Well, she did for a little while but my mother was one of
those very independent women. She was a Victorian.
She had never worked a day
in her life. Didn’t know very much about the world. "I am going to
work". And she went to work. She got some little job in an office. We
never had much money but I seemed to have had a lot of fun in my life. I had
two older sisters and two brothers. One brother was about my age but the
following year after my father died my mother had to put in him in boarding
school. In India you didn’t keep children in day schools for too long, so she
sent him to boarding school and he was there a month when he fell down 60 feet
onto marble flooring. That was it. My mother went around after that like a
zombie.
I went to a boarding school but it was a Convent because mum
got help towards the fees. She couldn’t afford it really and I was only Church
of England in a Catholic school. The nuns were quite fond of me but at the same
time they’d keep on saying, "Dorothy, we can see your place in hell."
but otherwise the teaching was fine.
We had our own gang of friends. There were three Church of
Englands, three Roman Catholics and my mother would come up, maybe once a
month, and she’d bring home cooked food which is absolutely wonderful in a
boarding school. I remember one day, it was the first Friday of the lent - a
great day in the Catholic Church. My mother came and left all this great stuff
for us. It was beautiful - meat in potato and deep-fried. Three girls came
along and lifted the desk, "Oh, I hope school finishes soon.” The Catholics were worrying, "What is
going on there". “Nothing". “Oh, no, no, your mother’s been today so
we know”. I said, "I’m sorry to say you can’t eat meat". Their faces
dropped "You can’t eat meat on Friday - it’s lent”. The girls had a little
powwow amongst themselves and they came back. "We’re going to eat. So what
are you going to do?” We always shared
everything! They had arranged to get the bishop where they went to church and
confess their sins to him so they told us.
I remember this woman, one of the teachers she was a
terrific Catholic, she would never ever break a rule - she saw us all sitting
and eating. "Hope you girls are not eating meat.” "No miss" But
later on, I don’t know how it came out, but the headmistress, she was a nun,
sent for me and said "Dorothy I’m very surprised that you enticed my
Catholic girls to eat meat. "I beg your pardon, sister, they begged to eat
it.” I told her the whole story and she was shocked. I don’t know how old we
were maybe 11 or 12.
I had taken my training as a teacher and then I found that
it wasn’t a very good salary and so I decided to become a telephonist. When I
told my mother. she hit the roof. "What, telephone operating from a school
teacher - you’re going to become a telephonist?" Because in India you had
specialised jobs. If they lost their
respect for you, well God help you.
I met my husband who was an engineer on the railway. The
most quiet man you could ever hope to meet. He was never going to get married.
But of course I charmed him. We knew each other about 18 months but I had known
of him before that because he was a friend of my brothers. We got friendly and
that led to something else and to something else and we got married. We were
married for 52 years and we had only two kids. Couldn’t afford to have more, I
would have liked more.
India got independence and that was it. My husband was a
Scotsman, he was born in Scotland, and I said to him that he would never work
under these people - all the young Indians that were going through colleges and
all coming out with MA’s and BA’s and all the rest of it and didn’t know a damn
thing about mechanical engineering or anything. They would come to my husband
and ask to be shown this and that. My husband said, "We are going back to
England, not Scotland. Scotland’s got no jobs, we’ll go back to England".
And so that’s where we went.
I was teaching
there and then got
browned off because they didn’t want me to correct the work and things like
that. So I said "Keep your job, I’m going.” and went back to being a
telephonist.
It did stand me in good stead, even the teaching. I was
trained and I left it, I went back to it when my kids were old enough to attend
school and I used to take them to the school bus. I carried on in the 60’s in
England where I was teaching, then as a Telephonist. So having two professions
really helped me.
I came to Australia to visit to see my other daughter. I
love Australia and you have such a different life to England but I was happy to
go back. My husband didn’t come with me on my trips out so he wanted to come
here. I said if we go, we go for good. So we sold our house and all the rest of
it. We lived with my daughter for six months. I could not stand the children at
that age, all that loud music. We had led a very quiet life because both girls
were married and gone. We left and we went and stayed in a flat in East Perth
and then my husband died. I didn’t want to stay on but I stayed for a year, not
much longer. The daughter in England said she had offered her father and me a
house or anything else I wanted before, but her dad wouldn’t take it. And she
said now what about me. So she bought me a flat.
