A History of Silence

by Lloyd Jones

  The moment she names my mother’s father, a threshold is crossed. There is a wait to see how the cards have fallen—badly for Maud, as it turns out, because at Nash’s insistence she writes O.T. a letter, that is, she takes down what Nash dictates: a demand for money.

  Maud told the court that Nash made her blackmail O.T. and his family:

  One suggestion was to expose him to the neighbourhood where he lived, which, incidentally would have meant exposing her [Mrs Evans]. Eventually he came to the conclusion that the best revenge would be to extort money from the man and eventually at his dictation and under coercion I wrote for £70 to have the child adopted.

  The letter Maud wrote to O.T. in August 1917 isn’t in the file. So there is no way of knowing how Nash made her frame the request, although Maud did call it ‘revengeful blackmail’. O.T. replies immediately, anxious to contain the situation.

  Dear Maude [sic]

  I just received your letter today as I have been away, and it knocked the life completely out of me. I am absolutely astonished by the tone in it. Whatever has gone wrong that you are so despondent. You told me you were getting married and your husband was adopting the child so I cannot understand what is the matter. If you write at once you can send it to me direct as I am at home alone. I am quite willing to do whatever I can for both you and the little one. Tell me what is wrong and what you want, and I will do it at once if I possibly can. But do please spare my poor old father and mother if you can. I don’t care what I suffer as I know I have sinned, but for God’s sake don’t do anything desperate. Send at once direct.

  Maud replies:

  Dear Mr Evans,

  I can go no longer with Betty living in the same house, so that to get her adopted to someone who would love her and bring her up nicely as well as give her a name is the only way I can get happiness for her…

  Nash later writes separately to O.T. enclosing a receipt for the money received. He writes with a pseudonym. He signs his letters H. Manley.

  In the summer of 1917 the attacks on Harry Nash—which the court will hear about and the newspapers will leap on with glee—resume.

  Nash is cutting the hedge. Maud is watching him from the porch. There is nothing wrong with the hedge, but Nash is cutting it all the same. He is imposing his will on the hedge. As usual he wants the world to conform to his desire, his needs. He does not care about anyone else. He makes the cutting of the hedge appear so reasonable. He would cut off the head of the little girl if he had his way; he would move methodically along the row and cut off her head without a second thought, mindful of process and appearance, mindful of himself and all that he might represent in the eyes of others.

  There is something unacceptable about Nash, something so revoltingly present in the man that she cannot abide it any more. It is hard to say whether it is located in any one thing, although his breeches annoy, and the stuffy way he stands in his boots, and his sanctimonious air with the hedge-clippers. She gets up from the porch, almost without a thought other than her revulsion for all that Nash stands for, and it is suddenly necessary to do something to prevent him reaching that place along the hedge where he will harm her daughter with his thoughtless clipping. Something has to be done. And so Maud brings her foot back and kicks Nash in the crotch.

  But did the incident actually occur? Nash says that injuries he sustained from Maud’s attack put him in bed for a week and that the doctor was called for. The doctor remembers attending Nash, but not at that time, and not for a kick to the crotch, but for a side strain.

  If it did happen, then for a split-second Maud must have felt that some justice had been restored. It is hardly a legal argument. It is an emotional one, but this is the nature of her war with Nash.

  Maud removes the photographs of Nash’s children and his late wife from their frames, presumably to make Nash understand what he is demanding of her, and to provoke him to imagine himself into that space. And to know that if he is abusive to her little girl she will be the same towards his children. And if he dares her into violence, as slight as she is, she won’t disappoint.

  O.T. has sent more money, as per request, but only after a second terse note instructing him how much and what the money is for. Life has become intolerable and Betty cannot continue to live in Nash’s household. The money is to pay for Betty to be separated from her mother.

  Maud writes, ‘Fifty or sixty pounds should do it.’ In 1917, fifty or sixty pounds was the average household’s rent and food for a year.

  O.T.’s money duly arrives—much of it handed to a solicitor who makes the arrangements for my mother to pass out of Maud’s world. But in the course of managing the transaction the solicitor dies and, Maud told the court, rather than put herself through the ordeal with a new solicitor, she decided to adopt my mother ‘through friends’. She does say ‘through’ rather than ‘to’.

  Dr Robertson who treated Maud around this time described her in a note tendered to the court as:

  …a physical and mental wreck. She was very depressed. She gave the impression of something worrying her mind. She was not a strong woman. There was no evidence of insanity. She was in almost an hysterical condition. I attended her for an acute abscess under the chin, and had to give her a general anaesthetic because of her nervous condition. I considered her condition was due to some mental strain behind it all…I had a conversation with the nurse who merely indicated family trouble.

  Another practitioner, Dr Couzens, recalled treating Maud for ‘nervous depression’.

  One of my mother’s earliest memories, according to my sister Pat, is driving in Nash’s car. It would have been a treat, watching the spray fly off the rocks around the south coast, never guessing that the two people sitting in the front have already plotted another future for her.

  The trips in the car turn out to coincide with a brief period when Maud and Nash separate. Maud is six months pregnant with Ken, Nash’s second child. But something is afoot. There is a change in Nash. He is accommodating and generous. He pays the rent on a cottage for Maud in Seatoun, a beachside suburb in the city’s east and provides her with a weekly income. During this sunny period he builds a house at Rona Bay, across the harbour in Eastbourne. At the weekend he turns up to Seatoun bearing gifts—flowers, chocolates. He has in mind a fresh start, one without Betty. Maud, too, has come round. She has already been through the mill as a fallen woman with an illegitimate child. She is no doubt reluctant to strike out on her own with two—and soon three—small children in tow. And since she is about to sacrifice my mother—and herself—to the greater good, she will stick it out. She will try again.

  Several months of grace pass and she moves back in with Harry Nash, this time to the Rona Bay cottage to make a fresh start without the provocative presence of my mother, or the shadow of the child’s father that was such a torment to Nash.

  Perhaps the damage was already done. In Rona Bay, Maud’s grief takes a new turn. She is erratic, irrational. Very likely she is suffering from depression. The old wound festers—there’s a return to the tit for tat of the bad old days in Newtown. Possibly it is as straightforward as this: if she cannot be a mother to Betty then she will not be a mother to Nash’s children.

  She punches Nash’s twelve-year-old daughter Marjorie, blackening her eye. The child is forced to move in with friends until boarding school resumes. She throws Nash’s son William out of the house into a concrete wall. She smashes another window with a bowl of porridge after an announcement from Nash that he is taking Marjorie away to live elsewhere ‘in consequent of her violence’. She throws an iron at Nash who happens to be holding one of the babies; she hurls a music stand at him, she chases him out of the house with a poker, and so on. On the day of the baby’s christening she puts a hose down William’s back. On Christmas Day she throws a breadboard at Nash and it hits a glass door, smashing it. She then launches at him with a bread knife. The following Easter, on Good Friday 1919 (by which time my mother has been adopted) she attacks William with
a lump of wood, driving the boy from the house. She rushes Nash with a carving knife. She chucks pots at him. She beats Marjorie with a copper stick. Marjorie tells of one occasion when Maud entered her room at 2 a.m. and demanded she come out of the house with her. There, after threatening to kill her, Nash, and the babies, Maud broke down and begged Marjorie to get the police. On it goes.

  Maud denies most of these charges. Of the attack on the boy she tells the court, ‘he just fell over’. And of the broken window—it happened inadvertently while she was ‘trying to talk to Nash’ and somehow the clothes brush flew into the glass…

  And yet, tellingly, in one incident after another—in Manley Terrace and in Rona Bay—when the neighbours intervene it is Maud they take in.

  There is also plenty of evidence of violence that for some reason didn’t trouble the jury. Dr Couzens tells of finding

  a mark on Maud’s forehead, marks of a kick to the left knee, and bruises on her arms, legs and body as though she had been hit and kicked by some person. She told me at the time that her husband had assaulted her and was responsible for her being in that condition.

  Testimony from neighbours in Rona Bay recount Maud ‘crying and trembling and her blouse torn’, and seeing Mr Nash man-handling her and pushing her around.

  Nash tries to have Maud committed, but after examining her, a doctor in Rona Bay declares there is nothing wrong with her sanity.

  Undeterred, Nash urged a builder to come to the house to look at his wife. Sam Fisher thought she must be sick or had had an accident. He told the court Nash acted like a lunatic, rushing ahead of him and urging him on. After Nash disappeared inside, presumably to haul out the mad woman, Maud appeared at the door holding a carving knife. She said to the builder, ‘Look Mr Fisher, this is the one who threatened us with an axe and held it over us since five this morning.’ Nash, according to Mr Fisher, did not deny Maud’s statement but continued to argue the case of her sanity. ‘Look she is a lunatic,’ he said. ‘She is raving mad.’

  ‘I am just as sane as you, Mr Fisher,’ replied Maud, ‘aren’t I?’ I said, ‘Well, if you are, go and lay down that knife.’ She did so immediately. Then Mrs Nash turned to one of the boys and said, ‘He’s been thrashing and knocking us about all morning.’ The boy said, ‘Yes, he has.’ Nash made an effort to strike him, but the boy got away from him. Just then Mr Downs jumped the fence and Nash was saying all the time ‘how mad she was.’ I said, ‘Oh, I think it is you who is mad.’

  What a relief to turn to the farmer’s letters, which are civil and generous.

  Of course, they are written by a man standing before a window fully aware of the destructive power of the woman outside clutching a stone in her hand. If the letters are civil, they are even more careful not to cause offence. O.T. writes to Nash, aka Mr Manley:

  …I must apologise to you for addressing your wife by her Christian name, but believe me it was the tone of her letter that made me think she was in dire trouble, and I did not want to shelve the money part, but only wanted to know what really was the matter. I only wish she had explained in her letter and I would have been spared the misfortune of hurting her feelings or yours. I honestly did not want to hurt in any way, and was very thankful to her writing in the way she did. I have worried a lot since I last saw her, but, out of respect for you as her husband and herself, I did not write to her to know if she had got the child adopted. Owing to my father having lost nearly all his money and having given him all spare cash, it is a bit difficult for me to get all I would like to send at the present moment, but if it will help your wife in a small degree I will send £50 next week and another £50 before the end of the year. I will not forget the child later on and will do something for her when she gets older if it is in my power. I would esteem it a favour if Mrs Nash would reply to this, or just put a few words in to show that you are in harmony in the matter. I still have a great deal of respect for Mrs Nash and will always do my best to help her if she should be at any future time without a breadwinner. Kindly let me know if this arrangement will suit you, and I will forward the money early next week, and the second lot as soon as possible, but not later than the end of the year. In reading Mrs Nash’s letter I really thought that she wanted to have the child adopted by strangers and will be thankful if it is the arrangement you are proceeding with. Please let me know what the child’s full name will be. I promise that I will not forget to help her if it is in my power in eight or ten years. If you can reply to this so that it will come by Thursday’s boat please reply direct to me. In concluding I must thank you both, especially Mrs Nash, for the kindness you have shown me. If there is anything in this letter that causes pain I assure you it is quite unintentional. Yours truly,

  Owen T. Evans

  PS. Please do not write if you cannot send it by Thursday night’s boat.

  O.T.E.

  In court, it has come down to Maud’s word against Harry Nash’s. On that score she doesn’t stand much of a chance. She is a fallen woman. She reeks of opportunism. She didn’t marry Nash because she loved him—a black mark—and sacrificing herself in order to give her daughter a name is not like rescuing a saint from the flames. The word of such a person cannot be held in the same esteem as that of a successful man, generous, perhaps overly generous. It would be hard to believe the jealousy that Maud claims has curdled inside him or her testimony that he is ‘a man of very violent temper which he could not control’. It is not easy to believe that he spat in Betty’s food and often hit her, or that he threatened to expose the father of the child, or that their frequent changes of address were due to Nash not wanting to remain in neighbourhoods where people knew of his treatment of her.

  Ethel Hargrave, who was also paid to look after the children, told the court that ‘Mrs Nash was very kind and good to the children. We planned Marjorie’s clothes. I never saw her unkind. Marjorie was rather unmanageable and not too truthful.’

  Even the assurances of another one-time housekeeper, Mrs Ashworth, apparently lacked sufficient persuasion:

  I had the child, Betty, under my care all the time I was there and no one could have wished for a cleaner child. She gave no trouble. In fact, everyone loved her. She would not go near Nash. I often used to wonder if he had been cruel to her. She would make friends with everyone but Nash.

  The court has a deaf ear by the time Maud is invited to explain herself:

  About two years after marriage Nash was so cruel to the child, and made me so miserable about the matter, and so ill that under the coercion of Nash I wrote a letter to Mr Evans asking for money to have the child adopted…I kept Betty as long as I could but had to have her adopted as there was no hope…About a month after I came back from Seatoun I had taken Betty to friends to adopt her, and I did not want him to know where she was. He returned from Auckland (on business) and instigated Willie to kick me. I sent Marjorie for the constable. Marjorie’s statement is not true. He was so violent to me, and Marjorie willingly went, and as usual I was blamed. It was allusions to Betty’s father. Nash told people I was mad. Nash hated Betty and me. I have not seen her since the day of her adoption or heard from her adopting parents.

  And here is the bit that I wished my mother could have read or heard for herself: ‘I only did this as last resort as I loved the child…and wanted to keep it and give it a name and bring it up as one of Nash’s family as he had promised before marriage.’

  Betty nee Seaward turns into Joyce Lillian Fairley. She will live in Island Bay and, later, Petone, where James Fairley had his stationery- and bookshop. Mr Fairley, who my siblings grew up calling Grandad, was, I’m told, a kind and gentle man. The 1918 electoral roll describes him as a ‘torpedo man’, living at the Shelly Bay naval base with his wife Edith. My sister Pat said he took his own horse off to the Boer War and that on his return he ran a horse-and-cart milk delivery in Island Bay. She remembers his wife, Nana, had an enormous bust, and wore a dress that dropped off the edge of her like a curtain. She liked to play croquet. I imag
ine they led full lives, but these are the scraps that survive. All I ever knew of Mr Fairley was what was inside that mahogany box containing the past, which my mother had said was difficult to open. I understand he knew nothing of what happened at home when he was at the bookshop, when my mother was tied to a chair and thrashed for her failure to be what the bookseller’s wife wanted more than anything, a quick replacement for her own dead children.

  In October 1917 the Fairleys lose their daughter, Isabella Margaret, and in April the following year seven-year-old John Fergus ‘Jackie’. Later that year, the Fairleys adopt Mum, and name her Joyce Lillian.

  She never liked that middle name Lillian. She would smirk whenever asked to supply it on official forms. But Mum embodied the characteristics expected of someone called Joyce. Wore dresses that Joyce would—unflattering dresses—then, after her change of fortune, she dressed more stylishly, and Joyce the bag lady was superseded by Joyce the clothes horse.

  The house Mum was sent to turns out to be an old rustic timber cottage. Eden Street lies one kilometre up from Island Bay on the edge of Cook Strait. I found the Fairleys’ house in a row of wooden houses below the crest of an east-facing hill one December afternoon when fog rolling off the strait had closed the airport and sat in drifts over the hills. A hammer banged away in the unseen distance. The odd car groaned up the steep part of Eden Street from the sea end.

  Eight houses along from the Fairleys, the street disappears down a hill. Beyond the nearest neighbour in the other direction the road vanishes. It is an odd piece of landscape, a large sky-basking arena with bits and pieces of hilltop and hillside that sit as if suspended and apart from one another.

  When my mother arrived there, Eden Street was the outer boundary of the suburbanisation that had crept up the hill from the Parade. Cattle grazed on the slopes above and on the naked hills across the valley.