SUNDAY IN MEMORY LANE (Episode 7)

1974 brought us the UK General Election during February and I was delighted when Labour managed to just tip the balance in their favour putting Harold Wilson into number 10 Downing Street.
Inflation was running at 17% and we were starting to feel the pinch, especially in the building trade. Although there was still a lot of work available, getting supplies to sites was becoming more difficult.
A series of national grid electricity blackouts during the winter was causing mayhem and these were followed by strikes over fuel prices by lorry drivers. They were even blocking the motorways so materials were delayed at construction sites all over the country.

There came a point when, after all the wages and expenses were paid, I could not feed the family.

While Tony was out at work, I had found our bank account in overdraft and that had to be corrected immediately. I walked from the bank straight down to the seafront and called into the Royal Hotel, the most prestigious hotel in Clacton-on-Sea, at that time.
I immediately acquired a job working as an evening Cocktail Lounge barmaid and persuaded Adele, my tenant upstairs, to care for Dan along with her own child, Joanne, who was just about two years old at the time.

I started that very evening and found the work incredibly boring, mainly because there were very few customers in the small, exclusive residents only bar.

When I got home around midnight Tony was furious.
He had found the note I had left, retrieved a meal from the oven and had collected Dan from upstairs, fed him, bathed together as usual and put him to bed.
He had spent the rest of the evening fuming with rage.
"What are you thinking? Being a barmaid, of all things!" he burst out between clenched teeth.

I explained the financial situation.
Generally Tony did not take any interest in money.
As long as he had enough to go out with the boys on a Friday and Saturday night and to pay his football team dues during the Sunday League morning match, he didn't even ask me about how the business finances were going.
He realised that he had not been earning a great deal recently but he assumed that I always had savings to cover us for any hiccoughs.
He finally, but very reluctantly, accepted that me taking a bit of temporary work was a wise decision.

We muddled by for the next few months and I continued to work evenings in the Royal Hotel, even though I hated it.
I was able to keep our bank account in credit, but only just. Tony was at home more and more as the tiles or felt or batten were missing from the sites he was supposed to be working on. He was becoming very bad tempered and bored at home.

Thankfully, he was able to get enough materials together to strip and retile our neighbour's house and he worked on it alone from a ladder going from just outside our back door up to the neighbour’s roof.
One day I heard him call me from the roof in a strangely quiet and strangled voice.
Dan had climbed the ladder and was standing almost at the top saying "Dada!" He was still in nappies, not even two years old and a fearless monkey. I watched as Tony reached him and calmly lifted him off the ladder. He carried him up to the apex of the roof to survey the town.
Dan was ecstatic.
I was barely conscious.

We tied a board over the bottom rungs after that little episode and Tony worked as fast as he could to finish our neighbour's roof.

During the summer months, shortly after Dan's second birthday party I was working as usual in the bar at the Royal cocktail lounge.
A smartly suited American guy came into the otherwise deserted bar and ordered a drink.
He asked me the standard chat up question:
"What is a nice girl like you doing working in a place like this?" I explained that my husband was a roofer and due to the strikes we were unable to get materials at the moment.
The big Texan asked a few more questions and then said casually "If your man can work on a roof, he can work on an oil rig" as he slid a business card across the bar to me. I picked it up and it stated that he was an executive from an American drilling company called Sedco. He told me to phone his secretary in Aberdeen as soon as possible and to give her my address. He said he would fast-track Tony onto an oil-rig.

To be honest, I didn't really believe that this would actually happen.
I was used to guys coming into the bar, being very self assured and telling fibs to impress me.
I wondered what on earth he was doing in Clacton of all places, but I never did find out. He left the bar after just one drink and I never saw him again.

When I got home that night I showed Tony the card and offered to make the call.
He was very interested. The following morning I phoned the secretary. Sure enough an application form arrived by the next post. I filled it in, added copies of Tony's passport and driving licence and posted it back to her immediately.
Within a week Tony was on a helicopter safety training course in Aberdeen, all expenses paid! He was sent offshore straight away and started his new career at the very bottom of the promotion ladder.
He had become a roustabout on the Sedco 706.

I carried on working at the Royal Hotel just until Tony's enormous salary reached our bank account the following month. I could not believe how much he was earning. He worked twelve hour shifts for fourteen days at a time and then he was home for fourteen days. There were additional payments for dangerous working conditions and all his travel expenses were covered.

He was able to keep Apex Roofing going during his time onshore and he was gaining contracts, employing his friends and was so proud of himself, he was bursting.

Big Chas liked the sound of the oil rigs and he wanted to give them a try, so Tony got him a job. He didn't last a week. He came back to Clacton saying that the rig was a rust bucket almost in the Arctic circle, the work was extremely hard, the weather frighteningly cold and he would never ever get into a helicopter again! Everyone admired Tony for braving what Chas was describing to us all.

Tony and I exchanged letters while he was away and I would try to keep him informed of all the gossip, all the local news and of how much Dan, Dylan, Nicki and I were missing him.

Out of the blue, while Tony was offshore one fine summer day, Lorraine knocked on my door. I was extremely surprised to see her. She said that she was arranging a "girlie" night out in Ipswich and did I fancy coming along as I must be lonely?

Female friends were something I lacked ever since I had moved to Clacton and I had become accustomed to being given the cold shoulder by most of the women in that town. Due, I assumed, to my always being in the company of the "jocks" as Tony and his friends were known.

I said that I would think about it and she asked for my phone number. She said that she would pick me up in her car and that there would be a couple of other girls coming too. She was planning to visit a nightclub.

I had not been to a nightclub since 1969 when I was seventeen and bunking trains to get to the famous Marquee Club in London’s seedy Soho. I was sorely tempted by the offer but also dubious.
Something triggered that sick feeling in the pit of my stomach again and I muttered something about needing a babysitter. I thanked Lorraine for thinking of me.

Adele shouted down from her flat upstairs, as I closed the front door, "Who was that?" and I went up to her flat to share a coffee and tell her all about it. Adele immediately said, "Don't be daft, go! You never go out and I can look after Dan, no problem!" She was a lovely, sweet hearted girl and I trusted her completely.
She was taking excellent care of the flat and it was always beautifully clean and tidy. I didn't like her boyfriend very much though. He seemed brutal towards her and Adele was often in tears but Jamie was another one of Tony's friends from Glasgow, so I had to tolerate him.

On the following Saturday evening Lorraine arrived with one other girl in the flash smoky blue Ford Capri sporty car which was her pride and joy. I got in the back as Lorraine made the introductions and we sped off to Ipswich, about 30 miles away.

Lorraine always, without exception, wore tight fitting, black trouser outfits, dyed her hair black and was incredibly slim. Her friend, Sue was similar looking but less intimidatingly dressed.

I felt like a fish out of water in the nightclub.
I danced but they did not.
I refused alcohol but they did not.
I wondered why Lorraine had invited me because they seemed to be talking about me, huddled giggling at the bar and more or less left me to dance alone.
When the time came to drive home I was quite relieved. I had not liked the place or the music they chose to play. Oddly, Lorraine insisted that I should sit in the front of the car on the return journey, saying that Sue was a bit drunk and needed to crash out in the back.

I soon discovered the real reason for this strange change of seating arrangements.

Lorraine began to tell me, while she was driving, that she was having an affair with Tony.
She went into detail.
Too much detail.

I sat in total silence observing the glitter of glee on her face as she delivered the worst thing I had ever heard in my life. I was thinking 'This is one almighty bitch'.
'She knows I can't physically tear her head off while she is driving'.
My blood ran hot and cold as I maintained a completely still expression. Getting no verbal reaction Lorraine decided to go for gold.
"I can prove it!" she slung out of the side of her mouth as we approached Clacton. "I will show you my diary! And what is more, I am not the only one he fucks around with!"

I got out of the car, with legs like jelly, on the driveway of her parents' house and we went indoors quietly. Lorraine's room was close to the front door on the right. Her parents were presumably in bed by the time we got there, well after midnight.

I do not know how I maintained my calm.
I may have been in shock and not realising it.
I honestly do not know.

Lorraine handed me a diary, open at a date during 1973, around the time that we had moved into our new house close to the town hall. The sordid details of every move that she and Tony had made were meticulously recorded. She had also noted lending money to him and when it was repaid.
Then I read more on the pages for the following Friday and Saturday nights and even occasional Sunday afternoons. Then a wet Wednesday and more and more until I could barely see for holding back the tears.

I walked out of that house in a numb silent trance.

As I heavily trudged the few hundred yards to my home I was thinking of all the nights that Tony had made love to this twisted vindictive woman and then, presumably, had come home and made love to me, immediately after.

There had barely ever been a night that Tony did not want to make love. It wasn't as if our lovemaking was interrupted by anything, not even my monthly periods.
Tony seemed to have an insatiable appetite and I had learned fast how to please him. I was not at all inhibited and never refused to make love. Why would I? I loved him.

As I approached my dark and silent house, I remembered that I had always believed him when he gave me his regular ‘sanctity of marriage’ lectures. I had found them cute and sometimes funny, there being no thought in my head about being unfaithful to him. Now I was realising that these lectures were born out of guilt on his part. He was not the guy I thought he was. Maybe Lorraine knew him better than I did?

Something profoundly important switched off in my soul that night.
Something that hurt me really deeply.