by Peter Wells
BUT NOW THERE IS A break in the letter, which up to this point has been typed. Had she been writing at lunchtime in the office?
She had a secretarial position at a grocery and dry goods importer, Hutchinsons Wholesale, near Auckland’s railway station. During a time of wartime shortages, when New Zealand was cut off from British imports, this was an advantageous place to work. It was a desk job, meaning she could not be manpowered into a factory or a farm, expected to dig up turnips or milk cows at dawn. It also gave her access to food that was strictly rationed.
She was a woman used to getting what she wanted. Before her marriage, she had been a receptionist at the Masonic Hotel, Napier’s one luxury hotel. There too she had an advantageous position, not working in the winter months and taking time off to play tennis and golf. She was the daughter of well-to-do parents in a small town and she had high expectations about how her life would roll out.
Bess, according to her two elder sisters, was ‘spoilt’. She was the youngest in the family, and the ‘pet’ — hence her nickname ‘Chick’ or ‘Chicken’. She had been sent to a private school, Solway College, after the earthquake, unlike her sisters who attended state schools. Unusually for the time, she also had five years of secondary education. She had a sense of entitlement about who she was and what she expected of life. ‘I could do no wrong,’ she told me recently, a hundred-year-old looking back almost gloatingly at a younger self. She was good-looking, with a lively sense of humour, and used to the attentions of men. As a young girl and teenager she had been the favourite of a childless couple, the Burtenshaws, who lived next door to her parents in Lawrence Road. Bess became their goddaughter. At fourteen she had learnt to drive the Chrysler car that ‘Mr Bertie’ (Mr Burtenshaw) owned as a commercial traveller for Campbell & Ehrenfried. She received gifts from the Burtenshaws and at times travelled with Mr Burtenshaw to luxury hotels like the Chateau. Today we would look askance at the relationship of a man in his forties with a girl on the verge of being a young woman. In the 1930s, people were less suspicious or perhaps more contained by an expectation of codes of behaviour. But I do not know if this was not part of my mother ‘being spoiled’, with all this implies about an uncertain moral compass.
These thoughts are my own creation of a possible past for Bess, but they could well be wrong. Marguerite Duras, the French novelist, has commented: ‘In existence, I think one’s mother is, generally speaking, the strangest, most unpredictable and elusive person one meets.’4 What strikes me now is that Bess made her own decision about shaping her life during the war. She had not gone home to Napier when her husband went overseas, as her parents expected. (There is a letter from Jean, her eldest sister, written after the Japanese bombing of Darwin, which says Bess should abandon Auckland, bury anything valuable in the garden and go to family friends who had a farm in Taranaki. ‘It’s no good getting panicky,’ Jean wrote, ‘as I feel if the Japs ever get to New Zealand we will have lost the war.’)
But Bess stayed in Auckland and got a flatmate who happened to be a glamorous blonde woman separated from her husband, a golf professional. This flatmate had some of the recherché lustre of a Wallis Simpson: she was a mistress of Tibor Donner, a modernist Czech architect working in Auckland as a wartime exile. He was a married man. Times of war are notoriously complex morally. The fixed nature of society tends to come unstuck under the duress of separation and the anxiety of impending death. People grab at life with both hands. This was the morally neutral world Bess came to live in while her husband was away overseas. In escaping her small-town background she had also escaped the opprobrium of small-town eyes. Possibly for the very first time in her life she felt free.
Her flat was at the end of the tramline in the seaside suburb of Point Chevalier. She lived in a mini-estate created in the 1920s by a rumoured black marketeer who had made a fast fortune as a plasterer in the rebuild of Napier after 1931. In Point Chevalier he created a Shangri-La of sorts, building a plaster Art Deco mansion with its own private cinema, tennis courts and boat shed by the water’s edge. It had a certain film noir character to it, morally hazy, at once smart, slightly cheap and rather loose.
It was in this environment that Bess met an American who became her lover. She was pretty, seemingly abandoned by a husband who, she later told me, regarded the marriage as a dead end by the time he went off to war. (I never heard my father’s version of this story.) He had apparently told Bess that ‘if he returned’, it would not be to her. But what people say when they go off to war may not be the same when they come back. Perhaps the long wound of war had made my father rethink. Perhaps he thought of his wife more fondly now he no longer saw her. Perhaps he remembered only what he loved. Perhaps he was just looking forward to coming home.
TIME HAS JUMPED FORWARD WHEN Bess takes up the letter again. (Remember it is already a fortnight in which she has received two letters from Gordon. It is now a week later — three weeks since she has written. Is she thinking what to write? How to fill in the empty space when she cannot say what obsesses her? Is she like Emma Bovary who, as she walked home to her husband, mused, ‘What am I going to say? How am I going to begin?’) She mistakes the date, putting in July for 6 August 1945, by which time Gordon is at Lake Trasimene: ‘… [S]ince starting this,’ she writes, ‘I heard from BBC that the 2nd Div was on the eve of departing from the European theatre so I didn’t bother to continue writing but apparently all that meant was a 4 day journey to another part of Italy.’
This is her explanation for the delay, perfectly justifiable in itself. She is also trying to work out exactly where to send the damned letter. But she still has about three-quarters of the aerogramme left, so now she reaches out for the kind of gossip that is essentially filler. At the same time she is unconsciously evoking a morally grey world to which Gordon will be returning. Servicemen have already started coming home: ‘Doug Flett arrived home yesterday — big party at the Commercial last night & a lot of sore heads today. Tom gave me a lift into town this morning — he reckoned they had all tried to get him under the table but he was the last on deck. All so darned silly for I guess Doug Flett is not a bit interested in … that crowd.’5
This is a world I recognise as a child in the immediate post-war period — alcohol being used to tranquillise unquiet spirits, deaden anxieties, steady the nerves. There is no acknowledgement of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), not even of the concept. Instead heavy drinking is presented as ‘hilarious’, a continuation of the ‘high spirits’ of wartime. But already this is starting to come into collision with the expectations of the post-war world (‘all so darned silly’): ‘Doug reckons Jock is on the water now — Nora is going to get a rude awakening I think for she imagines Jock will just stay at home & look after the children while she holidays — parties etc — Jock doesn’t seem to come into her plans at all.’6
Bess then reverts for a moment to a metaphor for anxiety. ‘Old Ruapehu & the other Mts are all erupting quite fiercely — the grey dust has ruined all the snow for skiing I believe. Personally I’d be a bit dicky if I lived within coo-ee for each week seems to see them grow fiercer.’ The grey ash from Mt Ruapehu was soiling the beautiful white snow — snow as white as a wedding dress. To live nearby would be dangerous. ‘Hope we can visit the Franz Joseph.’
Unknown to Bess, Gordon was himself having to get used to rapid change. The 2nd Division was on the point of embarkation. The embrace of army life, with its frustrating rules and regulations, its discipline and orchestrated moments of insanity in which a human was suddenly meant to regard killing as a normal part of everyday life, was at its end. It was unsettling. The ‘next few weeks and months were full of pathos’, the regimental history notes. ‘A great fighting force and the powerful loyalties surrounding it slowly disintegrated, and even the thought of going home could not make this process agreeable.’7 Whatever great body had held these men in its death-like clasp was about to release them back onto civvy street. A great many of them were damaged. Gunner Gordon
L. Wells — 472930 — boarded HMT Strathmore on 5 September 1945 bound for home.
THERE IS LITTLE SENSE THAT Bess was aware of Gordon’s state of mind in her superficial, almost prattling letter. (But then she was essentially talking to herself, nervously making it up as she went along.) And Gordon, typically for his time, would have considered it both unmanly and unbecoming to write to his wife about his fears and uncertainties. Possibly he lacked the language.
The rest of the letter is written in Bess’s competent workaday handwriting. It is easy to read and there is no ambiguity about the meaning of a word. Gordon’s handwriting (very little of which remains) was by contrast gorgeous and elegant. In one way his handwriting was like an inner semaphore of a ghost-being. As a young man he had been stylish, with Brilliantined hair, smart clothes and the body of an athlete. He projected his bachelor status in the peacock shades of his rayon dressing gowns. This was the man Bess had married and who had gone away to war. The man who returned would be different. His medical notes describe him at one point as ‘a walking case’. He returned as one of the many walking wounded.
This is who Bess addresses in this aerogramme. She is feeling out towards someone she no longer knows. Just as she, in her turn, is a changed woman with experiences she has not shared with her husband. (Is that why she kept this missive? It was a moment in time — between what has happened and what would perhaps never come to light? Was it precious in some way, or was it something she instinctively just tucked away in a drawer and, through some species of inertia, forgot about? Did it remind her of an earlier self? A more innocent self? Or a more deceptive self?)
The last flap of an aerogramme is always the most important. By this time you know you are running out of room and you have to cram in whatever is left, as you do a suitcase that is already full. Here Bess raises the question of Gordon’s future employment, an issue that will dog their married life. She asks whether ‘Head Office’ at the English bank for which Gordon worked had asked where he would like to ‘serve’ once he is demobbed: ‘— are you going to pick? Guess you will hate the Bank — I wish we could branch out into something fresh but it’s hard to know just what.’
This was not a small matter, despite the casual way she introduces the subject so late in the letter. Bess came from an upwardly mobile family. Not to upwardly mobilise in your turn was, in a way, to defame a shared religion. It was to ignore a central tenet of your being. It was one of the disappointments of Bess’s life that she married a man who did not produce the upward mobility she needed for her sense of self-worth.
But the issue was deeper than that. Dad’s wartime experiences scoured out of him some earlier being. He had gone off to war a handsome man with some of the lissome qualities of a Cary Grant. The photos of him taken during the war show a prematurely aged man, exhausted, drained, just hanging on as a grunt. He had turned down any chance at promotion, even though it was offered to him. Some sea change had happened to him during the war years. He became a bitter and sarcastic man.
For the meantime, believing him still to be the person she knew before his army experience, Bess wants Gordon to consider another career — but she leaves the reality vacant, as she cannot think what it would be. So this was a juncture, theoretically, at which they could have changed their lives. Bess, in this scenario, is looking to the future positively, if tentatively, accepting they will be together henceforth.
But now she has only a tiny amount of space left. There is still room to abruptly change the tone of the letter and say something personal to him. Like she loves him and misses him. Like she longs to see him and touch him. But she writes, in rather large letters to fill up any remaining space, ‘Cheerio — good sailing — hope you get a chance to at least ring your brothers [in Australia] — Miss Flynn is at Hotel Styne — Manly — Sydney — See you soon, Love Chicken.’
See you soon.
I FIRST FOUND THIS LETTER as a child, foraging in the hall cupboard. My reading of it then differs almost entirely from my understanding of it now.
The hall was decorated for that extremely rare moment when someone knocked at the front door. (If a tradesman like the Rawleigh’s man came, he was always told to go to the back door, where negotiations could take place in private.) The front hall was, to a degree, formal, with an expensive embossed wallpaper, and had presentation objects in it, like the dark carved box that had come from ‘the Far East’, and an imposing clock that ticked out the minutes and chimed away the hours.
Around the corner, away from the evaluating eyes of the visitor, was a tall, thin cupboard with stacked shelves and a closed door. Inside the cupboard (I am tempted to call it a closet) was a compendium of my mother’s past, a small museum of items ranging from never-opened presentation boxes of handkerchiefs, the lids decorated with 1930s maidens dancing along with Art Deco nimbleness, to boxes of photographs and rarely used table linen. Every square inch of the cupboard was wedged with memorabilia. Just like a library it had different levels of rarity and usefulness. The bottom level was given over to items of practical use — like the Electrolux. But as you rose up, you seemed to be climbing a ladder into a mysterious past.
Russell and I came across the aerogramme on the second to top level. We were always sorting out what was hidden in the house, restless as animals roaming a veldt. It was a way of trying to uncover our parents’ past, of trying to get to know these mysterious beings whom biology and history had placed right in front of us, blocking the light. (I think I became an historian and writer on these forays into the backs of drawers and inside musty boxes, lifting up creased bridesmaids’ frocks and carefully packed, elaborately knitted old pullovers. There always seemed a secret ahead of me.)
We had no way of knowing that this aerogramme held such a potent secret. Yet we had, unknowingly, already found other clues — or rather, separate parts of the same puzzle which, if the parts were put side by side, would make up a picture of our mother so diametrically opposed to what our childhood eyes saw that it would have seemed startling, even shocking. To the point of disbelief.
Let me describe one of these clues. It was a studio photograph of a man neither Russell nor I had ever seen. By now we were familiar with the core cast of most of the family photographs. ‘Who’s that?’ and ‘Where is that?’ were staple questions to ask our mother, and it was always a pleasure to perceive the infinite depth of her knowledge of family members, recognition of whom often led to a story or an incident. Just by looking at her face you knew these incidents had a reality that our mundane house, and even we her children, lacked. But this man never had a name.
Russell had managed to feel something behind the tablecloths. Tightly wedged into the shelf was the hard edge of a framed photograph. He triumphantly brought it out, and we looked at it in uncomprehending silence. It came from the 1940s (we did not know that, but intuited it came from the past, as the past was always black and white). The frame was slim, wooden, and had come apart along the left-hand side. The subject, a man, was wearing glasses, and looked to the right. He was not particularly handsome. He did not look like any known relative.
Our mother was on her way from the kitchen to the bedroom when she saw what we were holding.
‘What are you doing with that?’
Before we had time to answer she veered towards us, her hand out.
‘Give it to me.’
She was angry, we could see that. But not only angry. There was some other feeling in her face, trapped there like a slide caught in an automatic projector. She snatched the photo out of Russell’s hands. At the same time, she raised the hem of her apron, and with one tender move wiped it across the glass of the frame, removing the dust. She seemed to sink down a shaft of memory for a moment.
‘Who is it?’
Russell was always bolder than me. I knew it was better to wait, to ask her in a weaker moment, when her guard was down. She held the photo away from us, above our heads, so we could no longer see the man’s face.
‘Never you m
ind,’ she said sharply. ‘It’s none of you kids’ blasted business.’
The use of the word ‘blasted’ indicated her dander was up.
‘Yes, but who is it?’ said Russell
‘Someone I used to know once. That’s all,’ she said.
We watched her put the picture on a higher shelf in the cupboard. We would need a stool to have another closer look at it.
She had her back turned to us as she hid it under further layers of cloth. ‘Just don’t ever show it to your father,’ she said.
She turned and shot Russell a look of exasperation.
‘Why don’t you kids go out and play in the fresh air.’
She shooed us further out of the hall, towards the kitchen.
‘I don’t understand you kids,’ she said. ‘You have a beach down the road to play on, a park, swings. Why do you always want to hang around indoors, fishing inside cupboards? Get outside.’ Then, in a steely voice which meant we had definitely done something wrong, she said, ‘I don’t want to see either of you for a good hour or two.’
That was the last time we ever saw the photograph.
But in time I would discover that our house was littered with objects that had a particular resonance to my mother because they related to past love affairs. If the lover had vanished, at least he had left a small token behind. And just by glancing at this object — a perfume bottle, an aluminium plate from the US canteen — you received the charge of a long-buried secret.
THE TRUTH ABOUT BESS’S AMERICAN lover came to light in a way Tennessee Williams would have approved. It was at my brother’s twenty-first birthday party. The woman who ‘told us the facts’ was a family friend. Her name was Aunty Margaret, no real relation. It was her sister-in-law who had shared Bess’s flat, giving Aunty Margaret a ringside seat to my mother’s life during the war. By the 1960s, Aunty Margaret was an alcoholic. Nobody, of course, said this at the time — many people drank heavily at social occasions. It was simply said she ‘drank too much’.
