Free Eighty Not Out by Elizabeth McCullough Page B

hovered around freezing, and the stars were brilliant. The vehicle was a pioneer jeep with canvas seats stretched tightly on metal frames, the sides open to the elements. It was an urgent and uncomfortable experience, during which I climaxed while precautions were being put in place: such was my innocence I did not realise it was an orgasm. By the time we got home sobriety was setting in, along with guilt when I saw the light in my mother’s bedroom. After some difficulty getting the key into the back door lock, I slunk to my chilly bed, dreading having to appear at work by nine thirty on the first day of January, which in Northern Ireland was not a general holiday. For the first time I had a hangover, and a face reddened by what was popularly known as ‘stubble trouble’. There was, however, a distinct feeling of achievement, and from then on I thought of myself as being a fully fledged woman – not to mention one up on Celia.
    During the next couple of weeks, I agonised about the efficacy of the condom, and the awful possibility of being pregnant. In those days the dread was ever present, and continued so until the Pill came into general use. In fact, sex, both illicit and within marriage, continued to hold an element of apprehension for many years – particularly for those who abhorred condoms and relied on the ‘safe’ period or sundry unreliable sponges, gels and foams.
    The likelihood that Harry might be married had, of course, occurred to almost everyone but me: his fellow officers all knew, and had been waiting for the denouement. One of them, kindly, middle-aged and patently uneasy, turned up at the ice rink to convey the message that Harry had left that morning to attend the funeral of his mother-in-law in Portsmouth, but would get in touch with me very soon. Memory possibly deceives me, but I like to think I did not give any hint of the shock inflicted: I just thanked him, suppressed tears, and with a pounding heart went to remove my skates and leave the session early. During the journey home by tram and bus, I tried to analyse what I felt – not angry, just numb, and conscious for the first time of my naïvety. I dreaded his return, uncertain what attitude to adopt. I do not remember any profound apology for the deceit, but he spun a pathetic story about his wife preferring to remain in England with her mother and two children – already in their teens – and her refusal to join him in Belfast. The marriage had been dead for some time, and he spoke of divorce. I planned to join the WRNS as soon as his tour of duty finished with the commissioning of the aircraft carrier in May 1948. He wrote frequently and at length, while the ship was on trials off Newfoundland, and I believe he was in love, or thought he was, with me. There were glimmerings of dissent, however. His politics were fascist, even racist – I remember remarks about having had to share lodgings with ‘coloured’ sailors while he was in Vancouver, and how ‘they’ had a special smell. When I voiced my intention to continue working after marriage, the stuffy response was: ‘Naval officers’ wives do not work.’ When we met six years later, after I had, in his words, ‘thrown myself away’ in marriage, we were awkward with each other, finding little in common, although he insisted on making a visit to pay his respects to my mother.
    Ego led me to think of myself as the lead in a romantic drama on the lines of many films of that era. I remained an avid cinemagoer, adoring Trevor Howard, James Mason, Eric Portman, Rex Harrison and George Sanders, and had a penchant for the elusive bounders they played. I chose to ignore it, but my liaison had caused much adverse comment within the conformist tennisplaying fraternity. A degree of ostracism could be detected, and invitations to dances, cinema and theatre were few during the summer of my laments. To my mother’s relief I did