MICHAEL
Now I have to talk about Michael. I can feel the resistance in me, I keep
putting it off, but I must do it. I
know it will release me, from what I do not know. I have not thought about him for many years. I have tucked away the memories deep
inside of me, but of course they are still there, and now they are shouting to
come out.
When
my mother and I fled to Cornwall, to Mousehole, early in the summer of 1952 -
fled, that is the word, certainly for me - I wanted to put behind me all that
had happened in the year since I met Michael. I have talked to no-one ever since about Michael. No-one that is, except Kate, whom I met
at the Lobster Pot in Mousehole.
She became like a surrogate mother to me. I could never talk to my own mother about love, men and sex; these were all taboo subjects, just as
any mention of my father was, except on the one occasion when she had written
to me about him. But I could talk
to Kate. Kate, with her warm
heart, embraced everybody, just as
she embraced me. And I needed to
talk about it, just that once.
When
she kept telling me that she was seeing these adverts in one of the dailies,
the Daily Mail or Star, asking for Daphne: “Daphne, where are you?” from Michael, I
pooh-poohed it, saying “Oh, they’re certainly not for me,” and I closed my mind to the very
possibility of it. I did not want
to know. I was much too frightened.
Now,
all these years later, I have come to believe that it was indeed Michael, and
that he was looking for me. I am
no longer frightened and he must have been dead for many years. He would more
likely than not have died an early death.
Looking back, I have so many more insights into the whole affair, that
at last I feel I am ready to write about it.
(to be continued) This piece will be inserted later
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