Whatever Remains

by Penny F. Graham

  Which route the young family took out of Russia and how they travelled and provided for themselves was also never fully explained. Or maybe no-one specifically asked!

  It is generally believed within the family that when they left Russia they travelled through Central Asia, possibly with a circus group. Apparently Julia had referred to being part of a circus when she was a young woman. Both Julia and Gustav played musical instruments, the mandolin and the zither, and it is believed their musical ability earned them their keep. By February 1924, Julia, Gustav and six-year-old Nona were in Bombay, India. Here, their second child was born, another girl they called Daisy. Daisy was told she was born and christened in India but she has no birth certificate, no bit of paper legitimising her existence. It is quite possible that Julia and Gustav did not register her birth. The six-year gap in ages between Nona and Daisy, at a time when there were no reliable contraceptive methods, seems unusual. Many years later, when Daisy experienced the pain and disappointment of a miscarriage, she was told by Julia that there had been miscarriages during those intervening years between her first two children.

  Within 18 months of Daisy’s birth, the family was living in Singapore where their third and last child, Irene, was born. When Irene was only a toddler, Gustav disappeared. His disappearance is still a mystery. When the younger girls were growing up and asked about their father, Julia told them he had died. If Gustav had died, or deserted the family shortly after Irene was born, then Nona, who was probably eight or nine, would have known which — but she chose to say nothing to her siblings!

  Daisy and Irene always believed that he had died because their mother told them so, but they had no conscious memory of him. What really happened to Gustav Brayer is still a mystery. I have a very precious photo of a handsome looking man with brooding deep-set eyes and the hint of a smile on his rather sensual lips. This, my Russian cousins tell me, is Gustav, my grandfather. I wonder if I will ever really know what became of him.

  With so much time gone by, and not knowing how or where they travelled before they reached Malaya, I doubt I will ever find out more about the early period of my grandparents’ life. My Russian relatives have their own ideas as to why such a young woman would leave her family and home to travel the world with a new husband and infant daughter. But they are only speculation; suggested scenarios with many different variations.

  At this time, no facts have emerged that tell us any more about Julia and Gustav’s flight out of Russia and the six or seven intervening years before Irene was born. This part of the story is theirs and theirs alone.

  Old circus records have been checked, enquiries for Daisy’s birth certificate made. So far nothing has been found. Julia’s early married life will remain hers to keep. It is maybe how she would have wanted it.

  Chapter 13

  Daisy’s story, 1920s onwards

  Near the end of her life, my Aunt Daisy wrote an account of her childhood and the years leading up to World War II. She called her unpublished memoirs Fireflies and Scorpions. Her memory of her childhood years was good, as it so often is in the elderly. She recounts the good times and the bad with a brutal directness and honesty. Dark haired and brown eyed, Daisy was a pretty child who would grow to be a striking looking woman. Never one to hold back on letting you know her feelings, her story lets us share some of the emotions of a sometimes insecure girl whose childhood shaped her life as an adult. Her story also gave me great insight into those years when Nona and her sisters were growing up and of the hardships facing Julia, a relatively young woman, who was left to bring up three children away from family in a foreign land.

  Nona does not figure largely in Daisy’s recollections. Daisy refers to her as being an unobtrusive older sister who only occasionally drifts in and out of Daisy’s story. I suspect the six-year age difference and shared early history between Julia and Nona caused some resentment between the three siblings but particularly between Nona and the younger girls.

  Here, told in my words, are snippets of Daisy’s story.

  Penang, late 1920s

  Penang is a jewel of an island sitting just off the coast of Malaya. Colonial Penang prospered through the export of tin and rubber which fed the relentless demands of the Industrial Revolution in Britain. In 1826, Penang, along with Malacca and Singapore, became part of the Straits Settlements under the British administration in India, later coming under direct British rule in 1867 as a Crown Colony. Georgetown became the capital of the Straits Settlements but its status was soon supplanted by rapidly developing Singapore. But Penang’s prosperity attracted people from far and wide, making Penang truly a melting pot of diverse cultures.

  Daisy’s memories begin when she was about four years old. She remembers living in Penang with her mother and two sisters in a large two-storey house by the sea. Her life at this time was comfortable and secure. The house was big and cool, the garden full of fruiting trees and flowers and there were servants to cook and clean for them. There is a man in her mother Julia’s life, but it is not Daisy’s father; it is someone she knows only as the Dutchman.

  Daisy, Irene and Nona are cared for by a Chinese amah. This kindly amah wore wide black pants and a crisp white tunic. She had long silky black hair twisted into a bun at the nape of her neck. The amah is kind to Daisy and Daisy is happy in this house.

  The three children did not see much of their mother. She and the Dutchman appeared only occasionally in Daisy’s orderly existence. What Daisy remembers most about her mother at this time is that she laughed a lot, smelt wonderfully of flowers, and wore pretty dresses. She remembers many parties at the house; music was played on a gramophone which enchanted little Daisy. Life for her and her sisters was comfortable and safe.

  There was a large cherry tree near the front gate of their home; not a European cherry with soft sweet flesh but a Malayan one with small sharp fruit that Daisy found bitter and not to her taste. One day, Julia told Daisy that she and the Dutchman are going to Brastagi, a hill station in Java, for a few weeks holiday and they would be taking baby Irene with them. Daisy was very angry and did not want to be left behind. She was given a beautiful doll to compensate but this was not enough to console her. When Julia, the Dutchman and Irene returned, the doll was found hanging upside down from the cherry tree at the gate. Daisy is not punished but was told that she has done a very naughty thing.

  Not long after this, the Dutchman left and Daisy and her sisters’ lives changed suddenly and for the worse. Julia disappeared from their life and the three children find themselves left in the care of the nuns at Light Street Convent.

  The Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus or Light Street Convent, as it is more commonly known, is a girls school established in 1852 by six French nuns who had arrived from Antwerp in Belgium a year earlier. It is situated at the end of Light Street in Georgetown, Penang and was run, by the 1920s, by an order of very strict French nuns. It was not just a school for wealthy parents — it was also an orphanage and a place where destitute parents could leave their children until they got back on their feet. The school is large, centring on a wide courtyard with many shaded walkways, high ceilinged classrooms and an imposing chapel.

  Daisy hated being left at that school and was terrified of the stern stiff nuns. She recounts an incident that gives us a glimpse of her state of mind. One day, on her way to catechism classes, Daisy accidentally dropped her lesson book down the back of the cistern when she went to the toilet. She was horrified, and knew she would be in grave trouble. She remained hiding in the toilet for the entire lesson. She never went to another catechism class for fear of being found without her class book and had to hide in the toilets during every lesson.

  Daisy was lonely and deeply unhappy during her stay at the convent and very homesick. Julia did not visit the children for many months and Daisy did not know where her mother was.

  Gone are the gentle almond sweet hands of the kind amah to sooth away her fears. Gone are her mother’s pretty skirts swirling around in t
ime to a new dance played on the gramophone and gone is the security of knowing what tomorrow will bring.

  Malaya, 1930s

  By the early 1930s, Julia was apparently back on her feet again and working as a hairdresser. She has collected the three children and they are now living in a house on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur (KL) in central Malaya. The children attend nearby St Mary’s School. Again, this was no ordinary school. It was a place that took children whose parents, for whatever reason, could no longer keep them. The three girls were sent first as day girls, but later they were left in care there.

  Daisy and Irene were happy to be back living with their mother but worried that she might disappear from their lives again. Julia often excluded her two younger children from family discussions by speaking Russian to 14-year-old Nona. The younger two had not been brought up to understand Russian and they saw these ‘secret conversations’ as a way to exclude them from the family decision-making. The age difference and the language cause the younger children to resent Nona, who they thought was the favoured child. Daisy worried when she heard Julia and Nona speaking Russian together — she believed Julia was planning to vanish from her life again.

  The family was often short of money and Julia is often in debt to the local food store. Eight-year-old Daisy remembers the embarrassment of being sent to the door to tell the irate shopkeeper that ‘Mother isn’t home.’ She also tells of the food seller who came by the house every day selling his wares. Daisy and Irene would drool at the smell of a yummy noodle dish with curry sauce that he was selling. Daisy would sometimes buy a serving, on credit, and share it with Irene. When Julia found out that Daisy owed the food seller money, the children were reprimanded and sent to bed without supper.

  It was while they are living here that Julia met Ernest Roberts, a mining engineer. He is the manager of a tin mine somewhere in the jungle. Daisy tells us that he is a kindly man and treats the three children well. They all liked him and Daisy hoped Julia and ‘Uncle Robbie’ would stay together. After a while Julia and Roberts did fall in love and Roberts proposed marriage. They travelled to Singapore where they were married in the Registry Office.

  A break in Daisy’s story

  Daisy has misremembered the sequence of events. Or, maybe for propriety’s sake, when Julia moves in with Roberts they tell the children they have married. I have a certified copy of the marriage certificate between Ernest Arthur Roberts and Julia Orloff Brayer. It is dated 8 August 1934, the day before Nona’s 16th birthday. By August 1934, Julia was no longer working as a hairdresser; she was living with Roberts and the children are staying with a family in Penang and attending the Light Street Convent.

  An article in The Straits Times dated 15 August 1934 is headed ‘Death on way to new appointment’. Another article from the Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser also announces ‘the death yesterday of Mr E.A. Roberts in Penang’. The Straits Times states that ‘Mrs Roberts, who was well known locally as a hairdresser, and the late Mr Roberts were on their way to Rahman Hydraulic Tin Ltd where he was to take up a new appointment’. Julia’s second marriage was to tragically last only six days.

  It is intriguing that they would travel to Singapore to be married. Maybe Julia thought that too many people knew of her circumstances in the area where they were living or maybe Roberts had a job interview in Singapore and they sensibly decided that before heading off to his new position they would legitimise their situation.

  The marriage certificate also gives us some interesting information. Julia lists her surname as Orloff Brayer. Why did she give her maiden surname (or the Russian masculine equivalent of it) and add her first husband’s surname? Could it be that her three children were known as Brayer? And then, to really complicate things, she listed her ‘Condition’ as Spinster! Julia had children, so why didn’t she call herself a widow? Maybe because she could not produce a death certificate for her ‘late’ husband! Julia conveniently put aside the knowledge that she already had a husband. As Gustav has been gone for some years she probably feels she is entitled to some happiness, some stability in her life.

  When I was first given a copy of the marriage certificate soon after meeting my Perth relations, I presumed that Julia had been Gustav Brayer’s de facto wife. I also believed this was probably the reason Julia had fled Russia. Unmarried and with a small baby, maybe the stigma had forced her to leave country and family behind her. It would be nearly two decades later I would find that my assumptions were quite wrong.

  We have not yet found a death certificate for Roberts but records from the Western Road Cemetery in Penang show the cause of death as malignant malaria. Malaria was a serious and constant hazard of living and working in remote Malaya at that time.

  The death notices change the timing of Daisy’s story. She believed that, after Julia and Roberts married, she and her two sisters spent time in the jungle at their stepfather’s tin mine during their school holidays. They did indeed spend time with Julia and Roberts in the jungle, but it must have been well before Julia and Roberts married.

  But let’s put aside the fact that the marriage came at the end, not the beginning, of their relationship and continue with Daisy’s story as she remembers it.

  Daisy goes on with her story …

  After Julia married Uncle Robbie, the three children were left at St Mary’s School. Daisy was desperately unhappy there. In the Christmas school holidays of 1933, all three children made the long boat trip up the river into the depths of the jungle where Uncle Robbie and Julia lived and where Robbie managed a tin mine.

  The mine was somewhere in Pahang, an area of central Malaya, and the easiest way to get there was by boat. The journey was magical to Daisy even though there were rapids, rain showers and oppressive humidity to contend with. As night fell, little lights appeared in the jungle, millions of little lights. They were fireflies and they turned the banks of the river into a black and silver fairyland. Daisy was mesmerised and even though she was exhausted by the long journey, she sat and watched the beautiful canopy of twinkling lights and will remember them as one of the most beautiful things she has seen in all her life. Just after dawn the next day the boat arrived at their destination. The damp, steaming jungle closed in on Daisy narrowing her existence to one small world filled with just the family, Roberts’ work at the mine and the life in a mesmerising tropical forest.

  Julia and Uncle Robbie lived in a wooden house overlooking a small Malay village. Although the house was very primitive and they lived a very simple life, Daisy loved this time spent in the jungle. With no shops for many miles, Daisy and Irene made do with what they had. They each made a doll out of bits and pieces and dressed them in scraps of fabric that Julia gave them. Daisy, whose doll was made from two pieces of timber tied together in a cross with some pieces of string glued to the top to make hair, named her Wendy. Primitive play things, but enough to keep Daisy happy in her new secure world.

  The children made friends with the kids in the kampong and life was pretty free and easy. Being out in the sun so often, they became nearly as brown as the Malay children. They ate simple meals cooked by Julia on her small wood-burning stove. At night they snuggled up in bed and listened to the noises of the jungle, particularly the monkeys whose shrill voices calling to each other were heard at dusk and dawn. To help protect them from malaria, the children slept under mosquito nets and, as an extra precaution, had citronella oil rubbed on their arms and legs before they went to bed.

  That Christmas, Daisy and Irene were given a Shirley Temple doll and a toy tea set, but Daisy cannot remember who got the tea set and who got the doll. Christmas dinner was the usual fare except that Julia cooked a delicious Christmas cake to celebrate the occasion.

  At this time Nona is 15, Daisy 9 and Irene 8. The five and a half years between Nona and Daisy now more than ever make a big difference to their relationship. While Daisy is still a child, Nona is well into her teenage years. Daisy was very conscious that her mother had a special relatio
nship with Nona — she was not only Julia’s eldest daughter, she was her confidante. In the lonely years following the disappearance of their father Gustav Brayer, it was Nona in whom Julia confided. Mother and eldest daughter had been through a lot together and this gave them a special bond. An invisible dividing line has now been drawn between the three girls. Nona is a young responsible adult helping Julia in the house and with the cooking, while the two younger children are just that; children who spend their days playing either with each other or with the children of the kampong.

  One game they played was to snip off the tail of a deadly scorpion, tie a thread around the small insect and take it ‘for walks’. Daisy recounts how horrifying the memory of these escapades are to her now as she realises how cruel an act it was.

  Daisy loved the time she spent at that jungle house and wanted the holidays to never end. But one day they were told they must return to school and the children were put on the boat to travel back down the river. The descent was quicker and Daisy did not see her beloved fireflies on the return journey.

  Daisy had been dreading the return to St Mary’s after the holidays but was told that she, Irene and Nona will not be returning to St Mary’s but staying with a family in Penang where Daisy and Irene will once again attend Light Street Convent.

  Daisy was horrified. Although they had felt isolated and unloved at St Mary’s, they were never treated badly, but the Convent in Penang was a hundred times worse. The very thought of returning to the convent, even as day girls, made Daisy feel ill. She was also angry that she and Irene were to be once again separated from Julia.