The Painted Altar

Chapter Thity-Two

Plot reminder: In order to gain a bursary for Cambridge University, Hilda has suggested to Vincenzo (Ettore) that they get married.

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I married Hilda Frecklington on Saturday 16th of July, 1949, and thereby committed the crime of bigamy.

It was the simplest of civil ceremonies, the whole occasion even more muted and austere than my first wedding. Hilda wore a lilac dress she'd found in a sale somewhere for twelve shillings; I, a suit I'd borrowed from Mr Habergham's brother-in-law and which hung off me as unflatteringly as the items I'd slipped from that back garden clothes line in September '43. There were no flowers. No swirl of organ chords. Other than ourselves and the presiding public official, attendance was completed by the legal minimum of two witnesses: Mr Habergham and his good lady wife Iris. When the official asked if any of the assembled knew of any reason why Hilda and I should not be united in wedlock, the only sound was the deafening squeal of my own conscience.

Afterwards, I bought a round of drinks in a nearby pub. As was his wont, Mr Habergham then bought a second. And a third, along with a bag of pork scratchings.

After that, we all went home. There was the afternoon milking to attend to.

*

Though as Hilda's husband I would of course continue to live on the farm, my imminent undergraduate studies would necessitate my absence for large chunks of the daytime hours. At no little financial sacrifice, the decision was therefore made to take on a full-time hand.

His surname I can no longer recall; something long and unpronouncable and typically Polish. Jozef was his first name, this usually shortened to Joe. A nice chap, if a little serious in that way Slavic people often are; it took at least half at a bottle of vodka before you'd see him crack a smile. A former airman, he'd fled his Nazi-occupied homeland to pilot Spitfires in the Battle of Britain. With me he never spoke of his war experiences however, nor I of mine with him. This is something I've noted on various occasions throughout the decades, that none are more mute than two war veterans together. The heat of battles fought, the images and sensations therin, hang like a bees' nest between. Best not prodded or stirred.

Based at the nearby RAF Wittering throughout the war, he'd afterwards found work at a paper plant in Cambridge, this where he'd met his fiancee Rita. Having grown up on a grain farm in the wide Polish plains south of Gdansk, he'd found it difficult to adapt to the more claustrophobic environment of the factory and had been eager to return to the land. Passing through the village one day he'd made enquiries at The White Horse, the locals pointing him in the direction of Woodside Dairy.

We paid him forty shillings a week and granted him Sundays off to visit Rita. The rest of the week he was accommodated in the pantry which we'd purposely gutted out and which had been just big enough to fit a bunk, bedside cabinet and small chest of drawers. Though a stoical and uncomplaining type, the makeshift nature of his lodgings in a two-bedroomed farmhouse had at first confused him.

"If you and Hilda are married," he asked me as we scrubbed out the stalls one afternoon soon after his arrival, "why don't you sleep together as God intends a man and his wife?"

To Hilda and I, the situation was so ridiculously simple, so perfectly natural, it mystified us that hardly anyone other than ourselves seemed to understand. To say ours was a union of irresistible passion would be wrong, yes, but neither was it some cold, soulless marriage of convenience. Despite the twenty-two years between us there had always been a certain level of physical attraction, right from the very first day. That we had never acted on it was to not put at risk the more overridng facet of our bond - that of our friendship, our mutual respect and affection. Rather than tear apart this unspoken contract, our marriage served to strengthen it.