CHAPTER SEVEN – THE WEDDING AND EXMOUTH HONEYMOON YEARS
The deep love secretly forged on the sandy beaches and in the leafy lanes of South Devon led to a wedding, which was unbelievably modest considering its huge significance to the bride and groom.
Instead of the lavish occasion my mother could have expected in her future had she returned to Edmonton and her promised career, there was a simple ceremony attended by a handful of family members, at least one of whom believed that the union was ill-conceived.
It might well have not taken place at all had it not been for the unstinting support and encouragement given to the young couple by Great Uncle Hugh and Great Aunt Mim, now enjoying retirement after the years running Southlea School in Great Malvern.
Their thatched cottage in Church Lane, Great Comberton, had often been my mother’s haven since her return from Paris and it was from there that on Wednesday, September 11, 1935, she walked the short distance up to the village’s St Michael’s Church and her longed-for marriage to her man, conducted by her Uncle Frank’s brother, the Rev Harold Scallon.
The wedding arrangements had been made by my father with typical precision, detailed on hand-written notes, which included the arrival times of the family guests on the Tuesday and dinner that evening at the historic Angel Inn and Posting House in nearby Pershore.,
.
Wedding Arrangements
Wednesday, Sept 11th
J.R.G. picks up Hunts at Church House, Worcester at 10.40am and brings to church arriving at West Gate.
Revd. Harold Scallon & wife & Frank Scallon arrives Church (West Gate) at 11.15.
P.R.G. with Van (?) and Eileen arrive at Church at 11.20 (West Gate)
M.N.W. driven to church at 11.10
11.28 A.E.W & Bride to Church.
During Wedding J. Lewis fetches Bride’s luggage and puts in J.R.G.’s car.
Puts all cars except Bgrooms in Rectory Drive
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After Wedding
B & Groom Drive off
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Wedding Lunch, Angel at
12.15 approx.
My parents’ first night together was at a hotel in Honiton, Devon, but the all-too short honeymoon was spent at the Regents Palace Hotel in London – ironically the same hotel that my father had warned my mother about a year previously as being “notorious for strange men.”.
What the hotel receptionist would not have known was that the confident young man checking in had borrowed the cost of the room from his bride of a few days.
But I am certain that money or the lack of it was the last thing on their minds as they strolled hand in hand, enjoying the sights and sounds of the capital, together at last as man and wife.
Back in Devon, they set up home in Exmouth, initially in a rented flat, and their fortunes improved when Grandfather Percival retired through ill health to move with Marian to an apartment at San Remo Towers, Boscombe in Dorset – he died there in February, 1945.
My father had handled much of Grandfather Raymond’s work as his condition declined, but he still had to fight hard to replace him and it was probably my mother’s forceful intervention, which swung the balance with the association’s committee, which included Basil Drewe, brother of the constituency MP Cedric (later Sir Cedric) Drewe, who my father grew increasingly to despise.
They eventually moved into a rented cottage, Gablecote in Brixington Lane near Woodbury Common, and so began their honeymoon years, filled with the warm companionship and joyful fun that marked the whole of their married life.
There were idyllic picnics on the beach – my mother recalled how on Coronation Day, May 12, 1937, they wrapped a sixpence in silver paper, no doubt from a cigarette packet, and buried it in the sand, returning a year later to excavate it with great glee.
There were also car journeys around the constituency and motor-cycle journeys to further-flung parts in Somerset and Dorset (they weren’t allowed to take the Conservative association’s car out of the division).
On one trip to Weston-super-Mare my mother decided to go for a swim and was horrified when she emerged from the sea to find that her new, brilliant white bathing costume had been turned nearly black by the resort’s trademark mud.
At one stage, my father decided that it would be better for her to travel in a sidecar, but she found it transferred every bump in the road to her back and filled up with noxious fumes, so she consigned what she called “the lethal chamber” to history and went back to pillion riding.
There were also trips across the estuary to Dawlish Warren in their small sailing dinghy, Ganduff, named after their nicknames for each other – Gander (my father) and Duffins (my mother). His other nickname for her was Fig or Figgy from Figgyduff pudding.
My father always liked going to pubs to drink beer, a habit that never left him, and my mother usually accompanied him, but very often she was consigned to a pokey snug bar “with a stuffed owl” while the men enjoyed themselves in the main saloon.
Sometimes she was even left in the car with a glass of port, while he drank convivially inside, and on one night my mother was less than pleased when he parked her outside a bank and she ended up being inspected by a torch-wielding suspicious policeman.
On another occasion he thought to give her a treat by adding a tot of brandy to the port, but when he returned to the car some time later my mother said she had poured it away because it tasted “funny”.
My father loved music from Fats Waller to Benny Goodman – a gene I thankfully inherited from him, but in my teenage years our differing tastes could lead to major arguments and great was my rejoicing when on a rare joint visit to the cinema he saw King Creole and learned to appreciate the God-given gift of Elvis.
Where I am a lazy musician, starting to learn but not persevering with the guitar, banjo and harmonica, my father was always playing some instrument or another, whether the piano accordion or his excellent Aristone guitar, now donated to my brother-in-law Dave Laws.
He also enjoyed the ukulele and on occasion declared his ambition to play it on the top of Dartmoor’s Hay Tor at midnight. This he achieved, my mother as ever accompanying him in the car, but not joining him on the ascent.
There was only one element missing in their otherwise contented lives and in 1939 their undoubted happiness was completed by the arrival of my brother, Hugh.
In Paris when my mother knew she was falling in love with my father, she had decided to see a doctor to discuss the possible dangers of first cousins marrying and having children
The doctor told her that if both partners were healthy they had no reason to worry,
but if there were previously inherited genetic problems these would be doubled.
Hugh, a lusty rosy-cheeked baby, was born on June 2, 1939, in the middle of a long spell of warm weather and his pram became a regular feature in the garden against a background of laburnum blossom.
My parents spent a lot of time in the company of their great friends, Ron (RF) Delderfield*5 and his wife, May, and my mother would sometimes be invited to read through the manuscripts for his celebrated novels or plays prior to publication.
However my mother always said that Mrs Delderfield had had “miscarriage after miscarriage” and that if it had happened to her, everyone would have blamed it on the first cousins’ relationship.
My father was obviously overjoyed at the birth of his son, but ever-mischievous suggested that the child could be the progeny of “Sansom’s man” – the fellow who delivered their weekly grocery order from Exmouth.
Thanks to my mother’s inveterate hoarding I can now look through her weekly tally of shopping, preserved in a slim green ledger, all items carefully listed, allowing a tantalising glimpse of their household outgoings and their favourite foods.
Their family by now also included a black and white female cat, Boots, which had a roaming nature over the surrounding countryside and attracted a queue of tom cats to their door and an inevitable flow of kittens.
Until homes could be found for them, my mother used to nest the kittens in an open chest of drawers and she remembered one special character, she called the Little Pickle, who was so fat he had be exercised by being rolled on his back and having his tummy tickled.
Her ministrations obviously worked as the Little Pickle lived to become a healthy, adorable cat, as a letter from his new owners to my parents several years later was to prove.
Sadly not all the kittens were so lucky and those left unadopted after a few weeks were gently but efficiently drowned by my father in a pail of warm water – my friend, Sue Loder, will no doubt be horrified.
Happy as their days in South Devon were – not withstanding the feline euthanasia - they could not escape the ever-darkening shadow of war, which was soon to engulf the planet and tarnish the lives of them and so many others.
The long outstretched arm of fascism even reached the main street of Exmouth, where the Berni brothers - later to start a successful chain of restaurants, which would change the eating habits of the nation - could be seen marching up and down in black shirts.
My mother’s dismay at this naked display of Right Wing extremism would probably not have been tempered even had she known that her beloved Uncle Hugh was distantly related to Sir Oswald Mosley, founder of the British Union of Fascists, who was interned in 1940.
Despite the growing talk of an impending world war and debate about which nations might be dragged into the conflict, my father never lost his sense of humour, saying at one stage in 1939 – “I expect Turkey will be in by Christmas.”
It was and so was he when after war was declared, he decided that it was his duty as a Conservative agent to enlist – it also meant that a promised cash bonus for a planned General Election campaign never materialised.
So ended their honeymoon years in Exmouth, with my father off to a Royal Army Service Corps training camp and my mother and Hugh, by now nicknamed Lickle, off to an increasingly uncertain future in London, where they would endure the perils of the Blitz and long anxious years of separation.