by June Thomson
The well-dressed young jeweller, with his beautifully manicured hands, was making Rab feel uncomfortable. Rab probably assumed the man was gay because of his appearance and the manner in which he had been fussing around me since we entered H. Samuel in Glasgow’s Argyle Arcade.
The Victorian arcade of jewellery shops is a mecca for courting couples. Rab had planted his big workman’s hands on the gleaming glass counter but he withdrew them quickly when the young man rested his own delicate fingers next to his. I could read Rab like a book. He was fed up. We had traipsed the length of the arcade, lingering at every brightly lit casement window as I searched for the ring. I had now found it.
‘It is lovely, isn’t it?’ the jeweller said. ‘And it fits perfectly.’
‘Is that the one you want, then?’ Rab repeated.
I wanted to savour the moment. Rab was behind me but I could feel the heat of his simmering irritation. He’d had enough.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Give her it, then,’ Rab said brusquely, pulling a wad of notes from his trouser pocket.
‘Do you want to keep it on your finger?’ the jeweller asked.
‘Oh, yes,’ I told him. ‘I don’t want to take it off.’
I could hear the child in my voice.
‘I’ll get you the box,’ the jeweller said, delving into a cabinet behind him and locating a navy-blue leather box decorated with gilt scroll.
Rab laid down £98 on the glass counter. The price of happiness. I looked at my ring and pledged no one would ever take it from me. For some reason, I remembered the stereo record player from my teens, the most special gift my father had ever given me. I now felt the same about the ring. Like that stereo, this was something just for me. I would never take it off. It was Valentine’s Day, 1981, and £98 was a lot of money. Rab had worked many 12-hour shifts to pay for it.
He must really love me to give me something so special, I thought.
I leaned towards Rab and kissed him lightly on the cheek. He recoiled, embarrassed by my public show of affection. The tip of my nose brushed his jaw line and I felt a twinge. The swelling on the bridge of my nose had gone down in the last few days, but vestiges of pain remained.
I know this is the moment when everyone asks the same question. Why, in the name of God, would any woman in her right mind pledge herself to a man who had struck her just two weeks earlier?
How can I explain?
The truth is that I can’t. I cannot offer any rational explanation. From where I stand today it was, of course, monstrously crazy. But who among us can look back over the course of our lives and not find episodes that provoke the question ‘What in the hell was I thinking?’ ?
I should have walked away when I had the chance. In fact, I should have fled. But I did not. Why? It may seem trite and too easy to blame our childhoods, to look for excuses in our past. But …
What we become is governed by who we were. When I sat on Rab’s bed, nursing my bruised face, I had been incapable of rational thought. Don’t ask me why, but the pain of Rab’s assault dissipated the moment he said, ‘Let’s get engaged!’
It would be many years before I recognised that the reason I hadn’t fled was because I was so desperate to belong, so in need of being loved and so desirous of being wanted. I didn’t flee. I stayed. I made the mistake so many abused women have made before me, and no doubt there are – and will continue to be – many more caught in the same trap.
However, on that day, in that shop, the engagement ring was so much more than a piece of fancy jewellery. It was a symbol of all of the things I craved. I had convinced myself that Rab hitting me was a sign of his love. His violent outburst was born of jealousy. He couldn’t be jealous if he didn’t love me, could he? And, of course, was it not my fault? I had provoked him by waving at the men. But that was obviously all a load of nonsense. His jealousy was a manifestation of controlling behaviour, just as tearing up my cat-suit had been. How could waving innocently to your workmates deserve a punch in the face? So, to everyone who has ever said to me, ‘You should have left him,’ I say to them, ‘You’re absolutely right.’ But I didn’t and I would pay a dreadful price.
Wisdom in hindsight is, after all, our only exact science.
Giselle: And I was blinded by love.
The butterfly had spread her wings but she hadn’t flown far, at least not physically.
Within a few months I had moved into a new flat in a multi-storey block close to the one in which my parents lived. The blocks were crammed with families and had a population equivalent to a small town. Glasgow was dotted with such ‘multis’, a legacy of the 1950s and 1960s when the city fathers tore down the tenements and replaced them with what became known as ‘high living’. It was only a euphemism.
I looked around my shiny new flat, with its cream walls and the peach curtains that I had made by hand. I was so pleased with my new independence. I had at last grown up. I was a woman rather than a girl, the perennial baby of the family.
So much had changed in three months since that evening in Kelvingrove Park when Ash asked me to marry him. In the interim I had stood by my decision that we should wait a bit longer. I loved Ash, and I wanted to marry him, but there was just ‘something’ that held me back. He was still loving and attentive, and he continued to shower me with gifts, flowers and tokens of affection. I told him not to, and yet he persisted. He made me happy but – to use that famous expression – there was a third person in our relationship: his mother.
All of Ash’s grand schemes for our idyllic future behind an imaginary white picket fence seemed to involve ‘Mum’. Mum would live with us; Mum would look after the babies; Mum would keep the house and cook; Mum would choose my clothes. Ash’s mother was a lovely, welcoming woman, but I had a mother of my own and no one could take her place. I wanted Ash and me to be a couple, and not have his mother standing between us.
Since the evening in the park, Ash had asked me on an almost daily basis to marry him. His proposals were accompanied by elaborate word pictures of large homes, big cars, success, wealth and this mysterious term ‘respect’. More than anything, he valued respect. It was a word he often used and I never quite understood what he meant by it. Men who sweep the streets inspire respect. Respect is not defined by wealth or status, but Ash seemed to believe that it was.
Even in the rosy glow of early love, I recognised that Ash’s dreams were divorced from reality. How could we achieve all of the things he wanted? More importantly, why wasn’t what he already had enough for him? He had a good and secure job, and I had provided a place for us to live.
When I moved out of my parents’ home it had really pleased Ash. It was an obvious sign that I was trying to create what could become a world of our own. In reality, however, it seemed to have remained a world of my own. I got the flat, believing it was inevitable that Ash would move in.
He didn’t. I saw him every day, but every night there would be the phone call to his mobile. It was always his mother. They would speak for several moments and then he would find excuses to leave. Strange as it may seem, this was a pattern that would be maintained throughout our relationship, even after we married and had those beautiful babies he so wanted.
In the course of our entire time together, I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of nights we spent in the same house. Looking back, I can’t fathom why I put up with it, but somehow we just fell into that way of doing things. Before we were married there always seemed to be a reasonable explanation for his nightly departure. His mother was unwell; he had forgotten to tell her he would not be home; she had made his dinner and he did not want to disappoint her.
I should have put my foot down and forced him to make a choice, but I was reluctant to do so. I still lacked confidence and perhaps feared that, if I demanded he choose between us, I would lose him. I did not worry that he was being unfaithful to me as I knew that the only ‘other woman’ in Ash’s life was his mother.
I also appreciated what it
meant to feel a duty of care to your mother. I had looked after my own parents for so long and I was, in many ways, still doing so. Ash was clearly devoted to his mother and I was reluctant to make demands because a part of me believed it would be churlish to come between a parent and child. I looked around my little nest, trying to count my blessings, in the hope that everything would resolve itself in time.
The sound of a key in the lock brought me to my feet. Ash had arrived. He breezed in through the open door of the living room, one hand behind his back.
‘What are you looking so pleased about?’ I asked.
He was smiling broadly. By now I could recognise the expression that heralded yet another gift.
‘Ash, you don’t have to keep getting me stuff. I don’t need presents, I just need you.’
He beamed.
‘But this is special,’ he said, revealing his latest offering with a flourish. ‘Open it,’ he said, presenting me with a tiny velvet box.
‘Ash!’ I said.
‘Open it!’ he insisted, and I identified the same tone in his voice that I had heard on the evening when he gave me the Happy perfume.
I took the box and opened it. A love-heart ring, set with a deep-red ruby surrounded by diamonds, sat in a cushion of white satin.
I slipped the ring onto my finger and held my hand up to the light …
Chapter 5
Closer to the Flame
‘It was too late. These men now had an almost hypnotic hold.’
Ian Stephen
June: I should have listened.
‘No! No! No!’ Wilma said.
‘Please,’ I pleaded. ‘You’re my best friend. I want you to be my bridesmaid. I know you don’t like Rab, but look at my beautiful ring. See? He loves me, he really does.’
My words fell on deaf ears. Wilma was adamant. She wanted no part in my special day. I might have been blind but she could see all too clearly. She had no doubts that I was making a mistake but I was consumed by the dream shared by every schoolgirl, to have a fairytale white wedding. I had been so desperate to realise that dream that on the spur of the moment it was I who proposed to Rab.
My sister Linda was inadvertently responsible. Around the time we got engaged, she had married, and she and her husband were now expecting their first child. Our family was carried along on a wave of happiness for her. Linda was quite rightly the centre of attention, the focus of the joy that envelops you at a time like this. I wanted it too. So badly.
I wasn’t in the least jealous of Linda; I just hungered for a taste of that happiness. I couldn’t get the longing out of my head. I was, I reasoned, almost married. Rab and I were engaged, and we were living together. Why wait?
We were sitting in the flat one day when I turned to him and said, ‘Let’s get married, soon.’
Rab didn’t take his eyes off the television.
‘Okay,’ he said.
Giselle: I thought a wedding would solve all our problems.
‘Okay! Okay!’ I told Ash.
He dissolved, tears welling in his eyes.
‘Giselle, you have made me so happy,’ he said.
‘But I don’t want any big fuss,’ I warned him.
‘I promise. Just the two of us. We’ll elope. It’ll be so romantic. We’ll choose a day, get married, and then we’ll tell everybody. They’ll be so pleased for us.’
I felt a moment of coldness. Like every woman, I wanted my parents and brothers and sisters to be there to share my wedding day, but if their absence meant that Ash would be forced to become a husband, rather than a mummy’s boy, then it was a price I was willing to pay.
I held my hand up to quieten him and said, ‘And we will be together, as a couple?’
I was excited yet apprehensive. The ruby ring Ash had presented to me was a turning point, I thought. It was a solid symbol of commitment. And with a wedding ring on my finger, everyone would know that we were together.
I never doubted for a moment that Ash loved me. He told me so a dozen times a day, but I was still apprehensive, still discomfited by his almost obsessive commitment to his mother. How could we be a normal couple if he was determined to run home to her each evening?
‘You promise?’ I repeated. ‘We’ll be a normal couple?’
‘I promise,’ he said. ‘We’ll be a family. I want babies. I want a daughter. Daughters have respect for their fathers. I want a son. A son would carry my name.’
I should have been carried along by his enthusiasm and, to a certain degree, I was. Perhaps marriage would change everything. A wedding would solve all our problems, wouldn’t it? But still the nagging doubt persisted. I ignored it and gave myself up to his excitement.
‘I’ll buy a new outfit,’ I said.
‘No! A proper wedding dress,’ he insisted. ‘I’ve already told you – I’ve picked one!’
‘But Ash, why go to the expense of a fancy wedding dress when there’s just two of us? Who’s going to see it?’
‘I will,’ he said. ‘Our babies will. When they grow up, they’ll look at photographs of Mummy and Daddy on their wedding day. I want everything to be done properly.’
‘Photographs?’ I said, laughing.
‘Yes, official photographs,’ he said pompously. ‘You in your wedding dress, and me in my morning suit.’
‘Tails!’ I said.
‘Yes, tails,’ he replied.
It was difficult not be swept away by Ash’s childlike exuberance. I had taken a decision that would change everything, and for the first time in my life my family were not a party to it. I had felt unable to tell my parents that Ash ran home to his mother every night. I could not reveal to them that it was she and not me who washed his clothes and cooked his dinners. It would have been incomprehensible to them. My dad was pure Glasgow East End working class, with all its traditions and boundaries. Wives made your ‘tea’; wives washed your clothes. Mothers were there to be loved and visited on Sundays.
If Da had known how we lived, he would have lost respect for Ash for not putting me first. If Ma had known the truth, she too would have been mystified by my devotion to a man she would have perceived to be ‘a mummy’s boy’. I had solved the problem once and for all by saying ‘Yes’.
Married men do not run home to mother.
June: Weren’t we such fools?
I looked in the mirror, fingering the lace daisies embroidered under the tight bust-line of the white satin dress. The gown skimmed the carpet and the only visible signs of flesh were my hands, neck and face.
‘Lovely, June,’ said Ellen, who was standing behind me. ‘You’d think it had been made for you instead of me.’
I patted my hips, smoothing down the heavy material. A veil fell on either side of my face, reaching to the hemline of the dress.
‘Do you think so?’ I said to Ellen’s reflection.
Ellen was one of Rab’s two sisters and she had offered to lend me the dress she had worn at her own wedding. Ellen had also agreed to be my bridesmaid; second choice for a bride in a second-hand dress.
It was May, and the weather was already promising summer. We were only weeks away from the wedding and yet Rab had become a stranger to me. He was working 12-hour shifts to pay for it. Since the day we, or more accurately I, decided that we were going to be married, we had been spending money like water. We soon realised that weddings were an expensive business. We were paying for everything ourselves and I was trying to keep costs down, hence my second-hand dress. I had discovered that the cost of a new one would have been astronomical. Most couples save for years to pay for a wedding. We effectively had a few weeks. Rab played no part in the preparations, but I was in my element.
When Wilma had bluntly refused to be my bridesmaid, it had not only dampened my enthusiasm – it had made me wonder whether I was doing the right thing. In spite of all the excitement, I couldn’t get it out of my mind that Rab had hit me. My dad would have been horrified and enraged if he had known that Rab had lifted his hand to me. As far as
he was concerned Rab was just a hard-working lad; a bit rough and ready, perhaps, but someone he believed would look after his daughter.
Somehow I convinced myself that the episode had been an aberration on Rab’s part, and any lingering doubts were quickly suppressed by the planning: booking the church, renting the local community hall for the reception, hiring the band and sending out invitations. I strutted through my days in a happy haze, and now, as I looked at my reflection in the mirror, my reservations were dispelled.
I was already halfway down the aisle.
Giselle: Everything was for show.
The woman was smiling when she chided Ash.
‘You know it’s bad luck for the groom to see the bride in her dress before the wedding, don’t you?’
Ash ignored the shop assistant, who tried to shield me by drawing the satin curtain across the changing area.
He was determined.
‘I want to see her in that dress,’ he told her, attempting to take the curtain from her hand.
The shop assistant’s smile faded but she held firm. A faint hint of annoyance crept into her voice.
‘Not until the wedding day, Sir,’ she said, still trying to keep the mood light.
He was insistent.
‘I want to see her,’ he said.
The immaculately dressed and coiffed assistant in the salubrious wedding shop relinquished the curtain reluctantly. I could see she was embarrassed. So was I.
‘Ash,’ I said. ‘It’s bad luck.’
‘Let me see you,’ he said.
I stepped out from behind the curtain, my face flushing red.
‘Beautiful!’ he whispered, stepping back to admire the ornate, billowing gown.
The snowy-white dress was as traditional as it got. My hair was gathered beneath a pearl headdress attached to a veil that flowed down my back.
Ash began crying.
The shop assistant’s eyes widened in disbelief and she retreated hastily to another part of the shop. I wilted under his intense gaze and I too had to look away.
‘Beautiful,’ he repeated.
‘I’ll take that one,’ he said, in the direction of the assistant.