RAPE OR PASSION - Chapter 7

1974 brought us the UK General Election during February and I was delighted when Labour managed to just tip the balance in their favour putting Harold Wilson into number 10 Downing Street.
Inflation was running at 17% and we were starting to feel the pinch, especially in the building trade.
Although there was still a lot of work available, getting supplies to sites was becoming more difficult.
A series of national grid electricity blackouts during the winter was causing mayhem and these were followed by strikes over fuel prices by lorry drivers.
They were even blocking the motorways so materials were delayed at construction sites all over the country.

There came a point when, after all the wages and expenses were paid, I could not feed the family.

While Tony was out at work I had found our bank account in overdraft and I walked straight down to the seafront and called into the Royal Hotel, the most prestigious hotel in Clacton-on-Sea, at that time.
I immediately acquired a job working as a Cocktail Lounge barmaid and persuaded Adele, my tenant upstairs, to care for Dan along with her own child, Joanne, who was just about two years old at the time.

I started that very evening and found the work incredibly boring, mainly because there were very few customers in the exclusive residents only bar.

When I got home around midnight Tony was furious.
He had found the note I had left, retrieved a meal from the oven and had collected Dan from upstairs, fed him, bathed together as usual and put him to bed.
He had spent the rest of the evening fuming with rage.
"What are you thinking? Being a barmaid, of all things!" he burst out between clenched teeth.

I explained the financial situation.
Generally Tony did not take any interest in money.
As long as he had enough to go out with the boys on a Friday and Saturday night and pay his football team dues during the Sunday League morning match he didn't even ask me about how the finances were going.
He realised that he had not been earning a great deal recently but he assumed that I always had savings to cover us for any hiccoughs.
He finally, but very reluctantly, accepted that me taking a bit of temporary work was a wise decision.

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We muddled by for the next few months and I continued to work evenings in the Royal Hotel, even though I hated it.
I was able to keep our bank account in the black but only just. Tony was at home more and more as the tiles or felt or batten was missing from the sites he was supposed to be working on. He was becoming very bad tempered and bored at home.

Thankfully he was able to get enough materials together to strip and retile our neighbour's house and he worked on it from a ladder going from just outside our back door up to the roof.
One day I heard him call me from the roof in a strangled voice.
Dan had climbed the ladder and was standing almost at the top saying "Dada!" He was barely two years old and a fearless monkey. Tony reached him and carried him up to the apex of the roof to survey the town.
Dan was ecstatic.
I was barely conscious.

We tied a board over the bottom rungs after that little episode and Tony worked as fast as he could to finish our neighbour's roof.

During the summer months, shortly after Dan's second birthday party I was working as usual in the bar at the Royal cocktail lounge.
A smartly suited gentleman came in and ordered a drink.
He asked me the standard chat up question:
"What is a nice girl like you doing working in a place like this?" I explained that my husband was a roofer and due to the strikes we were unable to get materials at the moment.
The gentleman asked a few more questions and then said casually "If your man can work on a roof he can work on an oil rig" as he slid a business card across the bar to me.

I picked it up and it stated that he was an executive from an American drilling company called Sedco.
He told me to phone his secretary in Aberdeen as soon as possible and to give her my address. He said he would fast-track Tony onto an oil-rig.

To be honest I didn't really believe that this would actually happen.
I was used to guys in bars being very self assured and telling fibs to impress me.
I wondered what on earth he was doing in Clacton of all places, but I never did find out.
He left the bar and I never saw him again.

When I got home that night I showed Tony the card and offered to make the call.
He was very interested.
The following morning I phoned the secretary.
Sure enough an application arrived by the next post.
I filled it in, added copies of Tony's passport and driving licence and posted it back to her immediately.
Within a week Tony was on a helicopter safety training course in Aberdeen, all expenses paid.
He was sent offshore straight away and started his new career at the very bottom of the promotion ladder.
He had become a roustabout on the Sedco 706.

I carried on working at the Royal just until Tony's enormous salary reached our bank account. I could not believe how much he was earning. He worked twelve hour shifts for fourteen days at a time and then he was home for fourteen days.

He was able to keep Apex Roofing going during his time onshore and he was gaining contracts, employing his friends and was so proud of himself he was bursting.

Big Chas liked the sound of the oil rigs and he wanted to give them a try so Tony got him a job. He didn't last a week. He came back to Clacton saying that the rig was a rust bucket, the work was extremely hard, the weather far too frightening and he would never ever get into a helicopter again!

Tony and I exchanged letters while he was away and I would try to keep him informed of all the gossip, all the local news and of how much Dan, Dylan, Nicki and I were missing him.

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Out of the blue one fine summer day Lorraine knocked on my door.
I was extremely surprised to see her.
She said that she was arranging a "girlie" night out in Ipswich and did I fancy coming along?

Female friends was something I seriously lacked ever since I had moved to Clacton and I had become accustomed to being given the cold shoulder by most of them. Due, I assumed, to my always being in the company of the "jocks" as Tony and his friends were known.

I said that I would think about it and she asked for my phone number. She said that she would pick me up in her car and that there would be a couple of other girls coming too. She was planning to visit a nightclub.

I had not been to a nightclub since 1969 when I was seventeen and bunking trains to get to the Marquee Club in Soho. I was sorely tempted by the offer but also dubious.
Something triggered that sick feeling in the pit of my stomach again
and I muttered something about finding a babysitter.

Adele shouted down to me as I closed the front door, "Who was that?" and I went up to her flat to share a coffee and tell her all about it. Adele immediately said, "Don't be daft, go! You never go out and I can look after Dan, no problem!" She was a lovely, sweet hearted girl and I trusted her completely.
She had taken excellent care of the flat and it was always beautifully clean and tidy. I didn't like her boyfriend very much though. He seemed brutal towards her but was one of Tony's friends from Glasgow so I had to tolerate him.

On the following Saturday evening Lorraine arrived with one other girl in the flash smokey blue Ford Capri sports car which she was well known to own.
I got in the back as Lorraine made the introductions and we sped off to Ipswich, about 30 miles away.

Lorraine always, without exception, wore tight fitting, black trouser outfits, dyed her hair black and was incredibly slim.
Her friend Sue was similar looking but less intimidatingly dressed.

I felt like a fish out of water in the nightclub.
I danced but they did not.
I refused alcohol but they did not.
I wondered why Lorraine had invited me because they seemed to be talking about me, huddled giggling at the bar and more or less left me to dance alone.
When the time came to drive home I was quite relieved.
I had not liked the place or the music they chose to play.
Oddly, Lorraine insisted that I should sit in the front of the car on the return journey,
saying that Sue was a bit drunk and needed to crash out in the back.

I soon discovered the real reason for this strange change of seating arrangements.

Lorraine began to tell me, while she was driving, that she was having an affair with Tony.
She went into detail.
Too much detail.

I sat in total silence observing the glitter of glee on her face as she delivered the worst thing I had ever heard in my life.
'This is one almighty bitch' I was thinking.
'She knows I can't physically tear her head off while she is driving'.
My blood ran hot and cold as I maintained a completely still expression. Getting no verbal reaction Lorraine decided to go for gold.
"I can prove it!" she slung out of the side of her mouth as we approached Clacton. "I will show you my diary! And what is more, I am not the only one!"

I got out of the car on the driveway of her parents' house and we went in quietly. Lorraine's room was close to the front door on the left. Her parents were presumably in bed by the time we got there, well after midnight.

I do not know how I maintained my calm.
I may have been in shock and not realising it.
I honestly do not know.

Lorraine handed me a diary, open at a date during 1973, around the time that we had moved into our new house close to the town hall. The sordid details of every move that she and Tony had made was meticulously recorded.
Then the following Friday, Saturday and Sunday afternoon.
Then a wet Wednesday and more and more until I could barely see for holding back the tears.

I walked out of that house in a trance.

As I staggered the few hundred yards to my home I was thinking of all the nights that Tony had made love to this twisted horrible woman and then presumably had come home and made love to me, immediately after.

There had barely ever been a night that Tony did not want to make love. It wasn't as if our lovemaking was interrupted by anything, not even my monthly periods.
Tony seemed to have an insatiable appetite and I learned fast how to please him. I was not at all inhibited and always orgasmed more than once.

I never had another orgasm with Tony again.
Something switched off in my soul that night.
Something that hurt really deeply.