In 1943 John’s health had deteriorated even more and she was finally diagnosed with bowel cancer. It was the ever faithful Una who nursed her, although Evguenia would visit when she could. Una didn’t like her coming and tried to prevent her from touching John if she could. On her deathbed John, who had once in a fit of deep love told Evguenia she’d leave her a large sum of money when she died, revoked that wish and left her whole estate and fortune to Una on the condition that she make an allowance for Evguenia.
Una mourned her partner deeply and even had her suits cut to size so that she could wear them. She styled herself on John for many years afterwards. Finally Una found a new object to fawn over and serve in the way she had John. This time it was an Italian opera singer and he was male.
Evguenia ended up marrying a Russian émigré with whom she lived in poverty. She called on Una’s charity and compassion when she was also diagnosed with cancer but Una, still hurting from John’s betrayal, refused. Evguenia had her meagre allowance and that was all she was going to get from Una.
Una died in 1963.
Part 7
Mistresses of Men of the
Common Class
The last section of this book was extremely difficult to write. I needed to find stories of ordinary men with ordinary mistresses who led ordinary lives; not princes, or dukes or poets but businessmen, shopkeepers, teachers or taxi drivers. Their histories are not recorded in the same way or to the same extent because they are not famous. The scandals caused by their sexual indiscretions are not the stuff that newspapers are made on, unless they involve perversion or murder or something sensational. Where does one turn to for stories about these men and women?
Thank goodness for the Internet and social networking media! A single call out across the world for help and often it is given. In choosing to rely on word of mouth accounts from living people about their friends and relatives the writer has to be very careful. First, permission has to be sought from the narrator and the family, where possible. Second, names and other identifying information need to be sorted out as to whether real names or substitute ones are given. Third, there is no guarantee that the stories or the details of the stories are true unless there is documentation.
In my own family history there is mention of a remittance man on my mother’s side. The mother of the boy was paid to leave England for Australia with her illegitimate son and never to return or try to reconnect with the child’s father. No news stories were to appear concerning the child’s parentage and a fair sum would be given for them to start a new life on the other side of the world. The family story is that it was the bastard son of Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, later to be Edward VII. And the mother was probably some poor maid who took the roving eye of a prince and got put in the family way. But we don’t know. The mother of the child did as she was paid to do and kept her previous history a secret.
On telling my first cousin this story we amazed each other in discovering that she also had a similar tale only with someone from her father’s side, and to whom I am no blood relation, perhaps. Now, maybe the stories were made up to help gloss over the truth that girls got pregnant when they shouldn’t and by someone they shouldn’t (possibly just the boy up the road) and they invent a fairy tale myth to help take the sting out of the truth. Or perhaps there are many similar tales told all over Australia because Edward VII, as king and prince, had a notorious appetite for pretty women.
The first tale I am going to relate was told to me by an acquaintance of mine. It is not something from her own family but her husband’s family and she has asked me to cover up the identities of those concerned, although she admitted that names hadn’t been given when she heard the story.
MISTRESS FOR A FORTNIGHT
At the beginning of the Great Depression there was huge unemployment, in Australia just as in Britain or the US. Men had to travel across the country looking for work or they were put on to work programmes in return for a pension. Among the unemployed there were many men who had fought in the First World War, thus there was bitterness and desperation.
The family of the woman concerned in this account lived in and around a large country town, west of the Blue Mountains in New South Wales (which in turn are immediately west of Sydney). It was a big Catholic family with numerous cousins and aunts, uncles and extras (sometimes in these families babies born to girls before they get married are absorbed into the general chaos of the family and no one is ever sure who the baby belongs to).
One of the teenage daughters of the family, called Jane (not her real name), went to work at a neighbour’s dairy farm. She didn’t get paid much but it all helped. She would have had to get up early in time for the first milking. They had milking machines but the cows had to be got into their bales and the machines attached to the udders, then everything had to be cleaned out afterwards. My mother’s family had a dairy farm in a different part of the state and she said it was hard getting up so early, especially in winter, when her hands would get frozen.
There were other people employed by the farmer and some of them were itinerant workers. One of these was a young man called Geoff (not his real name). He made himself very amiable to the other workers and people he met in the town. Dances were held regularly at the church hall and, as there weren’t many places for young people to go for amusement it was a very popular and well-attended event. Jane would go with two or three of her siblings. Apparently she and Geoff became very friendly and were soon thought to be an item. Days off were spent together; he was introduced to Jane’s family – her brothers got on with him, her mum liked to feed him up and he played with the little kids.
Geoff came from Sydney, he said. His father had been killed in the First World War and his mother lived with her mother and father in a cramped semi-detached house in Chippendale. Geoff’s grandad wasn’t well and his grandmother wasn’t too good either, it was a lot for his mum to take care of. She also took in washing and ironing for people.
When Geoff lost his job at the brewery he felt he had to go looking for work out of town. There was nothing for someone like him in the city and he didn’t want to be a burden to his mother. He did miss the city though, he admitted. Of course he was full of stories about Sydney. Its delights and entertainments and its dangers, possibly exaggerated to enhance his exoticism. He told them he’d never seen a cow till he got off the train in the country. Another bit of leg pulling probably.
Jane’s family wanted to know what he was planning to do when things looked up. Would he stay in the country and get work there or would he go back to Sydney to his old job? Or would he move on somewhere else? The answers were evasive but that may have been because he truly didn’t know what the future would hold in the way of job prospects.
Then one day Jane came home from work in tears. Geoff had gone. He’d left. There was no forwarding address, no Sydney address, nothing. Jane was inconsolable. After a few weeks it became apparent as to why she didn’t get over it. In a little while Jane went to visit an aunt who lived further away. She’d be staying a while to recover from her broken heart. When she returned, low and behold, somehow another child had appeared in the crowded household. Everyone believed it to be a late baby of Jane’s parents, one last one.
Jane did settle down, she did get over the disappearance of Geoff, and maybe even she started thinking that the youngest member of the family was a sibling rather than her own child. After a couple of years Jane got married to a local boy, John (not his real name) and they had two children of their own.
Just before the outbreak of the Second World War Geoff returned; he was his old affable self and full of apologies and regrets. His mother had written to him telling him his grandad had died and she needed him back home. He’d left as quickly as he could, which meant he couldn’t say goodbye. And then he’d been offered a job at a printers and he couldn’t refuse an opportunity like that. Then his mum had got ill with cancer and he’d had to help nurse her and work too. Things kept preventing him fro
m coming back to see his friends. After a while, he thought, they’d have forgotten about him and he ended up marrying someone from his work.
Jane had thought she was happily settled with her reliable husband and their children. She no longer had to work on the dairy farm and she was well looked after. Whether anyone thought about the baby she’d had, and that he was probably Geoff’s son, wasn’t mentioned and Geoff didn’t seem to have been made aware of him. Geoff stayed in town for a week and then left, making sure to say his farewells this time. And everything went back to normal. Until a month later when Jane suddenly left her husband and kids. She didn’t leave a note but she was seen catching a train to the city.
What happened to Jane in Sydney is largely speculation. She had not got over Geoff’s disappearance and had followed him back to the city. He had left an address this time, for his workplace, not his home. Jane had taken what money she had, enough for a train trip and a couple of nights in a hotel. She saw Geoff, who had hoped she would follow him, and he paid for her to stay a fortnight in the hotel.
Geoff was married, true, but he was desperately unhappy. His wife wanted him to succeed in business, to climb the social ladder and to keep up their level of living. He told Jane he was sick of it, he’d never really loved his wife and had thought of nothing but finding his Jane again. And she fell for it.
The plan was for Geoff to tell his wife he was leaving her and then he and Jane would find a small flat somewhere, far enough from the abandoned wife so she couldn’t make trouble but close enough so he could see his kids. Jane waited every day for his return from work, when she would spend time with Geoff and ask if he’d told his wife about them yet. Each time he gave an excuse for not telling her. It was harder than he thought, he said, he really didn’t want to hurt her more than he could help it. Jane needed to be patient.
On the second to last day of the fortnight Geoff came to the hotel late. He was in a bad mood and needed cheering up, he said. They went to dinner and then back to the hotel, and then Geoff announced he had to tell her something. Jane could probably already tell that is wasn’t good news for her. Geoff had decided it wasn’t possible for him to leave his wife after all. They’d talked hard and long about it and they’d decided to give their marriage another go. Geoff was so sorry, but he needed to think of his family.
Maybe Jane made a scene but if she did it was to no effect. Geoff kissed her and left, telling her not to try to contact him, or his wife would call the police. What a slap in the face. There was no option for Jane except to pack her bag and spend her last amount of money on her train ticket home.
John took her back, no questions asked; the children were thrilled to see mummy after her holiday. And that was the end of the matter. Jane was pregnant but she never knew if it was her husband’s child or her lover’s, but this time she made sure it was hers.
THE TWO-FAMILY MAN
The second story is set in England and begins in the 1970s. Again the names will be fictional as none were given in the original version I heard. The man in this story I will call Trevor; he was the headmaster of a primary school and a good upstanding citizen. He was married to Helen and they had four children. As headmaster Trevor often had to stay back at school working late; there was marking to do, reports to be written and there were endless meetings. None of this was out of the ordinary for a man in his position. The kids who went to his school and then on to the local comprehensive were a conscientious lot and all did well enough to go to university.
When Trevor’s own children left home he decided to retire. Helen thought that at last they’d have some time together, perhaps travel, move to the seaside. But Trevor was reluctant to move. They did have a couple of holidays abroad but Trevor was always a bit anxious about getting home again. And then he decided to take on some casual teaching work. His pension wasn’t really adequate, although Helen didn’t see why that should be so, but the money wasn’t there so she agreed to let him do more teaching if that’s what he really wanted. Trevor continued teaching for several years into his retirement and then he had to stop as he had a stroke. And then he died.
It was at the funeral that the truth came out. Trevor had been leading a double life. He was married to Helen but some years after their marriage he fell in love with a much younger woman and set up house with her. They didn’t live that far away from his house with Helen, although the children from his relationship with his mistress didn’t go to the same school he taught at. His mistress knew all about the wife but Helen knew nothing about the mistress. Trevor had been so careful, so organised, so businesslike that it seemed impossible for a man like that to have been so devious. He’d even called his children with his mistress the same names as the ones he had with Helen so that he wouldn’t get caught out saying the wrong thing and arousing suspicion. The two women were polite to each other but that was all. The children from both sides, however, were intrigued that their father had been so interesting and they all enjoyed having extra siblings.
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Copyright
Cover illustrations © iStockphoto
First published in 2013
The History Press
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© Fiona McDonald, 2013
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Other Women Page 17