An extract from Restless Dolly Maunder by Kate Grenville
Step back in time and meet another memorable woman forgotten by history in this edited extract from Kate Grenville’s latest novel, Restless Dolly Maunder. As she did for her mother in One Life, Grenville weaves together family memories with her own research to imagine her way into the life of her grandmother, Dolly Maunder.
1927: Eighteen Thousand Pounds
The pharmacist Mr Morris was a regular at the Cally, often sat up in the lounge having a gasbag with Dolly, they both liked to follow the horses. Not quite a doctor, though everyone called him Dr Morris and the sign on his shop awning – Medical Hall – suggested it. He was a boy from the backblocks, he’d told her one day, his father a clerk in the mine at Greta. He’d had an uncle in the city he could stay with, so when he turned out to be bright he was sent off to Sydney Boys’ High School.
Pharmacy, Mrs Russell, he said, it’s the first rung on the professional ladder for a boy from nowhere.
Laughed, he was a cheerful man enjoying the success he’d made of his life. He was sending his son to Sydney Boys’ too, wanted him to be a doctor, a real one. That was how it should happen, he said, each generation doing a bit better than the last.
He was a clever man, being a chemist. He’d opened the pharmacy the year before and it was already doing so well that he was going to open one in Manilla as well. He planned to have a whole chain of them, adding another whenever an opening came up.
So if you hear of anything, Mrs Russell, he said. I know a good publican has her ear to the ground.
Ah, that was why he came in and chatted about racehorses!
So Dolly picked his brains—what did he think they should do about their clever daughter who was doing the Leaving?
Well, Mrs Russell, he said, there’s always teaching.
She could tell he was feeling his way, not wanting to be too definite in case he said the wrong thing.
Yes, Dolly said, but if she’s a teacher, when she gets married she’ll have to give it up.
Mr Morris heard the edge in her voice. She saw him decide to say what he thought.
Well, Mrs Russell, since you’re asking, I might just mention that pharmacy has no marriage bar. And something else—it pays a woman the same as a man. Not many jobs you can say that of.
Oh yes, Dolly said, that’s because the men who run things never thought there’d be any women doing it!
Mr Morris smiled, she could almost hear him thinking, Oh, Mrs Russell’s a sour old thing.
You could be right, Mrs Russell, he said. The fact remains, a woman could make a fair living at it, if she had the brains, and she could have a family too, if she was so inclined.
The thing that tipped it for Dolly was that pharmacy was a business. It wasn’t just a job, working for a salary. You’d never get on, working for someone else. The only way to get ahead was to have your own business. She and Bert were living proof of that. Pharmacy was a good money- spinner as a business, there was Morris doing very nicely. But it had standing as well, a step on the professional ladder.
It wasn’t a degree, Mr Morris said, but you went to the university for the chemistry and the Materia Medica. The rest of the time you learned on the job as an apprentice. Dolly didn’t have a clue what Materia Medica was, but what Mr Morris was laying out sounded right, a mix of the foreign and the familiar.
Bert was on her side. He liked the idea of his daughter becoming a pharmacist. The boys haven’t got too much go in them, he said. Maybe the girl can make something of herself.
At the Leaving, Nance got four Bs and something called a Lower Pass. That was enough to do Pharmacy. But Nance, that difficult child, said no. She’d already put her name down for the Teachers’ College. Dolly wanted to hit her. The words rushed out unplanned. Over my dead body! she shouted. Over my dead body you’ll be a teacher!
She heard the echo of her father’s words all those years ago and felt
a hollow shock to find herself using them against her daughter. But this was different. Teaching had been her only option, but Nance could have a different kind of future.
She’d have a big bustling shop, people would call her Doctor Russell. Married or not, she’d be set for life. And here she was, acting as if it didn’t matter. Couldn’t she see how important it was?
It’s that boy, she said. It’s that Roy Axtens you’re so keen on. What are you going to do, Nance, marry him and spend your life watching the sky for rain? When you could do so much better?
Nance stared at her with that stiff wooden gaze she put on when she wasn’t going to budge. Stared and said nothing, as if her mother was a madwoman.
Dolly felt the familiar hot spurt of rage. You little fool, she shouted, you can’t see beyond the nose on your face, when there’s a whole long life ahead of you, and by God I’m not going to see you waste it on Roy Axtens and a houseful of screaming kids!
Nance shouted back, All right Mum, I’ll bloody do it, at least I’ll get away from you!
She was going to do the apprenticeship in Sydney, at a pharmacy in Enmore. Ten minutes’ walk from the Botany View, wasn’t life odd the way things came around. They all went to the station to see her off. Look after yourself, Nance, Dolly said, trying to catch her eye.
The words were silly, feeble, a thin pale little phrase trying to stand in for other words that she couldn’t find. Words that would build a bridge to this young woman standing there on the platform with her smart little suitcase, the way she herself had stood on the platform at Currabubula all those years before, about to go off into her life. Look after yourself: what that really meant was You are precious to me, but the depth of her feeling was made shallow by the glib phrase.
She leaned towards her daughter, wanting to embrace her. Nance gave her a quick kiss but in the same movement turned away to say something to Frank. The kiss didn’t quite reach Dolly’s cheek. Then there was a great fluster, the train was starting, Nance turned and climbed into the carriage, everyone was shouting goodbye, good luck, bye bye, Nance!
The moment was gone. The past she’d shared with her daughter, the pushing and pulling against each other, was all there’d ever be now.
