Eve Yearsley

By susanc, 19 July, 2015
Profile

If you were to meet Eve today, you would find a tiny woman with an amazing store of memories.  Eve loves to talk, and her life story gives a taste of worlds most of us just read about in history books.

The eldest of six children Eve grew up in South Wales, in a mining village called Cymmar near Port Albert.  Her Dad, Fred, was an overman and as such commanded the respect of the village, but on Saturday night he loved to go to the local pub where he could be one of the lads, earning his drinks by playing the piano.

In the village Eve was known as ‘little mother’ Fam Bach, because while her mum, Hannah, was busy with the newest baby, it was Eve who bathed the toddlers, and laid their clothes out to warm in front of the fire.  It was Eve who enrolled them in school, popping the birth certificate that proved their age into the pocket of her gym slip.  It was Eve who told the little ones stories as she tucked them into bed.  No wonder Hannah asked her to stay at home until the last baby was weaned.

Eve was 15 when, in 1935, she left all she ever known to travel alone to London to ‘go into service’.  As she left, her father said ‘wherever you go, Eve, look over your shoulder, because there are five more coming behind’.  That was to become a guiding principle of Eve’s life.

But first, Eve entered service.  She lived with a well-off family of tailors in a four storey house in London.  She cleaned, cooked and did laundry and helped with the family business.  Her days would often start at 5 am as she climbed up and down four flights of stairs to load the van with skirts and coats made in the upstairs workshop.  For this she should have been paid 6 shillings a week but often she would be only given 4 shillings and a piece of second hand clothing.  She had a half day off each week so she could go to the public bathes.  Not generous employers!  The reason Eve gave for leaving after six months was that food served to one of the sons and not eaten, was later given to Eve as her meal.

Her next job was caring for Beaty, Golda and Monte – three children she still speaks of with obvious affection. The two little girls slept in one bed, and Eve and Monte shared the other.  But after about two years she was asked to return home to Wales to care for her mother who was suffering with rheumatism.  Wilf, a brother a year younger than Eve, had started work as a pit boy, and their mother needed help with the household. Eve was now aged 17 and World War 2 was on the horizon.

Then the mine closed and life in the village would never be the same.  A girl friend from the village had moved to London and got a job at Kemps Biscuit factory. She invited Eve to share her London flat. Soon Eve, too, was packing biscuits.  â€˜Wherever you go, Eve, look over your shoulder ...’ her father had said.  And so it was that first her father, and then her mother and the five younger children joined Eve in London, living in a flat that Eve had found for the family.

London during World War 2 was a difficult place to live, yet Eve was able to keep the family together, hold on to her job, and find time for romance.  A friend from the factory, Doreen, was ‘walking out’ with a young man called Ray Yearsley.  And he had a brother that he told Eve would be ‘just right for her’.

Eve cheekily retorted ‘ if he’s like you, keep him home and lock him up’.  Three years later, 1940, Eve married Cyril Yearsley.  Cyril glimpsed the kind of girl he was to live out the rest of his 84 years with when he tried to buy her an engagement ring.  Eve said ‘Oh no Cyril – would you mind very much if I bought a sewing machine instead’. Their wedding present from the factory was £10 – Eve bought a dinner set.

The danger from bombs meant the biscuit factory closed most of its operations and Eve was out of a job.  Walking home she saw a Dry Cleaners, stopped by, and got a position cleaning army uniforms. Cyril was an apprentice electrician. They often spent their evenings helping to clear the dead and injured from bombed buildings.

 As well as hardships, the war provided opportunities, and Eve took the huge risk of buying property in war torn London.  When she sold it a few years later, they made a profit – their first £1000. It was there that her only child, Len, was born in 1944.  Eve remembers listening to the ach ach guns at night.

The war ended, and Eve and Cyril were invited to join friends who were running a restaurant in Melbourne. Not for the first time, Eve left all she knew to venture into the unknown.

 Len was six when they landed in Melbourne and started work at the Mayfair, near Melbourne Domain.  From there, she went to a Bed and Breakfast, Kilbride House, making a home for Cyril and Len in the stables at the back of the house.

And then she heard about a position at Amsbury House - six flats each with fourteen rooms. Eve and Cyril spent  several  years caretaking for some of the cream of Melbourne society, among them the Frasers, the Clarkes,  Alison Wyatt, a well-known actress, and Arthur Horden, a sleeping partner to his brother Anthony Horden’s store.

While she was at Amsbury House, there came a summons – Queen Elizabeth would be staying at the Governor’s residence and Eve was required to help out in the kitchen.  ‘Oh no’, said Eve, ‘I couldn’t possibly, because all the people at Amsbury House will need me’.  None the less, Eve dressed in her best blue uniform with clean while collar and cuffs was picked up  by a chauffeur and driven to the Governor’s residence where her parsley sauce and other special dishes were all sent up to the monarch. Eve remembers there were twenty-four cooks and two head chefs who had come from England for the four days of the royal banquet.

Her father had said ‘wherever you go, Eve, look over your shoulder ...’ and over the years Eve brought three brothers, two sisters and, after her father’s death, her mother to Australia. She help most of them become established in jobs and houses. Being behind Eve’s shoulder was a good place to be.

After years of caring for the ‘idle rich’, Eve and Cyril moved to the Melbourne suburbs, then to Queensland, and finally , as age caught up with her, Len and Cheryl welcomed her into a lovely granny flat in North Arm Cove.

The sun shines in large windows overlooking the entrance to the Cove, and Eve watches the birds, and dophins, writes endless letters to those who have shared her life at one stage or another, and at 95 cares for and cooks for herself.   Her father had once said that he had been poor in money and rich in family.  Eve made sure she wasn’t poor in money – and she is certainly rich in family.

Tag

Filed under