Peter’s Story

Section Five - Episode Four

Found Her....  at last!

After the dissappointment of the “Jocelyn affair”, and the other disasters with girls, Peter went right back into “the search”.....






Mary


The first time I saw Mary, I was bowled over.  She was slim, about 5ft 5in tall, with thin shoulder-length blonde hair.  Not a really stunning beauty, but something about her really grabbed my attention.


We met at a public dance, not the dance that was my “usual hunting ground”, but a new dance that had recently opened.  There was something about Mary's personality that really got me.  She had an easy, friendly, loving nature.  She was a trainee primary school teacher, and I was a trainee telecomunications technician at the Post Office.  She was eighteen, and I was almost twenty when we met.


I recall driving her home the night of our first meeting.  We talked for a few minutes, had a very brief kiss, and she went inside.


It turned out that she was from a rather strict Catholic family, and she had strong religious beliefs.  This did not stop her from enjoying immensely my kisses as our relationship progressed, but she made it plain that sex before marriage was definitely not on her agenda!


We quickly fell into a pattern of going out every Saturday night, sometimes once mid-week, and also every Sunday afternoon.




As the weeks turned into months, our mutual passion increased.  She was a very passionate young woman, despite her strict Catholic upbringing.  She really, really believed in the teachings of her church and was determined to follow them, but her passionate nature was pushing her in another direction.


We talked about this, and there seemed to be no answer.  Marriage was out of the question for the foreseeable future.  She had to finish her training first, and I had no desire for marriage.  There was also the religious question, I was very aware that my mother would not approve of me marrying a Catholic.  My mother was from an Irish Protestant heritage, and had inherited a lot of religious prejudice.  Two of her brothers (my uncles), had married Catholic women, and she did not approve of this.


Our relationship continued, with us both becoming more and more frustrated. We were both virgins (despite my sexual adventures with April and a few others, I was still technically a virgin).  We would often lay together on the seat of my car, fully clothed but bodies pressed tightly together, kissing passionately, panting.




Eventually the impasse was broken.  It was totally unplanned on my part (honest it was!).  One night, we parked outside her parents' house, went through our usual routine of kissing and pressing our bodies together, but somehow, as if in a dream (I was a little drunk at the time, and so was she), I managed to lift her skirt, push aside her panties, and enter her.  It was over in thirty seconds.  She did not even realize what had happened until she went inside and discovered some blood on her panties!


She was not amused!  In fact, she was furious!  Earlier that same evening, she had told me in great detail about how she really looked forward to one day walking up the aisle, clad in white as a virgin bride!  And within an hour or so of this telling, her virginity was gone!


Anyway, the deed was done, the horse had bolted, and no amount of recriminations would close the stable door now!  By the next weekend, she had calmed down.


Now that her aim of remaining a virgin was no longer possible, there was no stopping me!  I was determined to go for it!  At our next Sunday afternoon outing, I took her to some very secluded sand-hills at the beach, determined to repeat the dirty deed!  And I did!  She goes along with it, but, once again, is not very happy afterwards.  It hurt her quite a lot this time, and she took my blanket down to the sea to wash off all the blood, berating me as she went.


But guess what happened?  After the first few times, once she got used to it, her passionate nature took over and she really enjoyed our lovemaking.


But she was very guilty.  She really believed that we were committing a “mortal sin”, and would pay dearly for this moral crime.


The fear of possible pregnancy came up immediately, of course.  For the first month or so, I think that we were just extremely lucky.  To me, the obvious answer was condoms, but to her this was as bad a sin as the actual sex itself.  By now, I had found an answer to my little problem of my Chemist Shop phobia.  I would order condoms by mail order, from the adverts. in the back of the  “Truth” weekly newspaper, being careful to make sure that I was always the first home to clear the mailbox before my parents!  And, I got away with this, my parents never ever found out.


I am sure that good old  “Truth” saved many hundreds of young New Zealand women from the consequences of unwanted pregnancy over these years, way before the sale of condoms in supermarkets and vending machines.




Eventually, we fell into a pattern.  To pay homage to her Catholic sensibilities, she would calculate the “safe” parts of her cycle, as approved by the church, and we would not use the condoms on these days.  If we made love on the “unsafe” days, we would use the condoms.  She was still very guilty about all of this.  After all, even having sex at all, with or without the condoms, was a mortal sin!  But, for quite a few months, it worked!  We had a few scares, a few days of panic, but these were always false alarms.


Our relationship continued through the end of 1966 into 1967.  The summer of 66-67 was great!  We would often make love on a Sunday afternoon in the sandhills, and it was wonderful!  She may have been worried about eventually going to hell for this sinful behavior, but to me it was heaven on earth!  I had finally found someone to love and be loved by, complete with awesome sex!  Absolute bliss!


You know how most of us have a really special memory of a very special occasion, an occasion that really stands out from all other occasions?  I have very sweet memories of a gloriously sunny Sunday, during that summer of 66-67.  We drove up State Highway One from Christchurch into North Canterbury, and eventually found a very secluded spot in a riverbed.  We spread our blanket on the ground under some willow trees, and made glorious love with the birds singing in the trees and the patterns of sun and shade on our bodies.  A timeless, glorious, tender and passionate coming together of young lovers, just as lovers have since time began.  Afterwards, we shared a couple of bottles of beer, and then the passion rose again and we made love again (slightly drunk), on the front seat of the car.  Absolute bliss!


However, our relationship was much more than just sex.  I would not like you to think that this relationship was purely for the carnal delights that we shared!  There was a real depth to the love that we felt for each other, at least that's how it felt to us at the time.  With Mary, I felt a very deep affection, a real genuine regard and concern for each other.  We had an easy intimacy, a closeness that I felt no matter what we were doing together.


Our social life was excellent, also.  We went to dances very regularly, and on car rallies.  We went to the car races, and to the occasional ball.  My friends got to know her, and she was very popular with them.  Even my parents liked her a lot, and seemed happy to put aside the issue of her being a Catholic.  (It was at one of these balls, with Mary, that I bumped into my former love, April, as described earlier.)




The relationship carried on, and I would have been very happy for it to have continued like this for years.  But, as they say, all good things eventually come to an end.  There was another possible pregnancy scare, only this time, as the days turned into weeks, this time it looked like we may have been caught!


I can remember very clearly the occasion when it must have happened.  We had been out one night, and had parked in a very secluded industrial street a few blocks from her parents' home.  (Our usual love-making spot on such occasions).  She was not sure whether it was safe to not use a condom.  After a little hesitation, we proceeded to make love without a condom, and I recall being a little anxious about this but proceeding anyway.


The weeks dragged on, and eventually, we had to face up to reality.  We needed to find out for sure.  She selected a doctor out of the telephone book, as she would not have dared to have gone to her family doctor.  Looking back now, it seems incredible the whole energy of how society related to sex and sexuality.  There was still no way that I could ever have discussed sex with my parents.  Even as a young man of twenty!  I was still trapped in the energy of the 1950's, the little boy who had asked his parents where do babies come from and been fobbed off with a nervous laugh about storks and gooseberry bushes.


And as for Mary, it was even worse!  Her convent school education by the nuns, the priest preaching about the evils of the flesh, her parents totally suppressing their sexuality outside of the privacy of their own bedroom.   We literally lived a double life.  At home, for us, sex did not exist.  We were even very, very careful to hide our sexual activity from our closest friends.  My friends had no idea that I was having sex with Mary!  We just did not discuss such matters.  I talked about sex to my male friends, the usual locker-room talk, but always in very general terms, and never a word about my actual, real-life sexual relationship with Mary.


Looking back now, from the perspective of 1998, after decades of permissiveness, it seems bizarre to reflect on how it was back then.  But that was our reality, and we knew no other.  We had no idea that within a few years it would become socially acceptable, in fact almost the norm, to live openly together in a sexual relationship with no intention of marriage!  To us, the very thought of such a thing ever being possible was just not part of our reality.




Mary went for her doctor's appointment, pretending that she was married.  We were so fearful of what society might think, and so desperate to keep our dark secret hidden, that we even tried to keep the truth from the doctor!  But when the results came (positive), she was not able to hide her distress and burst out crying.  The truth came out, but rather than condemning her, the doctor was very supportive and promised to do all he could to help.


So here we are.  The classic dilemma.  The same dilemma that must have been replayed, with minor variations, millions of times down throughout history.  A young couple has pushed their luck, and have been “caught out”.  Our biology has caught up with us.  Our bodies have done, very efficiently, exactly what they are designed to do.  We have planted the seed, and the clock is now ticking for the harvest in approximately seven months time.


The next issue, obviously, is telling our parents.  Mary was petrified with fear at this prospect.  Their eldest daughter (she had two younger sisters and no brothers), despite all the years of indoctrination about the evils of sin, has committed one of the worst possible sins!  How can she face them with this news?  The shame!  And their bitter disappointment in her!  They will be devastated.  As well as the fear of their wrath, she is also extremely concerned for their feelings.  They will be so disappointed, and ashamed.


Eventually, she plucks up the courage to tell her mother, and leaves it to her mother to tell her father.  And a funny thing happens, at least to me at the time it was totally unexpected.  Once the initial shock has passed, and she has had her ordeal of being severely reprimanded, they are actually genuinely concerned for her welfare and totally supportive of her!  She is not thrown out of the home in disgrace, they close ranks and indicate that they will do all they can to resolve the issue.  They are a very close-knit family, with a deep concern for each other that goes way beyond their religious beliefs in sin, hell and damnation.


But as for me, Mary's parents are not quite so eager to forgive me!  I am summoned to a meeting with her father.  I am interviewed on the back door-step of their house, in subdued voices, in case the neighbours hear!  (I was not invited inside, and I was to never again enter their home.)  And, for all the subdued volume of his voice, there is no hiding his fury!


How could I do such a thing?  I have ruined her life!  I protest that I love her, but this is dismissed with a venomous comment that no way could I really love her, or I would never have done such a thing!


I slink away, tail between my legs, my ears stinging from his vicious comments.  I never enter their house again, I am not welcome there.  But, they do not prevent us from continuing the relationship!  I think that they were allowing us to continue in the expectation that maybe we would decide to get married, as this would have resolved the issue.  Also, I guess there was also a degree of pragmatism  “Well, she's pregnant anyway, so he can't get her pregnant again!”  Whatever the reason, I am eternally grateful to them for this.




Meanwhile, back home with my parents, I am trying to somehow find the courage to tell them!  The two pairs of parents did not know each other, had never met, and never did meet, nor did they ever have any direct contact at all.  It's amazing, looking back, that Mary's father did not telephone my father and tell him the news, but he did not.  I have no idea why not.


Over the next few weeks, and eventually months, I attempted many times to tell them.  I rehearsed exactly what to say, figured out the best time to say it, and really did try to follow through.  I would sit in the lounge with them of an evening, the T.V. going, my father reading the newspaper.  I would open my mouth to say the dreaded words, and my voice would totally fail me.  I just could not say the words.  It just was not possible for those three simple words  “Mary is pregnant” to pass from my lips!  No matter how many times I tried, all that would come out would be a faint croak!


I really did want to tell them.  I was fearful that they would find out anyway, from someone else.  And this would make it even worse!  Every time the phone rang, at the back of my mind there would be the possibility that it just might be Mary's father!  My relief each time when it was someone else!


Many years later, when I finally do tell them the story of the grand-daughter they did not know existed, they want to know  “Why did you not tell us at the time???”  I can only rely  “How could I?”


It was difficult enough to finally front up to them in the 90's and tell them the truth, but in the energy of the 60's, how could I?  In our home, sex, sexuality and sexual activity just did not exist.  It was not part of our paradigm.  It was never ever mentioned, under any circumstances, ever.  If it was essential to allude to anything to do with sex, euphemisms were compulsory.  “Pregnant” was always referred to as  “going to have a baby”.  Mention of childbirth was O.K., but no mention was ever made of what it was that started the process nine months earlier!  It was like the cause of pregnancy was spontaneous cell division in the woman's body.  A kind of immaculate conception.


I remember asking one time when I was about eight or nine, in all innocence,  “How come that the Patel girls are dark like their father?” (Their father was Indian, but their mother was a white Kiwi woman).  I knew by then that a baby, by some mysterious process, grew inside it's mother's tummy and then somehow came out.  I had no idea how it came to be there in the first place, nor how it got out, for years I just presumed that it must come out of her anus, as this was the only suitable opening that I was aware of, and her belly-button seemed far too small!  Even the  “playground talk” at school had not enlightened me at all!


As always, my mother referred this embarrassing question to my father, but all he could think of by way of reply was “Because he is their father, of course!” said in such a voice as to make it plain that this was the final word, and I was not to dare ask the fateful question as to what it really meant to be a father?  I was totally mystified.  If the baby came from the mother's body, then I could understand how the child would look like her.  But what could the father possibly have to do with it???  Surely, he was just the guy who went to work each day to provide the money???  No-one was about to enlighten me.  For my parents, anything to do with sexual activity just did not exist.  And no way could I ask the boys in the playground, and reveal my ignorance.  And as for the teachers at school, forget that!  After all the fuss from  “Miss What's-her-Name”, during the incident of the pictures of naked women!


If it was unavoidable to allude to sexual activity,  “sleeping together” might be permissible, but even this was pushing it!  This paradigm had been rigidly enforced all my life.  How could I openly speak of something that was outside the paradigm?  How could I admit that I had been doing something that just did not exist?  If it did not exist, I could not have been doing it!  End of story!




Anyway, the weeks turned into months, and Mary's pregnancy progressed.  We discussed possible marriage many times, without deciding definitely and finally against it, but not able to decide for it either.  In a way, I was quite keen on marrying her.  At least, this way, we could be together all the time.  We would get to sleep together every night!  This prospect sounded like heaven on earth to me!  But, the practical difficulties always intervened.


The religious question came up, of course.  Mary lent me a book from her school religious class, and I was horrified.  I had been programmed by my mother, and by my Presbyterian Church, with a belief that Catholicism had all sorts of crazy beliefs, and this book only served to confirm this.  There was no way that I was going to convert to Catholicism, and even the prospect of having to sign a promise to bring up all my children as Catholics was abhorrent.  And, of course, my mother would never forgive me!  Not after the way she often went on about her two brothers marring Catholics!  How could I, her only son, dare to do the same?


In the hindsight of the more tolerant 90's, this Catholic phobia seems insane to me.  Today, it would not exist as an issue at all, at least not for me.  (Some of my recent girl-friends have been “lapsed Catholics”, and, with them, the religious issue was totally non-existent).  Reading my words above about how horrified I was at the prospect of marrying into this religious belief system, I can hardly believe that it was I who felt like this back then.  But, that's how it was for me, as a twenty-year-old young man in 1967.


There was also the practical matters of our young age, our lack of money, where would we live, etc.  Mary was desperate to eventually complete her teacher's training, and if she was to marry and have a baby to bring up, that would be totally impossible, back then in 1967.


The months drift by, with no resolution, and we drift on.  We are still going out at least once a week, and gradually it becomes obvious that we are not going to get married.  The decision is made by default.  And, I still have not told my parents, although I still intend to.


Mary's family rally around, and also her church, much to my surprise.  The parish priest has put her in touch with the Catholic Welfare people, and they are arranging for her to go and stay in the country on a farm, once her condition becomes impossible to hide.  And they are arranging adoption for the baby.  I suppose they must have had hundreds of Catholic girls become pregnant in similar circumstances, and had developed pragmatic solutions for this.




I have a vivid memory of Mary from this period of our lives, walking out from her parents' house to my car on a Sunday afternoon, in her loose-fitting dress, to hide her advancing pregnancy.  She looked absolutely radiant, as do many pregnant women.  She must have been around five or almost six months pregnant, and she would often take my hand and press it against her belly for me to feel our baby kicking inside her.  Despite the circumstances, she was quite excited about the prospect of becoming a mother.  She had a very deep love of children, and had always wanted to eventually be a mother.


The circumstances of her pregnancy would sometimes fade away, and it would feel to me like we were no different from any other young couple, excited at the prospect of impending parent-hood.  Dreams of marrying would come up, of being together with our baby (and other babies in the future), of becoming our own family.  In the years to come, I would occasionally experience feelings of regret that this scenario had not happened;  that I had not found the courage to overcome all of the obstacles, and make this beautiful young woman my wife.


Looking back from the 1990's, the obstacles to our staying together and becoming a family seem trivial.  A couple in similar circumstances now (as has happened to two of my sons), does not go through the same hell that we went through.  They just have the baby, decide whether or not to live together, and get on with life.  But to us back then, caught in the energy of the times, it was not so easy.


A few years later, married to Jeanette, and about to start a family, I would occasionally reflect on the irony of how much significance that society placed on a simple piece of paper, the marriage certificate.  What difference should a stupid piece of paper make?  Surely, the people are the same, no matter whether or not they have the magic piece of paper?




I cannot remember the final parting from Mary, the final  “Goodbye.”  The time eventually came when it was time for her to go to the country for the remainder of her pregnancy, and I was left alone.


I did receive one telephone call from her father while she was away.  He suggested, rather forcefully, that I might like to send her some money to help her out, as it was me who had got her into these circumstances!  I sent the money.


On 26 December, Mary telephoned me to tell me of the birth.  She had just given birth to a lovely, healthy daughter.  It had been a very easy birth.  She sounded so excited!  We spoke for a few minutes, and that was it.  By now, I was immersed in my new relationship with Jeanette, the young woman I was to eventually marry, and was trying to forget all of my pain from the Mary period of my life.  Hearing her voice, I was momentarily torn by regret and guilt.  I briefly considered the possibility of coming out of the closet, telling my parents, and resuming my relationship with Mary with a view to possible eventual marriage.  But this brief fantasy was never a possibility; I would have to give up Jeanette to pursue this option, and there was no way I would do this.


Over the next year or so, following the birth and adoption, my mother would occasionally mention that she had seen Mary at the bus-stop, and I would experience pangs of guilt and regret, as I thought of all of the pain that she must have gone through in the giving up of our daughter for adoption.

Click here to continue on with the next episode of this section of this (1998 version) of the story......

Section Five, Episode Five.....  Finding my daughter, after all these years.