Nancy

There's a gap in the oncoming crowd on platform three. In the distance, unmistakably, is Nancy. She is walking towards me dressed in an olive green, calf-length raincoat and carrying a brown cowboy hat with a dove-coloured band. I recognise the outfit, for it is familiar to me from the photographs she had sent from the Far East. In one of the pictures, she was standing in front of her class of small Korean children dressed as a cowgirl, in another she smiled before the Pomosa Temple on the outskirts of Pusan in South Korea.

Now she is approaching me, her four-inch high heels clicking rhythmically on the scratched marble of Preston Railway Station. As she draws nearer, I gasp inwardly, for she was the living double of our recently dead and much beloved English comedienne, Marti Caine. Indubitably, she would have come first in any lookalike competition.

Still unobserved, I could see her thanking a fellow passenger for his help. The woman before me was of average height with a slim attractive figure. A pair of huge wide green eyes dominated her high-boned cheeks and well-defined nose. Thick eyeliner, skilfully applied, provided emphasis to the wide lids, shadowed and swept by long heavy lashes. Her lips were full and well shaped, the lipstick neither too dark nor bright - just right. Her long hair was soft auburn and worn full over the neck to the shoulders.

She is patently a woman of taste and sophistication. Vibrant and quintessentially feminine, in age, she looks to be in her late thirties. Bending down to check the zip of her travelling bag, the front locks cascade over her eyes and obscures her view. She rises and flicking back her head, she sees me. I behold the recognition flooding into her expressive eyes as an amiable generous smile lights up her face. The soft drawling voice is well modulated and rich with southern vowels.

We cross the busy road outside the station entrance and enter The Railway Hotel. Nancy asks for red wine. I order myself an Irish Whiskey with a lager chaser. Behind and above the bar, a large electric toy train chugs it's way amongst the racks of empty glasses and hanging spirit optics. Round and round it clatters, a constant reminder of the proximity of the railway and the reality of distance and separation.

A crowd of boisterous, partly drunken Scots occupy the adjacent seats. A momentary silence falls over them when they spot Nancy. A mildly threatening, male-pack-sensuality pervades the room, until their attention returns once more to private jokes and serious drinking.

We have never met before, yet we do not feel like strangers for we have been corresponding for over a year. I had placed an advert in a South Korean newspaper asking for Korean pen friends. Nancy was teaching English in the southern city of Pusan at that time. In May 1997, she had written to me offering her impressions of the Korean way of life from a Western occidental viewpoint. Her letters were full of interesting insights and sharply observed detail of the fascinating culture of her host country. Her intelligent eye brought much maturity and experience to her penetrating observations. Soon we were exchanging views on a multitude of subjects.

I have been interested in Korea since my late teens when the 'Korean War' was never out of the newspaper headlines. In the fifties Korea was poor and backward, with no real industry and a gross national domestic product on par with Pakistan or Latin America. Now Korea has achieved Western levels of development.

Later, when I was seventeen, I even chose to join the Gloucestershire Regiment because they had fought so bravely in The Battle of the Imjim River in the Korean War. Subsequently, at University, I studied linguistics, and it was always my dream to learn Korean and try to trace any Turkic influences in the modern language. I am studying the Korean Han-gul script right now, but maybe I have left it too late in life to realise my dream. The problem is that in this life there are so many interesting things to do - all clamouring for attention! I have never been to Korea or met a Korean face to face! My intention is to try and understand how the Korean mind works, and to appreciate the special qualities of the Korean people that have enabled them to retain their unique qualities, in spite of being sandwiched between two super - powers.

Can I be mischievous? Perhaps the Americans have succeeded where the Japanese and Chinese failed? Perhaps it is American attitudes and life-style, which is the greatest threat to Korean culture? In addition, just like the Koreans, we are very sensitive about our culture and our language - a language, which, in spite of the small size of our country - we have given to the world. The British - (and I am British not English), just like the Koreans, are very individualistic - we are renowned in Europe for this trait. The Germans for example are like the Japanese - they revel in conformity, and being part of the crowd, or part of some zombie-like industrial corporation. The British are individualistic to the point of being idiosyncratic, and can sometimes be amusing in their attempts to be different from all the others! The British think of the Japanese as robots, with no ability for lateral thinking. We see the Japanese as non-creative people - but as brilliant innovators and very hard workers. We admire their achievements - but not their methodology. They are like bees - and Japan is like a massive beehive.

The Chinese are much more attractive to the British. We like the Chinese. The Koreans are completely unknown to the British, and most Europeans think that they are a mixture of Japanese and Chinese - and that the language is of the same family. It is not the case in fact. Korean is part of the Tunguistic group of the Altaic languages, which comprise the Turkic languages and the Mongolian.

By the time that I received Nancy's second letter, her plans had changed. The family business that she was working for was moving, so two weeks later she returned to her hometown of Denver in Colorado. Nancy is the eldest of seven children and is divorced with two sons. At the time that she first wrote to me, she had been in Korea for eight months. She had left America because she wanted to do something completely different and had ventured alone into a completely alien environment because she was seeking a challenge - a change of direction. Nancy wrote that Korean high school children attend lessons from 7am until 10pm. It is a land where parents spend 16% of their gross income on extra educational classes; mostly in English language studies.

She said that most of the education is by rote memorisation with little encouragement for creative thinking. Korean people, she went on, are generous, curious, driven. The are essentially family orientated with Confucian ideals having more influence than the rival Buddhist teachings. Sons continue to be everything, and a rigid demarcation exists between roles for men and women. Most Korean women agree that once they marry, 'Its all over',

Nancy wrote of the family she stayed with:

"Since I have been here the family has visited the husband's widowed mother every weekend for the entire weekend. The wife's parents however, were not visited at all. The husband has bought some beautiful, valuable pieces of jewellery for his wife, but he never takes her anywhere to wear them! All outings are family outings, with small children and extended family along." And in the same letter: "The pace here is Pali Pali (Hurry, hurry) but with a kind of festival atmosphere. When a Korean says, 'Let's go out to eat', you don't pause to change clothes or comb your hair - you are heading out of the door NOW!  

On one occasion," she continued,

"I created a home-made pizza for the family. After we had all taken one bite, the man of the house suddenly insisted that we all go out for lunch and leave the pizza for dinner later. So immediately everyone jumps up, leaves the pizza on table and heads out of the door! At first I was insulted, but I learned it is just the Korean way."

Nancy's family originated in the British Isles. Her mother's family were from Scotland and the family name was MacLaughlan, whilst on her father's side it was English blood the name being Metcalfe. She is very interested in tracing her family history and one day she will get down to the task of genealogical research.

After spending an hour together chatting in the Railway Hotel, we drive the ten miles to our home in a semi-rural area. I can see that Nancy is curious to see my village, and as we travel down the lane past the church and round the little pancake traffic island then down the road to the house, I can see her eyes taking in the scenery.

Clare welcomes us upon our arrival and soon Nancy is sitting in our living room playing with a rather boisterous Cameron. Our son is passing through what people call 'the terrible twos' at the moment, but Nancy shows no impatience with the boy, in spite of him crawling all over her.

That evening after the meal is over and the plates have been cleared away, Nancy begins to tell us about her life and her seven marriages. Desperate to get away from her abusive father, she had married at the age of seventeen.

Her life at home had been a miserable one. Her father was a religious fanatic, who had on one occasion shaved off all of her hair for some minor misdemeanour. Her mother had been too terrified to stop him. Later, after giving birth to a son, the marriage broke up. Following that, there was a succession of partners. Nancy lived in Germany from 1968 to 1970. She lived in Berlin and worked for the Armed Forces Television as a weather person and as the hostess of a half-hour talk show.

All the tapes of her many appearances were lost in a burglary she suffered about ten years ago.

Nancy told me of a particularly funny incident, which got her into a little bit of trouble with the station manager. What happened was this...

They had been experiencing an exceptionally hot summer with a bad drought in Germany. At that time, the American show Laugh In was very popular. On the show, a regular clip was a girl who would say, "It's sock-it-to-me-time!" Someone would then throw a bucket of water over her.
Nancy decided to liven up the weather report without telling her boss. She got some of the crew together at the end of the broadcast and said something to the effect that while everyone suffered through the heat and drought another day, she was going to cool off because it was sock-it-to-me-time. A camera operator, off camera threw a big bucket of water on her, someone forgot to cut the mike and she was sputtering and spewing water in front of thousands, including her boss who was at home watching.

The next day he called her into the office. They ran the film backwards and aired it. "The water is back in the bucket now", he said - "let's keep it that way!"

One of her spouses, I forget which, was a rodeo rider. I think it was to him that she had her second son. The family travelled around the southern states in a trailer. Her husband would tender an entrance fee and enter in the rodeo competition. If he lost in the various events - horse riding, steer riding, lassoing etc, then the entrance charge would be forfeited and the family would have no income that week. Once his lariat was wound round his thumb when the animal lunged away and it was ripped right off. He insisted on having it stitched back on again and wore it bandaged for weeks. When the wrapping was removed however, there was just a blackened stump that had to be removed.

There was another husband much older than she was. She originally got a job on his ranch as a secretary. His two sons were very impressed with her, and both asked her for a date. Mysteriously, on both occasions the men had to go on business trips and could not appear for the date. Nancy discovered that in fact their father had engineered it that way, for the simple reason that he was interested in her for himself. It was against this man, that Nancy was later accused of attempted murder, when after a blazing row, she took pot-shots at him and the house with a hand-gun through the window of her car as she sped away. She was arrested and imprisoned, but there was a temporary reconciliation and he dropped all charges against her.

At one time, she was working as a hostess in a large resort restaurant with 380 rooms in the mountains. Being so hard-working, intelligent and personable, she was rapidly promoted, ultimately assuming the post of Banqueting Manager. The owner of the hotel eventually became her paramour. The owner however insisted on her wearing blue, grey, black or brown suits, while she wanted to wear her own flamboyant style. Very much an individualist, (or in her own words "Stubborn and opinionated"), she refused to wear the house uniform and skipped the opportunity for better or for worse. She could have ended up marrying the owner, but sadly, he was killed in an aeroplane crash.

Later after studying law she began operating as a lawyer, she wore grey or black suits and said that she could feel his presence snickering at her from on high.

On another occasion, she and her husband were managing a huge cattle-ranch. Her errant husband took off on her, and poor Nancy was left to run the spread on her own with two young boys to care for at the same time.


We sit drinking red wine whilst she tells her story. I wish that I had had a tape-recorder, for there were other tales. The incidents of her life both amusing and serious came out in the correct chronological sequential order as the hours sped by, but I cannot for the life of me remember much about it now.

There came a time, I think it was after the cattle-ranch episode, that she decided to change her lifestyle completely. Nancy enrolled at a college to study law. After years of hard work, her retentive memory, intelligence and analytical skills paid off. She graduated first in her law school class and was an editor of the International Law Journal. She was granted her diploma in law from an academy in California. These are Nancy's words:

"Despite my accomplishments, I couldn't get a job with a major law firm upon graduation. Partly because of my age, (major firms prefer young kids that they can push around for a while), and partly my gender. I will also admit that I sometimes appear combative, (the red hair), and have been known to tilt at windmills (Don Quixote). While I was studying to pass the bar and waiting for the results of the test, I fell into teaching at a college quite by accident. I loved teaching. However, after I passed the bar, I went into solo private practice and was only able to continue teaching on a very limited basis. For six years, I practised law in a very small town, doing every kind of case except tax and patent law. It did not take me long to end up working seven days a week, 14-16 hours a day. In between I managed a brief disastrous marriage; (he quit his job two weeks after the marriage)."

She had been having migraine attacks once a week. She admitted that she had a very curious way of practising the law, she charged the rich and worked free for the poor, which left very little profit for her. She just could not turn down a sob story and acquired many first hand experiences with dishonesty, greed, cut-throat manoeuvring and sexism.

Nancy went on to say that at that time she closed down her office and went to teach in Pusan, She said that those experiences are a book in themselves, I certainly hope that someday when her restless journeying are over, that she sits down and writes that book, for it will certainly be worth reading.

In the period immediately before coming to England, Nancy had been working at refurbishing houses in her hometown of Denver. She decided to learn something new and try her hand at carpentry and plumbing. She had been involved in framing-out a new house, then going on remodelling jobs in the evening. Although she has always been scared of heights, she forced herself to climb high ladders and dangle off beams. One day she was using a nail gun powered by compressed air, when suddenly one of the hoses became disconnected and whipped itself round her calf leaving a bruise the size of a football. She also picked up tiling, caulking and how to plumb-in a sink! Always one to try something new, Nancy had her tongue and eyebrow pierced and a stud or ring fitted. She said that she figured that you only get one chance to experience things and that was one she wanted to try. I can remember how enthralled I was to listen to Nancy's business history and marital adventures.

I suppose I was in awe of her. She would certainly be my choice for The Reader's Digest's - 'The Most Unforgettable Character I've ever met'.

Nancy carries this poem around with her in her purse. In a way it suits Nancy perfectly, and could have been written just for her:

AFTER A WHILE.

After a while, you learn the subtle difference
Between holding a hand and chaining a soul,
And you learn that love doesn't mean leaning
And company doesn't mean security,
And you begin to learn that kisses aren't contracts
And presents aren't promises,
And you begin to accept your defeats
With your head up and your eyes open,
And with the grace of a woman, not the grief of a child,
And learn to build all your roads on today
Because tomorrow's ground is too uncertain for plans,
And futures have a way of falling down in mid flight.

And after a while, you learn
That even sunshine burns if you get too much.
So you plant your own garden and decorate your own soul
Instead of waiting for someone else to bring you flowers,
And you learn that you really can…
That you really are strong
And that you really do have worth
And that you learn and learn…
With every goodbye, you learn.

I told you it could have been written for her!

A few days later, she has to be at the railway station to catch the 1.20pm back to London, for the next day she was due to fly on to Warsaw in Poland to take up a teaching position in the town of Czestochowa.

We speed through the village of  and soon we are driving towards Preston. I glance at Nancy. Here sitting beside me in my car is a warm, loving woman, who after a very unhappy childhood had been incredibly unlucky in her choice of men. A  wonderful woman, who after suffering terrible indignities from a succession of drunken, unfaithful, sometimes abusive men; had picked herself up, dusted herself down, collected her two boys and ridden off into the wide blue yonder and achieved high honours in her pursuit of a profession in the law. She had been wounded emotionally and hurt physically, but she was unbeaten and certainly not cowed by her experiences. She had had a busy life and now it was time for some contemplation and an examination of that life.

The train is already waiting on platform 3.
Nancy smiles and after thanking me, she offers me her cheek for a kiss. There is dignity in the tilt of Nancy's chin and determination shines from those wide green eyes. She stands for a moment in the carriage doorway, A quick 'goodbye' and she is gone.


© Jud Evans. Monday 28 September 1998