RAPE OR PASSION - CHAPTER 3

Travelling to London from the Essex coast for work every day was a gruelling affair.
It meant getting up before 6am and racing through town to catch a train that would get me to the office close to Wapping Wharf by 9am.

As was my habit, I would arrive at the station scrubbed, with curlers and do my make up and hair while I chatted to fellow commuters.
I really loved my job as a bilingual secretary. I was fast approaching 19 years of age and loved to sit with the sun shining through the office window on my new engagement ring as I typed.
I always worked through lunch because I enjoyed the peace when the rest of the staff would go to the local pub.
It was my responsibility to monitor the switchboard and entrance security console. The only other person in the building between 1pm and 2pm was our elderly tea-lady who was a much loved member of the director's family.
She would insist on making me thick wedges of buttered toast and we would eat them together with rich milky coffee.

One boring Wednesday, we were munching and gossiping when we heard someone coming down the corridor towards us. We both jumped with shock because neither of us had buzzed the door open.
I dashed to the office door and flung it open. The tea lady and I stood stock still in shock. There before us was an Indian gentleman, dressed ornately in rich brocade with many jewels, necklaces and an ornamented turban.

"Can I help you?" I asked somewhat shaken.
"Oh I am sure you can!" he replied and said that he had come to deliver a message.
He reached for my left hand, smiled as he saw the ring on my finger and placed a tiny folded piece of paper into my palm.
He folded my fingers over it and said "You will marry soon and bear a child, a very important child. Then there will be a long wait before you have another."
He went to turn and leave but the tea-lady asked him a question just as the phone rang. I went to the switchboard to answer the call.
When I found the tea-lady she was in her kitchen looking pale and worried. I asked her where the gentleman was and she mumbled that he had left.
"But I did not buzz the door, Annie!" I cried as I ran down the stairs to check the entrance. There was no sign of him anywhere. Annie left the office early that day and never did tell me what he had said to her that had unnerved her so badly.
I dared not mention this strange visitor to anyone else in the office because I could not explain how he had gained entrance or exit from the property. Security was strong, no alarms had been activated. It was most disturbing.

More disturbing still was the little scrap of paper that had been given to me. As I unfolded it I immediately recognised the handwriting. It was Tony's.
It had an address on it that I did not recognise bar the fact that it terminated with Glasgow.

When I showed it to Tony, that evening, he looked very confused. He said that it was indeed his writing and that the address was his home address where his parents still lived.
We were both absolutely baffled but unable to fathom how the strange man could have come to possess it.
We decided to let it lie.

---

Meanwhile, Tony had informed his family in Scotland that he was now engaged and of course was making arrangements for us to visit in the near future.
One thing Tony loved, more than anything, was football. Particularly Celtic, the traditional team for Roman Catholics in Glasgow. It was decided that I would meet his parents over the new year celebrations of 1971 when Celtic would be playing Rangers at Ibrox Park.

We made the journey by National Express coach and arrived at frozen windy Glasgow in the early evening. We caught a local bus from the city centre out to Drumchapel and I was astounded to see a "No Spitting" sign, an emergency claxton and a pakistani bus conductor with a Glasgow accent.
Drumchapel on first sight was a grim, dour looking place. All the roads looked exactly the same, all the buildings were grey and some were boarded up.
The pavements were gravelled and very steep and we climbed towards the street where Tony had grown up and where his parents and younger sisters still lived.
It was bitterly cold but our greeting at the house was so warm and happy that I soon warmed up. There were so many people in the room that it felt like we had arrived in the middle of a great party. It was the day before New Years Eve.

I really can't remember very much about the next few days, they passed in a whirlwind of relatives and friends, parties and visits until the day of the football match arrived.
The men went off with their green and white striped scarves proudly worn leaving me and my future mother in law to prepare the dinner for later and have a few hours of peace which we filled with learning about each other.

It was early evening and we were getting hungry but the men had not returned from the game.
Suddenly a neighbour burst into the house and demanded that we put the television on.
We watched in shock as the news pieced together the facts as they arose.
There had been a terrible disaster.
It was a crush among the crowd at the end of the football game.

My future mother-in-law sat calmly watching the news and assured me that all would be well. I was absolutely bereft, not at all easily convinced. Another neighbour popped in to say that her man had returned and said that the crush had occurred at the Rangers end of the stadium. It was agreed that Tony and his father must have gone to the Scots Greys Club nearby after the game and were possibly oblivious of the drama.

The pair of them rolled home an hour or so later, merry with beer and as unaware of the worry they had caused as children out exploring.

The dreadful event at Ibrox led to 66 deaths and more than 200 injuries. It happened on 2 January 1971 and was the worst disaster in football history until Hillsborough.

A commemorative statue was erected at the stadium some time later but nothing can erase the memory of that awful day for so many who lost loved ones.

Just before we returned to Essex by coach, my name was added to Tony's family birthday book, producing yet another spine chilling moment.
It transpired that I had been born on the day that my mother-in-law's first born girl, named after herself, had died mysteriously.

Overwhelmed with the coincidence she burst into a flood of tears and cried "Oh Joe!" Tony's father, Joe immediately comforted her with a hug saying "Well now we know why it happened Ellen. God moves in mysterious ways!"

---

1971 came in like a rush for Tony and I. We were recommended as tenants for a cute little weatherboarded cottage on the outskirts of Clacton. The owner was related to one of Tony's bosses and we were so excited when we went to see it.

It was filthy inside and stunk dreadfully but we guessed that if we took up all the carpets and bleached the place through we could get it decent enough.
We literally had nothing in the way of household furnishings when we moved in. There was an aged butler sink and a crusty electric cooker that was barely working in the kitchen, a double bed in one of the two bedrooms, one built in wardrobe and an unpolished brass firegrate in the lounge. Nothing else!
We immediately took up all the carpets and burned them in the garden which was oddly long and very overgrown.
I think I bleached the floor boards a hundred times before we saved up enough to buy new carpets.

We had no hot water or bathroom and the toilet was a little dark hut that stood a few yards from the back door, fine in the summer we thought, but bitterly cold during our first months living there.

Both of us continued to work and save our money, first for a work van so that Tony could become self employed, then for the carpets and also for a deposit on our first mortgaged home.

In the spring of 1971 Tony came home from work one evening with a wriggling thing under his red jumper.
He said "I have a surprise for you!" This was becoming a habit, I could tell. I steeled myself for the impending shock as he pulled out a black and white collie type puppy and my heart did a flip!

So shiny, so cute and so clever was this bundle of joy that he won over everyone with his antics.
We named him Dylan, after Bob who was big in our musical repertoire at the time.

Dylan was soon provided with a chum to share the days while we were working. Nicki, a tabby kitten arrived within a week or so as a gift from a good friend. They made such a pretty sight curled up together in front of the blazing fire every night.
We were rapidly becoming a family and the six months trial was coming to a very happy end.

We agreed to accommodate Tony's parents' wish that we should marry in a Catholic Church and very nervously we called on the local Priest to make arrangements. He was a darling of a man and fully understood that although I was not a Catholic I was very keen to marry in his Lady of Light RC Church.
We booked the wedding for the 10th of July 1971 and I set about making bridesmaid dresses, my own dress and all the arrangements for the reception.

My family owned 3 holiday homes in Jaywick Sands very nearby. The entire week of my wedding was booked for guests to stay in them because most were coming from Glasgow and one sister was planning to travel from Jersey where she was working.

As the months tore by barely a week would pass without Tony supplying something he had acquired for the house. We very soon had such a sweet and homely place to live, thanks to his scrounging abilities.
His work van was nicknamed the Black & Yellow Peril because it made such a tremendous noise that I could hear him coming home when he took the last roundabout at least a mile away!
I would turn the cooker on at that point every evening.

The day of the wedding was so nerve wracking that I thought I would pass out several times. My future father-in-law was doing back flips in the garden, my mother was fussing over my hair and dress before mopping her tears of joy. There were people coming and going at such a rate that I wondered if we would all get dressed in time for the church.

Tony and his friends had been out for the obligatory Stag Night and were all looking much the worse for wear. Jai had lost his false teeth down the toilet in the pub and was totally unable to smile. Tony could not stop laughing and Dylan was overjoyed to have so many people milling around the house. Nicki was sitting on the toilet roof, aloof and unimpressed.

The cars containing all the guests left and I had a few minutes with my father before a lovely black Mercedes decked with white ribbons arrived to take us to the Church.
My father was more concerned about getting the refrigerator he had bought for our wedding present installed and running.
"I don't know how you have managed without a fridge!" he exclaimed and I giggled, reminding him of my childhood days in Islington, London, where we had a slab of marble to store perishables.
Fridges were yet to become a regular feature of domestic life and I had learned a lot from those days in the 1950s.

As we walked down the aisle I was very surprised at the number of people who were there.
Everyone looked so smart and smiley. Then I saw Tony, suited and booted, standing next to his brother Pete, grinning as if being in Church was the greatest hoot he had ever experienced.

It was a beautiful ceremony and as we returned to the sunniest of days outside we were showered with confetti and rice, photographed in various combinations of guests with much hilarity and fun.

(image: Tony and I with his parents outside Our Lady of Light RC Church)

We held the reception in the function room of a public house and my father had put some money behind the bar for the first few drinks all around.
I felt really blessed. We cut the cake, we did the first dance and we made a point of speaking to everyone who was there.
It was a brilliant evening and to my amazement there was no trouble!
Tony and Pete provided a taxi service, ensuring that all the guests got home or to the bungalows in Jaywick where they were staying. Finally we staggered through our own front door absolutely exhausted at about 2am.
"Have you eaten anything?" Tony asked me.
"Oh no! I haven't had time, have you?" I replied.
"I am bloody starving!" He declared.
So I made us fried eggs and chips in commemoration of the night we met,
only a year and a half before.