We knew it was a mistake when we wed

I had no right to blame anything on my husband — it was a month after Rob’s 21st birthday. It was not his fault that I, almost four years older and who should have taken the lead, had been so gutless.

IN September 1968, the unofficial uniform for girls at Loyola University, Chicago, was “preppy”: knee-length skirts, brogues and neat sweaters. I had arrived with only the micro-minis that were the norm in Dublin, certainly among actresses. To complement them, I wore wooden Dr Scholl clogs and black fishnet tights.

On my first day on campus I was hailed by a young man on which, as he strode towards me, everything flapped: shoulder-length hair, long mackintosh fastened only with one button at the neck, fringes on his calf-length moccasins. “Hi,” he said. “I’m Rob Weckler. Are you the Irish actress?”

Maybe the miniskirt and clogs had been the giveaways. “I am,” I said.

“Would you like a cup of coffee?”

I was taken aback by the suddenness. Then I thought: Hey! They do things differently here. I have to get used to this openness and I’d better start integrating. Anyhow, although he looked terribly young, he was 6ft tall and very good looking. “Thank you,” I said. “That would be lovely.”

As we walked towards the coffee shop he filled me in about himself. He was going to be a fellow student in the theatre department, where, as the college’s first European theatre artist, I was to set a standard for the students. In return I was getting a full tuition scholarship — with which I could study anything I liked. (I signed up for courses in psychology and classical theatre.)

A few days later I was accosted in a corridor outside a classroom by a tiny dynamo with huge blue eyes, a wide smile and curly hair. “Hi,” she said. “You’re Deirdre? I’m C Sue Braun. I’m 23, too.” Thus were born two relationships. Rob and I married 14 months later. C Sue became a lifelong friend.

What I did not know when she buttonholed me was that up to the moment Rob stepped, literally, into my path she had been his girlfriend. “But I thought,” she explained a couple of weeks later, “that since Rob was so much into you, y’know, you must be somethin’ really special? So I thought: ‘Gee! I should become this person’s friend. And since we’re the same age, we’d have a lot in common’.”

This was some shock. It is not often that a woman dumped for someone else accepts it gracefully and then takes the initiative to become friends with her successor. I did wonder what her motives were.

Rob popped up everywhere I went. He had told me over one of the numerous cups of coffee we had together that he would marry me — a pronouncement I had laughed off disbelievingly, but, I hoped, kindly: he was only 19 for goodness sake. While I thoroughly enjoyed his humorous and entertaining company, his mimicry, his fund of anecdotes and warm, open, have-a-go-at-anything personality, that was as far as it went.

I was Experienced. I was a person with two livelihoods already under my belt, three if you count the Civil Service Commission. Against his American Boy I fancied myself as that sophisticated creature, European Woman. And so I challenged him about C Sue. He confirmed what she had said. My suspicions of her motivation in courting my friendship had been unworthy. Her giving him up had been stylish.

I loved everything about my new life — showers instead of baths, takeaway dining, Campbell’s tomato soup and a banana sandwich for the 20-minute lunch break, catalogue shopping and drive-in movies in Rob’s ancient but stately black Oldsmobile — the type I’d seen only in gangster movies. We once used it to perform an illegal U-turn on Lake Shore Drive, which led to my having to bail him out of jail in a downtown police station. What seemed to concern him most afterwards was not the humiliation, but the outrage of having his belt and shoelaces confiscated.

I also found a surrogate family in Rob’s house where I was received with open arms — but a degree of wariness. I would guess that, from the start, the senior Wecklers figured correctly that their eldest son and me was not a match made in heaven and so they may have nodded sagely to one another when we broke up the following summer. But within months we were back together again and engaged to be married.

Six weeks before our wedding I went home to Ireland to prepare and to settle everyone’s nerves. Although they did their best to conceal their misgivings, I think my parents were appalled at the precipitate nature of this undertaking. In fairness, they rowed in with lists and plans.

Money was tight, so we settled on a modest affair in the Maples hotel, a small establishment on Iona Road in Glasnevin. I was not going to go to the trouble and expense of getting myself a frothy wedding dress when I had, in my opinion, a perfectly respectable cream-coloured thing with a divided skirt that I’d worn only about three times in the States. So nobody in Ireland — except Rob, of course — would have seen it before. It was empire line with a flowing, Greek goddess look to it, so I also took with me from Loyola a thick hairpiece I’d worn on stage as Clytemnestra. By adding a pair of Greek-looking sandals I felt I would look grand, even co-ordinated. Moreover, I would have covered more than adequately the traditions of “old and borrowed”. ()

The guest list was more than one-sided: it was almost exclusively drawn from my family and friends. Not only were Rob’s parents absent, but also none of his five siblings, relatives or close friends was able to make the transatlantic trip, with the exception of Jerry Rossetti, a theatre department colleague who was, I am sure, surprised to find himself selected as best man.

Since Jerry had never been out of America before, he came with us on part of our honeymoon — a “tour” of Ireland in a hire car. We took my brother, Declan, too. The weather did not improve for this highly populated honeymoon. The Cliffs of Moher in a Force 8 or 9? Salthill deserted? Connemara invisible? And in that midwinter season the choice of food in the B&Bs was stark: hard or soft eggs with rashers and sausages.

The lowest point was one afternoon on a seaweed-strewn beach on Achill Island, where we rocked morosely on the springs of our hired car under an unremitting assault of wind, rain and clumps of spume as large as tennis balls. It was almost dark, although our watches said it was just after 3.30pm. Rob and Jerry, raising their voices to be heard above the racket, agreed that if a mixed grill was the only food option in the next guesthouse, they’d kill themselves.

As the plane took off at the end of our honeymoon and Ireland receded under the clouds, I was again in tears. But long before we touched down at O’Hare I had forced myself to buck up. We would put the past two weeks behind us. I would commit myself totally to this marriage. I would be the best wife I could be because, after all, I did genuinely love Rob. He was young, but he would mature. We would make a go of it — and not just to please everyone or to show we had not made a mistake.

So although I found it very difficult to conceal my disappointment when I saw the poky little studio his mother had secured for us — I am sure she thought me an ungrateful brat — within days I was busy turning it into a home. We adopted a white cat, Adam, from a rescue centre and I got to work constructing furniture from orange boxes, cable drums, foam and scraps of fabric. I went to work in O’Connor Travel, Rob went back to his job as a mailman.

It was difficult for him to find a job. He was a talented actor and singer, but had worked mainly in community theatres and, as was the case all over the world, the acting profession was precarious and he wasn’t inclined to take the risk of “turning pro”. Especially now he was married.

SEVEN YEARS later, in May 1977, our two sons were healthy and thriving in Claremont Court, Glasnevin, our new home in Ireland. Rob was in Noel Pearson’s production of Cabaret at the Gaiety Theatre and I had just taken up a job as a newsreader on radio and television.

One Saturday morning, Rob announced he was leaving me. And he did. He had not come home the previous night. I hadn’t slept, but had kept a bizarre vigil by the living room window. The dawn that morning had been exquisite. Summer can be cruel.

On the night of that Saturday, dazed, I was on duty reading the television news. By another of those coincidences that transcend fiction, there was an arts package in the running order. It included a video clip of one of my husband’s shows, with him in it. I got through the bulletin, but I really don’t know how. I guess the old acting gene — the show must go on — kicked in. ()

On the Monday, Una Sheehy, who had watched over my broadcasting progress like a guardian angel, came to see me. She was sympathetic about my predicament and urged me to take time off. I couldn’t, of course. I had to continue to earn: my children and I had to eat and keep a roof over our heads.

I can see from this distance that I was reacting not with any intellectual coherence but viscerally: an animal protecting the den. Because, despite sensing danger and knowing that our marriage was not what it should be, I was shocked when reality hit. Being the type I am, no matter what difficulties I experience I hang in there, Pollyanna-like, always believing that if I work hard enough I will ameliorate them.

Apart from my distress, I had genuine and serious practical difficulties. Childminding had been dovetailed around our work commitments — of which, over the years in Ireland, Rob had had relatively few, so most of it had fallen to him.

For the next couple of weeks I existed in a state of dread. I was panicked at work and unable to sleep. I found myself performing trivial tasks at weird times of the day and night: frantically scrubbing at a stain on a skirting board, mowing grass already so short the earth was showing through. I muddled through with the help of friends and babysitters, the understanding of colleagues who swapped shifts with me and the reluctant co-operation of Rob, who came back to babysit when I couldn’ t find anyone else — not an ideal arrangement for either of us. But the more I searched for a permanent solution, the more I could see I would not be able to afford the going rate for permanent childcare.

Then Aunt Nellie stepped in. She said she would give up her job as an insurance broker and move in with me. I calmed down. Rob and I even managed to say goodbye in a manner that, although fraught, was relatively civilised before he flew back to the US. It was three weeks after he had made his announcement. Our son Adrian was three years and 10 months old; Simon was one and a half. They had been close to their father and now, overnight, had to get used to his absence and a complete regime change. Nellie became a homemaker and their surrogate mother while I fulfilled the outside role of hunter-gatherer.

There is no point in spelling out my personal distress here. Marriage break-up is an appalling hurt. No matter how sunny your basic personality, it permanently closes off at least some part of your heart’s trust. Strangely I didn’t feel ashamed or stigmatised, even though single parenthood was not the relatively normal state it is today. I’d done my very best and, although I was sadder and wiser, I was still the same person I’d always been.

I did worry about Adrian and Simon, though, because within their school and their peer groups they were now in a tiny minority of children from “a broken home”. There was little I could do about it except confide in their teachers, which I did. Inside, though, I bled hard for them.

Despite our personal mismatch and the problems and issues between us, I can now see how unhappy Rob was in Ireland. He is an intrinsically kind and open-hearted person who had come to Ireland because he saw it as a big adventure, and also because he was willing to accommodate my drive to get home. I don’t think he ever came to terms with the cultural differences between our two countries. He referred disparagingly to Irish people as being sunk in “Celtic gloom”.

On principle I argued indignantly with him about this. But having lived in the thrusting, positive atmosphere of Chicago I could see his point. He came during a grey period of Irish history. At that time it was impossible to be in company, or even at a shop counter, without having to listen to someone complaining about the weather, the government, the price of something, the unfairness of everything.

He had moved from lazy, hazy baseball summers and the glitter of snowy Super Bowl winters to the incomprehensible county allegiances of Gaelic games. He hated the damp Irish climate: the deep dark winters and unpredictable summers. Instead of flicking on central heating or air conditioning, he had to make endless piles of newspaper spills, shovel slack and huddle for warmth over Super Ser gas heaters while the rain pelted down outside during what passed for high summer.

Most of all, I think, he found it hard to come to terms with an environment that was infused with begrudgery, grievance and, to him, the stilted protocols and bogus politeness — hypocrisy — of Irish life.

And, of course, he was out of love with me.

Extracted from Diamonds and Holes in My Shoes by Deirdre Purcell. Published by Hodder Headline Ireland at €14.99