my wife tells me – but how could she tell, given how bad my dancing was?). But I did fall in love with her next day when, along with other colleagues and their girl friends and partners, we met for lunch in the Clarence Hotel in Exeter’s Cathedral Square. I was bored with the lunch, and so was she, so we went off to look round the Cathedral together and, wandering round, found that we shared a love of architecture and classical music. Jane, it turned out, was an art student studying at Bristol and was as engaging, unpompous and fresh in her views as she was beautiful.
We started to write regularly and see each other whenever we could. I couldn’t afford a car at the time, and so I relied on Tim Courtenay to drive me up to see her at her home in Burnham-on-Sea in his open-topped MG. I have very fond memories of these drives up the Exe Valley, full of anticipation at seeing Jane again. These were days when roads were less crowded, and we could stop off at a pub for a couple of pints and a sandwich without worrying about alcohol limits. And it always seemed to be summer, and the sun always seemed to be shining.
It was just at this time, as I was finding a new dimension to my life, that I lost the most important anchor on which I had relied for all of my eighteen years. Straight after the ball at which I had met Jane, I returned home to Ireland for Christmas with my parents. A day or so after I arrived home, my father took my mother, my brother Tim and me off to the Grosvenor Hotel in Belfast. This was, by family tradition, the place we always went when there was something really important to celebrate. But this was not a celebration. My father, with tears in his eyes, told us that he had failed us – his business would have to fold. He had decided, with my mother, that the only sensible course for them now was to pay off their debts and emigrate with the whole family – except me, since I was now established – to Australia, where the Government had initiated a scheme that offered British families passage and assistance in setting up in the new country for £ 10 (the so-called ‘ten-pound Pom’ scheme). They would leave in the spring. My father explained that his only lifetime ambition left was to give his children a proper start in life, and in class-conscious Britain that meant paid-for private education. It was now clear that that he would not have the money even to do this, so he would take the family to a country where it didn’t matter. They had considered Canada, but the Australian scheme was all they could afford. I was heartbroken, almost as much by the sight of my beloved father with tears running down his broken face as at the prospect of being permanently parted from them all.
We had a pretty miserable last Christmas in a rented house in Donaghadee, where we had started in Northern Ireland, and then I returned to Lympstone at the end of the Christmas holidays. I saw them once more, a few weeks before they left from Tilbury Docks on the SS Strathaird on 6 June 1960. They had gone down to spend their last few days in Britain with my Dorset aunt, and I got time off to go and say farewell to them. After I had said goodbye to my brothers and sisters, my parents decided to accompany me as far as Axminster on the first leg of my bus journey back to Lympstone. It was not a wise decision. Most of the journey was spent in dumb misery, broken only by my father trying, in a choking voice, to give me advice on how I should live the rest of my life. It was on this journey that I first told them about Jane. And then, there in the town square of Axminster, I said goodbye to them both. It was dusk, raining and very cold for earlysummer. I remember seeing their faces out of the rain-streaked back window of the bus as it pulled out of the square, carrying me back to my life in England, as they headed off to refound their family on the other side of the world. I was to see my mother again for only three (albeit extended)
We started to write regularly and see each other whenever we could. I couldn’t afford a car at the time, and so I relied on Tim Courtenay to drive me up to see her at her home in Burnham-on-Sea in his open-topped MG. I have very fond memories of these drives up the Exe Valley, full of anticipation at seeing Jane again. These were days when roads were less crowded, and we could stop off at a pub for a couple of pints and a sandwich without worrying about alcohol limits. And it always seemed to be summer, and the sun always seemed to be shining.
It was just at this time, as I was finding a new dimension to my life, that I lost the most important anchor on which I had relied for all of my eighteen years. Straight after the ball at which I had met Jane, I returned home to Ireland for Christmas with my parents. A day or so after I arrived home, my father took my mother, my brother Tim and me off to the Grosvenor Hotel in Belfast. This was, by family tradition, the place we always went when there was something really important to celebrate. But this was not a celebration. My father, with tears in his eyes, told us that he had failed us – his business would have to fold. He had decided, with my mother, that the only sensible course for them now was to pay off their debts and emigrate with the whole family – except me, since I was now established – to Australia, where the Government had initiated a scheme that offered British families passage and assistance in setting up in the new country for £ 10 (the so-called ‘ten-pound Pom’ scheme). They would leave in the spring. My father explained that his only lifetime ambition left was to give his children a proper start in life, and in class-conscious Britain that meant paid-for private education. It was now clear that that he would not have the money even to do this, so he would take the family to a country where it didn’t matter. They had considered Canada, but the Australian scheme was all they could afford. I was heartbroken, almost as much by the sight of my beloved father with tears running down his broken face as at the prospect of being permanently parted from them all.
We had a pretty miserable last Christmas in a rented house in Donaghadee, where we had started in Northern Ireland, and then I returned to Lympstone at the end of the Christmas holidays. I saw them once more, a few weeks before they left from Tilbury Docks on the SS Strathaird on 6 June 1960. They had gone down to spend their last few days in Britain with my Dorset aunt, and I got time off to go and say farewell to them. After I had said goodbye to my brothers and sisters, my parents decided to accompany me as far as Axminster on the first leg of my bus journey back to Lympstone. It was not a wise decision. Most of the journey was spent in dumb misery, broken only by my father trying, in a choking voice, to give me advice on how I should live the rest of my life. It was on this journey that I first told them about Jane. And then, there in the town square of Axminster, I said goodbye to them both. It was dusk, raining and very cold for earlysummer. I remember seeing their faces out of the rain-streaked back window of the bus as it pulled out of the square, carrying me back to my life in England, as they headed off to refound their family on the other side of the world. I was to see my mother again for only three (albeit extended)
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