So, how did Brian win my heart? First, he disappeared for several weeks! Employed in aerospace, he and his colleagues went to Kenya in October of 1974 to launch a satellite from a rocket built on an Italian oil rig off the coast of Malindi. He was gone for six weeks, and even though we didn’t live together, I missed him like crazy. When he left Kenya at the end of the assignment, he travelled down to Rhodesia to see my parents. Crossing Rhodesian air space was banned because of international sanctions imposed on the country, so Brian hedge-hopped via small airports in Zambia, Malawi, and South Africa, making sure that his passport wasn’t stamped except on a separate card inserted loosely inside his passport. Brian arrived in Salisbury, stayed with my parents, and visited places of interest such as the Victoria Falls, the Eastern Highlands and some of the Catholic missions. It was 1974, and the guerilla war was escalating. Much to Brian’s dismay, two of the Irish missionaries whom Brian had visited were murdered soon afterwards by marauding guerillas coming in from Mozambique. Their death was doubly hard to take because the missionaries were doing so much to help the African cause, but there was no gain-saying the fact that they were White. Whites were no longer welcome in the eyes of the guerillas.
Brian left Rhodesia, not knowing what I would be like when he got back to England. He had phoned me from my parents’ place to ask me if he could tell them “the good news” (quote) that we were engaged to be married. No, said I, because we aren’t! I just couldn’t cope with the idea of marriage. I should add that at no time did Brian propose to me in a traditional sense, down on one knee. Not once! He merely TOLD me that he wanted to marry me. That was it. He was disappointed in my refusal. I didn’t know what I was doing or not doing, but I knew that I was too scared to agree to marriage.
A few days later, on a Saturday, Brian flew back to England. I couldn’t wait to see him. I was up very early to drive to the airport in London to meet him. Looking tanned and healthy, he walked off the plane and enveloped me in a hug. From that moment onwards, I felt as if I couldn’t bear to be more than 2 inches away from him. I hung onto him, needing to make sure that he was still there. We drove to Windsor, a town nearby, where Brian had once lived and worked. We had lunch in a pub and visited the town, with its beautiful old castle, before we headed south to Cowplain where Brian lived in a house which he shared with two friends.
Once there, I made some tea. Brian sat in an armchair and pulled me down onto his lap. “I love you, Sue, and I want to marry you”, he said for the umpteenth time. Oh, heck, what am I going to do? I didn’t have time to think, though. Even now, I get goosebumps when I recall what happened next. A voice…..…whose voice, was that? …… I didn’t know……but this voice answered him, saying “I will marry you any time you want!” It was the weirdest feeling as if some divine intervention had just occurred, with a voice beaming down to earth from above and coming out of my mouth. Had I just said those words? Yes, I had, and I meant them, too. I was suddenly sure that I wanted to marry this man and to stay with him for ever more. At long last, I was convinced that this was right. My decision was made. This was the man who was to be my husband.
We have been married now for over 50 years.
