Difficult men

Saturday 22 April 1972

I woke up very tired this morning after getting home from the hotel both rather drunk and extremely tense. I am always tense when trying to understand what people are saying in Spanish. Paddy (one of the Irish visitors) took us to the hotel last night to eat lobster. We had wine too. Carlo came along but seemed ill at ease and complained that Sergio didn’t greet him, as well as someone else I forget.

Carlo is very tetchy and difficult at the moment. He didn’t really want the visitors but he waited on them while they were here and refused to eat with them. I ate with them but Carlo seemed a bit unhappy about waiting on me with the result that I never really knew what was going on.

In hindsight there was a lot of confusion here. Carlo thought the pair were tourists who would pay for their stay but Georgina had probably offered them accommodation on the island, maybe as reciprocity for some help on the continent. They were reciprocating as guests not tourists by taking us out. Incidentally lobster was not a prestige item on the island at the time but probably is now!

Carlo keeps telling me what to do with Mungo – told me to wash him this morning. I feel bad about not helping him more but he insists he’d rather I didn’t. I offered to wash his kids’ clothes this morning but he said I should look after my baby and he’d look after his. He continually goes on about how women are always complaining about their work and he does it with one hand tied behind his back. And he’s always going on about how women screw with him or “ciano”[?]. He maintains he has 13 children in all – 3 here (in the house), 8 in Santiago and two more in the village. He misses Georgina a lot and is depressed because she’s not coming back until the beginning of May at the earliest. He has nude pictures all over his wall now. But last night at the hotel an old girlfriend came up to him – aged 20 odd and he joked with her but did not appear to actually arrange anything. I think he’s probably pretty straight- laced when it comes down to it.

Mmmm.

Grant is back on his old “fit in or get out “ tack which has left me feeling utterly low this morning. I haven’t had my feelings so mashed around for ages. Mung woke last night with nappy rash pain I think. Now that it is not so sunny I think the nappies keep their infection through the wash. All I have is zinc ointment.

Carlo’s ‘godmother” came by this morning. She seemed a bit jaundiced towards me too too but maybe it just seemed that way.

I now wonder why I put up with all this masculine nastiness. I could have started another life -with so many decades ahead of me then. What stopped me? I began editing these diaries with an account of how Grant and I met but decided it was irrelevant but perhaps this bit of it is useful here.

My plans to marry a very suitable boyfriend had gone awry and I was consoling myself with an overland holiday trip to Morocco with an outfit called Sunseekers”

“The initial meeting of passengers was on Victoria Station where we were to sort ourselves into the vehicles and head initially to Spain. I arrived at the meeting spot and saw a guy standing at the head of a group. He had curly fair hair and an authoritative manner and introduced himself, with a faint American accent as Grant, one of the two driver/guides.

Cupid shoots an arrow above the bustle of Victoria Station, London, 1972 — love across a crowded station. Generated with ChatGPT prompt: “A Cupid shooting an arrow inside London Victoria Station as it plausibly appeared in 1972: beneath the Victorian iron-and-glass train-shed roof, with British Rail-era platforms, period luggage, and anonymous travellers in early-1970s London clothes. Candid 1972 colour-film photograph with soft focus, natural grain, gentle colour fading, and diffuse daylight. Wide horizontal 3:2 composition; no text, modern screens, hearts, or watermark.”

When I saw him all the cliches came true for me. A yearning. I wanted him for me. It was love across a crowded station, an arrow through the heart and all that. But I sensibly thought he was out of my league and got on with the holiday.. In fact I was right because a very silly but pretty girl became his tent mate”.

Lots more happened but that moment of intoxicating conviction never left me and it was that rather than anything rational that strengthened me in difficult times, especially on the island. I respect that feeling even now. Love is a powerful, if peculiar, force.

Talking to some other widows my age (Grant died three years ago). I realise there is an odd thing that happens to some of us. We still love and grieve for our lost ones but are quite relieved when we wake up alone in the morning (and are a bit shocked by this). We have freedom, and autonomy and with it, a new dignity. Fifty years ago so many of us did not question the leadership role men automatically assumed. This was very bad for both them and us. Some things are so much better for everyone now.

8.30 pm

I did the washing and felt slightly better after that. A cousin of Coca (Carlo’s daughter) was here and helped me. About 9, she was, and very pretty – a daughter of Maria/Suzy. Carlo said nastily that Maria/Suzy only ever thinks about the baby she’s having and not the ones she’s had. The little girl just smiled at this.

I went down to the church and collected my first few wild flowers on the way. I got some of the local names from the big girl who is often around here and her female relative in their garden. I was passing and they called to me.

A couple of boring Chileans have come by to talk to Grant. The woman – faded but intense, a sociological something or other here. And her little weasely husband seems to be helping her. Anyhow they’ve been yattering away in Spanish for two and a half hours. Mungo shat on the floor in front of them too. That’ll please Carlo!

I have a shocking cold at the moment and I have four tiny handkerchiefs.

The nice fair Chilean lady lent us nine eggs today because the co-operativa was shut as it always is on Saturday afternoons. Mass tomorrow. I feel the need of a little spirituality I must say. I’m tired of being grubby and inadequate as a speaker, a bird, a mother, a cook and everything else. Ah well, must try and collect a nice lot of wild flowers.

“Bird” meant desirable young woman in those days! (Later it was “chick”).

There has been quite a lot of rain today and there are still clouds in the hills.