Terpsichore's Fire: A True Story of Obsession

By Robert Townsend

Where were you and what were you doing during the summer and autumn of '84? I will try to tell my story as accurately as I can remember, with all the important and relevant events included and described. Make of it what you will, for I'm darned if I can make much sense of it. How did it happen? Why did it happen? And, much more importantly, why did it have to stop happening? For this is the story of an obsession you see. The true story of an obsession; with someone, and the things we did together. It depends on your point of view I suppose as to whether an obsession is a good thing or a bad thing. But one thing is for certain; you never forget. I feel like some scholar of ancient history, stuck in some interminable dark age, with the silence only being broken by the tapping of my computer keyboard as I labour into the night. So come with me as I journey back in time, back to my memories I shall go, back to when fantasy and reality were one and the same, back to a series of incredible events, back to a wild outrageous time.....

• Language: English
• Publisher: Robert Townsend
• Release date: Jan 25, 2016
• ISBN: 9781310829796

Robert Townsend

I was born in the village of Histon, which is just outside Cambridge, England, in December of 1959. When I was four years old and my younger brother was one the family moved to a house in Stevenage, Hertfordshire as my father had obtained a new and better paid job for Stevenage Borough Council as a Public Health Inspector. At the age of fourteen, while still at school, I became very interested in astronomy and stargazing. I obtained my first good proper astronomical telescope in 1976 for my sixteenth birthday. After leaving school I went to work for a small company making quality hand built astronomical telescopes at Astro-Systems in Luton. I was made redundant eight years later when the owner emigrated to America to work designing telescopes for Celestron Corporation. There followed a series of short term jobs that were only temporary. Later, I went to college and did a course in creative writing. I had already written several short stories with a science fiction/fantasy theme. This was followed by a romantic autobiographical account of some personal experiences called "Terpsichore's Fire". Later, I returned to fiction and in a flash of inspiration I hit on the idea for a full length comedy/fantasy/sexy book, and "Laura's New Boyfriend" was born. In the last ten years or so, when I get the time, this has been followed by three more full length books with the same comic characters, plus a few new ones. They are: "Laura's Wedding", "Laura's Baby" and "Laura's Child", I would like to see them published online and in paperback someday soon. I also have ideas for other comedy stories with different themes and characters, some of whom are based on real unusual and eccentric people I have met over the years. I also like doing wildlife photography, prehistoric model making, Chinese food and drinking real ales in country pubs. I live with my girlfriend Sarah in Stevenage and my star sign is Sagittarius. Robert Townsend, Astronomer and Author.

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100

TERPSICHORE’S FIRE

PROLOGUE

Where were you and what were you doing, during the summer and autumn of ‘84? I will tell my story as accurately as I can remember, with all the important and relevant events included and described. I would very much like to tell this true story, to everyone, to the world, to whosoever may be interested, for posterity. It’s high time to get all these things written down and recorded before they fade away completely from my memory. Also I want to convey to the reader the essence of what happened and how I really feel, for my life has never been quite the same again. Make of it what you will, because I'm darned if I can make much sense of it. How did it happen? Why did it happen? And much more importantly; why did it have to stop happening? I feel like a student of ancient history, an unknown and unregarded scholar recounting fond memories of a long lost Camelot, whilst living through some interminable Dark Age. It has been said that we can’t return to Camelot. The silence and the stillness of the lonely present being broken only by the faint tapping of the computer keyboard as I labour into the night.

This is a story of obsession, for you see I have an obsession. It must surely be the mother of all obsessions. An obsession with someone, the events that happened and with the long lost times we shared together. Obsession is incurable, this I have found from first hand experience. It depends upon your point of view as to whether an obsession is a good thing or a bad thing, and on what the obsession is I suppose. But one thing is for sure, you never forget. When I get to heaven the obsession is the first matter I intend to discuss with The Man upstairs.

As Charles Dickens once put it; It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way….. To which I would add that it was the happiest of times, it was the saddest of times, it was the most jovial of times, it was the most solemn of times, it was the most heroic of times, it was the most frightening of times, it was the most heart-warming of times, it was the most heartbreaking of times, it was the most adventurous of times, it was the most loving of times. I am taking you back in time. Back to a time the likes of which I have never lived before or since. A time as no man has ever lived greater. When fantasy and reality were one and the same. Back to a Golden Age in my life that barely lasted some fifteen months or so. Back to the summer of 1984 and the glories that year bestowed. Back to my memories I shall go.

Back to a wild outrageous time…..

1. DAY OF INFAMY

To you…..

My heart cries out Perfidia

For I find you, the love of my life

In somebody else’s arms

Your eyes are echoing Perfidia

Forgetful of the promise of love

You’re sharing another’s charms

With a sad lament my dreams are faded like a broken melody

While the gods of love look down and laugh

At what romantic fools we mortals be

And now…..

I find my love was not for you

And so I take it back with a sigh

Perfidia’s won

Goodbye

The Ventures

We are all travellers in our own lives, with birth being the beginning and death being the ending, so my big question is this; at what point on the timeline do I begin? For reasons that will soon become clear, I have decided upon Tuesday 19th June 1984, because it was on that fateful day something happened which set in motion the chain of events that is the reason for this book. If it had not happened the way it did, then there would be no exceptional and extraordinary tale for me to tell.

It was high summer and therefore a typical hot sunny day, with hardly a cloud in the sky. Up until that afternoon I had been involved with a girl called Theresa for the last nine months. We had got engaged to be married some months previously, She was in her last year of secondary school and when she got a bit older, we planned to move in together to set up home in our own place. I still lived with my parents in Stevenage at that time, and she with hers, but I was on the waiting list for a place of my own with Stevenage Borough Council. I had been on the waiting list for several years already, and I knew that my name would soon be reaching the top of the list, and that I was certain be offered a flat someday soon. Theresa lived in a small village called St. Margaret’s, which is about eleven and a half miles south from where I lived. I had to travel there by car to see her nearly every day. Her parents disapproved of me and so our affair had to be conducted largely in secret; they thought that we were just dating and that was all that had going on. You know; just holding hands and chaste kisses. To keep things under wraps, my fiancée only wore her dazzling new engagement ring in front of my family and close friends. She had been very pleased with it. We had talked about moving in together frequently, and had many plans and ideas. However, she did warn me that her parents were from a different generation and very old fashioned.

My mum won’t like it at all, she doesn’t approve of unmarried couples living together. She says that sort of thing is ‘utterly disgraceful’ and ‘why don’t they get married first’. She will go through the roof if I do something like that. I will get called a slut and a whore and a load of other things besides, but I don’t care, as soon as I’m finished school and you get your own place, I am definitely going to move in with you. Or so she repeatedly assured me. I was young and, fool that I was, I believed her and took her seriously.

Now, unfortunately, in the last few weeks things had deteriorated considerably for us. Her parents were now doing a complete clampdown and forbidding her to see me at all. Since this sort of mindless tyranny only invites disobedience, we carried on meeting up every couple of days or so in secret; while we tried to work things out and resolve this problem. But that wasn’t to last for very long. Not until this awful day was I to fully realise that our so-called engagement was nothing but a lie and a sham on her part; as had been the whole relationship for the past nine months. It was only on this day of dreadful infamy that I realised just how fickle and perfidious women can be.

Because she had not turned up to our rendezvous the previous day, I went to try and meet her outside the school gates where I anticipated her to come on her way home at the end of the day. Sure enough, at just after four o’clock, I caught sight of her coming through the big iron gates. She turned to walk along the pavement by the roadside, and she was on her own. She seemed to be lost in thought and in a bit of a daydream. Naturally, I walked towards her to greet her and put my arms around her. It was only then that she also caught sight of me striding towards her.

Go away! Don’t put your arms around me! She scowled and yelled at me before I could reach her.

Why what’s wrong? Why on earth not? I replied in amazement at her totally unloving way of responding to me. Pacing myself to walk alongside of her, I turned to try and place one arm around her waist.

Don’t put your arms around me! She yelled again, this time in an even more contemptuous way.

What the hell is the matter with you? I said as I recoiled. In the entire nine months that we had been dating, she had never acted this way before.

Don’t touch me anymore! Don’t come near me ever again! She ranted on, still without any explanation.

Look what is it? What's going on? I was getting very frustrated with her.

I couldn't meet you yesterday; I couldn't face you after what happened. By now I was beginning to get very tired of her mean spirited attitude, and I began to wonder why on earth I had bothered to come out to meet her.

And what the hell is that supposed to mean?

Look what I am going to have to say to you is gonna hurt you so you had better get used to it and listen good….. Her speech had a very patronising tone about it. I felt the pit of my stomach beginning to sink.

…..You won’t want me anymore anyway, ‘cos I'm a slut and I'm a whore! She announced it in a very sarcastic and nonchalant manner. It was as if she was expecting a telegram from The Queen any time now to inform her that she was going to be awarded a damehood or an OBE for it.

Good grief! What are you on about?

"I’ve changed and I’m different now. I want to do it with lots of different men. I want to enjoy life and experience things. I don't want to be a missus. I'm a slut and I'm a whore, and I want to be one. Oh-hh…..I did love you once, but not anymore….." She said dismissively. But she wasn’t finished yet.

Although I can’t remember the exact words, probably because it was so shocking and painful, there then followed a very lurid account of how she had been seeing someone else behind my back these past few days. Apparently this liaison had culminated the previous Saturday afternoon when the two of them had gone out to the corner of a field somewhere for what can only be described as a casual, loveless, ‘bunk up’. Naturally, she wasn't going to reveal who this libertine was, suffice to say that I think it was nobody whom I knew or had ever met. Looking back I think it was most likely to have been somebody whom she had known at her school. As I recall at one point, the confession was very explicit and none of the sexual details were left to the imagination. She told it all with such conceited smugness that it was obvious to me that she had been saving it all up for this moment just to cause me the maximum outrage, shock and hurt. Perhaps this was the only attitude she could take in order to console herself with being such a worthless and cheap field slut; after all, I guess she desperately had to try and justify her behaviour to herself somehow. It is particularly hurtful to have to take crap like this from someone you love, and whom you were led to believe loved and respected you in return. I think it absolutely stinks. Only when her confession was finished did it finally sink in that she was embracing a brand new philosophy and lifestyle choice. That of the girl who wants to drop her drawers, lie down and spread her legs for any and every horny toad ramrod who wants a quick one. Please form an orderly queue outside her bedroom door.

And we both came together at the same time! She concluded for good measure.

Oh well…..you can bloody well go to hell then! I shouted back at her. Now with feelings only of utter contempt and revulsion for her, I turned my back on her and strode back to my car, which was parked halfway down a cul-de-sac a few hundred yards away. Climbing back into the driver’s seat, I drove home in disgust, and that was the end of that.

So what on earth was I to do now? In the space of just a few minutes on one seemingly calm and peaceful sunny afternoon everything I had dreamed of and planned for in my life had been swept away completely; simply flushed down the toilet in one fell swoop. All my hopes, my dreams, my needs and my aspirations for love were suddenly gone. It felt at the time like my whole world lay in ruins. A Pearl Harbour day of the heart you might say. What can I do now? What must I do now? Where should I look to find a good replacement for what had been lost? Where and with whom could I find comfort and solace? I was back to square one, back to having to play the field to achieve my desired life goal; the love of a good and suitable woman. Suddenly a giant gulf of complete emptiness lay before me, and I could see no end to it. It felt like I was being swallowed up by an enormous black hole of despair.

A few days later I drove out of Stevenage and over to Luton to visit a good friend of mine. I had not seen him for some time, and I thought that this would be a good opportunity of giving myself something to do, catch up on the news, and try to and take my mind off the emotional shock and upset, that I was still going through. At this juncture I think that it would be useful to say something about Thomas Frederick Stewart. I had met him a few years earlier when I had been working as an apprentice making astronomical telescopes for small firm called Astro-Systems Limited in a small factory in Luton. It was a real cottage industry. He was a new customer who had looked up Astro-Systems in the Yellow Pages and, seeing that he lived only a few streets away, come to look us up. He ended up buying a brand new telescope, which he had been very pleased with. He was a retired ex-merchant navy man who lived in a tower block of nice new modern warden controlled flats. Tom had always come across to me as a tough and gritty no nonsense Yorkshireman. He only came to Luton and settled there with the softy southerners as he called them, after being bombed out from his original home in Hull during the war. Now he was elderly and in his twilight years, he was a widower with a grown up son whom I never got to meet. Like most Northerners, his most admirable qualities are that to him a spade is a spade, the rights and wrongs on most matters are clear cut, and he has no time for fools and idiots.

When I arrived he greeted me at the front door and led me inside his small bedsitting flat to the main lounge. Sitting on a small armchair next to the dining table was an elderly woman with long lanky grey hair. I thought that perhaps he was having a neighbour round for tea and that she might even be a potential new girlfriend for him; but it turned out to be his sister. He announced that she was staying with him for a few days. After the introductions and small talk was finished, and when Tom was putting the kettle on to make us all a cup of tea, I found that I could no longer keep quiet about what had happened a few days previously. I found myself recounting the whole pathetic and sorry story to him and his sister, because I found that talking about things to people close to you does indeed help in times of emotional crisis. A burden shared is a burden halved, or so they say. You can imagine then how shocked and appalled he was when I told him about the behaviour of the girl I had introduced to him as my beloved fiancée few weeks previously. We had gone to the Astronomical Society meeting in Luton, and all chatted together in the Red Lion pub afterwards. He had liked her then and been impressed by her. Not so now.

Good grief, did she really say she had done all that? I nodded in confirmation.

She must be really shallow! He exclaimed at the top of his voice.

One thing I have got no time for and neither should you, and that is self-pity. Boo hoo hoo. Oh dear, poor me. Whatever shall I do? You don't need it. He continued.

Everything she had ever said, everything she had ever promised, she has gone completely back on. It was all nothing but a big lie on her part. I really don't know what to do now.

"Well for one thing, don’t go chasing after her trying to get her back. She is just not worthy of your love, she is not worth bothering about at all. Be glad that you didn't marry her and then find out how she wants to behave when your back is turned. You are well shot of her, believe me. You are well rid of a piece of cheap trash like that." I fell silent; he got no argument from me.

I am shattered Tom, I have never been so hurt in all my life.

Now listen to me…..You ‘ave got to be as ‘ard as nails in this world son, or people will walk all over you; worse still you may even go under and crack up. As he made this profound statement he motioned with his right hand, palm facing upwards, fingers and thumb spread out in a claw like gesture. It seemed to me that perhaps this was meant to symbolize a bed of nails.

And don’t start taking drugs to try and cheer yourself up, don’t get into any of that sort of nonsense either. Only sad inadequate people take illegal drugs to try and prop up their sorry lives. Don’t even think about committing suicide, it’s a bloody cowards’ way out. The person who attempts to take their own life has got no guts; I have got no time for him. But this wasn’t the end of it, for his sister then put in her tuppence worth.

I quite agree. You know what you should do now? What you ought to do is to get yourself another girlfriend and arrange it so that she sees you walking past her down the street with another woman on your arm. That’ll show her you’re not bothered, that you don’t care about her anymore. What you want to do is go out to one of these dances, or disco things as they call them now, and pick up another bird. They didn’t have all these dances and clubs and things when I was a youngster, there wasn't much going, but now there is so much. Yes, you want to get out there to a dance and chat up lots of women. I went home that evening with a renewed sense of vigour and hope for the future. But first, I had a little job to do.

When I told my mother about the way Theresa had behaved and what she had said to me that day, she explained it to me thus:

A few weeks ago I was talking to your father, and I said to him: ‘you just watch what happens, when she is done with him she’ll chew him up and just spit him out all over the place’. She has just used you for her first sexual experiment and now her feelings have changed and she wants to move on to other things.

Is that so?..... I exclaimed.

…..And I’m supposed to just happily accept that and not mind am I?

"Well there’s not really much you can do." She just shrugged, and then she turned to admonish me.

Now don’t you go chasing after her and trying to get her back.

I wasn’t going to.

But as the days passed after this conversation I felt that I didn’t want to just happily except it and not mind and that there was indeed something that I could do. Apparently she had just seen me and used me as sexual experiment so I thought that I would conduct a little experiment of my own. After all, what’s sauce for the gander is sauce for the goose, as they say. So I thought I would return the compliment. I took some copies of some adult art pictures from a photographic project we had worked on together and decided to give her some free publicity for her whoremongering activities. You know, like help her on her way to fame and fortune by finding her some more casual bonking partners.

So there I was a few weeks later, standing in the street outside her school gates with two large brown envelopes in hand. I was waiting for the school day to finish and for some older kids to appear, making their way home. I was hoping not to see Theresa and not to be seen by her at all, and luckily, I didn’t