We emigrated to South Africa in 1952 Part 3 1955

One of the managing secretaries of Merchants Industrial had been killed on 10 January 1954 BOAC Flight 781, a de Havilland DH 106 Comet aircrash in the Mediterranean shortly before I joined the company.

Pam van der Westhuizen was working there as a shorthand typist/secretary at the time and we became good friends. Soon she and Charles her husband became part of our social circle and we continued to be friends until 1992 or 93 when she died.

In nearby Roodepoort a new estate was being built at Horison by Gough Cooper and we decided to buy a house there. We had a choice not just of ground plans but the colour of the brick and roofing materials, windows, door styles and inside decoration. We visited regularly so watched the house being built.

During this time Nanette and Ann fell out with each other and we decided to leave the Pfeiffers with the completion of the  new house at Horison only a couple of months away.

We always seemed to be on the move. Jeppe, the smallholding, the cottage, the Pfeiffer’s farm, their Florida house and our next move was to the Florida Lake Hotel. In the 10 years I was married to John we moved 10 times.

With our furniture in store our ‘home’ was now reduced to a hotel room in a second rate hotel but it suited John down to the ground because he no longer needed to go out when he ran out of alcohol. The move however did bring some good fortune.

Florida Lake,  set in a small park, was opposite the hotel. During our stay there a strange thing happened. Of an evening we used to sit downstairs in the lounge with a small group of permanent residents.

One night, returning from work, as I walked through the hotel entrance I was waylaid by one of the female residents I hardly knew, waiting for me who called me over to chat. 
'I probably shouldn't tell you this,' she said. 'Do you know, after you left us last night to go to bed Bob said 'There goes a woman who doesn't know she is beautiful.' 

I had no idea what she was talking about or why she told me. 'Oh,' I asked looking around, 'who were they talking about?' Only later did I realise she was referring to me. It was the first time I had been called beautiful and it had never occurred to me!

One Saturday afternoon, while sitting in the park while Ann played on the swings, John heard someone talking to a little girl who had been playing with Ann. He recognised the accent as Cornish and started speaking to Thelma May, who was Cornish and brought her over to the hotel for afternoon tea and we immediately bonded. She has been a friend ever since.

Thelma and Chris (her second husband) were living in a nearby flat  and she had her young niece staying with them for a few days. They eventually moved from there to a house in a Johannesburg suburb and we regularly visited each other and started learning to play bridge together with she and I always partners.  However our games were never very serious and we did not play seriously and she and I eventually started playing the fool towards the end of the evening when she would declare 'Shambles have begun' and we would start quite blatantly cheating. It annoyed the men because they knew we were doing it but would play along! In later years she became a very adept bridge player but by then she was very serious about the game.

By this time we had many friends who came from the UK. Some through John’s work or his membership of the MOTHS (Memorable Order of Tin Hats - an ex serviceman’s organisation), and parties were arranged throughout the year by one or another of us.

1957

Ever since I had arrived in SA I had longed to make a journey back to Britain and the way in which my first return trip came about was not a happy one.

In November 1957 a letter from Dad said that my mother was very ill in hospital. She had cancer. Arrangements were made for Ann and I to fly to England to see her and we boarded a Trek Airways plane at Jan Smuts airports early in the morning of 10 November 1957 when it was still dark. 

The trip would take two nights and the plane stopped overnight in Luxor, Egypt and Nice and we arrived at Heathrow on the 12th. Later that evening after Dad's long and involved preamble he told me my mother had died on 10 November 1957, the very day and time I had boarded the plane in Johannesburg.

While we were staying in London John’s father arranged to meet me several times. He was very kind to us and told me to phone him every time I was short of cash. Following my phone call he would arrange to pick us up from the underground station near his home and took us back to his house where Joan, his second wife,  provided afternoon tea. Then he drove us to the nearest underground station and every time upon arrival, while saying goodbye, he would somehow manage to secretly pass me £100 without his wife Joan noticing. It was my only income because John did not send me one penny while we were in England.

This trip to the UK opened my eyes considerably. For a start it gave me the confidence to manage to get from here to there on my own with Ann and  I felt much more independent and self confident. Whilst my father and I did not see eye to eye on a variety of matters I did feel some family warmth from him, my brother, and oc course Nan and my aunts (my mother's sisters) and my cousins, something which I had missed ever since I had left the UK. John was never a warm, loving man and frequently treated me with contempt. He was always speaking disparagingly about women.

In London I realised how backward South Africa was in many ways not least in their attitude towards women who were treated like second class citizens. There appeared to be no interest there in those days in world affairs - for most South Africans the country was the centre of the world and how dare others criticise the country for apartheid and its treatment of the black people.Additionally while I was away I had no worries regarding John's drinking and it was a relief not having to put up with his superior attitude and being made to feel of lower value than him and indeed, all men.

Thelma wrote to me and said John was completely lost without me. He didn't seem to know what to do with himself. I thought to myself 'Maybe he realises how much he really cares for us." We stayed with my father in London until mid January and then flew back to Johannesburg and John. Big mistake.

1958

Recollections:

In 1958 we moved into our new house at Sir George Gray St, Horison, Roodepoort. I would have been happy to stay home looking after the children but John decided that I should work and insisted I did so and I started working as receptionist, switchboard operator, copy typist. for a firm which acted as company secretaries for a variety of small businesses 

Some time in 1958-59 we were given a Great Dane puppy (I think we named her Tessa also) who was about a year old and had been bred by Ann's godmother, Mrs Robertson. John built a large brick kennel for her in the backyard which was big enough for him to sit in and in her second year we had her mated. She had 14 puppies all of which survived.

Part of the garden at the back of the house was fenced with a 6 foot fence to keep other dogs out and Tessa in. When the puppies were being weaned it was a nightmare for if one opened the back door at feeding time  they all tried to get into the house and ran around all the rooms. We then had to go round picking them up and putting them out through the back door while the others just put out were trying to get back in. Everytime we had to make a head count to see if any were still in the house.

Tessa soon found that by jumping the 6 foot fence she could get relief from the puppies. It took  a year to sell them all and we were practically giving them away in the end. The income from their sale did not cover the extra cost of feeding Tessa both before and after she had the pups because we put her on a special diet of milk, meat, vitamins and once the 14 puppies were weaned they also needed special food.

With Tessa able to jump the fence when next she came into season we had to put her into the  kennels. The person who was feeding the dogs always arrived in Tessa's kennel with two plates of food, one for Tessa and one for the dog next door. The extra plate had to be held up at arms length when hers was placed on the ground in order to prevent her getting both plates of food because she always tried to jump up to get at the second plate. 

One day she leapt up for the raised plate and immediately dropped down dead. Having 14 puppies and jumping the fence had overstrained her heart.

After a few months I left Merchants Industrial and started working for Watson's Shipping as a clerk. This involved working alternate Saturday mornings when I also covered the switchboard and by the October I knew I was expecting again.

At Christmas 1958 the company had their usual Christmas Party as did John's company on the same afternoon. Both parties were just for the office workers and no guests.  At about 8 John phoned to say he would pick me up in the street outside. Arriving early he parked the car and decided to invite himself to the my firm's party. By then he was extremely drunk and it was most humiliating when he started going around insulting everyone. 

I eventually managed to persuade him to leave and again, licenceless, drove us home. I had the first symptons of flu starting and just wanted to get home and to bed and all the time throughout the journey he kept saying I had begrudged him another drink at the party.

The next day, the flu being worse and with Ann at her grandparents, I stayed in bed. John woke late and I got up to make myself some tea. 

He was still annoyed that I had made him leave the party when he wanted another drink and we had an argument in the bedroom about what had happened the night before at my office.

I said that he had embarrassed me at my place of work and he sneered and said 'You - you've never done a day's work in your life.'

The argument became heated and he became very angry and brought back his clenched fist  to hit me in the face. I was so shocked I stepped back and sat on the bed. He leant towards me and pushed his face into mine and said ‘That’s right,’ he said’ ‘you’re a coward as well.’

Having had enough of his intimidation for years I decided to challenge him and stood up and facing him said 'Go on then, hit me!' 

He stared at me in disbelief and quickly turned away to leave the room, and walked straight into the edge of the open door giving himself a blackeye. Then he disappeared for the rest of the day.

My flu was worse the following day and Walter came over with Ann but took her back with him to Parktown because I was too ill to care for her. I was also feeling ill because I hadn't eaten anything since the party. 

John arrived back drunk at lunchtime and offered to make me some lunch and asked what I wanted. I suggested a couple of eggs, thinking these were the easiest things to cook. 

I heard him shuffling round in the kitchen for a few minutes - opening the refrigerator doorand finding a saucepan in the cupboardetc and I lay in bed waiting for lunch. Everything went quiet in the kitchen.

After half an hour with things still quiet in the house I went out to see what had happened to my eggs and found him propped up against the kitchen cabinets and the sink, having passed out on his feet. The two half boiled eggs were in the kitchen sink. One was peeled and lying in the plughole and the other was broken in half with the saucepan on top of it. Two slices of burnt toast lay on the wet draining board. 

As I was clearing this up he came too and started arguing again but I ignored him and went back to bed.

Once again he disappeared outside and was gone for several hours. After dark I heard the back gate slam and all went silent again. Being alone in the house I felt nervous and went out with the torch to see why the gate had slammed andto look around the back yard.

It was tipping down with rain and I noted a movement in the brick kennel  and  I shining the torch in there I saw John,  soaking wet and curled up inside.

I asked him what he thought he was doing and he said 'Well, I'm in the doghouse with you so I might as well sleep in the doghouse.' I told him he was a stupid foo and was going to get pneumonia if he stayed out there, and went inside. Eventually he did.

In the February of 1959 he and I were returning to Horison after an evening at Thelma and Chris's. It had been raining and as we passed a small park I watched a car in a side street driving down towards the road we were on.

It didn't stop but drove out of a side road and straight across the road and struck the door on my side of the car and we were pushed to the opposite, wrong side of the road, mounted a heap of building sand which had been left in the gutter, my door was flung open and I was thrown out onto the road.

I slid across the road until I came to a stop in the centre anf my first thought was the vulnerable position I was in. If the driver of a car, coming from either direction did not notice me lying in the road I could be run over. I picked myself up and staggered to the side of the road. 

When I fell out of the door, as he hit the pile of sand, John thought he had run over me. Someone came out of the house and seeing I was pregnant invited me to rest until an ambulance arrived.

I was taken to hospital for a check up but apart from grazes down one side and my elbow, caused by sliding on the wet, sandy road surface, and severe bruising, I was uninjured. My second big fear was that I would lose the baby but everything was OK but I was advised to take the week off.

The following day was a Saturday when I should have been covering the switchboard at Watsons Shipping but I was not well enough to go to work so phoned to explain what had happened.

Having recovered somewhat I returned to work on the Wednesday following the accident and come the following Saturday, which was not my Saturday to work, I did not go in. to work.

On the following Monday I was called in to the Managing Directors office and asked why I had not attended work on the Saturday. I explained that I hadn't thought it was expected of me since it  was someone elses Saturday to cover.

This was not acceptable to them and I was harangued by the MD. Even telling him I returned to work several days before the hospital had advised was not acceptable to him. Eventually I burst into tears and gave in my notice. I think this was probably  their aim because they didn't think it looked good for the company to employ a pregnant woman.

Between then and Chris's birth I drew and coloured Bambi and Thumper frieze for the new pale yellow nursery which was to be for Chris.

1959

14 Apr

Christopher Stuart Campbell Turnbull born in the late afternoon. I started labour pains at about 10 am which started like a bad backache which I was used to since falling off a horse in 1952. John was at work and I phoned him at 11 when I was sure and he returned immediately and took me to the nursing home and Christopher Stuart Campbell Turnbull was born at 5 in the afternoon, weighing in at a little over 7 lbs.

Later: I stayed in hospital for 10 days which was quite usual then.

Diary 26 Oct

I was surprised when Madge from our old flats in Jeppe called recently. We haven't heard from her since we left there. She said she had been separated from Doug for several years and that about a year ago he had moved to Durban. He went to a cinema one night and as he left he got into an argument with a coloured man in the street and was stabbed in the neck and died.

Letter to H M Barnes: Christopher has his first tooth last Friday and has started crawling and sitting up by himself. He tries to talk and thinks he can compete with Elvis. Ann is outside playing in the tin bath with Nanette, her friend. They are spraying each other with the hose and screaming at the top of their voices.

Throughout all the problems over the years I had not told my family in the UK about John's behaviour, my father having said to my brother when he joined the Navy 'Now you have made your bed you must lie on it' and I thought he would show the same lack of sympathy to me, nor had I discussed them with anyone in SA. I thought doing so would be to show disloyalty to John. Consequently no one knew the problems I was having to deal with or how I was coping with them although I think some guessed. I can see now that  I was slowly sinking into depression and felt I had no control over the situation there was no way out.

John's drinking was now out of control and at parties he swilled down more than anyone else was capable of drinking during evening. Our friends humoured him, which was embarrassing.

Increasingly I was having to insist on driving us home because he was too drunk to do so, which he would never admit consequently we frequently  got into an argument about who was to drive because he could not see he'd had too much to drink and I wasn’t prepared to take a chance with the children in the back.

We decided to move from Roodepoort and found a flat in Johannesburg. By this time John was disappearing  for days at a time on drinking binges. I never questioned him as to where he had been and he never offered an explanation.

A couple of days before we were due to move, at which time he had promised to help me pack up the house, he disappeared again so I packed up the whole house by myself - we did not have a maid at the time. Fortunately Keith Setters, and old friend, turned up on moving day and gave a hand and hung the curtains for me at the new flat . John returned home later that evening after all the work was done.

It was at about this time that Tinca and Walter offered to pay for Ann to attend convent school. They obviously realised there were problems at home and I thought it was for the best because the situation at home was becoming completely out of hand with arguments and John's drinking.

The flat was on the first floor over garages and John decided we should have a house warming party and he would make the food. Curry. 

He decided to buy the curry ingredients himself, knowing nothing about the process, and spent the whole afternoon in an Indian shop picking out a variety of seasonings and mixed them at home - despite the fact he did not know the composition of curry powder. It tasted so awful no one ate the food except John out of bravado. So typical of him.

As was usual he soon became drunk and argumentative and fearing that he would take the car and be a danger to himself I took the keys from his pocket and hid them. 

That night he drank us dry and Keith offered to stay behind suggesting I go to bed with Chris and leave John to him.

I went into the kitchen for a glass of water and heard him telling Keith that I begrudged him a drink and had hidden all the bottles. Then he began searching for his car keys again and  came into the kitchen and asked me where they were. 

He said he wanted a drink and where had I hidden the bottles. I told him it was all gone (which is was) but he saw a wine bottle on the table (in SA they often decanted vinegar into wine bottles) and again said I begrudged him a drink. 

I told him it was vinegar but he didn't believe me and took a huge swig and swallowed and then started choking. When he recovered his breath he picked up the bottle and threw it across the room where it smashed against the wall,  then staggered out of the kitchen.

Keith followed him and I could hear him trying to talk sense to him, and heard John say several times 'Nobody likes my music' and (as I found out later) picked up a stack of LP records and threw them on the floor, smashing them. He then said since no one liked his music he was going to stop anyone else listening to music and kicked in the front of the radiogram.

He continued to be violent and started blaming me for everything until I feared he was going to come into the bedroom and harm me or young Chris, so I took our Beretta and stood by Chris's cot (who, surprisingly, was still sound asleep) holding it ready to shoot John if he came near us. By then Keith had had enough and told me he was going to phone Chris May (Thelma's husband) to see if he could come over and subdue him because John was getting very angry. Fortunately Chris arrived and only by force did he managed to subdue John by holding him down on the floor until he passed out and that was where John he spent the night.

Recollections:

When Chris was about 6 months old John picked me up one lunch time to take me to visit the wife of one of his work colleagues. We were quite friendl with them. He said he would pick us up at 5.30. 

She'd recently had a baby and I spent the afternoon with her ant thinking I was only going to be away for three hours or so I only took a couple of nappies and a bottle of water for Chris but no money or food for him - just the housekeys. 

Late in the afternoon she started preparing dinner and 5.30 came and went and no sign of John but eventually her husband (who worked in the same office as John) arrived home.

Their dinner was ready by 6.30 and they delayed it until 7.30 when I insisted they eat. 

Embarrassingly they offered to share their meal but I could see there was only sufficient for two. I had to borrow nappies and food for Chris from her. 

Because they had no car  her husband could not run me home and neither of them had the money to lend me for a taxi. Eventually John turned up at 9, drunk again.

At home John continued drinking while I put Chris to bed then went into the kitchen and started preparing a meal and when it was ready I went looking round the flat for John. 

The stoep door was unlocked so I went out to look over the stoep wall to see if he had taken the car but it was still there parked in front of our garage. Mystified I went back in and locked the stoep door and went to bed.

The following day he arrived back at about 12 or 1 and accused me of deliberately locking him out on the stoep the night before. He said he had been sitting in the corner of the stoep in the dark when I came out and looked over at the car then went inside and deliberately locked him out on the stoep. He was quite convinced.

He had then jumped over the stoep wall (we were on the first floor), onto the car roof and taken the car and driven to Pretoria. However half way there he ran out of petrol and having no money on him was unable to buy any and had walked back.

Christmas 1959:

On Boxing Day Thelma and Chris had a party at their home in Alberton. John and I, Keith Setters, several of our mutual friends, Walter and Tinca and neighbours were invited and there were half a dozen children also present including Ann and Chris.  We were all dressed very casually, John was in shorts. 

He had started drinking early that morning. By mid morning everyone but me (I was inside changing Chris) was seated in a circle on the stoep chatting together when John stood up in the centre of the circle, and while swaying backwards and forwards started lecturing them about something he was interested in. 

He had his back to Thelma and his mother and Walter and was so serious in his manner that after he had been seriously 'lecturing' everyone for ten minutes Thelma decided to tease him and  playfully  tweaked the hairs on the back of his kneesg. Without turning round he said 'If you do that again I'll kick you' and went on with his speech.

Again Thelma tweaked the hairs on the back of his leg again and he kicked back and his heel caught his mother across the shin, splitting the skin open (she later had to have stitches). There was blood everywhere and not surprisingly she burst into tears with the pain. 

Everyone was shocked at what he had done but John, still swaying on his feet, turned round to see what had happened and when he saw it was his mother he had kicked, and the state of her leg, said 'Good, I've been wanting to do that to you all my life, mother.'

Thelma tried to dress Tinca's shin but she just wanted to go home and she and Walter left. of course it completely spoilt Christmas for them. John showed no remorse for what he had done and made no attempt to apologise.

By lunchtime he was becoming a bigger problem when he started wrestling with the young children, rolling and tumbling roughly with them on the grass. I was concerned that one of them would be injured ecause some were very young and as always, not wishing to antagonise him, quietly asked him to stop. They were only 4 or 5 years old and did not understand the situation. He ignored me and carried on so I asked him again but rather more firmly this time, with the same result. 

Finally I had to insist he stopped and told the children to go inside whereupon John glowered at me and stalked off and wasn't seen again at the party until dark.

The local hotel was apparently open and he went down there and started drinking and then began making a nuisance of himself thee until the landlord had enough and asked him to leave and in an attempt to keep him in a good mood offered to shake hands with him. But John refused and leaving and started walking back to Thelma's, by which time it was getting dark, which took him along the side of the hotel where the back yard was, inside which the landlord kept ducks. John climbed in, caught a duck and, as he described it late, shook hands with it by wringing its neck!

A little later Chris, Thelma's husband, heard someone knocking at the kitchen door and on opening it was hit in the face by the the dead duck. 'Here's New Year's dinner for you' said John.

John continued drinking through the evening while swaying about in the middle of the front room so I asked Keith if he would take me and the children home and he agreed.

I told Thelma and Chris that I thought this time John had gone too far and that I wasn't sure I wanted him back. 

One of the guests (someone John did not like) had turkeys on a small holding just outside J'burg and was not impressed with what John had done and said so, adding that he would shoot anyone who came on to his land and killed one of his turkeys.

I looked in on John before leaving and there he was, swaying to and fro,  his eyes completely glazed, so much so that when I said goodbye to everyone he was unable to focus on anything in the room and was in danger of falling down so Chris and Keith had to persuade him he was better off seated on the floor.

Later Thelma told me what happened afterwards. He slept the night on the floor at Thelma and Chris's. She threw a blanket over him and when she and Chris woke the next day she found him seated in front of the unlit fire, with the blanket round his shoulders, shivering.

'I think I must have behaved badly, yesterday' he said to her. She said he had behaved very badly. 

'I don't suppose Jean's going to forgive me very easily is she? he asked her. She agreed and told him what I had said about not wanting him back. 

He asked her advice on what he could do to make it up with me and she suggested he wrote me an extemely humble note asking for my forgiveness and gave him pen and paper.

Two minutes later he handed her what he had written. 'I'm sorry I behaved badly. John' and asked her what she thought about his letter. She said it wasn't good enough and he would have to do better. He asked her what he should say and then copied down her words. 

Chris brought me the letter later that morning. It was very humble and apologetic and I agreed to have him back but only on condition he immediately phoned his mother and apologised for what he had done and said to her.

He came home and phoned his mother to apologise and she told him that I was to blame for allowing him to behave that way.

However John had not forgotten the man who kept turkeys on a smallholding and on New Year's Eve he and a friend dressed in old clothes went out to the man's farm, blacked their faces and crawling on their stomachs, breaking into the turkey pen and killed one of the turkeys. The man came out of his house and fired a gun in the air but they were not seen. Late the couple were like children as they bragged about what they had done. 

On New Year's Day John plucked the turkey, cooked it and invited the man whose turkey it was, over to dinner and listened to him telling how he had dealt with the intruders who came to steal one of his turkeys.

1960

March 1960

Letter to H M Barnes: Chris is 11 months old and has 12 teeth. He can say Mum-mum, dad-da, baba, tata and calls Ann Aaa and sometimes tries to whistle.

Recollection:

Sometime in 1959, probably towards the end of the year or early 1960, we again moved for financial reasons, to another flat, this time to a 3 bedroomed flat in Doornfontein and Keith Setters moved in with us to help our financial problems.We were still trying to sell the house at this time for paying the mortgage on the house at Horison and the rent on the flat made things very tight so we rented the house out until it was sold.