From Strength to Strength

by Sara Henderson

  ‘I suppose they think it’s some kind of custom!’ commented Charles.

  ‘Well, you must admit, you did it with regularity!’

  The entire staff of the inn turned out to see us leave, as well as our friends from the next room. I suppose they had never seen anything like us before.

  We went back to Tokyo for a few days while Charles finished his business, but it was a letdown after our swinging inn.

  Back in Manila, life continued with the usual proportions of fun, laughter and tears, and we busied ourselves with riding, tennis, children and social commitments, and Charles with his business.

  The children were growing up fast and we were really enjoying them. The eldest was now riding and Charles had bought her the funniest little pony. It was one of the native horses, a little bigger than a Shetland but with the sweetest nature. It was so fat that Murray Lee did the splits just sitting on him.

  So now our afternoon rides included the two little girls, Murray Lee on her own pony, and Bonnie sitting in front of her father. Our eldest seemed to be a natural rider and it wasn’t long before she was riding very well. Her sister was only one and a half, so you couldn’t tell, although she seemed very at home perched up in front of her father.

  Charles spoilt his children rotten but would hotly deny it. Of course I had to do all the disciplining, so naturally by the time Charles came home he was given a right royal welcome as they knew there would be no more spankings. He was thrilled to be the most popular member of the team.

  One afternoon the children and I were out playing in the garden when Charles arrived home and said, ‘Hurry and pack, you and I are leaving at first light in the morning.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘One of our ships is loading timber in Mindanao and there is some delay.’

  We left the next morning in a small four-seater plane. Charles was the pilot. The weather was perfect and we landed in Cebu for lunch with friends, and then continued on to the timber camp. In his usual teasing manner, Charles had me navigate and to spice the whole deal, he would say, ‘Quickly, engine trouble, nearest landing field!’

  I finally convinced him I didn’t need this type of entertainment and we settled down to a peaceful flight. Of course it didn’t last. We were about eighty miles from the timber camp, when the sky started to turn an ugly black. The flying became very bumpy and Charles stopped talking and concentrated.

  The weather did not improve and the rest of the trip was most unpleasant. We finally made a low, low water approach to the grass strip and not a moment too soon. Just as we touched down, we were engulfed in the thickest, blackest cloud imaginable.

  ‘Something tells me this is going to be some weekend!’

  ‘Now don’t let your imagination run away with you. What could possibly happen here in this out of the way place?’

  Famous last words. We were met by the engineer and he drove us to the mill, which was right on the water’s edge. As the hold-up was loading, we went staight down to the ship. I followed Charles down the rickety wharf and up the boarding ramp. We were staying on board for the evening so I went to the cabin, washed my face and then went out on deck to join Charles. He was in deep conversation with a variety of men, European, Filipino and Chinese, and some local natives in very little clothing. I was reluctant to join them so I walked around the upper deck to enjoy the view. After a while I realised that they had all stopped talking and were looking in my direction. Charles left the group and joined me.

  ‘Darling, come and meet everyone.’

  ‘Oh no, I’ll wait till you’re finished. They all look a bit too formidable for me.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, they’re harmless, come along.’

  And promptly dragged me over to the group. The next minute I was standing in the middle of the mob. One of the natives stepped forward, and mumbling something started to walk around me in circles. When he touched my hair I nearly launched into space! I threw frantic looks at Charles, who merely nodded and smiled. I excused myself and went to the cabin.

  Charles joined me an hour or so later looking very cheerful. ‘Well, everything is settled. They start loading immediately.’

  ‘Oh that’s marvellous, darling. When do we start back to Manila?’

  ‘I’ll have to stay until they finish loading, which should be tomorrow.’

  ‘Can we look around and have a picnic?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, I’ve arranged an outing for you.’

  ‘An outing? What do you mean? What about you? Charles, what have you done?’

  ‘Now, it’s perfectly alright, you’ll be absolutely safe.’

  ‘Safe? What do you mean “safe”?’

  Charles then told me what he thought was safe. Apparently the chief of the local natives wanted to go fishing with me and if I did the ship would be loaded.

  ‘Charles, you didn’t say “yes”?’ Complete silence. ‘You did!’ Now in complete hysterics.

  ‘Now, Darling, it will be alright, Ernesto will go. Besides, the chief just wants to catch some fish for you. He’s very attracted to the colour of your hair. He’s never seen red hair before.’

  ‘He’s probably a head-hunter,’ I said gloomily.

  ‘Don’t be silly, they gave that up long ago.’

  ‘What do you mean, “gave that up”? Oh Charles, how could you?’

  ‘Well, if I didn’t agree, the ship would sit there for heaven knows how long. And we can’t afford that.’

  ‘But we can afford to lose me.’

  I cried and performed, but to no avail. Charles had promised I would go fishing and he wouldn’t go back on his word.

  It was now late in the afternoon and our fishing date was no rod and reel on some quiet river, but a full-scale deep sea fishing operation. At least we had the company of twenty other native fishing boats, but they were all on his side. Charles waved goodbye to me and I completely ignored him. We headed out to sea and the sun slowly set in the west, for the last time as far as I was concerned.

  Well, I was wrong. It was a beautiful evening, the terrible storm that had greeted us when we landed had completely disappeared. The chief was so proud to have my red hair flowing in the wind on his boat that he couldn’t do enough for me. And he was a perfect gentleman.

  The entire group put on a remarkable performance of deep-sea, bunker fishing. They had a very good catch, which was due to my presence, or so they told Ernesto. When we returned to the other ship around two a.m. the natives were still loading. The chief issued orders and all the crews of the fishing bunkers turned out to help. The women cooked some of the catch over an open fire, and we had a lovely breakfast on the beach, watching the first colours of dawn appear in the sky.

  The loading was finished by mid-morning so we went and had a few hours of sleep. Then, after being presented with every gift imaginable, and many ceremonies, we were allowed to leave for Manila.

  At this point in my life, I suppose you could say I had it all. I was utterly and completely in love with my husband, I had two beautiful children, Charles was building his empire and success was in the air. It seemed too good to be true, and it was.

  The maid interrupted me in the writing room to tell me I had a visitor. I told her to serve tea in the sunroom and read the note she had handed to me as I walked into the room. The switchboard operator from Charles’s office sat nervously on the edge of a chair. As I entered, she jumped up and bobbed a quick bow. I smiled and asked her to please sit down. She sat with her head down and I knew she was waiting for me to ask her the problem. So I said was there anything I could do to help her.

  ‘Oh yes, there is.’ She spoke slowly at first, and then in a babble. As the speed increased, so did the accent, until it was difficult to understand most of what she was saying, indeed some parts of the monologue lapsed into Tagalog and I did not understand a word.

  But slowly and surely the shiny glass of my crystal world cracked and shattered into a thousand pieces. The room became hazy around th
e edges as if I were looking through a hole in heavy fog. And this feeble girl who had just destroyed my life, kept saying, ‘I don’t know what to do, what do I do?’

  So complete was the shock I was not capable of speech or movement. Eventually one of the maids came in and led her away. Still I sat. At different times during the next hour I was approached, I could hear and see people, but I just couldn’t or didn’t want to move. It was as if I was watching someone else and I couldn’t tell her what to say or how to move.

  The maids became worried and called the office. Charles was home in a flash. He knew what was wrong and he was, as later proven many times, as guilty as hell. He also knew how much I loved him, and how much control and influence he had over me.

  My eyes wouldn’t move even for him. He led me to our room, sat me on the bed and disappeared, then reappeared with a glass.

  ‘Here take this, big gulp.’ I did. It was straight cognac. That snapped me out of my trance. My eyes focused on Charles and the look made him gasp and step back a pace.

  ‘Now, Darling, I can explain,’ in his smoothest tone.

  ‘Don’t bother, I’m leaving you.’ I was very calm. I couldn’t believe I was so calm, not that I had ever given any thought to how I would act when I told my husband I was leaving him. I loved him completely. I had trusted him with my soul, my heart, my life. That was how much I loved him and I thought he loved me the same. I realised later in our marriage just how miserably wrong I was.

  ‘You can’t leave me just because I slept with her once,’ he said in surprised tones.

  My calm exploded into uncontrolled rage.

  ‘You only slept with her once!’ I screamed. ‘Well you must have a double. Maybe he’s the one who slept with her the other times. Maybe he’s the father of the child she’s carrying.’ By this time I was screeching and my voice failed.

  That was the only fact of the whole sordid story he didn’t know. When she knew she was pregnant, she came to me.

  The car was packed with suitcases and the children were waiting in it to go to the airport. I stood at the top of the winding staircase with Charles.

  ‘Well, I’ll call you when I reach Sydney,’ I said listlessly. Apart from the cognac outburst I had spent the last few days in a trance. My heart had really broken, and every time I looked at Charles it cracked again. I was so unhappy I didn’t know what I was going to do. If I hadn’t had the children I’m quite sure I would have ended my life. I wouldn’t now, but then, so young and so in love . . . I had to get away, not see him.

  I started slowly down the stairs, trying to recover from the ‘perfectly staged kiss’ which Charles had just given me. It had me crying inside, but I was not going to let him know that. I made it half way down the stairs. He said my name softly. Every fibre in my body knew I should leave this man, get as far away from him as possible, yet every fibre in my body wanted to stay.

  There are major turning points in everyone’s life and this was one in mine. Even to this day I have no idea if I made the right decision. You can philosophise forever and still not reach a solution. But my choice was not that straightforward, because when I turned to him, he was standing with a gun to his head.

  He said, very quietly, ‘When your foot touches the bottom step, I pull the trigger.’ I was young, very much in love and stupid enough to believe him. When he tried that routine on me about eighteen years later, I walked out of the room and quietly closed the door, quite confident no shot would ring out.

  A few months after the great winding staircase scene, I went to the office. I noticed a new switchboard operator. I asked Charles’s secretary about the girl and she said she had gone back to her home town on one of the southern islands.

  There were more unpleasant surprises in store. Our ships became caught up in a variety of waterfront strikes. Charles had to get the ships in and out of various ports just ahead of, or in between, the strikes. Our luck held out for quite a while as the strikes settled, but we were not to come through completely untouched. In fact, we were not to come through at all. At the very end, when everyone thought the problems were over, California waterfront started their own strike. Two of our ships were in San Francisco harbour, and there they stayed for many, many months.

  It was a long drawn out affair, going broke. Charles would not give up. However, slowly but surely, his ships one by one ground to a halt. After living in luxury for six years, we were now broke.

  Given the changes that were then taking place at such a rapid pace in the Philippines, Charles decided it was not favourable to start again. So he said we would move to our cattle station and live close to nature for a while. He didn’t mention how close.

  ‘What cattle station?’

  ‘Don’t you remember? The one I described to you on our first date.’

  ‘Oh that one?’ Still none the wiser. ‘When did you buy that?’

  ‘About four years ago.’

  I wasn’t too upset about the prospect of living on a station. My uncle owned sheep stations near Canberra and he lived very comfortably. How wrong could I be? The Northern Territory was one hundred years behind the southern stations, and that was being conservative. I should have smelt a rat when Charles avoided all questions about the place. He just kept saying that he wanted me to judge for myself. Of course the real reason was that, if he had told me what I would find on our station, I would never have gone.

  CHAPTER 8

  1965-1966

  I flew to Sydney with the children while Charles went straight to the station. The children and I stayed in Sydney for about a month and had a very enjoyable time visiting all the family and seeing old friends again.

  Mum had only seen her grandchildren on two visits to Manila, so there was a certain amount of adjustment on both sides. The children had had a full time yah-yah (amah) since birth. Bonnie was only two and a half so the shock wasn’t as bad for her as for her sister. At four and a half, Marlee had her world and her yah-yah nicely organised.

  We arrived home from the airport and Mum and I were enjoying a cup of tea. Marlee, with Bon in close tow, was investigating the house. After a few minutes, she returned and asked, ‘Mummy, where is my yah-yah? I need her.’

  ‘Nanny doesn’t have a yah-yah, Darling.’

  ‘What do I do? Who will dress me?’

  ‘Well, you will have to dress yourself.’

  She walked slowly to her room digesting this sobering thought. She reappeared a few minutes later with the play clothes she wished to wear in her arms and a bright smile on her face. She walked up to her grandmother and said, ‘Nanny, I have decided to let you be my yah-yah.’

  Mum tried very hard not to laugh, and thanked her profoundly, but declined the generous offer. Marlee was confused. She didn’t even consider approaching me. In her mind, I checked her appearance when she was ready, I never dressed her. She stood there, very unsure of what to do next.

  I said, ‘I’ll dress you, Darling,’ and walked her to the bedroom. She was very relieved.

  A few nights later I had a dinner engagement and Mum looked after the girls for the evening. I gave them an early dinner and bath and they helped me dress them in their pyjamas. They settled down to TV with Nanny and Poppa and promised they would be good girls and go to bed on time. Nanny said she would read them the required fairytales. The next morning Mum told me this amusing story.

  Mum read the required stories and tucked them in and kissed them goodnight, but Marlee soon set her straight.

  ‘But Nanny, Mummy always sings us a lullaby.’

  This was no problem for Mum. She was a trained soprano while I wasn’t anything and sang way down in my boots, just holding a tune. We were moons apart. Mum launched into song.

  When Mum finished singing the lullaby, Marlee, in all the innocence of a four-and-a-half-year-old, said, ‘Oh Nanny, that was awful, can’t you sing like Mummy?’

  Mum said maybe she could try, but Marlee said, ‘That’s alright Nan, you go and rest, we’ll get to sleep some
how.’ Mum kept a very straight face and kissed them both and said goodnight.

  After I had brought the family up to date on the madcap happenings of my life, and let the girls meet all their uncles, aunts and cousins, we departed for Darwin and the furthest point west. The station was two hundred miles southwest of Darwin by air, and a staggering five hundred by road, if you could call it a road. Our nearest neighbours were about one hundred miles away.

  Charles met us in Darwin and informed me that the plan was that he would go in by road with a few necessary living requirements, and the children and I would fly in with the mail plane. At that time, the mail plane was a DC-3 en route to Perth via half the stations in the north. As we approached the landing strip on our station, the pilot asked me if I would like to see the valley—he thought it was one of the prettiest valleys he had seen. I sat there and surveyed my new home, all one million acres of it. He was right, it was indeed a beautiful valley.

  The plane landed on the gravel strip, the crew and passengers waved goodbye and the plane took off. There I stood with two little girls, dressed in a white linen coat with white Garbo hat and white gloves, in the middle of nowhere. The two little girls and I should have been standing in a nice garden down south. Instead, as far as the eye could see was dust and dried landscape with heat shimmers. We had arrived in the dry season.

  After the dust from the takeoff had settled, I looked around. About five hundred yards away stood a tin shed.

  ‘I’m hot, Mummy!’

  ‘Yes, Darling, I know. We’ll go and sit in that shed over there and wait for Daddy.’

  Taking the children by the hand, I started to crunch my way through the bulldust, which was ankle deep and engulfed you in a brown cloud every time you put your foot down. I’m sure it is very similar to walking on the moon.

  I cleared a spot among the empty rum bottles and beer cans, sat the children on a suitcase each, and started to investigate the tin shed. It consisted of a large area in the middle with a roof and a back wall. On each end of this open section were rooms, like two little boxes. A continuation of these two rooms on one end formed a breeze-way kitchen, only two walls, and a breeze-way laundry, and on the other a bathroom and toilet. It was all tin and steel and cement and very, very ugly. But it was fairly new and well built, not the usual bush affair or lean-to.