My Mother My Mirror Page 14

  I was still vegetarian, but I sometimes cooked chicken or fish for Sam, which was something I had never done before. I could manage it provided it was reasonably pre-prepared and un-smelly and I didn’t have to do anything with it that made me squirm. It took me a while to get used to cooking for two rather than twenty odd as I had done in the ashram, but in time I began to enjoy finding out what Sam liked and making special things for him. I also baked fruit cakes, chocolate cakes, flapjack, shortbread, and sometimes wholemeal bread. All in all, our home was becoming very homely.

  20

  Marriage & Animals

  When we were in America, Sam had been nostalgic for England: the greenness, the softer, less money-orientated society, and most of all the dear old school-friends he had been missing for the last twelve years. Now that we were back, he did very much appreciate the green trees and plants, especially some of the magical places on the edge of Dartmoor, but some of his school-friends seemed to be a bit of a disappointment, and I was beginning to realize that Sam was nostalgic by nature, wherever he was. Sure enough, after a while he began to miss America, and in particular he would tell me stories about the Golden Retriever he had owned a few years back: how he had been able to carry three tennis balls in his mouth at once, what a fine time they had racing in and out of the surf on Malibu beach.

  I had never owned a dog and tended to prefer cats, but because I loved Sam and wanted to make him happy, one birthday I sought out a litter of Golden Retriever puppies and took my pick. Even to me, they were gorgeous: all silky with floppy ears and big paws and an irresistible look in their eyes. I found a box and made lots of air holes, put an old cardigan in the bottom and wrapping paper on the outside with a big bow ready to tie up at the last minute, then puppy and I drove to Plympton to meet Sam.

  He had been away on some work-related training course, which had given me time to make all the arrangements in secret. Somehow I managed to present him with the box without the contents making themselves too obvious, and he undid the bow and reached inside to find his wonderful, heart-melting surprise. Sam had owned a little dog as a child too, a faithful friend and companion on many adventures, until his mother had him put down... another trauma that made my heart bleed for him. So this special brand new puppy thrilled him to bits.

  We called him Barclay, because I paid for him using money from our Barclaycard, though later on it got changed to Buckles, which rolled more easily off the tongue. The whole business of money and earning and debt eventually became quite a problem, but at this stage a bit of credit seemed a light-hearted matter and we thoroughly enjoyed the treats that shiny bit of plastic helped us to afford. Buckles became an important member of the household, as dogs do. We bought him a basket and a lead and bowls and stocked up with dog-food. I made a ramp up to the scullery window, through a missing pane and down the other side into the back garden, then we spent hours stuffing old doors, planks and branches into the hedge so that he couldn’t get out, none of which ultimately made any difference.

  I remember his tender young paws trampling a patch of nettles and Buckles coming back to the house squealing and dancing with stings. I liquidized some dock leaves and bathed his feet in the juice; I’m not sure if it helped, but at least I felt I was doing something. Snooks, now well on the way to becoming a fully grown cat, was of course outraged to start with, and treated the newcomer with raised fur, lots of hissing, and more often than not just running away; but within a week or two they were more or less used to each other, Barclay sniffing him all over, Snooks maintaining his dignity by giving him the odd biff on the nose.

  We decided to get married. It made sense. We were making a home together; it was becoming annoying having different surnames for banking and so-forth. I knew things weren’t perfect, but it seemed we had put all our eggs in each others’ baskets, as it were, so a commitment would be appropriate. Besides, as you probably realize by now, I am a die-hard romantic, and for better or worse, to me romance was a good enough reason for anything.

  It was me who initially decided it would be a good idea. That was something I did in our relationship: I made decisions, because Sam was not so good at it. I was the one who tried to make things more structured, more grounded, to bring ideas down from the airy heights of ‘maybe’ and ‘one day’ and ‘what if’ and ‘ideally’... plans, dreams, fantasies... where Sam dwelt a lot of the time. My approach was: let’s do this, this and this and then take it from there. It was good for me to have this role. I was a dreamer myself, but Sam was so much more of a dreamer that I felt quite solid and realistic in comparison.

  Sometimes when he was upset about something he would wax lyrical for hours (yes, many hours!) about the injustice or annoyance or unfairness of the situation; I would search my heart and rack my brains for a solution, and then when I finally told him my brilliant idea he would be quite insulted. It was as if to him, the mental realm was far more interesting, stimulating and relevant... He wasn’t actually looking for an answer!

  Anyhow, it certainly wasn’t a matter of him asking me on bended knee, but when I suggested it he liked the idea, so we arranged a date at the Kingsbridge Registry Office. My last wedding having been such a big affair, and him having sworn a vow of lifelong celibacy, we decided to make it very small this time. We didn’t even let our parents know, but asked one of Sam’s old school-friends and his wife to be our witnesses. They were brilliant: signed in all the right places, brought a camera along, and flowers, and a bottle of champagne which we shared with them and Terry back at the house.

  I have photos of Sam and I outside the front door, holding Buckles like a baby, with huge tiddly grins on our faces. I am wearing a blue and white Indian dress – not as resplendent as the one at my first wedding, but pretty nevertheless. Sam is looking dapper in a smart jacket and trousers. The sun is shining, there are roses growing round the door, and we look good together.

  Bit by bit we added to our family. In Slapton post office we noticed a magnificent tabby cat lying on the counter: the biggest cat I had ever seen. We asked the shopkeeper where he came from and she directed us to another farm where we found a Siamese mother cat who had been sired by one of these great big tabbies and had a very interesting litter of kittens. We picked out a little creamy ball of fluff with faint silver stripes and another slightly larger, more Siamese-looking one, and took them home.

  Sam decided to call the big boy Meerschaum, because he was the colour of a Meerschaum pipe, and the little girl we called Smidgen. They had opposite personalities: Schaum was definitely the dominant cat and would beat up his little sister on a daily basis, just to show who was boss. He even gave poor, humble Snooks a pretty bad time, which was a bit rich considering it had been Snooks’ territory in the first place. He grew up to be an exceptionally large, strong Siamese with a loud voice and bucketfuls of attitude, but also a very loyal and affectionate nature.

  Smidge, on the other hand, was timid to the point of paranoia. She had a habit of following you to a door and then waiting there when you wanted to close it, terrified that it might get closed on her. Of course in the end you got impatient and closed the door, and this was usually the moment that she made a dash for it, so fulfilling her darkest fears and catching her tail – or even her body – in the closing door. But she was sweet and friendly and spent many hours purring contentedly on my lap.

  They teased Buckles mercilessly, leaping out at him, attacking his nose, wrapping their front legs round his snout and kicking with their back legs at his great shaggy throat, all of which he took in good humour, generally indulging them like a large, benevolent uncle. They also attacked our new Hessian wallpaper. One day when we were out they had a whale of a time tearing up and down, almost all the way to the ceiling. And tearing was what they did: there were threads hanging off all over the place, which was a shame; but it was worth it for all the fun they gave us.

  As time went by the kittens became cats and everyone got used to each other. I remember constructing a network
of tunnels at the back of the house, from the coal shed to the lean-to where Buckles had his basket, in which Schaum would often join him for a snooze. I can’t quite remember now why it was so complicated: I think I wanted the cats to be able to come and go but not the dog, and then later on for the cats to stay out at night, because Schaum had a habit of yowling in the early hours.

  Later still it got even more complex because I tried to introduce two new kittens to the household: coal-black Griffin and his snow-white sister, both of whom had Siamese blood. But this was a disaster from the beginning. Schaum made his feelings clear by leaving home, and even though we had spotted him once or twice in the fields behind the house, he refused to return until after I had taken them to a car boot sale and found them somewhere else to live. Losing Schaum was too distressing, so in the end we resigned ourselves to having just three cats.

  In the summer we would go for walks with Buckles, across two fields at the back of the house and down to the creek where ancient oak woods came down to the edge of the water, or sometimes all the way down to the beach. If it was a short, local walk then Meerschaum would usually come along too. Buckles was pretty undisciplined, but to start with I put it down to his exuberant youth. Only later, when it became a problem, did I realize just how much training a dog needs, and that really Sam should have been giving him a lot more attention. I’m sorry to say that, not being overly keen on dogs in the first place, I ended up getting very impatient with him, when really it was not his fault. On the positive side, he taught me to be more assertive; and the three of us had both touching and playful times together.

  We spent the long winter evenings all gathered in the living-room with thick velvet curtains drawn over the windows and bulky fabric sausages shoved up to the bottom of the doors to keep out the draughts; but we soon found we had to leave a bit of a draught so that the fire could draw air up the chimney... In fact the amount of cold air required to stop the room being filled with smoke was about the same as the amount of warm air that could have been produced by the fire! So after failing to be cosy in the front room adjacent to the kitchen, we installed a log burner in the other front room: the one that we slept in when we first moved in, because it took the least amount of work to make it habitable. We had papered it with the lovely hessian wallpaper with silhouettes of trees in the background, which now had little dangly bits all over it as well. Buckles would stretch out in front of the stove, getting longer all the time; Schaum would wedge himself between the dog and the stove, Snooks would find a bit of carpet somewhere to the side and Smidge would usually curl up on my lap.

  Often I would be sewing – either making curtains or cushion covers for the house, or mending clothes. Sam always had a little pipe on the go – a hippy habit he had never managed to completely let go of, even when playing the role of renunciate mahatma. Sometimes he would play the guitar and sing songs that he knew or had written. Often he would work on designs for battery-operated model aeroplanes, which he could invent from scratch, being familiar with aerodynamics and good at imagining things in three dimensions. And of course he would talk. He always had new ideas, opinions, observations, new things to discuss. I loved his intelligence, his appreciation of the natural world, his determination, strength and wisdom, and his intense loyalty to our mutual dream.

  21

  Little Red Plane

  After four years in the Civil Service, Sam was made redundant. We had known it was coming, because they were shutting down the whole department, but it wasn’t until it happened that he seriously began to wonder what to do next. He was to be given £10,000 redundancy payment, so we weren’t going to be left completely high and dry: a lot of possibilities opened up before us.

  He approached the situation as he did every other, from every angle and with a dazzling variety of moods and ideas. He prayed to God, resolved to put on his suit and go out selling something, pined for the good old days, went wild with excitement about a new sort of aeroplane he was inventing that could make millions, decided to publish his poems, investigated pyramid selling... and even thought about getting another job!

  What he did in the end was probably the most unlikely thing of all, though in retrospect kind of inevitable. He bought an aeroplane. I suppose we hadn’t begun to talk about babies at this time – or even if we had, it somehow didn’t sink in to either of our brains that by far the most sensible thing to do with that money was to put it towards a house. My priority was to support him: he was always telling me that if I truly believed in him, there was no end to what he could achieve.

  He created glorious visions of the future we could have, if we just followed our own inspiration and were true to our inner calling. We didn’t have to do things the way other people did – we were better, more enlightened – we could see how things really should be, and go our own way... So when he began to tell me about a small, red Piper Cub, to begin with I told him I didn’t think this was the best use we could make of the money, but after his angry disappointment at my lack of understanding, I returned to my supportive role.

  I did think it romantic and daring. On the sunny day that it flew over the house, so close that I could wave to Sam and his co-pilot as they went by, I knew that I would never forget that surreal moment; and the couple of times I went up in it were exciting. But let’s face it, it was totally impractical. There was the cost of parking it, of petrol, of repairs, navigation equipment, lessons necessary to renew his British pilot’s license... But there was nothing more I could say: he would have to realize it for himself. Of course this took time, and the plane continued to be a drain on our already diminished resources for the next couple of years.

  There followed a frenzy of looking at advertisements and asking around, trying to figure out what to do next. He found it hard to tow the line and compromise his ideals for a company or an employer. He thought about setting up on his own as a teacher, but part of the agreement with the Skills Centre in Plympton had been that he wouldn’t do this for a set period of time. In the end it was the finance companies that offered the most hope, mainly because a lot of the jobs were commission-only, so they were much more willing to take risks in employing people. So he donned his suit and tie and geared himself up for the thankless task of selling financial packages.

  Something else that happened a few months after Sam losing his job was that Mark, my ex-husband, moved down to Devon in order to put his children in the local Steiner School. We spoke on the phone, then arranged to meet at a riverside pub in Tuckenhay, a few miles from Totnes. Mark had brought me two presents, each in their own pretty box: a silver brooch of a dancing fairy, and a picture of him and me in a round, silver frame. We chatted easily, and he told me he had always loved me. I got the feeling his marriage was proving to be a bit of a challenge, as was mine. Suddenly I felt nostalgic for this kind, down-to-earth man, and began to have romantic feelings for him – strange though it may sound - for the first time. What a refreshing change from all the striving, the drama and the criticism that I had been living with. Mark was working in his father’s building firm and doing well. Like Sam he had a party-going, fun-loving, irresponsible side, but he was also able to function reasonably well in society; in fact compared to Sam he seemed wonderfully well-balanced.

  We didn’t see much of each other after that – just the occasional drink or visit – but meeting him again had been enough to make my heart feel painfully divided. I kept it to myself for a while, but I have never been very good at hiding my feelings... or rather, perhaps because I hid my feelings so well as a child I have had an enormous aversion to it ever since... So I told Sam about my conflict, and he ranted and raved and was far from sympathetic.

  That Christmas Eve we were having a particularly bad time talking about it (Why was it always the occasions that should have been the most special that were especially awful?!) and at some time close to midnight Sam suddenly picked up the phone and rang Mark, asking him if he was having a happy Christmas. Mark rather tentatively said that h
e was, to which Sam replied, “Well we’re not!” and proceeded for the next three quarters of an hour to tell him all the reasons he had spoilt it for us.

  But I slowly recovered, and tried my best to be a dutiful wife. I was still working, but didn’t earn all that much, and Sam was struggling. Much though he tried to believe in endowment policies, premiums, budgets and funds, it really wasn’t his thing. Sometimes he managed to forget about it all and work on his models. He had begun to make a prototype bladeless turbine as designed by Nicola Tesla, and it involved carving polystyrene in order to get the curved shape. There were little bits of polystyrene everywhere, which I was constantly hoovering up. There was also endless pale dog hair, which could only be removed by getting down on my knees with wet hands and rolling it into lumps. Sometimes we argued about domestic duties, but it made no difference: I always did most of the household jobs. In the end I let it go: at least it meant I was in charge of the environment and could decide what went where and how to arrange things.

  But there were still lots of things that we agreed on and enjoyed together, and one of these was our domestic animals. By this time we had a small crowd of pretty bantams pecking around in the yard next to the house. I loved to throw them a crust of bread and watch the mad sort of rugby match that ensued. One proud bird would grab the bread and make a run for it, with all the others dashing with their funny top-heavy two-legged waddle and mobbing him all in a crowd, until one of them had seized the prize and set off again towards another corner of the yard with the others in hot pursuit. This could go on for quite some time, with each individual only getting one beakful, until at last there was nothing left to fight over.

  They laid eggs, of course, and we tried to get them to lay them in places we could find them, by keeping them in the barn at night. The barns around two sides of the yard were owned by the same lady farmer who rented our house to us, and though they were sometimes used by a thatcher as storage for his supplies, it was fine for us to use them too.