Short Story: Round-The-World Robyn

ROUND-THE-WORLD ROBYN

“What goes out, comes around in the end.  It happened to my Mum and me, it really did.

My Mum was born in New Zealand in 1899. She was the only daughter of a Welsh ship’s engineer and an Anglo-Irish seamstress, one Kathleen Ann Bailey. Sadly, Granddad Lloyd was drowned in a ferry disaster in 1909. He’d provided as well as he could for his family with his savings and an insurance policy, but it simply wasn’t enough.

So, that year, Grandma Lloyd moved herself and Mum to India. She had relatives there in the British Raj, who promised to help her set up a small tailoring business in Bengal Presidency, as it was called then. You could live quite well on a little there, in those days. Grandma and Mum set up shop in a small town upriver from Calcutta on the Hoogly. It was hard going initially because the native tailors were pretty good, and much cheaper too. But Grandma could do the European fashions for ladies and kids that they couldn’t. Both she and Mum really worked hard and business picked up eventually, but they weren’t exactly rolling in money.

Salvation came in the form of another engineer. He was Yorkshireman Bill Canfield and he was in the business of agricultural equipment.  By the time he met Kathleen Ann Lloyd, Bill was well on his way towards getting fed up of both India and agricultural machinery.  He’d stopped off at their shop to get some pinafores stitched for his married sister’s small daughters in Assam. Bill’s brother-in-law was a tea planter there. One thing led to another, and before long, the widow Lloyd became the second Mrs. Canfield.

Bill was a widower before he remarried, his first wife having died of the cholera. He was a good husband and a kindly, if indulgent, stepfather, according to Mum’s diaries.  They initially had a pretty good life in a nice big bungalow by the banks of the Hoogly. The old black-and-white photos pasted in Mum’s scrapbooks show them holidaying in Darjeeling and shopping in Cal. The family had a steam launch and two cars, a Ford and an Austin, as Bill had to travel a lot on business. Grandma had a staff of Indian servants to look after the housekeeping.  By then, she had wound up her own business, though she did take up occasional part-time sewing jobs so as to ‘keep her hand in.’

Bill sprang his big surprise in 1912. He intended to chuck both job and bungalow and emigrate to Canada. Grandma and Mum were initially loath to give it all up but eventually let themselves be persuaded. The family sailed for England from Bombay by P&O steamer later that year. They sailed the old reverse Empire route; the Arabian Sea, transiting the Suez Canal to the Med, then Gibraltar and the Bay of Biscay, before landing in Southampton, just in time for Mrs. Kathleen Canfield to deliver twin boys there. This development delayed onward passage to Canada to the following year. The enforced break certainly saved their lives; otherwise the Canfield family might well have gone down with the Titanic!

After the warmth and sunshine of India, the Canfields were glad to see the last of cold, grimy industrial Leeds; Bill’s hometown. They sailed up the St. Lawrence seaway on their way to a new life in Edmonton by the summer of 1913.

Settling down in Canada wasn’t easy but Bill and his wife were used to overcoming adversity.  He had always wanted to set up a garage and engineering works of his own, but accepted that agricultural machinery offered better immediate prospects. So Bill went back to that; leasing, maintaining and administering farm equipment for a Canadian company in that line of business.  To help finance his dream, Grandma ran a Pub that was very successful.  Thanks to her support, Bill was later able to go into business for himself, helped by his two sons.

By this time Mum had left school and taken up nursing, shortly after World War One broke out in 1914. Against the wishes of her long-suffering parents, Angela Robyn Lloyd set sail for England in 1917 as a member of Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service. The stormy Atlantic passage was a terrible one, with the nurses suffering from acute seasickness and the ever-present fear of being torpedoed by stalking German U-boats. They were certainly very glad to set foot in Bristol at the end of it!

Mum ended up in Blackpool, looking after officers who’d survived the Somme and Flanders. One of the walking wounded there was a young Captain Andrew Maitland of the Indian Army.  He was discharged from hospital a few weeks after Armistice Day, 1918. Captain Maitland then marched out from the Outpatient Ward (Officers) to the nearest church, where he married Mum.

Post-war, Dad and Mum were posted back to India. I was born in a nice big bungalow by the Hoogly river. The place had been taken over from a firm dealing in agricultural machinery and converted into married officer’s quarters for the Indian Army.”