6

Work, Recreation and Liaisons

By the time I was fourteen the three-year disparity in age between me and my best friends was more apparent. Annie, temporarily in remission from anorexia, had been accepted by the WAAF. Celia, now a succulent young woman, had joined the Women’s Royal Naval Service based on HMS Caroline at Sydenham, under the command of the Earl of Kilmorey, whom she worshipped. We kept in touch by meeting for coffee either in Robinson and Cleaver’s restaurant, or Campbell’s Coffee Shop opposite Belfast City Hall. The latter was furnished with art deco scarlet upholstered chairs with tubular steel frames, grouped around low red metal-topped tables; the walls had been decorated by Rowel Friers, with cartoons of local characters. The coffee, served in mugs, was deplorable by today’s standards, but Campbell’s rolls, liberally filled with a mixture of bacon and mushrooms, chopped hard-boiled egg, sardines, or grated cheese and chutney, were deservedly popular and, at three pence, very good value. There was also a variety of sticky, fruit-spotted buns topped with a swirl of white icing. The first floor was favoured by artists, architects, playwrights, and the embryonic Reverend Ian Paisley, who even then, had a loyal circle of acolytes. The ground floor was where teachers from Inst and other grammar schools, my own included, socialised after school. Among them, Celia’s mother, who had, to universal astonishment, a science degree, and had been recruited to fill a gap caused by loss of staff to the forces. Memorably, on spotting one of the few African students at Queen’s, she was heard to say: ‘It’s funny them being black and us being white.’ By this time she was a widow. Celia’s father, an imposing figure, always dressed in a fine tweed suit, was a Great War survivor, probably suffering from depression, though this was never mentioned. He drank heavily, about which his wife spoke in confidence to my mother, who otherwise seldom had much in common with my friends’ parents. On one of his regular coastal walks, he fell to his death from the path onto rocks near Helen’s Bay. There was a lot of gossip about whether it was suicide, or whether he had been drunk, and lost his footing. Celia had loved him very much, and I too had been fond of him.

Celia’s plumply packed WRNS’s costume gave her the edge over me in my navy blue and maroon sixth-form school uniform, although, after removing the elastic chin-strap, it was possible to adjust the brim of the maroon felt winter hat to a becoming angle, and in spring the beret, also carefully angled, could look almost Parisian. Such modifications, combined with copious amounts of lipstick, did not escape notice and one of my teachers, who must have spotted me in Campbell’s Coffee Shop in central Belfast, reported them to our head. I was carpeted for degrading the image of the school, of which I should be a proud ambassadress, should be ashamed of myself, show some respect for tradition, and so on.

A group of international bridge players met regularly in Campbell’s: these predators made a determined effort to tempt us with offers of lessons to take place in the evenings at a venue in Duncairn Avenue. We were not interested in learning this social accomplishment, although Celia was tempted by the fact that one of the pair had influence within the Group Theatre. I wonder, had they been more attractive, whether we might have succumbed. Most persistent were a portly, balding man in his late forties and his bridge-playing partner, who liked to be addressed as ‘Major’. The latter was sinister, with cold reptilian eyes and tinted glasses – a Bond film character. Our evasive tactics became transparent to the point that they finally got the message, blanking us thereafter.

Many factors led to Celia and me drifting apart: I had developed vague leftist tendencies and, in the absence of a Communist candidate, my first vote went to a Labour candidate at Sydenham. My mother must have been hurt by this break with Conservatism, which had been taken for granted in her family. Free love was in, Empire and the royal family were out, and I despised those dark-suited, bowler-hatted Orangemen with their Lambeg drums, twirling batons and banners of King Billy on his white horse. Celia was deeply wary of Roman Catholics, and habitually referred to working-class people in lofty tones: ‘What else can you expect from these people?’ Obsessed by fear of ‘ending up on the shelf’, her ambition was to marry early and bear many children. Having already seen off a number of ardent suitors, she regaled me with details of how far they had gone without actually ‘doing it’. She was determined to reach the altar a virgin. I had other plans.

Celia had not long to wait. The directors and trainee managers of Ewart’s linen mills were habitués at Campbell’s, and one of these, an ex-RAF officer, was not long divorced from the wife he had married in a whirlwind wartime romance. Tall, personable, socially well-connected, and an Oxford graduate, he was thirtyeight by the time he met Celia. She told me how much more secure she felt in the company of a mature man, compared with the callow youths she had gone out with in the past. Their engagement was announced, despite the social ostracism that still lingered where divorced persons were concerned. Celia’s mother was none too pleased, nor was the prospective groom’s ambitious American mother, who felt her son had learned little from his earlier experience. His father, on the contrary, was indulgent, having also fallen under the spell of Celia’s pneumatic charms.

Meanwhile, in September 1945 I drifted into an apprenticeship with a commercial photographic firm in Belfast owned by the husband of a woman my mother had befriended at the group which met to knit balaclavas, scarves, socks, mittens and gloves for the forces. My mother paid £500 for the apprenticeship, which was to last three years: I was to be paid thirty shillings a week during the first year, £3 the second, and £5 in the final year. He got a good deal – an efficient slave for three years. The premises were Dickensian: a long, narrow slice of property fronted Howard Street; the gated porch, which it was my job to sweep, gathered litter and stray cats, and was sometimes used as a urinal – thankfully syringes and condoms were not yet commonplace. There was a display window, the dressing of which was also my responsibility; behind that, a reception area and waiting room, leading to the finishing room/general office, and then a warren of darkrooms, containing enlargers, sinks, cascade washers and flat-bed driers. A corridor shelved with negatives, both glass and celluloid, led to a recess for a mirror and hooks for outdoor clothing. At the end was the lavatory: lit only by a tiny cobwebbed skylight, it, like the rest of the premises, had neither handbasin nor ventilation. The pan was brownish yellow with age and worse; I do not recall there being a brush or tin of Harpic, but a charwoman sometimes appeared accompanied by the owner’s wife.

I negotiated a higher salary, eventually screwing seven guineas a week out of him by the time, in 1951, I decided there must be more to life than spending much of it in a darkroom. I enrolled for a seven-month course in shorthand and typing; book-keeping was part of it, but after a week it was agreed this was a waste of everyone’s time, so I concentrated on keyboard skills instead. This was probably the wisest decision of my life: I have used a keyboard, in one form or another, on an almost daily basis, ever since.

The tennis club, where I spent most evenings in summer, was in south Belfast, so I would go straight from work by tram to the Stranmillis terminus and walk along the Lagan towpath to the clubhouse. From September through to April many hours were spent at the ice rink at Balmoral – even more distant from home. At work I met colourful people, many of whom had escaped from Nazi Germany just before the war, and a few survivors of concentration camps. The Jewish community worked untiringly on their behalf, and many were talented musicians and artists. Heinz and Alice Hammerschlag were violinists belonging to the Music Society, but Alice was also a gifted artist who painted abstract designs in the early days of acrylic paints under her maiden name (Berger). I have one of her paintings and some hang in the Ulster Museum. Some, such as Zoltan Frankl, the art collector who established a knitting factory in Newtownards, were active in any local artistic enterprise: I was always on the fringe, having nothing to contribute, everything to learn, and despite good school French, being virtually monolingual.

Many of the girls at the club fitted Betjeman’s description of Joan Hunter Dunn – wholesome, hearty, outdoor types and probably good breeding material. Though not unpopular, I did not fit the image. Derek, one of the male friends I made, was five years older, sang in a light-opera group, was interested in ballet and played a fair game of tennis; additional attractions were that his office was near my workplace and he drove an MG sports car. It made sense therefore to hitch a lift, rather than take the slow, clanking tram to Stranmillis. We went to many ballet performances at the Grand Opera House during the years 1945–47. Only when an indiscreet friend told me that Derek had confided that he did not seem to feel the same way as the rest of the men about women did I begin to understand why our relationship remained platonic. Twenty years were to pass before homosexual acts between consenting adults became legal.

On my miserable salary I maintained a fashionable image, devoting far too much thought and time thereto. The New Look arrived to lift female spirits after years of utility clothing. But evening dresses posed a problem, in that they now used yards of fabric, which was costly, and required clothing coupons. My mother really enjoyed making ball gowns, and was unstinting with her time and sewing skills: I wish I had expressed appreciation more than I did, but she had to be discouraged from adding ‘little touches’ to otherwise plain styles. Sometimes she won: my first formal dress was pale blue taffeta, after Gainsborough’s Blue Lady – at the final fitting an intricate panel of appliquéd silk flowers appeared at mid-calf level on the lower skirt. Economy still reigned in 1948, when I wore a black silk taffeta skirt inherited from Grandma Eileen who had died the previous year. Evening shoes were almost impossible to buy, and I remember painting, with limited success, a brown suede pair belonging to my mother with silver paint. Finally persistence was rewarded when I tracked down some gold brocade shoes with a high wedge heel and peep toes – they cost a crippling three guineas.

With various escorts I always enjoyed a visit to the Grand Opera House. A celebration of late Victorian exuberance, complete with gilded elephants, red velvet curtains and seating, during the immediate post-war years it hosted many ballet companies. Ballet Jooss proved too avant-garde, but Mona Inglesby’s International Ballet, although not top grade, introduced a thirsty public to the great classics of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: Swan Lake, Les Sylphides, Sleeping Beauty, Coppélia, The Nutcracker, Don Quixote, even Scheherazade. Dame Marie Rambert brought her own company with the young John Gilpin fresh from Sadler’s Wells, when it was already clear that he would go far. I shall always remember his Albrecht in Giselle. Kenneth MacMillan had a commanding stage presence by the age of nineteen when he came to Northern Ireland with Sadler’s Wells, which staged a brilliant performance of Bizet’s newly discovered Symphony in C, and Kodály’s Dances of Galánta.

I became friendly with a Royal Navy lieutenant who had seen active service but now had a shore job. He looked like James Mason, played reasonable tennis and, in addition, was a fair skater. He was musical and had his own violin, which he insisted on bringing to our house to give a recital. This did not go down well with Auntie Rosemary, who had ambitions of her own in that field, nor did the fact that he was thirty-eight, the same age as she. We went to cinemas and dances, and he taught me marksmanship at the Customs House rifle range. After dances, in the back seat of the car, he would cradle me in his arms, and maunder on about his working-class childhood in north-east England, how he had worked his way up from doing paper deliveries, through grammar school, ultimately becoming a lieutenant in the navy. He was fond of me to the extent of addressing notes to ‘Dearest Bluebell’, and was generous with gifts. Transferred back to England, he disappeared from my life.

There were other men to whom I did not get so close. Then there was Douglas, also ex-Royal Navy, who had come to Belfast as an apprentice mill-manager at Ewart’s. He too was twice my age, and lived in digs in Eglantine Avenue, where he would take me after skating, for which he made an acceptable dance partner. His orientation was not in doubt, as, given the opportunity, he would fling himself on me without preliminaries and thrust his tongue down my gagging throat, only detaching himself after a sharp knee jab in the groin. He was a pompous public school product, and parsimonious – using a tray purse when we went to the cinema – so I gave him the push.

Now, without a skating partner, I began to cast my net again. It was not long before another victim presented: this one had the advantage of playing tennis as well. The Canadian aircraft carrier Magnificent was undergoing trials at Sydenham Docks, and many of its officers lodged in the Malone or Stranmillis districts of the city. Harry, the chief engineer, joined my tennis club in the summer of 1947 when I was nineteen; he too was thirty-eight, and a dead-ringer for John Mills.

Soon he asked me to dinner at the Grosvenor Rooms – where the Europa Hotel now stands – then considered the most fashionable place to eat. At last I was catching up with Celia’s sophisticated lifestyle, having too long envied her accounts of dinners eaten and drinks drunk – Pimm’s was her favourite – at this restaurant. I do not remember much about the meals, apart from Harry asking for French fries, and the waiter not understanding what was required. He was not a culture vulture, so most of our outings were to cinemas. I brought him home to meet my mother and aunt. Rosemary was by now working for a radiologist in private practice; the fact that she was the same age as my swain was again not a plus point, although I chose to ignore it. His Irish ancestors had emigrated from Ennistymon not far from the Cliffs of Moher in County Clare; his childhood was spent in London, Ontario, before he went to university to study engineering, prior to joining the Royal Canadian Navy. None of us enquired, nor were we told much, about his extended family; his mother and sister sent parcels of fruit cake and other delicacies unobtainable or scarce in Northern Ireland, and he sometimes went to Donegal in the Republic on shopping expeditions, bringing back nylon stockings – this was before the life-transforming advent of tights – and lengths of Donegal tweed, destined for Canada, where it was regarded as very fashionable.

Thus began a hectic social life involving many drinks parties both at the captain’s flat and in the ward room of the Magnificent. Captain Balfour, of Scots descent, was a towering figure with what can best be described as a rough-hewn countenance, rather like the Easter Island statues. Renowned for a fiery temper, and unpredictable outbursts of venom, I was warned that being female was no barrier to becoming a target. His wife, of the same craggy build, wore little make-up, and in contrast to the other officers’ wives, dressed informally, preferring tweeds and jerseys to more feminine styles. When she came under fire, rather than engaging in fruitless defence or argument, she ignored him, knowing he would soon turn on another victim. Having no experience of the dramatic changes in personality and behaviour excessive drinking can provoke, I did not recognise the mood swings were due to a prodigious intake of alcohol. The officers under his command were in no doubt, but accepted his abrasive personality without apparent censure – heavy drinking, after all, was the norm in all naval circles.

For the first drinks party I attended I wore the blue taffeta Gainsborough dress, sensible that it emphasised my youth and compared unfavourably with the more svelte styles worn by the wives of other officers. A few of the junior officers were unaccompanied, and Harry was the only senior one to bring a local girl – me. Rum and Coke was a favourite tipple, and at one point I remember being asked: ‘Just how much does it take to get you drunk?’ I despised those women who became giggly and unsteady on their feet, or worse, would disappear in haste to the ablutions, emerging looking pale and sweaty. My mother, despite the fact that alcohol had been the root cause of her failed marriage, had little experience of social drinking, but had warned me that drink affected one’s judgement and lowered female resistance to opportunistic advances: she did not mention its effect when the advances were welcome. I suspect most of the advice was based on hearsay, as apart from the cider at Christmas, she never drank, explaining that even a glass of sherry made her feel out of control and slightly dizzy.

My deflowering took place early on New Year’s Day in a jeep parked in the Castlereagh hills: the temperature hovered around freezing, and the stars were brilliant. The vehicle was a pioneer jeep with canvas seats stretched tightly on metal frames, the sides open to the elements. It was an urgent and uncomfortable experience, during which I climaxed while precautions were being put in place: such was my innocence I did not realise it was an orgasm. By the time we got home sobriety was setting in, along with guilt when I saw the light in my mother’s bedroom. After some difficulty getting the key into the back door lock, I slunk to my chilly bed, dreading having to appear at work by nine thirty on the first day of January, which in Northern Ireland was not a general holiday. For the first time I had a hangover, and a face reddened by what was popularly known as ‘stubble trouble’. There was, however, a distinct feeling of achievement, and from then on I thought of myself as being a fully fledged woman – not to mention one up on Celia.

During the next couple of weeks, I agonised about the efficacy of the condom, and the awful possibility of being pregnant. In those days the dread was ever present, and continued so until the Pill came into general use. In fact, sex, both illicit and within marriage, continued to hold an element of apprehension for many years – particularly for those who abhorred condoms and relied on the ‘safe’ period or sundry unreliable sponges, gels and foams.

The likelihood that Harry might be married had, of course, occurred to almost everyone but me: his fellow officers all knew, and had been waiting for the denouement. One of them, kindly, middle-aged and patently uneasy, turned up at the ice rink to convey the message that Harry had left that morning to attend the funeral of his mother-in-law in Portsmouth, but would get in touch with me very soon. Memory possibly deceives me, but I like to think I did not give any hint of the shock inflicted: I just thanked him, suppressed tears, and with a pounding heart went to remove my skates and leave the session early. During the journey home by tram and bus, I tried to analyse what I felt – not angry, just numb, and conscious for the first time of my naïvety. I dreaded his return, uncertain what attitude to adopt. I do not remember any profound apology for the deceit, but he spun a pathetic story about his wife preferring to remain in England with her mother and two children – already in their teens – and her refusal to join him in Belfast. The marriage had been dead for some time, and he spoke of divorce. I planned to join the WRNS as soon as his tour of duty finished with the commissioning of the aircraft carrier in May 1948. He wrote frequently and at length, while the ship was on trials off Newfoundland, and I believe he was in love, or thought he was, with me. There were glimmerings of dissent, however. His politics were fascist, even racist – I remember remarks about having had to share lodgings with ‘coloured’ sailors while he was in Vancouver, and how ‘they’ had a special smell. When I voiced my intention to continue working after marriage, the stuffy response was: ‘Naval officers’ wives do not work.’ When we met six years later, after I had, in his words, ‘thrown myself away’ in marriage, we were awkward with each other, finding little in common, although he insisted on making a visit to pay his respects to my mother.

Ego led me to think of myself as the lead in a romantic drama on the lines of many films of that era. I remained an avid cinemagoer, adoring Trevor Howard, James Mason, Eric Portman, Rex Harrison and George Sanders, and had a penchant for the elusive bounders they played. I chose to ignore it, but my liaison had caused much adverse comment within the conformist tennisplaying fraternity. A degree of ostracism could be detected, and invitations to dances, cinema and theatre were few during the summer of my laments. To my mother’s relief I did not join the WRNS, but continued my photographic apprenticeship.

Meanwhile, preparations for Celia’s Big Day reached a peak. A mutual friend, not long returned from a ‘finishing’ establishment in Scotland, and I had been chosen as bridesmaids. The social polish her parents sought remained elusive, and the unfortunate girl was for the most part mute and uncomfortable during the selection of suitable material, patterns and seamstress. I was equally miserable, if for different reasons, but vocal when it came to suppressing some of Celia’s more grandiose ideas. My mother was outraged that the bridesmaids were expected to pay for their dresses, furious at the choice of silk chiffon to be tortured into complicated draped bodices, and, in particular, the choice of a dressmaker affiliated to one of Belfast’s leading stores. The wedding took place at one of the few parish churches whose minister agreed to marry divorced persons. Celia was radiant in oyster silk, Douglas my ex-would-be ravisher, was an usher, the best man, also an ex-RN officer, was the suave commodore of the yacht club. After a reception at the country club, the bride appeared, elegant in a dove grey New Look ensemble trimmed with black velvet. A crowd of us saw them off at the station, where the long journey to a luxury hotel in County Cork began. In the evening a dance was held, at which copious amounts of alcohol were downed. I must have been dreary company, hoping that I exuded a sophisticated aura of mystery. One of the ushers saw fit to advise me to ‘beware of those Canadian wolves’. Too late – the Magnificent had already sailed down Belfast Lough for the last time.

After her marriage, Celia and I drifted further apart, although I was asked to be godmother to their first child, a compliment I should have refused, but did not know how to decline. They lived in one of the first ‘executive style’ red-brick houses to be built in prosperous north Down during the early fifties. Their life revolved around bridge and dinner parties, regattas and involvement in fund-raising for local charities. Celia’s mother, now retired from teaching, occupied a granny flat, from which, though a convenient baby-sitter, she emerged more often than was good for marital harmony. She voiced open criticism of their drinking habits, while Celia bleated: ‘What’s the matter with a wee drink, if it makes the party go?’ A lot, as it turned out.

A period of reappraisal followed when I began to face the fact that there was now no environment in which I felt at ease. Memories returned of the headmistress who had dubbed me a bad mixer – she may have had a point. Tennis continued, but I now had a ‘reputation’ and this brought me to reflect on my mother’s admonitions about ‘shop-soiled goods’, and not ‘flying in the face of convention’. Maybe she too had a point. When the skating season began in September, I continued to practise figure skating after work before the now lonely public sessions began.

I ‘trifled with the affections’ of a self-taught artist a mere six years older than me. He was tall, reasonably personable, but afflicted by contorted diction, hampered further by the pipe that seldom left his mouth. He had a natural talent for drawing buildings, and had toured Ireland sketching ancient monuments. He liked classical music and ballet, although due to his perpetual penury, we seldom went to the theatre. He was not in the least athletic – so tennis and skating were out. He lived with his parents and sister in a council house on the opposite side of town. His father, a retired riveter in the shipyard, had a large library and was a devotee of Dickens and Galsworthy. His mother and sister regarded me with suspicion when, during my visits, we disappeared for long periods to the front room, which was the ‘artist’s studio’ and strictly private. The relationship went no further than protracted snogging on the hard floor. Shortly after his declaration of profound feelings, I felt it was time to put an end to his misery: so, while conceding his natural talent for drawing buildings, I urged him to take lessons in life drawing, as it was clear he knew little about ballet positions, and less of human anatomy. Spoiled at home by uncritical adulation, he was hurt by my cruelty and withdrew to lick his wounds.

Rudolf had been a third-year student of botany when his Jewish father, a leftist political writer, fled Berlin in 1933 to settle in London with his Catholic wife and five children. The patriarch got a job at the London School of Economics, two older sons, already graduates, found employment, their elder daughter joined a kibbutz in Israel and the younger, a talented violinist, went to Singapore and married, much to Rudolf’s disgust, a Chinese pianist. Rudolf joined the Berlitz school of languages, which sent him to Belfast. Too proud to accept the offer of the Jewish community to support continued university studies, he opened his own school near my workplace. We met when he brought films to be developed and printed; he was a finicky customer, with an inflated opinion of his photographic skills.

What motive I had in pursuing him eludes me even now. Born in 1909, he resembled a young Bertrand Russell, wore glasses and had, as both my mother and aunt were quick to point out, a Prussian-shaped skull. He was dogmatic, self-satisfied, and patronising, but his manners were irreproachable. He was musical to the extent of writing an article for the Music Review, in which he challenged the views of Hans Keller on the function of ornaments in mediaeval English music. He was interested in painting and sculpture, good food – for what that was worth in 1950 – and the Great Outdoors, Donegal in particular. He had also been through a catalogue of women – the most recent, who had just ditched him, was a member of the Savoy Players. The whiff of bohemianism may have been part of the attraction. Anyway, I began to study German as a means of getting to know him better, and soon we were what is now known as ‘an item’. At lunch time we joined a table of middle-aged people at Anderson & McAuley’s top floor restaurant. The acknowledged head of our group was the writer Denis Ireland, a senator in the Irish parliament; his partner was Mary Hawthorne. Others were Thea Morrow, who lived in a threesome relationship with another woman, and George Morrow, son of the cartoonist, who held court at his house in the Holywood hills where writers and artists gathered at weekends. I tagged along, out of my depth, more conscious than ever of my limitations: illconcealed amusement at Rudolf’s latest appendage did not escape me. Drink mostly flowed, but he was abstemious, almost puritanical in his attitude to alcohol, so I did not dare resort to that. We went for brisk walks over hills last visited with the Guides, and I was shocked by his nonchalant farts as he springheeled along rocky paths, goat-skin rucksack, a relic of the Great War, bouncing on his back: he claimed to average 1,000 feet in half an hour. We attended meetings of the Gramophone Society, string quartets, and lieder recitals.

Rudolf’s teaching schedule meant that he did not return home until almost ten during the week, so any socialising took place at weekends. Soon a ritual was established: I cycled to his flat near my old school about midday, and back home in the late evening. If the weather was good, we put our cycles on the train to Bangor, from where we would go by the lovely coastal route as far as Groomsport and Donaghadee, often finding a sheltered spot near Portavoe for a picnic and quick swim in the icy water. Excursions further afield to Whitepark Bay on the north coast, or, at Easter, to Dunfanaghy in Donegal, involved my mother and her car to put a stamp of respectability on the relationship. Amazingly, Rudolf accepted this intrusion, and they formed an odd relationship; once, much to her annoyance, he described her as ‘a thoroughly good woman’. After our engagement, marked by the purchase of an Edwardian sapphire and diamond ring costing £18, an unescorted holiday was sanctioned in the summer of 1950. The ring, however, did not ensure lack of curiosity at our hotel in Glencolumbkille, where a small boy greeted my appearance for pre-dinner drinks, in front of a blazing fire in the lounge, with ‘Hello, fancy lady’.

A date for the nuptials was set for 28 December 1950. Celia thought Rudolf a comical choice; San and my mother kept their counsel; but Auntie Rosemary’s dislike was such that she ostracised us. He viewed her with faint amusement, mocking her mud-coloured Fiat 27, and nicknaming her ‘Juml’ after the number plate JML. Hers was an extreme reaction, adding to my mother’s worries for years. I was hurt, as she had been more like an older sister, teaching me how to knit, sew, look after my nails and, with Annie’s help, rudimentary cooking and cake making. Only after we separated, Rudolf having got work in Scotland, and Rosemary was engaged to marry in 1956, did she extend an olive branch to ensure I would attend her marriage to a really nice man, Uncle Arthur, who survives to this day. My mother’s comment: ‘He’ll need to be a saint.’