‘Not Marriage Material’ – Submission 5: A Near Miss, Thankfully by Shirley Read-Jahn

Not Marriage Material is an upcoming anthology of non fiction and poetry – submissions are currently open. More information can be found here.

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A Near Miss, Thankfully by Shirley Read-Jahn

On the verge of turning eighty, I’ve been looking back at my love-life. I’ve been married four times; I consider myself very good at it, ha! But then, if you’d put your trust in a man and married any chap who asked you because you reckoned you were in love, you’d have married every boyfriend you had, too, wouldn’t you? That is, if you were as trusting and gullible as me. Besides, back in the old days, at the age of twenty-four, your mother would have told you, too, that you were on the shelf, for Pete’s sake, so should marry the next man who asked you. You knew you really shouldn’t marry the man, but then, living in sin was an absolute no-no in those days of yore, so you had to marry the fellow, when you think about it, didn’t you?

I asked Mother, who was Pete, for Pete’s sake? She said, “Well, you can’t take the name of the Lord in vain, can you? St. Peter’s name is less offensive, isn’t it dear?” She always had an answer or comment on everything, even my boyfriends.

At the age of eighteen I met a young man at college in London. He was tall and skinny, as tall and skinny as me. Mother said when we hugged, she could hear our ribs and hip-bones scraping against each other. He had high cheekbones, dark brown hair, and huge, luminous brown eyes with long eyelashes. And could he dance! He was the king of the limbo. At our college hops, when Trinidadian music poured from our LP record player, I’d stare transfixed at this heavenly male creature as he bent backwards and, with those slim hips gyrating, pass himself under a bar held horizontally low to the ground. His arms stretched out in front or to the sides as he sexily danced, hips thrust forwards, while all we female admirers screamed, and the young males hollered in jealous admiration with each lowering of the bar for my idol to sway under.

By the end of our college studies, my sweetheart and I had become inseparable. Not only was this mesmerising man a good dancer but he could also tinker with cars. One of the favourites that he liked to work on was his beloved Messerschmitt KR200 microcar, shaped like a wingless aeroplane. We tooled around London in this tiny three wheeler, seated under its see-through domed roof, he in the front and me behind him. It was a marvel we weren’t run over by the huge red London buses careening around Hyde Park Corner as he drove us at high speed through the maze of London’s busy streets.

When not working, we patronised bars and Italian cafes in Soho for their fabulous coffee. There were so many clubs, pubs, and coffee bars to choose from. London was a magnet in the 1960s for all kinds of entertainment, and fashion. My love was a strutting clothes horse in any old outfit he threw onto his lean and sexy body. I dressed in Mary Quant or Biba mini-skirts, padded-shouldered jackets, and tall white go-go boots. Oh, were we stunning together!

Part of my studies of Romance languages called for me to spend a year or two in one of the European countries, working and perfecting its language. Finding a job in Spain, off I went to Barcelona, wearing a ring given to me by my sweetheart, carrying a promise of marriage upon my return. I believed he would wait for me—how could he not? We were madly in love. I hated leaving him but Mother said, “You must consider your career, darling. We women have moved on in life and don’t just marry, but work, too.” Well, that was a change from, “You must marry the next man who asks you!”

He flew out for a holiday with me in Sitges in the Costa Garraf, a small stretch of coastline nestled between the Costa Dorada and Costa Brava a little south of Barcelona. I was the nanny for the director of Renault cars in Barcelona and was charged with helping his staff take care of the six children. The family had a summer house in Sitges, a huge mansion with its own vast swimming pool, tall palm trees all around it with pink roses clambering up each tree. At night, spotlights lit up the palms and flowers and shone down turning the black tiles lining the pool below into glittering silver.

By 1965 my sweetheart wrote that he was driving a brand-new convertible MG Midget. He drove to Barcelona in the autumn of that year to bring me home to London. He told me he was still waiting to get his inheritance including the family’s antique diamond ring. When that happened, we would marry and drive off into the sunset in his MG Midget. Overjoyed, back in London, I threw myself into loving this man with every fibre of my being.

My fiancé loved to play rugby. He rang me one day to say he had broken his nose in a rugby scrum. I went to visit him in a London hospital. Sitting down on one side of his hospital bed, my alarm bells went off when I saw a girl sitting on the other side of my man’s bed. Who on earth was this young lady? His cousin? I knew it wasn’t his sister; I’d already met her. A ring, encrusted heavily with diamonds in what appeared to be a very old setting, sparkled on her finger. My fiancé’s face was completely bandaged but I watched his eyes moving anxiously from that girl’s face to mine, then back again, over and over. An awkward silence ensued as she and I stared at each other, then at our fiancé, each of us tenderly stroking the hand lying nearest us atop his sheet. I’d hardly arrived when the nurse announced visiting hours were over—but one person was permitted to have five minutes more with the patient. He pointed at the other girl. Naturally I demanded to know who she was. She said she was going to marry him. Gobsmacked, I said,

“But that can’t be. I’m his fiancée!” 

Now his eyes darted even more rapidly from me to her and from her to me. I shot up, glaring down at her, still seated rigidly at his bedside. The girl waved her hand at me, with its old diamond engagement ring almost weighing her finger down. I waved my ring finger back at her, bearing the silver and brown garnet that was to be but my temporary engagement ring. Now glaring furiously at them both, out I stalked from his hospital room. 

My friend Olivia had accompanied me on this visit, sitting at the end of his bed, her eyes moving in turn from the other girl to me and back again.

“Come along, Olivia, we’re obviously not wanted here!” I growled. Olivia followed me outside and I asked her to wait with me behind a tall bush next to the hospital’s exit door. 

“What was he thinking? How come she’s engaged to him, too? Oh, he’s broken my heart!” I wailed, hiding myself behind the greenery and pulling Olivia with me.

“No idea! Bloody nerve! He never even mentioned her to me while you were away. How could he DO that?” she hissed back at me.

When The Other Fiancée eventually emerged, I now set upon her with fury. Olivia forced us apart, then she and I frog-marched the girl to an espresso house in Soho where she cried and cried as I now let her have it verbally. It wasn’t her fault, I knew, but I was hurt, dismayed, and completely disgusted by his betrayal. Soon both she and I were engulfed in tears, as was Olivia. We three sat around a small table howling while the other customers shook their heads and tut-tutted.

When he was out of hospital, he came to me to tell me that he had to marry The Other Fiancée, although he really loved me. He said she was a little mouse and that I was too strong a woman for him. With her, he said he could be the head of their household. Besides, he told me, she’d declared that she would commit suicide if he didn’t marry her. Such manipulation, such foolishness! Even knowing that, I masochistically took it upon myself to spend many an evening outside his flat in Holland Park, sitting on someone’s steps across the road, bawling, while watching the shadows of the two of them embracing behind his white drawn blinds. 

My ex- fiancé and The Mouse were married. I was not invited. Olivia attended the wedding. She said that when the vicar asked him if he would take the girl to be his wedded wife, my love remained silent. The vicar asked the question again. After a long moment, and with sadness in his low voice, he whispered “I do.” 

Many years passed. I moved to Greece where I met an American naval officer working in Intelligence and married him in 1968. My mother had commanded me to marry the next man who asked me, and to ensure this time he didn’t leave me at the altar. His nickname was Skip. In every blue airmail letter that my mother wrote to me, she always got his name wrong [an omen, perhaps?] by asking in her last paragraph, “And how is our dear Spud?”

By 1980 Skip and I had been living in San Francisco for some time. Twelve long years had passed but the marriage had not survived. I still thought of my old love here and there and wondered occasionally how his life had turned out. 

By 1982 I remarried, hoping against hope, that this next man would finally be the right one, praying fervently to not let me have made another mistake! By 1984 I bore my one and only child, a son, to become known by all as my Golden Boy. 

In 1986 I heard that my mother in England was very ill. I flew back to England from San Francisco, baby in tow, to stay at Olivia’s house in Camden Town. My sister flew to London from Sydney with her youngest child, also to stay at Olivia’s. I had been happily married to my son’s father for four years and we had created Jazz in the City, later to become The San Francisco Jazz Festival [now known as SFJAZZ]. 

Olivia had always stayed in touch with my old sweetheart hence he knew of my return to London. He drove up from Somerset and phoned me at Olivia’s to invite me to walk with him across Hampstead Heath. He told me he had something very important to ask me. We walked for some hours in the evening in the dark, stopping to rest occasionally on benches under old gas lamp-style lights while he told me of the mistake that he’d made in not marrying me, how sorry he was, how he’d even given his three children the names we’d planned to give the children we knew we’d have together. How, if he’d married me, he felt he could have become something, someone more important in his world, someone happier, someone whom all would admire. 

He’d given HIS three children “our” names—oh, the nerve of it! Suddenly needing to get home, to stop this line of talking, I had him walk me back to Olivia’s. At the top of her front steps, we stood silently in a pool of light, hearing moths batting their wings within the overhead glass lantern. He took hold of my shoulders, turning me to face him. Now clasping my hands, he asked me,

“Fly away with me, to Kenya, I have friends and family there. Please! We could leave our respective lives and start over.”

I was gobsmacked. The man must be mad! Kenya? I had a life, a husband I loved very much, a child, a home, and a festival to run in San Francisco!

Now leaning toward me, he asked leave to kiss me. ​

“No, of course not”, said I.
“Then,” said he, searching my face earnestly. “Tell me what you are thinking right at this very moment, and I’ll remember it to my dying day.”
“Truly, exactly what I’m thinking right now?” said I.
“Yes, you HAVE to tell me!”
“There’s a pile of nappies lying on Olivia’s kitchen table and they all need to be folded.”
He dropped my hands. His mouth fell open. With a cross between a choke and a strangled snort, he turned on his heel, jumped the last few steps, slammed his car door, and roared out of my life.

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Author Bio

Shirley Read-Jahn was born during World War II and educated in England before becoming a hippy and living in an ancient Roman burial tomb in Matala, Crete. She went on to take up many different colourful careers, including swimwear model, interpreter, landscape gardener, paralegal and events organiser. She also co-founded the highly-successful San Francisco Jazz Festival (SFJAZZ) as well as running her own landscape business in the United States. Shirley has belly-danced since her thirties, still plays table-tennis, and now lives in Australia. In retirement, she has finally found time to devote to her passion for writing and the books swirling around in her head.

Read more about Shirley’s books and sign up for her newsletter here: http://shirleyreadjahn.com/