A fond accretion, part one

You've seen it before; I think it shows we "got on"

I need to write about Veronica but I’m under an obligation. I must strive to be interesting, anything less would be a betrayal; she was an interesting woman. Out with clichés and euphemisms.

First, then, she wasn’t playing cards so she didn’t “pass”. She died. Death notices often stress “peacefully” but in her case a better adverbial descriptor would be “in a remote state”. Her final six months were spent in pain from two long-standing sources, angry that she’d lost the fine edge of her articulacy and unimpressed by what she saw around her at the nursing home – to wit, others sharing her ailment. Uncomplainingly, almost casually, over and over, she told me she wanted to die. Three weeks ago her status became “palliative care”. I tried to visit every day, staying for three hours, keen to know if and when the morphine dosage would be increased. In effect she departed from me several days before I got the phone call but I approved of this drawn curtain.

Hers was a close and comfortable family life, unlike my rackety and ungoverned boyhood. Her scores in class were in the inhuman nineties and Oxbridge (that’s OXford followed by CamBRIDGE) beckoned. Misguided parental control prevented this and she settled for three years qualification as a State Registered Nurse, albeit sixty miles away from the family home. At (adopt a sonorous tone) “one of London’s greatest teaching hospitals.” Scores of 90%-plus continued.

When we met – as part of a foursome – I’d been in London a mere three months, a blissful escapee from Bradford, oop North. As to dating I’d had three evenings out with a progressively disenchanted 20-year-old woman who wore highish heels. What happened that evening in London is irritatingly blurred. Logically I, a proven failure with the opposite sex, should have been overwhelmed at finding myself buying a G&T for an undeniably beautiful woman. I just can’t re-create those feelings. Veronica has always remained shtum on this and I find it hard to believe I managed keep wraps on my crass Northern-ness.

Quite soon she took a two-week holiday at home and was trustful enough to give me the address. Naturally I wrote a letter (it’s my default state) and all I can remember about her reply is she’d acquired the Only The Lonely LP by Frank Sinatra. True I was a Sinatra fan but did I detect something symbolic in that LP title? Surely that only happens in books

A month later we had a fratch (Look it up.) and she left me a note suggesting we break it off. Surely this must have disturbed me but, no. I merely replied by letter and all was well again. Was I in danger of becoming a character in an epistolary novel? How terribly unfashionable.

Too much about me. What about those moments when she demonstrated forms of wisdom that I demonstrably lacked.

In those days it was traditional to buy one’s wedding dress. Veronica explained that hiring one meant oodles more style and one didn’t then have a useless garment cluttering up the wardrobe. I have to admit it looked fabulous

I did contribute initially in a minor way but it was Veronica who brought up our baby daughter. How did she know all that stuff? About bottles and nappies, quietening fits of crying without resorting to strangulation, knitting bibs, weaselling a free pickled cornichon from the Jewish grocery man by telling him our daughter’s name was spelled the Jewish way.

Finding an inexpensive source of asparagus in Dalston market..

MORE FOLLOWS, Time to create something dull and unhealthy while remembering what meals used to be. Ah, eggs mornay.