It had been the usual hot, humid, sticky day up at Magill in the old wooden shack house on stilts that Virginia had bought, leaving me and my madness down in the more pretentious atmosphere of Kensington Gardens. But this was after, long after the upheaval, after her two years in England, after the birth of our fifth child, a daughter.
Virginia had returned issuing me, immediately, a summons from a solicitor, demanding her children back. Never had time to rationalise, being in no condition to think about anything other than she was back and I, immediately, totally intimidated by her presence. Charlie desperately tried to prop me up, saying how well the boys looked, which indeed they did, everyone remarked. They called me "Sir". Charlie stood no nonsense scrubbing them until they shone. Everything was at the double, pure Teutonic thoroughness. I was the weak link. Try as she may, Charlie could not get me to defend the house, her and the children. My indoctrination by the Australians had been complete, they had convinced me with their money, their manner, their speech, their attitude, that I was little more than someone who's antecedents needed investigation by private detectives... no stone of my past be left unturned ... a nothing ... had gone a long way in succeeding in weakening me.
Endemic poverty and degradation of the British Working Class during the thirties had been little comfort to me. Along with every other person, meniality was accepted cheerfully, the rule of the rich, our 'Betters'..... unquestionable, ingrained in us from our first breath. ..."God save the King" stamped hard on us. My grandfather standing, his tall frame, rigidly to attention, saluting whenever and
wherever he heard that particular piece of insidious propaganda.
No, I was easy meat for Virginia, the Australians, those in the higher echelons of Society. I had taken their daughter, one destined for Murdock. I, a solitary sailor, with only his hands, had swept into her life, firing her enthusiasm, her imagination, a fresh breeze. She would, momentarily put her Clarinet to one side, her loneliness, her isolation with it. She became everything nobody expected of her. A woman that had never looked at any male before, determined, above all, on this issue, to have her say, her way, defiant to all pleas, threats, cajoling, promised of Paris, she made it quite clear she wanted the sailor and no other.
So be it. World without End... Amen.
Virginia's mother never quite gave up, the 'engagement' ring I bought her daughter, such a small, sad piece of Gold with its tiny diamond, something that was to be returned to me very many years later, something that would again almost bring me down, but I twisted it. The long expanse of time had worn it wafer thin at the base. Jennifer to see this pathetic package, turning out my desk. She tried it on, fitted, curiously, I thought, perfectly.
Jennifer had no qualms about what happened when she was a small child, demanding to be given it, there and then. Knew what she was about. Had the ring rebuilt with considerable misgiving. To my knowledge it never left her body once I obediently put it on the third finger of her right hand. A strange young woman.
Mrs. Howard had approached the subject of the ring very quietly in the large room overlooking the shaded garden, the purple bougainvillea swaying about the window in the soft afternoon breeze. No one else in the house. Virginia at the University, her sister riding the huge horse that had taken considerable dislike to me and showed it.
Silence in Desaumarez Street.
Mrs. Howard had lived alone with her two daughters since her Husband had died many years ago. She was shrewd and politically motivated, not taking kindly to Virginia's attacks on her political stance, especially when they were published in the newspaper. All this to one side. Put quietly to me that it would "perhaps be better if the ring were worn about Virginia's neck on a chain”..... No comment, knowing full well that I had no say in the matter, that she would not be able to get to her daughter through me ..... Virginia, above all, a very strong character ... Her mind never diverted once made up ... so who was I?
Virginia possessed no apparent weaknesses, her thinking not eroded by the darkness, death and confusion of War. Nothing had disturbed the silence, her ordered life, the tranquillity of her room overlooking the garden, her piano, her musical instruments, her books, her manuscripts ... nothing.... until she met Peter..
Mrs. Howard made tea for two out on the lawn, an every afternoon ritual in her life ... a something totally unheard of in mine ... Of course I had seen people at the pictures, at the Pavilion in Mare street, my Father with the night off, one and ninepence for a seat in the back. Ices, chocolates, cigarettes in the interval ... a make believe World far... so very far from Hackney. Had observed the ritual very closely, how to take the offered cake, with a poised tea cup in one hand, a saucer in the other....
Charlie had waited like a ghost in the background of my existence, would run to her at each ensuing crisis. The birth of my Daughter had done nothing to weld together the remnants of Virginia and myself. Charlie accepted the child as a for gone conclusion, as if aware the whole situation simply a matter of time and disintegration...how much more damage two people could do to each other.
On that last day she had waited apprehensively for me knowing even with tickets to England in her bag I could still fall down on the situation.
A tight atmosphere on my appearance at the old shack house. The boys, strangely quiet, Virginia never speaking to me now ... not any more ... no more words for us. She would always be busy in the back garden ... Just the children ... I would visit them occasionally ... Timothy, the eldest, six, holding Narissa, the youngest, ten days, in his arms, rather an unusual look on his face, a premonition perhaps amongst all of them ,it finally over, the fighting, shouting, my uncontrollable temper... all ended. Drove slowly away, down the hill towards the main road ... never looked back.
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