That autumn, 1979, Trish stood again for the City Council and was that time elected. She found the work an odd mixture of boring and vitally important. More than anything it was a case of getting to know people and their concerns and organizing them—work she was extremely familiar with from being secretary to so many organizations for so long.
Tamsin started school, and Helen went into full-time adult education. She was learning to program computers, to Trish’s complete surprise.
Doug’s song “Getting Married on the Moon” was released in the spring of 1980 and went to number three in the British charts and number eight on the US charts, his biggest hit ever. Nobody had yet been married on the moon, though the moonbase generally had a dozen scientists and astronauts on it at any given time. George and Sophie were interviewed by the papers about their dream, and the song was played over and over again on the radio, so that Trish heard it everywhere she went and was tired of being asked about it. “Will your son really get married on the moon?”
“He’d certainly like to,” became her standard reply.
23
Orangutan: Pat 1971–1977
The electric wheelchair, built of lightweight space metals, was worth every penny. It was cumbersome and awkward but it gave Bee independence, especially in college. New College tried hard to be accommodating. They built ramps and installed a lift. Every year Bee had to fight the administration to have her classes scheduled in the rooms she could reach, but these were battles she always won. She went on teaching and researching where many people would have given up. “I wasn’t about to resign myself to bedpans,” she said. She designed long-handled gardening tools she could use from the wheelchair, and taught all the children to help her. She would also lower herself from the chair and work from the ground. She could move around on flat surfaces with her arms. She had first developed this technique on the bed and later extended it to the floors indoors and then at last into the garden. Pat said it was terrible for her clothes, but Bee joked that it cancelled out because of the savings on shoe leather.
They had to give up the bees because there was no way for Bee to lift the hives and nobody else could deal with them without being stung. That was the only sacrifice.
The first year everything was difficult, and money grew tight. “I think we may have to sell the Florentine house,” Pat said.
“Never!” Bee said. “It would break the children’s hearts.”
“I’d be very sad myself,” Pat said. “But the property taxes are more every year, and the value has appreciated more than I’d ever have imagined. If we sold it we could live comfortably. And I don’t know how you could manage there. You know what the plumbing’s like, and the doors are so narrow.”
“In the gym where I do my physio they have rings hanging from the ceiling. I was thinking we could put some of those in, and I could get around that way.”
“My orangutan,” Pat said, fondly. “But even if that worked it would be difficult. Italian workmen? If we sold the house—”
“Are we that short of money?” Bee asked.
“Well, I didn’t write the Bologna book. Constable are being very understanding, but they’re not going to pay me for a book I haven’t turned in. And all the work on this house has been expensive. And keeping my mother in the home. We’ll be all right, but it’s going to be tight. That money that came in for the French translation got us out of a hole, and the US royalties should come in a few weeks. But we are getting a bit hand-to-mouth.”
“We can’t sell the Florentine house. It would be crazy.” Bee frowned. “You could go to Bologna for a week and do the research and come home and write the book?”
“I can’t leave you!”
“I could manage,” Bee said.
“I’m sure you could,” Pat said, though in fact she was far from sure that Bee could. She couldn’t reach the stovetop or the kettle. Remodelling the kitchen was a plan, but they had put it off because of the expense. It was on Pat’s list of things they could do if they sold the Florentine house. “But I couldn’t manage without you. I’d be utterly miserable, even in Italy. Look what happened the last time I left you! Besides, what if that social worker comes sniffing around again?”
The social worker kept coming back. She wanted to check on Bee’s welfare, and on the children’s welfare, or so she said. They trod carefully. Pat moved some clothes into the guest room closet and was prepared to say she slept there. The social worker did not go upstairs again, but she questioned the children, which was a worry. It had seemed charming to them for the children to call them Mum and Mamma, but now they worried and tried to train them into calling them by their first names. The girls soon got into the habit, but Philip never did.
“They couldn’t really take the children, could they?” Pat asked.