This time she disagreed (she actually got quite angry), but it didn’t matter. By now a bond had been formed, a bond that nothing – save for 16 years of attritional bickering and one pretty choice piece of philandering (hers, see Chapter 15, the bitch) – would ever be able to undo.
Those first couple of years flew by like a car doing 50 in a 30 zone. Maybe even 60 in a 30 zone. Depends who you ask. We were the principals in our very own Norwich-based Hollywood romcom. She was a thinking man’s Meg Ryan, I was a non-Jewish Billy Crystal.
We soon moved in together, and it was when we did that I took another giant leap into the warm waters of adulthood. A gentleman doesn’t dwell on such things, but let’s just say that when two healthy and hygienic adults enjoy two bottles of wine on an empty stomach, strip naked, lie on the kitchen floor and place their genitals within spitting distance of one another, there are going to be fireworks.
I’ll admit that there was a certain awkwardness to those early romps. Whereas I was flying my first sorties into sexual territory, Carol had been hymen-free for the best part of six years. My caution didn’t last long, though, and within about three months I was able to perform my duties quietly, competently and with a minimum of fuss.
With things continuing to go well, it seemed only logical (I sound like Spock!) to proceed to the next step – marriage. So, in early 1977 I cycled the 26 miles to Carol’s parents’ house to meet with her father and request his daughter’s hand in marriage. But when I got there I was on the receiving end of an almighty curveball.
‘Hello, Alan,’ said Carol’s dad, Keith.
‘Hello, Alan,’ said Carol’s mum, Stella, not bothering to think of a greeting of her own.
Within seconds, I had nodded back at them. I would have spoken, but I’d just cycled the equivalent of a full marathon.
‘What brings you out this way?’
I put my hand up as if to say, ‘Give me a minute, will you, Keith? I’ve just cycled the equivalent of a full marathon.’
Yet no sooner had I got my breath back than I spotted something truly incredible. Sat on the lawn, as bold as brass, was a brand new FlyMo. Now not only did I not know Keith was getting a FlyMo, I didn’t even know he was considering it.
I was completely floored. This machine was science fiction brought to life. It was based, of course, on the original design for Sir Christopher Cockerell’s hovercraft. And you really did get a sense of that – apparently it simply glided across the turf, as light as a feather, as nimble as a ballerina. I’d even heard rumours that owners didn’t mind the back-breaking job of collecting up the cuttings afterwards. And that speaks volumes. Clearly, it was an honour to mow with.
Of course I was so distracted by this turn of events that I never did get his permission. I did make another attempt the following month, though. I faxed through a request to his office. But I’d got the extension number wrong and it went to a different man.
The most profound moment of my life was still to come, though.39 And I’ll never forget the moment I heard the news.
I was banging about in the cellar, trying to find a pewter tankard that a friend of mine, Pete Gabitas, had suggested could be worth a fair bit of money. Sweaty, angry and pretty pissed off, I was not in the best of moods. Carol approached with a glass of lemonade, but it was homemade and I preferred the bottled fizzy kind so I took it without saying anything. Straight away, she looked hurt and I could tell she was troubled by something.
‘Out with it, Carol,’ I said. ‘I’m trying to find a ruddy tankard here.’
‘Alan,’ she said. ‘I’ve fallen –’
Freezeframe!
Let me tell you something about Carol. Over the years I spent with her, I learnt that ‘I’ve fallen’ was an opening gambit that could go one of two ways. One was very good, the other very bad. There was no middle ground. On the bad side, the sentence could end, ‘… off some step-ladders’ or ‘… out of love with you’. On the good? ‘… for one of your practical jokes’ or …
Unfreeze!
‘… pregnant.’
She was with child, and I was to be a dad. I’m told that some men have written entire books about the experience of becoming a father. And while that’s clearly too much, there’s certainly plenty to be said on the subject.
This child, my first, was Fernando. He was conceived in January 1980, the same month that President Carter announced a grain embargo against the USSR. Carol and I had been hiking and stopped for a toilet break behind a large boulder on Helvellyn. One thing led to another and soon we’d taken off our Gore-Tex trousers40 and were having, for want of a better phrase, full sexual intercourse. (I should add that before getting ‘hot and heavy’ we’d moved a good metre due east of the piddle zone.)
As to how it happened? Well, Carol hadn’t been on the pill, so I can only hazard a guess that the prophylactic had got punctured in the cut and thrust of what was some fairly robust lovemaking. Not that we cared. We were to be parents! In just under nine months I would be welcoming a child into the world in much the same way as I would one day welcome the guests on to my primetime BBC chat show. Namely, very warmly indeed. (And ideally with the musical backing of a 22-piece house band.)
The early stages of the pregnancy were equally tough for both of us. For the first ten weeks Carol suffered from almost incessant nausea, not to mention frequent bouts of oral vomiting. While, for my part, I was having hell’s own job getting a reasonable quote for a new fan belt.
Eventually, though, things settled down (I ended up going with NDB Autos on King Street) and we could begin to enjoy learning about the different stages of the foetus’s growth. One week it was the size of a pea, another a walnut, then a plum, an apple, a beef tomato, by which time the novelty of being able to equate my child’s size to the mass of a common fruit or vegetable had really started to razz me off.
When the birth came, though, I have to confess that I didn’t find it especially traumatic. After all, I’d been through it myself some 25 years earlier, and that experience (see page 3) seemed to stand me in good stead. Carol, on the other hand, wasn’t quite so keen. It took her two days and two nights to deposit our first-born from her loins. But finally, almost as if he knew there were only minutes left on my car-park ticket, Fernando Partridge was born, weighing in at 9lbs 4oz (roughly the size of nine one-pound bags of sugar).
There he was, his skin covered in a thick film of my wife’s innards. Tears streamed down my face. I was so happy I wanted to shout it from the rooftop. But at the same time I knew that that afternoon’s downpour would have made the slate tiles so slippery that achieving any kind of purchase would have been impossible. Equally, I was acutely aware of the car-parking situation mentioned above.
After a while (a bit too long actually) I was awarded my child and I cradled him against the crook of my elbow. He was well swaddled so I didn’t have to worry about getting any of Carol’s guts on my shirt. We stood at the window, me and my son, my son and I. The night sky was straining to get into the room but couldn’t because of the glass. I could at least protect him from that.
I looked up at the starry night and knew what I must do. I closed my eyes and began to sing very, very quietly, for the first time, to my infant son.
‘There was something in the air that night, the stars were bright, Fernando. They were shining there for you and me …’
And at that point, I broke down. To this day, my inability to sing the full chorus