Fay Berry’s Story – Chapter 14 – Aunty Connie Candy – my mother’s dear sister

My Dearest Aunty, yesterday I sat at your bedside with my Aunty Ronda Critchley your sister and her daughter Kathy Billings and I looked at your sweet round face as you lay peacefully sleeping there at your home in Forest Ave Blackforest Adelaide. You opened your eyes, dear Aunty, and you looked up at me and you smiled. You tried to speak but no words came.You are 92 years of age, Aunty Connie, you have lived a very long life, a hard life. You have liver cancer now and the prognosis is that you may only have hours or at least days to live. I think you will susrprise us all because you have a strong heart.

 

I have been writing up the history the two branches of our family, Aunty Connie, the Dangerfields and the O’Connors. I have been looking back over a time spanning more than 100 years of history. How do I feel about you, Aunty Connie as I consider your life so soon to come to an end? I have decided to tell your story as much of it as I know so that your essence is not lost to your children and grandchildren.

 

My Aunty Connie was born, 9th October 1919,  in Pinnaroo which is a little country town in the ‘Mallee’ region of South Australia. She was the third child of Maud Williams (Dangerfield) and Richard Pryor Williams.  Life was pretty tough for the Williams family. The great depression covered the land and everyone struggles to make a living. Richard had a milk round and family life revolved around the successful delivery of the milk.   Maud had contracted Tuberculosis and eventually had to live away from home at Kalyra because of her illness. Even before she went to Kalyra she had to live in a separate room built onto the house because of the possibility of other family members contracting the disease.  When Maud died of the Tuberculosis the family was forced to split up. Jean Married Maynard O’Connor, Ronda and her Grandfather Joseph Dangerfield went to live with Joseph’s son Harry Dangerfield’s family at Gawler and Connie and her father went to Adelaide to live.

 

From here I think I will write Connie’s story in her own words.

 

19990507 “When Dad, Richard Pryor Williams, came down to Adelaide, I came with him and we had to live in shared accommodation. Everywhere we went we soon had to move, so we shifted around a lot.   Ronda was okay. She went to live with the Dangerfields. Jean and Maynard married and went to live at Mylor. They lived there for a while and then because of the difficulty of getting jobs, Maynard became a blacksmith and worked for himself. He bought a house on Glen Osmond Road and built a factory and lived there. I got work at a boot factory and my father and I went to live at Parkside. My father managed to get work at the University of Adelaide in their animal nutrition section. We shared a house with three girls and we had half the house which was two rooms. These girls had two brothers, twins, and when the twins left school we had to move out so they could move in.

 

Not long after that I met Ron and we went together for six months.  He didn’t have work for a while, but then he got a job so we shifted away into a place of our own at Plympton. Then Ron got ulcers that perforated and he bled to death.  I was left with Bob andShirley and I was pregnant as well. At that time, everything in my life jut seemed to fall apart.

 

After Ron was born, I went to live with Ron’s parents for a while and then the little house opposite where they lived became vacant. The house belonged to a friend of my Father-in-law and so I got that little house at Anne Street, Stepney to live in.  It was on the corner of Anne Street ad Laura Street.  My father was still working at the university and living in a house down by the Maid and Magpie Hotel just on the edge of the city of Adelaide. Dad was just renting one room.  Then the owner wanted that room.  In the meantime Ron had died so Dad came to live with me at Anne Street.

 

Two or three years later, I met Joe and we got married.  Dad purchased two caravans and lived at the back of the Black and White taxi depot which was near the University.  He was still working in the Animal Nutrition section at the University. Then Dad got a perforated ulcer and bled to death.  He had caught pneumonia from animals and that’s what actually took him in the end. Ron’s sickness was attributed to working at Islington and getting the fumes from welding in his lungs.

 

When I met Joe, he was so different to anyone I had known.  He was a real gentleman. I was living in Anne Street and my In-laws lived opposite me.  Joe was married to their niece and she just ‘ticked off’ one day. Then Joe used to visit the Hills because he was very friendly with them having been married to their niece.  Living opposite as we did, that’s how we got together.  He treated me very well in those days. When he had his strokes they affected him so much that his personality altered and it was then like living with a completely different persons.

 

Eventually he had to go into a nursing home and he hated it and tried to run away, but once they got him onto  medication he was a lot better. It was only the seizure that had made him so different and difficult, but it was still so hard on me. His nursing home was alongside the village where I now lived and I used to go up to see him every day. He was now so gentle and so pleased to see me that it was very nice. Jill and David don’t remember any of the bad things – the way he was before. They only remember the good things. They don’t know about his tantrums and all that sort of thing.  I hid it from them. By the time he was in the nursing home, Jill was older and so she didn’t see the bad times.  David came to see dad and he was so amiable in fact quite loving. He wanted to hold me then, that’s all he wanted.  It wasn’t his fault, it was because he went through hell during the war up in Darwin. That altered his personality and changed him so much.  But I’ve got no real regrets about having Joe in my life.  I got David and Jill didn’t I? I wouldn’t have had them otherwise.  And what would I have done without Jill? Jill is such a wonderfully good-natured girl. She hopes her new baby is a girl and so do I.”

 

I am suffering from a little loss of memory these days.  I am 80 years of age. Your cousin Shirley Downs is holidaying in WA with her eldest son who has married a Western Ausralian girl. Shirley and her husband have purchased a small farm north of Grand Junction Road, four acres. They have dogs that they run on the property. Bob Candy still lives at Swan Street, West Beach and Ron Candy has a financial business and spends a lot of time tramping around Australia and overseas. David lives near me (Connie) at 92 Hancock Road.  Jill and her husband still live in my old home at Kertaweeta Street Black Forest. They are having another baby and Jill is none too pleased about it.  It will be her 4th. She has two boys and a girl at present. Jill comes out to my place twice a week. She takes me shopping on Thursdays and takes me out on Sundays for a drive or such and then home to her place for dinner.  I tell her that ‘the od boy upstairs’ was looking after me when he let me conceive her, though I wasn’t too grateful at the time! Her husband Jeffrey Brown is so caring. He spends a lot of time with me and cleans my house and looks after the garden. He does it for his own mother too. He is quite asmazing. Everyone here at the Elderly citizen’s complex are very jealous of me and ask me how I managed to have such a wonderful daughter and son-in-law. Well the others are all good, but they’re not quite like Jill, because she is just one out of the box. Shirley Downs has to wear a brace and can’t bend over at all. Her husband has made her a lot of tools to help her cope with everyday tasks like putting on her shoes etc. Shirley and her husband are on pensions so they are able to spend a lot of time in Western Australia with her son.  I soo Ron on rare occasions when he is in Adelaide. David and Ada when they are in Adelaide come to see me pretty regularly too.”

 

I rang Aunty Connie again on 17th May 2001 and once again wrote down many of the things she said to me.

 

” I have a few problems these days.  I had a fall and had a big lump under my chin.  Jill and Jeffrey came out to help me.  Jeffrey is so very caring.  He does the shopping with me and holds onto my arm.  When he can’t come, Jill does and she pushes the cart around as we do the shopping.  Her son James is now 11 years old, Thomas is 9 years, and Imogen 7 and the baby girl is 12 months old. Jill still lives at Black Forest and Shirley is north of where I live and she comes over quite often.  Her husband has had some strokes so she can’t come for long.  He has improved so much since he had the strokes.  He used to be so sarcastic and generally difficult, but he is not like that now, he is different all together. Shirley says it is like having a new partner because they get on so well and he is so thoughtful now, and is a pleasure to be with.

 

When I had Jill there was 9-10 years between Jill and David, and Joe was very good.  He wouild get up to the baby and things like that when I wasn’t well, but wouldn’t change nappies!. Joe has been dead now for 5 years.  He was in a nursing home for a couple of years before he died. It was a great relief for him when he died, but I miss him.  He changed completely after his stroke because his memory was gone.  He didn’t know who I was. Then he said, ‘you’re Connie, aren’t you,’ and his memory gradually came back. I said ‘Who did you think I was – one of the nurses?’ ‘No such luck’ I said to him, ‘I’m not getting paid!’

 

I used to read the papers to him and feed him lunch. He was nicer as well, fantastic in fact. If he had been like that all his life it would have been heaven to be married to him. Joe wasn’t a hard man, just withdrawn. He internalised everything and never showed affection. We got on all right though. He didn’t sleep in the same room as me and that’s not married life in my opinion. I was 45 when he stopped sleeping with me. He said ‘I’m not sleepin properly. Every time you move I wake up and then I can’t get back to sleep.’ I said ‘then let’s get twin beds,’ but no, he wanted to be on his own.

 

He used to write a lot, anything that came into his head. Things about when he was a child, or when he was in the airforce, he was always writing. When he died I read some of it. Some of it was so pathetic. His time in the airforce, seeing his mates killed in front of him, he never got that pain out of his mind. Although they were in Darwin, a terrible lot of bombing was going on up there. I didn’t realise what a terrible time they were having. He was a telegraphist and all the messages htad to go out. Chaps would have to keep on shifting their place for fear of the bombing. When he came back, the least bang would frighten him.  It took him a long time to get over that. When he had to go into the nursing home, I sused to spend a lot of time with him.

 

I’ve got used to talking to myself, and the cat and the dog would get a dressing down now and then. If the cat is outside in the back yard, Tinkle won’t go out because Bennie scruffs her and so she is frightened of her.  I give him a kick in the backside when I see him do it in here.

 

Mum died when I was 11 years old and she was in Kalyra with TB for 2-3 years before that, so I was only 9 when she left and I was 11 when she died, so my memory of my mum is very little really. I was too young. She was a tall and slim woman, but she had the most lovely voice.  Not a harsh scraping voice like me, but a sing-song sort of voice. I can remember her singing Ronda to sleep. Ronda was 5 years younger than me. I loved to sit there listening to her sing. She was in Kalyra for a couple of years and I was not quite 9 when she went away. She was away for 19 months.  Then she wanted to come home so badly but couldn’t unless she could live separately from the family. Dad and Grandpa built on a room down the side of the house, a wooden place with walls that were only 4’6″ high. They were covered walls and then the rest of it had to be mesh wire right around because she had to have fresh air all the time. We had to put shutters around so that you could close against the wind and the rain. They used to be opened up and they had long metal rods that would hook onto the window sill down below, but the windows would be up during the day if it was wet or anything.

 

Nobody was allowed to go to her but Jean and me because we had the dairy to consider. I got out of the dairy work because I looked after Mum.  I prepared her meals and fed her. We had a big metal bucket, a big round thing with handles on it and it was aluminium.  I had to fill this with hot water and take it out there and put towels on the bed andd sponge Mum all over and wash and dress her in the morning before I went to school and also give her breakfast. The good thing for me out of this is that I didn’t have to do anything in the dairy. We had to employ boys to do the work that I used to do. Generally, I looked after Mum, Jean did the housework and Grandpa Joseph Dangerfield did the cooking and we all helped with delivering the milk. I’d be rushing to get to school by 9 o’clock after looking after Mum.  I once said to old Bob Pocock the school teacher ‘If you want milk delivered to your house, you’ve got to put up with me being late.’ Old pig he was (and my Mum Jean agreed with Connie on this point), a horrible man! And he was like that at home too, his wife was always being told off.

 

The Dangerfields used to have a farm north of Pinnaroo. When Aunty Bessie Dangerfield married Fred Arthur, Mum (Maud) came to live in Pinnaroo because we kids had to go to school. The menfolk used to have to go back and forward to the farm or else they would stay overnight a couple of times if it was seeding time, or reaping time. But Mum and Dad had the town house and Dad was a cripple, his back was all bent over, so he worked in a store. Mum was a seamstress before she was married and used to take in dress-making. She used to make wedding dresses etc. We were all well-dressed. She used to buy remnants and left overs from bulk material in shops and make stuff for us and used to sell stuff to private people. She spent most of her time at the machine.  Jean and I had to do most of the housework even before she was really sick and deliver the milk and make the butter. I never had time to homework and I used to do all that at recess time.  It was a hard life!

 

Maynard O’Connor was a catholic and Mum was a Methodist and I think they met a basketball or maybe tennis. My dad said ‘I’m not going to have any bloody Catholics in my house.’ After a while, Mum joined up with the Christadelphians and after a while, Jean began to go there too.  The Adelaide Christadelphians used to send Christadelphians up each week end from Adelaide. Mum talked Maynard into coming to see what it was like and gave hiim books and things. It was all different to what we had learned, but it makes a lot of sense. Maynard gave up being a catholic and became a Christadelphian, but me, well I nicked out of the whole lot.  I left the church and never went to the Methodists. I used to walk around with the Salvation Army because I liked the music, but wouldn’t go to the church.

 

Maynard came to live at our place. Grandpa went to live at Gawler and Maynard took over the two rooms where Grandma and Grandpa used to be, but he used to come into our kitchen for meals. He paid his board to Dad.  Dad said to Maynard ‘I don’t know whether you should be here with the girls when we are not at home’ and Maynard said ‘Jean and I are going to get married.’ Dad said ‘You haven’t asked my permission.’ And Maynard said: ‘Well you haven’t given me a chance. But we are going to get married anyway.’

 

Jean had converted Maynard to be a Christadelphian. Jean was friendly with the people from the church and so Jean and Maynard went to Mylor which is near Adelaide and stayed with one of the Christadelphians who owned the property at Mylor. They decided to get married and live on the property and grow lucerne.  But Jean didn’t want to be out there on her own, so after some time they got a place in Adelaide in Halifax Street and Maynard went back to blacksmithing in a garage on Glen Osmond Road Fullarton. They rented a house at 12 Kenilworth Road Parkside which was a little row cottage at the back of the Parkside Primary School.  Jean died first then Maynard.  As I get older my memory fades.  I have written a lot of stuff in a notebook (Oh where is that notebook, I Fay would so like to find it). After Joe died so much had to gotten rid of, Joe had so many books.  I turned Joe’s bedroom into a sewing and knitting room. Lots of stuff has had to go, but there is still a lot of stuff there.”

 

So that is my dear Aunty Connie’s story, in her very own words.  I can hardly believe I had the fore-sight to take down this record when I did, otherwise it would all be gone now.

 

So my dear Aunty Connie, as I look down at your lovely, soft, sweet face and think of your hard life I wonder how you still remained so gentle and loving. None of the bitterness there could have been is evidenced in your unlined  face. That’s what I notice Aunty Connie, you have so few wrinkles.  Your skin is beautifully clear and young for someone who is 92 years of age. Well, my dear lady, I still have some memories in my head about you that are not recorded here right now, but they will still be there for a later time when I get to write it all down, God willing.

 

I hope those who read your words can feel some of the love I have for you, and for your two lovely sisters and especially for your lovely mother who I never met but so badly want to meet at a time in the future when we will all meet again. I love you, Dear Aunty Con, with all my heart,

 

Your loving niece,

 

 

Fay

 

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Aunty Ronda Critchley (Williams), Connie Candy (Williams) and Bob CandyAunty Connie todayFay Berry, Jill Brown, Kathy Billing, Ronda CritchleyBob and Rose Candy (Aunty Connie’s son)Shirley Downs Aunty Connie’s daughter