One Leg Over by Robin Dalton

Author:Robin Dalton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Text Publishing Company
Published: 2016-12-09T16:00:00+00:00

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The fact that I could not, as a divorcee, accompany David to the Royal Enclosure at Ascot (even had I wished to) was but a tiny indication of the pinpricks suffered by David. We were not to know of the vast, ironic turntable awaiting those standards; but I was also having a wonderful time and, although in love, found the world full of amusement—a state I had found sadly lacking in marriage. But we had five happy years of love, fun and friendship—a friendship which lasted until David’s death. My first marriage was by now happily forgotten, its consequences lingering, but life also lived long enough and well enough to recognise the blessings that fate had bestowed. I was saved, in all probability, by the Pope and the antiquated royal approval laws, respectively, from missing the joys to come later with my second marriage. David, understandably, got married to someone else (with the mistaken idea that she was very rich), leaving me with his dog, his car, and, just as we had parted in Australia years before, both of us in tears.

Shortly after drying mine I met Stanley Haynes. That liaison lasted for four years until I met my husband, and through him finally grow up, to look back with amazement at the creature I was in those years. Perhaps this is one of the things that growing up means. I cannot feel any shame or guilt at my behaviour, partly because I cannot believe that the creature was me. I am also incredibly glad that I felt none at the time, and was therefore able to enjoy life to the full without a thought to the future. I don’t think I hurt anyone much and my chief regret is that I made nothing of any of the opportunities offered me to concentrate on a direction in life.

But, as four years of that other life were spent with Stanley, some residue of enrichment must remain, however traumatic its termination.

Stanley was a writer/film producer of self-taught erudition and culture, and through him I regained something of the influences of my childhood with my grandmother. He taught me to listen to music—to need music. Before I met him, I had existed without it except for Chula’s concerts and occasional opera outings. He was one of the five men who had formed Cineguild, a unique grouping of complementary talents responsible for some of the better films of the 1940s in England—David Lean, Eric Ambler, Ronald Neame, Anthony Havelock-Allan, and Stanley between them writing, directing or producing. Stanley wrote and produced with David, Oliver Twist and Great Expectations. I was to become his fourth wife—something which horrified my grandmother but which my parents took in their stride. I suspect by this time they were relieved that I was about to settle down with someone—anyone, within reason. Over the four years, I hesitated, as I detected an inkling of why his last three marriages had not survived—largely to do with Stanley’s moods, depressions, and, in my case, jealousy.

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