Jean Perry
When I was a boy growing up in my old home town of Box Hill in Victoria the person who had the greatest influence over my growing life was probably not my mother. It certainly was not my father because he died when I was eight years of age. No, the person who probably had the greatest influence on my life was a lady who worked in my parents’ shop.
Her name was Miss Jean Perry. Her parents had moved into Box Hill probably some time around the end of the 19th century. Certainly by the early 1900’s they owned the main bakery and cake shop in Box Hill. My father and mother purchased that business around 1930 and for many years the young pastrycook and baker and his new bride worked in the shop. I was born just at the outbreak of World War II.
Jean Perry had worked in the shop together with her other single sister Maggie for many, many years and after my parents purchased the shop and the bakery she stayed on working for my Mum and Dad.
When my mother was pregnant with her first child Jean Perry said “Now for the doctor. You should have a good Christian doctor.” and sent my mother off to Dr. W.A. Kemp who became our family doctor for the next 20 years or so of my life. The day I was born she was so excited. My father said he intended to name me after three grandparents using the surnames of three of them: Gordon Keith Moyes. “But” protested Miss Perry, “you are leaving out your mother’s surname, MacKenzie. You should have the MacKenzie in.” My father said, “No.” He didn’t want the MacKenzie as that was too much of a mouthful. Miss Perry argued with him and when he said that the next day or so he would go into town and put the notice in the Melbourne Sun and the Evening Herald, Miss Perry put her hat on, stuck a couple of big hat pins through it, took off her apron, and got on the train and went straight into the city. There she put the birth notice in the paper. She declared that my name should be the surnames of all four grandparents Gordon Keith MacKenzie Moyes. She was determined that justice was to be done.
She was always strong willed and over the next 20 years of my life had a profound influence over me. My father, an alcoholic, paid little attention to his young family until we found him dead one night in the street not far from our home. My mother then had four children, I being the eldest and Nola the littlest having just been born, plus a business that was almost bankrupt.
My mother worked from the early hours of morning till late at night to keep that business going and the employees on the payroll. That meant that someone had to bring up the little children. So Miss Perry took me into her care.
I had lots of speech problems and one of my earliest memories was Miss Perry teaching me to say, over and over again, words the way they should be said. I remember the number of times I had to say the word “chimney” in order to say it correctly and having to repeat sentences to her like “she sells sea shells by the sea shore” and “Peter,” who of course, “picked a peck of pickled peppers”.
It was Miss Perry who first took me to Sunday School when I was three and a half years of age. It was Miss Perry who was there to help me learn the songs for Sunday School Anniversaries. It was Miss Perry who taught me to say:
“The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures.
He leadeth me beside the still waters.”
at a time when I could not say any “th” sounds and words like “maketh” and “leadeth” were a terrible problem.
From my earliest days she taught me to read and always gave me books. By the time I was seven or eight I had already read “Robinson Crusoe” by Daniel Defoe, “Kidnapped” by Robert Louis Stevenson and a whole host of “Biggles” books by Captain W.E. Johns. I still have every one of those books.
She taught me to sing. I remember some early Gilbert and Sullivan pieces that I sang standing beside her while she played the piano, admiring the five black Indian elephants, each diminishing in size one behind the other on the top of the piano. I sang some of those idiotic verses from Gilbert and Sullivan. Can you imagine a boy singing:
“I’m called ‘Little Buttercup’,
Dear Little Buttercup,
Though I could never tell why,
But still I’m called ‘Buttercup’
Poor little ‘Buttercup’,
Come of your ‘Buttercup’ buy.”
She also taught me to recite. Things like:
“The quality of mercy is not strained. It droppeth as the
Gentle rain from heaven upon this place beneath. It is twice blest it
Blesseth him who gives and him who takes.” And so on.
I knew how to recite Portia’s speech from “The Merchant of Venice” before I even knew what it was all about.
Miss Perry had a profound influence on my life. I could not say the words “Miss Perry” and I called her “Peppi” instead. Soon everybody in the shop and the bakehouse called her “Peppi”. Then the other shopkeepers referred to her as “Peppi at the bakehouse”, until the whole community knew her as “Peppi”. At the church people used to speak about “Peppi” who was doing this and “Peppi” who was doing that. She was very prominent in the church. She taught Sunday School, took me to Sunday School, helped me with my Sunday School lessons, talked my mother into letting me go to Boys Club and to Cricket Club and to Youth Club. She was also a member of the church choir. She used to sing in local musical eisteddfods. I can always remember her beautiful soprano voice singing at the wedding of my Aunty Mabel “I’ll walk beside you”.
She was a single woman who found a fulfilled life in helpfulness to other people’s children. “Peppi” meant more to me than I can possibly tell you. After my father had died, my mother was struggling to bring a bankrupt business back into productivity and to keep her employees on the payroll, “Peppi” just meant everything. She was the warmest, loveliest, kindest person I have ever met in my life.
But her life was not easy. You see, through all of this time and ever since she has battled the scourge of cancer. I did not understand what it meant but when I was a child she had one breast removed because of cancer. Then cancer was in the liver and some liver was removed. Then her gall bladder and some other parts were cancerous and she was operated on again and they were removed. Then another breast.
Then something called ‘a woman’s operation’ because of cancer and those parts were removed. Then cancer on her skin. She constantly had surgery on different parts of her skin. Then a few years later cancer was in her bones. She had her jawbone removed. Most of her throat was removed. The top of her palate was removed. The roof of her mouth was removed. Then her tongue was removed and “Peppi”, the beautiful singer, could sing no more. She could not speak at all but she learnt to make sounds. She knew what she wanted to say, and I knew what she wanted to say.
Over the years I have continued to visit her as in a nursing home for the aged. She continues with great strength, with a peculiar delightful laugh and with eyes that could speak even more eloquently than her tongue.
She reached 96 years and every single year some further surgery has been undertaken some toes here and a bone there as the cancer continued to move. I had an idea that she was going to live to a hundred and then eventually the surgeon’s knife will have taken so much more of her that what is left just will not be seen and she will just somehow or other disappear, while the rest of her goes on singing in heaven.
Not long ago I had a very special joy. I wrote on the back of a photograph of myself holding my first grandchild. I knew it would please her. Life goes on. “Peppi” was diminishing every year but she keeps singing. She told me that every day of my life she prayed for me. How do you estimate the value of a person like that? I only know that this I write to you has been the hardest that I have ever written because she was the dearest I have ever known.
I still feel that way even though it was more than sixty years since I first felt that way when I was a little boy walking home in Box Hill, up Bank Street, along the railway line, to the top of the hill and to No.5 Miller Street, Box Hill, a great city which was only a village where the adults were kind and the children grew up responsibly.
GORDON MOYES