Chapter 4 Married Life

Chapter 4   Married Life

In spite of the unfortunate beginning to her young life, Peggy grew up a healthy young woman. After leaving school she tried dressmaking and then secretarial work, both of which caused severe pain to the back of her neck, and migraine headaches, probably a remnant of the accident in her early life.

Eventually, at the age of 16, she settled at Rowe’s Café, a pretty posh place to eat, where Molly also worked. She started as a dishwasher and worked her way up in a short time to special cook. She loved it there and spent six very happy years. Rowe’s Cafe was a common subject of reminiscence for her over the years. Snippets included the à la carte menu, and how the fish was served on silver flats. She told me about the apprentice chef who defied orders from the head chef by putting all the chickens in one large baking dish. Apparently he'd been told to put them into individual baking dishes; and when Mr Ettason, their boss, discovered the transgression, the air was turned blue with the abuse that rained down on the head off the poor young man!

 “All the girls scattered. We weren’t used to such language. Ooh Mr Ettason could swear!” she told me, laughing at the memory.

After work in the evenings Peggy loved to dance.

 “We were taught to be light on our feet; we had to be--they were very strict,” she recounted, “ And I was never short of partners.” She and I often whiled away--(I whiled, she worked,)--the hours together in our old farmhouse, daydreaming about the times she went to Sandy Robertson’s dancing school, and how she and her young crowd danced until the last tram was due to go.

"We’d run for our lives, all together--girls and boys," she'd say. "The boys were decent sorts, and always saw us safely onto our trams.” Peggy danced four or five evenings a week.

 Dickie Jorgensen’s youngest brother Alec, attended Brisbane Boys Grammar School. For their uniform, the boys wore bright blue shirts. During their school years Peggy and Alec often crossed paths on the way to school and Alec loved to tease Peggy, who one day found the courage to make the profound reply “Tricky Blue!”

While Alec was growing up he became known as a bit of a tearaway, and generally the leader of a gang of youths. Living next door to Peggy's father, George, was not easy for Alec. If he was yelling out around the street making a nuisance of himself, George would not hesitate to give him a clip around the ear.

George was a bit of an old English gentleman, who was very strict with the girls, causing them all to leave home at an early age. He insisted on church twice on Sundays, prayers were said regularly, and grace before every meal.

One night when Lulu lived at home, she was dressed to go to a party with Alice and Molly, wearing a lovely pink dress that Annie had made for her. The bodice was made from fine Swiss voile, a thin material almost transparent, and while she wore a pink satin petticoat with shoestring straps, the material allowed her shoulders to show through. 

Annie called out to George, “Come and look at the girls, George. They look beautiful.”

When George caught sight of the dress on Lulu, he flew into a rage. “Oh, he went mad! He tore at Lulu’s dress and ripped it off her shoulders!” Peggy shuddered as she recalled the unhappy incident. “The house was in uproar. I listened to my sisters crying and I cried on my pillow.”

Lulu urged her sixteen and a half-year-old younger sister to move in with her and her new husband, a spiffy looking young bookie from the racetracks,. He had two bright gold teeth where his upper canines should have been. Apparently, this was a bit of a fashion statement for young men in those days. Perhaps they were like the tattoos that young men adorn themselves with today. I remember staying with them when I was little and he always smiled a lot!

  Meanwhile, with the aid of the government’s post-war Free Selector Program, Dickie and his brother Vincent, who  was entitled as a returned soldier, eventually selected two and a half thousand acres of wild, undeveloped forest in the Burnett region, 300 miles from Brisbane. The arrangement was that Dickie and his family would live and work on the property, and Vin share the initial expense to start out. In time, in return for work on the farm, Alec was supposed to receive a share of the property.

Molly and her husband moved on to the farm straightaway with their three children, Errol, Anthea, and Gordon, and with Simeon’s help, established a dairy farm in the thick bush. With the aid of their father, the brothers built a home for Molly amongst the eucalypts on a slope above a lovely lagoon. They used rough timber posts placed upright and embedded in the ground close together, over which they nailed hessian bags. With plaster made out of mud and whitewash, the outside walls were effectively sealed. The house had a solid, ant-bed floor. Tennis courts were made the same way. The hard mud from the  plentiful grey termite nests was crushed to a fine powder, spread out, watered, and rolled out flat. Kept damp, the mud set hard like concrete.

 Before she turned seventeen, Peggy got to go on a holiday up to the farm. While she was staying with Molly, she watched eighteen year-old Alec, dressed in his long black trousers and white singlet, wielding an axe to ring-bark trees to clear land. Alec was keen on Peggy and eventually followed her back to Bribane. While Peggy was working at Rowe’s Cafe, Alec asked her out on a date. 
   
His approach was stiff and abrupt, “Meet me at the corner of Edward and Ann Street, and be there on time.”

George disliked Alec heartily, and Lulu warned Peggy, “He will never have any money!” 

Peggy fell in love regardless, and when she was twenty-two they married. 

In many ways the wedding was a sad day for Peggy. Her father refused to attend, and her mother was in bed sick, her face painful and swollen with mumps. The reception was held on the verandah of her sister-in-law's house. They ate sandwiches.                                                                                                          

To top off a list of disasters, the photographer encountered some major problem with his camera, and the photos did not come out.

 “We had to dress up in our wedding clothes and go back the next day,” Peggy told me.  “The studio gave me a bouquet, and we had all our photos retaken.”  Consequently, everyone in the wedding party looks very glum in the photos.

 One of the wonderful memories that Peggy has of the wedding though, is the beautiful wedding cake cooked by the head chef of Rowe’s Cafe, given to her as a gift from the management. I would love to have a photo of it. Sadly, photos of wedding bouquets and cakes were not considered important in those days.                                                                                                          

Of course, back then, the rule was for a woman: if you got married--you gave up work. The newlyweds moved into a rented house in Brisbane and Peggy found herself alone all day. She became lonely and depressed, and greatly missed her work. Alec didn't know what to do with his young wife in her loneliness. In desperation he contacted his sister-in-law and arranged to bring over his three-year old niece to spend a week with Peggy. It was a disaster; Peggy had no idea what to do with a three-year-old. After several days, recognising she and the little child were equally unhappy, Peggy pleaded with Alec to take his little niece home again.

 One-day the young couple attended an outing with some of Alec’s relations and friends. A picnic had been arranged near a large shallow lake not far from the town of Dalby. Many families with children had chosen that area for an outing on the day.  Being young and slim, Peggy wore smart white cotton shorts.

At one point, the group she was with noticed a ring of children some distance away standing in a circle in the water staring down at a child’s hat floating on the surface.

One of them remarked, "I wonder what those children are doing?" 

 “I guessed straightaway,” Peggy told me, “and I started running. When I reached them, I could see a little child of about two floating face down in the water. I scooped her up and put her over my shoulder.”

 “What did you do then?”  I asked in awe.

 “I upended her, patted hard on her back... I did everything I could, trying to expel water. I put her on the ground, massaged her chest and squeezed her lungs.” 

Eventually, upending the child again, Peggy was rewarded by a scream, "Mummy! Mummy!" By this time other adults had gathered round, but nobody offered any assistance.

Just then a woman raced up to Peggy, “Give me my baby!” she sobbed, and snatching the baby out of Peggy’s arms she returned to her own family.

The commotion died down, but later on a young man approached Peggy. "Thank you for saving our little girl."

Peggy was still shaking. "It was almost too late," she said.