My mother Edwina Jan Brereton was born to Dorothy Amy Brereton
nee Jones, on the 16th of October, 1920, in Nantwick in Chester.
By then, her father Edwin Brereton whose picture appears at the right,
and whom Dorothy married in 1919, was already dead.
The picture below of Dorothy holding Jan was
taken when Jan was just over a year old. The photograph was
subsequently displayed in the Coventry photographer's storefront window,
as my grandmother liked to point out.
Dorothy was the illigitimate daughter of an oldest child, and had
been brought up as the youngest child of the family.
She claimed to have been something of a wild young girl.
I never found out any more details.
My mother had married one John Puttock in 1941, during WWII.
I learnt that when I was in high school, and I was quite surprised,
as you might be... my mother never discussed that sort of thing,
not done, you know.
Anyway, she told me that he had gone missing-presumed-dead on a rec
mission. The letter at right was piled in with an enormous amount
of dross correspondence in a box she kept, and which I am only now,
six years after her death, sorting out.
Kings must have used a lot of ink during the war, if they signed these things
themselves, which appears to be the case.
I have no photograph that I know to be of John Puttock, but when I first wrote this I suspected the
one below to be of him; it is of about the right vintage, it is not of
anyone I recognise, and it is the sole mounted photo that fits.
As of 2023, Merinda and I looked through an old album of my mothers in the Hamilton cleanup,
and found photos that suggest this was actually Norman Cooper, a later family friend.
The photograph at left is clearly dated May, 1940.
My mother had known my father-to-be, Perris Scott,
from before her marriage to John Puttock.
She decided to marry "the other guy", but
it is not so surprising that she eventually resumed
a relationship with him, some time after her first husband died.
Some time around 1944 (the date of this photograph)
she started dating my father.
I recall that she once told me that she had had to proposition him,
so tight were the social rules in those days.
She reflected that she had had a lot of fun in those days.
The small clipping at right exactly reflects the impressions
of those times that she gave to me when we discussed her life.
She said that the war had had less effect upon her and her peers than
others because they had reached adulthood in it or with the threat of it.
They had fun coping together. My father was (apparently) an
accomplished pilot. (Why he did not pursue that career is another
question... perhaps enough of the Royal Air Force was left aloft
to make pilots a common object.)
They married in 1946. These three photographs were the official
wedding photos.
My mother told me that their lives were very happy.
I would not be born for 10 years. I was an accident.
In the mean time, all was roses for them, though not for
England.
In the rear of the photograph outside the church the man in a bowler hat is Perry's father. He died soon after that. I have no idea how I know that (I guess mum told me) or what happened to him. He was apparently a marine engineer. Nobody like Perry's mother (probably not even his father). I met her as a child (she was prim and sticky and miserable), and I met her for the last time in 1981 (she was still prim and sticky and miserable, and generally a tight person).
The dog in the other photograph was her dog "Raff" (or RAF). My mother always said that she never again saw a dog as smart as Raff.
This photo was taken in 1947, at "Calthorpe Cottage" in Coventry, the
place my mother most fondly remembered.
It must represent her at the peak of her fun period.
She loved that cottage, and she remembered Raff twenty years later.
Ten years after her marriage, I was born.
My parents and grandparents had emmigrated to Australia.
This photo shows my grandmother Dorothy with her second husband Harry,
who was effectively my grandfather all of my life, my father Perry
and my mother, who must have been pregnant with me, for this photo
was taken in January, 1956, on Bondi beach, and I was born that May.
The marriage broke up three years later. My mother said that my father
had not wanted children. He disappeared out of my life forever when I was
not yet five years old. I never saw him again. He died in 1971,
living again with his mother in Lemmington, Newcastle, England. My mother
said that he must have had nowhere else to go, because he never got
on with his own mother and had as little to do with her as possible
all the years she knew him.
My mother was lonely for herself, but angry with him on my behalf.