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Chapter Thirteen - Sailors again, Unions and Friends Old and New

I don't remember much more about the Summer of 1981. There was one lovely day which stands out in my memory. Jennifer and I went to Brighton for the day. It was very hot and I had only been to Brighton once before with my father and Cathy in 1976. This time Cathy was away somewhere so Jennifer suggested we had a day at the coast. We sat in the sunshine near the Royal Pavilion and had tea and listened to a band playing. It was like a wonderful escape from anxiety for just one day. It was also like a forecast of what my life could eventually become if everything turned out well.

In October I moved into the flat in Browns Road in Walthamstow and absolutely loved it despite its being old fashioned and scruffy. Although it was an upstairs maisonette with back steps down to the garden, it was reminiscent of the ground floor flat where I had lived with Shirley in Highams Park, the same sort of arrangement of rooms. I had the front bedroom and the back was for Cathy. There was a small dining room and very quaint kitchenette painted bright emerald green and royal blue which was rather strange. It was full of shelves with cup hooks attached - no modern fitted stuff at all. I was very lucky with furnishing it. By October, when I moved in, June and Ruth at the Accountants knew about the changes in my life. June's daughter did not want her chest of drawers, and Ruth was selling the newish twin beds bought for her parents who had moved into a retirement home soon afterwards. So she sold them to me very cheaply.

Mary had an unexpected legacy from an Aunt in Yorkshire and decided to update all her things. She bought a new fridge freezer, a new lounge suite and new carpeting and I got the old versions of all these. I knew it was important for there to be a piano so that Cathy could practise and Mary had decided to get rid of hers to make space for some of her new furniture. This was a blessing and I bought it from her together with the piano stool and it had to fit in the back bedroom of the new flat. When I moved from the Ilford house, one of the sisters who lived there knew a man who did small removals and he went from Ilford to Gants Hill, Chingford and Leytonstone and picked up all the bits and pieces which I had acquired, on his way to Walthamstow. There was no central heating at the flat but it was quite a cosy place.

It was lovely having a garden. I had never taken much interest in gardening prior to this. The ground was muddy, stony and grassless. I read gardening books from the library and people gave me various ideas about what to do. Granddad kindly came and dug over the soil and also brought some plants. I would say more about how this reunion with Nanny and Granddad came about over the months, if only I could remember and had not blotted it all out. I was very grateful that they were still friendly although Nanny had said to Jennifer that in her day, people stuck to their marriages and did not give up so easily. However apparently Barbra had said to her mother that she was surprised our marriage had not broken up sooner, so it must have been less of a shock to her at least. Anyway, I did not lose contact although I realised how saddened they were about it all.

The previous residents at the flat had buried a lot of rubbish in the back garden and I had to dig up plastic containers, tins and bottles and get rid of them gradually. Mary and I went to garden centres and it was the time to buy bulbs and she gave me a lot of good gardening advice. Later I sowed grass seed and watched it come up the next Spring. There were a lot of odd bricks thrown around in the garden and these were very handy. I remembered the bookcase Avis had made at Hertford Hotel. You get two or three long planks, floorboards maybe and you put little piles of bricks against a wall and then stand a plank across them and then put more bricks to the height you need and then a further plank. I made a four tier bookcase this way along the wall of the landing.

Despite my constant anxiety over Cathy and money, I had a wonderful feeling of peace and happiness at every bedtime. I would just lie there knowing that I could drift off to sleep and no one was going to start a row just as I was dozing off. Nor would I have to worry about disturbing anyone else by moving or snoring at the wrong moment. John had always been difficult over sleep and usually in the past I had had to try to keep awake until his breathing was regular before I could relax myself. It was also a wonderful feeling to have my own key to my own front door. I did not want John ever to enter the premises and spoil the atmosphere. There were so many places all over London where there had been emotional scenes that were forever spoiled for me, as they always brought back unhappy memories and I did not want this to happen with my own precious flat.

It was very satisfying to get my life back into a sort of order too. I wrote to friends with my new address and invited people to come and see my new flat. I started up a Visitors' Book which some people signed enthusiastically and some people only very grudgingly. Some people refused altogether. I have tried to re-read this book to jog my memory about the early years of my new start in life. In fact reading it confused me more. There are affectionate messages from people whose names I don't remember at all, cryptic entries I don't understand and occasions when various friends of mine were together in my flat that I would have sworn had never met each other! This is why its easier to write about life 40 years ago, then you really only remember the principal people and most significant events. I don't like to leave anybody out in these memoirs, but there really were too many people coming and going, and it would be confusing to mention absolutely everything and everybody, so I will try to stick to a few of these only.

The main visitors were Jennifer and Mary. June and Ilma from Callingham Crane, the accountants, came several times. June lived fairly near so was a regular visitor. Nellie from the operatic society came with her daughter and we joked about men and I said sailors were the best prospect because they didn't bother you too much and came back bearing gifts of jade, perfume and spices, but Nellie said my ideas were a bit outdated and these days I would probably find a sailor who operated the Woolwich Ferry and came home every night with his dirty washing! From then on, a lot of the entries in the Visitors' Book are about sailors.

People wrote things like:

When you get rid of the blue paint in the kitchen it will be better, though sailors tend to like blue - Nellie
I only came for the sailors - June
No sailors, just the insurance man - June
No sailors when I come, where are they - Mary
Well we tried. It would have been helpful if the sailors had been around - Barbra
and then later:
All the sailors have gone to the Falkland Islands - June (April 5th 1982)

Maggy and Sally from the original operatic society also visited and Cathy's friend Denise's parents were very helpful, especially Dennis her father who we called 'The Workman' as he did so many things in the flat like putting up a folding door.

A very welcome surprise visitor was Clare who with her husband and three children came to England and Europe on an extended holiday. I had seen her briefly on my 1980 visit to Durban but before that had not seen her since she left London in 1962. They had a beautiful house in South Africa and she had shown me photographs of the swimming pool and the terrace. However when they came into my shabby little flat, she looked quite rapturous and said 'Oh how perfectly charming it is'. Michael was a bit scornful about this but I thought it was kind of her to be so nice about it. She surely must have been horrified.

The first Christmas was strange. Again I can't remember exactly what happened every day, but I know that on one of the days when there was no public transport, Mary took me to Nanny and Granddad for dinner, and it was arranged that I would leave before John arrived at teatime. The children were all there too, but stayed behind after I left to spend time with John. I had to walk in the almost eerily silent snowfilled streets to Maggy's house in South Woodford, where she was having a small party and from where Mary drove me home again afterwards. That was a very snowy winter.

Cathy was keen to have a cat. The cat at Woodford was called Oliver and he was more Michael's than Cathy's, so we went along to fetch one that was advertised by an Animal Rescue group. He was pitch black and we called him Snowy, not just to be funny but because he came during the snowy time.

Once when I popped in to see Jeff at his office, he said that he needed someone to do his filing and wondered if it would help if he gave me money to come and work there for an hour or two after I finished my other job. This was extremely helpful and I went there twice a week. He gave me a key so I could get in even when he was not there. I told him once how Jennifer was finding it difficult to manage on her grant at Drama School and he told me about a client of his in a similar position to mine who had changed her child's grant so that it was based on her lesser income than that of her ex-husband. When Jennifer had first gone to Drama School, John and I had had a big argument on the subject of grants. They were based on the father of the student's income and as John's was reasonably high he was supposed to pay Jennifer a certain part of what was considered a necessary amount to live on. He said he did not have to pay it and got very heated and said it was only an estimate and that I had taken the wrong meaning from the form. Jennifer was finding it very difficult to pay rent and fares and get equipment for her course, as she was not subsidised at all by John, so I wrote secretly to the Borough and said that I was separated from her stepfather and told them what I earned and asked if she could be re-assessed.

This worked out beautifully and Jennifer's grant was increased for the last part of her drama course, and of course it was realised that I could not possibly pay anything in view of the small difference between my income and outgoings.

The next February Cathy had a row with John. She and I have both now blocked out what it was all about, but during the row he said something like 'do you want to go and live with your mother all the time?' and she of course said 'yes' and he said 'go and pack' which she did immediately. She rang me up but I was at a MATCH meeting so she rang again the next morning and told me the good news. I was sure she was mistaken and that John certainly did not mean this and of course he didn't. He just said anything wildly that came into his head when he was angry. However this time there was not much he could do, although I am sure he was very bitter about it. She turned up with a small case containing a lot of her clothes and from then on we were together most of the time.

But the whole affair got nastier. John wrote me letters all the time, some so upsetting that I felt sick when I saw his writing. He accused me of all sorts of things like trying to poison the children against him and being evil and 'playing a dangerous game'. After a while, I stopped opening them and asked others to read them and only tell me if there was something practical between the abuse that I really needed to know, for instance a change in arrangements. The arrangements more or less seemed to reverse. Cathy used to go to John on a Wednesday after school and stay overnight, and John used to see her I think, every other weekend. Michael still came twice a week to tea with me.

I can't pretend that I was really free of John at all. I felt as if he was like a cloud invisible to everyone else but perpetually in the sky just above me which followed wherever I went, watching and ready to criticise. I ran my life constantly thinking about what the effect would be on John. I nagged at Cathy to practise the piano and do her homework because I knew he would blame me entirely if she did not do well at everything. I was not a natural disciplinarian but forced myself constantly to make Cathy do, say and eat all the things that would please him. It often went wrong. On one New Year's eve, I let her stay up to watch 'Pygmalion' on TV and she told him this later. He looked up the 'Radio Times' to check when the film finished and was very angry that she was having late nights! Michael told me he had argued with his father over this. John often telephoned as well and I got quite jumpy about answering the ring. He would keep me on the phone sometimes for nearly an hour, going on and on relentlessly at me.

Friends asked why I didn't just put the phone down on him, but I wouldn't have dared. He might have come round and that would have been worse. I bought an answerphone although at that time it was considered quite a luxury so that I could monitor calls and not pick up the phone if I heard his voice It was almost five years before I started to feel more free of his presence and really it was only years later when Cathy went away to College at 18 that I stopped worrying about him quite as much..

When I had Cathy with me most of the time, I stopped going to MATCH meetings and joined a Singles group called the 'City Circle' where different things were arranged for people to meet, walks, theatre outings, quiz evenings and that sort of thing. I could only afford the cheaper events which I sometimes attended on the days or evenings when Cathy was not with me. One good event was an occult evening at the home of a divorced lady called Merrill in Leytonstone with whom I became friendly. Soon afterwards, Cathy turned eleven and went to Nightingale comprehensive school in Wanstead and sometimes went back to South Woodford after school to stay with Michael until she caught the bus home to Walthamstow later.

Jennifer was regularly in shows at Mountview. They were free and usually on a Friday and Saturday night, also sometimes there was a matinee. She would always give John first option and if he wanted tickets for Saturday I would arrange to go perhaps with Mary on the Friday. John constantly muddled up the arrangements and would argue that he hadn't chosen the day she had booked him in for, and then I would have to change my date with Mary and there were months and months of problems of this sort.

At one matinee that unfortunately both John and I were attending, I got there early and found a mother of one of Jennifer's old school friends standing in the foyer. After leaving John, I had decided that I would avoid all the South Woodford people who I had known as they were probably against me, but anyway it was not fair to go into John's territory as I would not have liked him to start involving himself with any of my new neighbours and friends. This was therefore the first time I had seen anyone from my previous married life in the Woodford area. I was unsure of her attitude but need not have worried. She started the conversation and said she had always known what John was like and many times Jennifer had gone to her house, crying and she said how fond she was of Jennifer and how it had annoyed her to see a child so upset. So I had an ally I had never dreamed of which pleased me a lot.

Once when I was shopping in Leytonstone, I bumped into Pam Cunningham, another mother of one of Jennifer's school friends who I had always liked and was sorry to have felt it necessary to lose touch with. She was pleased to see me and I told her where I was living and she said that some woman in the Community Association to which John belonged, who I did not think I knew, had asked Pam if she knew what had happened to me. Apparently this woman had said that if ever there was a man whose garden she would want to dig up if his wife vanished, it was John. This was terribly unfair to John of course but it was strange to think that there was someone else in South Woodford who hadn't thought he was that perfect a husband. I was glad that I had been so wrong in my estimation of how we were viewed as a family.

A quite amazing coincidence happened at this time. As Jennifer neared the end of her course at Mountview, she wanted to go to an audition she had read about in 'The Stage' newspaper. The audition was in Scarborough in Yorkshire and she could not afford the fare to go. Nanny heard about it and kindly offered to pay for her to go and so off she went. There were two other girls auditioning and when the auditions were over, as people had come a long way, the producer suggested they all had coffee and a chat together before going home. He chatted away and in the conversation mentioned someone called Petal, who had written him the sort of letter that no innocent girl trying to get a part should write. Jennifer's ears pricked up at the name, as she remembered the girl who had visited us years before who was her half sister, and she said 'Excuse me, but was her other name McNamee?' He was very surprised and said that it was. When she said 'I think she is my sister', he said 'Well, you ought to tell her that she must not write like she has, she is only 15 and she could be misunderstood and taken advantage of'.

He gave Jennifer the letter before she left, and later she wrote to Petal at the East Grinstead address. Although I had always known where Laina and Petal were, I knew that John would not be happy about Jennifer getting connected with her real father and so I had never discussed the matter with her. And I suppose Laina did not particularly want Graham to contact us either, though she herself wrote to me quite often.

Well, Petal wrote back immediately to Jennifer and enclosed a letter from Graham. Apparently Graham didn't know where Jennifer was and had said to Petal that if she ever found her half-sister, would she forward his letter. As Jennifer was now grown up he felt it was all right to get to know her.

So Jennifer wrote back to Graham and they started a regular correspondence. Jennifer also invited Petal to come to London on a Friday afternoon and spend the weekend. Then Petal could see Jen in her Mountview show on the Saturday night, when she could sit with Michael and me.

When Jennifer told me what had happened, we both firmly agreed that it was not something that John could be told about at this touchy stage, not only because it would hurt him but because he would definitely blame me and think I must have arranged it all, as he knew I still sent Christmas cards to Laina. It seemed extraordinary that it was through his mother's generosity that all this happened.

So this was yet another secret, it did seem there had to be secrets where John was concerned if peace was to reign.

Petal was due to arrive on the Friday afternoon but was delayed. Because Jennifer was in the show that night and had to be back in Hornsey by 6 pm, she asked me to meet
Petal at London Bridge Station after work and bring her to the dressing room backstage. Worryingly for me, John was in the audience that night, so I would have to get through the foyer and round to the backstage part without being seen by him. Whatever would John have thought if he had seen me miles out of my way, on a night when I was not part of the audience? He would have been bound to think I was spying on him as it did not take much to make him paranoid in all sorts of ways.

Nanny was looking after Cathy as she often saw her on a Friday night and I rang Nanny to say I would be late back from work as I had to go somewhere else first. I met Petal who had forgotten me, I had not seen her since she was eight and she didn't really understand what I was saying about having to be careful going in. I had to make sure of the timing, that it was before interval but after everyone was inside. We crept along backstage and I hit my head on a wooden beam in the darkness, but eventually delivered her to Jennifer's dressing room.

My heart was pounding as I dashed out and away as fast as I could go. I could see the funny side of it though. The next night Michael came with me to the show. Perhaps Cathy was with John. I did not want Michael to have secrets from John, so Jennifer and I agreed that we would not tell him who Petal was. We decided to say she was a friend of Jennifer's called Rosemary and so the three of us sat together and Petal accepted being called Rosemary but again, seemed rather bewildered. I did speculate idly on the complications if Michael had taken romantically to Petal. There was no blood tie but the wedding photographer would have had a problem as it would have been embarrassing for me to stand next to either father!

Meanwhile, back at the office, I had a bit of a problem. Mr Jenn who was 62 was rather an old roué who thought it was the fashionable thing to have a younger secretary to flirt with. I was hardly a dolly bird, being 44, but after he had had a drink or two at lunch time, he would make suggestions to me and try to cuddle me. He was a pompous man, very small and quite well-spoken and he loved his German wife of whom he was very proud. Once he asked me to go to Paris with him and I said 'Mr Jenn, would you want your wife to know you said that?' He agreed he would not. I told him it was insulting for him to go on like that when he didn't really even like me very much. There were times when I was trying to type and he would come behind me and try and put his arms through my armpits in order to reach my breasts. Once I tried wearing a jacket and I squeezed my arms tightly against my sides so he couldn't get through and went on typing hard! Once he actually sort of chased me round my desk. I felt we were too old for this sort of thing and we should not be behaving like actors in a 'Carry On' film. It was nice when the other manager was down from Leicester and Mr Jenn behaved with propriety.

It was a very lonely job a lot of the time when Mr Jenn was abroad. I just had to be there to answer the phone and liaise with Head Office about customer complaints regarding their knitwear. It was too quiet as time went on and then once my salary was not paid in. This was a terrible thing to happen to someone with a crippling mortgage and Mr Jenn did sort it out quite quickly but I knew business wasn't good and then in August 1982, I was told they were closing the London office and I had to find another job in a hurry.

I went to the Social Services in Walthamstow to see if I could get some money just while I was looking around for something else and when I got up to the counter and told them my story, the first thing they asked was how tall my husband was. I was staggered. 'Why' I asked, 'so we can trace him for support' they said. 'But I know where he is and I don't want him to support me', I said,'that's the whole point, I don't want him to know I can't manage.' They looked very dubious and said they couldn't really help. So I stood up and said resignedly 'Oh well I'll have to become a prostitute' and started to walk away. It was only a silly remark, after all I didn't even have a man wanting me who didn't have to pay, but it had a startling effect. The lady jumped up and said 'Wait, I'll have to call my superior officer' and I was ushered into a side office where about four people came and stood over me firing questions at me.

In the end I cried, more with embarrassment over the whole farce than anything else. The supervisor said 'All right we will help you for three weeks, and then if you have not found a job, we will contact your husband'. This meant I could not be too choosy and in fact I took a fairly local job within two weeks.

The job I found at a Solicitors in Hackney was so awful I don't think its worth going into. There was a bad smell of drains, the women were hostile and rude not only to me but to clients. The pressure of work was great and the salary was not. I left after about two months and decided to do temping which was better paid and then perhaps it would lead to permanent work.

I went back to the Holborn Job Centre and was sent to the BTUC in the City which turned out to be a group of Telecommunications Unions. In those days there were six trade unions for different grades of telecommunications workers. It was just before Christmas and the staff were putting up decorations. It was all very friendly and there was a lovely cheap canteen in the basement. I felt like smiling all the time it was so much better than my recent experiences. They kept telling me not to work so hard.

Mary had been invited to spend Christmas with another friend so I was a bit depressed at the thought of being alone on Christmas day. The children came to me on Christmas eve and John was going to pick them up and take them to his parents after dinner. The friend I had made at the City Circle called Merrill, invited me to stay with her in Leytonstone until the next day. So I had another long Christmas walk to see her on a day with no public transport. Apparently there was an awful row at John's house while tea was being prepared, and Jennifer said she was going to get a taxi back to me. Cathy said 'let me come too' and then as they were about to walk out, Barbra arrived bearing presents and it all blew over. I would not have been at home if they had returned, so its just as well it turned out as it did.

I had invited various friends round on the 28th December for a sort of party (checking on the Visitors' Book I see it was Jennifer, Mary, Merrill and June) and Cathy was looking forward to it probably due to the food we had made or arranged to make. On the day before, the 27th, we were all invited to Barbra's house in Chigwell for a family get together. I was not sure about this at all and thought it would not be easy for John and me to be in the same house. And it wasn't!

I tried to be normal and neutral and pass him the butter and not talk much but he was strained and stiff and I noticed if I did join in the conversation at all, he would stare into the middle distance and show he was not listening and not respond to anything I said. I tried to stay in a different room from him where possible but right at the end as he was leaving he said to Cathy 'I want you to come to my house tomorrow as I have a friend coming who would like to meet you'. Cathy immediately burst into tears and said she did not want to go as there was going to be a party at our flat. John turned on me and said I must deal with her and insist she did as he asked, and asked why was it so important that she came to my party. I said it wasn't important to me, but it was important to Cathy and she had looked forward to it. I said that after all he had suddenly sprung his arrangements on her. He was very angry and called out to Michael and they went off together on their bicycles.

Jennifer cried, Nanny went and hung over the sink and looked as if she was going to be sick. Granddad apparently talked to Jennifer about John and asked questions about what things had been like when we had all been together. Previously Granddad had said things like 'Can't you two forget your differences for just one day' and I think this day proved it did not work for us to be together, although of course even if I had not been there, he still would have been angry about Cathy and the planned party. Barbra drove Jennifer, Cathy and me back to Walthamstow and when Cathy was asleep Jennifer and I drank wine and felt quite shaken and yet we got giggly and said that maybe now no one would invite both John and me together again to anything.

One day while listening to my radio alarm, I heard someone speaking about Scientology and I realised it was Cyril who I had not seen since before meeting John about 20 years previously, although we had exchanged cards for a long time. He was saying to the radio interviewer that he had left Scientology and was engaged in de-programming people disturbed by cults. He mentioned living in Bayswater and I was very excited and went and looked up his number and rang him straight away. I recognised his voice immediately. He however did not know who I was. This sort of thing has happened to me quite a few times. I must be very unremarkable. I can forget someone I only knew for a few weeks, but not someone with whom I was friendly for years and had visited several times.

He seemed very interested in my call though. He said he had had a slight stroke and it had erased a lot from his memory. I invited him out to see us and showed him photos of us all in the old days and then he remembered Graham. It was a jolly evening as Jennifer came as well and Cyril told us he was now married to an Australian teacher and would be coming and going back and forth quite a lot with his de-programming work. I think he had kept on the flat in Bayswater which had belonged to a relative. Cyril told us that there had been lots of changes in Scientology and a sort of purge had taken place in the organisation and a lot of the old people had been kicked out including Herbie and Jenny.

I still kept in touch with Jenny but we had so much else to talk about that the subject of Scientology hardly ever cropped up. This was how I preferred it as I felt it might be a touchy subject. Jenny had told me there had been changes but had not given details and she and the family still lived in Sussex near to East Grinstead. Jenny's father was very elderly and living in a Home in Golders Green so she often came to London to visit him until later she found a suitable Home for him in Sussex.

We always met for about an hour when she came to London, although her time was limited. Sometimes we met near Victoria or London Bridge stations and sometimes in Golders Green itself. Apart from the slight restriction I felt between us on the subject of Scientology, she and I could talk about almost anything under the sun. She has always been such a comforting person to talk to. She listens carefully and tries to suggest practical solutions to one's problems. I was very glad I had named Jennifer after her. Scientologists often used to talk about the Tone Scale and people being high or low-toned. My mother had said in the old days that Jenny was a really good example of a high-toned person. Life is always better for time spent with her.

At about this time Jennifer met Trevor, an actor about thirteen years older than her. They worked together at the Tudor Rooms a sort of theme restaurant where Jennifer dressed as Ann Boleyn and Trevor was I think the jester. He was looking for somewhere to live and there was a room going at the house Jennifer shared and so he moved in to the same house.

Gradually they had become a twosome and on Cathy's twelfth birthday they came together to her party. He was very well spoken and charming and particularly nice to Cathy. We liked him very much and his entries in the Visitors' Book were always good and often in rhyme.

At Easter, my mother came back to London and as usual I thought she would stay forever. I gave her my front bedroom and I moved on to a mattress on the floor of Cathy's room. There was no room for a bed and I could stand the mattress up against a wall during the day. By then we had a gerbil called Derek whose cage stood on a table in Cathy's room. It was difficult to sleep as he never stopped making crackling noises as he ate through his plastic house and bits of sawdust and plastic shavings used to drop on my face during the night. We also had two fish called Darren and Sharon, names we thought were funny. My mother still did not seem to get on very well with Cathy. She said she had not realised how much Cathy would be there. My mother was deaf and she often would say that Cathy had not said 'goodbye' or 'thank you' to her when in fact she had. She said Cathy didn't talk to her and was rude. Considering my mother nagged at her a lot, I think Cathy was quite well behaved. It was not nice playing 'pigggy in the middle' between them. The problem really was that Cathy did not know my mother. To Cathy, who already had endured a lot of stress in her young life, she was suddenly faced with an old lady of 77 in her home whom she had not learned to love over the years. My mother had very strict standards on the subject of how children should behave and about politeness. Compared to other children I had seen, I thought Cathy was very polite.

My mother was very pleased about Jennifer's friendship with Trevor. Trevor was a real charmer and we always had lovely evenings when they came round and all discord was forgotten. She was so pleased that Jennifer had found a 'gentleman' though she may have been surprised at the age discrepancy. I was very pleased that Cathy now had in her environment a man she got on with so well who was old enough to be her father and took a happy interest in her. Some of the happiest evenings in our little flat were when Trevor, Jennifer, my mother, Cathy and I were all together and at these times the friction between Cathy and my mother did not show.

British Telecom was in the process of being privatised by the government and the unions were doing all they could to prevent this. I did a lot of the typing of the Hotline papers and leaflets that went out to all the union members. Many meetings were held of the top union executives and I had to make coffee for them and it was a very busy but nice environment. The trouble was I was only a temp. The Campaign against Privatisation failed and some of the unions were 'rationalised' which meant there would not be as many as six any more. There were redeployees to be fitted into jobs and I overheard telephone conversations which made me realise they were going to get rid of me in the May.

They were very good and paid me about two weeks extra money which helped a lot. I had never paid tax for the five months I was there as they paid me from the petty cash and had no means of paying for a temp. I was always worried that the tax people would catch up with me. My mother and Merrill and I had a hilarious evening discussing what I would say if asked where I had been working for five months.

I said I would tell him I had met this wonderful man, Mario from Siena, 'he was so handsome, so lovely, he said I must not work, he paid for everything and then, whoosh, he went, so sad' and then I would sob into my handkerchief. My mother said the man would want to know Mario's surname. I said I would just cry on and say I didn't know. Merrill said please could she be there when I performed this scene with the taxman.

Merrill had some funny experiences with bureaucracy too. Once at the DHSS she went up to the window where a bored clerk asked 'What was the date of your decree nisi?'
She paused for a moment to think and he barked in an irritable staccato 'WHEN ... DID ... YOU ... GET ... YOUR ... DIVORCE?' She answered immediately in the same way 'I ... UNDER ... STAND ... THE ... QUESTION ... I ... AM ... TRYING ... TO ... REMEMBER!' She was glad when she heard a snort of amusement from his adjacent colleague.

Very soon I found another temp job but this was long term. By coincidence it was at one of the very unions that was part of the BTUC so I already knew the Group Secretary in the Telecom Group. However I did not start in the Telecom section. The SCPS was like a group of all the Civil Service Unions and I worked in Customs & Excise and the DHSS before moving to the Telecom Group.

The Union was in Southwark Street not far from London Bridge. It was quite a journey for me but I didn't mind. It was a lovely place, I liked the people and the cheap canteen. The bad thing was having to do Minutes of meetings. Some people seemed to have the knack of knowing which were the important things to note. I would have liked to have been made permanent there. Whilst in the Customs & Excise Group I had mentioned this hope to the lady who sat nearest to me who always whispered her views in a confidential manner. She had said to me that I should apply as 'they won't want someone young and pretty, you'll get the job I'm sure'. She was trying to be kind so I refrained from giggling. And she was wrong, they did want someone young and pretty! The Personnel Manager liked me and laughed a lot at my first attempt at a CV, but I knew that taking Minutes would be a stumbling block and minutes and meetings seemed to be the major part of the job. Usually the delegates to meetings were from all over England and a lot were from Scotland. In all the groups many of the delegates had broad accents and got very excited and I never really got to grips with what they were talking about, even when I moved to the British Telecom section, although I understood more there. There were the actual Union employees and then the British Telecom people who were allowed time to do their Union work.

The regulars in the office were Lorna, a West Indian girl, Roy who we called Little Roy, although he was over six feet tall, but young and baby faced and there was Lesley, who was in love with one of the BT people, Dave. We all got on very well and I really liked all the other BT people too, like Mike, Barry and Lynette who came into the office frequently. The Group Secretary was Beverley who I found a bit formidable but I had made coffee for her while still at the BTUC in the old days and felt I knew how to handle her reasonably well. In the general office, we laughed and joked a lot and very soon Little Roy, Lynette and Lorna also visited my flat. They all lived in South London and Lorna complained about the terrible journey to Walthamstow. Little Roy and my mother got on well and went together to the matinee of one of my shows in Ilford. I think Roy was gay but he did not admit it. Perhaps he just was not interested in girls. Later Mike and his wife and daughter were regular visitors and my mother and I went to see them in North London as well.

I still had the folding bed which Cathy had used at weekends in the Ilford bedsitter, so many people who lived far away came and stayed overnight in the little lounge. Eileen's sister Jean was one of these.

My mother had always wanted to see Stonehenge so she booked a coach outing leaving from Walthamstow on a Saturday for Cathy, she and I to go via Stonehenge to Bath for the day. We were very excited and I took photos and it was the beginning of Cathy's love affair with Bath. She had read a Jane Austen book about Bath at school too and from then on, she stopped saying that she wanted to live in Muswell Hill, her earlier dream place and wanted to spend her life in Bath. As it's said to be one of the most beautiful cities in England, it's hardly surprising.

During 1983 Cathy went through a phase of not wanting to speak to her father or go to see him at all. Its another point on which neither Cathy nor I can remember the exact reason why this happened. I think she and he had had words or maybe he nagged at her every time they were alone. It made life very difficult for me because he phoned rather a lot and she would refuse to come to the phone and go and crouch in the kitchenette. I don't think he believed me about this and saw himself as one of the victimised fathers one was always reading about at that time who lose contact with their children after a marriage break-up. As I was very short of money to entertain Cathy in a really satisfactory manner at weekends, and as I did not want to alienate my in-laws in any way,
I would obviously have preferred her to sail happily from one home to the other.

It also caused an even worse breach between my mother and Cathy. Firstly I think my mother liked to have me to herself sometimes and secondly she could see it was all distressing for me as I had to deal with John's angry phone calls. One day she started talking to Cathy and reminding her that John was after all her father who loved her and Cathy blurted out 'It's nothing to do with you and you should mind your own business'. My mother said 'Don't you speak to me like that, you little bitch' and I had stomach pains from the stress. It was the only time I ever heard Cathy being actually rude to my mother, although Cathy did have emotional outbursts and sometimes upset me too.

Once she said 'Other mothers would protect their children' which made me feel awful. I said 'but Cathy, he doesn't hurt you, the law would say he has every right to see you, what would I say I was protecting you from, when he is a teacher with a good work record and has never physically harmed you?' Anyway, John must have complained to his parents, because one evening when Cathy was at a music lesson, his father came round and said we were not being fair and must let John see her. I explained the situation but he seemed bewildered by it and still said we must make her go.

At this point, I enlisted Barbra's help. Barbra is a very loyal person, she would never take sides especially against her own brother but she always tried to be helpful. She suggested that if Cathy would agree to go to visit Nanny and Granddad on alternate Sunday afternoons, she would always drive her back to Walthamstow afterwards as Cathy had said she did not want to be alone with John while walking to the bus stop and waiting for the bus as he nagged and upset her. Cathy did agree to this and for the next few years Barbra nobly made sure she was always available to carry out this promise.. When this arrangement first started, Barbra rang John to say that Cathy would be at their parents' house on the following Sunday and so naturally John went as well. Then Barbra drove Cathy home and spent an hour or two with us in the evening.

Graham and his third wife Heather paid a visit to England at about this time and Graham contacted Jennifer to say they would be coming. Jennifer and Trevor were now living in a house-share in Edmonton in North London and were able to put Graham and Heather up for a few days. I never met Heather as she was visiting English relatives on the evening I went to Edmonton with Mary to see Graham. It was a pleasant late Summer evening and we all sat out in the garden. Again it all had to be kept a secret from Michael and Cathy in case John found out and was angry or hurt. I looked forward to a time when Jennifer could tell him that she had met her real father by chance and eliminate this stressful secrecy, but I couldn't actually envisage how this would come about.

At work all was harmony and fun. At Christmas Beverley booked to take all her staff to a South East Asian restaurant in Soho. Roy, Mike and a group of about six of us all went off happily by taxi and were surprised to see a cluster of policemen outside the restaurant. However we went in and started on the first course and all had drinks. Then a policeman came inside and walked down some inner stairs leading presumably to the kitchens which must have been in the basement and came up holding a small Eastern looking and certainly frightened looking man who he marched outside. A few minutes later another policeman came in and descended, coming back with another terrified little man. This kept being repeated and when about five of the kitchen staff had been removed, we began to wonder if there would be anyone left down there to cook the banana fritters which were one of the desserts

Beverley called the Head Waiter over and asked what was going on. The little man paused to think how to express himself. He looked rather self-conscious like an air hostess who has been trained not to show panic in front of the passengers although two engines are on fire. He said ponderously but calmly 'something is wrong'. We all tried not to smile at this understatement. Beverley said 'Yes, yes, I know something is wrong, but what?'

After persistent questioning by Beverley, it turned out that a rival restaurant owner had tipped off the police that there were illegal immigrants working in the kitchen. What a hard life it is for some people. Catering work is supposed to be the poorest paid and has the poorest conditions of service but I suppose to them it must have been preferable to being deported.

In 1984 there were again many changes in several people's lives. Cathy's school in Wanstead announced it would close shortly so it seemed a good time for Cathy to transfer to a school in Walthamstow where she would be able to walk home easily and John was quite reasonable about this move as she would have to change schools anyway.
Jenny and Herbie had to think what to do with the rest of their lives after their departure from Scientology and decided to move to Hove at the coast and buy a house big enough to have foreign students so they would have an income. This they did. It took Herbie a long time to come to terms with the changes in his life, but they had a lovely house and garden and the students had their own separate bathroom and lounge. There are many language schools along the Sussex coast and the students constantly need accommodation. It was nice for me too, as I now had a lovely place to visit for weekends when I was free. Jenny's children, all grown up by now, also moved to the Hove area.

Jennifer started performing at the Aba Daba Music Hall near Kings Cross. Apart from the regular music hall shows, they did adult pantos at Christmas and other special shows like 'Polly Pulls it Through', 'Little Fanny's Revenge', 'Me and My Puss' and Jennifer and Trevor had a lot of work (though never a lot of money) there. People like Ruth Madoc and Sally Whittaker from 'Coronation Street' had started their careers there. Jennifer and the company went on tour to the USA with 'Little Fanny' and saw a bit of Canada as well as California.

Ilma's husband had problems with his nerves and left the bank where he had been employed for years and went to Bedfordshire to help his brother run a pub. This job was not at all suitable for someone of Richard's disposition as he found dealing with the public a great strain. Ilma had to leave the accountants to help him and they sold their lovely house in Surrey where years before I had turned up before breakfast. One day a few months later, Richard could not stand it a moment longer and fled back to Surrey where he found a room, leaving Ilma working with his brother. After a while there was a scene between them and Ilma rang me saying she had to leave the pub so I told her to come straight to us, which she did. At first, my mother did not seem very happy about this addition to the household although she had met both Ilma and Richard and liked them very much.

However Ilma was such a wonderful lodger that my mother was soon won over. I continued to sleep on the floor under Derek's cage. My mother had the large front room and Ilma slept on the folding bed wedged between other furniture in the teeny lounge. She kept her things in a carrier bag hanging on a hook in the airing cupboard. She got up at dawn and by the time I emerged she had put everything away tidily, made tea and also had done a bit of general housework. She often got home from her new job as receptionist at a City stockbrokers before I did and had dinner ready. My mother thought she was wonderful. Ilma decided to buy a house in our road with her share of the proceeds of the house she had shared with Richard and she stayed with us until the other house was ready.

Read on... Chapter Fourteen

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