On My Way to Samarkand: Memoirs of a Travelling Writer (12 page)

There was an impediment to us getting hitched.

Annette was still a minor in the eyes of the law. She needed the permission of her parents to marry. Bill and Betty absolutely refused to give it. I don’t blame them. Here was this oik of an airman, with prospects drear, wanting to marry their bright intelligent fledgling daughter of seventeen years, hardly yet out of the schoolroom. If it had been me in their place, I would have blown a gasket. Instead they told me politely, in their middle-class way, to sling my hook.

It was the anniversary of our first meeting and unhappily I was no longer welcome in the Bailey home. Annette’s parents started encouraging other young men to go out with her. I was told later that one of these rivals was a schoolteacher. Fortunately, on impulse and without knowing how they would be received, I sent Annette a dozen roses accompanied by a poem on the very evening she was due to go out with this man.

One rose for every thirty days
that we have shared together.
One thought with me remains always,
may roses bud and bloom forever.
Love, Garry xxx

Annette told me later that she burst into tears and the schoolteacher’s evening ended in ruins. Impeccable timing saved my life. I doubt she would have ended up with the schoolteacher, but fate can be a rotten cow sometimes. I was still sure we were made for each other and no one was going to get in the way of that, parents or rivals. In fact I knew of only one really dangerous rival, an airline pilot, but luckily for me he was not committed enough to present me with a challenge. Maybe if he had pressed his case I might have had to fight a lot harder.

As it was her parents, wearied by our dogged persistence, eventually relented. The wedding took place at Christ Church in Thorpe Bay on 30 June 1962. The best man was my brother Ray. The maid of honour was Annette’s friend Valerie. We had the reception at the Rosalind Hotel, on Thorpe Bay seafront. Her cousin Mike drove us to London in his van and we spent one night there in a hotel before going on to a bed-and-breakfast in Bude, Cornwall. Bude was pleasant and the honeymoon was calm and enjoyable. I had my twenty-first birthday while we were there. We visited Tintagel, saw the supposed remains of King Arthur’s castle, ate crab sandwiches, got to know each other a bit more, fought a little over small things, made love a lot. Annette bought me a new dressing gown for my birthday and we spent just about all the money we had in the world. Everything was paid for, though, and we had the train tickets home so we were not in any trouble.

In those days airmen had weekly wages and we did not have to wait long before we felt flush again. Life in the early ’60s was breadline. We ate well at the beginning of the week, but were on cheese sandwiches by the time the weekend came along. We had no bank accounts: those were for doctors, lawyers and officers.

11. RAF Rheindahlen

Not long after the honeymoon I got on the boat train for West Germany. I had been posted to Rheindahlen, near Cologne. It was the headquarters for the Royal Air Force and I was to work in what was generally known as the ‘Big House’, a building not unlike the MOD in London. However, this time I was not in the main comcen but working with the meteorological office, providing them with their communications. Annette had to stay in England until I found us accommodation. There were married quarters for airmen, of course, but they were few. One had to have rank or a lot of points gained by doing unpalatable postings to get married quarters. What most of us had to do was go out and find a flat, get the RAF to take it on as a ‘hiring’ and then pay the RAF the rent.

I found us a two-roomed garret flat in a small village called Wickrath. The flat had no running water, so we had to carry it up in a enamel bread bin from the bathroom on the floor below. The heating was a pot-bellied stove in the living room. The bedroom was an icebox in the winter of 1962-3, which has since become known as the Great Freeze. Temperatures in England fell to minus 16 centigrade and was far below that in northern Germany. Water left in a glass by the bed froze solid overnight. At night we piled coats as well as blankets on the bedcovers to keep warm. Still, we were reasonably happy. There were two single beds in this attic room, of different heights. We put them together and placed books under the legs of one to bring it up to the level of the other. The snow lay on the ground from November to April.

I bought a push bike and rode the five miles to work each day, coming off a dozen times on every journey because of the icy roads. Frau Pfeiffer was our landlady. Not a great landlady, but not a bad one either. We managed to save enough to buy ourselves a second-hand Fiat 500 car and felt we were truly blessed. Those little utilitarian vehicles were brilliant. Cheap and easy to run, and in those days they really did have only a 500cc engine. Ours sounded like a motorbike, rather than a car. You could even buy spares for them at the local post office.

John Chidlow came and stayed with us that Christmas. He was stationed about ten miles away at RAF Wildenrath and he told us he had a girl back home called Grace and was going home on leave in the New Year to propose to her. We had a nice German Christmas that year, playing cards, walking in the snow. Annette was big and round as a barrel, but with a full healthy colour to her cheeks.

On 31 December I was getting ready to go to work at around eleven in the evening, to do night shift.

‘I think my bottom’s falling off,’ Annette said. ‘Better call the ambulance.’

I took the stairs three at a time and used Frau Pfeiffer’s telephone. The ambulance duly arrived, skidding to a halt on the icy road outside. Annette waved goodbye and got in, while I cycled to work. Had the birth begun just a few hours earlier I might have been able to arrange a stand-in, but not on New Year’s Eve. On the way to RAF Wegberg Hospital, the ambulance managed to get lost, but Annette hung on until they found their way and she was in a bed.

Richard John Kilworth was born just after midnight on 1 January 1963, the first baby in the hospital after New Year.

‘It’s a boy,’ murmured a tired Annie, when I finally got to the hospital the next morning. ‘Isn’t he lovely?’

No, he was not. He was a red-faced wrinkled little prune, like all other newborn babies.

‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘Absolutely.’

Once they were home, the pair of them, we began being ‘parents’, a profession for which we had no training whatsoever. We took Richard out in a pram in subzero temperatures without any knowledge that we might harm his lungs. He was well swaddled of course, wrapped up so that only his nose could be seen, but when I think of that time now I wince with guilt, realising our ignorance could have caused him harm.

Often he was in his carry cot, on the narrow back seat of the Fiat, as we drove here and there. Richard was a blessing. We felt so privileged to have him. It made us a family and with that feeling came contentment. I was never happy as a single man. I didn’t like the drinking culture of single servicemen and much preferred to be in the company of people who could talk without slurring their words. Annette, Rick (as we had begun to call him) and I went on outings as we pleased, visited other married friends of the same age, and generally enjoyed life. We discovered a passion for camping, something that Rick took to with zest, even at the age of two, since he could run around as much as he liked and go into other camper’s tents, and simply stand and stare at them.

John Chidlow went back to UK in January and returned with a very lovely wife, a Scot. Grace was everything the word means. She was dark-haired, slim and had a naturally happy disposition. She was gentle and sweet, and softened the tough edges to John. We all saw a lot of each other in those days, playing bridge, chess and other games. Once they had a baby themselves, young Craig, we used to stick the two children in a cot together and whoever was the dummy hand at bridge would look in on the little ones. John and Grace had a ground-floor flat in a large house near Wildenrath. Their ‘club’ was 6 Petrol Depot, run by the army.

In the spring of 1963 Annette and I went looking for better accommodation, hopefully with water and decent heating. We found a farm in a village called Hehn. The bedroom of the flat was above the cowshed while the living-room was above the landlady’s living room. The farmer and his wife were Kathe and Heinrich Maurer.

Heinrich spoke no language but German, but Kathe had very good English. She had been in the army during the war as a telegraphist, which gave us a talking point. It was her job to listen in to enemy broadcasts and thus she had to have good English. At the end of the war she found herself in Austria with the Americans advancing from the south and the rest of the Allies from the north. Fearful of being raped by the conquering troops she asked an Austrian farmer to shelter her in return for work and pretend she was his daughter. The farmer was not happy at doing it, but eventually agreed.

Once the situation had settled Kathe wanted to get back to Cologne, where her parents were market gardeners. She hitched a ride on a coal train and arrived in the city black with coal dust. The first shop she came across belonged to a florist who used to deal with her parents, so she went inside and asked if she could have a bath. They said yes and gave her soap and a towel, and filled a tin bath for her in front of a fire.

Now Kathe told us this story the evening we were being interviewed for the flat, with Heinrich sitting beside her on the sofa. He said nothing the whole time, but simply watched his wife’s face intently. When she got to the bit about the bath he perked up and glanced across at Annette and me, and grinned.

Kathe then said, ‘I finished my bath and had just wrapped myself in a towel when the door opened – and in stepped Cary Grant!’

This was Heinrich of course, the son of the florists. When he heard the words ‘Cary Grant’ he slapped his knee in delight and his grin became even wider.

‘And so you married him?’ cried Annette, laughing.

‘Yes, I did. And here he is! Oh, and by the way, please do not make love on your living-room sofa. The last couple, who were Dutch by the way, were always making my chandelier tinkle.’

Very candid, was Kathe. No bones about that lady.

They were a lovely couple, Kathe and Heinrich, and Kathe was like a mother to Annette, who was still only nineteen and with a baby to look after. We got the flat of course and we both loved it. We were allowed to take vegetables and beer from the cellar where they were stored and enter what we took in a small exercise book, settling up later. When a pig was killed, we helped in the kitchen which was turned into a sausage factory for the day. Fresh fruit was always available and the Maurers were easy-going.

There was a cherry tree blossoming right outside the second-floor window, which our bedroom window overlooked, and the cows snuffling below the floorboards helped us get to sleep. I don’t remember any unpleasant smells but I suppose if there had been we would have got used to them. We were given a huge German goose-down duvet which kept us as warm as toast. In England we had known only blankets and the duvet seemed a great luxury.

I wrote reams of poetry about the farm, the German countryside, the seasons, all of which is in a folder I have never opened again.

Richard seemed to like his new home. There was an orchard for him to run around in (he was always a runner) and the savage farm dog, which would have torn us to pieces, seemed to take to this jabbering little English boy as if he were a puppy. One day he crawled into the dog’s kennel and began eating the food from its dish. Annette, horrified, tried to coax him out, but every time she went near the kennel the dog flew out, snapping viciously, I suppose protecting Richard from this threatening woman. Later Rick crawled out, hunger satisfied.

One night on the way to Cologne the engine on our little Fiat 500 caught fire and burned out. We had to abandon it. Annette and I walked a long way to find a guest house and it being one o’clock a.m. we had to stay the night. There was no phone at Maurer farm, so we couldn’t tell Kathe what had happened. She said later she almost had a heart attack thinking we had been in an accident on the autobahn. She was babysitting Richard and we were not able to return until late the next morning.

So, having no car now we started to save for another second-hand vehicle, keeping the money in a National Health Milk Powder tin. Unfortunately the tin got thrown away during housecleaning and we lost all the money. My father-in-law sent us a cheque but I was still a little angry with him for the obstacles he had put in the way of the marriage and my pride forced me to return it uncashed. So we started saving again and within a few months had enough for a five-year old Fiat 127, a 1200cc proper family car with a big boot and a decent engine. It was a great car, that Fiat, and took us to Austria, Italy and Switzerland.

Our part of Germany was staunchly Catholic and every year the local priest would lead a religious parade through the villages, blessing them as he did so. Kathe Maurer hated this festival, because the farmhouse was the first dwelling at the entrance to the village, which meant she had to get ready a huge wooden altar every year. It was stored in the loft and had to be dragged down, dusted and cleaned, then set up on the pavement outside the house for the priest to use for his ceremony. One year we had council workmen outside the house and she tried to bribe them to prolong the work so that she wouldn’t need to erect the altar. They refused, being afraid of the priest. The parade took place, but Annette had forgotten Kathe’s instructions and had inadvertently hung the duvet out of the window, thus decorating the front of the house with bedding. Kathe laughed it off, though the priest had admonished her for it.

Later that same day there was a terrific summer storm. We had been out shopping and as I drew up outside the farmhouse Annette stepped from the car in the driving rain. Lightning cracked from above, hit a nearby lamp post, fizzed down the metal into the water in the gutter, along the water in the gutter, and right between her legs. A passer-by screamed, thinking she had been hit, but she stepped onto the pavement unhurt. I have never seen lightning hit so close to a person before or since. I couldn’t see anything for several minutes. The flash had been so bright I had been temporarily blinded. Was this retribution from above for leaving our bedding on the windowsill? I think so.

Heinrich was a hard-working farmer. He got up at the crack of dawn and came in when it grew dark. Six days a week he laboured, but unlike God on the seventh he did not rest, he got drunk. Every single week. Kathe would bemoan the fact that she had cooked a nice Sunday lunch and Heinrich would roll in around five in the afternoon, absolutely plastered. Only once did he arrive in time for his meal and ironically on that day Kathe had decided to attack the Benedictine. Sauce for the gander! On one Sunday Heinrich decided to turn the hay in the barn and in his inebriated state he put the pitchfork through his foot and we had to drive him to the hospital.

On All Saints’ day that first year in Hehn some bulls got loose and began charging down village street. We were walking without Rick, having just been down to the local sausage shop. I’m ashamed to say I was first up on a high wall, only afterwards reaching down for the fair maid who was struggling to join me. It seemed those lightning reflexes worked for
my
survival as well as for my wife’s and in this case quite dishonourably. Luckily the bulls passed below us without goring anyone but, as I say, I acted without thinking and went away ashamed of myself.

On Friday 22 November 1963 I was on duty in the Big House, receiving weather forecasts on the Murray code tapes, when I came to a tape which read ‘. . . precipitation imminent, temperatures between 7 to 10 degrees, wind from the north break break President Kennedy has been assassinated break break . . .’

It was the only time I ever experienced the weather forecast being interrupted for a news message. I stood there in shock for a few moments before showing it to a colleague and we immediately left the comcen to listen to the radio in the forecasters’ room. I was aware of a strange buzzing in my head. That sensation has come only once more since that day and that was on 11 September 2001 when I was with my publisher from Constable Robinson in a pub restaurant discussing a new historical war novel. We saw people crowding around the restaurant’s television screen. Eventually we got up and went to see what the fuss was all about. I watched as a plane flew into one of the Twin Towers.

We had several camping holidays in Austria and Italy, once with a pram on the roof rack. It served as a baby vehicle but we also carried a wooden box top to make it into a table. There were a few adventures, of course. A delegation of German vigilantes confronted us, telling us that it was Sunday and illegal to put washing out on a line. Annette tartly informed them, ‘We are not in Germany. This is Italy!’ a fact that seemed to have passed them by in their righteous fury.