Still Maturing

By Patricia F. Roberts

After describing in detail living in a small English village, Patricia goes on to relate an incident involving her father in World War II in which she secretly listens to him talking to his friend, Jim, after the war had ended.

She was nearly twelve years old. What she heard was so shocking and she was so traumatised that in the morning it had all been forgotten.

Now known as Repressed memory, it surfaced in 1974 as an audio visual phenomenon in her mind. She was treated as having a mental illness, and describes how it affected her.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Oct 31, 2013
• ISBN: 9781493116706

Patricia F. Roberts

Patricia, born in London in 1933 went to live with her grandmother at the outbreak of World War 11. She returned to the London area with her husband Peter and they had two daughters. In 1965 they emigrated to Australia and two years later a son was born. After thirty years of marriage she and Peter divorced and Patricia moved to Glenelg, a thriving tourist city in summer and a quiet village-type place in winter. She attended the ‘College for Seniors’, first joining ‘Creative Writing’, and then the ‘Autobiography’ class.

Book preview

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

STILL MATURING

Dedicated to the memory of Arthur Frederick Watson

Australian Citizen

Fond farewells, and some who wailed

‘Pray that again we’ll see’.

Six weeks ocean from England sailed

Our nuclear family.

Upon arrival, looking round,

Described as ‘sticky beak’,

How strange the words and quaint the sound.

Linguistics I can’t speak.

In time I learnt the lingo well.

I’m called a ‘whinging pom’.

Protests the speaker at my quell,

‘To point the bone, not on’.

A family row, cross words exchanged.

The neighbour called to see.

‘Some blue over that car you pranged’.

He’d been within ‘coo-ee’.

Years later now, confusion gone.

This country’s great, I vow.

I meet the language with aplomb,

For I’m Australian now.

INTRODUCTION

‘Still Maturing’ is a revised version of ‘Feel Free’, which was circulated in manuscript form amongst family and interested persons at the ‘College for Seniors’ in 1998.

Although an avid reader of books, both fiction and non-fiction I never read anything about the Second World War until after staying in America in 1994.

The aftermath of WWII seemed to follow me around long after it was over, and I wrote the poem, V.E. Morass while in the USA.

The poem reflects the story of soldiers who are sent to a camp somewhere in Germany, and in particular my father, Arthur Frederick Watson who was in the British Paratroop Regiment.

I was nearly twelve years old when I awoke that night and secretly listened to my father tell his friend Jim about his difficulties in coping with inmates of a concentration camp in Germany. In the morning I had forgotten about the incident only to have it surface nearly thirty years later, and then to be treated as having a mental illness.

Upon researching I was not able to convince myself of mental illness, but neither could I find any references to my father’s plight.

The full account manifested itself in 1975, when the ‘repressed memory’ was professionally declared a hallucination.

Can a hallucination appear so exact; place past previously unrelated fragments into accord, thereby making sense of a troubled past? Yes, I was told, a hallucination can do those very things.

Would that I could have accepted it had been so; a figment of the imagination—a fantasy. Whilst growing up I’d experienced fleeting thoughts which were never dwelt upon, possibly because they did not make sense. Why did I have the feeling I had ‘been there’ at a special time and place. Why could I identify with certain people and know full well of their traumatic, and horrific situation. I could not relate to them knowing I had been raised in a secure peaceful little English village.

STILL MATURING

During my childhood in the village of Saham Toney the war had seemed to be far away, with few reminders of its existence.

Around my grandmother flowed the discord and contention common in an extended family. Seeing and hearing so much taught me about people, and one of the things I quickly learnt was not to repeat what I’d overheard.

My maternal grandparents were Londoners. Granny Nock was married when her family immigrated to Canada. She was urged to leave her husband, my grandfather, and go with them; such pressure continuing over the years. She refused.

Grandfather had held different jobs and was a night-watchman when my mother was born