I’d shrunk down under the eiderdown, slightly shocked, but also dead impressed with my mum.
Dr Kingston had huffed and puffed then, and said she was going to talk to the Churchill prior to my appointment on Monday, and would be guided by them on the subject of prescription painkillers. But until then I was not to take any more Feminax. Aspro and hot water bottles, only. Understood?
After Dr Kingston had gone, I told Mum how proud I was of her and we had a little cuddle along with one of the dogs and most of the cats. Then she made me a banana custard and I burst into tears.
The transistor radio beside the bed was tuned to Radio One and was insisting on playing sad songs: The Bee Gees’ ‘Words’, Bobby Goldsboro’s ‘Honey’, The Beatles’ dismal ‘Hey Jude’…
This really, really wasn’t how I thought I’d be spending my birthday.
Stella’s Diary
September 30th 1968
This has been the most terrifying day of my life so far. Mr Glendenning, middle-aged, tall, scary, booming voice, loomed above me in the examination room.
Mr Glendenning’s clinic didn’t have cubicles – there were rooms, a whole corridor of them, and several women and girls all looking as terrified as me, sitting on chairs outside them. Armchairs, mind you, not the usual metal stacking chairs used everywhere else in the hospital. Mr Glendenning was clearly a cut-above.
When my name was called, Mum had to wait outside.
I had the usual naked-under-the-hospital-gown look, but a nurse gave me some paper knickers to put on “for modesty and hygiene purposes, dear”.
Oh, the embarrassment.
Mr Glendenning had a team. His team were a mixture of young white-coated male and female students. They all seemed to have notes about me on their clipboards and all smiled at me without actually meeting my eyes.
Mr Glendenning operated – ha! – by remote control, suggesting first one and then another of his acolytes should examine me and ask questions, while he stood back silently and either nodded or shook his head.
It was relentless. The only bright spot came when Mr G asked a very youthful and clearly nervous student what he had first noticed about my stomach.
The boy blushed and stammered and then said, ‘it’s very flat, sir.’
Everyone laughed.
Mr G harrumphed and said, ‘And I’m sure Miss Deacon is delighted about that, but that wasn’t what I wanted to know.’
The blushing student looked at me and I looked back. I had no idea what Mr Glendenning wanted to know either. I just wanted to go home.
‘We,’ Mr Glendenning boomed down at me, ‘are used to dealing with more mature stomachs in here. A flat one is something of a rarity. Now – let’s get on…’
Ages later – no clock in this room – it was over. Mr G’s nurse helped me get dressed, then called Mum in and we sat in front of his desk while the students gathered round behind us.
Mr Glendenning didn’t mince his words. ‘As suspected, Miss Deacon, you have two major problems. One I believe is irreversible – I suspect your reproductive organs are historically malformed and chronically damaged thus meaning that you possibly have endometriosis among other problems, and this is why menstruation is so painful and prolonged. However, given your age, I’m reluctant to perform a hysterectomy just now.’
Phew, I thought, no operation – what a relief…
Mr Glendenning continued. ‘However, the second issue, copious cysts and abscesses, I am practically certain, must be dealt with surgically.’
Surgically…
‘You mean…’ I whispered as Mum squeezed my hand very tightly. ‘I’ll have to have an operation?’
‘Of course. And the sooner the better.’ Mr G peered at me as if I was an imbecile. ‘Did you imagine I was going to give you a sticking plaster and some glucose sweets to cure your ills, Miss Deacon?’
The students all laughed dutifully.
I just sat and shook. An operation! Surgery! Nanny Ivy hadn’t mentioned surgery in her mumbo-jumbo! I wasn’t going to get better – I was going to die!
‘I won’t know the extent of the damage until I’ve operated,’ Mr Glendenning stood up, gathering his notes and his acolytes as he did so. ‘But I fully expect to be able to put an end to your clearly obvious discomfort by surgery. The malformation of your uterus and surrounding organs may be beyond me – nothing much is beyond me though, so we’ll have to wait and see. Oh,’ he paused and almost smiled, ‘and I’ve been in touch with your general practitioner and suggested she issues you with an ongoing prescription for pethidine tablets until such time as we can get you on the table. Good day, Miss Deacon, you’ll be hearing from my secretary forthwith.’
And he and the students sailed outside.
I just clung to Mum’s hand in silent misery. I was just 20 years old and I was going to die.
Renza’s Diary
November 4th 1968
The last couple of months since I last saw Scott have been sheer hell.
I’ve missed him so much I haven’t been able to eat. I’ve been surviving on Heinz tomato soup and pumpernickel bread. Mum has given up trying to force food down my throat, and even though I’ve often cooked the meals, I can’t face them. I live for his letters and sometimes there’s such a gap in them I’ve convinced myself he’s gone off with one of the many groupies they have hanging around all the time. But not The Bitch however. Scott told me she’d eloped to Gretna Green with a bloke from another band, soon after the Merryhill gig apparently, but that still left so many others.
But when one comes everything is wonderful again and when we manage to talk on the phone in the post room, at the base – not the easiest thing to arrange – I am floating on air again. The cost of the call is always so expensive we hardly get time to say a few words each and we’d have to hang up. It breaks my heart.
A letter came today. It’s eleven pages long and it made me cry reading it. Trouble is, I’m not the first to read it.
As usual, Mum managed to get hold of the letter from the post room before I could go down and collect the mail. She’s obviously read it, as I’m sure she’s read all the others, and that was why she’s becoming so anti-Scott. Not that there’s anything in them that shouldn’t be there, they’re not rude or anything.
Scott told me he missed me and loved me more than ever and that his mum was going to write to mine, inviting me over to Jersey for Christmas, Scott would pay my fare. I went to mention it to Mum but she already knew and flew at me like a mad woman because of Scott’s undying love and talk of ‘wanting’ me badly. She isn’t happy.
Scott’s still in Jersey and has been since October, when the band went over to play the Tropicana. Apparently it didn’t work out there and he and Stephan went into St Helier to see the owner of the club, Lords, who is actually a real life lord! He’s booked Narnia’s Children until they go to Paris on New Year’s Eve.
So apart from a couple of days back in Leighton Buzzard, in early December when they’re playing Stonehenge and some other local gigs, they’re going to be out of England until the New Year. I can’t see me being allowed to go over to Jersey. No way on earth.
Lords is turning out to be a good move for the band apparently. The owner gets drunk with them all the time and even jammed with the band on his organ. A booking agent has seen them playing at Lords and booked them to play the US Airforce bases in England, Scotland and Wales, when they get back from France. The same agent will be booking them into American bases all over Germany sometime in the New Year, and Scott thinks he could get to see me when they’re over here. He’s going to let me have their schedule when he gets it. I’m so excited I can’t sit still!
The band’s a bit worried because they might have to work with a girl singer in order to secure the tour – which would wreck their image. Stephan’s working on preventing it.
‘I’m still not over the shock of you actually going away again and not being here. I miss you so much it hurts, babe’, Scott wrote in his spid
ery hand, hard to read most of the time. ‘There just wasn’t enough time to tell you all the things I wanted to say. Not just that I love you and always will, and that nothing will ever change that, or how beautiful you looked that last evening – well you’re always gorgeous, but that last time, even more than ever.’I reached for more Kleenex as I read. ‘You’ve made me really happy, more than I ever thought possible and more than anyone has ever made me before. Even just walking in the College with you was wonderful, it was and is because I love you – I know you think I’m joking but I’m not, that’s the last thing I’d do.’ I could hardly read the words through the tears. ‘I really wish we were together, just walking and talking again, enjoying ourselves back in the village, but anywhere in the world with you would be great and I’d be happy there, I wouldn’t mind where, as long as it was with you.’
I still couldn’t see what he’d written that had got Mum all bent out of shape.
One of his letters mentioned me asking my uncle and his wife if I could visit them and stay with them at some point, and then we could meet up. I think Mum read that one and hadn’t got over it yet. She’d hinted at the content of the letter for days before I actually ‘received’ it from the post sergeant.
I’d written to my uncle and he’d said I could come over anytime. And one of the army blokes, a friend of Dad’s, mentioned that he often went back to the UK for a long weekend, driving to Ostend or Rotterdam, getting the ferry from there to Dover, and that I could go along with him whenever I wanted. He could drop me off at Victoria Coach Station so I could get to my uncle’s from there.
I’m keeping it in mind and biding my time. But I know I’ll try to do this as soon as I can find a way of getting some money together, though Scott said he would try to pay my airfare if I wanted. That wasn’t even worth thinking about. Mum would never allow that.
Scott wrote about a new film he’d been to see with Joss and Mo called The Lost Continent, which is based on a book by his favourite author, Dennis Wheatley. It was some sort of occult story, but I don’t really like stuff like that. I know he reads lots of it. He thought I should see it if it comes to the Mess. I’d much rather read books by John le Carre or Raymond Chandler, and watch crime or spy thrillers, but they never show them in the Mess.
He said there was a big scandal back in London concerning Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull, his girlfriend who went to the school near us at home, and where I might’ve gone, had I been allowed to stay on to do A Levels. He wouldn’t say what it was, but said I should read the papers! Mum and Dad read The Times and I haven’t seen anything in there about a scandal.
Zak and Scott have written a song called ‘ Lovin’ You,’ which is going to be the B side of their single, ‘Livin’ with You,’ which they recorded in London recently and is going to be released in May. Scott says it was written by the writers who have written hits for The Herd and Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick, and Titch, and is in the close-harmony style of The Hollies. I can’t wait to listen to it! I love all these bands so I’m sure that the song is going to be amazing. Narnia’s Children have the most amazing vocal harmonies, they can all take lead singer parts, and they are excellent musicians too. It’s going to be a huge hit, I just know it. How exciting. I can’t help recalling what Scott said he’d do for me when they made lots of money – he’d pay for me to do a course with The London School of Journalism. Of course I wouldn’t be allowed to let him pay for it, but perhaps by then Mum and Dad’s opinion wouldn’t count because we’d be married and they’d be history. I can dream.
I was at the market the other day trying to make the stall holder understand what I wanted. Talk about frustrating. I kept asking for shallots and she kept giving me ordinary onions. I’d rehearsed the right word all the way from home so I know I wasn’t pronouncing it wrongly. The woman ended up throwing the onions at me and shouting so that everyone stared. Thankfully a tall blonde girl came to my rescue and said something to the woman, and then asked me in English if she could help. Thank goodness. Anyway, we got talking and she said her name was Heidi and she taught English and History at one of the local schools. She invited me to Sunday coffee and cake with her and her parents who live just down the hill from where we live. She said she’d love to practise her English with me and could help me with my German. I thought why not and said yes. She gave me her address and I’m going there at 3pm on Sunday after lunch in the Mess.
I was very nervous because Heidi’s parents don’t speak English and they’re quite old. They escaped from East Germany not long after the Berlin Wall went up, hiding under hay in a hay cart and they got shot at and her brother was killed by the guards.
When we next go to NAAFI I’ll buy some coffee and something else to take them.
Last time Mum and I went to NAAFI, we went to Iserlohn instead of Dortmund – the Canadian NAAFI is there, used by the Americans as well as Canadians, and they have so much more for sale than we have in ours. The American women are really funny though, they do their shopping in the mornings wearing evening dress, or fur coats with ankle socks and plimsolls, whatever their age, and they go out with their hair in curlers. The Mater was disgusted and never shut up about it the first time we went shopping.
Their NAAFI is what they call a supermarket, I’d never heard of them before, but you go round pushing a huge trolley thing on wheels and help yourself off the shelves to what you want, and pay for it at any one of a long line of tills. It’s called self-service. Flipping Henry, those Yanks eat a lot. Their trollies were piled high with food and so much Coca Cola.
I love their music section. They have records by every band imaginable, and so many I’ve never heard of before. I got another LP by The Association, and by The Beach Boys, who are so groovy and psychedelic – they’re too much. I didn’t have that much money left from my jobs back home and so have had to be careful what I buy, but I really wanted these. Perhaps they’ll sell Narnia’s Children – I’ll need to save up in case.
We had a snack in the Stomp Club which is a sort of cafe place which sells books and magazines, and the other day I had something called a toasted cheese on rye with tomato and four types of cheese. It was lovely.
The trip to the Canadian NAAFI takes us all along the Ruhr and the countryside is lovely. So much forest and so many lovely views, sweeping hills and the villages are really cute. All very Hansel and Gretel. I wished I had a camera so I could photograph it all.
At the end of our strasse (street) you can walk to the Harkortsee River which leads off along the Ruhr to the dams which were bombed in the war. Although the area was known for factories and industry, it is still really beautiful. The town hall is called Das Rathaus and is really old and imposing and the base is just down the road from there. All the streets are cobbled, and although most of the homes are flats and in that horrid grey concrete, now and again there are some really lovely buildings, black and white, almost like those in Chester in England.
Heidi and her parents live in an apartment in a grey building, but inside it’s really nice. They have the full lacy curtains which are so popular in German homes, and it is all very formal looking. Her parents tried hard to communicate with me and I them, but it was difficult. Thank goodness Heidi’s English is so good.
They served me strong black German coffee and cream cakes – I can’t stand cream but ate it to be polite – and a delicious Austrian cheese cake which Heidi made especially for me and she gave me the rest to take home for everyone. I met her fiancé, Bernard, who spoke a little English and is also a teacher, but I didn’t catch of what. He seemed very nice but so old-fashioned in his dicky-bow tie and check jacket with patches on the elbows, and looked very scholarly with his pebble glasses and short hair. Not my type, and I am surprised he’s Heidi’s type really, as she wears mini-skirts, false eyelashes and all the mod gear. Bernard looked ancient – about thirty – but I’m sure he couldn’t be that old. Heidi is twenty and she said she really likes me and that we should do something together soon. I’d
like that.
When I wrote and told Scott about Heidi and Bernard, he warned me not to get too keen on German men, especially after I told him about the old blokes in the street whistling and shouting at me whenever I go out. I really don’t think he has anything to fear from old drunken Germans. They seemed to be drunk from early in the morning onwards. Even the workmen who were doing some repairs on our place had beer and schnapps in the mornings when they started work – at 7am! Scott said he laughed when he read my letter and said that it reminded him of the stewards on the cruises.
Scott’s Mum hasn’t written to my parents yet, so I guess Christmas won’t be happening. I didn’t really think it would, but I still feel gutted. I’ll just have to imagine what it would’ve been like to be with him in Jersey with his family and to actually sleep under the same roof as him.
When I do the housework I get through it by pretending I’m doing it in our house for us, for Scott and me. We’re married and he is away on tour but due back soon. I usually play Pythagoras Theorem on my new record player when I’m cleaning – I love ‘Our House’ – it reminds me of Scott so much.
Music’s getting me through the boredom and hell of being here and I’m so glad I got myself a record player and can go to the Canadian NAAFI to buy the latest records. I belong to the English NAAFI library and it’s great to have so many books to take out to read. I love reading and every now and again I have a go at writing something, but nothing seems to work. I’d really like to try writing a spy or crime novel, but my head is all over the place and I can’t concentrate. One day perhaps.
Only One Woman Page 18
