The Blacksmith’s Daughter by Fay Berry 2013 © - Chapter 49 - 1959 11 08 - Fay Berry

The Blacksmith’s Daughter – Chapter 49

A number of things had led up to my breakup with Jeff.

In November of 1959 I had met up with Robbie Berry, Jeff’s brother at Kirkcaldy Beach. I was fascinated with the fact that he was Jeff’s brother and wanted to get to know him but without him knowing who I really was. I introduced myself as Ronda Bowen, because Rhonda’s name was the first name that came to my mind after having spent so much time with her in Sydney after my brother’s wedding. Jeff was so busy studying each weekend and I was lonely. I kept up the charade for a few weeks until my conscience really “got to me” and I decided to stop going to Kirkcaldy and keep away from Robbie and all the surfers. So that was it.

Then came John and Phyl’s kitchen evening and then after that, the Young Folk’s Pt Elliott effort which for me was a wonderful weekend because I was able to spend a good bit of time in Jeff’s company.

My mother’s birthday was to be on 1st November and Jeff’s on 4th November so it was time for me to shop for birthday presents. I went shopping at John Martin’s and soon found a gift for Mum and then went looking for something for Jeff. I hate buying gifts for men because I find it difficult. I wandered round John Martin’s Men’s Department and was looking at ties when someone grabbed my arm and swung me around to face him. It was a “him” it was Robbie Berry, Jeff’s brother! “Okay,” he said. “This time I want to know who you are!” I didn’t know what to do or say at first, but then I decided to “come clean.” I told him I was his brother‘s girlfriend.

Well, to say Robbie was angry would be to put it mildly. By the look on his face, he was simply furious. He was sooo ooo angry!! He glared at me. He was still holding my arm and so he threw it down and without another word, turned and strode off, his heels just about burning holes in the carpet. “Ooops!” I thought.

That night I got a phone call from Jeff. He was so angry with me. Robbie had gone to his parents and told them what I had done and Jeff’s Dad and Mum had both been furious. I was “in the dog-house” big time. I asked Jeff what he wanted me to do. He said that I should go and apologise to his parents for my behavior. I think this was mid October 1959, so probably around Saturday 17th October I got on my bike and rode to Jeff’s parents place to apologise for what I had done. I arrived at 9 Layton Street Fulham, and went to the front door and knocked. The door opened and Jeff’s Dad stood there. He was crying!!! I said, “What ever is the matter, Mr Berry.” He wiped his eyes with a handkerchief and said, “My wife has left me.” I stood and pretty well just gaped at him. I had no idea what to do.

“Come inside,” he said, and so I followed him inside and he led me into the kitchen. I asked him if he knew where his wife had gone and he said “Most likely to her mother’s place.” I asked him if he had rung her there and he said,”No.” I said, “Why don’t you ring her and apologise or whatever you need to do, and see what she says?” He said, “Will you ring her for me?” At this point I was so nervous, almost to the point of hysteria, and I wanted to laugh at the irony of the situation. Here was I, after riding all this way to apologise for my stupid behavior with Robbie and the Surfers at the beach, and now here was Jeff’s Dad, asking me to ring his wife and beg her to come back home for him !! Fact is definitely stranger than fiction I thought.

I picked up the phone and dialled the number Jeff’s Dad gave me and waited with my heart in my mouth for Jeff’s Mum to answer. It was Jeff’s Mother’s mother who answered. I asked to speak to Olive Berry. Jeff’s Mum came on the phone. I told her that Mr Berry had asked me to ring her because he was too upset to ring her. I told her that he said he was “sorry,” and he wanted her to come home. We talked for about 10 minutes and she told me why she was so upset with Jeff’s Dad and then, to my relief, she agreed to come home. I hung up and told Mr Berry that she was coming home, and then I left!! And that was that!! I never actually got to apologise for my “crimes.”

Then came the Port Elliott weekend, which was a bright spot in an otherwise “hell” period of months. While we were at Pt Elliott, we had two girls from Sydney come to Port Elliott for the weekend and then on to our home for a holiday with our family. They were Jan Joseph, the sister of my sister-in-law Beth O’Connor (Joseph) and her friend Joyce Rosser, and so began the next “comedy of errors.”

I mentioned previously that the bus that stops out the front of our house goes to Kirkcaldy Beach. One Saturday, while the girls were staying with us, they must have got on the bus and traveled down to Kirkcaldy Beach and then, yes, you’ve guessed it, they walked down to the beach, parked themselves on the sand, and then were “picked up” by Robbie Berry and his friend Gregory Playstead. How do I know this? Well the inevitable happened. It was a Saturday afternoon when they went down to the beach and then after they came home, early in the evening there was a knock at the front door of 118 Glen Osmond Road, Parkside and Jeff who was at our place that night answered the door bell. To his amazement, standing at the door was his brother. Robbie told him that he had come to pick up two girls that he was taking out that night and they had given this house as their address!!

I don’t know what Jeff said, but the girls told me later that Robbie stormed off and as he passed their bedroom window, they poked their heads out and whispered “Sorry Robbie, we’are not allowed to go out with you!” The girls did not go out with Robbie that night and all three of us girls were in trouble with Jeff and my Dad who were not impressed with any of us. I guess that as far as Robbie was concerned I had simply added “insult to injury.”

Jan Joseph and Joyce Rosser stayed with us I think for two or three weeks. During this time my brother Graham started to visit quite a bit and before long he and Joyce had become an Item. Graham had lived away from our family for some years because Dad and Graham simply could not get on. Graham loved and respected Dad and all he had ever wanted was to be included in the family business, but Dad would not have it and Graham felt offended and rejected.

I was still working at APR (Associated Public Relations Pty Ltd) and our new offices were in the new Macnamara building at 104 Park Tce (Greenhill Rd) Unley. The windows of my office were facing out onto Park Terrace. In the afternoon the sun used to stream into my office and the glare may have affected my eyes, because for a period of about a fortnight I could hardly see. It was like looking through a heavy mist. I can remember waiting for Jeff to get off the bus and I could not see him, but I recognized his walk as he came towards me. Mum booked me in to see an eye specialist but it was a fortnight before I could get an appointment and by that time, my eyes had cleared up and I could see again. I never did find out what had caused it.

Around this time Jeff was boarding with a German lady, Mrs Scheer. She thought Jeff was “the ants pants,” and was prepared to have him to live with her as long as ever he wanted. In spite of my and the girl’s escapades with Jeff’s brother Robbie, Jeff still wanted to marry me, or so he said, but I was most unhappy about how he “neglected” me. When he said that it was “a weariness” to have to go looking for an engagement ring, well, that was when I wrote the letter to tell him that I no longer wanted to go with him. Of course, when the letter was opened by his Father, well, that was “insult, added to insult, added to injury.” Jeff was not pleased with me, but I was not pleased with him either.

I was feeling so miserable and disturbed by this time, loving Jeff, but knowing that we were not good together. I rode my bike to John and Phyl’s place and poured out my tale of woe to them. Whilst I was there, the phone rang. It was Jeff. Jeff poured out his side of our joint tale of woe to Phyl while I shamelessly eavesdropped on their conversation. Phyl was saying things such as “You deserved it, Jeff. You really do.” Apparently Jeff asked her what he should do to get me back, and I heard her say,”Well, it won’t be easy, Jeff. You will have to work at it. I don’t know what she’s going to do. You’ll have to do the best you can to get her back.”

Jeff rang me at work the next day, but I refused to talk to him. On the Tuesday night at Rose Park class I went in and sat down next to Wendy Jolly. She tried to move up to make room for Jeff, so I hastily whispered to her. “No, Wendy, we’re not going together any more.” To my dismay, Wendy said out loud,”Oh No, Fay. You’re not going with Jeff?” “Shhhhh I hissed, be quiet, pleeease be quite.” Wendy took absolutely no notice of me and kept saying, “Oh, that’s dreadful. Oh Fay, you mustn’t stop going with Jeff.” Then Jeff came into the room and started walking down the row towards me and pushing his way between the seats and treading on people’s toes in the process, trying to sit next to me.” I glared at him and said, “Don’t you dare, Jeff Berry, I am not sitting with you.” He sat down in the seat next to me. I got up found another seat.

For the rest of that week at work Jeff kept ringing me. I had asked the girl on the switch board to refuse his calls, but he rang so often that finally, the switchboard girl refused to reject his calls any more. The next time he rang I took the call and asked him what he wanted. He said he had some books he wanted to pick up and needed to come to my place to pick them up. I said that I would post them to him but he said he wanted to pick them up. I said “Okay then, come and pick them up on Thursday night. I will be going out that night and I want you out of my house with the books by the time I get home which will be by 10.00 pm.”

I arrived home that night at 10.15 pm and just before I came into the lounge the lights which had been on went out and I heard someone, presumably Jeff, running down the passage and out the back door. I followed and went out of the back door and looked towards the factory. I could see that their were lights on in the office. I went inside and went into the kitchen and had a coffee. Eventually I went down the back yard to the office. I stood at the door of the office looking grim and with my arms folded in front of me. I hoped I looked formidable. Jeff and Dad were sitting at the table there. They both looked extremely awkward, and Jeff had been crying!?

Dad said, “Jeff and I have talked everything over and he’s really sorry and we’ve worked it all out…… and…” I stood there stonily with my arms folded, and said, “Have you? So you’ve worked it all out have you?” Dad suddenly realised how stupid it sounded “we’ve worked it all out.” He stood up and said, “Well, I’ll leave you to it,” and went out the door. I stood there looking down at Jeff as he sat at the desk and didn’t say a word. I really don’t remember what Jeff said except that he was was sorry and wanted me to go with him again, that he wanted to marry me……… so we were “back together again.”

For the rest of November, our relationship continued on reasonably peaceably. We had talked about how little time Jeff spent with me being a problem and Jeff was spending a little more time with me, but there was one other thing that bothered me and that was that we always seemed to be so serious, we never laughed together. Never did fun things, never were…happy. One day Jeff rang me at work and told me he was coming around in the evening because he had a gift for me for my birthday. If he rang me once, he rang me half a dozen times describing the gift he had for me. It was small and delicate he told me and my mind went into orbit. All I could think it could possibly be was some lingerie, but what lingerie was “small” and “delicate,” my mind boggled.

The evening came round eventually, and Jeff arrived. I was in the kitchen and he came up behind me and kissed me and asked me to go into my bedroom and sit down and close my eyes. I went up into my bedroom and sat on the edge of my bed. I was almost breathless with anticipation. I sat down and Jeff came up and took my hand and held it. And I thought, “It is.. it’s .. a ring? He’s going to put a ring on my finger? We’re going to be engaged!!! That’s perfect,” I thought.

It was definitely a ring. He put it on my finger and I was so happy. I opened my eyes and looked down at my left hand and then shut my eyes again, something in my brain was not computing. I opened my eyes again and looked once more at my finger. Yes! It was a ring, but something wasn’t right. My stunned brain finally registered what was wrong. The ring was HUGE. A diamond THAT big would cost a fortune! Then it finally registered. It was a cheap “Coles” job. This was Jeff’s idea of a joke! I took the ring off my finger and flung it across the room. “I hate you, Jeff Berry, I hate you.” “Why, what’s wrong,” he said. “You say that you never laugh with me, I was trying to make you laugh.” “I simply don’t believe you, Jeff Berry.” How could you do such a thing?”

Eventually, Jeff gave me my real birthday present which was a beautiful slip, but it was at least two sizes too big for me!! That was it for me. I flung it on the bed and walked out of the room and down to the blacksmith shop to recover. We had planned to get engaged before Xmas, but now I just didn’t want to get engaged at all, not yet at any rated. Our Xmas plans were all mixed up as well. When I broke it off with Jeff, he arranged to go with the Pascoes to Wallaroo for the Xmas break and I had arranged to go with the girls to stay in the Eakins huge caravan at the West Beach Caravan Park . In the end, we reached a compromise. I would go with Jeff and the Pascoes for part of the time, and then back for the rest of the time with the girls at the Caravan Park at West Beach.

My stay at Wallaroo did not go very well at all. I was disturbed because of the stress of all the “high drama” leading up to Xmas and Jeff was still hurt (and probably angry) because of the “merry dance” I had led him after I broke it off. Then there was his disastrous birthday present. We were both completely “off balance,” each looking for something from the other that the other was not giving. It was complicated also by Ken Pascoe’s reaction to me at Wallaroo. On the one hand Ken “liked” me because we had always got on well. On the other hand he had been looking forward to spending Xmas with Jeff without me there. He adored Jeff like “a father” (probably because he didn’t have a father himself) and now he had to share him with me. He showed his angst in a very strange way. He would hug me whilst Jeff was there or kiss me in front of him and he did it all in such a way that I had no idea what to do, how to behave, how to react. Jeff didn’t know what to do either.

By the time that part of my “holiday” was over I was very stressed and distressed. To make it worse, I think every girl who went on that holiday camp at the West Beach Caravan Park was also disturbed for one reason or another. I remember Dianne Cridland was overly bossy and shrill and annoyed me immensely, Joan Mansfield, Perce Mansfield’s daughter was in a heads-on battle with her father because she was going with Gerry Nitsche and HPM was trying to break it up. There was a peeping Tom. It was one peeping Tom who wished he hadn’t “peeped.” A horde of us girls came streaming out of the caravan like hornets and chased him up into the sand hills and I am sure he thought he was going to be torn limb from limb.

It was also the year of “the frillies.” “The frillies” were the “in” group at the time. They were girls who were popular with all the boys and the boys followed them around like a flock of sheep. In the boys’group were Robin Mansfield, George Hawkins, Brian Manser and a bunch of other boys. It was supposed to be a girls’ camp and the boys weren’t even supposed to be there but they turned up every night anyway to the pleasure of some and the displeasure of others. The “frillies” had their own theme song which got sung endlessly during the camp. Anyone of my generation will know this song and its tune.

I know a ditty nutty as a fruitcake
Goofy as a goon and silly as a loon
Some call it pretty, others call it crazy
But they all sing this tune:.

Mairzy doats and dozy doats

and liddle lamzy divey

A kiddley divey too,

wouldn’t you?

Yes! Mairzy doats and dozy doats

and liddle lamzy divey

A kiddley divey too,

wouldn’t you?

If the words sound queer and funny to your ear,

a little bit jumbled and jivey

Sing “Mares eat oats and does eat oats

and little lambs eat ivy.”

Oh! Mairzy doats and dozy doats

and liddle lamzy divey
A kiddley divey too, wouldn’t you-oo?
A kiddley divey too, wouldn’t you?

The “leaders” of “the frillies” were

Mary Eakins and Dianne Johnson. Mary was Mairzey and Dianne was Dizey and everyone even talked in a funny lispy affected sort of way which suited some and did not suit others. For example, Sandra Turner was such an intelligent and stable girl and lisping did not fit with her very well at all.

But if was summer time and we were all a bit crazy and disturbed for one reason or another.

I got through Xmas with all its ups and downs and my relationship staggered on with Jeff.