by Peter Graham
Nora’s father, Robert Parker, came from Preston in Lancashire, and had moved to Birmingham at the age of twenty-two. Birmingham was “the workshop of the world” and the second largest city in Britain.
Robert qualified as an associate of the Institute of Chartered Accountants and practised on his own account in St Philips Chambers, near the great St Philip’s Cathedral and Bullring, the city’s commercial heart. On February 14, 1907 he married Amy Blakemore, a young Moseley woman, at the Moseley parish church. His background seems to have been securely middle class: his uncle Richard Parker, an Anglican vicar, assisted with the marriage service. Ten months later the couple’s first and only daughter was born. Christened Honorah Mary, she was affectionately called Nora by her family. A son, Robert Clive, soon followed.
Amy had every reason to anticipate a comfortable life with the usual assortment of servants to fetch and carry, but early on there was a calamitous change in the family’s fortunes. When Nora was two, her father was admitted to the City Asylum. The house in Alcester Road had to be sold, and Amy and the children moved to a more modest dwelling in Strensham Road, Balsall Heath. It was a major downward step—the first of many—from genteel Moseley. In January 1921 Robert died in the asylum. He was thirty-nine. The cause of death, certified by the attending physician, was “general paralysis”. It was the usual euphemism for tertiary syphilis.
Robert’s estate yielded the sum of £567.8.11, a fortune to the slum-dwellers of Birmingham but not enough to generate an income on which Amy and her children could lead a respectable middle-class life. It could merely postpone an inevitable slide into penury, worry, and the need to work for a living. It was a bitter blow for an intelligent woman bred to a life of ease, a music lover who delighted in choral singing. Amy was forced to acquire typing qualifications and get a job.
In 1926, three years before the Wall Street crash, a general strike in Britain drew attention to the plight of the country’s workers. Markets for British manufactures were disappearing and the coal industry, one of the country’s biggest employers, was being ruined by the importation of cheap coal from Germany. The Conservative prime minister, Stanley Baldwin, argued that to save British industry all workers would have to take a cut in wages. The middle classes worried about a communist revolution. Amy and Nora, now nearly twenty, decided there was no future in England.
The family’s troubles were far from over when they arrivedin New Zealand. Problems affecting the British economy rapidly infected New Zealand, which was totally dependent on exports to Britain. Unemployment rose as the Depression took hold.
Soon after arriving in New Zealand, Nora moved to Raetihi. Most born and bred New Zealanders would have found the backblocks town bleak and soulless; for a young woman from Birmingham it must have been unimaginably awful. There was little in the way of entertainment. The pride of the Dominion Cafe was “hot luncheons”, finished off with bananas and cream or fruit and jelly. Respectable women steered clear of the one bar in the Waimarino Hotel that admitted females.
Nora was reasonably attractive. Well built and buxom, she had dark wavy hair and smooth olive skin. Coming from Birmingham set her apart: she was not likely to be interested in the monosyllabic mill-hands whose idea of fun was to get drunk and knock someone’s teeth out. Nor were the clerks at the Co-op Dairy, Rangatana Timber Company and Raetihi Dairy Factory more inspiring company. But there was one man who appealed to her. Bert Rieper was neatly made, a good dancer and as smartly dressed as anyone who ever stepped out of A.G. Laloli, Gent’s Tailor and Outfitter in Seddon Street. Such men were a rarity in Raetihi: there weren’t many who wore a suit and tie. Bert made her laugh. And he had seen a bit of the world, if only Tasmania and Egypt. He knew there was life outside New Zealand and didn’t mind Nora sometimes talking about “Home”. He was ambitious too. He hoped to have his own accounting firm one day.
Nora was delightfully youthful, fourteen years younger than Bert and twenty-two years younger than his wife. He was, he let her know, very unhappy at home. His vile-tempered wife made his life miserable. Bert, Nora thought, deserved better than that. He deserved his share of happiness. He deserved her!
It was impossible to conduct a secret romance in Raetihi. Everyone knew everything that went on. Even if the two of them went out in Bert’s little Austin looking for a quiet place to be together, someone was bound to see them. “Working late at the office” was a handy excuse for moments of intimacy, but Louisa was sure to get wind of the affair sooner or later. It was sad he would have to leave Ken and Andre, but it was the only way. It was tough on Andre, but at least Ken was thirteen, old enough to stand on his own two feet,as he had at that age. Louisa, for all her faults, would look after them both like a mother hen. And of course Nora wanted a family of her own.
In July 1931, after Bert had stuck around for Ken’s fourteenth birthday, he bought Nora a wedding ring at Ashwell’s Jewellers and the pair of them took off. Driving south, they left the past hundreds of miles behind. Free of Louisa and free of Raetihi, they crossed Cook Strait by ferry and finally arrived in Christchurch, where they found a comfortable villa to rent in a peaceful tree-lined street in St Albans.
The love-nest was soon rudely interrupted. On September 23 a policeman came to arrest Bert for failure to maintain his wife and children. Louisa had taken out the warrant on August 10, and was obviously the source of the descriptions published in the New Zealand Police Gazette. The apprehension was sought of Herbert D. Rieper, formerly of Ameku Road, Raetihi, “age thirty-five, height 5’5”, accountant, native of Tasmania. Slight build, fair complexion, curly fair hair going bald, blue-grey eyes, thin features; usually dressed in a navy-blue suit and grey overcoat tinged with red (seldom wears a hat) … accompanied by his former office assistant Nora Parker (age twenty-three, height 5’7”, stout build, sallow complexion, brown eyes, full, round face) and may be in possession of a dark-blue five-seater Austin Sedan motor car, registration No. 77–732.”
Magistrates normally imposed a term of imprisonment of six months or a year in lieu of arrears. Bert presumably came up with the money because there is no record of a court appearance. He was not the only one to leave a wife and children to fend for themselves in those Depression years: one of the first measures implemented by the new Labour government in 1935 was a benefit for deserted wives. The new benefit, and the fact the boys had left school, meant that later, when Bert stopped paying maintenance for good, Louisa no longer had the same incentive to set the police on him.
By July 1934 Bert and Nora had scraped together the deposit for a small house. Twenty-one Mathesons Road in Phillipstown was a less desirable address than their rented house in St Albans but it was their own. To avoid any future claims Louisa might have against Bert, the property was registered in the name of “Honorah Mary Rieper, wife of Herbert Rieper of Christchurch, accountant”. It was a falsehood: the couple were not married and Louisa was still Bert’s legal wife.
Bert and Nora had three children in quick succession. The first, born in 1936, was a “blue baby” suffering from a heart malformation and lived only a day. In March 1937 a second child, Wendy, was born. She was a delight: happy, healthy, affectionate, adorable, everything a parent could wish for. Just over a year later on May 26, 1938, Pauline Yvonne entered the world at St Helen’s Hospital.
Yvonne, as they called her, was an “an average, normal child”, her father would remember, until just before she turned five, when she developed osteomyelitis in one leg. An inflammation of the bone marrow due to infection, osteomyelitis, most common in children, is an intensely painful illness and was then, before antibiotics became freely available, life-threatening. At one point it was touch and go whether Pauline would live. Several operations were needed to drain the infected site, and the young girl spent eight or nine lonely months in hospital. For the next two years she went through the daily agony of having her leg dressed.
It would take almost three years for Pauline to get better and she would be le
ft with a permanent limp. Even twelve years after the illness she still experienced terrible nights when her leg ached mercilessly and she would need aspirin and A.P. codeine to relieve the pain. Doctors advised her parents she should not play sports or games. She took up modelling in plasticine and wood, and became particularly adept at making plasticine models of horse. She would carry this enthusiasm through to high school. She also, her sister Wendy remembered, went through a period of religious mania.
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Fortunately for the Rieper family medical care was paid for by the state. In 1944 Bert and Nora were able to sell the house in Matheson Street and buy a larger villa at 18 Wellington Street in Linwood, another working-class neighbourhood. This was also registered in the name of “Honorah Mary Rieper, wife of Herbert Rieper of Christchurch, Business Manager”. Most likely that business was Dennis Brothers, Poulterers and Fishmongers.
After two years the family moved again, this time to a large old house in the centre of the city. Later, Gloucester Street at the Cranmer Square end would become a highly sought-after place to live, with the Christchurch Art Gallery, Christ’s College and Hagley Park all close by, but in 1946, when the Riepers moved in, the houses, while mostly big and imposing, were distinctly run down. There were a few exceptions. Across the street stood the childhood home of the Second World War hero Charles Upham, winner of the Victoria Cross and Bar. It was still occupied by his widowed mother Agatha Upham, a woman of impeccable social standing. A few doors along was Orari, the handsome town house of south Canterbury runholders, the Macdonalds, and nearby was the home of an orthopaedic surgeon, Keith Davidson, and his family. But most properties in the street had been converted into boarding houses or cheap flats for students. In 1940s’ New Zealand there was no cachet in central-city living: most people preferred to live in a suburb with decent-sized lawns, large well-ordered flower beds and less traffic. For the Riepers it was different: Bert was fifty-four and they needed to think about his retirement in the not-too-distant future. In the new house they could take in boarders.
Pauline was nine when she started at Christchurch Normal School, which was housed in a forbidding neo-Gothic building on the north side of Cranmer Square. For two years she was the only pupil in her class, a reflection of the small number of children then living in the central city. Outside school hours she sometimes played with the doctor’s daughter, Rosemary Davidson, who attended St Margaret’s Junior School. Rosemary preferred Pauline’s older sister Wendy, who was pretty, blonde and quiet. She was rather scared of Pauline, who had a “filthy temper” and would yell and scream if she did not get her own way.
Even as a young girl Rosemary was shocked at the conditions in which the Riepers lived. An air of poverty hung about the place. The house was “shabby and shambolic, nothing was tidy”. The family seemed to spend most of their time in one big room which had a coal range for cooking and always smelled of fish. Mr Rieper was shorter than his wife, with small beady eyes and sandy hair. He seemed scared of Mrs Rieper, “a big, raw-boned woman, with very black hair and an angry face”, whom Rosemary did not remember ever smiling.
The house had been converted into flats and the Riepers lived upstairs. To get to their flat it was necessary to walk along a dark, dank path lined with trees, then climb a wooden outside stairway. Rosemary Davidson made sure she always went home from the Riepers in plenty of time; she would have been terrified to walk along the “creepy” path in the dark.
Although in 1954 Christchurch was scandalised to discover that Pauline Rieper’s parents were living in sin, in reality Bert and Nora lived irreproachably dull lives. With both daughters at school, Nora went back to work, finding a position as secretary to a solicitor. Bert rode his bicycle to his job at the fishmongers and spent his spare time in his workshop and vegetable garden. They listened to the wireless, walked to the library once a week to change books, and sometimes ventured out to see a film. They might go to a music concert if Nora’s mother was involved. They dutifully attended parent–teacher meetings. Nora sometimes went to church, but not as regularly as her daughters. The car stayed locked in the motor shed until Sundays, when the family went for a drive. In summer they occasionally had a picnic or went to the beach. There was no money for holidays. A small circle of friends came for afternoon tea, dinner or the occasional “spot”, although little alcohol was drunk in the house.
In March 1949 Nora gave birth to a third daughter. The pregnancy was unplanned: she was forty-two and Bert fifty-six. The child, whom they named Rosemary, had Down Syndrome. Although not understood at the time, this is a genetic disorder caused by the presence of an extra chromosome 21. The physical features, which gave rise to the description “mongol”, are a round head with a wide flat nose,slightly obliquely slanted eyes, and abnormally short stature. Down Syndrome children have a mental capacity unlikely to exceed that of a five year old.
The new baby was a source of anxiety, stress and guilt to a family saddled with more than enough of all three already. The age at which Nora had conceived Rosemary was thought to be the root cause of the problem. It was a matter of embarrassment to have produced such a child and a daily struggle for Nora to take care of her. She had to give up her job and forgo the income that went with it. When Rosemary was just under four, Bert and Nora sent her to Templeton Farm, a residential institution for intellectually disabled children nine miles outside the city. Many parents treated Templeton Farm as a place to dump their impaired offspring and wipe their hands of them, but the Riepers never did. They visited Rosemary almost every Sunday afternoon and brought her home for weekend visits from time to time, and always at Christmas.
Pauline was eleven when Rosemary was born. Whatever her faults, she was always kind and thoughtful to her little sister.
CHAPTER 11
Indissoluble Bond
According to Bert Rieper, until Pauline went to Girls’ High and met Juliet Hulme she was “quite happy in the house” and “very good friends with her father and mother. … If ever she did anything wrong she would always say she was sorry, she knew she was wrong and would try to do better.” As far as he could remember, she was never given physical or corporal punishment.
His depiction of a compliant happy child does not square with the girl who, in February 1952, arrived at the school angry and rebellious, felt different from the other girls, resisted discipline, and spoke sarcastically to teachers.
Bert painted a similarly rosy picture of life in the Rieper household, but the truth was that, while Nora was kind and well-meaning, she was frequently overstretched and worn out, and Pauline got under her skin. Nora could be irritable and critical; she would nag Pauline and try to control every aspect of her life. She would fly off the handle for no apparent reason, only to regret it afterwards and try to make up with little gifts or favours. Much of this conflict made its way into the diary that Pauline started to keep in January 1953, but there was nothing to suggest the fourteen year old was dissatisfied with the limitations of her social world. All this changed when she got to know Juliet Hulme.
When she arrived at Christchurch Girls’ High in the third form, the daughter of the rector of Canterbury University College presented an image of supreme self-assurance. Juliet Hulme was as sure of her beauty as she was of her outstanding mental ability andmany talents. The importance of her father as head of the university and brilliant nuclear physicist, the glamour of her mother, and the social prominence of her family, living in their beautiful house at Ilam, all contributed to her sense of self-importance and made her stand out from the more awkward, self-effacing New Zealand girls.
If anyone called her a “pom” or a “homey”, who cared? What did it matter what they thought? Juliet had no need for friends. Nobody her own age she had ever met was worth wasting time on. Nobody had shown any interest in the things that were important to her. She knew no one with whom she cared to discuss her triumphs over adversity, her brushes with death, the beautiful world of chivalry and romance that
filled her thoughts, her amazing ideas for books to write, her love of grand opera. Nobody had ever appreciated quite how brilliant, how truly special, she was.
Then in the second term of school she became friendly with Pauline Rieper. This development, so surprising to the girls of 3A, came about because she and Pauline were the only pupils in the class exempted from games—in Pauline’s case because of osteomyelitis and in Juliet’s a weak chest, the legacy of her pneumonia and bronchitis. The two girls could hardly avoid conversing during the hours they sat around while their classmates had sessions of physical education, basketball, hockey, tennis and swimming.
Pauline’s sharp-tongued defiance of authority might have impressed Juliet, and she would certainly have risen in Juliet’s estimation when she let it be known how much she admired her—her cleverness, her beauty, her wonderful ideas. Pauline, too, was interested in books and poems, and a world of fantasy no one except girls like them could imagine. Both had suffered debilitating childhood illnesses, known loneliness, and grown to love solitude. Almost at the time Juliet had gone into hospital in London with pneumonia and bronchitis, Pauline had been hospitalised for the nine months in Christchurch. Both had come within a whisker of dying. It was as though they had been marked out by fate for some special purpose. Hilda Hulme later claimed that when Juliet became friendly with Pauline she said, “Mummy, I’ve met someone at last with a will as strong as my own,” although this may not be true: Hilda was always keen to portray the girls as equal partners.
Pauline was desperate to have a close friend, especially one like Juliet Hulme, poised, beautiful and sure about everything—and someone with whom everyone, whether they admitted it or not, wanted to be friends. She was spellbound, willing to pay homage—willing to be whatever Juliet might wish her to be. It is easy to imagine Juliet realising for the first time the thrilling possibilities of friendship with another girl, a girl who understood her, saw how unique she was, and would do whatever she asked in order to please her. And Paul Rieper shared many of her interests and ideas. In fact she soaked up all her ideas as fast as Juliet’s fertile imagination produced them.