… it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. — Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
§
Clearing out the cupboards I discovered an old brown envelope stuffed with letters that Heather and I wrote to each other before we married. Here’s one from me, undated:
Tuesday
Dear Heather,
I took out an old pad to write to you and discovered an old, unfinished, unsent letter home — written before your first trip to Mum & Dad’s:
Dear Mum & Dad,
Prepare to greet 2 friends & an angel next weekend. The angel’s name is Heather and she is attractive, intelligent & desirable. This sounds miraculous, I know, but perhaps she likes onions or something…”
I was wrong, I said — confirming my dubious sense of humour — it was leeks!
(I blame my mother and boarding school for my aversion to onions: slippery, unpleasant things that lurked in stews and the like. But I’m cured now.)
I signed off with Shakespeare:
What is love? ‘Tis not hereafter
Present mirth hath present laughter;
What’s to come is still unsure:
In delay there lies no plenty;
Then come kiss me, sweet & twenty,
Youth’s a stuff will not endure.
I love you, I said. And so I did.
§
I met Heather on a blind date organised by Ken. The venue was a folk club called the Poles Apart. I knew we’d be a foursome with Ken and Dianne but I had no idea whom I was meeting.
I vaguely remember the Poles Apart, and I suppose I remember the music. I remember what I was wearing because I was definitely overdressed. Heather says she was too, although I can’t remember her pastel blue fishnet stockings. I can’t remember a word she said — or we said — either. Only her eyes. Enthusiastic, lively, smart, engaged. Engaged with mine. I was smitten. I bought her a bunch of violets.
She seemed smitten too. She’d arrived with Ken and Dianne but we drove to her mother’s place, tiptoed in to avoid waking Mum and slept chastely on the lounge floor. We must have talked some more, quietly, and kissed. I remember the rug we slept under and her mother discovering us in the morning. She was remarkably calm about it.
§
Everything was different for our parents’ generation. Cliff and Dorothy had only known each other for a few weeks when he was transferred out of the district, and a few weeks after that he was training for military service. He was overseas for four and a half years and he came back battered in body and soul. Their letters were the chain that kept them together. Mum kept all of his, but hers are lost. I wish I had them.
Most of Cliff’s simply confirm that he was embarrassingly young, needy and in love — like me — but they tell a compelling story too, and although it took me 20 reticent years to read them I’m glad I did.
§
Unlike my parents I have no desire to share ours, but reading them is like reliving it all — the freshness, the youthful promise, the optimism.
This is from Heather to me on 21 August 1967:
On remembering the date I realise today is special. We’ve been engaged one month and known each other two.
We didn’t hesitate, we jumped! We’ve taken longer buying a car.
But, oh, the neediness. I’d barely spoken to a girl for the six months I’d been working on farms, and barely been out with one for four years. I never — have never — asked her about boys, but there were plenty of them round the Nurses’ Home. It was like a honey pot, I thought.
The fact that Heather was equally young and in love makes me feel a little better in retrospect — but as needy as me? As insecure? I’m not sure girls do needy — hurt, more like it.
§
We spent months burning the candle at both ends. Is that still a cliche? Those were the days when student nurses actually worked the wards. Heather was working shifts — mornings, afternoons, nights — and I was getting up to milk cows at 4.30am. Afternoon milking would finish at about 5pm, and, depending on Heather’s shift, I’d get cleaned up and head into town so we could spend the evening together.
There was a 10 o’clock curfew at the Nurses’ Home — unless one of the girls left the fire escape door open — and after dropping Heather off I’d often head to the White Lady on Fort Street to grab a burger and coke — and a scoop of chips. They were good burgers. Most of their clientele would have been drinking but I’d be on my way home.
I could hardly wake Des and Joan at that time of night, so it was straight to bed — taking a leak outside — and then that bloody alarm again.
§
So maybe it’s no wonder we argued. But about what? She smoked, and I didn’t like that, but apart from that I can’t remember. I argued with her brother Jim too, the first time we met. About Vietnam. He was in the Territorials and I was a conscientious objector. Heather said sometimes I was cold, distant. And her mother told her we made her feel like a stranger, and excluded her — we made only superficial contact with our surroundings. Tomorrow night give Mum a kiss and call her “Mum”, she wrote. For her mother this was the start of living alone.
§
But mainly we were head over heels in heedlessness. We were getting married! Heather, one of the stars of her nursing intake, dropped out a month before graduation. As for me, I was still recovering after my wheels fell off — farm work was my therapy.
We planned to marry in May 1968 — not quite the Summer of Love, but near enough — and I’d told Des and Joan I was leaving. But I had no job to go to. Jobs for single men were easier to come by, but married men were typically managers, like Des, or share milkers, and I had little experience.
We vaguely remember one rather befuddled old gentleman in an old house down country somewhere, who seemed ready to dump all his problems on us, but we walked away from that one.
And we had no money. No money. No prospects. No worries, we said — we’ll go to Australia. There’ll be work there.
No job, no ambition. The romance of dropping out…
§
The romance of dropping out? Not really. Remember, I’d dropped out of university twice, and when Heather phoned her mother to tell her she wouldn’t be graduating Joyce was quite rightly horrified.
We got married in St George’s Church in Takapuna on March 16th 19681. Heather’s Mum Joyce did the catering at home. Heather made her dress. Both were beautiful.
We had a professional photographer, and have only a couple of prints left. Ironic for people who built a business out of wedding albums.
We took the ferry to Waiheke for our Honeymoon after shaking the confetti out of our clothes in the public toilets.
When we went down to the hotel dining room for dinner my old Deputy Principal Paul Holmes was there with his new school’s First 15. Of course we had to say hello.
§
In fact we never went to Australia. My restless brother-in-law Keith had been managing Dad’s farm, but decided to uproot his family and see the world. He, Colleen and the kids were off to Britain, and I admired them for it. Luckily for us there was suddenly a vacancy on the family farm.
§
And here I am, rereading this on our 57th wedding anniversary. Reliving it — the freshness, the youthful promise, the optimism.
And thinking — that was then and this is now. We were deciding to spend our lives together. How did we do? Has it been disappointing? Have we been disappointing?
I’m not the one to ask. It was sobering to be reminded of my shortcomings, but they remind me of Heather’s qualities. If I get further into this work in progress I think you’ll see that it’s about us living our lives together. She‘s never stood in my way, she’s always supported me, and I’ve done my best to reciprocate.
We’ve been known to shout at each other. They say nothing is black and white, it’s shades of grey. But that’s not true — it’s colourful.
As Dickens says, of any life — imagine one day struck out of it, and think how different it would have been. I’m very lucky. And since you ask, I still love her.
- When she read this Heather pointed out that the 16th was the day of the My Lai massacre. ↩︎