Bonus: Lives Less Ordinary- Love Stories

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1:22Welcome to this bonus episode of the documentary podcast from the BBC World Service. Lives Less Ordinary is our go-to podcast for extraordinary true stories from around the world. And for the whole of August, the team have been sharing incredible love stories. We bring you episodes of Lives Less Ordinary here whenever we can. But to listen to more from the special love season, you can search for Lives Less Ordinary wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

1:55Hi, and welcome back to our Summer of Love series from Lives Less Ordinary for the BBC World Service. I'm Asya Fuchs. All this month, we're bringing you remarkable stories of love from around the world. Love that crosses borders, survives impossible odds, and sometimes arrives when you least expect it. But the course of true love never did run smooth. And one day, without explanation, in the episode you're about to hear, a first love, the all-consuming, head-over-heels kind, was stopped dead in its tracks. The breakup drew them to the edge. And just a heads up here, suicide is mentioned in this episode.

2:38It would take nearly 40 years and a message out of the blue before the revelation of a shocking secret would completely rewrite this couple's story. Lost decades, enduring love, and what happens when the person you never could forget suddenly reappears? Please answer this. Is this Penny? Are you Penny? and then another two weeks later, this is Mark, do you remember me? And so then, I just, I was like feeling sick. I thought I was going to have a heart attack. It felt like it was a message from an angel.

3:25We all remember our first love, the intensity of it, the absolute dead certainty that you're feeling something no one could possibly have felt before, despite all evidence to the contrary. For Penny Umbers and Mark Bethel, it happened when they were teenagers in 1970s England. And it started, as many of these do, with a night out. I was 16 and a group of friends from school, we were going out in the evening to celebrate. wait, oh, I think maybe just finish the exams. And we went to a bar in Nottingham called Mortonus, which was an underground pub where all the young people went. I know I was underage, but that was what we did in those days.

4:08But it was so loud in that bar with all the music. Like typically in those young people's places, you can't hear much anyway, can you? I was at the bar, I don't know, ordering a lager and lime or something, as you did in those days. and I saw this tall black boy was to my left. So I gave him a big smile and said hello. And he started talking. I was just interested to talk to him. And he started talking back and he was so friendly because most of the boys of my age that I'd ever met, you know, didn't really talk. So he was the most chatty person and very, very friendly. and then we just stayed on chatting then the rest of the evening.

4:53I was probably the one that kind of bent over and said, hi, how are you? This is Mark, that boy from all those years ago. We met at the bar and I was surprised that somebody would even smile at me. In those days, you know, there was the separation and I felt kind of, oh, this is a blessing. and we had a lot of things in common. We both kind of were empathetic on various issues. I can't remember what we talked about that night, but we talked ad infinitum. And I was just intrigued, I was flattered that a beautiful woman like her would be interested in somebody like me because I never saw that dynamic ever happening.

5:37And then slowly it progressed. He was friendly, good looking, just seemed very, very nice. I think I rode back on the bus on cloud nine. I was absolutely blown away. For background, Mark is from Nassau in the Bahamas. His dad had sent him to a boarding school in England as a young boy. He ended up at Trent College on the outskirts of Nottingham, where Penny is from. After that first encounter, Penny didn't waste any time and quickly orchestrated another meeting. My father was playing against Mark's school the following day in a cricket match. So I said, oh, I'll come and watch my father and you play cricket tomorrow.

6:20So that's how I arranged it. Then unfortunately, my father, for some reason, wasn't selected or didn't go to play in his team because he played a lot against school. But I still persuaded my mother to take me to Trent College so that I could see Mark. So we went there and sat on the edge of the cricket pitch. and luckily Mark saw me. He came walking across the cricket pitch in his whites and he looked absolutely amazing. I could hardly remember what he looked like because it was so dark in this pub underground the night before. This was the first time I'd seen him in daylight and I was really pleased that he actually came and said hello because I thought, how embarrassing if I take my mother all the way there and he doesn't even acknowledge me.

7:01But he came over and we chatted and chatted And then I went back and sat with my mother on the side of cricket pitch and watched him play cricket a bit and then went home and there was silence in the car all the way home. For Mark, the memory of that day is still crystal clear. I was over the moon. Within 24 hours, I'd seen the young lady twice. You know, that was it. Things were starting to click. And I was totally delighted. All I was interested in was talking to Penny. And so details were exchanged and they began seeing each other, this time without parents to watch over them. You know, where would you go on dates?

7:43What would you get up to together? We always went into Nottingham Town Centre. We met in the bus station and then we just wandered around. We went to Mortimer's Cabin a lot, sat in the market square. But then Mark had a very good friend called Simon, Simon Selkin, amazing friend, who invited us to go to his house. So that was very nice because we then had somewhere where we could actually be together, not in public. And did it feel like a serious relationship kind of from the get-go? In terms of absolutely how infatuated I was with him and how nice he was and how happy we were, I thought when the school ends, then he'll go back to his parents somewhere in England and then we can meet up over the summer.

8:29But when he told me that he lived in the Bahamas, I was very upset. He wrote to me all over the summer. And as soon as he got back, he came back luckily a bit before the start of the term. So we had a couple of weeks together. So it wasn't easy, but we were just completely in love. I mean, I just, even at that tender age, I just had such an affinity, such a passion for Benny. During that summer holidays when I was home, we corresponded by letters, you know, every, almost every week. We didn't have cell phones back then, so you had to wait a week between letters. Interracial couples were not the norm.

9:10And did you feel disapproval from your family, from your friends? I mean, from people on the street when you were out in public? It wasn't spoken about with my family. My mother's policy was to ignore it. They just didn't ever, ever, ever talk about it. Just silence. And there was never much communication between my parents and me. My friends, all my friends from school, thought Mark was lovely. And in fact, they actually said to me, Penny, I'm so pleased that you're going out with Mark. We really wanted him to get a nice girlfriend. All my mates at Trent loved her. They knew our situation. And I'd lived in England for so long that I'd kind of assimilated myself into society.

9:54I sound more English than I do Bahamian. And so, yeah, to me, it was no big deal. I just felt flattered that she would be interested in me. No, I never really got any angle hassle about it from anybody. A blissful year goes by when the next summer rolls around just before Mark is meant to go back home to the Bahamas for a gap year. Penny thinks it's about time for him to meet her parents properly, so she invites him for lunch at the family home. We sat down, had lunch. It was all very polite, very nice. Everything seemed to go very smoothly. I was very nervous, but I was so impressed with Mark.

10:37He was, you can't believe what a kind of person he was. He was very charismatic, very polite, handled himself very well with all different types of people. With my parents, he was so polite, fantastic table manners, charming to my little sister and brother. He was just, behaved very well. I thought it all went really well. I was very, very happy and relieved. Within a couple days, Mark was leaving school and heading back home to Nassau. But, completely unknown to Penny, Mark went back, carrying a dark secret. One that would only come to light decades later. For now, life's course seemed uncertain.

11:20I think I was still a little young and naive. And then I came back to Nassau for a year, trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. My father wanted to be an architect. But Penny and I still kind of corresponded, not as intensely, because I wasn't sure what direction I was going to take. And then I joined a company who was at that point the biggest hotel chain in the world. And I started working for them at the Nassau Beach Resort. But my father was so disappointed with my selection of career choice. You know, he said, OK, if you don't want to be an architect, you're on your own. So if Mark wanted to get back to England, he'd have to figure out a way to do it himself.

12:05And he fought hard to win scholarships to study at Westminster College in London. With Penny still back at school in the Midlands, the relationship was long distance and not easy. I was a year younger than him, so I was a year behind at school. And I just lived forgetting Mark's letters. And he said he was going to come back to study in London. so then all of my university choices were in London. I refused to go for any interviews anywhere else. With Mark and Penny both enrolled at universities in London, it felt like their time to start this new chapter together. I thought he'd be there like at the first day when I got there.

12:49And he didn't come, he didn't come. And eventually he came, I think, after about three weeks of term. And he just looked so different. He didn't, I thought he'd kiss me and big hug and he just saw me and was just different to how, obviously it was every year since I'd seen him. And he was very different. And I just blamed myself because I think I'd put on weight and I just thought, oh gosh, you know, he doesn't love me anymore. But we kind of vaguely saw each other. I think maybe a couple of weeks later, I think we went out for a drink in Kensington. And I remember once walking aimlessly around Hyde Park a few times, but he just wasn't physical with me, really.

13:39And I just felt it was all me that I was, you know, he was such an attractive, nice man. And yet he didn't seem to like me at all anymore. And I just thought, well, you know, it's been a year. and so we did see each other a few times but I was just pining and pining for him to call and he may be called once a month or something and then eventually at the end of the winter term at Christmas which is when I thought we'd move out to live together I hadn't heard from him for weeks and then the second time he came and he told me that it was over and I'd kind of known it was over because he was, oh I thought it You know, he just had been so distant for kind of six months since he'd ever come back from Lassau.

14:25I can't remember the exact words, actually. I was totally, totally distraught. He said something like, this isn't going to carry on anymore. And I remember him walking off down the stairs. We were, I think, on the second floor or third floor, and he walked off down the stairs, and I just absolutely collapsed. and I just didn't know what to do I didn't know what to do at all I've never felt like that that complete just not being able to really stand up and just screaming not knowing what to do without him I mean you didn't know why it had happened even though he had been distant for all those months no I just thought he didn't fancy me so he decided to and you know to dump me so if I went to St Pancras station at one o 'clock in the morning bawling my eyes out and said I need to get a train to Nottingham and then I remember them saying oh there's no trains the only train is the mail train so I got on this mail train that took about four hours to go from London to Nottingham I don't think it even went to Nottingham I think it went to Mansfield.

15:40And so I remember phoning my parents from St Pancras Station saying, you've got to pick me up at, or please pick me up at Mansfield at five o 'clock in the morning. My father came and poor thing, you know, he had to go to work the next day, pick me up. And I said in the car going home, through my tears and everything, I said, Mark's finished with me. And he just kind of went, ah, and that was it.

16:13So I never got any support from them at all, which I'd have thought when your child's first boyfriend dumps her, you'd have thought that parents might kind of offer some support, but I got absolutely nothing. Did you have anyone you could turn to? No, at that stage I didn't. And then I went back to London, and I just used to cry all the time. the beginning of the next term, I gave up. I went to my tutor and said, I'm leaving this course. So then I went back to Nottingham to live back with my parents. They sent me to a psychiatrist because they didn't understand why I was so depressed. It was then that Penny tried to take her own life.

16:57I think I wrote a note saying that I was... I didn't want to live anymore and, you know, good luck to you all. I did get some support from a wonderful friend of my mother's because when my mother found me, she called her best friend Maggie, who was an absolutely wonderful lady. So from then on, she said, come and see me whenever you want, Penny. I think I had three sessions with this psychiatrist who told me that there was nothing wrong with me other than grief. What did it feel like to hear that from the psychiatrist? Well, it was quite reassuring because my parents thought there was something wrong with me, you know, psychologically wrong.

17:38So being told that I had grief, he said, you definitely don't need psychiatric treatment. So that was a huge relief for me because I was thinking I was completely mad, you know. And then in January, I started a secretarial course, Pittman's shorthand, as you used to do in those days, because I was feeling a bit caro by then. But some days I was so distraught, I was just crying that I had to leave. And I just went to Maggie's house, my mother's friend, and sat with her all afternoon and cried and talked about Mark. And did you keep wondering about the breakup, about what had happened? As to why he'd left, I thought it was me that was ugly.

18:19And my mother said, oh, you're so gauche. You'll never have any friends. You don't wear enough makeup. You're too fat. so I just thought it was me and Mark was such a successful intelligent handsome person I thought he won't want somebody like me that's obviously you know why so I didn't question why I just kept longing to see him and I then dropped off a letter at his university I gave it in at the office and I said is Mark Bethel still a student here with you and they said yes I said could you give him this letter saying I'm back in London could we possibly meet up I just wanted to kind of see him again the days before mobile phones it's just you can't really imagine how life works in those days and I'm not really a dolled up person but I really tried to get so dolled up I think I looked absolutely hideous I put on this kind of leopard skin dress loads of makeup black high heels must have looked like a crossy sheep it was so funny I just thought I've got to try and be more attractive so I kind of went looking like the dog's dinner to meet Mark in this pub and the worst thing was that he'd come with another girl I was really hoping that we could just have a heart-to-heart.

19:44I could just talk to him one-to-one and I was absolutely gutted. It was the most embarrassing thing because he and her were there in jeans and messy t-shirts and I was there in my blue and black leopard skin dress and loads of makeup. So that was a disaster. And then I went back on the 159 bus. I remember sitting on the upstairs just crying and crying and crying because we hadn't been able to speak at all. What happened after that evening? I mean, were you able to kind of put the relationship to rest? Yeah. Then I just thought, I've got to put this behind me. Yeah, I did then. Kind of. I just thought it would help to meet up with him again, but obviously it didn't because we couldn't say anything and that was it.

20:32And then I went off to Spain. And I mean, you did have other relationships. You had marriages. is how difficult was it for you to trust, you know, other people, other partners after what had happened with Mark? I got into a funny headspace, really. I decided that I would never love anybody the way I loved Mark and I would never go out with anybody ever again who I was as attracted to as Mark because I figured that being very attractive to someone makes you very vulnerable. you know it was just a bit of a disaster when I was living in Spain all of Mark's letters were in a box at my parents house and unfortunately they had a great calamity in their life and had to they weren't able to keep it anymore and I just thought well I better really give up on Mark now so at that point I told my mother she could get rid of that box I regret that so much but I just I didn't think I could take a huge box of letters and poems and pictures.

21:34So that's how all of that got lost. Penny tried to move on. She married a Spanish guy. It didn't work out. She married again. But that relationship also began to unravel. I definitely didn't want to get divorced twice. I mean, I thought that's just the most awful failure. You know, you can't have two disastrous marriages. And then eventually in 10 years, he just then he said, know, I want to divorce. So through all these years, these relationships and marriages that didn't work out and that were leaving you unhappy, I mean, did you still think about Mar? Constantly, because it was my rationale for not choosing a nice man, because I didn't want to get hurt.

22:19And because I was totally defended against loving, I didn't really love properly. I was just protecting my heart. Yeah, I lived a half-life really.

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23:37The years passed. Penny was living with a boyfriend who didn't treat her well. Her dark days, she calls them. Then Facebook started up and this new boyfriend that I was living with showed me how to work Facebook. I had no idea you could send private messages. I thought if you put anything in Facebook, it was visible to the whole world, you know. And then this narcissist man was always looking at his old girlfriends on Facebook. And so I thought, well, when he wasn't there, I thought, well, I'll look at my old boyfriends then. And when I saw Mark, I just burst into tears. The picture of him, he was so handsome, so gorgeous.

24:15and I thought, oh God, how sad, how sad that it didn't work out for me with him. And he put on his profile that he was married. So I just thought, oh, I'm so pleased that he's married. I'm sure he's got a happy marriage and good for him. And I just felt sick looking at that picture. Some of the things on his feed I really liked. Mark was still there, just the same kind of outlook on life that I loved and the things he'd got in his feed. And did you add Mark as a Facebook friend when you found him? No, because I thought that was stalking. I thought, you can't go asking people who've dumped you to be Facebook friends, can you, sir?

24:56So 2019 rolls around. Nearly four decades have passed since Mark broke up with you. You're in yet another unhappy relationship. Tell me about the moment that you see a message from Mark appear in your Facebook inbox. I was at my parents' house because they were getting old and ill and they were moving house. So I was there helping them pack up their house. I couldn't sleep and I was looking at my phone. I've never been very good on technology. But for some reason that night, I must have pressed something funny and another screen opened. And it had a little tiny number six at the bottom, which is like unread messages or something.

25:39so I clicked on it and it was called messenger and this was like midnight or one o 'clock in the morning and there was six messages from Mark Bethel saying is this penny umbers then about two weeks later please answer this is this penny are you penny and then another two weeks later this is Mark do you remember me is this penny umbers and then it went on over Christmas then there were six messages eventually the last one was sent in about February saying please answer please answer if this is Penny Anders and and so then I just I was like feeling sick I thought I was going to have a heart attack just the fact that he was trying to contact me I felt like it was a message from an angel but Mark suddenly contacted me at that time because I was just at an absolute low point of not knowing what the hell I was going to do with my life.

26:38And so I wrote back and said, yes, it's me. And then I phoned him. And just to hear his voice, I was just crying and everything. Penny was always one of the most beautiful elements of my past. And I think I was getting a little bit computer savvy and I was scrolling through and I saw this photograph of her in a black beautiful dress at Windsor Castle attending some event and it looked like her but after not seeing her for so many years I wasn't sure and then the name was different but there was Penny and so I said worse comes to worse you know throw your hook back in the water and see what happens and I kept doing that I kept sending messages in hopes that there'd be some response even if it's a negative one no it's not me you know you have the wrong person and after a while since I didn't hear from her, I assumed that was the case.

27:34If it was the right penny, I knew in my heart I wanted to speak to her. I knew there was so much in the past that was unspoken. Tell me about the first time that you spoke on the phone after all those years. All I can remember was, with joy, she's back in my life, even just only to explain myself and what happened. I wanted to do that more than anything else. I had obviously no idea what had transpired in her life and what she'd been through. I'd gotten married, was happily separated. But you hadn't updated your Facebook profile to say you were divorced. I didn't do that, you see. To me, that was, again, that was like a little safety net.

28:18It kind of prohibited. I know it's a silly thing. It's like some women wear a ring on their finger and even though they're not married or not engaged. And that's my rationale for doing so. No, but I was over the moon to be back in contact with her. I really was. And I don't know whether we both cried or I cried, but I was generally that pleased. I really was. I remember Mark cried. Mark cried and cried and cried. And I said, but you know, you're married. He said, no, I'm not married. And I said, well, why does it say on your Facebook page that you're married. I mean, if he'd have put their divorce, I would have probably contacted him straight away.

29:01And he just cried and cried and cried. And then he said, in your garden, you had a mulberry tree. And I'll never forget what your father said to me under the mulberry tree. And I was going, what, what, what, what? This is just when he was leaving school, when I'd invited him home to meet my parents. I remember that my father, after we'd eaten, and had said, oh, come outside, Mark, for a beer. And I thought this was a man-o-man-o opportunity. We're finally going to get to know each other and talk a little bit and open up. And he took me under the Moby tree and, you know, we had a full beer or lager and sat down and he said to me, now that you've had your fun, please move on.