Like Chapter 7, this chapter about my second marriage overlaps others, this time the ones titled Between Wives and Cossor, but my autobiography is not, and could never be, an exact chronological record of my life. However to take up the story, on New Year's Day 1966, after the other sleep-over guests had departed from the celebration at Avril's home, I emerged and helped her to tidy up and put away the mattresses and rugs she had provided for the party. Discovering that although we came from quite different backgrounds, we got on really well, and spent a lot of time together during the following few days, ending with a meal at Avril's home on the evening before her husband, Peter, was to return from his skiing trip. Over dinner we talked about my impending divorce hearing, and Avril's intention to leave her husband, and realised that our friendship could make things very complicated, so although we had enjoyed our brief romance, we sadly agreed to stop seeing each other. However, after only a few days following this decision being made, I realised that for me, anyway, it was a big mistake, and that I wanted us to get back together, come what may!
Contacting Avril again was difficult however, as she had no telephone, and it was very likely that a letter would be intercepted. My only option came when I remembered that she had mentioned that she cycled to-and-fro from the school at which she taught, so I could try to meet her on her way home one evening. It is a facet of my character that I do pick things up very quickly, but do not always pay attention to the details involved, and this was the case when I realised that I could not remember the name of the school! Thus it was that for a week or so, I would leave my job early in an afternoon - no problem with this as I was a freelance author at the time, and paid by the hour - to drive back to Harlow from Basildon in time to lurk beside the gates of one of the several schools near to Avril's home, as the children left at the end of the day. I had no success however, despite following the likely routes she would take to get to her home, which I would slowly drive past in the forlorn hope of seeing her entering or looking out of a window. It was a very frustrating time! Salvation came just as I was about to give up my afternoon trips, in the form of a letter that arrived one morning. I did not recognise the hand writing, but it contained a note with something like the following: Dear Don, I know we agreed not to meet again, but you are constantly in my thoughts, and I even imagine I get glimpses of your car passing my windows. If you do want to contact me, you could call me at school at lunchtime at this number, but if I do not hear from you I will understand. Avril. To say that I was overjoyed at receiving this missive would be a massive understatement, and I rang her the following day to say that I felt exactly the same way as she did, and it was my car, not her imagination.
Following our establishing contact again, Avril and I would meet on evenings when Peter was at the rugby club, to pore over copies of the local paper trying to find a suitable bed-sit that she could rent and therefore move away from Peter. I would drive her to look at possibles, but nothing we saw looked suitable. Finally, in desperation to get away, she agreed to rent a room in a house near Sawbrideworth, just outside Harlow. Like most of the others we had seen, this was rather awful, but she was determined to take it, so I helped her move the few possessions she wanted to bring with her. She also had very little money, as Peter controlled their joint account so she had no chequebook, and she would not ask him for help. She depended on just her teacher's salary, and would walk the four miles to school to avoid paying bus fares, and do dinner duty in the playground each day to qualify for a free lunch. I helped as much as I could by inviting her to stay at my house in Vicarage Wood at weekends, but she would not accept any money from me, being fiercely determined to maintain the independence that she had achieved by finally leaving Peter. Eventually, however, after much argument where I pointed out that as she stayed at weekends she might as well stay all the time, she moved in with me.
When I received The Decree Absolute for my divorce from June following the humiliating hearing earlier in January, we discussed the subject of Avril getting separated officially from Peter. She told me that he would probably not cooperate, and would make her wait for all of the necessary three year period to elapse before she could get a divorce on those grounds. She did not want to start divorce proceedings herself, as her only option would be to cite mental cruelty, and she would not want to do that. However, in the light of what I had learned about Collusion during my own case, I pointed out that if Peter was to become aware of the fact that she was committing adultery with me, he would have to start proceedings himself, or be accused of collusion. As Eddie was still renting my spare room, and regularly attended the rugby club as Peter, I said that he would soon get to hear of his wife's continued infidelity, and have to act swiftly. After a couple of weeks elapsed with nothing happening, I asked Eddie if he had mentioned Avril's living with me at the rugby club, but he assured me he had kept schtum on the subject. I pointed out that his silence was not what we wanted, and asked him to spread the gossip like wildfire at the club, in the hope of forcing Peter into action, not just for legal reasons2, but to maintain his status there. So it was that a man in a raincoat and trilby, carrying a battered briefcase, rang the bell on my front door one evening a week or so later, to enquire if a Mrs Avril Field resided here. I replied in the affirmative, and then asked him if he was an enquiry agent. He took a half pace backwards before replying that he was, but was visibly relieved when I said: Oh! Good! We've been waiting for you!
At the time when the divorce arrangements were being discussed - not totally legally - we advised Peter that we would not counter petition on grounds of mental cruelty or seek half of the value of assets such as their house and car if he would not counter petition for damages from me as co-respondent. Avril was in a very strange state of mind at the time, just determined to get free from Peter with as little fuss as possible, and did not try to get more than a few items from the marital home, whereas she was entitled to a lot more. She was adamant on the subject, so I only had a couple of items, including her old steamer trunk containing some others, to collect from her old home. We did not attend the later court hearing, but eventually received the Decree Nisi around January of the following year, which naturally prompted thoughts that we were now free to marry. Still not entirely convinced that she needed to tie herself to another male who could turn out nasty after she married him, Avril took a lot of persuading to accept my proposal. One argument I employed was that we both wanted children, and we should be legally wed before they began to arrive, so she eventually did say yes, and we set the date for our wedding as Friday March 17th 1967, allowing time for the Decree Absolute to be granted. There was some panic as the big day neared and the Decree had still not turned up, but it arrived on the Wednesday of that week, to great relief all round.
The wedding took place at Epping Registry Office, and was a fairly quiet formal affair until a bunch of my slightly inebriated fellow authors from Cossor burst in thought the door, shouting, Are we too late? Avril's eldest brother Derek and his family, my parents and my brother Alan's family were also in attendance, Alan being my Best Man for the second time. Avril's brother Brian should also have been there, but Eddie's replacement as a lodger, another weird fellow author named Stephen, did not tell us about a 'phone call from Brian on the previous evening advising that he was in London for a few days leave. When she heard about this later, Avril was furious and Stephen was immediately ejected from our house. After the ceremony, the house was the venue for a simple wedding breakfast, beautifully prepared by Avril, and in the evening we had a party for friends, many from the diving club. This was a rather riotous alcohol-fuelled affair with lots of dancing in our emptied lounge. At around four o'clock in the morning, as my appeals for everyone to go home failed to make any impression on our guests - who were then engaged in a vigorous Virginia Reel - I turned off the electricity at the main switch. This did the trick, and Avril and I were finally able to retire, exhausted, to bed.
Although we married in March, we decided to have a delayed honeymoon in June, but stupidly we mentioned that we were thinking of renting an apartment in San Felieu de Guixolls to Eddie. He immediately said he would help with the rental costs by coming with us, as larger apartments were cheaper per person than those for just two people. I pointed out that he did not have a car, but he said that he would ask his friend Brian to take him and Anthea in his car, further reducing the individual costs. We examined the holiday brochure and determined that our target apartment had two bedrooms and double and single put-u-ups in the lounge, so there would be plenty of room, so very reluctantly agreed to the arrangement. We stopped overnight in France on our very hot outward journey to Spain, which was not too comfortable for Avril and I in our Mini Traveller with its tiny sliding windows, whereas Brian's car was a sports convertible, wide open to the breeze, so they were nice and cool. When we arrived, however, we found that there was only ONE bedroom, not two as we had mistakenly deduced from the rather small diagrams in the brochure. Our only solution was to let the girls have the bedroom, and the boys share the put-u-ups, but Eddie decided to create a makeshift bed on the apartment's balcony, from where he would call Antheee, to get her to pop out for a short love session.
Readers of this epic may think that was rather crass, but worse was to come. Firstly I noticed that my towel in the shower was sopping wet, and that my shampoo was practically useless. It turned out that Eddie was using my towel as a bath mat, and since he had brought none himself, had been using my shampoo and topping the bottle up with water. Brian was also affected, as when he asked Eddie for his contribution to the ferry and fuel costs for the car, Eddie tried to claim each of them should pay half. When Brian pointed out that Anthea was also in the car, so the split should be two thirds for Eddie and Anthea and one third for Brian, Eddie said, But Anthea didn’t drive! Brian insisted that Eddie pay the correct amount, but Eddie said he had already run out of enough money to do so.
There were quite a lot of positive points to the holiday, including the fact that the patio at the back of the apartment was right next to the sea, with a diving board and steps into the water. I had brought my aqualung with me, so was able to enjoy a couple of dives in the small bay formed by surrounding rocks. I had always wanted to try night diving, so purchased an underwater torch, and persuaded Avril that although I would be diving alone, and at night, the bay was more like a swimming pool and just as safe, so I was unlikely to come to any harm. After dark, I entered the water, and began to descend whilst looking at creatures on the rock wall, some of which reacted to my torch light. I began to relax about not having a buddy as all seemed serene, when I suddenly became aware of a huge black shape in my peripheral vision. I knew that sharks don't live in the Mediterranean, but I still started to panic a little as to what could be threatening me. I moved my torch to see what monster was lurking nearby, but it was gone! It took me a moment or two to realise that the black shape had in fact been caused by my free hand entering the torch beam and throwing a large shadow onto the rock wall. Can you perspire in water? I certainly felt very uncomfortable for a few minutes. After playing tag with a tiny octopus, I surfaced to be greeted by a relieved wife, and promised to undertake no more night-time exploits. Besides the diving, we also enjoyed some fine dining, at a restaurant beside the walking area at the front of the town adjacent to the beach. One evening I asked for the speciality of the house, and was served what looked like an innocuous soup - which turned out to be Gazpacho. Not only was this massively laden with garlic, but it was also cold, and I shuddered as I tasted it. The Maître d' spotted this reaction, and swiftly brought me some very sweet melon floating in sherry, which he correctly deduced would be much more to my taste. After our meal, we strolled along the walking area to where local were dancing, and Avril recognised that they were doing the Sardana, a dance which she taught to children at her school. We were invited to join in, and Avril did so for a while, greatly enjoying the experience.
We found some very pretty coves and beaches, although the exhaust pipe deciding to break away from the engine manifold did make the car sound like a Spitfire coming in to land on the way back to the apartment. That was repaired at a local garage, but eventually, we tired of Eddie and Anthea's company - Brian was actually a thoroughly nice fellow, but was obviously embarrassed by his association with Eddie - and decided to make our way home with a stopover in Paris. After an overnight drive with only a short stop for an abortive attempt at a roadside sleep, we arrived in Paris in the middle of Friday evening rush hour, and I drove around desperately trying - unsuccessfully - to find a suitable hotel. I headed out on the road to Calais, until I found a small town where we did find somewhere to stay. In a local restaurant, after watching a Son et Lumière show on a castle wall, we dined on fillet steak, ignoring the noise created when a waiter tipped a bucket of ice and a bottle of wine into the lap of another diner. Don't look, we're English! I instructed Avril. I think my steak may have had equine rather than bovine origins, as the next morning whilst waiting for Avril to exit the Duty Free shop at Calais, I felt that an enormous eruption was about to take place in my nether regions. I popped out of the Hommes facility to frantically ask Avril to open our case and find me some replacement underpants, which she did as the occupants of the cars behind waited impatiently for our car to move so that they could get onto the waiting ferry.
Avril
Avril's parents were Geoffrey Lawrence Cramp and Winifred Marjorie Walden, who had been married on April 4th 1931 in Woolwich, London. They had three sons and three daughters:
Derek George, born July 24th 1931, who first married Renée Fell, and had a son Duncan, and a daughter, Helen. He later married
Freda Marjorie, born July 17th 1933, who first married Donald Graham Parry on July 24th 1954, at Leytonstone, London, and had a daughter Ceri Jane, born in 1961.
Avril Marie born 22nd April 1940, in Bexley Heath, who first married Peter Lawrence Field, born January 17th 1934 in Salcombe, Devon. Her second marriage was to Donald Edward Johnson, on March 17th in Epping, Essex, and had a daughter Caroline Elise, born March 28th 1968, and a son, Paul Walden, born March 26th 1970, both in Harlow, Essex
Brian Laurence, born January 17th 1935, who first married Dorothy
Susan Carol, born on December 20th 1942, in Bexley Heath, who first married Robin Lestrand Whiitle and had a son Robin Lestrand, and a daugher Alexandra Louise. Her second marriage was to Paul Wiggil
Robin Walden, born October 28th 1944, who married
.