Whatever Remains Page 9

  Chapter 9

  Not wise, nor shrewd enough, 1954–1962

  One carries pockets of memory that lie dormant until they are suddenly broken open, flooding the mind with reminiscences. With the writing of this book, many memories have resurfaced. The more I think and write, the more I remember. It is as if the writing of words has opened the floodgates of memory.

  I was nearly 12 years old. Our mother was dead, and Denis was becoming restless. Our stay in Greenmount had been happy enough. I had certainly enjoyed the country lifestyle, the fruit trees, the garden, the chickens and playing with our new little kitten and Max the dog. But a quiet country life was obviously not enough of a challenge for Denis. The brick and tile business had either failed or been sold and we were presumably still living on accrued income from Denis’s investments.

  From the first day we got to England, I kept pestering Denis to look up some of his relatives, a distant aunt perhaps, or maybe a cousin. Surely there would be some family member left alive. After putting up with my insistent probing for a few days, he showed me the London phone book and looked up our name. Nothing. I was not wise, nor shrewd enough, to suggest we check in other phone books. Nor was I aware that the name we were checking was not Denis’s original family name.

  For some reason, probably with urging and pleading from Tony, my boat-mad eldest brother, we spent the next few weeks looking for boats — driving the length and breadth of Britain looking through boat yards at yachts of various sizes and shapes. They all looked impossibly big to me and the thought of sailing any of them out into an unknown ocean seemed a terrifying prospect. Who knows where the idea came from, but we were apparently in the market for a large sea-going yacht to sail to Portugal or even round the world, no less. Why a recently widowed man and his three school age children, with no experience of ocean sailing, would want to set sail for the high seas, I have no idea. Looking back, I am now inclined to believe that maybe we were only looking at boats to fill in time before heading to Portugal. Maybe Denis never really meant to take his small, totally inadequate and definitely underage ‘crew’ on the open seas.

  We were probably in England no more than a month. It was now time to board our ship (an ocean-going liner, not, thank goodness, the sort of boat we had been looking at) for our new life in Portugal. It didn’t work out as Denis had intended. I don’t exactly know what he was looking for in Portugal, but apparently he did not find it — I, on the other hand, loved this new country from the moment we arrived.

  Lisbon’s skies were blue, not grey like the skies I saw in England and the tall stylish buildings of this city seemed to revel in colour. I had never seen entire buildings so beautifully decked out in colours that ranged from pale pink to bright orange. Some had scrolls and swirls of decorative blue and white tiles telling stories of brave deeds and wonderful events in Portugal’s history.

  We stayed at a smart hotel, the Miraparque, overlooking one of Lisbon’s most elegant parks. We did a lot of driving around looking for a suitable house to rent or buy. Up and down the coast we drove, marvelling at the picturesque countryside as we went. For the first time I remember, I became a tourist, wondering at the beauty of the place, the different style of architecture, the bright colours of the houses, the small winding streets opening to wide vistas of open country. The days were warm and sunny, the ocean bright turquoise, the hotel food wonderful, and I loved it all. And so warm and comfortable after chilly Britain!

  The houses along the beachfronts of Estoril were a favourite haunt of ours on our quest for a new home. Squares of paper pasted on the windows denoted that the house was for rent and I would yell, ‘How about that one?’ hopefully from the back seat as we passed a pale orange house set in a pretty garden with its windows adorned with squares of paper. Nothing, however, seemed to suit. Too big, too small, too this or too that — we never seemed to find the right place and my voice became hoarse with all the hopeful calling.

  At almost 12, tall and thin and thinking myself very grown up, I was allowed to sip a glass of wine, albeit heavily diluted with water, with my lunch. This was the first time I had ever tasted alcohol, but in Portugal even children, it seemed, drank watered down wine with their meals. So, when in Rome …

  Maybe that’s why I loved the place so much. Maybe I was in a mild state of intoxication from lunch through to dinner. Whatever the reason, I could have happily lived in Portugal and pleaded with Denis to stay. But it was not to be — and once again we were packing our bags ready for the journey back to England. Memories can play tricks and I could have sworn we were in Portugal for some months, but shipping records give a very different story. What seemed liked months was in reality two and a half weeks. Why, after all the talk of making a new life in a new country, we should stay for such a short time mystifies me, but at the time the constant comings and goings of our family seemed quite unremarkable.

  Again we travelled by sea. Our ship, the Andes, ploughed back across the Bay of Biscay, riding the swell with ease, arriving back in England a day before my 12th birthday in chilly, windy April 1954. We rented a house in Purley, then an outer suburb of London. We did not stay there long, but there were two incidents that stay with me. I adopted a pigeon that had hurt its wing, and I broke my arm — two small creatures with damaged appendages.

  I found the pigeon on the back lawn dragging its wing and unable to fly. I made a perch for it on a window sill to keep it safe from cats, and plied it with mixed grains till it regained its strength. I had not had a pet since Max, our cocker spaniel, and our Greenmount chickens and kitten. It was comforting to have something to look after again. As the weeks went by and it regained its strength, I dreaded it flying off, but it seemed perfectly happy to sit on the window sill and coo. I called the pigeon the very inventive name of Pidge.

  The day before we were to leave Purley for a guest-house in Henleyon-Thames, I tripped in the back garden and smashed the elbow joint of my left arm on a concrete path. I was distressed at having to leave Pidge and had been pleading to take him with us. I ended up in hospital for four days, so in the end I didn’t even get to say goodbye.

  We moved, I think, because Denis was finding it difficult to get help in the house at Purley. After being discharged from hospital, but still with an arm that didn’t look quite right, I was taken to our new temporary home, Greentrees in the small village of Peppard just outside Henley. Greentrees was a boarding house for ‘gentle folk’ run by a formidable widow called Mrs Lyons,

  For me, life was pretty miserable for the first few weeks, but after having my arm reset, the pain receded and I grew to like Greentrees. I had a pretty room with silver-grey walls and a mauve bedspread and curtains — I thought the combination very attractive. There were regular meals, no washing up after, and an extraordinary box, called a television, that showed moving black and white pictures in the sitting room. This was my first encounter with TV and we children were mesmerised.

  There was also a family staying there who had a girl the same age as I. It was unusual for me to have a girl to play with, so I loved the novelty of dressing up her dolls (I didn’t own a doll, so she allowed me to adopt one of hers for the duration) and playing ‘families’. We became good friends over the next few months. I can’t remember her name, but oh how nice it was to have someone my age to talk to and play with.

  My brothers and I were required to do ‘school work’ every afternoon, an hour of reading and writing for me, and two hours of study for them, or so my brothers have told me. I don’t remember doing anything that resembled schoolwork, but perhaps we did.

  It is here, at Greentrees, that the lives of my brothers and I started to diverge. We were all growing up, developing our own personalities, no longer depending so much on each other for company. It was also here that I started to wonder about the discrepancies between what Denis said to the adults around him and what he said in the privacy of the family circle.

  After a couple of months of guest-house living, Denis decided it wa
s not to his taste. He had, he announced one day, found the perfect place for us — a house to rent in the picturesque village of Burley in the New Forest. So I said goodbye to my well-loved bedroom and my new-found friend and we packed our belongings into the shiny black Austin Princess (with real leather seating and polished timber trim, no less) that Denis had recently bought, and headed south to the County of Hampshire and our new home.

  Queen’s Close was the last of the houses we rented during my childhood, and the one I remember the most. It was an attractive double-storey house, made of warm red brick with blue timber trim and shutters. On a gentle rise overlooking the village, it sat snugly in a woodland garden.

  It was early autumn. A more beautiful time of year to see the New Forest, I cannot imagine. The trees turning red and gold, the New Forest ponies wandering at will through the streets of the picturesque village, the cool crisp air and the smell of the forest. From my upstairs bedroom, I could see down to the village through the many trees that circled the garden. A roaring wood fire seemed always to be burning in the wide fireplace of the spacious drawing room that also boasted a beautiful grand piano. I loved to sit in that warm attractively furnished room playing ‘Chopsticks’, a tune Denis had taught me to play. Our stay at Queen’s Close seemed to be a restful time for our family. Denis seemed relaxed and happy, my brothers, now growing into young men, had their own interests, and I had Delma.

  Before leaving Greentrees, Denis had ‘acquired’ Mary the cook and Delma the housemaid. Their defection solved the help-in-the-house problem simply and expediently. During our stay at Greentrees, Denis had persuaded them to come with us on the promise of a better position. Women, I was beginning to notice, were often won over by his charm and winning ways. But not all women! Mrs Lyons, Greentrees’ owner, who lost both her cook and housemaid, was furious. She had not only lost four paying guests but also two good members of her staff and all in a few short weeks.

  It was lucky for me that Delma the housemaid did agree to come and work for us. She was only a few years older than I was and she became a kind friend and confidante to a lonely motherless girl. It was Delma, with the cheerful smile, peaches and cream complexion and sunny disposition, who helped me cope with the inevitable changes a young girl faced as she encountered puberty.

  Walking on the moors became a morning habit. Even as the days grew colder, and the ponds and puddles froze over, we would walk. The falling red and gold leaves were pushed into banks by the sharp winds and soon turned brown and mushy under foot. The Forest ponies grew winter coats and stood in huddles with their backs to the chilling wind. With my warm winter coat and gloves and bright pink nose, I would skip and run, loving these walks on the wild side. Returning home to Mary’s home-baked cake or biscuits and a mug of cocoa was somewhat spoilt by the knowledge that we were then required to do school work till lunch.

  The library had been turned into a makeshift schoolroom. A tutor was employed for my two brothers, a Mrs Win Heppinstall. She was a kindly, pleasant-faced woman, a high school teacher who lived in the village. My brothers were getting to the age where university entrance was becoming an issue. On the other hand, at only 12, my education was not considered of such great importance. So I sat in the improvised schoolroom and read. And read, and read. From the well-stocked bookshelves, I went through all the English classics, prose and poetry, a set of The History of Britain and a good deal of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall during those six months. It was an unorthodox education, but I loved the freedom to choose my own literature and having the space and time to read it.

  Christmas 1954 came and went, and Denis was becoming restless. While we lived at Queen’s Close, he stayed at home, only occasionally ‘going up to London’ for shareholders’ meetings related to his share investments. Since his days of running an import/export business in Singapore, he had retained an interest in that part of the world and still had shares in both gold and tin mines in Malaya.

  One cold January day, Denis told us we would soon be leaving England for Australia. It was interesting that I was now to think of Australia as home. We had not spent many of my 12 years there, but I always thought of Australia with nostalgia: the delicate smell of the golden wattle on crisp winter mornings, the strong hot breath of summer that drove us kids running and giggling into cool sandy rivers or over the burning beach, through the white surf and into the rolling blue ocean. These were the memories I had of Home. England was a beautiful place, but it was not home.

  I have no idea what happened to Mary and Delma when we left England. I can only hope they both found positions quickly, as I am sure when they agreed to leave Greentrees and move to Queen’s Close, they had each expected it to be a long-term position. Mrs Heppinstall, our tutor, was another casualty of Denis’s charm. She was to follow us out to Australia to continue preparing my brothers for entry to university, but somewhere along the way Denis decided she was surplus to requirements and her services were dispensed with. I was beginning to see that Denis had a habit of putting aside unfinished business if it did not fit into his scheme of things.

  The trip back to Australia was to be our last overseas journey taken as a family, and was the end of what I choose to think of as my childhood. Life was never going to be as uncomplicated for me again.

  We made the journey home by ship via the Suez Canal. I was now at an age to appreciate ship life. I remember the feel of the wind tearing at my hair, the smell of the salt spray, the piercing cries of sea birds swooping above me and the endless motion of the ship beneath my feet. With deck games, a swimming pool, and all the food I could eat, it was to become a memorable journey. The ship, the Iberia, was large, modern and fitted with stabiliser bars so we rode the rough water with ease. On the passenger list for this trip. Denis’s occupation is shown as ‘Stud Master’ - heaven knows where he got that fanciful title from.

  We arrived in Perth, Western Australia, a few weeks before my 13th birthday. I would be living in Western Australia for the next seven years. Those seven years were to be the most unhappy of my life.

  I entered the teenage years tall, awkward and painfully shy. Unschooled in many things but with a knowledge of history, geography and literature far beyond my years, school was to become a minefield of contradictory feelings. Explosions of understanding alternated with periods of blank despair. I had to adapt to the regimentation of set lessons and try to learn within the noise and confusion of a classroom environment. To conform and get good grades I would need to make up ground in areas such as maths and science, in which I had neither aptitude nor basic understanding.

  I started my first term of continuous schooling at a private girls school a bus ride away from our new home in Nedlands. I had read prolifically, been taken to many museums and art galleries and had from an early age been encouraged to read and discuss the current affairs in the daily papers; attributes neither favoured nor understood by my peers.

  Realising that I knew a lot about some things and absolutely nothing about others caused my teachers to react with either sympathetic understanding or impatience at my ignorance. My English teacher in particular spent many hours of her own time helping me with homework after school. Many of my teachers were supportive and kind. Some were not. The other girls were not always kind. I was considered strange and therefore often teased for my British accent and old-fashioned ways and because I did not understand their girl talk and the children’s games they played. I had never spent much time among children of my own age, so learning to interact with my peers while trying to act like a ‘normal’ teenager was difficult. Those years between childhood and adulthood can be a trying time for most of us, but for me they were excruciating.

  I did make one friend soon after arriving at school, and she became my lifeline as well as a lifelong friend. She was someone to confide in, share good times and bad; a protection from the teasing at school and the increasing alienation and loneliness of my home life. I thought that if I could model myself on her, appear like her, then, hopefu
lly, I would become just like all the other girls I knew.

  At 16, I came close to death with a serious bout of double pneumonia. Strangely this episode of hospitalisation and recuperation became a turning point. As I slowly mended, I learnt to be a bit stronger, a bit surer of myself and less willing to be part of how Denis considered a family should operate. I was starting to grow up, to become an independent person.

  After buying, renovating and then selling a small bungalow in Nedlands, Denis decided to try country living once again. This time he bought an orchard, Lawnbrook Park, in the picturesque Bickley Valley about 30 kilometres from Perth. This would become the last home we shared as a family.

  Growing up in an all-male household with no female relatives had its difficulties. As I turned from a gangly child into an unsure, unworldly teenager, Denis’s demands that I should learn to act like a well brought-up young woman increased. Being demure, obedient and ladylike never came easily to me. It seemed he was never satisfied with my behaviour. I was too loud, too excitable and way too argumentative.

  While we were living at Lawnbrook Park, I learnt to drive — first a tractor and then a car. I also became proficient in picking and packing boxes of fruit ready for the market, gathering and bunching daffodils and collecting and grading eggs, all destined for the Perth produce markets. During those last years before adulthood, my growing collection of LP records would open my ears to the beauty of classical music. I would discover boys other than my brothers. I would make (again with my trusty pedal Singer sewing machine), and then wear, dresses that had full circle skirts, roped petticoats and wide tight belts. I would try out all the new Toni home perms in the vain hope of turning my very straight mousy blonde hair into a halo of golden curls. I would attend school dances and then gather with my girlfriends at the end of the evening to giggle over a good-looking boy. I learnt to pin up my hair in carefully crafted curls on top of my head, wear pointy toed stiletto heeled shoes and experiment with make-up. I grew breasts, developed a waist and hips and fell in and out of love two or three times.