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In 1930s Auburn
Pittard’s
Produce Store
sold coal
and groceries
and offered
homemade scones
in the afternoons
to perk up the working man
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My great aunt Armandine
was serving
at the counter
when a
larrikin sign writer
named
Aubrey Paul
dropped by
and seduced
her
over the
strawberry jam
Armandine
and her parents
grew
flowers and veggies
on the double
block
surrounding
their Victorian house
and kept a
pony and trap
for
deliveries.
Aubrey and
Armandine
lied to Maud
and Fred
that they
were wed.
Aubrey and
his elegant sideboard
moved in
The
Pittards gathered
and gave
them a nuptial party
and all was
bliss
until a
woman knocked on the door
one day
insisting
her husband come home.
Maud threw
Aubrey
and his
sideboard out.
A few
months later
on the
coldest Sydney morning ever
Beryl was
born
and given
Maud as her middle name
in
appreciation
Maud senior
set herself as gate keeper
to keep
both Armandine and Beryl
safe from the
pernicious adulterer
who didn’t dare
darken their doorstep again
As she grew
Beryl
gleaned a few
scant facts
about her
father
by
eavesdropping
on family
exchanges
it seemed she
had his height and thick wavy hair
During the week
to be near
her work
in Sydney’s
rag trade
Armandine
boarded out
leaving Beryl
to Maud’s offices
Maud kept her
close
chiding her
for exuberance,
and more
than once
resorting
to the strap
Fred indulged
her though
and Beryl adored
him
treasuring and
keeping
his
drawings even
his plan
for a
chicken brooder
all her life.
Beryl
wondered later
if the neighbours
knew and judged
her origins
like her
nasty Auntie Joyce
who dubbed
her ‘Illegitimate Beryl’
as if it
were
a latinate
name.
She was a
lonely child
her nearest
namesake friend
went off to
a different school
and Beryl made
four chimneys
she could
see from her window
into fantasy
playmates
she called Semy, Commy, Kivey and Co
When she was thirteen
her uncle
Clarrie bought her a bicycle
and her
world expanded
She was
allowed to
catch the
train to town
to meet her
mother
after work
to see a show
Once
walking from the station
she didn’t recognise
Armandine
and
pondered who this woman was
sporting a
perm and set
whose dress
fabric seemed familiar
talking to
a tall man with wavy hair.
Living in
Narrabeen
with Fred
and Maud
city schools
were deemed too far away
and Beryl was
sent to Manly Domestic High
her
academic gifts sequestered
for now
She left at
fifteen
to bring a
few pounds to the family coffers
working at
a belt and buckle factory
which she
hated.
Later she
became a machinist
making
children’s clothes
for
fashionable Marjory Daw
‘before all
children’s clothes were made in Asia’
as she once
said in an email to me
By age
eighteen Beryl had lost
Fred and
Maud and Armandine
and lived
with feckless bicycle buyer
Uncle Clarrie
but he had married
Josephine
his second
of four brides
who used
green Estapol
on the
Pittard heirloom clock
and made
Beryl feel unwelcome
so she took
a room in a city boarding house,
forming
friendships and sharing interests
with fellow
boarders.
On a
bushwalk she met and liked
George and
Alan Whatson
especially
George
They
married in 1957
at St Thomas’s,
Enfield
Funds were
short and kind neighbours
furnished
the cake and wedding breakfast.
George and
Beryl moved to Glenbrook
in the
Mountains
Beryl had
to quit work
to adopt
their three kids
so turned
her sewing skills
to
outfitting her girls and boy
and her
energies to
being an
attentive parent.
Taking her
eldest
to a youth
camp in the 70s
she heard
the name ‘Pittard’
and got to
know my Mum
her
cousin’s wife
as it
turned out.
Beryl applied
her brain
and tenacity
to family
research
and
discovered
Swiss
forebears
with
engineering prowess
a damp and
dingy
Lambeth
address
measles
aboard an immigrant ship
more single
motherhood
and
seamstress skills
a forger in
the ranks
and
acquired gentility
that denied
much of the above.
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When our
paths crossed
in 2015
seeking grandfather
Fred’s
first
drowned love
and adding
more flesh
to Aubrey
Paul’s bones
became our
holy grails.
Beryl had
photographs
of a woman
in white
resting her
hand on Fred’s shoulder
and of the
sailing boat
he
purportedly sold
after her
death.
We traded
reports
of Aubrey’s
early
criminal
capers
and surmised
who the
mystery fiancée
might have
been.
We stitched
together
Aubrey
Paul’s story,
mugshot and
all,
but Fred’s
first love
eluded our grasp.
Our last
meeting was
in a
nursing home
in
Cooranbong
in COVID
days
I shared my
latest find
a
transcript of another errant ancestor's
sympathy-seeking
confession
Beryl
showed mild interest
but her
mind was on the indignities
of respite
care
and the
fate of her papers
of great
significance to her
but of little
to her adopted children
she
thought.
Her funeral
was last month.
The sun shone
on neat lawns
and shiny
cars
and her
heavily pregnant granddaughter
read Mary
Frye’s
Do not stand at my grave and weep
though we
did.
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I was and
am the vessel
of your
blood
and
memories,
Beryl
Your eighty
nine years and
four
generations
leave their
traces
in your
papers,
in my
computer files
and on this
page.
