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“Getting Married on the Moon” Trish 1977–1980

It was Duncan, one of the men in the Lancaster Preservation Society, who suggested that Trish should stand for the local council. At first she was skeptical—she had no qualifications, and why would anyone vote for her? She wasn’t even a local, although by now she had been living in Lancaster for more than ten years.

“The council needs people who care, and who have their heads screwed on right about environmental issues. There’s so much corruption in the Town Hall,” Duncan said, shaking his head. “It’s all established interests, and they’re all in each other’s pockets. They need a shake-up.”

“I don’t think I have time.”

“It’s part time. And unpaid, but they get an allowance.”

“You stand,” Trish said.

“I’m going to, but we need more than one person.”

Duncan stood as an independent, and Trish campaigned for him. He was elected, to her surprise, and immediately the profile of the Preservation Society rose. Duncan kept talking to her about what the council did and how it worked and encouraging her to stand next time.

In June of 1978, George graduated from Cambridge with First Class Honors. Trish, Helen, and Tamsin, now almost three, drove down to watch him graduate. Cathy had exams that day and couldn’t be there. Mark showed up at the last minute. They sat together to watch him accept his scroll from Princess Camilla. “Now you’ll be able to tell them at MIT that you’ve met her,” Helen teased him beforehand. Trish found the ceremony moving, much more so than when she had graduated herself, which she barely remembered. They didn’t have this kind of ceremony at St. Hilda’s. Even though New College was still new they managed to make the occasion feel special. After all the BA and BSc graduands, those completing Ph.D.s came in, with their bright hoods over their academic gowns. Last a special award was made to a female scientist, Professor Dickinson, who had apparently done something to cure Dutch Elm Disease. Trish clapped with everyone as she walked across the stage, then got up immediately to try to find George in the crush.

Mark insisted that they should all have lunch together in a restaurant he knew. George brought along a girl. “This is Sophie Picton,” he said. “She’s a biologist. I wanted you to meet her.” She had long fair hair neatly wound up in a French twist. Trish liked her smile and the way she listened patiently to Tamsin’s chatter. This was especially noticeable as Mark was not patient with Tamsin and kept telling her to be quiet. They ate overcooked food. George, Helen, Mark, and Sophie shared a bottle of white wine, which Mark ordered. Trish noticed that Sophie wrinkled her nose up when she took her first sip.

“So are you still planning to go to America?” Mark asked.

“Yes, I’m going to do my doctorate at MIT, starting in the new academic year,” George said.

“You’re not expecting me to pay for that?”

“It’s fully funded,” George said coolly. “As was this. You’ve only been expected to bring my living expenses up to what you could comfortably afford. I’m sorry if it has left you short.”

Trish noticed that Sophie had put her hand surreptitiously on George’s elbow, whether to give him support or stop him she didn’t know. Mark spluttered and changed the subject—Tamsin had just dropped a piece of chicken onto the table and picked it up and eaten it, which gave him an excuse to fulminate about her table manners.

When they had finished, Mark paid for the meal and left. “I’ve got a long way to go to get home.” He did not seem to realize that the rest of the family also had a long way to go. The rest of them stood outside the restaurant after he had left. “Are you in an awful hurry too, or shall we go down somewhere outside for an hour and enjoy the sunshine?” Sophie suggested.

“Are there any playgrounds where Tamsin could run around for a bit?” Helen asked.

George and Sophie looked at each other blankly. “I can’t think of anything like that in Cambridge,” George said. “But if we go down by the river she can run around, as long as she doesn’t fall into the water.”

Trish agreed happily to the river plan. “I used to adore rowing when I was at Oxford. In fact I think I’ve missed it ever since. I haven’t lived anywhere where there was a river.”

“You could go out this afternoon,” George said. “I had no idea you rowed. Did you get your blue?”

“My college blue,” Trish said. “In those days girls couldn’t row for Oxford.” The young people were suitably horrified. “You’ve got no idea of the battles we’ve already won, especially when you’re busy looking ahead to the battles we still have to fight.”

“That’s very true,” Sophie said as they sat down on the grass by the river. “Professor Dickinson was talking the other day about how hard it was to be a woman in science when she was starting out, and it made me realize that even though it’s hard now it’s so much easier than it was twenty years ago.”

“And are you enthusiastic about our future in space too?” Helen asked.

“I certainly am,” Sophie said, exchanging looks with George. “I’ve been doing some work on hydroponics that I hope will be useful for the moonbase.”

“And are you also going to MIT?” Trish asked.

“Harvard,” Sophie said, and blushed.

Trish laughed. “How well you are managing your lives!”

“Dad doesn’t think so,” George said.

“I think he’s jealous,” Sophie said, unexpectedly.

“Jealous?” George asked.

“I think Sophie’s right,” Trish said, remembering. “He got a Third you know, and he was expected to do brilliantly and become a star. It took him a long time to get accepted, to get back into academia. I don’t think he has ever really got over that. You’re doing what he wanted to do. He’s bound to resent it.”

“I wish you’d stop making excuses for him,” Helen said. She looked at Tamsin, who was running in circles above them on the slope and making plane noises. “You always try to justify him when he’s just being a shit.”

Trish laughed nervously.

“No, you do, Mum,” George said. “Helen’s right.”

“I suppose I spent so many years doing it to myself that I keep on doing it,” Trish said. “I’m sorry. I know I should have been a better mother.”

“It’s not your fault that Dad’s the way he is,” George said. “Though I must say that one of the advantages of Boston is putting an entire ocean between me and him.”

“Did you get married directly after Oxford?” Sophie asked.

“I taught for two years,” Trish said. “Down in Cornwall. Why, are you thinking—”

“Not until we have our doctorates and we’re financially in a better place,” George said. “We were thinking of it before Sophie was accepted at Harvard, so she’d be able to come to America, but as things are we don’t need to rush it.”

“Well, whenever you decide to get married I’ll be delighted to have you as a daughter-in-law,” Trish said, and shook Sophie’s hand enthusiastically. Sophie pulled her into a hug.

“Of course, our dream would be to get married in space,” George said, then laughed at Trish’s horrified expression. “No, I know you’d want to be there.”

“I’ll never be an astronaut,” Trish said.

That next autumn, after George and Sophie had left for America, Trish stood herself at the council election and was narrowly defeated. “I should have come down to campaign for you,” Doug joked when she met him in London. He had released two solo albums since Goliath had broken up, neither of them very successful, but he kept on writing songs and touring. He was also working with other musicians and talked about forming a new group. He always had a new girlfriend but never anyone serious. She told him about George and Sophie and how sweet they were together. “About time old George found somebody,” he said. “I think I’ll write a song for them and call it ‘Getting Married on the Moon.’”

Helen decided to take night classes and catch up on her education. This meant Trish cutting back on some of her own evenings to babysit Tamsin, which she did reluctantly, acknowledging the necessity for Helen to have qualifications. She dropped the Peace Group, and abandoned plans to stand for the city council again.

One day Helen came home with a suggestion. “Why don’t we sort out the basement and let it as a flat?”

“I’m not sure I’d want strangers living there,” Trish said. “It has its own entrance, but that’s the only way into the garden. And the washing machine is down there.”

“I wasn’t thinking of strangers. You always know a million people, and there would always be someone you know wanting to live there. Right now Bethany and Kevin and Alestra are looking for somewhere.”

Bethany and Kevin worked at the whole food co-op. Alestra, their daughter, was a few months younger than Tamsin. “That’s an excellent idea,” Trish said.

She and Helen spent the next weekend cleaning the basement and painting. They spent the next rearranging furniture. They bought an electric stove and a fridge. Then Helen invited Bethany and Kevin to come and look at it. They moved in the next day.

Although Bethany was Helen’s age, she soon became much more Trish’s friend. She was passionate about food and often cooked enough for the whole household—vegetable soups, lentil bakes, chili with beans and rice. She played the flute and composed music, and again the house had music rising from the basement as it had when Doug lived at home. Kevin was quiet. “Not much about him,” Trish said to Helen, but she put up with him for Bethany’s sake. Alestra was neither as pretty nor as lively as Tamsin, to Trish’s biased eye, but she was a nice child, and the two of them played well together. Bethany’s family paid a low rent, which helped with household expenses, but best of all Bethany and Helen traded babysitting so that Trish was free in the evenings again.

Before Tamsin was born, Trish had made Mark’s old study into a nursery, and Helen moved into the room next to it, which had been Doug’s. Trish maintained a bedroom for each of her children, though now they were seldom all at home except at Christmas.

That Christmas, Sophie was coming to visit. Trish drafted Kevin to help move beds. There was a double bed in her room, which she wanted put in George’s room down the corridor, while George’s old single bed would do for her. Lifting her end of the double bed she felt a sharp pain in her chest and left arm and had to sit down. “I think I’ve strained something,” she said, weakly.

“You’ve gone a funny color,” Kevin said. “Should I call the doctor?”

“Just make me a cup of tea,” Trish said. He obliged, and after a cup of strong tea she felt much revived. They left the bed in the corridor until Doug arrived and helped Kevin move it into George’s room.

“You shouldn’t overdo things, Mum,” Doug said.

They had a lovely Christmas, with a tree and presents. Bethany cooked a delicious nut roast. On Boxing Day Mark came by for a mince pie and to see the children. Trish noticed how tentative he seemed, how uncomfortable with Sophie and Bethany, how falsely hearty with Kevin. The problem with Mark, she thought, was that he wasn’t her husband any more but he couldn’t ever be a stranger. He remained hung around her neck like an albatross, father of her children.

After Christmas she saw the doctor and told him about the pain, which had not recurred. He said she should be careful of her heart and told her to exercise more and eat less fat. She looked around for some exercise that didn’t bore her and began swimming early every Sunday morning in the Kingsway baths.

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.