Mary at that time had been engaged in ‘war work’, more specifically, running a small music group that used to travel in and around London providing musical entertainment to factory workers and troop bases, all part of the ‘war effort’ and keeping up morale. At that time, Mary herself was at a low ebb, smoking heavily whilst also spending a lot of late hours in smoky situations; eating irregularly and much of what today might be called ‘junk-food’. She had left her husband, whom she had married in the late 1930’s, having suddenly found him to be an insufferably boring businessman; the romance of young virile passion having worn off in the strain of those first war years. Her slightly younger sister with whom she had been very close had also married around the same time to a young Leicester barrister and the two couples, who had all been friends for several years, were in fact so close that when the opportunity for sister Peggy and her husband to take a short honeymoon break they had, all four of them, left Leicester for a stay in the nearby country-side.
The young athletic lawyer whom Mary described as a ‘Gay Lothario’ – would venture out into the bracing wintry air without wrapping up. He developed a chill and before the honeymoon trip was over was dead from complicated pneumonia, the three friends were all gathered his bedside as he died. Peggy the honeymoon bride had become the grieving widow within a week or so of her wedding. Subsequently the fact that Mary chose to walk out on ‘Curtiss’ and her married name to go down to London shortly thereafter led to a rift between the sisters that never really healed. Peggy could never reconcile her total loss of her own love while Mary had just cast hers away. Peggy remained a widow for the rest of her life, estranged from her sibling who eventually was living again in Leicester, just a few houses away on London Road.
So, Mary Smith (her maiden and professional name) met Gerald Temple Gaskell and the two formed a platonic bond that would last until Gerald’s death from respiratory complications in late 1971. They both recognized in each other the need for some lifestyle changes, and became a de facto mutual support group, giving up cigarettes – for they both smoked at that time – and becoming vegetarians – meat was scarce and rationed anyway at the time – and following the tenets prescribed in Yogic teachings. Eventually they both returned to Leicester to continue a life given over to social welfare support of some of society’s ‘misfits’, Mary’s musical teaching and to promoting the Teachings essentially of Buddhism.
By this time they were living as brother and sister, although Mary had adopted Gerald’s surname. Gerald’s father was a well-to-do country doctor or G.P. in Buckinghamshire and Gerald, their only child, finally fell out with his parents who did ‘...not like people who live together and are not married’. Gerald having been divorced from his young wife, with whom he had one son Robert, several years earlier. The boy became the apple of the old Doctor’s eye and that of his wife, Gerald’s mother and grew up in the shadow of his Grandparents. He eventually inherited whatever estate they left in their wills; Gerald having been written off completely.
In the intervening years Mary had at one time made a ‘marriage of convenience’ to an old acquaintance, a West Indian musician named Freddie Simmonds Dyer. It was through him that she had previously met many of the jazz musicians who came touring in England from the U.S.A. But she started divorce proceedings from Freddie soon after their wedding when he started knocking her about and his mother had pointed out to her that ‘…that’s the way our men-folk show that they love us’. Mary was not about to take that kind of baloney as the norm. So Freddie rapidly became Fred-ex.
When I walked into the Studio that I then heard referred to as ‘The Ashram’, early in 1971 it was to change my life completely.
There was hustle and bustle throughout the tall Victorian town-house except in ‘the Salon’ – that first floor (second to Americans) front room that was Mary’s centre of operations. By this time in their lives Mary intimated that Gerald had ‘all the time in the world’ to devote to his quiet studies and to meditation; and in fact one saw very little of him. He would go out for his walks in the park opposite and prepare an evening repast – sometimes. Other than that he was somewhat reclusive.
Mary on the other hand managed the comings and goings into the Salon with the expertise of a lion-tamer there was a palpable quelling of tension upon entering this busy sanctum. Voices were dropped. None were allowed to be in a rush or loud in their protestations – and there were plenty of these coming from the numerous occupants of the house. Like unruly grown-up children, everyone reporting the misdeeds of another.
Nearly all the occupants of the Ashram had been through the Mental Health system, some were coming from the Prisoners’ Welfare Service, others were referred by the Housing Department as being destitute or homeless, all of them had apparently been abandoned by any family they may have had. Helga, for example, a Ukrainian immigrant, had been in a Nazi slave-labour camp during the war and had the scars – both physical and emotional - to prove it. Others were being ‘rehabilitated on medication’ from long periods previously institutionalized in Psychiatric Hospitals. It was a centre for battered and abused women and looked upon by the various welfare agencies as a ‘half-way house’; a general clearing or dumping station for their difficult placement cases.
Mary would seldom say no to a referred case in need and space would be constantly found by rearranging of accommodations here and there couples who got on well together were encouraged to team up and release one of the beds for new arrivals. On the other hand the Rental Commissioners were forever onto her for ‘overcrowding’. They usually appeared when some poor unfortunate disgruntled former resident would ‘bite the hand that had fed’ or like the uncontrolled lion lashed back at the ‘tamer’ when his eye was averted.
The lofty ‘house’ was a warren of cells, dormitory rooms and cubicles from cellar to attic – the sort of accommodation one might find in a submarine but probably no where else. Hygiene and cleanliness, being ‘next to Godliness’ were the watch-words. The ‘brethren’ were expected to keep themselves and their immediate surroundings spick and span. This was more difficult for some than for others and the stronger were expected to carry some of the burden of the weaker. Once a month or so Mary would make ‘grand rounds’ but apart from these occasional tours the place was expected to run like clockwork – it seldom did.
On one of my early visits Mary actually suggested we start my piano lessons.
“That’s why you came, isn’t it?” she asked.
“Well yes”, I responded “but you’re so busy and there’s so much more I can do to help here at the Ashram.”
“Never mind that, the poor are always with us” I recognized the apt biblical quotation.
“Here’s a piece I think you should tackle. It’s Bach’s first prelude. You don’t want to start with ‘Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star’, now do you?”
I gulped, “Well I mean Johann Sebastian Bach? Surely that’s for professionals?”
“Not really, it goes like this”…
Her fingers began to move over the keys with speed and accuracy. I was mesmerized and recognized the tune that usually accompanies one of the versions of the ‘Ave Maria’. It was hauntingly beautiful as it came to a predictable end a few bars later.
“There, you see? Not really difficult at all.”
“I don’t know about that,” I replied.
“Break it up into sections. Bach is really repetitive and predictable; it’s easy once you get into it.” So it started, but I never got beyond managing the first few bars of that piece. It did however remain there as a beacon in my darkness, a light at the end of the tunnel perhaps, the promise of things hoped for.
There would always be some emergency or other cropping up and anxiously reported by this or that ‘resident’. If I were there, Mary would suggest, “Leo, just go down and see what Betty is so worked up about.”
She had taken to calling me Leo after my zodiacal sign. It was easier than Mr. Fosbery, and not as informal as Desmond. She never ever referred to me by my first name in all the subsequent years we were to be together.
I’d go downstairs and find something like an electric-kettle full of somebody’s boiling underwear atop the gas-stove. On another occasion someone had lit an old gas-lamp pipe fitting coming directly out of the wall and was boiling water for their tea holding a kettle against the gas jet. After all it was easier than finding a shilling or five-P to put in their gas-meter. It’s a wonder the place didn’t go up in smoke. On that point some of the old-timers were such smoke-aholics their cubicles were khaki from floor to ceiling.
When I was not functioning as ‘a duty fire prevention officer’ I’d be doing emergency clean-ups elsewhere, dismantling and reassembling bunk-beds, clearing out rubbish and so forth. In those days we junior hospital doctors had ‘emergency beepers’ issued by the hospital. These emitted a high pitched ‘beep’ and fortunately the Ashram was within the range of transmission. There was no two-way radio communication but it alerted one to the fact that one needed to call into the hospital switchboard for instructions. Hari soon learned the precise pitch and time sequence of my ‘beeper’ – after that oh, the times I had to ‘call-in’ only to realise that the darned bird had fooled me once more.
By this time I was spending more of my ‘free time’ at the Ashram and less at the resident’s mess at the ‘Royal’. In the beginning I was really being torn between returning to my familial duties to Gill and the boys and my desires for the company of Borijana. The Ashram provided my escape route from these opposing forces and I was able to sublimate my agonizing guilt in physical and oft-times menial pursuits.
Eventually Borijana was coming to the end of her contracted work as Anaesthetic registrar and intimated that she was going to apply for a new appointment up in Edinburgh with good references from her ‘chiefs’. Our relationship had lost its fire and that was just as well. Gill on the other hand had quite naturally started divorce proceedings and I did not contest these, holding myself thoroughly to blame for the breakdown of our marriage and being too ashamed to try and overcome my infidelity by seeking to return home and mend our relationship.
Mary suggested I might like to use the Ashram as my ‘off duty’ day-time abode at this time, to get some regular time away from the Royal Infirmary doctor’s quarters. I was getting more and more into the Yogic lifestyle; for example it soon occurred to me that being ‘vegetarian’ just when at the Ashram was rather hypocritical – so I changed one day and gave up meat and all associated products. Mary provided a lot of reading material to help me onto ‘the path’.
In a fairly short time I began to understand the differences between ‘Sat’ and ‘Asat’ that is between ‘those who intuitively know and those who know not’; and to start to work towards acquiring good Karma while accepting the exigencies of one’s past Karmic load. ‘Cease to do evil; learn to do good; purify your own heart’ ran the mantra.
I moved some of my belongings, such as they were after I’d walked out of the house at Oadby, into the Ashram from the Resident’s Mess at the ‘Royal’. I still had to continue my professional duties at the ‘Royal’ and to dress accordingly so I still left a lot of my wardrobe in my room at the ‘Royal’. Once for the duration of a fortnight during a time when I was not on emergency call, I did not lie in a bed.
It was at the ‘Ashram’ during an intensive period of inquiring, questioning, explanations and mental discipline adjusting to the pursuit of my new life-style. Mary and I would sit in the Salon chairs – the ‘tub’ chair and the facing ‘wing’ chair. Our lengthy discussions would continue deep into the night, with an occasional ‘tea-making’ break, a few minutes dozing perhaps, then more talk and eventually with the dawn chorus, time for morning ablutions, change of a few clothes and off to my day’s duties at the Infirmary.
Following the subsequent week of ‘on-call’ duty at the hospital, I returned to the Ashram and to Mary’s intensive tuition. It was at the end of one of her music pupil’s piano lessons that I was sitting briefly at the piano myself. The rash on my hands having started to emerge again recently, Mary noticed it. I explained the situation and the history of this affliction that went back to my days as a medical student; it had started one Easter holiday period when I had taken a job with British Rail in the ‘Refreshments Division’, during which time I had been extensively exposed to an industrial detergent used for cleaning hamper-loads of crockery sent back to Euston from the far north of the country;
“That will soon be gone,” she said, laying her cool hands over my fiery fingers “and it won’t trouble you again.”
I should have been convinced but I’d been suffering from recurring bouts on a regular basis for a period of thirteen years or so and that made her pronouncement difficult to comprehend at that moment.
Another pupil came in and after her lesson followed by the usual farewell ceremony I noticed Mary with a certain amount of muscular tension across her back as she relaxed once more at the silent keyboard. I found myself standing behind her and massaging my thumbs into the tense muscles between her shoulders. She appreciated the relief it gave her and I continued my efforts for ten minutes or so.
Then it was time for tea. By this time I had grown accustomed to preparing tea in the prescribed manner and went over to the ‘tea station’ to prepare our refreshment, Gerald came into the Salon upon the appointed ‘tea-time’ hour and the three of us passed a congenial period of ‘tea drinking’ before Mary’s next appointed piano pupil arrived and Gerald departed back to his studies and meditation in his part of the ‘house’. That night Mary invited me to join her in sharing her room.
I found it contained a large feather-mattressed bed, the type I remembered my Nanna having had when I was a boy; there was also a large standing mirror doored wardrobe and a wash-stand of antique type complete with China wash basin, Water jug and a Slops bucket. A bathroom and a separate toilet were a short distance down a hallway from this room.
My lessons continued; ‘Companionship’ Mary explained ‘between members of the opposite sex did not have to be sexually orientated’. It was important to realise that the heat of sexual passion could be quelled and not be missed, sublimated if you like. Mary at this time was exactly twice my age, I being 31 and she 62 years old (in this life, as she had pointed out). ‘On the other hand’, she went on, ‘if I was to find my biological needs over-powering’ she was ‘prepared to accommodate my needs in any way necessary’.
I found myself in a dilemma once more. Here I was, a refugee from sexual passions, being offered intimate accommodation with a person that I was very much drawn to on a philosophic level; and being offered those sexual services that my comparative youth might have felt to be most necessary. It was the ‘matter-of-factness’ in her approach that led me out of that awkward moment and we passed a peaceful night resting side by side enfolded in a luxurious cloud of down clad in nothing but our own skin and so it continued thereafter.
There were always strange encounters to be had at the Ashram, people were introduced by old friends and new. Borijana had visited once at my insistence but her visit had resulted in her almost running from the room and returning to the ‘Royal Infirmary’. That was very early in my association with Mary and Gerald. Visiting Indian sages would be brought by friends in the Indian community that was very large in Leicester.
Now in 1971, one morning an old friend bought along an ordinary looking local woman who, it was said by the friend, was a psychic. Mary did not usually subscribe to this type of seeming ‘sensationalism’ but accommodated her friend’s enthusiasm.
“Well now,” she asked the woman, “what do you have to say?”
The woman was quietly looking around the salon taking in apparently all the current and possibly future vibrations of the place; “All this will be changed,” she said with a sweeping motion of her hand round the room, “Gerald will be gone,” he was perhaps fortunately not in the vicinity at that time, “and you will travel.” Now Mary had not traveled far for years and for some considerable time, even to my knowledge, had not been outside the ‘Ashram’ at all. So this pronouncement seemed strange and life continued as usual at London Road, the Ashram having now become my home as well as my refuge.
One evening my mother came to visit. She had brought herself up to Leicester to visit her daughter-in-law and her grandsons and to see for herself what in Heavens name was going on with her son. She sat through an evening in which she was not seemingly impressed and returned later to the small hotel into which she had booked herself for the night, asking that I go and meet her there next morning before she went again down to London.
At that meeting, in the hotel car-park she implored me,
“It’s all an act,” she said. “Mary is a consummate performer, that’s all.”
“In that case Mother dear, I’ll have to stay until the end of the performance. Do please try to understand.”
She departed then, I’m sure with a small tear running down her cheek. Of course she could not understand the new direction my life had taken.