Heather
I didn’t have a mature, loving relationship until I was twenty-seven. But once I found her, I knew. She and I have been a pair, in love and in life, for fifty-three years.
Heather is my polar opposite. She is reticent, incredibly private and reserved. I know this is her worst nightmare: to be exposed and publicly known in a book. I have never given her full name in interviews and I’ve asked her permission to write about her here. It’s all right for me to be exposed: I quite enjoy the idea of exploring my innermost self and handing it out in little parcels. But she doesn’t.
We sat down, and I said, ‘You know I’m going to have to mention you, don’t you? You are the central person in my life. How can I not speak about you? That would be absurd.’ And she said, ‘Yes, I see that. I wish it weren’t necessary, but I can see that it is.’ I’ve made sure that I don’t overstep what she would want. But celebrating the love of your life is important.
Let me tell you about how I met Heather.
It was all thanks to one of my dearest school friends, Katerina Clark. When Katy went back to Australia to ANU — Australian National University — and I went to Cambridge, we continued to write to each other. During the five years after I’d left Cambridge, Katy was at Yale doing her master’s degree. Two scholarships were given annually to Australian women graduates: Katy had one, and Heather was the other recipient. (Katerina and Heather were both from Canberra, so when they went to Yale, naturally they became friends.)
I wrote to Katy and told her my big news about being gay; she replied, ‘Oh! My best friend here is a lesbian… you should meet.’
In the summer of 1968, Katy said that she was coming to London for a research trip, and her friend, this lesbian called Heather, would be coming with her. I replied suggesting we meet up. I thought it might be quite exciting, but Katy told me: ‘Don’t tell Heather that you know she’s a lesbian, because she wouldn’t like me betraying her confidence.’
It was arranged that she, Heather and I would go with a couple of other Australians to see The Charge of the Light Brigade, the film about the Crimean War, directed by Tony Richardson. They picked me up in a VW to go to the film; being the fattest, I sat in the front and showed off noisily all the way there, talking about cock-sucking and farting.
Behind me, I glimpsed this creature with white-blonde hair, which I find devastatingly attractive, and I just knew. I can remember it as if it were yesterday — the absolute knowledge that this was the woman that I had always sought and longed for. And she, of course, was in blind ignorance of how her life was about to change: I knew that this was for ever, but she didn’t, she didn’t have a clue.
When we got to the cinema, I insisted on sitting next to her. I didn’t look at the film at all, which Heather found disconcerting and odd: for the entire movie I turned my whole gaze on her. I drank her in, and she was discomforted by this, as you can imagine. I’m not sure Katy enjoyed the film much either; she was worrying I would let slip what she’d told me.
Years later, I saw the film. The violence of the war, guns, noise and stiff-upper-lipped Englishmen were all a long way from the passionate emotions I had been harbouring.
Afterwards, I said to Katy, ‘Bring Heather to lunch on Thursday, and don’t tell her that you’ve told me that she’s gay.’ Of course, we didn’t say gay then, the word was queer — and we were queer. Katy said, ‘Miriam, I can’t not tell her.’ Katy’s got that thing, you see — integrity — that gets in the way sometimes. Nevertheless, she promised she wouldn’t tell her, and she didn’t. I then said, ‘Just say you’ve got an appointment at two o’clock and you have to go, and you leave us two alone.’
Katy was never comfortable with even the whitest of lies, but she agreed and so, on the Thursday, they arrived. We sat down to eat. Suddenly, in the middle of lunch, Katy leapt up and said, ‘Oh, God! Is that the time? I’m really sorry but I’ve got to go.’
I saw her out, and at the front door she turned and sternly said, ‘Now, don’t you say anything because she’s going to be really…’ and I said, ‘No, of course I won’t!’
Perhaps it was knowing that Heather was gay that gave me the courage to make my move. After I had bundled Katy out the door, and returned to the kitchen, Heather said something like, ‘God! Why on earth did Katy go off like that? I would have gone with her.’
I said, ‘But I didn’t want you to go with her, I wanted you to stay.’ There was a pause. I said, ‘I’m queer, and I think you are too… aren’t you?’ She started to shake. I got up from the table, went around behind her chair and stood and stroked her head. A masterstroke, if I may say so. I have good massaging hands and I think that calmed her down.
Heather and I started our relationship that very night — and it never stopped. She phoned Jan Adams where she’d been staying, and explained that she wasn’t coming home. I heard her say, ‘I like Miriam.’ Next to getting into Cambridge, that was the best moment of my life. It was a feeling of connection on a level completely different to anything I had experienced before.
My emotions, my attention and my sexuality were totally focused on Heather. She engaged my interest and always has. She’s powerful and enigmatic. She is also reserved, and feeling her respond to me and realising that I could awaken her affection and sexuality was an intoxicating experience.
We didn’t get out of bed for a week.
Later, Heather told me that she had said to herself at lunch that day: ‘Miriam can’t be queer. She’s so noisy!’ For Heather, the whole concept of being gay was shrouded in secrecy. She couldn’t imagine that anybody could say, ‘I fancy you. I’m gay. Let’s fuck.’
My parents were two opposites attracting: Heather and I are the same. Those early patterns are important — they form the paradigm for your future relationships. I am a clone of my mother, whereas my partner resembles my father — she’s a thoughtful person, a quiet, undemonstrative scholar. Although theirs was a passionate relationship in which they were often at odds, my parents adored each other.
Being in a relationship with someone for fifty-three years is a big achievement. It’s difficult to look at someone objectively when you love them. And I love Heather. I get angry with her and she gets very angry with me, but I recognise her complete integrity. Nearly everybody has flaws of honesty; Heather has none. It doesn’t make her an easy person to be with, but there is a complete decency about her, which is refreshing and precious and rare.
Heather is an academic and a scholar: an Indonesianist. To begin with, she was working in Malaysia at Kuala Lumpur University, then she got a job at the Free University of Amsterdam, and she’s been in Holland ever since. She would come to London, of course, and I would go over to her seventeenth-century house on the Prinsengracht. We used to keep a little day boat on the canal outside the house. It had an outboard motor engine, which you started by sharply pulling a string, like a lawnmower, and off this little boat went. I loved that, but, eventually, because we didn’t use it enough, we gave it away.