Léon Pereira, Apothecary
My cousin remembered seeing, among family papers, a document signed by my great-grandfather. So we knew his profession.
Those papers didn’t come from India to Australia. Destroyed? Maybe left with another branch of the family – long-lost to distance, time, our ageing and dying.
I know some of his story. (Tassie nights around the fire. Older relatives reminiscing, conjuring a different world. We kids, agog, kept quiet so they wouldn’t remember us and send us to bed.)
I heard of his wooing Jane, the legendary beauty (‘very fair’ they said – which I understand differently now). The note smuggled into the orphanage. Escape, elopement.
The nuns were scandalised. Only 14! A High Court judge's daughter! She shouldn’t have been in the room when he came seeking a bride. Spying him through the window, immediately smitten, she snuck in, sitting on a pile of books to look taller. Yes, he chose her; they hustled her out. However....
Now I ponder, what was a child with an important father doing in an orphanage? In the British occupation of India? I think I know.
And he? Pure Portuguese? Another mixture? Anyway they married.
He made her rich. She was nicknamed The Countess. Legend said, if she wanted one cotton-reel, she’d send out for a gross. When she travelled, she hired a whole train for her servants, her dogs…. (My Nana, her daughter – Mum’s mother – was always followed, I remember, by a troop of little dogs.)
Nana – who thought herself a plain girl – crept into balls and parties, hiding behind her glamorous mother. She described dressmakers draping jersey around Jane’s elegant figure, stretching the fabric tight.
He died, the apothecary.
(I never found out how much older. A young man, already in business, needing a wife – up to ten years? Surely no more. But probably not in his teens when they met.)
She married again … died in her turn….
I know what happened to her: deduced her beginnings, know the ending and things in between.
He went looking for a convenient marriage, fell for a beautiful young girl who fell for him – seems they both did well. But I know nothing more of prosperous Léon with the mellifluous name, my great-grandfather.
Note: ‘Tassie’ — an affectionate abbreviation of Tasmania.
A 369-word piece of prose, linking to Weekly Scribblings #27 at Poets and Storytellers United: Things Were Different Back Then.