DAD MARRIES AGAIN
DAD MARRIES AGAIN 2023/03/23
My father married again in the summer of 1950, just before my 11th birthday. I was very excited. I would be able to leave the convent and would have a Mother, a real mother, not having had one for near on 10 years, plus two brothers, Mickey, seven months older than me and John, three years older. We were all going to live in the house my father owned at 103 Latchmere Lane in Kingston upon Thames, a 1930s row house, tiny, with a small, unkempt, backyard.
The first year was great. Pat, my stepmother, taught me how to ride a bike. We would go to Richmond Park 1 and practice on the empty road that went past Pen Ponds 2. Pat would run beside me, keeping the bike upright until I could find my balance, and when I finally did, I left her behind as she encouraged me to keep going. So there I was, pedaling frantically, not knowing how to use the brakes, when the road sloped down, a mild and short slope with, at the bottom, a gate. The road went around it, plenty of space, but of course, looking at the gate as I rushed towards it, I careened right into it, bending the front wheel and falling off. Pat came running up, winded, concerned, laughing as well. We walked home, companionably. And later, a neighbor straightened out the front wheel and I could go riding again, this time knowing how to stop.
Writing this today, in June 2025, it landed on me with a large thump that Pat, in that first year, was really my only experience of what a mother should be like. She taught me things. She remembered my birthday. That first Christmas at 103, she gave me a present, a boat, even though my father said it was to be shared with Mickey, we all knew it was mine.
We moved, in early ‘52 to 36 Beaufort Road, a large mid-Victorian house, still in Kingston, but on the other edge of it, next to Surbiton. Pat had changed. She no longer played with me, or her sons. I don’t remember her laughing much anymore. She got pregnant with my new brother, David, who was born in May of ‘53. Sometime around then, her arthritis became really disabling, and I had to take over most of the household tasks. For years I was resentful because I had to iron my father’s and brothers’ shirts, prepare all the vegetables for meals, do all the washing up, sometimes had to change David’s nappies and take him for walks. I was embarrassed be seen walking along the tow-path next to the Thames, with him in his push-chair, afraid people might think I was the mother. Why would I think that, unless it was the effect of living with my father for two years?
Later, after moving to America, I was visiting England, and saw Mickey. We were discussing our childhoods and I was grumbling to him about having to do all the skivvy 3 work. He said both he and John were envious of me because he said at least I got attention—a huge re-definition for me and had me realize how starved both John and Mickey were for support and love.
Even though my mother, essentially, abandoned me, and Pat was verbally abusive and abandoned both of her sons and me, I have never blamed either of them, or been angry with them. It has always seemed to me that how they were was a direct result of living with my father.
Dad was brilliant, an artist, writer, very handsome, tall, articulate and relentlessly charming. His public persona was so different from the private one. At home, when he came back from work, regardless of what else was going on, his arrival stopped it all. He took all the oxygen out of the house. It was all his, all his. Pat went from a fun, laughing, responsible parent to a bitter, verbally scathing, ill women in the space of two years. So much so, that when I was 13, waiting at the hospital to be admitted for surgery, she left me alone, in the waiting room, because she had to go home to cook my father’s evening meal.
She never left him. Instead, she became his biggest supporter, his biggest apologist.
Her actions don’t surprise me. Looking at myself, on getting married to Tony, when he didn’t tell his family he hadn’t passed his exams that year, I covered up that deceit. I didn’t bring it up when we went to Sudan to meet his mother in 1960.
In my second marriage, Anthony, who was physically, verbally and sexually abusive, and who tried to run me down with his little Morris Minor 4; who had a mistress who he had gotten pregnant; who embezzled funds from the community at Dartmouth Park Road 5, putting all those living in the house in jeopardy, I would have put up with his adventures, his cheating, his lying, as long as he didn’t tell me what was going on. This really was a conversation he and I had! I was prepared to put up with all of his antics just to stay married to him.
Fortunately, he walked out on me, albeit in a dramatic way, leaving in the middle of Christmas dinner, in front of about thirty people.
When I moved to Los Angeles in ’72, in order to stay in the US, I married Sid. He was verbally very abusive and sometimes physically abusive to both me and my girls. I would explain away his nasty mouth, downplaying it with the usual marshmallowy justifications; he was tired; hadn’t slept well; was worried; concerned; he wasn’t always like this; he’s having difficulties at work; and more, ad nauseum. I could, and did, get really creative with excuses for his behavior. I put up with him, tolerated him until he wanted to stop me from going to school. Then I chucked him out. It took that, plus living in a different country for me to step out of those old, accustomed behaviors, beliefs, trainings.
And the odd thing is, now that I think of it, that when I decided to divorce him, several friends were upset with me because, after all, as they said, how could I leave such a good man (???), after all, he loves me. For me, it was too high a price to pay for such love!
I can thoroughly empathize with both my mother and my stepmother for them not being able to manage my father, manage the abuse. I didn’t. And many women don’t.
The photo of my parent's wedding taken by a professional photographer, with my two cousins, Graham and Robin, holding her train, and her best friend, Lynn Thomas, one of the bridesmaids.
1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richmond_Park
2 https://londondrum.com/attractions/richmond-park.php
3 https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/skivvy
4 Morris Minor, a four-door economy car produced in England between 1948 and 1971. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_MinorWikipedia.
5 Dartmouth Park Road, aka, DPR, was the community Anthony and I formed in 1966.
