What Brought You to England?

By Zielfa B. Maslin

What Brought You to England?
It is the 1980s. A Filipina, Eve, goes with her husband, Andrew, when he returned to England after working as a British volunteer in the Philippines for four years. Due to limited finances, they have no choice but to live with Andrews parents, and the situation is not helped when Andrew experiences difficulty in finding a job as a clinical psychologist. The meeting of different backgrounds and cultural expectations causes strain, and there is palpable generational tension. For Eve, opportunities to find work in England prove nonexistent as she finds that her degree in history and career in the National Museum of the Philippines count for nothing. As she reinvents herself, she experiences undercurrents of racism, but she also succeeds in training to be a nurse. Her personality and Filipino upbringing inevitably impacts on how she copes with marriage, parenthood, work, and friendships.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Aug 26, 2014
• ISBN: 9781496989277

Zielfa B. Maslin

Dr. Zielfa B. Maslin is from the Philippines and lives in England with her husband and daughter. As a retired person, she views her disengagement from clinical and educational occupational therapy practice as an opportunity to be as physically and mentally active as possible. With her second novel, she continues to pursue her ambition to be a writer.

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© 2014 Zielfa B. Maslin. All rights reserved.

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Published by AuthorHouse 11/14/2014

ISBN: 978-1-4969-8884-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4969-8927-7 (e)

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Contents

Acknowledgements

Glossary

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

TO:      Mrs. Salvacion de Leon Yan (In memoriam)

My uncle, Nias Garrido Bayoneta (In memoriam)

Professor Charlotte Aspuria Floro (In memoriam)

Ninang Pat A. Floro (In memoriam)

Dr. Rosario Laurel Sotto

Marilyn Cordero

Josefa Quirante

Sr. Valeriana Baerts, ICM

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My grateful thanks to –

Sue Wilkes for her generous information on aspects of nursing training and education in England;

Magie Laurel Asuncion for researching on how marriages between Catholics and non-Catholics can be solemnised in a Catholic church in the Philippines;

Arni Sotto Resontoc, my god daughter for facilitating my communication with her mother and aunt in order to clarify some topics that were touched in this novel;

Marvin Uy for sharing with me her nursing education in the Philippines;

The Filipino nurses working in private nursing homes and in the National Health Service hospitals in England for sharing with me their experiences about working in this country;

All the Authorhouse staff (Cebu, Philippines) for their most efficient and friendly assistance. I cannot name them all but I would like to mention Andrew Gulde who negotiated my present contract; Rey Flores; Mark Andrews, check in co-ordinator; Kim Cavannah, design consultant together with her design and technical team; Wil Gomez, marketing consultant and all those who had input into the publication of this book;

My husband, Keith and my dearest daughter, Philippa for giving me a most needed help in correcting my English.

I, however bear full responsibility for this book.

GLOSSARY

Chapter 1

P eople ask me sooner or later, what brought you to England? I have schooled myself to take this in a spirit of healthy curiosity. Nonetheless, there have been many times when this question has infuriated me, reinforcing the feeling of being a perennial outsider. If I were white, Caucasian, blond, would I be asked this question? I keep these feelings to myself. I calmly tell them a much telegraphed version of events that led to my marriage to Andrew, an Englishman. I’m not the biblical Ruth who insisted on going with her mother-in-law when the latter decided to return to her country, Moab, after she was widowed, but in a sense, Ruth’s immortal words apply: For whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge. I willingly went along with Andrew’s plan to go back to England.

How I met Andrew was purely by chance. I nearly missed Jane that Friday afternoon. Jane and I worked in the National Museum in Manila.

I still had no idea what to do when I closed our office which I shared with five others. I was, however, anxious to beat the Friday afternoon rush. I could go back to my boarding house or enjoy the air-conditioning in a cinema near us. I had used a cinema many times to unwind and have respite from the heat and humidity of Manila.

Oh, good. I was hoping to catch you earlier, was Jane’s cheerful voice that even her very hurried footsteps could not drown. I thought that our meeting was never going to end. What are you doing tomorrow? Come to our house. Bella’s inviting some of her friends. She said I can invite who I want.

I’d been to their house before. It didn’t take me long to answer. I didn’t have anything planned for Saturday. What’s the occasion?

It’s for Bella’s department.

Jane’s an anthropologist. We collaborated on a number of projects and exhibitions. It was probably this that played a part in us becoming friends. My history undergraduate degree served me in good stead in obtaining a post in our National Museum. If my application had not been successful, I would have probably tried for a teaching job. A secretarial position in one of the commercial or government offices didn’t particularly grab me. Some senior people in the museum intimated that it was my interest in pre-Spanish history that swayed them to invite me to join their staff. There wasn’t much assembled information about this period in our Philippine history at that time. I loved going through old books in our libraries and made use of all the materials that I could get hold of.

Bella is Jane’s elder sister and an instructor in the psychology department of the University of the Philippines where I graduated from. It was common knowledge that intelligent but poor Filipino students went to study in this university. Bella volunteered their house as the setting of their department’s welcome party for the British volunteer who was going to be part of their teaching staff. It was easy to see why Bella’s offer was accepted. Bella and Jane’s parents were friendly and welcoming. Their house was spacious and their garden was especially inviting with its well kept lawn and attractive features. Flowering plants were beautifully arranged in well chosen places so that one’s attention would be drawn to them. Their red, white, and pink roses were delightful and the fragrant smells emanating from these blooms were intoxicating. At night, tiny lights illuminated the trimmed bougainvilleas around their house.

I grew up in Legara, a town in the island of Maridoro. After high school, my parents decided that I was to study in Manila. Manila is the capital of the Philippines. I was pleasantly surprised about this turn of events. I thought that I was going to the biggest town in our province where there was a private college. Not many of us from our town went to Manila for college. I readily fell in with my parents’ plans even though I was apprehensive about leaving home. My parents, who were schoolteachers, had some familiarity with Manila on account of their jobs.

I’m an only child. This is unusual in the Philippines but I had never asked my parents why I was the only child when our neighbours had lots. One had six; another eight. I have dozens of cousins. So, in spite of being an only child, I didn’t lack for playmates. My cousins and I were in and out of each other’s houses. Invariably, a cousin or two ended up sleeping in our house.

When I was in the elementary grades, my parents took me with them to Manila a few times so it wasn’t the boat and bus journey that made me nervous on the day of our departure. Being young and relatively healthy, thoughts of illness didn’t bother me. In Legara, if either my mother or father were not around, there were my aunts nearby. This, plus leaving my friends in Legara, saddened me. My parents said that I was to board at the house of Mr. and Mrs. Mendoza. My parents knew them from one of the teachers’ conferences they attended. They had four children. They provided my meals and they treated me as one of their children. This arrangement suited me at first as Manila was an unknown proposition to me. From the newspapers and the media, everything seemed to be happening in Manila. There was much fanfare about the president of the Philippines entertaining American government officials and foreign businessmen in Malacañang Palace. One famous senator denounced graft and corruption in one of his speeches in Congress and this was cheered by the nationalists. A much welcome housing programme for low-income families in Manila was trumpeted by the then Mayor of Manila. This was hailed as progress indeed. Handsome actors and well dressed actresses were photographed coming out of Manila Hotel or their palatial houses. I was awed by the many big and modern buildings, even after so many months in this city. The faded yellow orange painted buildings looked grand with their columns. I could hardly take in the numerous lines of shops, heaving with people. I was amazed at the wide roads and many side roads that led into more streets and avenues. There were hundreds of jeeps and buses that criss-crossed these roads. I feared that I would get lost. In Legara, I was used to walking on one main road from the pier to a part of our town where our house stood. It took no longer than half an hour. I was on speaking terms with almost everyone in our street. In the time that I lived with the Mendozas, the faces of the people in our street were familiar but I hardly talked to them.

In my second year, I moved to a residential hall in the campus of the University of the Philippines where I was studying. There were many activities which heightened my feelings of being young and carefree. During student elections, we accepted willy-nilly the campaign leaflets which the candidates and their supporters pressed on us. Our walk to our lecture rooms was interrupted by the ringing voices of the candidates on loudspeakers proclaiming what they stood for and promising this and that. Once a year, there was a parade of floats of all the colleges in the university. Floats embody the zest, academic and social activities of the students in a college. It was rather depressing that even universities did not escape the Filipinos’ obsession with beauty queens. An inevitable beauty queen was the centre piece of each float. My friends and I were always surprised about how the muse of our college got chosen for this parade. We were not aware of any beauty contests that were held in the campus. We were on-lookers and not in the orbit of students who were involved in the social and political life of our campus. We stood near the parade grounds to admire the order and discipline of the reserved officers training corps marching in their well pressed uniforms during their ceremonies. Our hall held regular gatherings and this included parties where we could invite our friends. These were the times we tittle-tattled about who was attracted to who and who was going out with who.

Being on campus made my parents felt more secure as it meant I did not have to walk through poorly lit streets when I needed to study late at night in the university library. Downtown Manila was getting more crowded. They heard from the radio about all the crimes that happened in Manila – muggings, hold-ups, street gang fights. Whether it was the area I lived in or just good luck, none of the Mendozas and I saw any of these occurrences.

My boyfriend in high school and I drifted apart, perhaps because I was in Manila and he stayed in our province. He got married and had six children, the last time I heard. My second boyfriend transferred his affection to someone else, an office mate. I felt hurt by this abandonment. There were times when I worried about my attractiveness as a potential girlfriend. But my face that greeted me in my mirror was good enough for me – fair complexioned, not too round a face, medium length wavy black hair, not too thick lips, and certainly not a flat nose. My mother and my aunts said that I was charming, but being my closest relatives, they would have said that, wouldn’t they? It tickled me somewhat when my friends wished they had my brown eyes and my naturally wavy hair. Nonetheless, in my low moments, I entertained the notion that I had better get used to being an old maid. This is a term we use for single women who are in their thirties and beyond. Then there was Raffy who showed some serious interest. He was working in one of the big Philippine-American companies. Raffy and I tended to go out with our friends. We went to eat in restaurants; relaxed in cinemas. One time, we even ventured to a night club. We had some drinks and deemed ourselves to be sophisticated. We were laughing as we ordered Martini. This was not something that we girls did everyday; coke and other soft drinks served as our usual tipple. There was a lot of teasing and giggling that night. One time, Raffy told me about a concert.

There’s a famous group of American singers. A friend of mine went and he thought that they were very good. Would you like to go?

Only the two of us went. We each paid for our own tickets because I insisted that I wanted to pay for my own. The tickets were pricey considering our salaries. He raised an objection. I’m inviting you.

Both of us are working. You can treat me another time.

The two of us enjoyed our outing together and we talked about going on another one in the future. Raffy’s interest in music extended to being a choir member. I like listening to music, mostly romantic ballads, but I simply don’t have the voice to sing. Our friends speculated that our relationship would have developed further if I hadn’t have met Andrew.

There was something different about the gathering in Jane’s house that Saturday. There were more people than usual. Some note of formality was signalled by two men who were about in their fifties and who were wearing barong Tagalog, a Filipino national costume. Top men from the university, I was told. Amongst them were three light-skinned persons – two of them, very tall. One of the university officials was talking, gesticulating with his hands. The foreign visitors indicated their interest in what he was saying judging from the attention they were giving him.

Come and meet our special guests for tonight, Jane ushered me excitedly as she led me to the three Westerners who seemed to be having a lull from the eager attention of the other visitors. Evelyn, this is Andrew, Lawrence and Stephanie. They’re British volunteers. Eve and I have worked together in several projects for the National Museum.

My interest was aroused as this was the first time I had heard of British volunteers. American Peace Corps volunteers were more common in the Philippines, although I had not met any of them. Andrew had a doctorate in psychology from the University of London. The university where Bella worked wanted to develop its clinical psychology programme. Andrew’s British Psychological Society diploma in clinical psychology added to his attractions, he told me later. I filed this in my memory even though I was baffled as to why his diploma was considered just as attractive as his doctorate.

The volunteers left the party much earlier than the majority of guests. I surmised with disquiet that it was the curfew that was behind their early departure. This was the 70s. The volunteers were sufficiently informed about martial law in the Philippines. Curfew was just one of the ugly, unpleasant features of martial law. Lawrence and Stephanie were flying out of Manila early the next morning, hence their early departure. Lawrence was a potter who was going to Davao in Mindanao. Stephanie was going to teach English in a town in Antique in the Visayas. Andrew was particularly easy to talk with. He struck me as down-to-earth, with his