a married woman she would not be permitted to teach, and what else did an English degree qualify her to do? Besides, if they married, she’d soon have a baby, and she’d be unable to work. Yet she couldn’t bear to give him up, to have his letters stop, for him to go out of her life.
“Oh Mark,” she said. “If it’s to be now or never then—”
6
What the Poetry Is About: Tricia 1949
“… now.”
It was two weeks before the end of term. At first Mark tried to insist that she come to Oxford right away, that day, that very moment. There wasn’t a train, and Patty knew they couldn’t be married for three weeks in any case. Mark reluctantly agreed that she could serve out the term while he took out a marriage license. Even as it was, Patty endured the withering scorn of the headmistress when she gave her notice—it sounded so absurd. Yet she couldn’t continue teaching. Married women were not permitted to teach. Patty felt very much that she was letting The Pines down. She left the headmistress’s room with a strong sense of burned bridges.
She marked her forty-five papers feeling she might as well be generous to the girls and give them marks for good intentions.
The rest of the term passed quickly. The other staff members gave her a leaving party, where she felt awkward and uncomfortable at their jokes. She did not hear from Mark during this time, neither by telephone, which she did not expect, nor by mail. She wrote and told him the train she would be taking but had no reply.
On the day before she left there was an envelope in her pigeonhole and her heart rose, only to fall when she found it was a letter from Marjorie, inviting her to join her on a trip to Rome. She wrote back at once, explaining and inviting Marjorie to the wedding “which will be in Oxford next week, I’ll let you know the details if there’s any chance you can come.”
It took all day to travel between Penzance and Oxford. There was a fine damp mist as she set off, and as the train rattled its way the length of Cornwall and then through Devon, she came to watery sunshine, and then once past Newton Abbott it unfolded into a beautiful day. She alternated between panic and exhilaration. She was to be married to Mark, and the clatter of the train seemed to sing this as a refrain “married to Mark, married to Mark.”
She changed in Bristol Temple Meads and bought a pallid sausage roll at the station buffet which she could hardly eat despite her hunger. She was afraid—of Mark, who had been so strange on the telephone and so silent since, of the new life she was plunging into, of marriage, and most of all of her wedding night. Everything she knew about sex came from literature and now came back to her—Shakespeare’s bawdy, Roderick Random , D. H. Lawrence, Brave New World . She wondered whether Malthusian belts existed in real life and where they could be obtained. Sex seemed to have an aura of the eighteenth century and the nineteen-twenties, of beauty patches and the Charleston. She stared out of the window at hay stooks in meadows as the train drew closer to Oxford, and thought of Andrew Marvell, painfully aware that she didn’t know what to do in bed. “A hundred years would go to praise thy lips and on thy forehead gaze. A hundred thousand for each breast…” Her own breasts were small. Would Mark be disappointed? “Let us roll all our strength and all our sweetness up into one ball…” But what did it mean, literally? She would have shrunk from any conversation with her mother on the subject, but she wished she had a married friend who might have advised her. What would Mark expect? She took one of his old letters from her handbag and re-read it and was comforted. His tone was so confident, so definite, and after all it was to her that he chose to address these intimate reflections.
It was late afternoon by the time she disembarked at Oxford. Mark wasn’t on the platform, and her heart sank. She telephoned him
“Oh Mark,” she said. “If it’s to be now or never then—”
6
What the Poetry Is About: Tricia 1949
“… now.”
It was two weeks before the end of term. At first Mark tried to insist that she come to Oxford right away, that day, that very moment. There wasn’t a train, and Patty knew they couldn’t be married for three weeks in any case. Mark reluctantly agreed that she could serve out the term while he took out a marriage license. Even as it was, Patty endured the withering scorn of the headmistress when she gave her notice—it sounded so absurd. Yet she couldn’t continue teaching. Married women were not permitted to teach. Patty felt very much that she was letting The Pines down. She left the headmistress’s room with a strong sense of burned bridges.
She marked her forty-five papers feeling she might as well be generous to the girls and give them marks for good intentions.
The rest of the term passed quickly. The other staff members gave her a leaving party, where she felt awkward and uncomfortable at their jokes. She did not hear from Mark during this time, neither by telephone, which she did not expect, nor by mail. She wrote and told him the train she would be taking but had no reply.
On the day before she left there was an envelope in her pigeonhole and her heart rose, only to fall when she found it was a letter from Marjorie, inviting her to join her on a trip to Rome. She wrote back at once, explaining and inviting Marjorie to the wedding “which will be in Oxford next week, I’ll let you know the details if there’s any chance you can come.”
It took all day to travel between Penzance and Oxford. There was a fine damp mist as she set off, and as the train rattled its way the length of Cornwall and then through Devon, she came to watery sunshine, and then once past Newton Abbott it unfolded into a beautiful day. She alternated between panic and exhilaration. She was to be married to Mark, and the clatter of the train seemed to sing this as a refrain “married to Mark, married to Mark.”
She changed in Bristol Temple Meads and bought a pallid sausage roll at the station buffet which she could hardly eat despite her hunger. She was afraid—of Mark, who had been so strange on the telephone and so silent since, of the new life she was plunging into, of marriage, and most of all of her wedding night. Everything she knew about sex came from literature and now came back to her—Shakespeare’s bawdy, Roderick Random , D. H. Lawrence, Brave New World . She wondered whether Malthusian belts existed in real life and where they could be obtained. Sex seemed to have an aura of the eighteenth century and the nineteen-twenties, of beauty patches and the Charleston. She stared out of the window at hay stooks in meadows as the train drew closer to Oxford, and thought of Andrew Marvell, painfully aware that she didn’t know what to do in bed. “A hundred years would go to praise thy lips and on thy forehead gaze. A hundred thousand for each breast…” Her own breasts were small. Would Mark be disappointed? “Let us roll all our strength and all our sweetness up into one ball…” But what did it mean, literally? She would have shrunk from any conversation with her mother on the subject, but she wished she had a married friend who might have advised her. What would Mark expect? She took one of his old letters from her handbag and re-read it and was comforted. His tone was so confident, so definite, and after all it was to her that he chose to address these intimate reflections.
It was late afternoon by the time she disembarked at Oxford. Mark wasn’t on the platform, and her heart sank. She telephoned him
Similar Books
