by Liz Byrski
If I told this story to my friends they would tell me to let it go. Tut it in a box, seal it and drop it off the jetty into the sea,’ they would say. ‘We can all go back to our first love, romanticise it, idealise it, rewrite history to make it perfect. It’s dead—do you really want to exhume the corpse?’ But I can’t let it go.
There is no one left who remembers this time. My father is dead, my mother’s memory failing fast and I have never told this story to anyone. I have known the struggles, fought the battles, raised my children. I have worked with a feverish intensity and succeeded. But what was I trying to prove? Has it anything to do with you? I longed for a great romantic love, but never found it again; did my need for love become my need for my work? If I had plumbed these depths years ago I might by now have freed myself, or perhaps I would still wear the emotional black of mourning.
I always looked good in black. You said I would. You said it that morning at the end of February when we went to Bond Street to buy a dress for me to wear to Chantal’s party. Your initial success with my parents had been reinforced in successive visits and I was confident any reservations would fade with time.
‘He’s lovely,’ my mother said.’ A real gentleman. He’s a lot older than you of course—and then there’s the divorce—but I’m really very fond of him.’
‘He’s a fine man,’ my father said. ‘He’s German though—we mustn’t forget that—he must be supporting the ex-wife and child in Germany. I wonder what he earns—architecture is a good profession.’
They liked you, and they would have liked you even better if I had not been so obviously besotted, but they trusted you enough to let us go to London together and stay out all night at the party. They trusted us, despite Joan’s interference. They even gave me five pounds towards the dress I would buy. And so I met you at Victoria Station on a Saturday morning and we headed for Bond Street. I was more accustomed to the hurly burly of Oxford Street, the perfumed aisles of Selfridges, Dickens and Jones, and D H Evans. Even a diversion to Swan and Edgar at the far end of Regent’s Street would have been a step up from my previous clothes shopping experience. But Bond Street! Perhaps The Secretaries had directed me there; perhaps they said something like—‘make sure you get black dear, you can never go wrong with a little black dress,’ and of course they were right.
You spotted the dress on a mannequin in the window. It was silk—’shantung’ the sales woman called it—the silk that has a coarse grain running through it; and it was black, not a deep black but soft, verging on charcoal.
‘Look,’ you said drawing me over to the window. ‘This is a beautiful dress for you. Let’s go inside.’ And you took my hand and held it firmly until we were inside the shop.
I loved the dress and wanted to try it but I was intimidated by the elegant surroundings, the antique furniture, the thick white carpet and the sales women who looked as though they should be on the front cover of Vogue. I was also intimidated by being with you. I had never been shopping for clothes with a man.
‘But it’s so glamorous,’ I whispered.
‘And so are you Sweetheart,’ you said, smiling confidently as the sales woman approached us. ‘Please just try it and see how it feels.’
I followed the sales woman to the fitting room and slipped out of my clothes. The silk seemed to sigh as I took the dress from its hanger and stepped into it. It could have been made for me, the cut, the colour, the texture of the fabric, and it fitted me perfectly.
‘What do you think?’ I asked, stepping tentatively out into the salon. And your smile told me everything.
The dress was wrapped in white tissue paper, placed with care into a stiff and glossy white box and tied with black silk ribbon. I can’t remember how much it cost but it was the most expensive piece of clothing I had ever owned, and as we walked out of the shop I was confident that this time I had actually surpassed Princess Margaret.
It was my first black dress, I have had other black dresses over the years, but none as significant as that one. You Karl, were the only one who ever took the time, made the effort, knew what would suit me and told me that I was worthy of something so beautiful. In movies I had seen Katharine Hepburn, Deborah Kerr, Sophia Loren in satin slips and camisoles, step into designer gowns and out of the fitting rooms into the spotlight of their lover’s eyes. Cary Grant, Gregory Peck or Clark Gable smiled with admiration, and sales assistants touched by the sight of love exchanged knowing glances in the background. Now it had happened to me.
Maybe you never knew the significance of that experience for a girl verging on womanhood. The new sense of myself that our meeting had triggered needed acknowledgement, validation. Buying that dress with you was another stage in that journey.
‘He’s gorgeous,’ Chantal whispered as we sat on the bed in her Earls Court flat, painting our nails before the party. ‘And he makes such a fuss of you. He obviously adores you.’
I tried to look modest but it was a tough assignment. Having you with me seemed to make Chantal and her boyfriend Neville see me through new eyes. You had raised my status and I was ready to make the most of it. Chantal stopped waving her hands in the air and tested the nail polish. Satisfied that it was dry she took a salmon pink satin sheath from a hanger and stepped into it, turning for me to zip it up for her.
‘Are your nails dry enough? Thanks. Look take your time, I have to go and help Diana with the food.’ She fluffed her hair in the mirror. ‘Don’t be too long though or I might steal your gorgeous man!’ She turned at the door and smiled. ‘Only joking—he hasn’t got eyes for anyone else anyway.’
I stood in my slip and stared at my reflection in the mirror, still unfamiliar with the young woman who looked back at me. Then I opened the white box, shook the dress from its tissue paper and slipped it over my head.
When I walked into the kitchen Chantal and her flatmate were decorating platters of canapes with sprigs of parsley. You were sitting on the corner of the kitchen table with your back to me, eating a piece of celery and talking to Neville. He saw me first and let out a long slow wolf whistle and you slipped off the table and turned to look. Chantal whooped with delight. She stroked the fabric, admired the cut, the shape, the fit. It was perfect^ she said, I looked like a dream and it was so sophisticated. You leaned back against the kitchen bench watching us, and as Chantal examined the label our eyes met and I could see your pride and pleasure. We were a conspiracy of two with our own wordless language.
Chantal and I had been at school together and I was always intimidated by her beauty. A Spanish mother and a Peruvian father had produced a creature so exotic she could stop the traffic at thirty yards. For the first time ever I was not totally eclipsed by her. I felt like a woman and you were undoubtedly the most mature and attractive man in the room that night. I was so proud to be with you. I had escaped from the cocoon of the dumpy teenager with a million freckles, and become an attractive young woman. It had to be so, for a man like you would surely not be attracted to that shy and awkward girl. You had stamped my passport to womanhood and that added another dimension to your attraction.
Later in the evening the lights were turned down and we danced cheek to cheek as Peggy Lee sang ‘The Way You Look Tonight’. Do you remember how our bodies moved together to the music; how you murmured the words of the song to me as the other dancers smooched and jostled around us?
It may have been the swinging sixties but that night seems wrapped in a romantic tenderness that captured everyone. There was a gentleness about it, couples fell asleep holding each other on the floor or on couches, some talked quietly until the dawn light crept between the curtains, scattering us to our homes. That night, as we lay side by side on a rug in Chantal’s living room, I begged you to let go of the past with all its fears and disappointments , and trust the present and the future. You told me you loved me, you would love me always and would never let me go.
***
Tell us a bit more about your young man,’ said Mrs Maxwell as she, Jac
kie and I ate shepherds pie and brussels sprouts in the canteen.
‘He’s really old,’ Jackie cut in. ‘I mean really old, he’s thirteen years older than her.’ Jackie was torn between an insane jealousy of my romance with this mysterious and romantic stranger, and a conviction that older men were boring and bossy.
‘He’s still only thirty-one,’ I protested.
‘Well that is quite a lot older than you dear,’ said Mrs Maxwell. ‘But I’m sure he’s very charming. A foreigner isn’t he?’
Being a foreigner in England in the early sixties could be compared with having a nasty disease. What sort of foreigner you were defined the level of infection. While to be European had respectability as well as a sense of the mysterious, it is probably true to say that only if you had been Swiss would you have been free of some sort of stereotyping. Were you Spanish or Italian you would have been dismissed as a hopeless Lothario. To be Scandinavian would have you cast instantly as a sex maniac; everyone knew that the Swedes, the Danes and the Norwegians spent all their time romping out of the sauna to roll naked in the snow. To be Belgian or Dutch would have you written off as a nobody. Americans were not to be taken seriously unless they were seriously rich, and the Australians, who at the time were descending on London like swarms of locusts and taking over decaying old houses in the Tottenham Court Road, were simply crude colonials. Had you been from Asia or Africa I would never have been allowed to go out with you anyway.
A decade earlier it could have been acceptable for you to be French, but de Gaulle’s refusal to consider England as an EEC partner had been an insult, even to the anti-Europeans. And to be German? Well, seventeen years after the end of the war, while there might not be open hostility there were still reservations and mistrust.
‘One simply can’t be sure about the Germans,’ Mrs Maxwell mused over her last sprout. ‘They are so very—well—one just can’t be too sure of them. But of course it’s not as though you’re going to marry him.’
With my mouth full I couldn’t answer immediately, and in that instant I decided not to respond at all. Confrontation was not one of my strengths: I knew when to keep my mouth shut. Jackie, unfortunately, did not.
‘Yes, she is! She’s going back to America with him. She said so the other day, didn’t you? Didn’t you say you’re going to marry him?’
I nodded and reached for my plate of canteen rice pudding.
‘See!’ said Jackie triumphantly. ‘She’s going to live in California.’
Mrs Maxwell got up from the table and picked up her plate.
‘Of course she’s not,’ she said. ‘Liz wouldn’t do anything so silly. And in any case her parents wouldn’t dream of allowing it. You mustn’t spread rumours like this Jacqueline, the company likes stayers, not people who talk about flitting off to America on the slightest whim. It’s not fair to Liz to talk like that.’ And she took her plate and her coffee cup to the trolley and made her way back to the office.
‘Silly old bat,’ Jackie said, moving into the chair alongside me. ‘You are going to go though, aren’t you? What did your mum and dad say?’
‘They said we have to wait a year,’ I told her. ‘Karl will go back to California in May and I have to wait for a year.’
‘God! A year! That’s forever,’ Jackie sighed. ‘You could die or something.’
Which had been exactly my own reaction when my parents had set out the ground rules. I would probably die of separation from you. A year seemed a lifetime and America was the other side of the world. I had no idea then how much my parents’ own experience had informed their view. They had gone out together for three years before getting engaged and the engagement lasted seven years before they finally married the week that war was declared. It was many years later when my mother told me this and I realised that their fear of our marrying so soon was more than just a response to you and me as individuals. It was part of the way they were, what they believed in and what all the people around them, whom they liked and respected, believed. They had traditional and conservative values and although you hated the thought of separation as much as I did, you understood their concern.
A year seemed interminable, you agreed, but it would pass, we would be together next year, we would be married and never have to part again.
***
‘He’s very good looking,’ said Sally Palmer. ‘I saw you in town on Saturday morning.’
‘I hope you’re not seeing him too often,’ said Mrs Wilmot. ‘It doesn’t do to seem too eager and available you know.’
‘I only see him at the weekends,’ I said, uncomfortably conscious of the five pairs of secretaries’ eyes on me. ‘Just weekends, he lives and works in London.’
‘You should make him wait a bit,’ said Sylvia, who had loaned me her perfume. ‘Tell him you can’t see him sometimes, let him think there’s someone else. It makes a man keener.’
The idea was abhorrent to me and I was well aware that rather than making you keener it would cause you to disappear faster than the speed of light. I kept my eyes on my work and began to type. I knew you—knew you as if you were a part of me. I had felt your heartbeat, breathed your breath, tasted your skin; you were in my blood. It was all or nothing, a fidelity that was spiritual and sensual as well as sexual. I had already felt the edge of your chilling response to anything but total exclusive possession.
As I watched you deep in conversation with my father at a party a hand descended on my shoulder and a voice hissed in my ear.
‘What a gorgeous man, wherever did you find him?’ Doreen lit a cigarette narrowing her eyes at you through its smoke.
‘I met him at a friend’s house,’ I said, and as you bent your head to hear better above the music you glanced towards me and smiled.
Doreen sucked in her breath. ‘Darling if I was your friend I wouldn’t have let you get your hands on him. Look at those bedroom eyes—he’s far too old for you Lizzie, he’s just my age and my type.’
She moved on weaving her way among the chatting laughing groups, draping herself over one man after the other, leaving her lipstick on collars and lips. Leaning on the bar, Don, her husband, watched with a mixture of indulgence and embarrassment. I prayed she would not go near you. I knew I couldn’t bear it if she tried to touch you or kiss you. But these were my parents’ friends, what could I do, what would you do? As Doreen took a man’s face in her hands and kissed him full on the mouth I watched your features freeze to a mask. You turned to me, fixing me with a cold stare, your mouth was set in a hard line, and the colour drained from your face. You crossed the room towards me and gripped my arm with the force of steel.
‘What do you think about this?’ you asked, nodding in Doreen’s direction.
‘She’s always like that,’ I said. ‘Worse when she’s had a few drinks.’
I asked you what you thought about her behaviour,’ you said with an edge to your voice that I hadn’t heard before. ‘Why don’t you answer the question?’
I blanched at the unaccustomed sharpness in your tone. I felt accused of someone else’s crime.
I think it’s horrible,’ I told you. ‘And I hate it most when she does it in front of Don.’
‘I’m sorry,’ you said, your face relaxing as you put your arm around my waist. ‘Forgive me darling, I’m so sorry, how stupid of me—I was frightened—Your voice dropped away. ‘It offends me deeply.’
I know you’ll remember that night Karl. Many other memories will have faded but that one will remain, doubtless with the same chilling clarity that it has for me.
***
Sex was a mystery to me. I had kissed and been kissed but I had never felt those first thrilling stirrings of sexual attraction and desire until there was you. From the moment I saw you the touchpaper was lit. I was flooded with desire in your presence, at the touch of your hand, at a look and a smile; in your absence I ached at the thought of you. As I struggled with my newly wakening sexuality you were both tender and passionate, but I knew you were holdin
g back. But holding back from what? The extent of my ignorance seems unbelievable.
I had received my sex education in a Catholic convent. It took place one rainy afternoon when Sister Mary Raphael, her eyes fixed on a table of the elements on the rear wall of the science lab, told us all we needed to know about sex. That afternoon we learned that sex is dirty but we should save it for the one we loved. Nice girls do not like sex, but those foolish enough not to renounce its horrors and take the veil must submit to their husbands for the purposes of procreation. Men have gross sexual needs and desires for which they cannot be held responsible so it is up to women to take responsibility for controlling the whole thing. Not one of us, not even Lesley Rayner, considered to be the fastest girl in the class because her mother was an actress, was game enough to ask for a specific definition of the whole thing and just what it involved.
‘So remember girls,’ said Sister Raphael, her voice rising with relief that her speech was almost at its close. ‘If you are alone in a room with a boy and something terrible happens it will be your fault. Always keep your knees together when you sit in the bus and remember to wash your hands.’
I’ve never been sure whether the hand washing related to the bus ride or the terrible thing that might happen if left alone with a boy.
The convent was a seething mass of sensuality, rich with scents of freshly laundered linen, beeswax polish, incense from the chapels, the perfume of bunches of heavy headed roses that filled the vases in the halls, and the huge pine logs stacked in the grates where fires were never lit. The hems of the nuns’ habits swished across the polished floors and their rosary beads chattered against the folds of their skirts, the distant hum of the novices at worship in the chapel was the background music to every day.