Continued from Part 3 on Swansea and Boarding school.
Ina digresses from her account of school in Swansea to talk more about her family, before going back to Swansea in the next part.
Really I only met my sister [LM, Beth] after meals when we would look at the letter board. Our parents did write regularly, our mother in her big scrawl and our father would type. He taught himself several skills - playing the organ, the concertina, typing - and he took people's teeth out if necessary and prescribed glasses. He drove an ambulance during earthquakes which were not infrequent in Peru. I have always admired his resourcefulness, his curiosity, the way he took a grip on life and absorbed information and ideas. But he was astonishingly naive too - many things passed him by. He once saw a punk cycling through Newburgh [LM, in Fife, Scotland]. He didn't know the word punk - he just saw a person with orange spiky hair and couldn't for the life of him understand why this guy should look like this. He was naive in relationships, dropping clangers, but never realising. He didn't intend harm. He always visited the lonely and sick even up to the day he died. He was respected by many but didn't inspire affection. I think I respected his achievements and determination. If only he hadn't been a missionary! And with the right encouragement he could have had a fruitful life. But then he thought his life was fruitful. I feel very sad that his potential was diverted into sterile channels altho' I'm sure he brought comfort and help to some people. My mother did not have skills and never taught us any either. She was not a good cook- largely because she could only afford the cheapest possible things. I was flabbergasted when I was in my fifties and they had retired and were with us in Bourne End. I had made some mince pies and my father commented on how delicious they were. My mother said "She had a good teacher". I think she had to believe that she'd done the things that mothers should do altho' she had not been with us to do them.
She had a timid, kind, sentimental nature. She never wanted conflict. She constantly poured oil on waters even when they weren't troubled. Strangely, she didn't visit the sick or lonely when they retired to Scotland. This makes me wonder if she did even in Peru. But perhaps she'd had enough. And perhaps there she felt on a par, in fact even a rung above the peasant women. Back here her lack of education and ignorance of how the world had moved on may well have resulted in loss of confidence. I think she found us all daunting, argumentative, reading, talking, learning. She was a bit like a fish out of water. But our protectors she still wanted to be even if she sometimes imagined up problems for us. If we were doing exams she would whisper and tiptoe and try to provide little extra treats. She loved to talk about people, their relationships, etc.
Well, after my parents had been away about 4 years Agnes was sent back on a ship to England. They were living in Cuzco at the time and just as she was about to leave there was an earthquake and this delayed her. Whether transport to the coast was disrupted or whether my parents felt it had been too traumatic for her (this I doubt as going at all must have been traumatic) I don't know. Beth and I, who must have been 13 and 12, (Agnes was 9) went up to Liverpool to meet her. We stood on the quay and saw this lively faced blonde girl wearing a beret. She leaned forward and it fell into the water. A sailor got a long pole and fished it out. I don't know how or why I realised that she was somewhat unkempt and uncared for. She had travelled for 3 weeks in the care of a male missionary. Mr Creighton. His plaiting skills were probably nil. I feel angry and shocked even now to think she could have been sent off like this to a strange (to her) world. Mr Creighton was a stranger to her, too. No wonder she was something of a rebel. For Beth and I it was very exciting having a younger sister come. However, we didn't actually see her much. Again, she stayed with her peers. She was extremely sporting and shone at netball, athletics and hockey. I have visions of her leaping high with toes pointed. She looked good too with her extremely blonde long hair. I felt proud - but she did get up to naughtiness. She attracted the boys - Bernard was one of her boyfriends. Even in later years when she nursed in London they were friendly. Subsequently he went to New Zealand, was a fruit farmer and married with family but died in his fifties with a heart problem. He had also been very sporting. She was also friendly with Gordon Morris. David, his older brother, was in my class and in my late forties I met up with David again and became quite friendly. He had married Edna, who was also at school with us but younger than I. Edna had always always always fancied David. And somehow after they left school her dream was fulfilled. David in turn always fancied Betty Colley but she married Ken. But they became quite a foursome in their late forties onwards.
Well, Agnes was attractive and sporty but couldn't care less about school work. She left school at 15 so was only there for 6 years. I was there for 11 years. Beth also left at 15. Beth and Agnes took up nursing. But one more thing about Agnes' arrival at Liverpool. When she got off the ship she cringed as we walked along the streets. Whether I realised this or heard someone say but it was the tall buildings that frightened her after her recent experience of the earthquake.
Having our sister come was the next best thing to having our parents. The domestic staff at school in no way were proxy parents. They were uneducated, untrained. Their qualification was that they had been 'saved' and Rees Howells, the Director of the school, and the college was their mentor and hero. He was God's representative on earth. They weren't paid. They had their keep. But what they really wanted was go to Palestine as it was then and look after the refugee children there. They had no compunction about telling us from time to time that we were second best - especially if we didn't behave. So our parents had left us in the keeping of people who freely admitted that they'd prefer to be looking after other children. We rang rungs around them and had no respect for them. Thankfully we did have respect for the staff who taught us. They were also not paid - only got their keep. They did it for God.
On the domestic side we had a matron and her assistant who was Doreen Thomas. We had most to do with her. It was all quite interesting and I got to grips with the culture but my dream was to see my parents, especially when other parents came on visits. I imagined walking round the corner of a building and there my parents would be!!. I hid under the sheets and had little weeps from time to time but what kept us going is that we were all almost in the same boat. Not quite however. Most of the others had relatives whom they visited regularly. The plan with us was that we would go to Ireland at Easter to my Mother's family and so we did the first Easter - and that was the last time. Why? Nobody ever told us. What had Beth and I done? We were too much for our Grandmother I suppose. Yet she had two daughters who lived with her and must have helped and another daughter, Auntie Sally, who had no children at all and was very close to my mother. Not close enough to look after her children evidently. To this day - 50+ years later I feel puzzled and embittered by the total lack of interest and care shown by my Irish relatives - all deeply devoted Christians. The Easter that we went Beth and I had to go by train to Liverpool and then by boat to Belfast. We must have been 8 or 9 but I don't remember being nervous, only excited. We slept in a big dormitory on the boat. There were a lot of soldiers and servicemen on the boat - I supposed it was still close enough to the war - 1947 or 8 - and troops were still being demobbed.
This was not our last trip to Ireland. When our parents came on leave they took a house there for a while and we went on our holidays. My Mother's brother, Alan, married to Jean, had a piano and let me go and play it. Their daughter, Ruth, very pretty and glamorous, took us on a trip around the Antrim coast. Subsequently she and her husband moved to California. She had two sons and 1 daughter. Her parents retired out there and her father died of a stroke like many of the Lowry family. Ruth's husband died of cancer in his sixties, I should think.
Our Irish grandfather died very soon after our return from Peru - he dropped dead in the street, as I was told. A heart attack, I presume. For our summer holiday we were told we would go to Newburgh in Scotland to Uncle George, our guardian. More of that later, but it entailed a train to Shrewsbury, change for Crewe and then to Perth. Again we were 8 and 9. And then, of course, Agnes came along later on.
When my parents retired and we invited them to spend Christmas in Bourne End my father said 'Your Mother would like to be with her own folk'. I was speechless at the end of the phone - who were we? Of course, apart from her closeness to her Irish family they both would have been fearful of not having a Christian enough Christmas with us. I also got the feeling that my father was marginalised by my mother's family. I don't think somehow he was quite comfortable with them and quite accepted. What makes me think this? Vibes?
This is the family in, I think, Aberdeen Park in Highbury, London, about 1958 or so when the parents were back on furlough from South America. William (father) is at the back. In front of him Ina on the left aged about 19. On the right Agnes (about 16), third sister. In the front from left to right, Beth, the oldest sister (about 20), Ruth (mother), and on the right Ruth, the youngest sister (maybe 12/13). I think at this point Ina was at university (London Bible College) and had probably met my dad.
In the next Part 5 Ina goes back to a focus on boarding school and Swansea.