Chapter 11
Two Michaels
Written forty years later in 2022.
In the next four years one of the things I organized was a Poetry group in my house. Some very strange people came to it having seen the advertisement in the Oxford Library. One was a German student who didn’t like my house or my old typewriter or my poetry, for that matter. Then there was an old man who had been a manager in the Ford Motorworks, which was at the end of the Cowley Road. I don’t really like poetry, he said, but I thought I would come along for the company. And there was a mad woman who never spoke and had to go outside for a cigarette every fifteen minutes. But it was fun and I think everyone enjoyed themselves in their own way. If nothing else they liked the coffee and biscuits and got through plenty during the evening.
During that time I went on Sundays to St.Barnabus’ Church in North Oxford, which featured in Thomas Hardy’s book, Jude the Obscure. This is why I chose it although it was very high church, with lots of incense floating about. It had a very bright ceiling as I remember it, blue with gold stars, which I liked looking at during the service. I became very friendly with the vicar,
Father Michael, took me out to lunch sometimes and told me all the Oxford gossip. He was also a magistrate and we often sat on the bench together. Once he took me to an elegant dinner with a Japanese Prince and afterwards there was dancing and general gaiety.
Father Michael and I had many discussions about the Christian faith, never with very satisfactory answers from him. ‘Why for instance’ I asked him one day ‘does God allow so much suffering in the world, so much injustice, so much greed, violence and intolerance. So many wars.’ ‘Ah’ said Father Michael and then paused for a moment, thinking I suppose for a convincing answer, ‘God moves in mysterious ways” he said finally, as if this was an entirely new idea. And that was about it. When I was a teenager we had the use of a small damp cottage with no electricity, and no mains water in North Norfolk. I very much wanted a pony and asked God to help me get one on many occasions. But He never did and eventually we were lent a small fat one called Joey, who came with a trap. I have often wondered why God doesn’t intervene more in the ways of mankind. If He really loves us, as we are led to believe, He wouldn’t want us to suffer as much as we do, or so I would have thought.
One Christmas Father Michael invited me to dinner in his house in North Oxford. There were two other priests there and a woman who I didn’t know. During dinner the doorbell rang and I went to answer it. It was carol singers. I went back to tell Michael and he and his friends all said: ‘Get rid of them for goodness sake’. I went to fetch my bag and gave them £2 of my own money. Not a very Christian action for priests I thought as I sat down. Then the strange part of the evening began. We went to sit in the sitting room and Michael got out some tapes of music for us to listen to. The tapes were of Nazi marching songs, which kept the priests smiling, and at which they applauded. I felt very uncomfortable and left hurriedly. I wasn’t asked again.
In 1978 I had been to a week’s course on William Wordsworth’s poetry in Kellogg House, Oxford, It was an interesting course but for the usual distraction. This time it was in the form of an Australian woman who liked to talk, interrupt, and tell us stories about her life which were nothing to do with Wordsworth’s poetry. And the tutor didn’t reprimand her; just let her talk on and on. I have found in the many courses I have attended on different subjects that there is always one student who monopolizes the class and seems totally unaware that it is not in order. And the tutors let them do it. And I suspect they let them do it because it is slightly less work than teaching. But lucky for me that I went on this course because it was where I had met a scientist who worked for The Ministry of Defence. He was called Michael and became my faithful companion during those single six years.
Lucky for me that I went on this course because it was where I had met a scientist who worked for The Ministry of Defence. He was called Michael and became my faithful companion during those single six years. I never really discovered what exactly he did and I think I wasn’t supposed to. One day the doorbell rang, I opened it and the caricature of an Englishman who reads the Telegraph, (he had one under his arm), was standing there. “Can I come in, I am Government Security, and need to speak to you”, he said. We sat down and I got some coffee for him, ‘What is this all about?’ I asked. It was about Michael. The sort of questions he asked me were: Did I know what Michael did when I wasn’t with him? Was he gay, did I think? Did I know if he spoke Russian? I gave him the only information I knew and said tersely that of course I had no idea exactly what he did when I wasn’t with him.
I think the Ministry of Defence thought he was a spy and to this day I have no idea if they were right or not.
Michael was extremely clever, well read, and amusing. He was a rock for me in those turbulent years as a single woman in Oxford, and I will always be grateful to him for his constant support and, I think I can say, love. I can’t really remember why we broke up but I think it was to do so with me wanting to be married again. I wanted a husband. I am not a woman who looks for a man with money to keep her, but for a constant legitimate loving companion, someone to call my own. And Michael was not the marrying type. So, for six months I was single again.
I had been going to a writers’ group in North Oxford run by a woman called Barbara Gordon Cumming. Barbara had herself written two novels; both published, and had two daughters who were authors too. We met once a month in different houses belonging to the group and I became very good friends with Barbara. One Christmas she invited me to a dinner party at her house and it was there I met Dr Geoffrey Ellis, an historian and my future husband.
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