I met Rachel in 1965, when we were 17.
She was the first friend I made as an adult, and
meeting her had a profound effect on my life.
Since that time she has been my best friend, one of the most important people in my life after my parents.
At different times we spent virtually all our lives together, and at other times, confided in each other in detail about everything and everybody.
We met on our way to our Oxford entrance interviews. Arriving at university, we found we had been placed together, 2 South London women among hundreds of public school types. I was a suburban nonentity, and I revelled in meeting Rachel, her family and her friends. Through them I was introduced to left wing and anti-war politics, anti-racism, to music, literature, foreign food - many things we all take for granted now. Also Rachel and I had a particular experience of women’s changing position in society, and we needed each other’s close support. The age of majority was still 21, and women caught having sex or sleeping with their boyfriends were expelled from the university. Just living a normal life had to be done in secret. We were always looking out for each other: making sure our room curtains were opened and closed, and our beds made, so that the college porter couldn’t find out we had been out all night.
After university we kept in touch through exchanges of huge typewritten letters containing torrents of facts and ideas about our work, our studies, our relationships, our politics and our future plans. Our lives eventually came together again in 1977 when Rachel and I, our husbands, and two other close friends began to share a house together. We wanted to have children. We wanted worthwhile careers. We wanted the men to share childcare and domestic work equally with us. We wanted time and support for political activity. We wanted to try out possible future ways of living. We both believed this was all possible, and that friendship was enough to solve all difficulties.
We had our children. They are here
today, much loved.
We pursued our careers. The men did share the child care and
domestic work.
Rachel and I got involved in politics together. We joined Women’s Aid, the organisation for women facing domestic violence, because it combined a forum for political feminism and a reason for practical work. We did everything from taking the kids out, driving the minibus, decorating and moving furniture to speaking at national conferences. We both met many great women in and out of Women’s Aid. We struggled with analyses of the causes of women’s oppression - was it capitalism or patriarchy? The debates were often acutely personal. The house, politics and relationships were all connected. We faced down radical lesbians who called us traitors because we loved our husbands and our children. We fell in love with other men. We fell in love with other women. We considered falling in love with each other. We asked ourselves and each other what love was, and what you owed and what you could demand from the loved person. We argued with each other. We wrote songs and poems about it. There were tears, and crying on the stairs, all-night discussions, raging political debates and long walks. Through all this, Rachel remained what she is, what we all know her to be. Generous, unselfish, unwilling to criticise: a true friend even in anger.
Slowly, personal friction drove that household apart. But, like a large slow kaleidoscope, most of us remained close and connected in different ways even after Rachel moved to Sheffield. Some time later I joined Rachel, Ruth and Andrew on a climbing holiday in Cornwall. Since then I have for some years spent many holidays and other times with Rachel, discussing everything and everybody just as before, not always agreeing, but always wanting to know.
But just now, because of how she died,
the shared experience of climbing stands out.
I love climbing. I love climbing with many different people, and
they know it, but with Rachel in particular, because we are two
old friends, two women, not young any more but still getting
better at it, who can still make exhilarating moves in
spectacular places. I am thinking of Rachel now on our last day
climbing together, only a few weeks ago in Jordan. A mixture of
effortless companionship, and apprehension because I knew her
life was changing very fast: no space to talk deeply because the
rock demands attention.
I do not yet know the full extent of what I have lost by her death: we shared so much, and discussed so much, and I have experienced so much of what I have done, or dreamt of doing, in relation to Rachel. I know that for the rest of my life, in the big and small things that I do, I will be thinking of her.