The Queen's gambit

A renowned writer of biographies tells her own story of scandal and loss after falling in love with a woman.

- SHARON STEPHENSON

There’s a before and after in Dr Joanne Drayton’s life.

The “before” was marriage to an Anglican cleric, mother of two sons and a comfortable middle-class life in Christchurch. The “after” is every moment since the teacher/writer fell in love with a woman and upended not only her life but that of her family and her partner’s family.

But here’s the bit where it gets really messy: this was back in 1989, when society wasn’t always kind to lesbians, especially those who were married mothers.

As Drayton writes in her new book, The Queen’s Wife (Penguin Random House), the decision to partner with Sue Marshall, a graphic designer-turned-artist and teacher, earned the couple opprobrium from every side.

“We were spat at, ostracised and even hit on by a creepy guy who wanted a threesome,” says Drayton from the Auckland home she’s shared with Marshall, aged 70, since July 2000.

“We fell as far from grace as it was possible to. Leaving our marriages to be together was seen as transgressing what it meant to be a wife and mother, because although it was acceptable to raise children as a widow or as an abandoned wife, you couldn’t do so as a lesbian.”

Drayton is used to looking under the covers of other people’s lives as a respected author of biographies about 70s chefs Peter Hudson and David Halls, murderer-turned-author Anne Perry and Kiwi artists Frances Hodgkins, Rhona Haszard and Edith Collier.

Whanganui artist Collier was the subject of Drayton’s doctorate in art history, gained in 1998.