Then I joined up myself. I went into the RAF, working as a steward in an officers’ mess in Middlesex, where I served the Queen a cup of tea and met Princess Diana and Prince Charles. But I’d joined the RAF to see the world, and it just wasn’t happening. So after five years I left and started working on cruise ships, which I loved because I really did see the world. Then I worked as a bar manager and then an assistant manager in smart hotels in the home counties.
I went back to Plymouth to keep my mum company. She and my dad had split up, my brother was working abroad and my grandparents had died, so I felt my mum needed me around. I took an admin job but also took on a couple of shifts a week behind a bar, just to meet people.
Clayton came in with some mates. He said, ‘My name’s Charlie’ – which is his nickname – ‘and I’m a submariner. I’ve travelled the world.’
I just said, ‘Yeah, and I’ve done a bit of travelling.’ I don’t think he believed me. He thought I was just a girl in a pub who’d had a couple of holidays in Spain.
Despite everything I’d said about men in uniforms, it was only a few months before we moved in together. I insisted on a two-bedroom flat so that if it didn’t work out we could just be flatmates. We got engaged three months later, bought a house in Plymouth together after four months, and got married seven months after that. I knew it was always going to be a tough call, as his submarine disappears for long stretches of time, but it’s one thing knowing about it and another experiencing it.
We had a lucky break not long after we married: we had a fabulous posting where he wasn’t below the sea but was manning patrol boats off Gibraltar. That was brilliant. We saw a lot of each other. And because I’d lived on Gibraltar twice as a kid, when my dad was based there, for me it was like going home. I kept bumping into familiar faces, people I’d known at school. The social life was amazing. Clayton said, ‘I take a foreign draft and you go on a school reunion.’
I fell pregnant with Charlotte in April 2000 and we moved to Gibraltar in October. Charlotte was born in January 2001 at the Royal Naval Hospital, Gibraltar. Clayton was on a sub then, and he’s been on a sub ever since. He’s now a chief petty officer on HMS Tireless. He joined the navy at 16 and went along to a briefing to learn about being a submariner, and the next thing he was enrolled. He loves the job, so I accept what goes with it, but he does long tours and comms are poor.
Even when he does get a chance to ring, it may just be a two-minute call when the sub has surfaced. You can get loads into such a short conversation, but afterwards, when I put the phone down, I feel it. But I never try to prolong it: if the sub has surfaced for a couple of hours and there are 130 men all wanting to use the phone, I totally get why I can’t stay on the line. I hang up when he says he has to go.
He always leaves early in the morning, usually around 5 a.m., depending on the tides. Whenever he’s away I put a shoebox in the kitchen for the children to collect anything they want to send him. They collect their school paintings, photos of places they’ve been, small gifts for their dad. I tell them to write a date on everything. Before I pack it up and send it I may sort it out a bit – our son Harrison will write the date on a stick the dog has been playing with, or a pebble he’s picked up, and put it in the box. We send letters and parcels to an address in Britain, and they are forwarded on to ports where the sub is due to dock, although I never know where.
When the submarine is in port he can ring me properly, and it’s lovely to have a really long chat. I say to him, ‘I’ve told you everything now. You don’t need to read the letters.’ But he says he loves reading them when they are at sea, one a day, when he gets back to his bunk. ‘When I come off my watch, just to open a fresh letter and read all the news, even if I already know it, is really nice.’
I don’t send many emails – just short ones. If they are at sea and the emails are not picked up within seven days, they are discarded. It’s no good pouring out your heart and soul if he’s never going to read it. So I just send short messages like, ‘Hiya, I’m thinking of you. We’re all all right. It’s chucking it down with rain.’
After Charlotte was born I began working in a crèche and toddlers’ group, and studied for childcare qualifications. When Harrison was born a couple of years later it worked out perfectly because I could take him with me for four mornings a week. Then, when he started school, I moved to my current job in a day nursery, where I work four days a week. I need to work: while Clayton is away, being busy helps.
I had a moment, when things were really bad on the ground in Afghanistan and a friend lost her husband out there, when I felt glad Clayton was on a submarine, not on land. But although it’s different, the risks for him are horrendous. Subs are always a target, and if there is a fire, or a leak from a burst pipe, the risks are so great under water. If there’s one little mistake by one of the men, or one faulty bit of equipment, there’s no going back to get it repaired: it has to be done there and then.
My worst time was in March 2007 when Tireless was under the Arctic ice cap on an exercise, when two submariners lost their lives. I got a phone call from a naval officer at ten to six to warn me that there would be something on the news at 6 p.m., which would announce that there were two fatalities on his sub. ‘But don’t worry, it’s not your husband.’
After that, I heard nothing for 17 days, and even though I knew he was alive, I couldn’t help thinking about his crewmates who weren’t, and worrying about conditions on the sub. I carried my mobile phone with me everywhere: in the shower, in the toilet, while I was hanging the washing out. I told my bosses at work I needed it with me. Later I learnt that there had been an explosion onboard, and afterwards the captain managed to surface through a crevice in the ice so that they could clear the smoke. But then they had to go down again: there was no chance for them all to make phone calls.
One of the blokes who was killed was a mate Clayton had joined up with, and Clayton was definitely very affected by what he went through. Every noise or bang made him jump up. He’d been in his bunk when it happened, listening to Snow Patrol’s song ‘Cars’. For a long time afterwards we switched the radio off if that track came on. He could have had counselling, but he chose not to. I was his therapy: he unburdened to me. He described it graphically, and afterwards I would cry down the phone to my mum or one of my friends.
When I started with the choir Clayton was on a ten-and-a-half-month tour. It was the longest he has ever been away. All I was allowed to know was that he was going ‘east of Suez’, which meant the sub was supporting the troops in Afghanistan. I try very hard to keep it together when he leaves, but knowing he was going away for over ten months was very difficult. The children were asleep, but they knew that when they woke up he would be gone. I tried to hold back my tears, but this was the hardest tour ever, and for once he saw me cry. I know I should be used to it, but you never do get used to it. It hurts just as much now as it ever has.
He was away again, on a five-month tour, when we sang at the Festival of Remembrance, and for seven weeks I had no contact with him at all and couldn’t tell him all about it.
We’re lucky because when he returns home he slots in fine. He accepts my routines with the children. He says he wears the trousers, but I tell him what size! He’s my best mate, and I love it when he’s around.
When he’s away we make the most of all the welfare activities laid on for families, and we’re involved with Family and Friends of Deployed Units, a volunteer organisation that sets up days out for the children. Charlotte accepts her dad being away, but Harrison sometimes gets angry, and I have to calm him down and explain, even though he knows it’s not that Dad wants to leave us. As the children get older, I think Clayton finds it harder to go.
He may sign on to stay in longer. It’s his choice. If he does, I’ll support him all the way.
I