‘No, I didn’t fall in love with him straight away, I never fell in love with Roberto at all and I doubt he really loved me. But we got caught up in it all, that post-war euphoria, being free, liberated and young. After the things we had seen, horrors that the lady sitting next to me on the bus could never imagine or the annoying pipe-smoking clerk who polluted our office with his ignorance and presence, would never believe. Maybe we went a little bit wild.
‘Roberto knew so many wonderful and interesting people; war correspondents, writers, actors and actresses, musicians… the list was endless. So we partied and drank but deep down I knew I was trying to erase the terrible sadness in here.’ Dottie touched her chest.
‘I thought by blocking it all out, that I wouldn’t miss France, and the men and women from my village. It left a mark on me, my Resistance, and my comrades were like family and I missed them, and I missed my life. I yearned for Renazé, the little village I’d called home.’
Dottie looked in the visor mirror, and noted her make-up was still in place, no sign of tears. That was good. The visor flipped up with a snapping sound.
‘My parents thought Roberto was the bee’s knees, everyone did, from the customers in the café, my doe-eyed colleagues, the barman in the local pub and his bosses at the news agency. He was a rising star, travelling back and forth to the Allied-occupied zones, his photographic journalism in great demand. Roberto proposed to me in a smoky pub, New Year’s Eve, 1948, a few minutes after Big Ben chimed. It wasn’t a great romantic gesture but somewhere in between clinking our glasses of whisky and a kiss, he said, “Hey, let’s get married,” and I said, “Okay, why not”. It really was as simple as that.’
‘But it’s a huge thing, and you always seem so independent and I can’t imagine you getting married on a whim.’
‘Well I did, and I don’t regret it, not one bit. You see I’d been away for almost two years. I left my family in limbo, with no idea where I was or if they would be the next ones to open the door to the telegram boy. My mum was beside herself with happiness when Roberto asked for my dad’s permission. I can see from the expression on your Modern Milly face that the idea is alien to you, it is to me now, but back then I didn’t care. My marriage told my mum that the days of worry were over. Her little girl had come home and was staying put. Life would go back to normal.
‘We had a town hall wedding, a reception and knees-up in the café and after a honeymoon night in The Strand Palace hotel, we returned to a surprise. Mum and Dad gave us the deposit for a house and the key to the door of a property two minutes away. Roberto and I went straight over and had a look and by the following day, the ball was rolling. I was a married woman, career woman I may add, with a handsome roving reporter for a husband and after a while I convinced myself that I could do it. I could be normal, a good wife, and as a reward my heart would stop aching and eventually those damn pictures in my head would fade.’
Maude asked the obvious. ‘So what went wrong?’
A sigh. ‘We’d been jogging along happily for seven months, it was summer, July, and Roberto met me from work so we decided to walk to St James’s Park. It only takes four minutes, I know this because the girls and I used to go there for our lunch and be back at our desks at one, prompt.
‘We held hands and chatted, but I sensed Roberto was agitated. I had no idea that there were only four minutes left. That’s how long it took to basically end a marriage to a man I didn’t really love.’
Maude said nothing, instead fiddled with the flip-top lid of her bottle.
‘He’d been offered a job withTimemagazine in New York. There was an apartment thrown in with his generous wage and other benefits that I can’t even remember now, oh yes, there was a rooftop pool and terrace for the residents, and a concierge on the door. Poor Roberto was animated and overjoyed. He was going to the land of opportunity and had already been commissioned to photograph the NATO negotiations when they began. We had a one-way ticket to paradise.’
‘And what did you say?’
‘I asked him what I would do all day, while he was clicking away, doing his dream job in his dream city. He told me I wouldn’t have to do anything, apart from shop and look fantastic. He behaved like he’d found the pot at the end of the rainbow. I wanted to push him in the lake.’
‘Yep, that’s more like my gran.’
‘The whole scene, his animated face, his excited pacing, the picture he painted of the promised land meant nothing to me. It was actually like an epiphany. Okay, so I didn’t have the most scintillating job, overseeing supply movements to military bases, but it was my job, that I got up to go to every morning. I had my own desk with my nameplate, and an extension number. People knew who I was and what I did, and no way was I giving it up to spend my days lounging on a roof terrace, gossiping with other wives.’
Maude took another sip of water. ‘I can actually picture the scene and I sort of know what happened next… how did you tell him?’
‘I didn’t straight away, because as much as I knew in my heart that I wouldn’t go, I felt he deserved a period of grace, to believe I had given it due consideration and not dismissed it and him out of hand. That’s what I was doing really. I was letting him go and truthfully, Maude, I didn’t care.’
‘That’s very civilised of you, Gran, letting him down lightly.’
Dottie harrumphed. ‘He sulked immediately because I hadn’t jumped for joy so the ride home on the bus was somewhat subdued. I told him I needed to get my head around it all. He told me we’d be going at the end of the month. Three weeks away.’
‘Blood… blooming heck! That was a bit quick.’
Dottie folded up the chocolate that lay in her lap, it was getting warm and she’d gone off it now. ‘The best way to describe it was like a rush of blood to the head. How dare he presume that I’d simply throw away everything to follow his dream? I’d survived so much during the war. I wasn’t just his wife, I was a woman who’d jumped out of a plane into the blackest sky, then gone undercover, fighting a war far from home. I’d hidden in the dark, smelling of forests and fox shit. I risked my life, felt fear, loved, lost, cried. I was more than his wife and I would not be shuffled off to play house.’
‘Did you tell him that?’
‘No, I didn’t because he should have known, or at least had the decency, the wherewithal to see things from my point of view, after all, he’d met me in France, he knew what I did. My life there was not a total secret. I just preferred not to talk about it.’ Dottie passed the bar of chocolate to Maude who placed it in the carrier bag.
‘I stayed up all night after he’d gone to bed, probably exhausted from trying to persuade me. By the time the milkman was doing his rounds I’d got it all straight in my head. Over breakfast I told him that there was no way I could leave my parents. Mémère Delphine was becoming frail and after being away from home for so long I felt duty bound to stay close by. I pitched it as a simple choice, duty over love. I omitted to say what I really felt, that the choice was my self-respect or marriage. Like I said, Roberto was let down lightly and had a ready prepared line to feed anyone who asked why his marriage had failed.’
‘So it was all quite amicable, what happened next?’
‘We parted as friends which I suppose was all we were, but as you young things say nowadays, with benefits.’
‘Gran!’
A roll of the eyes from Dottie, then more. ‘Roberto booked a flight, he went a few days later and to soften the blow we both made easy-to-break promises and bold statements that made saying goodbye easier, less awkward. He would try to come back regularly, and he wanted me to visit for holidays and who knew, I might fall in love with New York. In other circumstances maybe I would have been bitten by the big apple. It sounded like a fantastic place. I wasn’t completely ignorant to its charms. We did keep in touch, for many years actually, even after we divorced. I was always extremely proud of him and subscribed toTimemagazine, scouring the pages for one of his articles. He was an outstanding photojournalist and a happy part of my life. A chapter at least.’
