Fromelles, finally

 Lucretia, 1915.

It was about 6 months before Lucretia’s 18^th birthday when she knew she was pregnant.  Her boyfriend was an energetic 22 year old carter, employed also by “The Store” – the rapidly growing co-operative which supplied everything from bread and milk, to building supplies as Newcastle spread and suburbs appeared. The attractive Lucretia had worked a few years behind the counters in the main shop, learning how to measure and sell fabrics for clothes, cushions, curtains and everything else the home seamstress needed.

 

She liked Herbert Adams, but it was an undefined inner emptiness, an incompleteness, that drove her need for the warmth of his body and the feeling of oneness with him. She knew it was “love”, but she didn’t know that love had consequences. How babies were made was not at all clear to her. Before now.

 

Her friend Beth said she would help Lucretia speak to her mother. Not Lucretia’s mother, whom both girls remembered only dimly, being now dead from the girls’ infancy. But Mrs Weaver, Beth’s mother and Lucretia’s……what? Foster carer? There was no formal arrangement, the kindly Mrs Weaver simply taking into her own home the orphaned child. There were no other relatives that anyone knew of, and it was unthinkable that the toddler Lucretia could be sent to a foundling home or an orphanage. And so she moved next door and grew up with Beth and the other Weaver children, to an outside observer a strangely darker child at odds with the Celtic origins of the Weavers.

 

It was quickly decided that Lucretia and Herbert would marry, a proposition that each readily accepted. Herbert’s work would enable them to rent a room and Mrs Weaver would be on hand to advise a new mother learning how to live with and raise a baby. But news of the pregnancy also pushed to the forefront a thought that had begun to trouble Mrs Weaver. At some stage Lucretia would need official documents about her life. Was there a Birth Certificate? Was she baptised or christened? In what church? What was the girl to know of her parents?

 

The immediate difficulty was obtaining permission for the wedding, as the bride was well below the then “marriageable age” of 21 years. Who could give this permission? Not Mr or Mrs Weaver, as neither had any legal relationship with Lucretia. It was known that the Town Clerk of Newcastle, Mr Edward Scott Holland, was a reasonable man, in fact his reputation for “charity” to the less well-off had spread through the community. Approached and made aware of the facts, and having met the young couple, he readily agreed to be “Official Guardian” for Lucretia and give his approval for the marriage. With this resolved, planning for a marriage within the next few weeks began. Although neither party had religious affiliations, under Mr Holland’s urgings it was agreed that Church of England rites would be used and St John’s Church in working class Cooks Hill was chosen.

 

Edward Holland was a high-minded civic officer and his sympathies were moved by the plight of the orphaned Lucretia, her current situation, and the generosity of the homely Mrs Weaver. For reasons he couldn’t quite put a finger on, he was less sure of Mr Weaver. He quickly determined that a birth certificate was needed for Lucretia. Beyond a surname of “Robertson” and a birthday of 8^th January, nothing else was known and in the few months that the Weavers had lived next to Mrs Robertson and her young daughter, a friendship had quickly grown but no family details divulged. Mrs Weaver had wondered about Mr Robertson, but time and opportunity had not permitted that conversation.

 

A lesser credentialed civic official may well have given up the search for Lucretia’s birth document. “No Record”, was the answer to the request for a birth certificate for Lucretia Robertson, born on 8^th January around 1897. Edward Holland knew whom to contact to look more closely – and more widely – into this. The answer, when it came, surprised him. A “Lucretia Roberts” had been born in Sydney on 8 January 1898. Discretely he checked with Mrs Weaver, who confirmed that “Mrs Robertson” had mentioned coming from Sydney, and her neighbour had always answered to that name only. Conversations over the fence while putting the washing on the line had informed Mrs Weaver of Mrs Robertson’s Welsh parentage, and explained the occasional difficulty in understanding her neighbour, and no, she was sure she hadn’t misunderstood Mrs Robertson’s name, and that lady had always responded when addressed as such. Mr Holland didn’t press the matter any further.

 

Familiarity with the many reasons people changed their names, used aliases or otherwise hid identity, led Edward Holland to dig deeper. Lucretia’s birth certificate stated that her parents were Mary Rowland, 35 years old, and born in Pembrokeshire, Wales, and James Roberts. It was information on the father that aroused his suspicions. James Roberts was described as 30 years old, occupation “Able Bodied Seaman”, and born in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. The certificate provided the further information that Mary Rowland and James Roberts had been married in Adelaide, on 12 January 1897. Mr Holland knew the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages in South Australia, and now contacted him. The answer, when it came, did not surprise him. There was no record of any such marriage, either in 1897 or any other year.

 

Mistaken information on official documents was a familiar enough occurrence and Edward Holland saw it regularly. He was astute enough to know when these errors were accidental, the result of illiteracy, or deliberate. He knew immediately that this “error” was deliberate. And he knew he would mention it to no-one.

 

The wedding day arrived quickly. Friends at “The Store” had managed to scrounge materials for a floral dress to be made for Lucretia, and a new shirt for Herbert, and on a warm spring day in October the couple exchanged vows before the Rev Ritchie. Herbert’s brother George and Lucretia’s friend Jessie signed the Register as official witnesses to the event, before a handful of guests, drawn from the Weaver and Adams families.

 

With little discussion, it had been agreed that Mr Weaver would accompany Lucretia to the altar. Hesitantly, she had suggested this was not necessary but Mrs Weaver insisted Mr Weaver “would love” to do this for their “foster daughter”. This was how they had done things for their own children, and they would do it for Lucretia too.

 

Lucretia would long remember that final walk. It was years before she realised it was the letting go she had wanted, that she had needed, and which had seemed so unreachable. Until a cheeky young carter came into her life. She had only known Herbert a few months, had had very little time with him, stolen kisses turning to hot passion on one occasion on a walk through the sandhills around Newcastle beach. And now this young couple would raise a baby, and discover as each matured and came to know themselves and the other, the strength and weakness of the bonds which joined them. And the memory of Mr Weaver could be allowed to dim and fade.

 

But right now Lucretia’s closeness to him on that walk down the church aisle, the familiar smells of tobacco and rum, only heightened the uneasiness she felt, and which she could not name.  She couldn’t remember when his visits to her bedroom began, the room she shared with Beth and a younger Weaver child. She was still in Primary School, perhaps 10 or 11 years old. But she came to dread the days when Mrs Weaver took her children to visit their grandmother, and it was only Lucretia and Mr Weaver at home. He had last taken his pleasure with her in the weeks before her pregnancy became obvious. In later years, more knowledgeable in the ways of the world, she would look at her growing child and wonder at her fairness and blue eyes.

 

“I, Lucretia, take you, Herbert, to be my lawful wedded husband…” she now repeated shyly, prompted by Rev Ritchie. And it was done.

 

In the small congregation, Edward Scott Holland sat quietly. As a civic official, he knew his duty and obligation was to put the facts honestly into the public arena. But he listened with clear resolve as Lucretia Robertson became Mrs Lucretia Adams. The decision to keep to himself the damning birth certificate, had, in the end, not been as difficult as he had anticipated. The shy girl whose marriage he was now witnessing deserved the chance of a future as quickly as possible away from the lecherous fool who had brought her to the altar, and the opportunity to build her own family, her own new identity, in which Roberts / Robertson would be irrelevant. That past could be dispensed now, was being dispensed this very moment. He would destroy the birth certificate. If in future years another family member went digging, so be it.

 

He smiled at Lucretia as she passed by on the arm of her husband. She smiled shyly back at a man she hardly knew.