Valerie Byron
NO ORDINARY WOMAN
“Your book never feels self-indulgent or forced and that's a credit to your well-honed skills as a writer. We found it amazing that you had managed to convey so much, with clarity and vigor.”
George O’Sullivan and Colin Peterson (playwrights)
“Your story reminds me in many ways of "A Tree Grows In Brooklyn," one of my favorite books. The fact that this is an actual biographical work makes it that much more remarkable.”
Judy Collela (author of the MacDara Chronicles)
“I was absolutely fascinated. It was as if we were together in a warm café, just talking while the snow fell on the iced pavements outside, becoming lost in conversation. I definitely want more of your writing. Everyone should read your book. Bravo.”
Cheniston K. Rowland (Violin Historian –Violinland.com)
“Beautifully written, with immaculate story-telling abilities that have just the right amount of sentiment. I must commend you on your memory for the details of your youth, because mine are so dim. I found myself caught-up in your world, and so much of the emotional stuff was so easy for me to identify with. I almost feel like we share the same Mother. I can't tell you how much I enjoyed this, and I hope many more people have the pleasure of sharing your life's adventures with you. Thanks VERY much for this absolutely perfect read!”
Carolann Kaiser (author of The Pink Blanket)
“This is great, totally involving, and quite an emotional journey for those of us of 'a certain age' who spent our childhood in post-war Britain. You write, as ever, quite beautifully, there's always great anticipation about what will come next.
You have obviously bounced back from your numerous crashes and burns to be the woman you are today. From what you have written, life has not always been easy for you. This is a courageous bit of work. Your picture portrays a beautiful, strong, and in-control lady. I'm glad you turned out to be such. What I find good about your book, is you maintain the high ground in everything you develop. I don't detect revenge, retaliation, or hatred that often taints a writer's work. It's just good story telling all the way.”
Min Pattullo
Born in England, Valerie moved to California at the age of twelve, an awkward pre-teen. Five years later, a transformed young woman, she returned to England, landing her dream job at Granada Television in the swinging 60s.
After captivating almost every actor who walked through Granada’s doors, she returned to California in 1969, landing a job with a glamorous Hollywood talent agency. Now in her sixties, Valerie has started life again – as a writer. Her book of short stories. “The Man Who Lost His Genius & Other Stories” is available for sale at Amazon.com.
Internet dating has provided her “Knight in Shining Armour” – a man twenty-five years her junior – who encouraged her to write this book. She lives near the ocean in Torrance, California.
For John, you really are my Knight in Shining Armour.
I love you.
Copyright © Valerie Byron
The right of Valerie Byron to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is
available from the British Library.
www.austinmacauley.com
First Published (2012)
Austin & Macauley Publishers Ltd.
25 Canada Square
Canary Wharf
London
E14 5LB
I could not have completed my life story without the support of my family and friends.
John, for encouraging me to start (and finish) the book
Brian Doswell for his tireless work in spicing up my writing
Geoffrey Seed for his help with my blurbs
Patrick Lee for his enthusiasm and belief in me
My dear friend, Tatiana Conway for proofreading
Rita Goodman, Patricia Nash and Jane Goodman for reading everything I write
All the generous writers at Bookrix.com for their feedback
Min Drinkwater – my Granada friend who helped me so much at the end
Patrick Crawford, my boss, who allowed me time to write
Bill – for remaining my husband and my friend
Vanessa and Nicholas – my amazing children – who I hope will eventually read my story.
And to my family in England who have always loved and believed in me – thank you.
Prologue
If someone had told me, as I was walking down the aisle on my wedding day that the man whom I was destined to love with all my heart was not the handsome man waiting for me at the altar but was, in fact, only two years old, I would have fainted dead away.
Yes, my true Knight in Shining Armour was, at that precise moment, barely riding a rocking horse, let alone a steely white charger. Not only was I marrying the wrong man at the wrong time, but I was six thousand miles away in a different country – but of course, I didn’t know that then.
Sometimes, on a cold winter evening, with my feet tucked up under me on the sofa, and the flickering flames of a log fire to warm the room, I wonder how I ever came to be so lucky as to have that second chance at love. I am now sixty-nine years old and as I look back on my life, it really has been filled with second chances. This is the story of my life, written for my family, friends and those who would like to know a great deal more about the woman I have become.
PART ONE
SALE, CHESHIRE
1942-1954
26 Sandown Drive, Sale, Cheshire
CHAPTER ONE
I suppose my future links with America were sealed when I was born on the Fourth of July, 1942, in a nursing home in Sale, Cheshire in the cold north of England. My parents had fled London to escape the bombing in 1939, although my elder brother was born in London in 1934 prior to their departure. To my parents’ eyes, this bucolic countryside setting must have seemed light years away from the bombed-out ugliness of the industrial city of Manchester, only eight miles to the north.
While Americans were celebrating their freedom from the Brits with fireworks and hot dogs, the nurses were frantically pushing me back into my mother’s womb until the locum Indian doctor could arrive. I am now absolutely convinced that my present tendency towards claustrophobia began as I was thrusting forth in the damp darkness of my mother’s birth canal.
While my mother was giving birth to me, my erstwhile father was busy doing his bit for the war effort by impregnating his twenty-one year old seductive secretary at the Royal George Hotel in the nearby city of Altrincham, totally unaware of his first daughter’s imminent arrival. Barbara, my father’s sexy secretary, was a secret that none of us knew about then or indeed until much later. My half-sister Julie, was born nine months after me, although we did not meet up for another sixty-five years.
At birth I suffered from projectile vomiting, but my father could not be found to give his consent for an operation as he was very busy, as I explained earlier, at a local hotel with Barbara. My mother had no choice but to take a chance and hope her breast milk would do the trick. Was I born needy? I must have been, because it worked wonders, and I latched on immediately and had to be forced to let go. The ensuing months that I clung to her breast, sucking furiously, were probably the only truly fulfilling moments of
my early years.
After the obligatory six nights in the local nursing home, my mother and I were discharged to a somewhat stress-filled home. My father was always leaving on mysterious errands and my mother was perpetually crying, begging him not to go. Working on Barbara was clearly a matter of national importance for him. Conversely, my eight year old brother doted on me at first, raving over my magnificent violet eyes. However, all that changed some several weeks later when he gazed lovingly down into my face, paused for a moment, and then ran to my mother exclaiming solemnly, “Mummy, Mummy, she can't be ours. She has brown eyes, and it’s impossible for two blue-eyed people to have a brown-eyed child. I heard it on the radio.”
If only there had been an Internet, with omnipresent Google there to resolve the question, I’m sure the family might have accepted me and my eyes more readily. I always wondered why I am the only brown-eyed person in my family. Years later I heard this same hypothesis myself and called into the local radio station to dispute it. I was told that two blue eyed people could have a brown-eyed child but the odds were one in ten million. It was a good feeling to be different… to feel special.
My first real memory is of lying in my cot, staring at a freckle on my little finger, and wondering why no-one answered my cries. In those days children did not have the luxury of mobiles and music boxes to amuse them. For me, the crib was a prison sentence, so I cried whenever I was placed in it. From my position, on my back, there was nothing to look at in the austere bedroom – just the ceiling and the bars of the cot. How was I to know that my mother had unearthed father’s national war-time secret and was having a nervous breakdown?
Looking back on those days with the heart of a mother, I can find all manner of ways to rationalize the fact that the more I cried, the more my mother chose to shut the door on me. I can even imagine how she might have blamed her pregnancy with me for losing my father to the whore effort, but at the time, how was I to know?
As I lay there alone in the cold, plain bedroom, I waited in vain for someone to answer my piteous cries. They never did. No matter how loud I wailed, it never brought a concerned face to the room, and eventually I learned not to expect anyone to come to my rescue. My bedroom was never made into a nursery for me. It was just “the spare room” containing a bed, wardrobe and a cot for me, but no toys, paintings or bright colours. Houses in the north of England did not have central heating in those war days, so in the fall and winter months ice crystals formed on the insides of the windows and, small as I was, I soon learned to stay under the covers for as long as I was allowed in order to keep warm.
We lived at 26 Sandown Drive, in a new, four-bedroom, two-level house. As I grew older, I loved the fact there were so many rooms in the house, because there was always somewhere to hide, my favourite spot being a tiny cloakroom under the staircase.
To me, the kitchen was the most important room, often the focus of much business and cooking by my nurse. It had a door leading outside to the garage and an adjoining, enclosed stone-floored lavatory. We called the kitchen “the scullery”, although I never found out why. It contained a refrigerator, stove, the obligatory sink, an “easiwork” which had drawers and shelves for food, plus a cold larder where most of the food was kept. Because we had no car, groceries were often delivered, and the brightly coloured bottles of “pop”, especially my favourite, “Dandelion and Burdock,” were swigged down before they had time to cool off.
Through the kitchen was a tiny front room, containing a dining table, small coal fireplace and built-in cupboards. The table was large, with an iron mark burned into the wood. My mother must have left the iron sitting there one day and become distracted. I’m sure there must have been many days like that for her.
The cupboards were stuffed to overflowing with my dolls and toys, plus any other bits and pieces that had nowhere else to live. The fireplace had to be lit in the early morning in order for the water to be heated. I would often come downstairs in my pyjamas, shivering with cold, but the dark pieces of coke never put forth a warming blaze, just glowed darkly in the small grate.
The spacious dining room faced onto the back garden. It was a large room, identical in size to the lounge. It contained a long dining table and chairs, a sideboard, and two comfortable flower-printed arm chairs, which were placed in front of a gas fire. There were French doors leading to the garden. Long, lined drapes were drawn at night to keep in the sparse warmth, and I found these perfect for staging plays when I got older. My mother kept chocolate digestive biscuits in an ivory and glass container on the sideboard. When I was able to reach, I would routinely lift up the lid to see what was there, and eat every last biscuit. My greed for sweets started very early in life and has lasted all these years.
The main room, the lounge, contained a burgundy and grey sofa, two matching arm chairs, an upright piano and book cases. Later, a television occupied pride of place in the corner. Our one black telephone was located in the lounge, on a side table next to a ceramic-fronted gas fire.
The garden was my play area when I was young. A green lawn was separated by a walkway leading to a swing, attached to a large oak tree. Orchards spread directly behind our house, filled with fruit trees. Corn fields were located behind our neighbour’s house to the left, and were a magnet for young children to hide in. I loved playing in the back garden, especially when we occasionally saw the sun. We had a hammock placed up against the French doors of the dining room, and I would lie on it, swinging back and forth. If a summer day became particularly warm – maybe 60 degrees, which was blistering for England – Mummy would announce that it was time for a picnic, and out we would go to sit at a card table and chairs positioned on the grass, and eat a delicious afternoon “high tea” of sandwiches, cakes and pots of hot tea.
Valerie aged two
It was left to the first live-in housekeeper, Nana Martin, to tend to my basic needs. She was a gentle soul who did her best to cope with cleaning the house, cooking the meals and looking after me, the baby. I have no real memory of her, except as a large, motherly figure, always wrapped in an apron or pinafore. As time went by, she was replaced by the very stout and harsh Nana Mutch, who once “lost” me on a trip to the seaside.
She had reluctantly taken me, aged three, to visit some of her relatives in Southport, several hours away. We went by steam train, which belched great gusts of grey smoke from the engine and, as we trundled through the countryside between Manchester and the coast, I was fascinated by the carpets of bluebells in the woods that I could see from the train window. Nana Mutch spoke to me of her son who was living with relatives, and she sounded unhappy that she was not able to be with him. I was impressed that she even bothered to chat with me, and stared at her mouth as the words poured out in an accent I could not readily understand. I was always in fear of her, due to her size and brusque manner. Not a loving woman, she probably resented having to look after me, while her own son was living with others.
When we arrived at the seaside, Nana Mutch took my hand and marched me along the pier. I breathed in the smell of ozone and the salty air – it was exhilarating, and I was hoping for some treats, maybe even a visit to a café. There were many different shops selling merchandise geared for the beach but, before I could take a breath or ask for an ice cream, she suddenly exclaimed, “Wait here. I’ll be right back.”
She left me alone, and I just stood there in shock as she took off towards the high-rise hotels behind us. I peered into a shop window, noticing a plastic blow-up fish and wondered what it was for. It could have been seconds, minutes or hours, but for me it was an eternity.
After a while I panicked, not knowing what to do. No-one seemed to pay any attention to me, sobbing in the street, and I thought I would be left there forever. Fortunately an English “bobby”, his helmet firmly attached to his head, took my hand, asked me my name and where I lived. I was only three years old and had no idea who I was or where I lived. “Valerie?” I offered tentatively, hoping this was the correct response.<
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He took me to the local station and sat me on a bench. Eventually Nana Mutch showed up to claim me, and all was well again. She gave no explanation, but thanked the officer, grabbed my hand, and we left to catch the train home. I never got to see the beach that day, and it wasn’t until I was grown that my mother learned of my abandonment. Funny how I still have recurring dreams about being lost in a strange city, not knowing the language, where my hotel is or how I am going to get home.
CHAPTER TWO
At bedtimes, after being properly washed and polished, I was routinely presented in the sitting room to say goodnight to my mother. Nana Mutch would always remind me that she was still suffering from her nerves although I had little idea what that meant until much later in life. Most times Mummy allowed me to sit on her lap while she wistfully sang lullabies in a voice so soft that sometimes I could hardly hear them. Poor woman, she couldn’t sing in tune but I never got tired of hearing “Lula Lula Bye Byes”, and feeling her arms around me. I never wanted the closeness to end, and always begged for more time with her, before being taken away to my cold bedroom upstairs. “One more song, please, Mummy!” I would beg, and once in a while she would give in and sing another lullaby.
By now my father had moved in with and married his mistress, who was pregnant with their second child, John. My parents’ divorce had taken place in my third year, and my brother, Alan, eight years my senior, was still packed away at boarding school. My mother could not pull herself together enough to attend to the needs of a spirited young girl and an adolescent boy – and relied for many years on her two elder brothers, Morry and Stanley, for financial support, since she received nothing from dear old Dad. I appreciate now how my mother must have pined over her lost husband, even though she never said so.
No Ordinary Woman Page 1
