved. He chose a small cottage, not knowing until we got there that it was rather far from civilisation and also that it was rather damp. Still with a car we managed to drive all over the area and we also attempted to walk up Snowdon, although we turned back half way. The most memorable thing to me about the holiday apart from the magnificent scenery was Ted's one-liner as we were walking up Snowdon. A large party of traditional-looking Jewish people with beards overtook us as I was beginning to flag. As they passed us, Ted muttered to me "Only three miles to the top, but for you, two and a half!"

In summer 1987, Pixie wrote to me from Barcelona saying that her eldest daughter, Irene, wanted to come to London in October to study of all things, astrology. This was going to be difficult for her as although she could speak English, she had never had much opportunity to do so, except to her granny. Pixie's parents had left South Africa to live in Spain too and Mrs Laurie had never mastered Spanish. I said I would love to have her stay with me and I was very excited about her arrival. By this time, Cathy was 16 and had passed several O Levels and was at a nearby Sixth Form College. Irene was about 18. Trevor and I were the only people free to meet her on the day she arrived and so we went together to Victoria Coach Station. Pixie was very short of money and Irene came by coach all the way from Spain which must have been a horrendous journey.

Irene was dark and predictably Spanish looking and had dark brown thick curly hair. Everyone liked her and thought her English was quite good. She understood much more than she said and obviously had a good sense of humour. She loved watching English television with us, especially the comedies. She stayed in the third bedroom. Of course I told her I was always trying to find a lodger to help us financially so she knew that if we did, she would have to sleep in the lounge on a folding bed. I did not want to find just anybody to be our lodger. It was obviously important that the person should be compatible, decent and honest.

I thought it was interesting the way we found Anna. All English people around at that time will remember the big hurricane in October 1987. Irene slept right through it, but Cathy and I woke up in the early hours. It was very difficult to shut Cathy's window but we managed in the end against the force of the wind. Then the two of us stood in the back dining room which overlooked the park and found the storm quite amazing with the trees crashing and the wind howling. The noise was terrific. Eventually Cathy managed to go back to sleep but I stood there a long time almost enthralled by the ferocity of the storm. In the morning it was sunny and everything in the street looked normal though at the back the fence dividing our buildings from the park had come down and the park looked quite devastated. I listened to the radio and heard that a lot of trains would not be able to run due to the damage caused by falling trees and other debris. I knew however that the Victoria Line on the Underground would run because it never came out into the open, so that unfortunately I could not avoid going to work.

Meanwhile in Tunbridge Wells, Ted had woken up and found he had no electricity. He is a person who always has to have a cup of tea first thing so this was a very difficult thing for him. His upstairs neighbour who had a gas supply, made him some tea and later when he tried to go to work, he found that the roads everywhere were blocked by fallen trees so in the end he had to go back home. He tried to make dinner by standing candles in between piles of books and putting a plate across them like a bridge. It took hours to heat this way. As he had been reading a book about magic and candles, he decided to pass the time by trying to work some magic. He concentrated on getting a lodger for me as he knew I needed the extra money. I was at work later that day in my office but many of the other secretaries had not managed to get in.

There was a West Indian lady at the other end of our floor who I knew by sight but had never spoken to. While I was on the phone talking to Jennifer about lodgers and how difficult it was to find a suitable one, she came into my office with some typing for me. She needed it done quickly and had heard I was one of the only secretaries who had managed to come in due to the storm. She said she could not help overhearing what I had said and wondered if I would like to take over her lodger. She was leaving her house and moving to a smaller flat and had a very nice quiet girl living with her who she had been very upset to part with. She was worried about where Anna would go and wanted to be sure she would be all right. I gave her my phone number and that night Anna rang and asked if she could come the next day to see the flat.

Well, Anna came and just by looking at her you could see she would not have riotous parties that disturbed our nights nor would she be nasty or difficult in any way. She was very pleased about the flat and her room and said she would have hated to move in to a place that was not as part of a family. Irene moved her stuff out of the bedroom and into the lounge, and Anna moved in the next week. It was a very happy time at home which compensated for the fact that I was not very happy at work. The four of us often used to have our baths and get into nightclothes and squash on to the three seater sofa to watch television. I have a photo of one of these evenings showing the peace and harmony of the situation. Irene, Cathy, Anna and I all got on very well. Anna hardly ever cooked. She ate very frugally, sometimes a sandwich and an apple. I did the washing for all four of us in the washing machine but I only ironed for Cathy and myself. I realised I was quite glad my mother had not come as everything had worked out so happily. So could it have been Ted's magic that brought about this outcome?

Anna had a car and sometimes gave me a lift to the station in the mornings. At Christmas that year both Irene and Anna went back home to their respective families. Anna came from Brighton so it was not far to go. When she was away, she paid only a small retainer rent. We had a lovely party at New Year. For some reason Ted did not come but all the usual crowd did, the BT people, the Union people, the operatic society lot plus Laina of all people.

I find it difficult to remember all the ins and outs of Laina's coming and going. She had at last met another man, although deep down I think she still hoped that one day she and Graham would be reunited especially in view of the fact that he and his third wife were apart. However, I liked Blane and was pleased she had found someone at least to take her mind off her obsessive love for Graham. This was 1987 and during the 13 years since he had left her, I had received letters from her showing her misery, then her hopes and disappointments regarding Graham. If he was polite to her, she hoped it meant a reconciliation. Then he would find someone else and she would be distraught again.

I tried to tell her that if Graham found someone else, it would be someone younger again and he would be unlikely to return to her. I think she was still involved with Scientology and presumably was living back near East Grinstead at this particular time. I don't think Blane was a Scientologist though. Somewhere around this time she also told me that she had heard that Graham and his latest girlfriend, Sue, were expecting a baby. She didn't know what they intended to do about it. Sue was a couple of years older than Jennifer so at that time must have been getting on for thirty. And Graham must have then been about 52. I don't think Laina and Blane were intending to stay in England. Laina said she loved the country but they both had problems getting paid work, and so were not settled.

Cathy had a lot of school friends who used to come round frequently. Usually they stayed in the dining room at the other end of the flat. I did not get to know all their names and like a lot of teenagers they were not all that communicative to me anyway. They all seemed to like the Visitors' Book though and when I recently looked through their entries, I discovered I had probably never before realised what and how much they had written.

Early 1988 flowed on in much the same vein as 1987. I saw Ted at weekends and during the week the four of us females had a peaceful existence. I had a nasty accident to my teeth in the Spring through running for a bus carrying shopping bags in both hands. I should have let them go and risked breaking the eggs. However I fell on my face and broke and damaged several teeth. My face was bruised and distorted and my two front teeth, which were already crowned, were returned to me by kindly people at the bus stop. I got a taxi and went home before going to the hospital Casualty Department.

Only Irene was home so we wrote a note for Cathy and Anna and I took Irene with me. She phoned Barbra who got there by car as soon as she could. Although I gave my two teeth to the staff on arrival it was nearly midnight before they managed to get a dental person there who opened up the dental surgery part of the hospital. He had little confidence that my teeth would stay but put them in with a brace. He kept saying 'if we had done this sooner, it might have worked better' and I kept responding 'well, I have been here since straight after work at about 6.30 pm. The pain was terrible. The dental chap had to inject into my bleeding upper palate and I thought at the time that I had never known as much pain as in that hour, but it is difficult to compare different sorts of pain. I didn't realise how terrible I looked until a nurse sent me to a mirror to wash. My whole face was covered in blood and I looked like some twisted monster.

I was away from work for about two weeks. Jennifer came and took photos of me almost every day as my monster face changed from one stage to another. I was surprised when some of the people at work sent me a huge basket of fruit and a card. On the day after the accident, Irene was very kind and made me soup and bread with no crusts and put a pretty plant on a tray with the food. I was very distressed about this accident, and keep reliving the fall when I was trying to get to sleep, and had to take painkillers for quite a long time. The brace was on for quite a few months and my teeth did stay in although I could no longer bite on an apple or anything hard. I do think that the fact I read my homeopathy books and took remedies for teeth and gums must have been very helpful in keeping the teeth in place. However, the accident still cost me a lot financially as so many other teeth were damaged and had to be crowned. I had to pay for all the restoration and I think it cost me over £1000 and I kept wishing I had just let the shopping bags drop and had put my hands out to save myself from such an awful fall. Eventually I needed a bridge which was extremely expensive.

Mike from the Union told me a while later about another secretarial job within BT with a friend of his called Linda and I applied for the job. Linda was the head of a large division and in fact needed a secretary for her second in command, Paul Kenny. I was very pleased, as I knew I would never get to like working at the Euston building despite my interest in mobile phones. I had decided to go to visit my mother again as she had not come to England and I had not seen her for three years. It was very expensive but I realised I could use a credit card for the fare and then pay it back over the year ahead. When I returned from Durban, I would go straight to the new job. However Linda's secretary got promoted and as Linda herself needed a secretary, I had to work for her in the Holborn area instead of for Paul in Old Street.

I chose Alitalia for my flight this time so I could go via Rome. There would be a ten hour break in Rome between flights so I realised I would be able to see a little of the city. Ever since my crush on Mario Lanza and 'The Great Caruso' I had been interested in Italy and I thought it would be nice to see Rome at least on my way through. I read a guide book which warned of the men who crowded round the centre where the airbuses stopped who would try to carry bags and offer services and I decided that I would be very careful. I studied the street map and saw where the underground railway was and planned to see at least the Spanish Steps and the Fountains of Trevi. The scene where the airbus stopped was very much as described in the guidebook. I ignored the milling crowd of men and turned and walked quickly down the steps to the underground and bought a ticket to the station, which I think was called 'Spagna'. I felt very pleased I was managing so well. I found my way on foot from the Spanish Steps to the Fountains but I was so worried about looking like a tourist that I hesitated to get my camera out of my flight bag at all. I also was worried about missing my flight and I knew it was a long way back to the airport.

However there were some things I was determined to do. I thought I would practise my Italian and went into a coffee bar and said 'Cafe a tavola, per favore' which I thought couldn't go wrong but he answered with a positive volley of words which left me floundering. I said 'pardon' and he indicated that I must sit down and he would bring the coffee over to the table. It seemed amazing that I was actually in Rome in an Italian coffee bar so many years after my avid interest in all things Italian. Then I started to walk back to the station trying to follow my map without looking as if I was a stranger. I thought 'no gigolo is going to try to have a Roman spring with me, as I'm no Mrs Stone'. I realised I was a bit lost and saw a man in a sort of soldier's uniform and I asked him hopefully 'Dov'è Termini?' 'No English' he replied. 'For God's sake, I thought, 'I'm speaking Italian'. But I tried again - 'stazione?' 'Ah' he said with the second volley of words that I had heard that day, but this time he pointed and waved his hands about too. I walked the way he had pointed first and became very hot and panicky, but eventually found a big shopping street and guessed I was near the railway station outside which the airbuses stopped. Then I asked a lady for directions. She laughed at my linguistic attempt and said she was an American and that I was nearly there and she pointed me in the right direction.

Of course I got back to the airport in plenty of time but that was much better than being late. I had taken about £30 in Italian lire but hardly managed to pay for anything. No shop either in the city or at the airport seemed to sell anything that wasn't exorbitantly expensive. A coke at the airport cost, it seemed to me if I was working out the exchange rate correctly, about £4. A young woman with a strong South African accent and a toddler in a pushchair was having a frantic shouting match with an official at the airport about money and phone calls. I asked her what was wrong and she said she needed lire to pay for an important call and they would not accept her money. So I gave her the balance of my Italian money and she gave me a cheque drawn on an English bank for what we estimated was the correct amount. And that was the end of my Italian adventure. Nova met me at Johannesburg airport and we had lunch. I had told my mother not to worry or meet me and was vague about my arrival time. I think that time I got a taxi straight to my mother's flat from the airport.

It was seven years since my previous visit at the stressful time when I was in the process of leaving John. This time I might enjoy seeing Durban a bit more, but my mother was now in her eighties and was naturally more limited in getting about easily.

My mother went to bed very early as she also woke very early. She had television in her one roomed flat but South African television is in my opinion so boring that it was not worth turning it on most of the time. I hated 'Dallas' and never watched it in England but in Durban it was about the most interesting thing on. Most evenings were quite uncomfortable. I got backache as I just sat on my bed and read until I felt sleepy. On one or two nights I went out to dinner, once to Dawn and Eric's and once with my mother's Indian friend Rajie. Graham and Sue had just had their baby; a boy called Martin who was premature and very small at five months old. Graham brought him round to show my mother and me. Sue was understandably a bit shy at having to confront his first wife, but came in for a while. I also met Richard (Graham's son with Heather) for the first time, who must by then have been about 13. I got the feeling Graham was quite potty over baby Martin and perhaps at last would settle down with Sue, and this has turned out to be true.

In the daytimes I walked about with my mother to the local shop, and sometimes I went swimming in the sea for an hour on my own. It was only a short walk from her flat. I used to take the minimum of things as I thought they might get pinched on the beach. I love swimming in the Durban sea, well not exactly swimming, but getting knocked to the ground over and over by the huge breakers and trying to jump at the right time just before the waves break to avoid being knocked over. But most of the three weeks were quite depressing. I dreaded leaving, as I knew my mother would be upset. She got upset every time people asked me when I was going back. She seemed hurt that I had four weeks leave from work and yet only came for three. She didn't seem to realise that I had hardly any proper holiday. My mother was having a much lonelier life than previously as so many of her friends had died and she was desperate to talk endlessly to me. Sitting in her room was what I did most of the time and she did not seem to understand that I might want a week off work to go on holiday with Ted or Cathy. And the trip to South Africa took all my money anyway. I returned to work looking pale and unrested.

I had been a bit worried about leaving Cathy while I was away, but she had Anna in the evenings and was going away to France with John for one of the three weeks of my absence. Among Cathy's crowd was a boy from her class called Paul. I didn't pay more attention to him than to any of the others. I didn't think he was romantically interested in her as there was another boy who I did not particularly like that seemed more keen on her. Irene had finished her course and returned to Barcelona but the small space she left when her things were removed from the floor behind the sofa did not remain empty for long.

One rainy night when Cathy was out, perhaps at a music lesson, the doorbell rang and I was surprised to see Paul on the doorstep dripping wet and breathing strangely. He said his father had turned him out after a row about the door key and he had no coat and was asthmatic. I found him a towelling dressing gown and he had a hot bath and afterwards I asked him about his father. He said his parents had separated when he was five and his mother lived in Wales and his sister had gone with her and he had come with his father to Leyton in London. Usually he apparently got on with his father but I got the feeling it was not a really happy relationship. He was very worried about getting his clothes and things for school the next day, but was afraid of further scenes with his father who had apparently pushed him down the stairs. This is another event I am a bit vague about now, but I do know that from then on he lived in our flat in the lounge until he and Cathy finished their A levels. He had a friend with a car who drove him back to his father's flat and apparently he was allowed to take his things in the end.

After a while his father sent me the Family Allowance and this helped me a bit with his food. I suppose it was inevitable that Cathy and he became more than just friends. She was 18 by then and I just had no energy to worry about anything else. She was always very honest with me and told me she was going to the Family Planning Clinic so at least I knew she would not get pregnant. It was difficult for me to explain who Paul was to people who didn't know all the circumstances, and why he was in my flat. At work I called him 'the boy on the floor in my lounge' which Linda, my boss, thought was funny.

In July 1988, Ted's 19 year old daughter, Lesley, who he had not seen for a long time, had a baby girl. She did at first plan to marry the father, but later decided to go it alone. It was rather a shame as she was bright and had passed a few A levels and having to bring up a child on her own was obviously going to make any career she chose more difficult to pursue. Luckily she lived with her mother who could help look after Lauren.

My 'dancing days' had ended too, for a different reason. Whilst I had been at Mobile Comms I had once banged my knee on the corner of my desk and it had been very painful. A long time later I went to the doctor about it, as it seemed so stiff and painful especially going down stairs. It did not dawn on me that I could have arthritis until the hospital I had been sent to said that I had slight osteo-arthritis in both knees. I took fish oil and calcium but realised that I would probably have to 'learn to live with it' as they say.

In the Autumn of 1988, Jennifer and Trevor surprisingly broke up their relationship.
I thought they were happy and always seemed so when we visited them in the Ilford flat. Jennifer seemed very upset about it although it was she who felt their relationship was not going anywhere and they were stuck in a rut. Perhaps it was because Trevor was so much older and less ambitious than she was and she felt that they lived like a boring old couple. She said she would always care for him but knew that the romance had gone out of their lives and she was too young to accept being in this sort of rut. Trevor was very unhappy about the break-up and was also worried as he was keen to have a London base and she explained to him that although there was no hurry, he would have to find somewhere else to live as obviously the Ilford flat belonged to all of us. He did not seem able to find anything and she was exasperated and actually helped him by buying papers and phoning up about flats and rooms to rent and sometimes driving him to look at them. By this time Jennifer had learned to drive and had her first car.

Eventually a happy solution was found as Jennifer had a friend in Ealing who lived in a large shared flat and there was a vacancy. Trevor already knew Helen and so he moved in there. I was very sorry about the break up as we had always got on so well with Trevor and we did continue to see him occasionally over the next few years.

That Christmas Jennifer was in pantomime at Richmond Theatre in 'Dick Whittington',
playing opposite Su Pollard and the late comedian Bernie Winters was the Dame and his dog Schnorbitz was in the show as well. I arranged for a large party of people to go to see it one night after work as well as booking to see it with Ted and his Sussex friends on the Saturday night. I have been trying to remember who all the people who went during the week were and so far have thought of eight people. Anna who had a migraine and was therefore exceptionally quiet, Pam, my ex neighbour from Woodford with her friend, Janice and Eddie from BT as well as the doll-like Amanda who had been so friendly with JG and lastly there was Lynne. It was one of Lynne's bad nights on the drinks front. She appeared rather sloshed right from the start. She had drinks in the theatre bar before the show and was keen to get back there at interval. She took a dislike to Mr Winters's dog and her language got worse and worse as her voice got louder and the abuse more belligerent. I sat between her and Anna and kept trying to hush her and was very sorry for poor Anna who seemed quite shocked. Later Pam told me that her friend was astonished I could know anyone like Lynne.

Read on... Chapter Sixteen
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