Uncle Charles & the Bothersome Boyfriend

When I was 17 Charles Pretoria died of a stroke. My mother said it was my fault, I'd killed him. At the time I thought she was just being melodramatic, but now I know that he was gay I suspect she may have been right.



I had no idea of this at the time and neither did my mother. Charles' brother Bob was a bachelor too and he was definitely hetero. It's surprising how many men of the 2 WW generations remained single, given they had so many left over women to choose from. True, Charles shared a flat with a male friend in Llandudno where he headed the English department at John Bright's School, generally coming home to Pwllheli at weekends. But unlike his other cousins at Ala Road there was never a breath of scandal attached to him. In those days homosexuality was illegal and could have lost him his job and reputation.



My mother unwisely enlisted his help to try and persuade me to give up my boyfriend, whom she considered unsuitable. Naturally I felt indignant and told him it was none of his business. It wasn't as though he was a close family friend. We seldom saw him. I also said that he, of all people, was in no position to advise others on their love life. Meaning only that, being middle-aged and unmarried, he had either failed to attract a woman or had been unduly picky. Of course I'd intended to annoy him, but his extreme reaction alarmed me.



His face turned purple, his eyes bulged, he gasped for breath before launching into a spluttering tirade on my appalling lack of manners, of respect for my elders and betters etc. My mother told me to leave the room and I gladly did. She said later she'd had to calm him down with a glass of brandy, he was so upset. A week later he had a stroke and died. Would I have said what I did if I'd known? Perhaps. In those days I shared the common prejudice.



The reason for my mother's disapproval of my boyfriend, whom I later married, was the contretemps between her and his father a couple of years earlier. My father-in-law Dai Davies was a guard on the railway, a great union man and a self-educated left-winger of the old school. That is to say, he upheld the rights of the working man, but thought the working woman should go back to her kitchen. Working mums, of whom there were very few in those days, were his especial bete noir.

My mother used to get up at 6.30 to catch the 7.15 a.m. 'Workers' Train' to Porthmadog, as the next one wouldn't get her there in time. The other passengers were all 'working men', ie labourers. One day she told off one of them (a newcomer) for swearing in her presence, the first time it had occurred after ten years of travel. This chap complained to the guard, saying that women should not be on that train. As a result Mr. Davies wrote to my mother forbidding her to travel on the 7.15 as she was not a worker. She indignantly replied that she was indeed a worker, and tried to take the matter up with his superiors. Having failed to get the decision overturned, she then bought a car and learned to drive. The new Austin 10 looked very smart.

This was good, enabling us to get around for all sorts of jolly jaunts on weekends and holidays. But the affair rankled with my mother. When she found out who my boyfriend was, she was furious. After our eventual marriage, when I was 20, an uneasy truce prevailed for the next 19 years. But my father-in-law and I always got on very well, despite disagreeing on a great many issues. Our arguments were always good fun and I cried at his death, although by then I'd been divorced for some time.

A very non-PC tale - sorry, everyone!

Charles Pretoria, my mother's cousin, was named after his house, like many Welsh people. His brother was Bob Pretoria, but really they were both Joneses. Presumably the house name commemorated the Boer War.

The mystery of why he turned up at the Strand one Saturday afternoon in 1947 with 5 young airmen who had known my father was solved quite recently when another of my mother's cousins told me he'd been gay. He said at the time that he'd happened to be passing, saw them at the door and 'took the opportunity to make the acquaintance of these brave young fellows who've been fighting for their country'.

Afternoon tea in the drawing-room being insisted upon, I , then aged six, was sent to Railway Stores at next-door-but-one to buy an extra loaf and two packets of the ubiquitous, chocolate-covered round marshmallow and biscuit delicacies, the only shop cake available then. Auntie Kate had half left of the one sponge cake a week she could make from our sugar ration, and this was cut up into very small pieces. Even salmon sandwiches were rustled up with a tin saved out of a parcel from Australia.

Everyone puffed away at their cigarettes while Auntie Kate trotted back and forth to the kitchen like a waitress. There was much cheerful badinage, in English of course. Charles, taking on the position of gracious host, handed round the chocolate marshmallows saying in his affected Oxford accent, 'Do help yourselves to an Abyssinian bosom, boys.' The reference to the Haile Selassie visit was of course quite lost on me, but I appreciated the mirthful attention the remark earned him. So, a little later, when I had been ignored for at least ten minutes by the company, I passed round the plate again with the same exhortation, delivered in my squeaky imitation of Charles' plummy tones.

Everyone roared with laughter, a most satisfying outcome for me. It was hardly surprising, therefore, that when Auntie Kate entertained the minister of Salem Chapel to tea a few weeks later, I didn't realise that the refined Welsh conversation, subdued atmosphere and the absence of my mother's cigarettes made it a somewhat different kind of occasion. Yes, we had chocolate marshmallows again to boost the Victoria sponge, and yes, I repeated that remark again. Oddly, though, nobody heard me this time. So I had to repeat it very loudly. With the result that my mother removed me from the room none too gently and smacked my bottom. Grown-ups! I was never going to understand them.