Scrap of card that led me to the love of my life
BRITAIN is full of unsung heroes and heroines who deserve recognition. Here, in our weekly obituary column, the moving and inspiring stories of ordinary people who lived extraordinary lives, and who died recently, are told by their loved ones.
MY WIFE MARJORIE
Atiny slip of paper that i could have so easily thrown away led me to the love of my life.
it was July 10, 1943, the invasion of Sicily was about to begin, and i was an 18-year-old telegraphist on HMS Westcott, a destroyer deployed in the Mediterranean.
i was opening a new package of note pads on which we’d take down the messages transmitted by Morse, when a small white card fell out.
i was about to read it when the pips in my headphones indicated a message was coming through, so i slipped it into my uniform pocket. And there it stayed for the next three weeks as all hell was let loose.
it was only after the invasion when we returned to Alexandria in Egypt that i found it again. it was a compliment slip from His Majesty’s Stationery Department, and someone called Miss M Johnson had written a message: ‘Cheerio and the Best of Luck!’
i wrote back to thank her. She replied and told me that she was engaged to a RAF technician. Her fiancé, however, had a 16-year-old sister who would be my pen pal if i wanted. i thought, what did i have to lose?
And that is how my darling Marjorie and i were introduced. For the next two years, we wrote to each other every three weeks. Of course i couldn’t write about where i was or the operations we were on because letters from the ship were censored.
So we wrote about personal things and really got to know each other, the music we liked, my love of swimming, her interest in dressmaking — she went to night class twice a week.
it was not until the end of the war that we saw each other for the first time.
We arranged to meet at Kings Cross Station in London and then to go to her family’s house in Middlesex.
i was extremely nervous. i came from
Lincoln and had never even been to the capital before. And of course I was anxious about meeting Marjorie. I had only seen one small photograph she’d sent me, and meeting someone in person is very different from writing letters to them.
But I needn’t have worried. I lost my heart to the beautiful brunette on the platform the moment I saw her. I can’t remember what we talked about that first day, but it wasn’t at all awkward.
After I was demobbed, I started working for the Co-op as grocery manager and bought a Norton motorcycle. I would drive from Lincoln on Sundays to see Marjorie, getting up 6am, arriving three or four hours later, and then leaving at 9pm. It was only when her older brother left home and there was a spare bed that I could go on Saturday instead and stay over.
I can still remember the first time I took Marjorie by the hand — we were on a daytrip to watford and a bus came careering along and I stopped her from stepping out in front of it by grabbing her arm. And then I didn’t let it go. that was the day I kissed her for the first time, too, as I took my leave.
In 1948 we went on holiday to Minehead and while we were walking over the Quantock Hills I asked her to be my wife. And so on Easter Saturday 1950 I married my dearest pen friend.
we had a wonderful life together. I became a manager in the Co-op and Marjorie raised our daughter — I don’t think Sharon wore anything except the clothes Marjorie made for her until she was about 12. Now Sharon, is a director of nursing with a grownup daughter of her own, Victoria, who is also a nurse.
Later Marjorie joined me in the Co-op and became a manager herself. She was so sociable and loved by everyone.
I lost my dearest wife on March 9 this year, the result of a sudden stroke, a month before our 68th wedding anniversary.
I have never doubted my good fortune in spotting the little compliment slip that day 75 years ago. I found the love of my life. It was a marvellous piece of luck that is impossible to measure.
MARJORIE KIRKBY, born September 6, 1927, died March 9, 2018, aged 90.