Features

What a smile can do

By WANDEKA GAYLE, Staff Reporter

Cliiford (left), and Lucienda Blackstock of Palmer's Cross, Clarendon, who have been married for 43 years.- junior dowie

IT STARTED WITH a smile and five shillings, but no one knew, not even their parents, that Lucienda and Clifford Black-stock's relationship would span four decades of love and devotion.

The couple, both originally from Rock District in Mocco, Clarendon, now live in Palmer's Cross, Clarendon.

Love sparked

They told THE STAR that while they knew each other from in the community, it was on a sunny June afternoon along a lane in their community that their love sparked.

During the interview, Clifford started to tell the story but Lucienda cut in.

"Let me tell you how it goes," she said dramatically, looking slyly at her husband, "It was a Friday in June, the year was 1958 and I was walking with my girlfriend when we saw Clifford walking in front. She called to him and asked him for money but I didn't, because my mother taught me better."

She said Clifford turned around, approached them, then putting his hands in his pockets pulled out a shilling and gave it to Lucienda's friend. With a smile, he handed five shillings to Lucienda. Then he asked her a question that stopped her cold.

"I said to her, if she would be my girlfriend," Clifford said smiling, "And she said yes."

However, doubts soon began to cloud his mind.

He had heard stories around the community that she had promised many young men to be their girlfriend but had turned them down later.

"She would say yes to them but mean no," grumbled Clifford with a mischievous smile.

"Well, I told him that my yes means yes," Lucienda supplied.

When Clifford was asked why he made such a dramatic proposal of intimacy, he replied slyly, "Sometimes you look on the tree and an orange look different from the rest, riper, you just have to pick it."

They were married in England, on July 30, 1961, at a marriage registrar, shortly after they migrated to Brixton and Peckham for 32 years.

However, it would be 16 years after they were married before Lucienda's father came to terms with her daughter's marriage to a man who had been in agriculture while in Jamaica.

"It was in 1977 when my father said to me that although the love was not there for him at first, he could see that he was taking care of his daughter," Lucienda said.

Clifford added that he had told his young wife to write a letter to her father to say that he was taking good care of her.

The couple later went through some greater hardship as they lost their first child, Tennie, to bronchitis in 1959, six months after he was born.

"We both grieved over it; we had parents around us to instruct us," Lucienda said, "We comforted each other."

They had another son, Fitz, who they discovered was epileptic at 17 years old. Their two daughters, Verna, and Debbie, now reside in England.

Clifford stated that he worked in various capacities, as a street sweeper and as a worker at both a metal and plastic moulding factory. He said he was almost fired from one of his jobs when he became angry that his supervisor referred to him as "you people".

"They put me before a tribunal where they give me a warning." he said. "You learn to overcome it."

What makes their marriage work? Lucienda says God's intervention and Clifford being open and allowing love to shine out in the lives.