Feudalism: Tricia 1963–1966
By the autumn of 1963, Tricia had four children, aged from thirteen to three. Although she’d never been away from them except when she was in hospital giving birth, she found it difficult to understand how she had come to be in this position. They were people, and they had become people while she wasn’t paying attention, while she was mired in toilet training and morning sickness and bitter resentment of their father.
Doug was thirteen. He attended Woking Grammar School, where he frequently got into trouble for fighting and belligerence. She was afraid he was becoming a bully—certainly she frequently had to stop him bullying the other children. Mark bullied Doug and Doug took it out on the others. He was protective of her against his father, and she frequently had to stop him from making things worse. Tricia worried about him, about what trouble he might get into, and about how he would grow up.
Helen was nine, and her father’s favorite. He spoiled her. Tricia found herself using this—using Helen to ask him for favors, for a visit to Grandma’s, a new record player, lights for the tree at Christmas. She did not like to see her child wheedling, but wheedling worked on Mark. Helen was pretty. She had Tricia’s fair hair, but with the thickness and body of Mark’s hair. Her features were regular. From babyhood, strangers had been cooing over her and admiring her. Tricia worried about spoiling her, and about other people spoiling her.
George at six had just started school. He was nervous of everything—he hated being left at the school gate, was afraid of the dark, cried when dogs barked and when his father shouted. Tricia would have given him a night light, but his father forbade it. She compromised by moving the boys’ room to the front where there was a streetlight outside, and allowing them to have the curtain open a crack. George was her secret favorite, because he clung to her and was loving.
Cathy was three, an energetic toddler who liked to walk everywhere, no matter how much it slowed her mother down. They spent time in parks and at the library and at meetings. The Peace Pledge Union had been replaced by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Tricia longed to go on the Aldermaston Marches protesting the American missile sites on British soil, but Mark had forbidden it. However, he knew nothing about what she did in the daytime, and CND daytime meetings generally had other mothers with children and they traded childcare. Cathy seemed truly gregarious, and loved playing with other children while Tricia signed petitions, and even helped to draft petitions for circulation. CND were writing to the Russians, the French, and the Americans as well as the British. Their aim was nothing less than complete nuclear disarmament and a new era of world peace. Tricia’s typing ability was welcome. She began to make friends and feel as if she was making a difference.
She had come back from an afternoon typing petitions on November 22nd. The six of them had dinner, all sitting down together and eating as Mark preferred. Tricia’s cooking had improved slightly through practice and with the availability of better ingredients, but she was unadventurous. That night they had pork chops with applesauce and mashed potatoes. Mark complained that the chops were overdone, which they usually were. Tricia was terrified of undercooking pork.
There was a bottle of wine sitting on the sideboard. Tricia sighed when she saw it, but no longer feared this as she had. The act itself remained unpleasant, and Mark’s apologies remained painful, but as long as she took her pill every day there was no risk of pregnancy.
After dinner she put Cathy to bed at six, George at seven, and Helen at eight. Doug was allowed to stay up until after the nine o’clock news. So the three of them were sitting together on the sofa watching the news, and they discovered together that the American President, John F. Kennedy, had been assassinated in Dallas.
“The bomb is believed to have been hidden in the massed flowers below the banquet table,” the announcer read, visibly shaken. “President and Mrs. Kennedy were killed instantly, along with the Governor of Texas and—” Tricia looked at Mark, who was gaping at the screen.
“Who could have done that?” she asked.
“The Russians?” Mark suggested. “The Cubans?”
“I know the CIA engineered a coup in Cuba in May, the way they did in Guatemala a few years ago, but surely they wouldn’t have the ability to do something like that?” The screen was showing them the Vice-President, Johnson, taking his oath of office.
“He had Castro killed, why wouldn’t they try to kill Kennedy?” Mark asked. “But you’d think they’d have trouble getting a bomb into a reception in Texas. A Cuban would be conspicuous there. Or a Russian.”
Bobby Kennedy was insisting vehemently that there would be a full investigation and that whoever was responsible would pay.