Changing Speed

CHAPTER TWO: WHERE WE WENT

It wasn't until we had gotten ourselves engaged that my mother, without intention, told us of an amazing coincidence. She had first met my girl's mother some weeks before either of us was born. Indeed they had met at the hospital in which we both would see our first light of day, myself fifteen days earlier than my girl. It was plainly evident that some of our troubles had had their nucleus from that meeting. Neither of our mothers had liked the other, for what reason we would never discover. Indeed neither had been willing to acknowledge that they had even met the other until after we were engaged and then it was just by chance.

I'm told I was quite academically gifted at school, not that I ever really cared. I remained there until I was eighteen. I was never given the choice nor gave thought to do anything different. My brother had studied hard for his seven O'levels and three A'levels whereas I had not and yet somehow had achieved a better showing, unfair though it clearly was. I was offered a place at the same university as he had graduated from but being away from my girl was not an option that I took seriously. I wasn't looking to give those around us the opportunity to ensure we stayed apart. I knew that she would not break away from her parental bondage until after we married. I decided to leave full-time education and, for no other reason than my career officer said it would be suitable, went to work in a bank. The work there was tedious. Any intelligence I had, instead of alleviating the workload as it had done at school, served only to intensify the boredom.

Together we saved hard and amassed the deposit required to buy our first home. It was an old semi- detached house by the side of a busy road and opposite a notorious inner city council estate. Nonetheless it was ours. The ten o'clock curfew was extended to ten-thirty and weekends were brought into the allowance so that we had time to decorate the run down property. Co-habiting, common place as it was, was not up for negotiation. Anything else would have to wait until after we were married and still I respected that, just.

We married two months after our twenty-first birthdays. My girl deserved better than that day, much better. I'm sure that we would have waited until we were a little older but the rift between our families was intensifying and I felt that time was against us. Even my new father-in-law's short speech was interpreted as being antagonistic by one of my many uncles brought out for weddings and funerals. I have numerous such relatives propagated by the traditional procreation requirements of Catholicism. Had it not been for my wife's grandfather, a down to earth warm- hearted man, our wedding day would have seen feelings violently explode. If we could have scripted the day then my wife would have wanted to repeat it. We couldn't and I didn't.

We had no honeymoon. It didn't matter to me at the time. Being a loner throughout much of my teens had taken its toll. I thought more of my feelings and assumed that my wife would feel the same. I had what I wanted. She was mine. I'd waited long enough. She was everything for me and I could see nothing ever changing that.

Life was great being that naïve. We had just enough money to ensure that we had food and shelter. There were times I can remember going to use the shampoo and finding the contents of the bottle frozen solid and the times we would go to the supermarket. I would be taking things out of the shopping trolley and putting them back on the shelf as quickly as my wife was taking them off of the shelf and putting them in the trolley. I realise that people have harder times than we had, but the reality of the situation was that those times were fun. We had little in the way of material things but we had each other. That was enough then. I look back at those times and still I wonder what happened to change things. We were so very much in love.

The month after we married I left the bank. My wife said it was the right thing to do because I wasn't happy there. It was so easy. She said leave and I left. I took a job selling insurance. We thought that we had little money when I was working in the bank but at least the money that we did have was regular. Now we really didn't have any money. My wife was working at a jeweller. The pay was poor but she liked it. What she earned covered our new mortgage but it was planned that my wage would cover the other luxuries such as food. It didn't. My wife's mother started to appear with food parcels. She had only given our marriage six months before her daughter would be back at home. She mellowed. All that we had been through before seemed to have been forgotten. I had pride but I also had hunger. I accepted the gifts reluctantly but not too reluctantly that they might have been taken back. My mother would have described our existence as being hand to mouth should she have found out. We didn't tell her. She still had hope that I would see the error of my ways and carry on my education through to university. I'm sure she would have helped if I had asked her to but I would never have asked.