Just Another Friday Night In Memphis - Part 7

No way was she going to have another
child!.................................

'I'm not going through all that again for anybody', she would say, and
I would let it go for another few months.

Then one evening in February 1979 I came home from work to find her in
a foul mood, I asked what the problem was and she said there wasn't
one.

I persisted and eventually she screamed at me, 'I'm fucking pregnant
that's what the problem is.'

I was shell-shocked, as we never had much sex, let alone love. I
thought for a few minutes and said that she told me she had been fitted
with a coil after Spencer's birth. She said she had to have it removed
because of an infection.

After a few moments more I asked her why she hadn't told me and she
said,

'I forgot.'

It was now my turn to be angry and I accused her of lying and playing
God with me, she denied this and I didn't have any proof so eventually
I let it go. She refused to discuss the pregnancy with me and on the
night her waters broke I had to send for an ambulance, as I had to get
Spencer off to school in the morning. When I arrived at the hospital
about mid-morning she had already given birth but there was no baby
with her and I sensed a problem. She said the baby, a girl, was in the
care unit upstairs and she seemed to be disinterested. I eventually
spoke to a doctor in the baby care unit and he told me the baby was a
Down's Syndrome child. I sat on a chair and cried for a bit, how much
more of this misery was there for me to cope with. The baby girl, whom
we named Alison, never came home.

On the day I brought Jean home from the hospital I heard the phone
ringing as I opened the front door. Jean went to the kitchen to make
some tea and I answered the phone, it was a hate call from an
unidentified woman screaming at me about being an evil bastard who
deserved to have handicapped kids, it could only have come from someone
in the hospital! I was shocked to the point where I called the police,
but they said they couldn't help and I should call the phone company
and get my calls monitored. I insisted that the number was changed and
didn't want it put in the local directory. I have been ex-directory
ever since. Jean and I were not only traumatised about Alison, but she
was now also haunted by the feeling she wasn't a complete woman as she
had borne a 'defective' child. After much discussion Alison was
fostered and ultimately adopted by a couple in Norfolk. Still reeling
from this latest spell of bad luck Jean felt the need to prove herself
by having a 'normal' baby and tried again too soon after Alison's
birth. Three months into her pregnancy she started to miscarry, she
refused any medical help and locked herself in the bathroom ignoring my
pleading to be let in to help her. Two hours or so later she opened the
door and said it was all over. She refused to discuss it, but did see a
doctor who told her to rest and leave it for nine months before trying
again.

In late 1980 she informed me she was pregnant again saying,

'Don't say you didn't know about this one!'

Because of her history she had to have the test that is apparently
normal pre-natal procedure now, to detect abnormalities in the foetus.
She would not allow me to take her to the hospital and when the results
were sent to our GP she refused to give me any information other than
to say it was OK. We had a terrible row about this with her screaming
it was HER baby and she wasn't telling anyone whether it was a boy or
girl. I tried to calm her and explain that if she wanted the sex kept
from family and friends that it was fine by me, but I had a right to
know.

She finally screamed at the top of her voice, 'It's a fucking
boy'.

From that moment on she didn't discuss the baby at all and when it was
time to give birth went to the hospital by ambulance. It was a bad
birth, the baby had been born too fast, struck his head on the pelvic
bone and had burst blood vessels in his head. The top of his head was
like a massive blood blister and the doctors feared meningitis would
result. He was placed in intensive care and Jean was told after a
couple of days that she could go home and they would care for the boy
until it was safe to bring him home. She said she was not moving out of
the hospital without her baby and I supported her in this; in the
circumstances it was more than could possibly be expected of her, to go
home a second time without her baby. The doctors could see she was
adamant and agreed to let her stay in the maternity ward until the baby
was well enough to go home.

During the second week, arriving for my daily visit to the hospital I
was passed on the stairs to the baby care unit by a nurse who greeted
me by saying,

'Have you come to see James?'

I asked what she was talking about and she said Jean had christened him
James, in spite of the fact that she knew I didn't like the name at all
(we had argued about the name when Spencer was born). I knew she had
done this in my absence to be hateful to me and I was upset about it
for weeks. She had spoiled every single occasion in our life together
that should have been filled with happiness, and for the first time I
felt animosity for her creeping into my feelings.

Over the next three years we drifted further apart, not talking for
long periods and never going out together except to shop. Eventually a
woman that I considered a friend, and who I would see among a group of
friends at Chelmsford folk club on Sunday nights, propositioned me as I
was about to leave early one evening. Her name was Susan Patterson; she
was a few years younger than me, and a schoolteacher.

I had arrived at the club a bit late and having bought myself a pint of
beer was leaning against the wall by the door having decided that the
guest band were not very good and I would drink up and go home. Susan
was somewhere in the audience and walking toward the bar with an empty
glass in her hand saw me by the door and walked over to me.

'You look as though you're not staying!' she said to me
enquiringly.

'I don't care for this band, I might as well go home' I answered,
'they're crap aren't they? I added.

'Well why don't you take me for a drink?' she said.

I looked her in the eye and said,

' Do you mean what I think you mean Susan?'

She moved a little closer, standing right in front of me and looking me
straight in the eyes without blinking replied,

'I mean anything you want me to'.

I was quite shocked and said that, as she knew, I was a married man
with kids and didn't have anything to offer her.

'I'm a big girl you know, I know what I'm doing' she was looking at me
intently trying to read my reaction, 'well?'

My mind was working overtime trying to think of a good reason to turn
her down but I couldn't think of one, here was an attractive
intelligent woman offering to share some time with me, something that I
needed badly, and I was trying to avoid it.

'Well why not' I thought to myself as she continued to look at me
expectantly.

'Ok Susan, but not tonight, how about next Wednesday?' I eventually
replied.

'Any particular reason for Wednesday?' she enquired.

'Well I have to discuss it with Jean' I said.

Susan looked at me puzzled.

'I won't cheat' I added, 'not her, and not you'

She couldn't believe that I was going to speak to my wife about it,
finding it a little bizarre that a married man would discuss an
impending liaison involving another woman with his wife!

Arriving home from work on the Monday night I asked Jean to talk to me.
She was ironing and without stopping or looking up asked what I wanted
to discuss. I said that yet again I wanted to know what her intentions
were with regard to the marriage. She was a little irate and asked what
had brought about this latest confrontation. I replied that someone
else had shown an interest in me, and I was getting older and couldn't
afford to waste any more time if she didn't want me.

She said, 'If you can get what you need elsewhere you'd be a fool not
to take it!'

At no time during this exchange did she either stop ironing or look at
me, I was shocked; she didn't care about me at all and didn't care what
I did. I told her that I would be going out on the Wednesday evening
and stormed upstairs to bed. On Wednesday morning Jean unusually got up
as I was about to go to work and asked what time I was going out that
evening. I told her about 7.30 and asked why she wanted to know.

'I'll see you have a clean shirt', she replied and went back to
bed.

Arriving home at teatime, there on the back of a chair in the kitchen
was my best shirt, ironed to perfection. My tea was on the table and
Jean was nowhere to be seen. She was in the lounge watching TV. I spent
a long time getting ready to go out, showering, washing my hair,
cleaning my shoes and hoping all the time she would realise it was
make-your-mind-up time for us and ask me not to go. The minutes ticked
by and at 7.29 I walked down stairs and into the lounge, she must have
seen me standing there to her left but never took her eyes off the
screen. I stood there for what seemed like an age, then turned on my
heels and walked out slamming the front door so hard that the whole
street heard, and it nearly fell off it's hinges! I drove away from the
house seething with anger that she was prepared to abandon any hope of
making the marriage work but as I approached the pub we had arranged to
meet at on the A13 10mls from home I started to think about where this
evening might lead.

Susan and I sat in the saloon bar all evening chatting and asking each
other more intimate details about each other's lives than we would ever
have dreamed of asking 2wks before. Within a week or two it became
obvious that she wanted a permanent relationship, she had been a career
girl all her life and had reached deputy head mistress level, was 36yrs
old and had started to panic about not having a family of her own. She
was looking for a husband, and father for her yet to be conceived
family and knew time was getting short. She obviously thought I would
fit the bill, but I came with baggage and problems! After a few weeks
she began to pressurise me into leaving home but it wasn't that easy
for me, I came from a broken home and grew up without a father, only
someone who has lived it can know what damage being fatherless can do
to a child. I couldn't bring myself to abandon my kids (the youngest
boy, Jim, was only 3yrs old, Spencer was 10) and had hoped that Susan
would be a bit patient, and as my feelings for her grew it would become
easier to make the break. Eventually she pushed too hard, forcing me to
choose between the kids and her. If she thought that would sway things
her way she had made a terrible mistake and I ended the relationship.
It had never been a sexual affair, as she thought to keep me at arms
length would reinforce her position, but in the end it just made it
easier for me to split. On reflection perhaps if she had been really
serious about me and wanted to make me feel I couldn't live without
her, she would have been better off going for the sexual angle and
giving me the time to learn to love her but as it turned out I'm glad
we never 'did it', for her sake as well as mine.

With Susan gone there was a vacuum in my life and I wondered whether
there was any possibility that Jean and I could finally resolve our
problems and make something out of the wreckage of our marriage. In
retrospect this was probably a non-starter, Jean had never shown the
slightest interest in being married and I had no reason to believe
things had changed. I tried anyway, but the old wounds kept opening up
and the results were worse than ever. During the course of one argument
it came out that the reason we had come to grief in 1973 was because
Jean had started an affair with her boss, Ken Deacon. She was working
at a firm of solicitors in Chelmsford High Street at the time and had
become besotted with him, going for lunchtime drinks initially and then
who knows what! He was married and had a baby daughter but that didn't
stop him, his secretary was 23 very attractive and willing, it didn't
matter to him she had only recently married. More importantly it didn't
matter to her either! I was beyond belief; I had believed we split up
because I hadn't made a big enough effort but it appears I was on a
loser anyway. I ran off to Cambridge to see Julia as I often did when I
had problems. Julia and I are roughly the same age and both of us felt
we'd been badly treated by our partners and would often commiserate
with each other. On my return a day or so later I was to find that Jean
had sat at her typewriter and written the whole chain of events out in
intimate detail, even describing how he inserted his dick in her at a
barbecue at a colleagues leaving party at a private house in Mayland. I
was so badly affected by this that for over a year I couldn't bring
myself to touch my own penis, not even to go to the toilet, I would
only touch myself with a face cloth or sponge to wash myself. I started
to drink a lot, turning up late for work and then leaving early, I even
kept a bottle of brandy at work and would take surreptitious mouthfuls
when I thought no one noticed. Eventually my work suffered and on a day
with curious connotations for me, Wednesday 6th June 1984, I was
sacked.

I drove home in a terrible state only to find Jean's bloody mother at
home yet again. I couldn't face either of them and went upstairs to the
bathroom. Standing in front of the mirror and seeing what a mess I'd
become I started crying again at which point Jean came to find me and
seeing the distress I was in told me that she'd made everything up
about the affair.

'It was all lies' she said, 'everything'.

'Why did you make it up then?' I asked.

'To hurt you!' was all she said, and then returned downstairs to her
mother.

That just made matters worse, I now knew she was a liar but on which
occasion, when she told me about Deacon or when she denied it? To this
day I've never known the answer and that is almost worse than believing
it had happened. That is in effect what I have spent the years since
thinking; it was the only safe thing to do!

tbc