We Meet Again

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After her husband’s betrayal, Frances Macaulay Forde swore off love and romance for good, until a long-lost stranger unexpectedly reappeared in her life. By Laura Venuto.

When Frances Macaulay Forde watched her boyfriend Paudie Coughlan perform on stage with his band, thinking, ‘God, he’s gorgeous,’ she never expected their relationship would end. She also never expected that 30 years later she would be standing in the same position, saying the exact same thing, but with an altogether different ending.

It was December 1973 and Frances was a feisty, fiercely independent 23-year-old living and working in a small city in Zambia, Africa, and managing a local pop band in her spare time. A few weeks earlier she had been living in England, but decided to return home upon her brother’s advice. “Dennis visited me on his way back from a holiday in Perth and said to me: ‘Go home to Zambia, save some money and then go to Australia – and go straight to Perth. It’s the most amazing place.’”

Looking for a new adventure, Frances did just as her brother suggested, and a few months later she was well on her way to buying that plane ticket… right up until Paudie walked through the door of a band practice to audition for the role of keyboard and rhythm guitar player. His soulful, shy eyes and deep, sexy voice had Frances transfixed. “I watched him play and that was it,” she says. “When you’re 23 you just fall madly in love, don’t you?” Before long, Paudie and Frances were going out and Frances’ plans for Australia went out the window. “Suddenly, I wasn’t thinking about going anywhere,” she says. Needless to say, their ensuing relationship was of the passionate intensity that comes with youth. “I used to worship him,” says Frances with facetious exaggeration. “I’d stand there and watch him play guitar and just think: ‘You’re gorgeous!’. I wasn’t thinking marriage, but I’m an all or nothing person, and I knew I wanted Paudie forever.”

But unfortunately, as with many intense, young relationships, it was also short-lived. About five months later, Paudie, who was just 21 at the time, confessed to Frances that things were moving too fast and he just wanted to be friends. “I was very young and I really didn’t want to get serious,” says Paudie. “And I knew it could get serious if I let it, but I thought that would be unfair.”

Nursing a broken heart in a very small community wasn’t easy for Frances, and suddenly Perth looked like a fantastic option once again – the perfect place for a fresh start. Within a matter of weeks she had booked herself a flight to the other side of the world, trying to get as far away as possible from Paudie.

From the moment Frances set foot in Perth, she loved it and felt a sense of renewal wash over her. However, she continued to think of Paudie. “I would look up at the Southern Cross wondering if he was looking up at it too, and I would sit and write the most awful poetry,” she says with a big laugh at the youthful melodrama of it all. “But I had really fallen hard and it took me a while to get over it.” Frances and Paudie didn’t keep in contact though, and gradually, Frances felt herself moving on.

Over the coming months, Frances’ new life started to take shape; she found herself a job, a nice apartment and had made a great group of friends. The plan was to spend a year working and exploring. She wasn’t looking for love, but being the “hopeless romantic” she was, within six months she had been swept off her feet by a “bronzed Aussie hunk”. He must have done something very right as they wed three weeks later, on Valentine’s Day, 1975. Paudie sent a message through a mutual friend to say he was happy for her and wished her the best; Frances simply ignored it.

Besides the initial impulsiveness, the rest of her marriage went by the book according to Frances. “We were a statistic. We waited two years before we had our first baby; we had two beautiful children – a boy and a girl – we did everything as the book says. And we had 10 wonderful years together.”

Life was rolling along nicely. The young family had built a new house, and Frances had just started to pursue her greatest dream – to become a screenwriter. After completing film and TV courses, she started a small film production company and was on the verge of being recognised for her screenwriting. But just when she thought things couldn’t be more perfect, Frances came faceto-face with a most unexpected nightmare – finding her husband with another woman. “It devastated me; because suddenly those 10 years were a complete lie. And I didn’t see it. I absolutely trusted every word that came out of his mouth. I believed he loved me because he said so, and I believed and trusted him because he said so. I think it was because I was so trusting and gullible that it devastated me even more. It was just horrendous.”

Frances didn’t hesitate in making a decision; she packed her bags, put her children in the car and quit her job (as she worked with her husband and all the staff knew about the affair). And with just 30 cents in her pocket, she faced the prospect that at 34, she would have to rebuild her life. But the most difficult part of the journey for Frances was rebuilding herself. “It took me three years to like myself again, because my thoughts of myself were: ‘You’re a failure. You’re to blame. You didn’t love him enough.’”

Over the coming years Frances had her fair share of admirers, but romance couldn’t have been further from her mind. “I became adept at fending off any whiff of a romantic advance. There was no way I was ever going near anyone again,” she says. So much so that she actively side-stepped any reference to, or chance to work with, the whole notion. Frances even left a romance writers’ group because she just couldn’t imagine a romantic man. “I was still a romantic at heart, but I didn’t believe in romance for me. I didn’t trust my own emotions. And I certainly didn’t think for one moment it would come into my life again. I’d blown my chance.”

For many years, Frances deliberately remained celibate, as it was the only way she could be sure of protecting her heart. Instead, she focused her energies entirely on herself and her children. One of her biggest personal coups came in 2001 when she graduated with a degree in creative writing. “My confidence was building,” she says. “I was finally paying off a small house; my children were grown and happy, living in their own places and I had just earned my degree.” It was during her final year of study that Frances discovered an internet bulletin board which reconnects people who have lived in Zambia. “I wasn’t looking for anyone in particular and had forgotten all about Paudie, so what happened next took me completely by surprise,” she says.

Paudie, who was now semi-retired and living in Ireland, had spent the past 30 years devoting his life to his corporate career. He had been extremely successful, had travelled the world and lived in numerous countries, but had thus far avoided all serious relationships. “I never married,” he says. “I don’t know why. I got caught up in my career, I guess. I was ambitious and just kept moving forward, never really settling anywhere. And at 50 I was at the stage where I thought maybe I had missed the boat.”

But then one day, while researching business opportunities in Zambia, Paudie stumbled across the same internet bulletin board. He noticed Frances’ name and decided to make contact. “Fancy meeting you here,” he wrote. Frances was surprised to see Paudie’s name, but pleasantly so. They were soon regularly exchanging friendly emails, until Valentine’s Day, when Paudie made the mistake of referring to their brief romance. The mere mention of them as a romantic item made Frances’ stomach drop and her protective walls sprung into action. She emailed back with a scathing article she had written about how much she loathed Valentine’s Day and all it stood for. “I thought that would put him off for sure,” she says, “but I think it had the opposite effect.”

Instead, Paudie wrote back saying maybe they should consider exploring the possibility there might still be something between them, and even put forward the idea of meeting in person. “I was thrilled, but terrified. I can still feel it.” says Frances. “I had been through a wringer backwards; I was just keeping my head above water, but finally finding myself and my writing again. My little house was full of colour and individuality − I didn’t want to ever compromise that − it had taken me so long to find and like myself again. I was also 52, not the pretty 23-year-old he knew before and I hadn’t allowed a man near me for years. Besides, I didn’t think I would survive rejection again.”

So they spent the next seven months in constant contact, with Paudie reassuring Frances of his intentions, and, most importantly, building her trust, starting with emails, then instant messenger and finally, very long phone calls. “If it hadn’t been for the internet, there’s no way it could have progressed the way it did,” says Frances. If I hadn’t had all those words from him – that stream of emails coming in, assurances, reassurances… there was something about it all being down in writing that made it easier for me to trust him.” For Paudie, it was the first time they spoke to each other on the phone that confirmed their connection. “When we first spoke on the phone in March, I certainly felt as if those 30 years had never happened. It was like yesterday. We clicked very quickly; it was very potent and very obvious when we first spoke.”

Despite everything, the romantic in Frances still held out a glimmer of hope and eventually, she gave in to her unbearable curiosity. Paudie planned a trip to his best friend’s 50th birthday in South Africa, where his old band was planning to reunite for the party, and decided to coincide the trip with a stopover to see Frances in Perth. If things worked out well, he suggested Frances accompany him to a UK reunion of 200 people who had reconnected on the same bulletin board as they did, and where Paudie would also play with a band again.

The day Paudie touched down in Perth, Frances was “nervous as hell,” she says. “I stood by a pot plant in arrivals, terrified. When he came out, I was speechless. I stood there, frozen. The poor guy was probably thinking I wasn’t there yet.” As Frances recalls the next moment, she suddenly chokes up in tears, the emotion from the day just as affecting as if it was yesterday. “My sisters-in-law were with me and they said, ‘Go to him’. I walked across the room and waved and he put his arms out, and it was wonderful. It was as if 30 years had never happened. I looked into his eyes and it was the same Paudie. And I knew everything he had said to me had been the truth. I don’t remember anything else from that moment except looking into his eyes and being in his arms. The moment he touched me, all my instincts radiated positive. It was as though all the things that had happened to me suddenly didn’t matter, because it was all right again,” she says.

It didn’t take either of them long to know that they had rediscovered something special, and within hours of each other’s company, neither had any doubts about their future together. “It felt absolutely right and I didn’t want to let him go ever again,” says Frances. So she agreed to accompany Paudie to the reunion and, in a beautifully poetic kind of way, found herself back in the same position as when they first met; watching her Paudie up on stage, thinking, “God, he’s gorgeous”. She even felt a pang of jealously when some other women sidled up to Paudie for a chat. “It was as if I was a teenager all over again. I got all jealous and we had our first little argument,” she says with a sheepish chuckle.

Soon after the reunion, they flew back to live in Paudie’s apartment in Ireland. Despite 17 years spent convincing herself that she wasn’t made for ‘coupledom’, Frances revelled in their union. And while she had spent most of those years working hard to pick up the pieces of her confidence again, it was Paudie’s confidence in her that took Frances to new heights of happiness. “The sexiest thing in the world to me was Paudie’s genuine pride in my abilities and his wanting to show them off to the world. He encouraged my writing by taking me to festivals, workshops and talks with famous and local writers. He also encouraged me to publish my first book of poetry and to set up my website to let the world have a chance to judge what I do. I was in heaven.”

It wasn’t long before Paudie asked Frances to marry him. They decided to relocate to Perth and were married in December 2003 – exactly 30 years after they first met – a supremely happy ending that just came a little later than expected. But as far as Frances and Paudie are concerned, it’s better late than never.

“I know how rare what we’ve got is because I thought I had it, but I didn’t,” says Frances. “So we made a conscious decision not to waste any more years, not to waste another moment. We may not have forever, but we’re going to have them together.”