At the end of the process, I was offered the position. I could hardly believe my good fortune! I had a job. I could stop worrying myself sick about my lack of money and how I was going to survive. I would move to Hampshire, about 60 miles south of London, at the end of March and start looking for somewhere to live. I was back on track!
I had to find accommodation, though. So, I came to Hampshire the following weekend to visit various places which I had seen advertised in the area. I didn’t like the one that was so close to a railway line level crossing that the windows and doors rattled every time a train passed by. I didn’t want to be in a house occupied by smokers. My luck turned when the school contacted me to tell me that a previous student from the school, who was sharing a bungalow in Emsworth, a village not far from Havant, had phoned the office to ask if there were any young teachers starting in April who might be looking for accommodation. The school office gave me all the details and I went to meet the two young ladies living in Emsworth.
And so began a friendship which saw us three young ladies supporting each other through our ups and downs, our romances and our break-ups. We never had any arguments. I continued to learn from them. I even learned from the shock of finding that all my underwear (only the underwear!) had been stolen overnight from the washing line. Being naïve, I couldn’t understand why a lady would steal someone’s else’s panties and bras. Emsworth was a well-off village where there was no sign of poverty. When I rushed inside to tell my housemates that my underwear had gone, they explained that it was likely to be a man, not a lady, since some men liked ladies’ underwear. Really?! I stared at them in disbelief. One of my housemates called the police. A policeman duly turned up on his bicycle to interview us. My housemates were correct. There had been several such thefts of late, the policemen told us. If I remember correctly, the culprit was caught.
I stayed in that semi-detached bungalow for a year until the lady owner, who lived next door, wanted us to vacate it because her daughter and family were coming back from Singapore. Both the young ladies with whom I was sharing went back to their respective mothers, both of whom lived in Hampshire, one in Havant and the other in Cowplain. My parents were 6000 miles away in Southern Rhodesia, so I could hardly go back home, too. I made enquiries at school and found that the mother of one of the young teachers there, was looking for a lodger. This lady, although somewhat elderly, lived in an enormous, rambling house in a village called Denmead, about five miles away. I had by then taken and passed my British driving test and had bought a car, a second-hand Ford Anglia, which my step-grandfather had found for me. I no longer had to take a train to get to Havant. I knew I could live in Denmead, where there was no railway station, until the school holidays began in late July, at which time I could search for somewhere else to live for September onwards, when the new school year would begin.
The most amazing coincidence of all, to my mind, about moving into the Emsworth bungalow is that, although we would never have imagined it possible at that time, all three of us landed up by living in Canada, one in Calgary and two of us in Ottawa! We didn’t emigrate together, either. Our departures happened over the course of many years, with all of us eventually marrying the boyfriends we’d first met whilst we were living in Emsworth.
Now, more than 50 years later, I am still married to that same man. However, we are living in Ottawa, where I still visit ex-housemate, my beloved friend Heather and her husband Tony. We are well into our 70s. Heather and I see each other regularly for tea, for coffee, for bike rides, and for endless chat. We shall hopefully be here for each other throughout our remaining years. We are both fit and well, leading very active lives. I know that we shall stay two close friends who first met in April 1972, when Heather and her housemate interviewed me as a prospective tenant in their jointly rented house.
I am so glad that I did well in that interview, too!
