The Dressmaker's Daughter by Kate Llewellyn Read Free Book Online Page A

off. Yet he never ceased being at heart a military man and it was thecause of trouble between them. He bowed to her wishes in all things except this. (I have never met a man who wasn’t terrified of his wife.)
    Beck remembers that when Grandfather brought a friend home to have a cup of tea after an Anzac march, Nanna hid in the shed, rather than make the tea. This has been a scandal in the family ever since we heard of it. But now, reading those harrowing letters of my grandmother’s to the Australian Imperial Force when her husband was missing, I can see why she may have later hated all mention of the war. I think, alone at home with their two sons – Doug and my father, Ron, who were playing up and wanting to leave school – and half mad with worry, she may have had a sort of nervous breakdown.
    In 1927 my grandfather lost his General Service medal. A Military Court of Enquiry was needed to have a replacement made. This proved to be a serious problem. There are six pages of documents in the file, not including his initial letter relating to the loss of this medal.
    The Court of Enquiry recorded:
Lieut. Colonel T.A. Brinkworth, V.D., Unattached List, being called, stated –
    During the Camp of Continuous Training, 1927, I was acting C.O. of the 3rd. Light Horse Regiment.
    On Sunday 3rd. April, 1927, a ceremonial parade was held, on which medals were worn.
    My medals were fastened to a bar which pinned on to my jacket. At the time the medals seemed securely fastened to the bar. Immediately after the parade I noticed that the General Service Medal had come apart and was missing from the bar.
    An immediate search was made by me and several members of the regiment but no trace of the medal could be found. The loss was notified in both regimental and District Routine Orders.
    T.A. Brinkworth Lieut. Colonel.
    Although a new medal was supplied, for which Grandfather paid eight shillings and nine pence, he might have saved himself the trouble. Upon his death of throat cancer in 1943, Nanna threw out all his medals and, the day after the funeral, Beck watched her brushing down his clothes and uniforms ready to sell to Trims, the Adelaide second-hand clothing dealers. His swagger stick was overlooked and now his great-grandson Hugh, who went to Duntroon and collects books on military history, has it. Recently I laughed after a phone call from Hugh, because, as an afterthought, he had shouted, ‘Where’s his sword?’ I only wish I knew.
    Fortunately Grandfather had given the war memorial all the photographs he had taken during the war, so they were saved from either the bin or Trims. I have copies of the photos from the archives, some of which are ofTurkish prisoners of war, and also his photographs of tented camps in the desert that look like medieval jousting carnivals. There is also a photograph of a soldier having his head shaved. He is standing beside an unsaddled horse, which is held by another soldier. This hair-shaving, I assume, was to get rid of vermin. It is now a famous picture and is used in many histories.
    I do beg of you…
    That phrase that our tormented grandmother used goes over and over in my mind.
    Beck was my grandparents’ third daughter-in-law, even though they had only two sons. Doug, my father’s elder brother, married Kathleen Snelling in 1934. At Yorketown, where they had moved from Adelaide when Doug joined Goldsborough Mort & Co., a stock-and-station company, she gave birth on 13 September 1935. Nineteen days later, in spite of Doug giving blood for a transfusion for his wife, Kathleen was dead. She had septicaemia brought on, it was said, by faulty hygienic practices at the hospital.
    The widower brought the baby, Rob, home to Adelaide to be cared for by some relatives – a young couple who had children. After several months, it was decided that Rob should be given to Nanna to rear. There is a photograph in an album of Nanna with white haircombed up into a high bun, sitting knees apart with the