Smile Though Your Heart Is Breaking

He grimaced. ‘The air conditioning broke down and it was like a furnace below decks. I went to the captain to complain but he called me a troublemaker.’

I knew John had been pushing to get better trade union representation at sea and I knew that his political passions weren’t popular with his employers, but beyond that, I didn’t really understand. ‘Don’t worry, love,’ I said, relieved his unexpected return wasn’t because of anything more serious. ‘I’m sure you’ll find another passage soon. Anyway, I’ve still got my job.’

‘Um, well, that’s another thing,’ he told me, looking awkward. ‘While you’ve been here sick in bed, I’m afraid Quaintways has burned down. There was a fire overnight and the place was gutted.’

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. The temptation to slide back down the bed and hide under the sheets was enormous. Fortunately, Mr Guifreda and the managing director decided to keep all of the staff on, transferring us instead to the Lewis’s salon in Liverpool for the six months that it would take to rebuild Quaintways. As soon as I was back on my feet I began commuting to Liverpool each morning with the rest of the staff, taking the eight o’clock train for the forty-five minute journey from Chester to Lime Street Station.

John, never a shirker, went back to the butcher’s where he was always welcome between voyages. He also did a paper round. Each morning at ten past eight, when he knew my train would be pulling out of Chester, he’d stop on his round and wait in an alleyway between the rows of terraced houses that backed on to the railway line. I, in turn, would sit in the window on that side and wait for a glimpse of the man I knew I’d almost certainly marry. As the rest of the girls giggled and teased, I’d sit on the edge of my seat until the moment I saw him and then we’d wave madly and blow kisses to each other in the few seconds before each disappeared from view. It was such a romantic thing for him to do and made me think of my parents waving to each other across the rooftops.

After work, I’d walk from the station to the street where John worked and sit in a little café opposite sipping coffee. Watching and waiting, I’d stare and stare at the butcher’s window until I saw John’s hands reach down into the display, pick up a string of sausages and swing it madly from side to side. That was my cue to ask for my bill and it made me laugh every time. He’d be ten more minutes wiping up and putting the meat away before he’d take off his stripy apron and we’d go back to my mother’s for tea.

Mum adored John from the moment she met him. Why wouldn’t she? He was a hard worker from a good local family who was young and handsome with great style and a wicked sense of humour. Best of all, he wasn’t married and never had been. I couldn’t help but notice how differently she behaved around him to the way she’d been with Jim. She loved everything about John, from his tidy steward’s manners to the meat he brought her, wrapped up in paper and tied with string. Amazing as it seemed to her, this was a man who could not only cook but who loved to entertain, often hosting Australian-style barbecues in his mother’s garden with the finest steaks from the butcher’s larder or a cruise ship’s cold stores. There’d always be music – Sinatra, Glenn Miller, Duke Ellington – and dancing. John was a very good dancer and we loved to show off our moves.

Whenever John did manage to get steward’s work again and went off on the ships, he’d bombard me with love letters from abroad. Besotted, I kept every one. He became my uniformed hero who travelled to faraway places and telephoned long distance, or sent romantic billetsdoux within hours of arriving in a port. Believe it or not, my John cut his own romantic recordings of tunes like ‘Blue Moon’ or our special song ‘How Deep Is the Ocean?’ in special booths in New York and sent them to me on 45 r.p.m. discs.

‘Darling, I love you,’ the packaging would say. Or he’d write out the words to ‘our’ song and fold them inside.

How deep is the ocean? How high is the sky?

How many times a day do I think of you?

I thought that was so wonderful.

John was less popular at sea, where he argued with any passengers who whistled or snapped their fingers to attract his attention, in between rallying fellow crew members to complain about conditions. His various captains, who continued to object to his union activities, sacked him repeatedly, often labelling him as ‘Not Wanted on Voyage’. Back on land, he had to find work wherever he could. Through Mr Guifreda, he was offered a job in the Quaintways kitchens for a while, which was fun for us both. Then he went back to a place he’d worked in as a commis chef once before, a hotel and restaurant in Warrington called the Patten Arms. I’m surprised they had him back, frankly. He’d been suspended a few years earlier for being too disruptive when he persuaded the rest of the staff to strike over pay. His boss there used to joke that commis chef meant a Communist who cooks.

One night in the summer of 1959, John told me that he was taking me to the Patten Arms for a ‘special dinner’. I knew he was going to ask me to marry him; I’d been expecting it for a while. We’d already chosen a lovely antique engagement ring at Walton’s jewellers in Chester. It had fifteen diamonds in a marquise cluster and he’d asked them to put it to one side. We’d discussed buying a house and worked out that we should have saved enough for some sort of deposit in two years’ time.

The question was where, when and exactly how would my dashing steward pop the question? Would he hide the ring in my dessert? Would he go down on one knee in the restaurant in front of all the other diners and his colleagues? (Unlikely, I thought.) Maybe he’d booked us a room and would ask me in private? I couldn’t wait to find out.

I put on my best outfit: a black pencil skirt and a houndstooth jacket with a crisp white collar. I styled my hair, cut short still and not dissimilar to Audrey Hepburn’s. I was excited and looking forward to what would probably be one of the most important nights of my life. Looking in the mirror before I left to meet John, I smiled back at my reflection.

We took the train to Warrington but a few miles out of the station John became increasingly nervous. He’d never been very confident in public in spite of what he did for a living. Secretly, he is full of self-doubt and rather shy. He can’t walk into a room on his own; he always makes me go in first, and then he only joins me if I have found him a seat facing the wall. Not far from our destination that night he suddenly turned to me and said, ‘Listen, Paul, when we get to the restaurant everyone’s going to be watching and waiting for the moment I pull out the ring. It’ll be embarrassing.’

I waited, wondering what on earth he was going to suggest instead. Maybe this was a trick to whisk me off somewhere else.

‘Here,’ he said, grabbing my hand and pulling me to my feet, ‘come with me.’

Before I knew it, my oh-so-romantic husband-to-be had bundled me down the corridor and pushed me into the cramped train toilet. Pressing me up against the basin to slide the door shut behind us, he kissed me hard on the lips and blurted, ‘Marry me?’

I had no time to answer before he whisked out the ring we’d chosen and shoved it unceremoniously on my finger. I was twenty years old. He was twenty-one. I looked at him, glanced down at the ring and burst out laughing.

‘John Prescott!’ I cried indignantly. ‘I see the art of romance isn’t dead, then?’ He looked crestfallen, so, kissing him back, I grinned. ‘Of course I will, you idiot.’

We went on to have a lovely relaxed dinner at the Patten Arms, chiefly because John didn’t have to propose in front of anyone. On the way home on the train, he made up for his unromantic proposal by snuggling up to me in our empty carriage.

‘John, don’t,’ I giggled, pushing him away. ‘People can see in!’

Jumping up, he unscrewed the light bulb in the ceiling, plunging us into darkness. ‘Now they can’t,’ he said, silencing my laugh with a kiss.

My mother couldn’t have been more delighted. After all she and I had been through together, she wanted nothing more than to see me happily married. Rather naughtily, John decided to test his own mother’s true feelings for me by telling her that we’d broken up.

‘Oh, John, I’m so pleased!’ she cried.

‘No, Mother. I was just seeing how you’d react,’ he told her. ‘Now I know how you really feel about Paul.’ He never quite forgave her.

Despite her disapproval, his mother put on a good show and kindly offered to host our engagement party in her large garden, usually used for Labour fundraisers. John filmed the whole thing on a state-of-the-art 8-mm cine camera he’d brought back from the States. No one had ever seen such a thing before. All the Quaintways Girls were there, of course, many of whom had also recently got engaged so we were excited about each other’s forthcoming weddings. Some of John’s ‘Brit boys’ from the Britannic came, as well as friends and colleagues from hotels and the other places he’d worked. It was a lovely do, and his mother even offered to make our bridesmaids’ dresses and my going-away outfit, which was very sweet of her. She was a fabulous dressmaker and I was lucky to have her.

Throughout our long engagement John continued to be very active in the National Union of Seamen, which pretty much began to take over his life. Furious at what he called the ‘cosy’ relationship between the ship owners and the union bosses, which he claimed led to poor pay and conditions, he regularly attended marches and strikes or spoke at rallies addressed by leading union officials. He put so much effort and research into his speeches and would practise them over and over until he – and I – knew them off by heart.

I wasn’t that interested in politics, even though my family were always strong Labour people. For John, I was more of a sounding board. Mostly, I made endless mugs of tea and coffee when his union friends came round. I have to admit that sometimes I fell asleep waiting for them to finish their heated late-night debates. What I did come to appreciate, though, was that John had made enemies at the top of the NUS by becoming an unofficial shop steward. I didn’t realize how serious that might be at the time; I just loved the maverick side of him that fought so passionately for what he believed in regardless of the consequences.

Knowing that politics was a side of his life that I didn’t really understand, despite how much it meant to him, I decided to go to a rally to hear him speak. This particular one was held at the Roodee racecourse in Chester. A huge crowd had gathered, some sitting in the tiered stands, the rest forming a large circle. People stepped up and spoke into a microphone in the middle of the circle if they felt like it or until they were booed off. John, who was far younger than most of the men around him, had to push his way through a huge crowd of hecklers to take his turn. I held my breath as he began falteringly. I knew how nervous he was. After a few minutes, though, he got into his stride and became more and more impassioned, delivering each sentence with conviction and flair. I was so proud of him, I could have burst.

I only wished my father could have been there to see him. Each week, without fail, Dad had paid his union dues out of his hard-earned wages to ensure that his rights and those of his fellow workers were respected by his employers. Now here was the son-in-law-to-be that he could never meet representing all that he believed in and more. The man I was going to marry was someone of principle with strong working-class beliefs. Watching him bringing his speech to a climax at that microphone, I had never been more certain that I was doing the right thing.