A Girl Who Didn't Fit In: Crushed by Gaslighting but not Defeated

By Marion H Clark

An only child of parents with deprived backgrounds, Marion's early years were lived in a frugal world, with a grandmother who was addicted to prescribed morphine. The girl who emerged from that bleak world was far from frugal. She traveled, suffered the loss of her father, retreated into Christian Fundamentalism, developed an investment portfolio, married, had a family, and earned a post-graduate degree in the field of her dreams. But how did it all happen?

"A Girl Who Didn't Fit In" answers that question. Marion Clark's roller coaster life inspires readers to engage with their own challenges, reflect on themselves, and achieve more tomorrow.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Oct 22, 2020
• ISBN: 9780646825663

Book preview

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PART I

THE ODDS WERE AGAINST ME

Chapter 1

BEGINNINGS

As soon as we are born, our parents, extended family siblings

and others plus events write on the nature of who we are.

These all define us. anon

It is 1937, and a trio of women are seated on a well-used leather lounge suite in the sitting room of a Californian bungalow in East Oakleigh, an outer suburb of Melbourne. The place is dark, and heaviness is in the air. On the mantel of a dark brown, open wooden fireplace is a chiming clock flanked by two orange porcelain vases. On the left side is a framed verse by Adam Lindsay Gordon:

Life is mostly froth and bubble.

Two things stand like stone,

Kindness in another’s trouble,

Courage in your own.

A large rug covers brown floorboards in the centre of the room and heavy maroon curtains frame leadlight windows covered with ecru lace curtains. Two large prints on the walls depict Biblical scenes, and a framed plaque of The Last Supper is above the open fireplace. A black framed poem about death and the afterlife by Lord Tennyson hangs on the wall that is the closest to the kitchen door:

Twilight and evening bell, and after that, the dark!

And may there be no sadness of farewell,

When I embark;

For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place,

The flood may bear me far,

I hope to see my Pilot face to face

When I have crossed the bar.

My grandmother speaks, ‘You shouldn’t have tried to have a baby in the first place, Gerte.’

I agree’ says Elsie, her youngest daughter ‘You don’t know how to be a mother; you are just not capable. You should be ashamed of yourself for wanting a child. It’s for the best that you lost this baby and the first one as well.’

Gerte is tearful, ‘The lady at the hospital wasn’t kind to me’, she says, ‘I shouldn’t have told them that I own my home. When she found that out, she told me that I had no business being there because that hospital is for poor people, not me. She knew that I was four months pregnant and losing a lot of blood, so I asked her what I should do. She told me to go back home. I couldn’t understand why she was refusing to help me because when I lost the first baby, they admitted me to that hospital and gave me a curette. That’s why I went back there.’

‘I think it’s all for the best’ says her mother.

Elsie agreed nodding, and says, ‘You will just have to get over it and get on with your life, after all, you will soon be 40, and that’s far too old for a woman to have a child.’

‘You have both had children,’ Gerte said accusingly, her mouth pursed and eyes steadily directed towards Elsie’s face, ‘Ron is 14 years old now. You’ve done all right bringing him up, and I could do the same.’

Elsie scoffs, ‘I know how to be a mother. I knew how to be a mother when I was 18, all you cared about when you were that age was about doing your crochet and fancy work to get money to top up your wages from the shoe factory so you could build this house, and what’s more, buy a car. What kind of example would all that be to a child? Have pity on it.’

My mother leaves the room, and noises from the kitchen suggest that she is preparing afternoon tea.

In many respects, my mother belonged to the Feminism era of the 1970s when women were burning their bras and asserting their rights as human beings to have the same rights as men. She was not interested in fashion or status, cut her own hair, made her clothes and didn’t wear a bra. She didn’t bake cakes, preserve fruit or make jam. She mended clothes, darned socks and painted walls. It was not unusual for her to re-tile chipped hearths, replace benchtops and repair a leaking roof. I watched her do the latter when she was 88 years old, holding my breath lest she falls.

My Nanna and Aunt Elsie were of the housewife kind, keeping the home fires burning and good food on the table. They both did it well with a great deal of well-deserved pride, and each believed that her way of doing things was the right way.

My Aunt, married to Walter, knew that her job was to look after her husband, the breadwinner. She knew her place: her washing was white; her cupboards were tidy and her house clean. She was in charge of the poultry pens and the vegetable garden.

Elsie and husband Walter lived in Emerald, a village in the Dandenong Ranges close to Melbourne. She had her routines: there was washing day, then housework day, sewing afternoons, baking days and gardening. He gave her the wages he received from his job as a slaughter-man for a local butcher every Thursday night. She counted the money and placed set amounts in labelled tins on the mantlepiece above the stove—one each for rent, groceries, electricity, wood and insurance. She then returned a small sum to him, his tobacco allowance. Elsie supplemented his income by selling eggs and dressed poultry to townsfolk and taking in house guests for short holidays during summer months.

Elsie liked to be out and about and considered herself to be stylish. She wore make-up, had her hair permed, smoked and drank alcohol. She was a relatively care-free woman and enjoyed life and gossiping at the local shops. Her weekends were for tennis and relaxation. She played the organ each Sunday morning at the local Anglican church and visits with friends were a priority.

Often tea was taken on Sunday afternoons at the homes of various women with bone china cups and homemade food provided by each guest laid out on a handmade lace cloth. Whether the occasion was at my Aunt’s home or one of her friends, there was always her pièce de résistance, a cream sponge which she placed with a measure of aplomb in the centre of the table. The glories and shortcomings of her offering was always discussed; this one was a little dry the oven must have been too hot; or, the eggs were too fresh this time. Nevertheless, the verdict was always the same: It was the best-baked cream sponge that the town had ever produced.

The conversation was always lively, and I can only imagine the gossip and Elsie being the star of the show. She was a gifted storyteller and could hold an audience for hours.

My Aunt speaks, ‘I always knew that Jean’s baby had something wrong with it; her pregnancy didn’t look right. I wasn’t surprised when I heard that it was stillborn.’

‘I heard that you were the one who found Mrs Miller dead on the floor last week’, said one of the ladies inviting a story.

‘Yes, that was me, and a shock it was too. I had baked biscuits and thought she would like a few, she doesn’t do much baking, you know. She didn’t answer the door, so I gave it a hard push, and it opened. When I got into the kitchen there she was, laying on the floor. I was very shaken up I was.’

‘Oh Elsie, that was terrible, what did you do?’

‘I could see straight away that she was dead so I ran over to the phone at the post office and rang Dr Jorgensen in Belgrave, I knew that he would know what to do. He told me to leave the matter to him, and I went home.’ ‘Poor May Miller’ said Elsie tearing up ‘She was a nice old soul, and to think that her laggard daughter turned her back on her. Disgusting! I liked May a lot, she was a good woman.’

Perhaps my Aunt’s spiciest stories concerned Rev. Charles Clark, the Anglican clergyman, whom my Aunt referred to as Old man Clark. ‘He had it on with the women you know. I feel sorry for his wife; she is a proper lady, very refined. He leaves her to bring up the children while he is out and about promoting himself. All parson’s do the same thing. I could tell you a few stories about him that would make your hair curl, believe me!’

My mother represented a clash of cultures that was beyond the understanding of her mother and sister. I have no doubt that they loved her, but she was an enigma that they couldn’t explain, and they both resented that one of their own didn’t fit in. She was a loner, bookish and considered ‘old-fashioned’ in her choice of clothes. She was not interested in hosting a lady’s afternoon with homemade cakes, and she didn’t gossip. They were correct about one thing though, my mother was not an earth-mother soft, comforting and tender as shall be revealed.

To know my mother, one needs to understand her sense of shame and humiliation about the turbulence of her parent’s relationship and the straitened circumstances of the family after her father left it.

Her mother, Helen Laura Foley, the 5th child of Thomas Foley and Elizabeth Stamp, was born on Christmas Day in 1868 at Donnelly’s Creek on the Walhalla Goldfields in Gippsland, Victoria. Thomas was the son of a convict, Ann Foley who was convicted at the Old Bailey in 1843 for stealing eleven pounds of pork from a shop in East London owned by a Mr Harrod, and sentenced to seven years detention in Van Diemen’s Land. She arrived with Thomas, then aged three years, on the women’s convict ship, Woodbridge, in Hobart on Christmas Day of that year. She was sent to the Female Factory and Thomas to the orphanage.

Helen’s mother, Elizabeth Rebecca Stamp married Thomas at Sale, Victoria in 1860 and in 1865 they were lured to Gippsland in search of gold. The couple with their three eldest children took up residence on the Crinoline Reef at Donnelly’s Creek not far from Walhalla. It was a brave move, but Elizabeth was a resilient woman having migrated to Australia alone after securing a position as a nursemaid in Melbourne before the voyage.

The family lived in a tent, and Elizabeth worked from dawn to dark, providing the family with their basic needs. She rose before dawn to re-stoke the fire using bellows to coax embers back to life and kneading the dough that had been set to rise the previous evening before baking it in a portable cast iron oven which she placed on the top of the coals. Then she would put water to boil on the fire to make tea, then cook breakfast porridge made from oats.

Once the family were awake and dressed, sleeping rolls would need to be folded and stored away. The older children would milk the cow, and later she would separate cream and churn butter. Depending on the day, she would then do the weekly wash, the ironing, grind the grain, work in the vegetable patch and so on until dark. In-between these jobs she would be making a pot luck stew for the evening meal, do the mending, darning, knitting, sewing, crochet or spinning as well as breastfeeding Helen Laura.

The diggings were unhealthy places, and there was a high mortality rate. Elizabeth must have been anxious about the well-being of her baby. Her previous child, born there in 1866, Henry Gilbert, just nine months old, died there and was buried in a coffin made by his father.

Because their search for gold was unsuccessful, the family moved in 1872 to the township of Walhalla and Thomas took a job in the Long Tunnel Mine. On November 11, 1880, he had a severe fall, breaking both legs. The family always remembered this date because that was the same day that Ned Kelly, a well-known bushranger, was hung. Thomas, laying on the back of a horse-drawn cart was transported 40 miles along corrugated roads to a hospital at Toongabbie and later, was transferred to the Melbourne Hospital. He received substantial compensation from the Mining Company, was successfully rehabilitated and obtained work in 1883 with the Victorian Railways in the Engineers Branch.

It can be assumed that Helen attended school because, in 1896, it is believed that she was working as a Governess in Launceston, Tasmania. It was there that she met James Philip Hewlett, a sailor who had jumped ship, and the couple were married there in March 1897. They returned to Victoria and set up home in South Melbourne, and he worked as a hairdresser and surgical instrument maker. Three daughters were born to them: Edith Elizabeth in 1898, Gertrude Esther in 1899 and Elsie Selina in 1900.

James Philip Hewlett had migrated to Australia with his parents, sisters and brother in 1883 when he was eight years old. In the following four years, two of his sisters died, and in 1888 after his father’s early death he ran away to sea carrying his unresolved grief His life was a struggle, and he moved from place to place and ship to ship, until he met and married my grandmother in Launceston in 1897.

In 1902 he deserted the family after breaking several restraining orders alleging that he physically abused his wife, leaving her with three young daughters to rear alone. An Interpol warrant was issued for his arrest, but he could not be located.

The family was destitute, and two months later my mother and her sister Elsie were brought before the South Melbourne Court and declared Wards of the State because they were ‘neglected children’ and ‘destitute.’ This order remained in place until each child reached the age of 18 years. I’m unsure whether my mother was aware of this. The Court formally gave the two girls back into the care of their mother, because she was considered to be a woman of good character. She was, in fact, a binge drinker and had no trade or profession. Fortunately, we have her husband’s side of the story in his autobiographical poetry:

LINES TO HELEN LAURA HEWLETT

You talk of the men that make earthly blunders,

You forget that there’s one who will judge us someday.

You frown in your wrath, as loud as the thunders,

And think not where you’ll go when your soul flits this clay.

There’s one who will judge us, who judges the many,

So, it troubles me little whatever you say;

You talk of your good, but good – have you any?

Your wrath brings tomorrow, the curse of today.

I’ve run through rough paths in my mad boyish error,

But I curse not the curs that drove me from bliss;

But I trust you will think of me if you ever

Suffer such sorrow or anguish like this.

TOO LATE TO REGRET

I reck not for the life I’ve led or troubles that I have seen,

Or what I was, or what I am, or what I might have been;

‘Tis hard to think of bitter words, and wrath that’s flung at me,

‘Tis better we are far apart since we cannot agree.

Oh, God, the pangs and angry wrath of a woman’s spiteful spite,

But she may judge and judge again, but has she judged me, right?

Nothing is sadder on earth to me than to think of the taunted past,

But cursed is she who curseth me, yea, cursed me with wrath and blast.

After James left, Helen tried unsuccessfully, to keep the family together, taking in washing and earning a pittance. Unable to pay rent and afford food for herself and children, she placed Gerte and Elsie in a Children’s Home, ‘The Home of Hope’, in Collingwood. While the girls were cared for adequately while there, they nevertheless, suffered much privation and contemplated running away on many occasions only to be stopped by the knowledge that if caught, they would receive severe beatings.

Edith died in 1903 at the Melbourne Hospital. Her death certificate records her cause of death as ‘exhaustion’, and her parents ‘unknown.’ I wonder what the background to her admission to the hospital was. She was remembered fondly by my mother.

My mother protected me from the shame that she carried from both her early privation and the socially unacceptable fact of coming from a family with a history of violence and desertion by refusing to tell me the truth. She explained the absence of her father by saying that he died in 1903 from Bubonic Plague and was buried in the Melbourne General Cemetery. However, when doing family history research in 2000, I traced his whereabouts from the date of his desertion until he died in Western Australia in 1919 where he had set up a home with a lady from Adelong in the Snowy Mountains with whom he had two sons. One son, James Philip Hewlett (5th) was living in Perth in 2000, and I had the privilege of his friendship for the last six years of his life.

I am unsure whether Mum knew that her great-grandmother, Anne Foley, was a convict. I have no indication that she did but at the same time would be surprised if she didn’t.

By the time Elsie was old enough to go to school, the girls were again living with their mother. Helen had a job working as a cleaner at Bedgood’s shoe and boot factory at Richmond, a nearby suburb. Over time, she gradually worked her way up to the status of forewoman.

At that time, both girls were attending the Princes Hill Primary School. My mother said she loved to learn and was quick with numbers, ‘when a problem was written on the blackboard, I could solve it almost instantly. The teacher used to ask me how I did it.’ When she was 11 years old, a prize for academic achievement was presented to her at the Collingwood Town Hall, which I still have: a book called ‘Madcap Marigold.’ The following year, to supplement the family income, special dispensation was obtained for her to leave school, and she commenced working at a menial job under her mother at the shoe factory.

Gerte was missed at school and the Headmaster, R. Skewes, visited their home pleading with her mother to let her remain because he and his fellow-teachers considered her to be a gifted child. It was a great disappointment to my mother that she did not have further education and I’m sure that in other circumstances she would have studied at a tertiary level. To give her the experience and sense of a university, we had a day together at LaTrobe when I was an undergraduate student. We attended an English lecture about the poetry of John Donne, had lunch at the café and spent time in the library.

Mum worked as a machinist at Bedgoods for several years before she was promoted to stitching the uppers of sample shoes and boots taken by salesmen around the State. This was a prestigious position only given to those machinists who achieved perfection. For as long as I can remember, Mum had a pair of new soft brown kid Bedgood shoes that she kept in a cupboard in her bedroom. When I came across these as I was clearing out her home after she died, I held them and realized that they were beautiful and yes, perfect. My instinct was to keep them, then my rational mind took over and realising they did not fit me, I sent them to the op-shop. I regret doing that.

The Australian author, Alan Marshall, who himself was an accountant at a shoe factory in Collingwood nearby, wrote a compassionate story of workers there during the Great Depression. He describes an oppressive environment which dominated by a ‘rhythm ruling the lives of workers, a rhythm devouring their youth, their laughter and their hopes for the future.’

‘The machine room was like an oven … girls sat with curved backs in rows on old stools operating machines with fingers darting, confident and untiring manipulating leather. The conditions were dreadful.

No morning or afternoon tea and no heating whatever. No sick or holiday pay. The hours were from 7.30 a.m. to 5.20 p.m. with no tea breaks. Girls could go to the toilet, but if a girl was away from her machine for too long, the forewoman would go looking for her.’

Soul-destroying, yes! But my mother’s soul was not destroyed. She persevered, working under those conditions for 24 years. When she left to be married, the Company gave her two beautiful matching burnished brass urns. They were about 25 inches high and were the most precious ornaments in our home. She was very proud of them and several times told me how to clean them when they became mine. Mum always thought well of the Bedgood family and was grateful for consistent employment throughout the Great Depression.

…

Chapter 2

EARLY YEARS

Not intimidated, my mother did get pregnant again, aged thirty-nine, hiding her pregnancy from her family as long as she could so, she said, ‘They would not interfere by telling me what to do’, and no doubt continue to ‘gaslight’ her.

The strength of this defence from interference extended to my mother not consulting a doctor until the third trimester and not purchasing baby clothes or nappies until after my birth. At the time she lost the second child, she was told that when next pregnant she would need to go to bed for the first three months. She did that, and Hilda Ward, married to a first cousin of my Dad looked after her at home. The pregnancy progressed well, and in the seventh month, she tried, unsuccessfully, to obtain a place at a hospital for my birth. Finally, at eight months she consulted a G.P. in Toorak who arranged a place for her at St. Vincent’s Mercy Maternity Hospital in Victoria Parade East Melbourne.

A few days before my birth, while my heavily pregnant mother and father were visiting Elsie and her husband, Wallie her waters broke. Wallie became agitated, ‘Get your wife out of here’ he said ‘I’m not having any baby being born on my property.’ They gathered their things and drove back to Melbourne, where Mum was admitted to hospital. I was born the following day into the cloying atmosphere of foreboding.

They were dark days. War clouds had been gathering over Europe for many months. Two months before my birth,