CHATTER

Our first morning of married life in our new flat was disturbed by a phone ringing in the communal hallway. After ignoring it for a while (we weren’t in from our travels until 2.a.m.), I went to answer it. It was my mum checking that we had got home safely.  I was naïve enough to think that as a married woman (girl) my mum would stop worrying about me. Now, as a mother and grandmother, I realise that the worry never stops. Anyhow on wakening (we were too tired to wonder how the bed got made up) we realised that various bits of furniture had materialised, the wedding gifts had been unpacked and put away and the place looked quite homely.  An envelope sitting beside the bed contained a cheque for £100, a gift from G’s mum and dad.

The telegrams ( olden day texts ) were also there.  Ironically there was one from the Parish Priest who had caused me such unhappiness, wishing me all the best for the future. I wonder how he would have reacted to the fact that we are still together 48 years later.  

We headed for the city centre to buy furniture. Do you remember Donaldson and Lyttle  furniture shop? Well we headed there and for our £100 we were able to buy a wardrobe, dressing table, four Ercol dining room chairs and a small ‘ cottage’ suite. We couldn’t wait for it all to be delivered. In a week we had become an old married couple. We settled down to married life, the two of us and the mice. We weren’t aware of them until one night while watching the telly ( a black and white set from Radio Rentals) I noticed something moving in the corner of the living room. The scream I let out could only be heard by any dogs in the immediate vicinity. Suffice to say there was a large family of them and for the next few months I was reluctant to return to the flat on my own.

Meanwhile on the political front, the SDLP had come into existence. The British Army which had been welcomed by the Catholic community was now seen as the enemy and soldiers were being killed. Charlie Haughey was found guilty of importing weapons destined for Northern nationalists .

Rioting on the streets was common practice in 1970. I wouldn’t like to guess how many busses and cars were burned. Parts of Belfast began to resemble a war zone. Night life practically came to a halt. It was noticeable that the number of large groups from across the water were avoiding Belfast. So TV became the main source of entertainment. We had Morecambe and Wise, Cilla Black and Val Doonican keeping us entertained. Over the coming months there were nights of continuing riots and we fell asleep to the sound of petrol bombs and occasional gunfire.
As it was becoming difficult to be sure of crossing the city in the morning to get to our workplace, (the hubby was on the Stoney Road and I was in Dundonald House), we decided we needed a car. We headed to see the bank manager and were able to borrow the princely sum of £325 to get our new wheels. Not having a clue about cars, I left it up to the hubby. He came home with a Mini Cooper of indeterminate age and condition from Mervyn Stewart’s who were I believe in Gt.Victoria Street at the time. Like many businesses in the 70’s a bomb later destroyed the showroom.
We were over the moon with our new car. We were so excited that we offered to bring my mum and my mum-in-law to see a play in Portadown.  One of my work colleagues was appearing in it. We duly arrived to pick them up and started off to Portadown. Now they say that pride comes before a fall and we were extremely proud of our new purchase. With about 10 miles to go to our destination there was a thud followed by a scraping noise. Gordon stopped the car, got out and was gutted to find the exhaust pipe lying in the middle of the road. Oh the embarrassment! We arrived somewhat late for the production after a patch up job on the exhaust.
We settled into a routine and Saturday was shopping day. A local grocery store was the venue and the bill for my weekly shop rarely exceeded £6. No luxuries and no carry outs. Basic food and very few occasions to eat out. We had no washing machine so a couple of nights a week were spent in the launderette in Botanic Avenue. No central heating, no microwave, how did we manage? To save money, we traveled home to the parents at the weekend, got well fed and waited on.

We had the car for a couple of months and after the necessary repairs it was going great. In fact it was quite a mover. We were able to park right outside our bedroom window. The bedroom being at the front of the flat and the flat being on the ground floor. Ok, I know you all realised that. Anyhow one morning we headed off to work. I went out first. Gordon, I shouted, where did you park the car?   There was a space where are car should have been!

Cars were parked on either side of the space.  Our car was gone. We phoned the police and were stunned when Gordon was asked where he had been at 2 o’clock the previous night. Apparently our car had been used as a getaway car for an armed robbery on the Antrim Road. When it was eventually returned we discovered a jemmy stuffed down behind the passenger seat. Obviously a thorough search by the RUC!

When I look back on it now we were both very young to get married.  But it wasn’t unusual, back in those days when women were still treated as second class citizens, for young women to see their future as married with a family. I even had to resign from the Civil Service on getting married and had to reapply for my job.  I think we were quite lucky in that we had both lived independently from our families for a number of years and were used to budgeting and looking after ourselves.  It must have been difficult getting married, leaving home and straight into managing a household. As we headed into 1971 we had hope that things would improve and peace would return to Northern Ireland. How wrong we were.

“My mother Patricia Cole passed away in 2006. I came across this ‘blog’ in which she described her time in London at the height of the war in 1944. I was amazed at how her style of writing was so like my own. I hope you enjoy it. I know she would have been delighted to see her words in print.”

We were interviewed in Belfast – good secretarial qualifications and a broad education were required – we satisfied the requirements. It was in early Spring 1944 and the four of us, the three Bradley sisters and myself ‘ imbued with the spirit of youth and adventure’ arrived in London to join the staff of the American Forces Network.

The journey via Larne -Stranraer-London was a nightmare.’ U-boats ‘ bobbed up and down as the ship made its way down the lough. We listened with racing hearts as the Captain gave instructions as to what to do if the ship’s bell sounded four times.  Getting into a life jacket was a difficult and uncomfortable manoeuvre. The train journey was no different as just outside London the train stopped. We were informed that an air raid was in progress and it was then that I began to have doubts about leaving a comfortable home and a reasonably good job.

At Euston station we were met by a representative of the Women’s Voluntary Service who had arranged accommodation for Una, Joan, Norah and myself. We were taken by underground to Oxford Street by a Mrs Slator.  Standing at the top of the escalator looking down at that moving steel animal I was petrified. ‘ Be sure to step on, don’t catch your foot ‘ advised Mrs Slator. I can still remember the fear and that stayed with me for almost a year after I arrived in the war-torn, doodle bugged London.

We had promised our loved ones that we would stay together and we were lucky. Motherly Mrs Slator escorted us to Muswell Hill and into a big comfortable bedroom containing a double bed and two stretcher beds. We must have been asleep for hours when the dreadful drone of the air raid siren awoke us. Mrs Slater was yelling for us to either go to the garden shelter or scramble under the stairs.

My kindly old aunt had given me a small Pond’s cold cream jar filled with ‘holy water.’ It had been a source of embarrassment to me when I opened my case for security when getting on the boat. At three o clock that morning it became a comfort to all of us, the Slater family included, even though they were Church Of England.

The following morning we took a bus to Marble Arch and walked to the side entrance of the Grosvenor House Hotel. The Americans had taken over the back portion of the premises. We entered a reception room where there were quite a number of other girls. Una and Joan, being older and more sophisticated, were delegated their duties quite early. Norah and I waited and waited and to our horror we were informed that a miscalculation had resulted in an over recruitment of personnel. I felt absolute despair for the first time in my young life.

Is your journey really necessary?   This was the slogan we read as the stations flashed by. We were en route to Manchester. For two weeks we had slept under the stairs or out in the shelters as merciless flying machines crossed over Muswell Hill. It would take too much space to relate our misfortunes, suffice to say we all had suffered enough.

How we got tickets for the train remains a mystery. There was a ban on travel  – no homeward sailing from the Mainland and only a distance of sixty miles from London. We arrived in Manchester at 12.30 a.m.having missed our connection at Crewe. The other passengers, mostly Army and Navy personnel, disappeared quickly leaving us girls standing on an empty platform in the middle of a city were all transport ceased at 11.00pm.

Una remembered that her mother had sent a Christmas card every year to an Uncle Frank who lived in Blackley. We were rather tentative about turning up on the this man’s doorstep but decided we had no option. Listening to our conversation, an elderly lady porter interrupted. ‘ Not tonight dears, you will have to do with the night shelter.’

She walked with us to the entrance of the shelter and we followed her up a bare stone stairway. We paid one shilling each for a bed and were shown into a long stone covered room, much like a dormitory. The four of us occupied one cubicle sitting on our cases and hoping we would still be alive in the morning. We thought of home and how arrogant we had been when we had been cautioned about our undertaking. It was the worst night of my life. We were offered numerous swigs from bottles of what we presumed to be wine. When we refused we were admonished for ‘ being too good for the likes of us’

We left at six a.m. It was almost dawn. After a wash in the station washroom and as it was Sunday, like good convent girls we looked for a church. We sat at the back, noting that it was full of soldiers. A priest was delivering a sermon in what we took to be Polish. In the comfort of the church, knowing that here we were safe, we all fell asleep.

I was awakened by an old Priest shaking my shoulder. He asked were we were going so early in the morning. Una told him we were heading for Blackley and asked him if by any chance he knew a Dr Frank McGlade.  ‘ Is it Frank you’re looking for? Sure I know him well. Doesn’t half of Manchester know Frank.’ Within the hour  we were driving up to Old Road, Blackley and into the motherly arms of a silver- haired Scottish lady. Dr.McGlade was friendly but a little distant. Next morning we were quizzed about leaving London. After hearing our story, he rose from the table and rang the authorities in the Grosvenor hotel in London. They admitted that the two of us had been overlooked and that they had tried to contact us to see if we were safe.

It was then that the stern Irishman who had fought in India became a second father to four exhausted Irish girls. We were unable to travel home so we were offered accommodation with this lovely couple and we set about finding jobs. As I had been a law secretary back home I began work with Howard Pink and Co. Solicitors.

It was November or December before the ban on travel was lifted. We immediately applied for tickets but with the demand out weighing the supply we had to spend  Christmas in Manchester.  In the first week of 1945 we sailed for home. Ironically we were treated as ‘ heroines.’ Only our families were told the true story of our wild adventure. Letters were censored in those days so they never knew the truth until we arrived home.

Broadcasting House

Three months later an advert appeared in the now defunct Northern Whig looking for secretaries for the BBC in Belfast. I was interviewed and three weeks later received a letter asking me to present myself at the BBC in London. This time my mother insisted that my brother accompanied me to make sure that both my job and my accommodation were secure. I spent four and a half wonderful years in the Drama Department of the B.B.C. in Broadcasting House,  but that is another story. I was also on the Mall in front of Buckingham Palace on VJ day. There was much laughter and singing as the country celebrated being at peace once again.

On the 18 August 1970 the day before the wedding, I had recovered sufficiently from my attack of jaundice to go ahead and get married.  I thought I was ok about the ceremony being in Belfast, but on that morning contemplating the fact that I couldn’t leave to get married from my childhood home I was overcome with grief. Sitting at the breakfast table bawling my eyes out my mother thought I was having second thoughts about the wedding. I think it was a build up, of all that had happened coming up to the big day. I reassured her that all was ok, it was just an attack of nerves. I had to head for Belfast in the early afternoon and I had also to make sure that I had everything I needed with me. I couldn’t just hop back to Rostrevor. We had a ‘viewing the presents night’ the previous night and due to the generosity of my guests I had enough tea sets, toasters and Pyrex casseroles to open my own store. Well before the days of Ikea.  I also had some beautiful pieces of Waterford Crystal all of which remain intact to this day.

There was no hen-do. They weren’t the done thing in those days but there was a stag night. It had taken place in the Rose and Crown on the Ormeau Road a few nights earlier. Thankfully I wasn’t there to witness the aftermath which I believe was quite ‘lively.’ The groom and his best man JT slept over in a friends flat and I believe had breakfast in the nearby Wellington Park Hotel. No nerves there.
The morning of the wedding, Wednesday 19 August was warm and sunny. There was only myself and my two bridesmaids in the flat. Unlike today’s brides, there was no hairdresser, no make up artist and no spray tan. I applied my own makeup and you would have hardly noticed that the whites of my eyes were still slightly yellow. 😀  The flowers arrived on time. The cars were at the front door. All I needed was my dad. He arrived in the nick of time with my little sister. An army checkpoint had delayed him. I came downstairs to the front door. The little old lady from the flat downstairs was the only one there to see me on my way. I know if we had been at home the villagers would have been out to see the bride departing.

The city had been quiet for a few weeks. Rubber bullets had been fired for the first time at the beginning of August. The British Home Secretary had threatened to impose direct rule if agreed reform measures were not carried out. Sound familiar? Not much has changed in 48 years. Hard to believe.
As we made our way up the Crumlin Road to the Holy Cross Church at Ardoyne we were escorted by two army Saracens out on patrol. In my wildest imagination I hadn’t anticipated having an escort to the church, especially from the army.  When I stepped out of the car, Gordon’s Uncle Billy was waiting with his cine camera. Billy and his wife Chrissie were the only two of the Scottish contingent to brave the situation and travel to Belfast. Not sure whether it was the fact that Gordon had succumbed to the charms of a Catholic that put them off or the situation in Belfast but the Allan side was under- represented. However thanks to Billy the wedding was recorded for posterity and I’m going to let you have a look.

As I tried to say my wedding vows I teared up and it was obvious to the congregation I was very emotional. After all we had been through we were finally here. My little sister who was kneeling behind burst into tears and had to be consoled by one of the officiating priests. I learned afterwards that my wedding caused controversy within the clergy in Ardoyne. Why? Because Fr. Marcellus gave communion, both bread and wine, to Gordon. It was unknown in those days for a Protestant to receive communion and some were not happy about it. I think it confused the congregation even more. Some must have been wondering what foot he actually kicked with. God knows what Granny Fallis, a card-carrying Baptist must have made of it but the old girl said nout and appeared to enjoy the day.

The reception was lovely. Everyone enjoyed their meal of dover sole, lamb and raspberries in Curaçao. Not together of course. Everyone but me, that is. I still couldn’t eat and had to be content with an omelette. There was no after party. To entertain the guests my lovely cousin Siubhán played the harp beautifully. No disco, no dancing and no late night.

Gordon had been treated to drinks all afternoon and by 6 pm he was ‘rightly’  I decided it was time to leave. My going away outfit was made by my mother in law. A dress with a jacket. She was a wonderful dressmaker. As I was leaving one of my aunts came over to say goodbye. ‘ We’ll be praying for you’ she said. I pictured the guests falling on their knees and offering a decade of the rosary after we left.

We were leaving on the midnight flight to London that evening.  Yes there was one from Aldergrove in those days. It cost £5 for a return ticket.  We waited in my aunt’s house on the Glen Road where Gordon got something to help sober him up. I didn’t mind flying then but I was a bit nervous and wondered if it was an omen when lightning hit the plane on the way over. We arrived in London after two in the morning. By the time we got to our hotel on the Cromwell road it was nearly three. To say the hotel was underwhelming would be an understatement. There was no lift and our room was on the third floor. No en-suite and the room was basic to say the least. But the next morning we discovered that there was a coloured TV in the lounge and we’d never seen one before.  We were very impressed and wondered if we would ever have one ourselves. We spent a few days sight-seeing and went to see Paint your Wagon in the cinema at Leicester Square.

‘Oh, those are just for show. We don’t have electricity.’

On day three we headed for the train at Victoria Station. We were going to Calais on the hovercraft from Dover and then by coach to Ostend. That was a strange experience. We were flying along on the top of the waves but couldn’t see out. We were strapped into our seats and weren’t allowed to move for the 30 mins. With a lot of others, we piled on to a coach that would take us to Ostend. The driver called out the names of the passengers to make sure we were all there. As I had booked in my maiden name that was the one he read out. It was 1970 and the looks we got were hilarious. We both looked very young which added to the interest of our fellow passengers.

Ostend was probably an unusual choice for a honeymoon but it was picturesque and I loved it. We traveled into Holland for a day and the weather was lovely. We also visited a beer festival which featured the ‘dancing waters’ Don’t ask! The trip to Ostend cost £15 each and that included transport and hotel !

The honeymoon was soon over and we headed home. Northern Ireland was shrouded in autumn mists when we arrived home.  That was 53 years ago, I’m not sure it has totally emerged from them yet.