Life Goes On by Michael Ludlow

Author:Michael Ludlow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Brown Dog Books

Chapter 12

A NEW LIFE

What of the children, sufferers from a split marriage, through no fault of their own?

Here, to begin with, I need to go back more than a year from the day I packed my bags and left my home in Leigh for good, to a day late in January 1967. One morning I was walking from my office along Tothill Street, close to Westminster Abbey, on my way to a morning appointment. About 20 yards ahead of me, I saw a small group of people talking. One of them was a slim lady, with her back to me. I thought I recognised her. ‘Diane?’ I called questioningly. It was indeed Diane, the girl to whom six years previously at the end of 1960 I had written to tell her my news of the girl I later married. On reaching her, I could see she was suntanned, suggesting she must recently have returned from a hot climate. In my short conversation with her, I learned that she had just returned from Bombay (now Mumbai) where she had attended the wedding of her closest and most long-standing friend, Zehra Tyabji (née Tayebbhoi) with whom she had been at boarding school in Ootacamund in her teens. She was now working, as she had been eight years previously, as secretary to the editorial director of Pan Books. What had changed was the address of Pan Books, whose new offices in Tothill Street she now stood outside. After this brief conversation, I continued on my way, and she on hers.

It must have been many months later, during the time of Prue and my sessions with Sir David Stafford-Clark’s assistant, when they were looking depressingly unhopeful. I had memories of how comfortingly uncomplicated life had seemed eight years previously before I had met Prue, but how greatly the hard learning curve I had experienced since then had served to bring unattainable idealism down to earth and be replaced by realism. I had off and on, since our meeting in Tothill Street, been thinking about Diane, and had a growing desire to meet her again and hear news of her life since our relationship had ended. Finally, I plucked up courage and called at her office, round the corner from mine.

At Pan Books reception desk I asked to see Diane. To my relief, she accepted an invitation from me to take her out to lunch a few days later. When the time came, the day was sunny. On meeting her at her office, we took a taxi to a moderately priced restaurant in Soho. This was not intended (at least, not consciously) as a possible pitch, but was I deceiving myself? Over lunch, I learned that soon after she had received my letter calling our relationship to an end, her father had died. Sometime later, she had contracted glandular fever which she had taken a long time to get over. She had a steady boyfriend, Tony, who designed Pan’s book covers and had used a

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.