Gallery Samples Stories of our Ancestors | Page 67

In previous times, and in some other cultures, a young married couple expected to live like this
with the aged parents in control and the sons bringing their wives and offspring to the
patriarchal home to be lackeys for the Mother-in-Law, until the aged parents were downgraded
and usurped by the eldest son and his family. This is still traditional in many Eastern cultures.
But it certainly didn’t suit a girl like Ruby who had ‘modern’ ideas of a nuclear family.

T

CHAPTER 3: SAVED BY EMPANGENI!

he marriage very nearly came to grief but was saved by Les applying for and getting a
position as Town Clerk of Empangeni, a village on the North coast of Zululand. At last
Ruby was free to make her own home and do what a Good Wife did. It was in
Empangeni that their son, Alan Leslie, was born on 18 March 1936. By now World War
II was looming and by the time I, Heather, was born on 31st December 1939, War was under
way. South African men were not ‘called up’ but were pressurised to ‘volunteer’ for war
service. Les was exempt from this ‘voluntary call-up’ because his position as Town Clerk was
categorised as an ‘essential service’ although he had to do military duties of some sort.
Apparently Les and Ruby were happy in Empangeni except for the excessive heat which Les
hated and which never failed to make him Cross. But at least Ruby had nice little Cold-Meatand-Salad lunches awaiting his return home at twelve o’clock. Once Leslie had finally been
freed of his Mother’s Hot Dinners at midday, he never varied his choice of lunches, even unto
death! As you might presume Les proved to be an unadventurous diner and didn’t think a lot of
Ruby’s new Mrs Beaton’s attempts in the kitchen.
Now, for the first time in her life, Ruby was alone all day and for the first time she, who needed
other people, was forced into making friends outside of her family and the self-sufficiency that
the four sisters shared. Her large family mainly precluded the need for anyone else and so
making friends with strangers was a new and difficult experience for her. Les, however, never
saw the necessity for friends or family anyway! However, for the 8 or 9 years they lived in
Empangeni, life was generally good and they quite often made trips to Durban for shopping
and visiting various hospitable aunties and sometimes to pick up Ellen who enjoyed a brief
holiday annoying Ruby in Empangeni.
Ruby was overjoyed when she realised she was pregnant and in due course Alan was born at
the little cottage hospital in Empangeni. Ruby insisted all the way through his life that he was
the image of the Andersons in spite of his blonde hair and brown eyes, and this gave her a
special bond with him. She never would accept that Alan was ‘a Hodgkiss’ through and through
and grew more and more like his father and grandfather the older he got!
By the time their second child was on the way they had realised that the little local hospital had
some dire deficiencies so they planned that the birth would take place at the Catholic
Sanatorium in Maritzburg. Rebecca was against such a dreadful decision because, as she told
Ruby “don’t you know that the nuns KILL babies!!” Not too concerned about the nuns who had
been part of Ruby’s life, they duly drove in the Willys to Maritzburg but apparently I was in no
hurry to negotiate my way into the world and the non-pregnant members of the extended
family went off on holiday to Winkelspruit. Les had the grace to wait for my eventual birth but
then left his poor wife in the hands of the feared nuns and packed himself off to be with Ruby’s

67