Annette - Sweet on You

Chapter 43 Annette – Sweet on You (Extract from the book Two Worlds)

Annette Motley nee Combe, with her mother Catherine Picture courtesy Tony Combe During Arthur’s first year at university he had met a young lady – a local girl who was aged only around sixteen at the time. Her name was Annette Turnbul Combe and she would go on to to become a significant ongoing presence in his life. As to when he first met her we don’t exactly know, but given the nature of the relationship and what was to thereafter occur it would most likely have been at a relatively early stage in his first year at the University of Edinburgh, so perhaps during late autumn 1928. By the start of his first academic year in October 1928 we’re fairly certain that Arthur is now residing in lodgings at 25 Marchmont Road.

It’s only an informed guess but it was perhaps whilst on his way to and from the university that he first met young Annette Combe within the general vicinity. My mother seems to recall that her parents – or at least her mother - ran a sweet shop selling newspapers, cigarettes, confectionery, etc. Perhaps Annette worked part-time in the shop and it was here in the premises that their paths first crossed.

Editor’s Note Come the 9th September 2025, after meeting up with Annette and Arthur’s nephew, Tony Combe, it does indeed appear to be the case that Annette’s mother, Catherine Combe, now separated from her husband David, does indeed run a sweetie shop in the area. See postscript vignette, Shop-Keeper and Assistant.

I suspect Arthur may have enjoyed both a smoke and a bar of chocolate. When you visit a shop regularly it allows you to build up an easy rapport and quick relationship with the owners and the staff. Each day you superficially pass the time of day - how you’re getting on – and gradually as you get to know one another better you exchange what’s going on in your day to day life too. Here in Britain – and Edinburgh is no different to cities in England – such conversations famously begin with comments about the city’s variable weather and before you know it you’re discussing school, university, work and family background. As a business one of the key tricks is to please your customer so that they come back time after time after time so that they become one of your regulars: it’s not simply a transaction but instead you develop a relationship with your customers. You want to be friendly but in doing so by trying to seek out the right balance – not being too nosey – too inquisitive, but being interested in your fellow traveller’s life and when appropriate being supportive too. If Annette worked in the shop she would have been pleasant to Arthur. They were both young – Arthur was 24 and Annette aged around six or seven years younger. Indeed, she may still have been at school only helping out in the shop occasionally. She would have found Arthur interesting, perhaps even an exotic creature – he was handsome – he was Black – he had an attractive personality and disposition – he was charming, fun, optimistic, with a ready smile and a hearty chuckle. And he was different – very different to the other young Edinburgh men who frequented the shop and with whom she had come across, albeit, with students living within the Marchmont area and community, Arthur wouldn’t have been the first coloured man that she had met. But nevertheless she was attracted to him and found him fascinating too. But given the prevailing ambience and culture of Edinburgh, how on earth did their relationship develop beyond simply a short pleasant exchange, encounter and chat within the confines of a shop across the counter as Arthur passed his farthings, halfpennies, pennies, sixpences or shillings across to Annette in exchange for a bar of Cadbury’s chocolate or a packet of Woodbine, Gold Flake or Players Navy Cut cigarettes?

And in developing further the notion - the concept or theory of transactions versus relationships in the world of business and clients and customers - how on earth did they first move from it being a transaction to a relationship in its more fullish – or should that be foolish – sense? At the time – late 1928 - the barriers would appear to have been insurmountable, but as the cliche goes, love will find a way. Beyond the shop one other likely way whereby they may have met is if they had both attended the same local church. I don’t recall Dr Motley being of a religious persuasion but it does state in the Lincoln University CV that he was a philosopher of religion, so who knows. With his father Frank going on to become a minister clearly his parents were religious. But outwith that unless there was perhaps a local party at around Christmas or New Year the only other possibility is that they may have passed each other in the local streets and got to know each other in brief little exchanges. But beyond that, in Calvinist Edinburgh with its colour bars in some parts of the city, if they were to have been seen out and about as a couple together in each other’s company, it would most certainly have turned heads. They say Edinburgh is a village – that you’re only one link away in the chain from knowing someone in common - and in a community such as Marchmont and given Annette’s parents were shop-keepers, what with the regular flow of customers coming in and out of their shop each day, if the young couple had been seen out and about together, no doubt word would have spread very quickly and got back to them.

And whilst their colour difference at the time would have been a major barrier, this was further exaggerated by Annette being so young and still a local schoolgirl. Annette may have attended the well regarded George Watson’s Ladies College school better known as George Square named after its location in the city close-by the university: alternatively she may instead have been at the local school in Marchmont - James Gillespie School for Girls made famous by its most famous alumni Dame Muriel Spark with the school becoming legendary as where ‘Miss Jean Brodie’ taught when she was in her prime. Writing of this does of course raise the possibility that if Arthur and Annette had got to know each other through the shop, on occasion they may also have followed a very similar route home to Marchmont, she after school and he after being at university, giving them an opportunity to meet. So perhaps on occasion they accidentally bumped into each other enjoying each other’s company as they casually and easily chatted about their distinct and different young lives and backgrounds – she an Edinburgher and he an Okie. And thereafter, as their relationship developed, rather than serendipity bringing them together, as the weeks and the months passed by, in the harmony of the Edinburgh seasons - autumn through the bitter winter of 1929 when Arthur kept warm in Annette’s arms and sweet embraces and then into the darling buds of May and early summer, their love for each other grew and grew until their passion spilled over in that first week or so in May when they first consummated their relationship. But certainly when Annette had started seeing Arthur it’s something that wouldn’t have gone un-noticed and it would surely have been spotted by one of the girls from Annette’s school and no doubt word would have got out and quickly spread. It would have been the stuff of gossip. The Meadows on Sundays has always been a popular Edinburgh haunt for courting couples but it would have been well nigh on impossible for Annette and Arthur to have been like other lovers and instead they would have had to have conducted a more clandestine affair. And yet, an affair there was – a love affair – so the young couple must somehow have managed to find a way because during the height of when Arthur should have been studying hard for his first set of medical examinations and sitting the written and oral papers he and Annette conceived a child.