CHAPTER FOURTEEN – SALLY

 

When my mother died, I decided that I would like to place a plaque for her on Clevedon Pier.

 

Sally and I chose the ideal spot. It was on the front of a bench seat next to the third lamp from the end with the finest view of Poets Walk and the 12th century St Andrew’s Church and just yards from the pier pavilion, where my mother’s Uncle Raymond and Aunt Winnie had sat in 1908 and posed for the postcard they sent to Canada to celebrate her christening.

 

When Sally died five years later a plaque for her joined my mother’s – it proclaimed that she “loved Clevedon almost as much as North Norfolk” where she delighted to walk with me, her brother, Dave, and sister-in-law Vivvie on the impossibly-long, unbelievably-empty white sand beaches.   

 

Sally had been widowed on April 27, 1976, when her RAF flight engineer husband, Terry, was killed in an accident at Boscombe Down - a trainee Italian pilot froze at the controls and piled their Argosy aircraft into the runway.

 

It was only the second fatal Argosy crash in RAF history – the first had killed the husband of Sally’s best friend, Pat, whom she had met when both were service wives in Singapore and found a mutual interest in sailing, which allowed them to escape the endless rounds of coffee mornings and petty gossip.

 

Sally’s son, Andrew, was a boarder at Abingdon School, at the time of his father’s death and she decided that it would be best for him to stay there while she took a succession of jobs to provide for them both.

 

He later took a Bachelor of Education course in Physical Education, Sport and Recreation, at Reading University and then followed his father into the RAF, although as a PE officer, allowing him to lead expeditions on several continents.

 

It also earned him a coveted four-year posting with his wife, Claire, and children George and Lu to the Akrotiri base in Cyprus, where his father had been based in the Seventies.

 

When Turkey invaded the island in 1974, Andrew and his mother, who had been living with a Greek family in Limassol, were evacuated to Gibraltar and then back to live with Sally’s parents, who were running the Strangers Club in Elm Hill, Norwich.

 

I met Sally in July 1985, while I was on an Aspro holiday with Paul and Katie on the Greek island of Zante and she was there with two married friends – our paths crossed at a Saturday night barbecue at the Red House restaurant close to our rooms bordering the then-largely unspoilt Lagana Beach.

 

Her friends pointed out that I was alone with two children and as Sally and I passed in the queue for burgers and hot dogs, they said: “She’s not here for the food, she’s here to meet a man.”

 

That may have not been true, but we clicked instantly and after I had demonstrated my prowess at Greek dancing, complete with a Zorba-like whisked handkerchief, we strolled in the moonlight on the deserted sands.

 

The following morning with children in tow, I went in search of Sally and found her on the beach, where she seemed pleased to see me, although she later admitted she had initially tried to hide in the waves, not quite sure that she wanted to pursue this lightning romance.

 

But when I heard that her friends had declined to sail with her despite her proven prowess as Ladies Champion of the Singapore Yacht Club, I volunteered to crew – an offer she gratefully accepted.

 

We set off together in a tiny red dinghy on a mirror-like emerald sea, passing a leisurely swimming turtle and with me leaning out to balance the craft as I had seen on television – I don’t think I disgraced myself, although my beach-cred was slightly dented later when I discovered the paintwork had coloured the seat of my trunks..

 

There followed idyllic days of sunbathing, lunches at beach-side bars and leisurely suppers at small tavernas, but all too soon she and her friends returned home.

 

We had however agreed to meet again back in England to exchange holiday photographs and I asked Sally to suggest an attractive riverside halfway location, where we could have lunch.

 

She chose the Trout at Lechlade – I should have looked at a map, as I discovered later that the pub was a few miles from her house in Clanfield, Oxfordshire, while 70 miles from mine.

 

Despite this duplicity, we enjoyed a lovely afternoon on the Thames – her rowing after discovering my incompetence at the oars – and there followed a pleasant evening back at her home.

 

Sally knew at the time that I was in another relationship and it was that which meant that when we parted I would not see her for another 12 years.

 

One lonely evening in 1997 I spotted her name, Colgan, in my address book above that of my oldest friend, Colin Cook.

 

I worked out the new code for her telephone number, called to find an answerphone and left a message, saying she might not remember me, but it would be great to hear from her again.

 

Sally called back later and it was as if no time had passed at all – we chatted for a while and then I suggested I would drive over immediately and meet her at the Crown Inn in Faringdon – on this occasion I knew the location was just down the road from her home, The Old Stable.

 

We met in the bar, her having already ordered a half pint of lager, chatted for a while and then she looked me in the eye and said: “Let’s go home.”

 

I stayed for three days, failing to scare her off, despite suggesting to buy her an expensive long case clock at an antique dealer’s in Burford – it would have been totally unsuitable for Sally’s home.

 

But maybe I was subliminally influenced by my Great Great Grandfather Joseph, who I was to discover nearly twenty years later had been a clockmaker less than 40 miles away in Souldern, Oxfordshire, in the mid-19th century.

 

In view of our later happiness, it is difficult to justify the trauma to which I subjected Sally over the next two years, but I was torn between the completeness I felt in her company and the 14-year intense yet on many levels unsatisfactory relationship, which had been a major part of my life since my divorce.

 

However Sally persevered despite my constant vacillations and in 1999 we became a couple, bringing joy not just to me, but also to my mother, who as ever wanted to see her boy happy.

 

I had left the Western Daily Press in 1994, setting up my own travel promotions company, Bellevue Marketing, which had survived despite an exciting but doomed venture in 1997 involving historic railway posters and T-shirts, which were produced successfully if unprofitably for the sailing from Bristol to Newfoundland of the replica of Sebastian Cabot’s ship, the Matthew.

 

However by 1999, my business was beginning to bear dividends and I had the freedom to divide my time between Clevedon and Clanfield, while Sally was working as the Accountant at Rhodes House, in Oxford, reporting to the Warden, Sir Anthony Kenny - a job she described as the best in her life.

 

Like her predecessor, Peggy Cetti, who with her husband, John, was to become a great friend, she felt the book-keeping side of the role was secondary to acting as surrogate mother, adviser and confidante to the Rhodes Scholars – the brightest of bright youngsters from all over the world, who often needed practical advice on coping with life far away from home as well as a shoulder to cry on

 

But this close contact was to end when Sir Anthony retired and the incoming Warden, Dr John Rowett, decided that Sally’s office should be taken over by his new secretary, so she was moved at a few days’ notice to a distant garret up several flights of stairs at the opposite end of the building.

 

By then she was suffering from COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), having inherited her father’s weak chest, and the stress of the move, the extra exertion caused by the new office location and the enforced separation from the young scholars led her to take retirement.

 

Clevedon then increasingly became our base, partly because her son, Andrew, having retired from the RAF, was now living with his family near Bristol and working for the Avon Fire Service as an education and training advisor. 

 

I was working during the week, so Sally needed new outlets for her considerable energy, directing this at first to refurbishing my mother’s house in preparation for its renting-out to pay for care home bills and also to re-modelling my home, which had remained largely unchanged since I bought it in 1983.

 

Sally also became a major influence in the life of my daughter, Katie, and after my grand-daughter, Edie, was born there could not have been a more ideal baby-sitter and later adopted grandmother and mentor.  

 

The two became inseparable chums on expeditions to the Portishead swimming baths, followed by lunch in the neighbouring Waitrose cafe, and on visits to the amusement arcade on Clevedon seafront, where Edie would sit in the electrically-powered Wagon Train and instruct Sally to “sit properly” on the adjacent bucking metal horse and put the money in the slot to spur it into action.

 

When Edie’s nursery school held a grandparents’ day it was no surprise who she should want to take along, introducing her mentor by saying: “She’s not my grandmother, she’s my Sally – she’s a lady.”    

 

But much as she enjoyed her time with Edie, Sally still remained somewhat unfulfilled, so she looked for voluntary work and her two choices, suggested by Andrew and his wife, Claire, were to bring her a welcome new purpose.

 

The first was helping to catalogue items for the inventory at nearby Tyntesfield, the National Trust-owned Victorian Gothic Revival house, built as a family home by William Gibbs (a namesake but not a relation) thanks to the wealth he created by importing guano (bird droppings) for use as fertiliser in post-Industrial Revolution Britain.

 

Her second voluntary work was at the Life Skills Centre, in Bristol, where predominantly Year Six pupils (10 to11-year-olds) were taught with the aid of realistically-constructed film-type sets how to handle emergency situations and to cope safely with situations they were likely to encounter in their day-to-day lives.  

 

It was a role that was eminently suitable for Sally, but sadly she had to give it up after contact with young germs brought regular chest infections and the hacking coughs, which were eventually to lead her to the doctor in Bampton, Oxfordshire, and the chilling diagnosis in February, 2011, of inoperable lung cancer.

 

At the time we had been planning for the sake of her health to spend part of the Spring and Autumn each year in Cyprus, but all that had to be abandoned as Sally prepared for the months of hospital visits, radiotherapy and uncomfortable procedures, which were to follow.

 

She faced the prognosis of six to 18 months to live with typical courage and practicality and we vowed to face whatever lay ahead together, enjoying each day as it came, including one last visit to Cyprus, and leaving aside all but the briefest discussion of the end game.

 

I would have loved to have married Sally, but she could not do so officially without losing her RAF widow’s pension – a cruel regulation which has since been revoked.

 

But I thought that being engaged would be the next best thing, so on Leap Year Day - February 29, 2012 – I reminded her of the tradition which allowed a woman to propose to a man and after hours of badgering, she eventually relented at five minutes to midnight – although I was the one who had to go on one knee.

 

Sally proceeded to tell family and friends, but did not expect her brother, Dave, to insist that even though there could not be a formal marriage, we had to be hitched one way or another.

 

So we were wed on July 29, 2012, in a traditional handfast ceremony, which Dave conducted as an internet-ordained priest , surrounded by our family and friends in the grounds of a beautiful farmhouse in North Norfolk – the county of Sally’s birth.

 

When some six weeks later she went into the Churchill Hospital for a blood transfusion and a planned meeting with her consultant, I thought she would be back home the next day, but eleven days later she was gone.

 

I was able to stay in her room for the last four days and early on the morning of October 1, as her breathing became gradually more shallow, I kept saying to her: “Don’t forget to breathe, Sally – don’t forget to breathe.”

 

Around 9am the nurses asked me to pop out to the day room, while they changed her bedding, and five minutes later one came to tell me: “Your wife has passed away.”

 

Dave and his wife, Viv, Andrew and Claire and Katie were all there shortly afterwards and as I went back to her room to say a final goodbye to Sally the door opened of its own accord, as if she was welcoming me in for the last time.

 

Her funeral in the Memorial Woodlands near Bristol was as beautiful as her spirit, with the type of basket weave casket she had once said she favoured covered in flowers, including her favourite freesias, and the chapel filled by her family and many friends.

 

Dave sang “Hev Yew Gotta Loight, Boy”, the song written by Norfolk’s Singing Postman, in which Sally always enjoyed taking a speaking role, and read out the perfect sonnet he had composed for her.

 

Katie read out my poem for Sally – it had been written, as had all mine for her, as if guided by an unseen hand.

 

TO MY SALLY

 

Every hour is precious, every day a prize

Delighting in your laughter and the sparkle in your eyes

Knowing that we’re finite, wishing ‘twas not so

Wishing that you’d stay with me and never, ever go

For years you’ve been my template – a pattern for my days

Rounding off my edges, fine-tuning all my ways

Reminding me what’s proper and what’s best left unsaid

Teaching me to think awhile and not rush blind ahead

Asking about others and listening to replies

Giving counsel freely in words both warm and wise

Together and forever that’s how we’re meant to be

Together and forever throughout eternity

The gift I wished to give you was not within my power

But you’ll stay closely with me and fill each waking hour