My Father is vomiting in the downstairs cloakroom of his parents’ home. For once, it isn’t alcohol-related. Perhaps it’s something he’s eaten. Five years since the war ended, food is still desperately short; and My Father, perpetually hungry, has been known to take a chance on an elderly bacon rasher, or some unidentifiable leftovers shoved to the back of a pantry shelf. Or perhaps, more likely still, it’s sheer panic: a rebellion of the guts and bowels brought on by the knowledge that today his life changes, for ever. Today – in just over two hours’ time, in fact – he will marry My Mother.

He retches feebly, inconclusively. Still half-kneeling with his right arm tenderly encircling the lavatory bowl, he wonders if the worst may now be past. Or maybe, it occurs to him, it’s just about to begin.

***

Across the hallway in the kitchen, where the gassy reek of over-cooked vegetables has permeated every floor-tile and work-surface, My Mother is making cream, or something that approximates to it. She has taken a large can of Carnation evaporated milk, and plunged it into boiling water, where she will leave it for 20 minutes – after which, she will whisk the contents to stiff peaks, to be served later at the Wedding Breakfast with fruit salad from another (unboiled) can.

As she works, My Mother hums, in a manner that may sound care-free and happy. And why shouldn’t those be her feelings? She is about to marry a man she loves, and who brings to their soon-to-be-sealed union every quality she could wish for in a husband. At just-turned 24, My Father is good-looking, kind and brilliantly clever; currently unemployed, it’s true, but an exceptionally able young man of the greatest promise, who will undoubtedly prove to be the all-competent provider she wants as a life-partner and father of her children.

At first sight, it may seem surprising that this – finding a man to take care of her – represents the height of her aspirations. The first member of her family to go to university, she has just completed her Finals at Oxford; she is beautiful, and built like a runway model; and although not yet 23, she is by no means deficient in terms of personality (measured as the capacity of an individual to change the temperature of a room). She could, perfectly plausibly, be contemplating a brilliant future for herself.

But this is 1950, when for a girl from a dowdy Manchester suburb to get to Oxford is an achievement remarkable enough to require no sequel. And in her own case, My Mother feels this to be particularly true. Since leaving home nearly three years ago, she has expended every atom of energy she possesses to make herself what she is today. She has changed her appearance, her voice, her accent, her posture, her walk, her ideas, her political views, her laugh, her style of dress. Yet despite her efforts – or perhaps because of them – she has never, for a single moment, been able to relax and enjoy her achievements.

And this is why My Mother hums. She hums – at almost all times when she is awake, and not talking – to soothe herself, to drown out the incessant chirruping of her anxieties, and the low remorseless thrumming of the dread she feels that her past will reclaim her; that the life she has left behind, and the home she has escaped – where her desperate mother now nurses her father in his final illness – will somehow reach out and draw her back in.

The Carnation, still at a rolling boil, has done its 20 minutes now. She fears (with some justification) that removing it from the water may cause the can to explode, to devastating effect. It’s a risk she isn’t prepared to run unsupported.

“Husband, dearest!” she calls. “Haste thee to my succour!” (She has recently started addressing My Father in mock-Shakespearean, to humorous effect she imagines.)

There is no immediate response.

“Husband, mine? Hie thee hither, betimes!”

My Father appears in the doorway, still wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. This Shakespeare thing makes him deeply uncomfortable, but sometimes, usually when he feels in the wrong (which he nearly always does), he plays along with it.

“What wouldst thou, fair lady?”

Quite often, she gets stuck in the late 16th century for hours on end, but on this occasion, the pressures she feels in relation to her bridal responsibilities jolt her back into the present day.

“The cream,” she says, indicating the pan. “I was rather hoping you might take charge of it. We have so much to do before the Register Office.”

“I can ask my mother to help,” he says, using a tea towel to pick up the pan, then carrying it to the sink to drain. (She loves how competent he is!)

“I’d much rather you didn’t. She needs to rest.”

“She wouldn’t mind. Really. I think she’d rather like to be asked.”

“No.” This quite sharply. “We’ll get on and do as much as we can ourselves, then if we need her help, we’ll ask her later.”

This wedding of My Father and My Mother is not a traditional one, for a number of reasons – among them the fact that My Father’s mother has recently had a minor heart attack, and been advised to avoid undue excitement. The terminal decline of My Mother’s father has less direct impact, because he is lengthily dying far away in Manchester, but of course it casts a shadow that would make bacchanalian revelry hard to enjoy. And then there is the homelessness and unemployment of both My Father and My Mother. This explains why they are currently (temporarily) living rent-free here in his parents’ large gloomy under-furnished Edwardian villa on the suburban fringes of South London – and also why they are now acting in clear contravention of the tradition dictating that bride and groom should not lay eyes on each other before the ceremony.

As a Socialist, My Father rather approves of this; an unashamedly unconventional non-bourgeois wedding seems entirely appropriate for a man in his position. He needs to be married, for the sake of his political career, and My Mother will make exactly the kind of photogenic wife that local constituency parties go mad for when selecting candidates. But the last thing he needs on his CV is a Tatler-style Society Wedding of the Year, casting doubt on the sincerity of his commitment to the struggles of the working man.

My Father turns on the tap, to sluice the super-heated can with cold water. While they wait for it to be cool enough to open, he and My Mother get to work on the other components of the Wedding Breakfast. He slices bread thinly, and spreads it with margarine; she applies fish paste to bridge rolls, and snips mustard and cress to mix with hard-boiled eggs and salad cream. He carves slices from a glistening pink block of luncheon meat. And, rather to his own surprise, My Father finds he is enjoying this; being in the kitchen, with his almost-wife, performing mindless food-related tasks together. Perhaps, for a moment or two, he reflects that this kind of dull but benign domesticity is something he has never really experienced before, having spent much of his childhood, and all his adolescence and early adulthood in institutions of varying kinds (boarding school, Army, Oxford college); something that, without knowing it, he has always craved.

My Mother stops humming and asks him: “Was there any post this morning?” Exceptionally, this being her wedding day, she was in the bath when it arrived.

“Nothing interesting.”

“Nothing from BTA?”

“No,” he lies. The letter from the British Travel Association is in his jacket pocket.

“Perhaps we asked for too much?” she says, a quaver in her voice. My Mother cries a lot during this period of her life. My Father puts down the knife, and prepares to comfort her, a role at which he has become exasperatedly adept.

My Father’s career plans could not be clearer. He aims to be Prime Minister, or at least in the Cabinet, within 25 years. Or maybe 20, if all goes well. More immediately, he will train as a barrister (he’s already eaten his dinners at Inner Temple), while he waits for a winnable seat to come up. My Father has, just a few months before his wedding, contested a safe Tory constituency – and performed well enough, he thinks, to have realistic hopes of something much juicier at the next General Election, which should be fairly soon, given the government’s unsustainably small majority. Financially, it’s going to be very challenging indeed, but a man of destiny has to be willing to make sacrifices (up to and including remaining dependent on his parents for rather longer than would ideally be the case).

My Mother supports My Father in his ambitions. Whole-heartedly, and unreservedly. No one believes more fervently in his exceptional abilities, or in the urgent necessity of his using them to forward the cause of Socialism, in the nation’s interest. And yet – well, not “and yet” really, because that would imply a reservation where none exists; and as well, she feels that an intellect as formidable as My Father’s needs to be fed, stimulated, occupied; and that while he is, unavoidably, in something of a state of limbo, waiting for his legal and political career to gather momentum, he could usefully and enjoyably deploy his extraordinary talents dabbling in some other more immediately remunerative line of work.

So she has been making job applications on his behalf. Originally, the rationale for this related to My Father’s “execrable scribble”, as they laughingly refer to his appalling handwriting, which they agree would be unlikely to make a favourable impression on a potential employer. But over these past few weeks, My Mother has taken complete charge of the application process; scouring the papers for suitable-sounding openings, composing letters, signing and despatching them, often without My Father’s knowledge.

He has no idea, for example, that he has just completed applications for a job as a Trainee Assistant Manager of a large commercial laundry in Peckham, and another as Deputy Director of Schools for the London Borough of Merton.

The first of these is not, My Mother realises, an opening that will really stretch one of the most able young men of his generation. But it would enable him to “keep his engine ticking over” as she puts it, and to earn enough for them to move out of his parents’ house. For the second, on the other hand, he may seem at first sight to lack the necessary weight of educational experience, but My Mother’s faith in My Father is unshaken by any such mundane consideration; extraordinary people, she would contend, possess the potential to achieve extraordinary things.

“Pum padda-pum padda-padda pum-pum….” My Mother, tears now dried, is humming again as she cuts tomatoes into quarters, and lays them on well washed lettuce leaves.

My Father thinly slices cucumber. How does he feel about her attempting to alter the course of his career? Strangely, perhaps, he rather likes it. True, it’s problematic – or likely to become so – that she is determined to secure him employment that would quickly become incompatible with the pursuit of his true ambitions. (He could, in the shortish term, combine a not-very-demanding job with his Bar studies; but as soon as he has a constituency to nurse, it would be out of the question.) But for My Father, whose sense of abandonment by his family would be impossible to exaggerate, the feeling the someone really cares what happens in his life – to the point of being prepared to intervene forcefully in it – comes as a delicious novelty. He feels like a desert newly irrigated by the power of her unwavering attention.

In any case, he doesn’t have to go along with her plans. At any point, he’s free to slam on the brakes. He has, propelled by her, submitted a number of job applications (although he doesn’t realise how many). He has even attended a couple of interviews. But if he is offered a job – as, in fact, he now has been, by the BTA, despite his attempt to forestall that possibility by demanding more money than they were prepared to pay – no one can force him to accept it.

Absorbed in their work, neither of them notices My Father’s mother enter the kitchen. She is a small, squarish figure, built like a scrum-half, with an improbable frizz of orange hair, which she imagine allows her to pass for an English lady. Wrongly, as in terms of both features and accent, she quite strongly resembles her near-contemporary Golda Meir, later to be Prime Minister of Israel.

My Mother is first to register her presence. Despite having now lived under the same roof for several weeks, she is yet to resolve the problem of how to address her very-soon-to-be mother-in-law. Using her first name is out of the question; “Mrs” seems over-formal; “mother” or “mum” unthinkable. But sometimes – and this is one of those occasions – something more than a bald “you” is required. Under pressure, My Mother opts for her default style of diction.

“How now, my lady?” she enquires.

My Father’s mother looks at My Mother, but does not respond. She is unsure, at this point, what to make of her almost-daughter-in-law, though inclined to take a dim view. She talks so much, and says so little that seems to make any sense.

“Mother,” says My Father, “how are you feeling today?”

She shrugs and sighs heavily, casting her eyes heavenward, in a manner that suggests the answer to this enquiry is so unequivocally negative as to be unworthy of articulation. She advances painfully on the kitchen table, where the food is laid out, and reaches out a hand to pincer a slice of luncheon meat between index finger and thumb.

“Out There, this we give to the dogs.”

My Father laughs. His mother disapproves of almost everything in this country. She is relieved to have escaped the daily threat of violence that scarred the last few years of her former life in Jerusalem. (My Father’s father was supposed to be at a meeting at the King David hotel on the day of the bombing, but was prevented from attending by a fortuitous stomach bug.) But in every other respect – food, climate, manners of the local population, quality and size of accommodation, availability of cheap domestic labour, and so much more – she finds England in 1950 to be no match for British Mandatory Palestine. (Out There, as she invariably refers to it.)

My Father barely knows his mother, but he is a dutiful son, and speaks to her solicitously. “Mother, have you decided if you’re well enough to come to the Register Office?”

Again, she does the shrug, sigh, upward glance; this time to denote, “How could you possibly imagine that one suffering as I am might be capable of such a thing?”

My Father is relieved, since she is still in her dressing gown, and the timings are tight. “Well, that is a pity,” he says, “but I hope that means you can get some more rest before our guests arrive later.”

He turns to My Mother. “And, darling, we had better get a move on.”

“Tarry we not,” My Mother agrees. “Our nuptial hour draws on apace.”

***

In the taxi on the way to the Register Office, conversation does not flow.

Perhaps the bride and groom – she in a queasy pale green imitation linen, he in his itchy ill-fitting demob suit – can be excused on the grounds of pre-nuptial nerves. And the third member of the wedding party, My Father’s father, has never had any talent for inconsequential chat. A stiff, rather remote figure, he has a bristling moustache that gives him a military air, and a tendency to clear his throat juicily, as if about to deliver himself of some pronouncement that never comes.

As for the final occupant of the car – Guy Simmons, a friend of the couple from university, here today as second witness and unofficial best man – he has at least two reasons to feel uncomfortable. The first is that he is perched precariously on the fold-up seat, facing the others, and finding it quite difficult to maintain the balance of his considerable bulk, particularly as the taxi takes corners. And then there is his former relationship with the bride.

In itself, there is nothing compromising about this. It’s an acknowledged and uncontroversial fact that at the time My Father first met My Mother, she was – in a fairly technical, Oxford sense – Guy’s girlfriend. They had drunk warm sherry at a college mixer together, and walked hand in hand through Magdalen Meadows, on a couple of occasions. At the time, this transfer of allegiance was managed surprisingly smoothly; partly, it must be said, because Guy had started to find My Mother’s disruptive presence in his life a little overwhelming, and was by no means sorry to regard her as a friend, rather than a frankly terrifying romantic partner. But recently, My Mother has decided to make a running gag of the unlikeliness of their short-lived “fling”, as she refers to it. And now, in the awkward silence – humming, for once, failing her as a means of filling dead air – she feels impelled to return to this rich source of comedy.

“So, prithee tell us brave Sir Guy, how feel’st thou to see thy former paramour carried off, for aye, by thy noble adversary?”

Guy is a stolid long-suffering type, currently doing his articles at one of the duller City law firms, and fully accustomed to playing second, third or even fourth fiddle in matters of the heart. So he laughs, hollowly, and says, “I’m not sure I shall ever recover, as a matter of fact. But the better man won, and to the victor, the spoils, eh?”

My Father gives him a rueful half-smile, while somehow simultaneously glowering at My Mother. My Father’s father clears his throat, and they all turn to him expectantly. But he has nothing to say.

“Not much further,” says My Father, the nausea bubbling up inside him again. “We’ll be there in five minutes.”

“Poor dear Guy,” says My Mother, leaning forward to pat his knee. “Still so passionately in love with me!”

***

Despite My Mother’s best efforts to sparkle, or at least emit a radiant glow, the Wedding Breakfast is a subdued occasion.

One reason for this is the most almost complete lack of any enlivening refreshment. (There must, presumably, be something alcoholic in the fruit punch mixed by My Father’s mother to a recipe popular Out There, but if so, it’s near-impossible to detect.) It’s uncomfortably stuffy, too. Outside, the midsummer sun casts dappled shadows on the lawn; but these are indoor festivities, My Father’s parents taking the view that the British climate is not to be trusted. It’s probably the ill-assortedness of the gathering, though, that does most to dampen the mood of this supposed celebration. A small huddle of friends of My Father and My Mother from Oxford laugh and talk loudly about politics in one corner of the cavernous sitting room. In another, My Father’s two younger sisters giggle, and whisper to each other, but contribute little else to proceedings. Between them, a desiccated elderly couple, friends of My Father’s parents from Palestine, search unsuccessfully for conversational common ground with an over-awed uncle and aunt of My Mother’s, the only members of her family to attend.

How does My Mother feel about this? Sad, of course. She is fond of her father and wishes he could be there – though she also resents him for having married an inadequate depressive woman, and for having been perpetually sick, thereby depriving My Mother of anything resembling a care-free adolescence. But mostly, what she feels is relief. Because for My Mother this is the very first hour of the first day of a new phase of her existence; one in which she and her Husband move serenely through their days, going to places, saying things to people, buying furniture, making hot-pots, having babies – free, unconstrained, newly minted. For her family to be here, now, would be jarring, incongruous; it would simply make no sense, like coming across a London bus in an Amazonian jungle clearing.

The happy couple have a train to catch, so, mercifully soon, speeches are made (three short ones, by My Father, his father, and Guy), toasts are drunk (a bottle of sparkling perry appears from somewhere, and thimblefuls dispensed), and the cake (supplied by Joe Lyons for £4 9s 6d) is cut, to applause from all present.

My Mother hurries upstairs to change into her going-away outfit. As she enters her room (of course, she hasn’t been allowed to share with My Father), her eye is caught by the two newly completed job applications, on top of the chest of drawers. There’s just time to pop them in the post, if she changes quickly.

Tripping lightheartedly down stairs with the letters a few minutes later, she bumps into Guy, emerging from the cloakroom off the hall, where he has been hiding for at least quarter of an hour.

“Ah, bold Sir Guy,” she trills. “Wouldst accompany me on my quest to entrust these missives to His Majesty’s Messengers?”

Guy has no idea what she is talking about, but feels compelled to take the hand she imperiously holds out to him. She inclines her head, to indicate he should open the front door. And then they walk together – hand in hand, My Mother laughing gaily – to the postbox at the end of the road.

“Oh, Guy, if only my Husband could see us now!” she remarks, joshingly.

He can. He’s watching them from the window of his bedroom, where he has gone to change. He raises his hand to cup his brow, where, although he is still in his early-mid 20s, his hairline is already starting to retreat.

***

At Paddington, while My Mother buys a magazine, My Father picks up a quarter bottle of brandy, which is all he can afford.

On the train, as soon as he decently can, he pretends to fall asleep. He should, he knows, indulge his new bride, by listening as she picks over the happiest moments of this happiest day of her life. But he just can’t face it. He’s been married to My Mother for only a few hours, and already he feels oppressed by her suffocating presence, overwhelmed by the current of barely suppressed panic that zings and fizzes around her.

Keeping his eyes firmly closed, he tries to regulate his breath. In…. out…. in…. out…. in…. out….

Perhaps everything will turn out all right, he does his best to reassure himself. She is, he reminds himself again, stunningly attractive – and, potentially, a major asset to his career. True, she is…. highly strung, a little unpredictable even. But then, she has been through so much recently, with her exams, and the wedding to organise, and the perpetual crisis of her ghastly family. It’s incredible, really, he reflects, how happy and well-balanced she seems, most of the time. And now that the wedding is over, things really should start to settle down in her life. And maybe, My Father thinks hopefully, they will be able to recapture something of the exhilaration of the first few weeks after they met, when she seemed so dazzlingly different from the drearily indistinguishable Home Counties blue-stocking types he had been consorting with since arriving at Oxford.

In any case, he reflects, everything will change when his career gets properly underway. When he’s in Parliament, perhaps already a PPS or even a junior Minister, and starting to build his Bar practice, he’ll be so busy, so fully engaged intellectually, so far elevated above dull everyday non-political concerns, that it will really hardly make any difference who his wife happens to be, or what she may need or want from him. (He knows he shouldn’t allow himself to think this, but – too late! – the thought has already skittered and cartwheeled across his consciousness.)

Gradually, My Father’s heartbeat slows, as exhaustion and the calming anaesthetic effects of the brandy – most of which he gulped down in the Gents, before boarding the train – start to kick in. And soon, My Father no longer needs to pretend to be asleep, as, with unquestionable authenticity, his mouth droops open to allow a narrow slug-trail of saliva to dribble down his chin.

Her magazine open on her lap, My Mother watches her Husband sleep, lovingly. How beautiful he is. And how astounding her good fortune in meeting him. What, she wonders, was the likelihood of her path through life intersecting with that of a young man from a world so entirely alien to her own, and yet so startlingly, implausibly perfect in terms of all the attributes she could ever wish for in a man? My Implausibly Perfect Husband! She like the phrase, and files it away for future use.

And there is so much more about their future that now, as My Father starts to snore in a way she finds thrillingly endearing, comes into focus for her. She sees herself cradling a swaddled infant, while he wraps a protective arm around her shoulders. She sees the home where they, this child, and others, will live happily together; not palatial, but spacious, with a separate kitchen and dining room, and a lovely little garden. And she sees her Implausibly Perfect Husband hurrying home from work each night, always first to leave the office in his eagerness to miss as little as possible of the happy familial hubbub that awaits him.

Where, My Mother wonders, will that home be? Over these last few weeks, she has been doing a bit of location-scouting, and she rather likes the look of the London Borough of Merton. If only he can get the job!

Through the longest evening of the summer, the train trundles unhurriedly across Berkshire, and Hampshire, and into Dorset, where they will spend their honeymoon, its wheels beating out an insistent rhythm as they cross the tracks, “Te-tum, te-TUM…. te-tum, te-TUM…. te-tum, te-TUM…. te-titty-te-tum-te-TUM…. “

Without realising she is doing it, My Mother starts to hum in time with the train.

***

“Fie, sir! For shame! Why assail’st thou thy lady thus, with this rough and rude unseemly coming on?”

My Father’s attempts to introduce a little interest and energy into the otherwise dutiful performance of the wedding night solemnities seem not to be appreciated by his bride.

“Unhand me, prithee, dearest sir!”

He unhands her, and rolls onto his back. His main feeling is relief. All he really wants to do is sleep.

***

When she awakes next morning, in the bedroom of their guesthouse, My Mother finds that she’s alone. My Father is gone. Although he did briefly consider the possibility, he hasn’t decided to cut short the agony of their doomed liaison, by disappearing into the dawn. As the note he has left on his pillow explains, he has in fact gone to look for newspapers. (Something that throughout his life My Father will do when he wants a drink, an opportunity to make an illicit phone call, a way of avoiding disagreeable responsibilities – or indeed, newspapers.)

Having read the note, with an indulgent smile on her face, My Mother kicks back the sheets, and climbs out of bed, in a happy and care-free fashion. The village where they are staying, from what they saw of it when they arrived late yesterday evening, is small; perhaps too small to have a newsagent’s. He may not be back for a while. She crosses to the dressing table by the window. She will use this time to beautify herself still further, for her Husband.

On the stool by the dressing table, his jacket is lying where he tossed it aside. She picks it up, intending to hang it nicely for him on the peg behind the door. As she does so, she notices a folded sheet of paper in the inside pocket. Good quality paper. It looks like a letter. She hesitates, but only for a moment. They are, after all, Husband and Wife; one flesh; interests indivisible.

She unfolds the letter, and reads. They have offered him the job! The BTA would like him to start as soon as possible. And they have agreed to pay the extra £104 annually that he (in her view) so rashly demanded. It sounds ideal! Not quite as perfect, perhaps, as the London Borough of Merton job, because the BTA offices are in the Strand, which means his journey home will take a little longer (depending where home turns out to be). But what possible harm can there be in accepting this wonderful job while they wait for news of one that might be even better?

My Mother rummages through her suitcase, which she hasn’t had time to unpack yet, to find the writing materials that she’s brought, with a view to making further applications while they are away. If she hurries, she can get his acceptance letter done before he comes back with his precious papers. And maybe later, she will find a moment to pop it in the post for him, too.

Luckily, she has remembered to bring stamps.

*****

 

Next

If you are enjoying My Father keeps the PM waiting, please do share it with a friend.