When my sister and her boyfriend decided , opportunely......, to get married, at the ages of sixteen and seventeen respectively, I was living in an attic flat in Newport Road, near the railway bridge, and they moved in with my father. The house was re-decorated, and they had a nicely-furnished bedroom to call their own. As I look back on it I am amazed that my brother-in-law suffered my father's anger and temper for years before there was a truce between the two. If anyone was ever in any doubt about the boy's devotion to his new wife, one would only have to know how he bore it manfully for so long before letting my father know in no uncertain terms that he was not to be bullied and nagged at any longer. Then, one after another, two children came along, and my father, transformed from the domineering, violent man he was to a tender, loving grandfather who could do no wrong. And, thankfully, that's the only side of him which is fondly remembered by my sister, and her children, who now have children of their own , who will soon be on the verge of having children of their own....................
One day I came back from away and my sister and her husband, with their baby boy in the pram walked to our Auntie Kitty's in Cathedral View. On the way, my brother-in-law began talking very loudly and motioning to something in the opposite distance. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my father in a garden chair, slink soundlessly to the ground behind the hedge, and a very attractive older woman disappearing quickly into the house. When we had passed this scenario, my brother-in-law whispered to me that this was my father's "girlfriend" about whom my sister knew nothing, and it was better to keep it that way, because even though my mother had been incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital for many years at this point, they were still married, and my father brought my mother home from the hospital every other weekend.
I was older, and a teeny bit wiser, though not by much, at that time. It occurred to me that it was a stalwart thing to do, to remain loyally attentive to a schitzophrenic wife all those years, so the comforts of a dalliance or mistress was a modest indiscretion to be admired, not resented. It was only after my father's death that my sister knew of "The Other Woman".
Shortly afterwards, the son of another family on the estate, divorced his wife on grounds of mental health, and left her in Whitchurch Hospital. They had hardly been married at all.