Chapter
Twenty - Nova, Pixie and Maureen Again and The Wedding
of the Year
Nova wrote regularly to me from Johannnesburg and although she had always loved everything about Africa, the sights, sounds, colour, culture, light and the people, she was getting more and more depressed about the violence and crime wave that had followed in the wake of the euphoria after Mandela's release and the election. She said one could no longer even go for a walk safely, and violence and murder wasn't just something you read about in the papers, it happened to neighbours and work colleagues and orderly society seemed to have completely collapsed. The postal system had deteriorated, and post often didn't reach its destination or was extremely delayed.
Of course Nova also had the problem that her only son Craig was living in England and she wanted to see him. Craig and Annie had left South Africa a few years earlier and had settled in Devon and were definitely not going to return to South Africa. Although Nova was South African born, Mike was actually English and had gone to school, strangely enough, in Shoreham, which was adjacent to Lancing. Mike had one younger married brother in England in the Midlands who had also left South Africa a long time previously and another brother who lived with them in Johannesburg and had never married.
So Nova and Mike were thinking about giving up their lovely home that they had lived in for most of their married lives and starting again in England. It was an enormous thing to plan for people of nearly sixty and they were not even due to receive pensions. They knew it would difficult, maybe even impossible, to start again, but felt that at their age, their staying in South Africa was not going to help the country or contribute to its hopefully eventual spiritual and financial recovery. They had decided to come on a long holiday in the autumn to look around and see what the prospects were of finding accommodation and work.
Nova often sent me cuttings about all the murder, crime and violence. I suppose there must have been such disappointment in the country amongst the Africans who thought that getting the vote and seeing the ANC in power would suddenly make them all rich and able to live in large lovely houses. But with unemployment and simply not enough money for the government to fulfil all its promises, for a lot of people, there was nothing much to do except turn to crime. The old hated pass laws and the night curfew for black people that had once existed, though undesirable and often cruel, had meant that crime had been kept down to an extent in the towns. Now people could go anywhere freely and people still came into the towns, hoping for work. When there was no work, they turned to burglary and other types of crime, like car-jacking which was also rampant.
The world at large did not seem too aware of the situation. As South Africa was now politically correct, the media who had condemned its policies for years and then gloried when things 'came right', could not suddenly do an about-turn and say how wrong things had become in many ways. South Africa wanted tourists and I think played down the trouble and showed the world only the sunshine and the cheap property. I was sorry that things were as they were, but very pleased to think of being reunited with Nova, even if she was going to be in a different part of England.
So in early 1996, I had quite a lot to look forward to - the two expected babies, the wedding, the arrival of Nova and of course Pixie's planned Autumn visit.
On the 8th March Joanne gave birth to Georgia Rose. I went by bus to see Joanne and Georgia at the hospital near Tunbridge Wells on the 8th and they were both very well. Whilst waiting for the bus home, I saw a beautiful white cotton and lacy baby dress with matching pants in the British Heart Foundation shop, which I bought for Jennifer's expected daughter. Jennifer loved it and used it later for the christening.
And twelve days later, on the 20th March, which also happened to be Cathy's birthday, Jennifer gave birth to Emily Rose by caesarian section, thus avoiding all the problems she had suffered giving birth to Ben. Ben came and stayed with me and I took him to the hospital to see his new sister in the afternoon.
Emily's birth announcement follows:
Everyone in the family was getting excited about the forthcoming wedding. Ted
hired a car and we booked into a small B&B near to the church in Oldfield
Park for the night before. Because I was Mother of the Bride, we had been
booked into a special room with a four poster bed at the reception hotel for
the night of the wedding.
Roger had to have the family car as he was on a tour of 'Return to the Forbidden Planet' which was in Croydon that week and he would have to drive across to Bath after the Saturday night performance. Jennifer went by train with Chris, who helped her with baby Emily. Ted and I took Ben and Ellie in the hired car. It was beautiful weather, really warm and sunny. Ted went to fetch Ben and Ellie and bring them to Lancing while I did the last minute packing. When they arrived, Ted said Ben had been sick in the car, and quite a lot over Ellie's sweatshirt. I grabbed some of the clothes I had always kept for Ben's visits but nothing was very suitable, a pair of boxer type shorts with Father Christmas on them and a dingy looking vest that was too small for him. I put a clean teeshirt on him and another pair of boxer shorts and put the revolting things he had worn into a carrier bag to take to Jennifer in Bath where I hoped the hotel would have washing facilities.
We decided to have a break for lunch somewhere near Southampton and we stopped at a motorway service cafe. Ben did not seem very happy and wouldn't eat anything. He even lay on the floor at the side of our table and looked very tired. When we had finished Ted said he would meet us in the lobby and we went to the ladies' room. I went into one cubicle and Ellie took Ben into another. Ellie by the way was wonderful with children. She was only eleven but very mature and helpful. I heard her shriek from the adjacent cubicle and I went out to see what the problem was. Ben had been sick again all over the floor, I slid in it trying to take him from her. He was sobbing so I clasped him to my bosom and then I was stinking too. The lady attendant there was very kind. I sat Ben up above the handbasins and stripped him. The lady fetched yards of kitchen roll and we damped it and washed him. I asked Ellie to find Ted and fetch the spare vest and pants from the car. The stench in the car by then was too dreadful as the windows had been closed while we were having lunch.
We had to drive straight to the posh hotel where Jennifer, Chris and Emily were waiting for us. They were all staying at that hotel on both nights. When we four trooped across the lawn, we must have looked like refugees from a war zone, smelly, crushed and stinking, especially Ben in the strange dingy and ill-fitting clothes. When we reached our B&B, we immediately had to ask the landlady for a bowl of disinfectant and soapy water and we tried desperately to clean the hired car. This did not work and the car smelled very unhealthy for the whole three days that we had it.
On arrival at the B&B, Ted went straight to sleep He was exhausted after the stress of the long and somewhat smelly drive and I went round to see Cathy and met some of John's relatives who had come down from York for the wedding.
I had bought a lovely straw hat with black stripes round it to go with my pale yellow Dieppe dress and some Marks & Spencer black strappy sandals that wouldn't press on my crippled toe. However they were terribly uncomfortable as I later found out to my cost.
Next morning on the big day, 21st July, Ted and I went round and watched all the exciting preparations. Jennifer and Ellie were there already and Jennifer was helping as usual with the hair and dressing. I knew Sep and Clare would arrive soon and thought it would be tactful if we disappeared soon after. I did not want to embarrass Clare who I had since found out was 'funny' about me although I thought things had always been friendly between us and she couldn't possibly have found me any threat. Firstly she was younger and secondly no couple could have been more thoroughly finished with each other than John and I were. So when they arrived and I had taken a few photos, Ted and I realised there was time to take our cases to the hotel at Limpley Stoke where we would be spending the night and still get back to the church in time.
Cathy and I had planned the seating in both the church and later at the top table. Sep and I would have to sit together as we would go through to the vestry with the wedding group. Then I thought Ted and Clare could sit next to us. Clare was told all this, but at the last moment Sep came alone and said that Clare would not come down to the front with us. She in fact sat with Barbra at the back of the church.
It was a really wonderful wedding. In addition to the organ, some of John's musician colleagues played brass instruments up in the gallery and as Cathy walked down the aisle there was a trumpet fanfare. She looked like a princess and the dress was absolutely beautiful on her. I enjoy watching the video even more than the real thing because I can see more of it. John said he nearly cried when he saw her and he is not what one would think of as a crying type. It was a full nuptial mass and although I had been told it would take a long time it didn't seem too long, at least to me it didn't.
Cathy's friend Jo from college, another music student, had written a special song for the wedding and this was sung by one of Cathy's singing pupils while we were in the vestry.
Then the photographs were taken in the beautiful setting at the back of the church and Ted and I set off for the hotel. By this time, my feet were so painful, I had to walk in my stockinged feet (tighted feet?) across the gravel drive of the beautiful hotel and rush up to our room to get my ordinary old sandals. There was a formal line up where Sep and I joined the others to welcome guests, and then the meal and speeches. This time Sep's speech was amusing and tactful, I suppose Clare had advised him about it. He and Clare sat at the opposite end of the long table from Ted and me.
The food was lovely, a proper sit-down chicken meal followed by strawberries and cream. Afterwards everyone sat on the terraced lawns and children played and it was everything a summer's day should be. In the evening there was a barn dance with live music out on the terrace. Ted and Alan were both unsporting and refused to join in, so Barbra and I danced together.
The only people who found it hard to enjoy the wedding were Jennifer and Roger. Ben was still a little peaky and Emily, being only four months old, needed a lot of attention. There had been a muddle over their hotel booking and the previous night they had all been squashed into one room, Chris and Ellie as well and none of them had slept properly.
Ted and I stayed in Bath for the rest of the week to feed Cathy's cat, Claude (Debussy, De Pussy, yes!) while they went to the South of Spain for their honeymoon. We had beautiful weather and if anything it was rather too hot the day after the wedding and we just lay on the grass and dozed down by the side of the River Avon.
After all the excitement, ordinary life returned and back in Brighton, Roger and Jennifer had found a bigger house not too far from where they lived. It had three bedrooms and three large reception rooms downstairs. However, the back garden was quite small and there was no central heating. It was in a lovely wide road which sloped down to the not too distant sea, which you could see from the front gate.
Unfortunately, at the time of the actual move, Roger only had a week's break from his tour and his friend Derek came down as well to help them with the move. I was there too taking photos of all the activity!
Pixie came in September as she had arranged the year before. We went to meet her at Gatwick Airport. She was very excited and happy to be in England again. She came with me to visit Jennifer and the children at the new house and we also had a day out in London where I arranged to meet my erstwhile Tuesday night friend, Maureen as well. Maureen and Pixie had not met since about 1964 and I thought it would be interesting for the three of us to meet. We arranged to meet outside the building where Michael worked in Woburn Place and went to his local pub for lunch. Now Maureen and I meet several times a year, look round shops, have lunch and occasionally do 'family tree' things.
Pixie was thrilled with all the charity shops and bought a lot of things for her three offspring. She also bought a lot of books as English language books were hard to obtain in Barcelona. She had so much stuff that some things had to be made up into parcels and posted to her later. We also spent two days in Bath, staying with Cathy and John, and she was very pleased about this, especially as she had always wanted to see Bath.
She would have liked to see Nova again, although she had never known her particularly well, but coincidenally Pixie was leaving one evening from Gatwick and Nova and Mike were arriving at 5 am the next morning at Heathrow. As Joanne lived quite near to Gatwick, I asked if I could spend the night with them, straight from Gatwick and if Rob who was a taxi driver, could take me to Heathrow at the crack of dawn, as there was no other way I could get there. The children all thought it was quite an adventure and wanted to come with us. I didn't think they would get up that early, but they did and I was very grateful to Rob for taking me.
Nova had told me that I could not miss Craig as he was 6'6" tall and Annie was very small and fair. I saw them straight away across the crowds of people at the Arrivals area and went and introduced myself. Craig looks so South African anyway. He wore shorts and a sports shirt and was tanned and fair and with a rugby player's build. When Nova and Mike arrived, we all went to a restaurant at the airport for breakfast. They were all going first up to the Midlands to stay with Chris, Mike's youngest brother. Paddy, the eldest, had stayed behind with the dogs this time.
I was sorry to see that Mike smoked. Hardly anyone in our circle did, except Roger and Pixie, both of whom knew they had to smoke outside. I am not very tolerant of smokers. Ted thinks it's because I have never had that addiction but I don't think so. I have known so many people who had smoked all their lives and yet gave it up when they found out about the dangers. Barbra, Sep, Granddad, my mother and Mary had all given up. Even Ted, who never thought he would had managed it. People who smoke have smelly clothes which make other things in the house smell slightly dirty so apart from not wanting to be at risk from others' smoking, I don't want that smell amongst my things.
The pro-smoking lobby are so keen to talk about freedom and it's so silly. No one is free legally to do anything that injures another. If one carried a knife round and slashed people accidentally when passing them, that would be considered an offence. Why should anyone be allowed deliberately to cause illness and suffering in another? People are free to do other silly things, like drinking too much, provided they don't drive and injure others. And a drinker who just makes himself ill through overdoing it, is not physically affecting anyone else though he may be an obnoxious nuisance at times. I realised that when Nova and Mike came back to stay with us I would have to explain about smoking in the garden. Luckily it was not the depth of winter yet, but merely a windy October.
When they came back, all was well and we had a lovely three days. We all went to see Jennifer and Brighton and also went to look at Shoreham to see if Mike's old grammar school was there, but unfortunately it wasn't. While we were looking at Shoreham harbour, my mobile phone rang and it was Jennifer to say that Rajie had just rung her as there was no answer at my house, to say that my mother had had a minor stroke and was extremely distressed. I was terribly upset and when I rang her my mother she said she wanted to come back to England. Her speech was a little distorted but not terribly bad. I was extremely taken aback. She seemed very insistent about it and said there were things she wanted to say to me. One thing was that I had been right when I had said she was selfish about my visiting Jennifer after Ben's birth and the other was that she had made a mistake in going back and that she was very lonely there and wanted to be with all of us.
Later Rajie phoned me and said that my mother was too ill to fly and she was very worried about her insistence on returning. I know it sounds callous but I couldn't help worrying about how it would all be paid for. I never seemed able to catch up on my previous debts to Barclaycard. My mother would not have been able to fly alone so it would have involved two lots of fares. The other problem was that she had overstayed by now on her British passport, which I had not thought would matter as I thought she had returned for good. Previously her South African passport had been endorsed so that it could not be used and now I thought the South Africans would be difficult if she tried to leave and they saw that she was British and had been back in Durban for over two years. My mind was reeling about the whole thing.
Rajie also asked why I hadn't written for so long. I said I had continually written but hadn't heard from her since the end of July and had presumed she was tired but was at least reading my news. Also there had been so much going on, what with the wedding, and the visit of Pixie. About a week or two after this, I started getting her letters in reverse order. They must have been piled up somewhere in South Africa and they had started to clear them from the top instead of from the earliest letters first. All through November and early December I received her letters written in mid September, then late August, then early August and so on. This was what the South African post had become like. It was often found dumped somewhere, undelivered by a less than conscientious postman. When I got her letters, I realised she had been telling me for a long time that she wanted to come back and had made a mistake and she must have thought it very unkind of me not to reply. If I had received the letters earlier, I don't know whether things would have turned out differently.
Nova said it was a terrible problem if someone collapsed on a plane and the airline could sue the person who had booked knowing about the illness, especially if the plane had to make an emergency landing. She had known this to happen and someone she knew had had to pay thousands of pounds in compensation. I was sorry when Mike and Nova returned to South Africa to plan for their eventual emigration, and never realised how very soon I would be seeing Nova again.
In the midst of all my anxiety about my mother, Cathy who was in the early stages of pregnancy, started having problems which developed into a miscarriage at the end of October. Cathy had been desperate to get pregnant straight away. She had heard that it was best to have one's first baby before the age of 26 and she was already 25. When John rang to say she had gone into hospital, I went on a train quite late that evening and got to Bath at about 10.30 pm. John took me to the hospital and Cathy was very unhappy. Not only about the miscarriage, but she had felt ill and had fainted and knocked her head against a fire extinguisher. She came home from the hospital and I stayed with her a few days and all the time she was very depressed and panicky. Although I was with her, she seemed desperate to have John there all the time and cried when he went out, which of course he had to at times. She found out that a lot of people had previously had miscarriages and then gone on to have the rest of their family and we all tried to cheer her up. She was worried that if she got pregnant again, it might go wrong again and she read books on the subject. I hoped desperately that she would soon get pregnant again and all would go well the next time.
When I returned home from Bath, I went to London to have lunch with Maureen, who was very obliging and didn't mind what she did on the occasions when we met in London a few times each year. We made enquiries at South African Airways about booking flights for very elderly and ill people. They seemed to think that a doctor would have to say my mother was well enough to fly before they would accept her. I had quite a few conversations with Rajie who was having a difficult time and once had to spend the night in my mother's room at Frangipania. I asked when I should come over, and Rajie said she didn't think quite yet.
I rang both Graham and Dawn. I asked Graham to visit her and then rang him again to find out what had happened. He knew what I meant and what the problems were. He said she didn't seem too bad in herself and was talking properly again. He said it was very difficult to advise what I should do. Graham also said my mother had told him that going back to Durban was the worst mistake she had ever made in her life. Dawn said it was all right for me to stay with them if I had to come over. One of her sons was abroad anyway and Tracey and the baby had their own house so she had two vacant rooms. There was no way I could have afforded to stay in a hotel and my pension was still tied up at home, paying the English bills anyway.
There were also a few difficult conversations with my mother where she kept asking to come to me and she was too deaf really to hear anything I said properly. Rajie kept telling me I couldn't possibly look after her and there was one time when she wasn't even able to get to the bathroom on her own. Then she was taken to hospital after having an internal haemorrhage. She was only kept in about three days. She wanted to stay there, but just as in England, there was a crucial shortage of beds and they said there was nothing they could do and sent her back to Frangipania. Rajie said the medical staff thought it was cancer but would not do any tests as they would be too distressing for her at 90 years of age.