My father outside our home in Canberra, mid 1990s
The city of Astrakhan from the Red Tower of the Kremlin, 1998
Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood, St Petersburg, 1998
Statuary commemorating the WW2 battle for Stalingrad with the towering Mother Russia behind, Volgograd, Russia
Lindsay and Elena, our dear Russian friend, outside Kazan, Russia, 2006
Birth certificate of my mother Nona, born in Astrakhan in 1918
Chapter 26
Ventures of my choosing, 1999–2006
Our arrival home heralded in changes. We were looking forward to the day when our time was more important than either the money we earned at work or the commitment we had to our jobs. That day came for Lindsay first. He was to turn 60 in 2001. It seemed like a grand opportunity to have a have a double whammy celebration, a combined birthday and retirement party. The house overflowed with friends and colleagues as Lindsay cut the cake that would cement his ability to call his life his own. I worked for another year, and then decided I too had too many things to do with my life to keep on working. I would miss my work colleagues and friends, but I would now be free to spend my time on ventures of my choosing.
In 2001, our son Stephen and his French wife Magali were to marry again — this time celebrating with as many of their families who could come. They had chosen a beautifully restored old home near Le Mans for the ceremony. The picturesque city of Le Mans straddles the banks of the Sarthe River. Famous mainly for its annual 24-hour car race, for the rest of the year it is not a city infested with tourists. It boasts some spectacular Roman walls, a beautifully restored old town, an imposing gothic cathedral, great fruit and vegetable markets and a very friendly population.
Family and friends came from Australia, England and Germany. We flew to France to meet up with other family members, to get to know Stephen’s delightful in-laws and to help them prepare for the big event. And what a celebration it was — lots of lovely French food, dancing all night and speeches in two, sometimes three, languages. A joyful three-day event in a stunning setting in a beautiful part of France. Our sons with their wives or partners left for their various homes in the days after the wedding and soon it was time for us to say our goodbyes and head for England.
As the ferry neared Dover, the legendary white cliffs sparkled in the afternoon sun. We were in England to meet Paul Emerson from New York, and his mother, Brenda, who lived near Tunbridge Wells in the county of Kent. From our train’s carriage window, England looked as charming as usual with the village gardens full of summer flowers and the fields and hedgerows spreading out across the country like a gold and green patchwork quilt. We rented a car, another rent-a-wreck from a backyard dealer in Tonbridge, and headed for Paddock Wood. We had been in touch with Paul via emails and Christmas cards for a few years so we were looking forward to meeting him in person. He had been very helpful in filling in many of the gaps in our knowledge of the Emersons. He had also very kindly given us many copies of birth and death certificates of Denis’s brothers and sisters and their children. These, with some early photos of his family, had been invaluable sources to add to our still growing collection of information on my family.
We met in a small country pub for lunch. Although 89-year-old Brenda was very frail and in poor general health, she had insisted Paul bring her from her nearby home for lunch. She might have been frail and elderly, but her smile shone so brightly it lit the room. There are some people that you just have to love — Brenda was one of them. We sat together in the snug little dining room getting to know each other. Paul was, as I had imagined him — pleasant looking, quiet, with a reserved but friendly manner. Brenda was something else again. Life for Brenda was one big happy event. Her marriage to John Emerson had been happy, she told us, and her two children, Paul and Sally, were the light of her life. She shrugged off her present illness as a mere trifle, but the hospital staff and community nurses who periodically cared for her were angels beyond price. It did not take us long to realise that Brenda had an incurably happy disposition.
She was born Brenda Potter in Norfolk in 1912. The photos I have of her as a child and young woman show a vivacious girl with sparkling eyes and abundant brown wavy hair, and of course, that wonderful smile. She married John Henry Emerson (Denis’s nephew and my first cousin) when she was 24. Her sister, Beryl, had married John Henry’s uncle Horace (Lol) Emerson, the second youngest of the Emerson boys, so her marriage was truly a family affair. When John Henry and Brenda married, he was a clerk but he was a company secretary on retirement, so it seems he did well in his chosen career. Over the next few years we kept in touch with Brenda, Paul and Paul’s sister Sally. In 2003, at the age of 90, Brenda died. Even though we knew her for such a brief time, I know she would have considered she had been blessed with a rich and full life — how glad I was that our paths had crossed.
After leaving Tunbridge Wells, we spent a restful week visiting Pat and Albert in West Sussex, walking their dog Parsley, catching up on each other’s lives and telling them all about the French wedding. It was sad that they had not been able to make it but we understood how tiring travel was becoming for them.
At the end of our blissful week with them, Lindsay and I were to go our separate ways. He was to head for his beloved India to travel through South India and the Himalayas, while I was to join a walking group in Andalusia in southern Spain. We both flew out of London, Lindsay a day ahead of me. In six weeks’ time, we would meet again in Perth and then travel home to Canberra together.
As the years passed and the perimeters of my extended family grew, I now felt a sense of completeness. I knew where my English roots lay, had found a half-sister, met some of my English cousins and had visited the country and city where, more than likely, my Russian ancestors had originated. I had an ongoing and close relationship with my Russian aunts and cousins in Perth. I was beginning to feel that by now I knew about as much as I was ever going to know about both sides of the twisted maze that was my family tree.
In 2003, we once again packed up our home and set off for Europe. We were to spend six months in France, living close to our son and daughter-in-law in Le Mans. We had a special reason for visiting. In 2002, Stephen and Magali had had their first child, a plump, blond beautiful baby boy they had called Tal. We had planned our arrival in France to coincide with Tal’s first birthday.
This time the backpacks got relegated to the store room and new wheelie suitcases were bought. I had had enough of travelling with all my worldly goods strapped to my back. Again, we flew to Perth to spend a few weeks with our family there. Now there were two little granddaughters to love and spoil.
Britain was experiencing a cold and frosty spring. To acclimatise and get over our jet lag, we stayed in a comfortable B&B in Windsor, nearly 40 kilometres west of London but a reasonable taxi ride from Heathrow. One of Pat’s sons-in-law, Bob, came to pick us up after our few days of rest and recuperation. That meant he had to drive all the way from his home in Gravesend to Windsor and all the way back again, a round trip of 200 kilometres! Only a generous-hearted family member would even contemplate such a thing. But Bob’s like that; generous to a fault.
It was good to catch up with all their family again and see the plans for the new extension that Mr Fix-it Bob was about to embark on. After our brief stay, Bob once again kindly assumed the mantle of ‘driver’ and ferried us into London to pick up our rental car before waving us off on our travels.
There was a brief stopover to see Rosemary, Pat’s third child. We were determined to meet up again with all my nieces, so after leaving Rosemary, we headed north to York where Angela and Stephen lived.
York is a walled city founded by the Romans on the banks of the River Ouse, and it still has many traces of its Roman heritage. Now a prosperous city with a fast and frequent railway service to London, it has become a Mecca for the tourist trade. With its beautifully preserved Roman walls and towers, picturesque city centre and medieval streets
and a well-regarded university, York looks like a city on the move. Angela, Pat’s oldest daughter, and Stephen lived just outside the city. We did some wonderful walks on the surrounding moors and into York itself. In this part of the country England’s ‘cuteness’ changes to a more austere landscape of windswept grasslands and outcrops of rock, an altogether wilder side of the face of Britain.
Before leaving for France we spent a week with Pat and Albert. It’s always good to wander in their garden, tag along when they take Parsley for his twice daily walks and catch up with all the family news. What are sisters and brothers-in-law for if not to sit beside the hearth on a brisk spring evening sipping hot chocolate before bed and swapping the latest family news?
We arrived at Le Mans railway station, as planned, the day Tal turned one. This was the first time we had seen him and what a chubby round-faced happy little fellow he was.
A small apartment had been organised for us by Steve and Magali so we could move in straight away. We settled into our new lives very quickly. Learning how to ask for a baguette for lunch at the boulangerie in our halting French, exploring our new neighbourhood, attending French classes and, of course, getting to know our new grandson kept us busy. But not so busy that we could not take time out to do a couple of bicycle tours through the bike-friendly French countryside.
The six months we spent in France simply flew by. It seemed that, no sooner had we got into the rhythm of French life, it was time to leave. We left a part of our hearts in that French city and Tal’s head was wet with tears as I gave him one last hug before boarding the train for Switzerland to visit our god-daughter Robin. We spent a few days with her and her little family before heading up into the surrounding hills to the village of Trogen to visit some friends who had lived for many years in our street in Canberra. Our kids and theirs had roamed the friendly neighbourhood together playing games and having fun all those years ago.
From Switzerland we crossed Lake Constance to Germany then through the Black Forest to Heidelberg and on to Cologne. We flew out of Frankfurt Airport a few weeks later to spend a couple of weeks in Andalusia, Spain covering pretty much the same territory that I had in 2001 when I had been alone on a walking tour there. Apart from the searing heat, August in Andalusia is very dry, but we had a great time doing the tourist thing in some of the marvellous Andalusian cities and also doing some challenging walks in the Sierra Nevada and other national parks.
While driving to Ronda, our last port of call before heading back to Malaga, we had a call on our mobile from our son in Hobart. He and his partner Jo planned to marry in April of the following year! What happy news: another lovely daughter-in-law, this time a very bright, very beautiful girl whose family had migrated to South Australia from Goa on the west coast of India. We were becoming a very multicultural family.
With this good news to warm our hearts, we finally made our way back to Malaga to board our plane for Australia.
As predicted, April 2004 brought a great gathering of the clans in Hobart. Our third son, Tim, married his partner Joanne. Jo has a large family. They were all there, plus the Graham clan from all parts of Australia. Even Stephen and Magali came from France bringing Tal and a tiny new addition to the family, Alexandre. Alex was seven weeks old when they flew to Australia — a very long journey for a very little boy, and a major achievement for his new mum.
Like the French wedding, this was to be a three-day extravaganza. We gathered at a unique wilderness lodge set on the estuary of the Esperance River in the far south of Tasmania. The following day saw the family, now joined by their many friends, come together to celebrate their union on the river bank. Thankfully, the rain held off till the evening when we were all comfortably seated in a vast marquee for a sumptuous feast.
My relationship with my brother Derek had not improved over the years since Denis’s death in 1997. However, my eldest brother Tony and I used to meet on a fairly regular basis. We would usually lunch together every couple of months. After Denis’s death, Tony had sold the home they shared in Charnwood and moved to a small flat close to the city.
Tony was five years older than I and had an excellent memory of those years before my birth and before I had conscious memory of my own. He could tell me wonderful stories of when he was a young child living at Whitelawns and of the time leading up to the evacuation of Singapore. He had excellent recollections of the many houses we had lived in and the many ships we had sailed in. He had an eye for detail and an astonishing memory for dates, times and places. During those lunches, he also told me his personal theories that helped explain some of the more baffling journeys we had made from country to country and state to state when we were young children.
Tony was a complex man. In looks he favoured his father with a strong nose and high forehead. As a young man, he had been very slim with a fresh complexion and large grey-green eyes and dark brushed-back hair. Good with languages, a talented sketch artist with a passion for all things nautical, he was good with books, drawing pads, paints and boats but never very comfortable around crowds of people. Even as a young boy he had always lacked confidence.
In his middle years, whatever self-assurance he had when he was younger seemed to dissipate. I believe he became too dependent on Denis and tried too hard to fit in with his father’s views. When Denis died Tony was, for a while, like a boat without a rudder — shifting this way and that with the currents of life, a little lost now he had no strong mooring. But life goes on, and after a period of adjustment he was now running his affairs as he wished. By his late sixties, he was carrying far too much weight. Food, usually the wrong kind, and his fondness for a few glasses of wine with dinner had not improved his overall health. He had never been a fruit and vegetable eater and too much red meat and starchy foods had done their worst.
At one of our lunches early in 2005, I asked him if he could sketch for me, on paper, the movements of our family from the time we left Australia after World War II, when I was about three and a half, to our arrival back in Australia in 1955 when I had strong and ongoing memories. He did, and I have this wonderful piece of A4 paper filled with dates, names and time lines. It is one of the most precious documents that I possess. It is a complete mud map of my early childhood years. It has been my frequent guide and sat with pride of place on my desk during most of the writing of this book. But a few months after he constructed that map of our early lives, Tony was dead.
He had been walking home to his flat from the Canberra Club where he’d had dinner with Derek. We will never know why he chose to cross the last road before home against the traffic lights. It was a dark night, but he must have seen the car lights approaching. Did he misjudge the distance to the oncoming car, or was he so deep in thought he did not even look? He was killed on impact. There was an inquest, and yes the car was travelling fast, certainly more than the speed limit, but the light was green and the driver of the car had not seen my brother step out onto the road until it was too late. The coroner brought in a verdict of accidental death.
Death is a shocking business. The suddenness, the unexpectedness, the sheer unfairness of his death came as a terrible blow to all the family. Tony had not been the most dynamic of people, just a quiet man living a quiet life doing no harm to others. He did not deserve to die in such a terrible manner.
Derek had rung to tell me of his death the morning after he died. Thank goodness I had not seen it in the papers or heard it on the news beforehand. His funeral, a cremation, was held in the same small chapel where Denis had been cremated. Like Tony’s life, his farewell was a quiet affair with only his immediate family and a few of his close friends seeing him off. Tony’s death brought about a degree of reconciliation between Derek and me. We were, after all, brother and sister.
A few months later, Lindsay and I were to visit our family in Perth. Derek and I agreed that I would scatter some of Tony’s ashes on a part of the Swan River where Tony had loved to sail small boats when he was a young boy. There is a particular spot,
a grassy spit of land with a small beach under the steep cliffs surrounding Chidley Point Reserve where we had played as children and often moored our small sailing dinghy. Tony, Derek and I would often sail the boat into this sheltered spot where we would have a picnic lunch or just a swim in our own private bit of heaven. This part of the river had been a very special place to Tony and I am sure that he would have been very happy to rest in the quiet waters of what we used to think of as our private bay.
It was a bright July day when I and our young granddaughters, Amber and Zoe, stood, our family gathered around us, and together sprinkled a casket of Tony’s ashes into the bright water and watched as they became one with the sand and the water and the river and the sky.
Chapter 27
Back to Russia, 2006–2007
As the years went by, Lindsay’s beard began to turn to grey and my dark blonde hair developed alarming drifts of white. The laugh lines in our faces deepened and stayed long after the joke was over. We were heading for the slower, gentler years of the third age.
In February 2006, our fifth grandchild was born in Hobart, Tasmania. Tim and Jo’s first born, Arun, was a gorgeous little boy, perfect in every way. We visited not long after his birth to give him and his parents a hello and goodbye cuddle. We were going back to Russia one last time.
Julia Orlov, that most secretive of grandmothers, had made vague references to an early life in Astrakhan. I was determined to find out if that was where part of my heritage lay. We would combine this with a month in Poland and another five month stay in France. Our French family were in the process of building their own rather unconventional straw bale house in a small village near Chateau-du-Loir. We thought that maybe a couple of extra pairs of hands could be of use to them.
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