SHORT STORIES

SHADES OF DIFFERENCE

I sat in the Registry Office, waiting. Oh, I suppose I would have preferred a proper wedding – all white lace and satin and ‘Here comes the Bride’, but I don’t know. It doesn’t seem right to me to go and get married in a church when you hardly over go there except for other people’s weddings – besides, I could hardly get married in white, not after everything that’s happened. I would have liked it, that’s all – it’ll never make me miserable that I didn’t.

Anyway, I could feel Johnny getting all nervous beside me – we weren’t saying anything, though – I think we were both too scared to speak, really. Well, no wonder! What with Mum sitting there looking as though she was at a funeral, and Dad looking apologetic all the time – you could tell he was dying to say he was sorry to everyone, but none of it was really his fault. He’s very good at not taking sides. Johnny’s dad was doing quite well, but you could see he was all tense too – he’d have had to be. No one’s that thick-skinned.

I suppose I should start at the beginning. really. I first met Johnny at school in Cardiff, where we both lived, but we didn’t go out together for a couple of years after we left. After I left, I should say – he was in his last year when I started. He was one of the boys all the first formers went mad for – he was clever and nice-looking, and they thought he was everything their hearts desired. Funny, I never saw his attraction, not then.

I remember the first time I realised I loved him. I didn’t tell him, because I didn’t know how he felt. When I was sure of him, I could still hardly make myself believe it. I couldn’t imagine anyone being that fond of me. I mean, I’m not pretty or anything. Attractive, that’s what everyone says I am. They say that when they mean you’re not beautiful but you’re not ugly – you know, sort of in between.

Anyway, once it began getting serious, I was a bit worried . Oh, nothing to do with how I felt about him or anything like that. But the trouble was he was the wrong colour. There, I’ve told you. It is difficult – telling people, I mean. Still, you can’t be too shocked, or you wouldn’t still be here. Some people – they’re so liberal until it comes to the crunch. I’ve heard them. Everyone’s the same under the skin. But when they meet someone who isn’t the same colour as them they either fall over backwards being polite or they hardly talk to them. Proper daft, that’s what I think it is.

So you see, I didn’t know what to do. I’d been going with him about six months and my parents didn’t even know he existed. They knew there was someone – they’d have had to be pretty thick if they hadn’t, because I saw him nearly every night – but they didn’t know anything about him. They kept saying, ‘When are we going to see this boy of yours, then, Gwen?’ and I didn’t know what to say. They wanted to meet him – it was only natural, but I felt like they were prying, because I knew what they would say once they saw him. I decided that I’d better tell them before they met him – I didn’t want their jaws dropping all over the place when he came in the door, now did I? They’ll get used to the idea, I told myself.

Wishful thinking, that’s all that was. They didn’t want to know about it. At first I don’t think they even took it in. But I wasn’t going to be put off, so I told them I wanted to marry him. You should have seen them! They practically hit the roof. If I had come in and told them I was wanted for murder, they couldn’t have been much worse. My mother, she’s the one. She really got going. Brought out all that stuff about black not mixing with white and like sticks to like, and all that. I thought at least people had stopped saying daft things like that even if they thought them, but she hadn’t.

I told them it wasn’t sensible going on like that. He’d had exactly the same kind of life as me – there was nothing different about him. But it didn’t work. My mum turned on me – I don’t think I’ve ever seen her look like that before. She looked… now, what’s the word? Outraged. That’s it – outraged. ‘What do you think you’re doing to us?’ she said, and she wasn’t even shouting, just speaking – almost whispering – and she sounded so bitter, it frightened me. ‘What will everyone say – your friends, our friends – what will they think? I won’t let you do it. You’re too young, anyway, to get married. You can’t, not without your dad’s consent – and he won’t give it.’ She looked at my dad then, for confirmation and a bit of support, but she didn’t get either; he just muttered something no one could hear. He’s never had any backbone, him. I’m sure he didn’t care a jot who I married, just so long as no one asked him to make a decision.

I went to bed that night exhausted with all the shouting and everything. I got undressed half in a daze – I mean, I knew they’d take it pretty bad, but I didn’t know how to cope with it now that I had told them. I tried to tell myself that they would come round, but the tears were streaming down my face all the same. I know how they must have felt now that I’m that bit older. It must have looked like I had a crush on him, but I knew it wasn’t like that at all. Johnny’s a few years older than me, like I said, so it wasn’t a teenage thing with him. I can’t explain it – I couldn’t then. And I was only eighteen, so how could they be sure? They would have been upset whoever it was. But whatever they thought, I wasn’t going to give him up.

So I lay awake all night and I knew what I was going to do. They had told me they wouldn’t let me go out, but they couldn’t really stop me; they were never the-lock-her-in-her-room type. But there was no point in setting out to upset them. Some people would say that what I did was worse than openly defying them, but I don’t think it was. My way there were no rows and no scenes. I knew they wouldn’t stop me going to night-school, and I had a lovely little plan.

First, I got a friend of mine at the office where I worked to take a note to him and I met him instead of going to night school. Of course, we couldn’t go on meeting on my class-night – people round where we lived talked, you see, and my mum’s friend’s daughter was in my class. So I joined another class – told Mum and Dad that since I wasn’t doing anything else I may as well – and I went to the first three, just in case anyone was checking, and after that I only went to about one in three, so I saw quite a lot of Johnny. Funny thing is, I passed my exam! Meeting Johnny secretly wasn’t the way I wanted it, but I was determined. So that’s what further education does for you, I’d think every so often, but there was no point in feeling guilty; I wouldn’t have had to do it if they had agreed to meet him. They would have seen that he was all right.

The night I told him what they had said, he laughed. Not as though he was laughing at something funny – sort of forced laughing, like he was laughing at something too silly for words. I think I loved him even more when he did that instead of getting all angry and intense like I thought he might. We went walking – not that there was anywhere to walk to. I mean, we had no beauty-spots or anything, not round where we lived. We ended up down at the docks. We said daft things like how we would jump on board one of the foreign ships just as it left, and go sailing into the blue yonder. Only the yonder wasn’t very blue; it was a kind of murky grey – you know, when the sky and the sea seem to be all one. It was getting pretty dark too. We stayed there in the dark for a long time, feeling sorry for ourselves. After all, we wanted to get married, and we didn’t want to have to wait for three years, now did we? I even thought of him going to Scotland, staying there for three weeks, or whatever it is – I think it’s three weeks – and then I’d run away and join him and we could get married, but he just laughed. He said that only happened in stories and it wouldn’t be the right way to get my parents to accept him, anyway. I told him what hope he had of that, but he still said no.

We met every time we could, but I had forgotten about the holidays, and I wasn’t looking forward to them. We had the whole of July before the summer break, though, and we would go on his scooter for miles sometimes. It was a lovely summer, but a bit rainy, and my mum wondered how I got so wet coming home from night-school, sometimes. I think my Dad guessed what I was doing, but as usual he didn’t say anything. And what I’m really trying to tell you is that one evening a friend of Johnny’s took pity on us going off in the rain, and lent us his flat. Well, what with only seeing each other every now and then, and not being able to get married, and being in the flat… oh, well, to cut a long story short, I found I was pregnant.

I told Johnny – and do you know what he said? He said, ‘Well, that’s just as well – now they’re going to have to accept me.’ But I wasn’t so sure. They said I’d have to marry him, but they didn’t say they were pleased – in fact, Mum said just the opposite. They just didn’t want the disgrace of an illegitimate baby. My mum – you should have heard her. Going on about the baby being neither one thing nor the other. When I look at him, he’s just my little boy – and he’s beautiful. He doesn’t see one of us a different colour from the other. If he does, he thinks it’s natural – and so it is. And he’ll grow up to be a lot more tolerant than most, that’s what I say.

I don’t know why my mum and dad took on like that, though. It’s funny, when you think of it, them not approving of Johnny. After all, they’re the ones who are different. You can’t live in Cardiff and be surprised if your daughter falls for a white man, now can you?

©Jill McGown 1968