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Chapter Four - page 3

Katherine and her husband must have been by any measure extraordinary parents, it was an age when well brought up women were thought of in terms of a good marriage and child bearing, if anything too much education was not to be encouraged.   Women’s place was in the home, the man’s place was conducting his business and running the country, it was unnecessary for women to have the vote.   With five daughters, they were all very attractive, most parents of the day would have put all their energies into arranging suitable - and profitable marriages, not the Morris’s of George.   All five girls were educated to the highest standard possible, Gwen at the London College of Music, Katherine and Dorothy as chemists, Marge at Cape Town University and the Sorbonne in Paris.   Ruth with her talent in music Gwen had insisted to her mother could only go to the Royal College of Music in London.
Ruth had begun her schooling at the small school in George run by the Church of South Africa, small as George was (it is not a very large town today) it boasts a cathedral and my grandmother was very involved with the church and its school.   It became clear that Ruth was outgrowing George and she was packed off to complete her education at the Stella Maris Convent in Durban.   It was whilst at this school Ruth began taking her annual exams set by the visiting Royal College of Music examiners.  
Which is how my father, the young Fourth Officer of the ‘Edinburgh Castle’ met a young music student who would one day be his wife and my mother, and at this point I am confusingly changing my father’s name.   In the first chapter I told you how he loathed his names, just I wonder how did he come by the name Geff, somehow I cannot see my father thinking the name up, that simply was not like him at all.   But I can imagine my mother saying something like ‘you look much more like a Geff than a Claude’ and the name sticking.   Of course an open romance on board ship was out of the question, officers could associate with the passengers under certain very limited conditions.   Similarly a young lady such as Ruth would not have been travelling aboard completely alone, my grandfather would have made sure that amongst the other passengers there was a family friend to act as chaperone.   It surely must have been a difficult time for both of them, my mother embarking on a completely new and somewhat frightening life on her own in a strange country and Geff, an impecunious junior officer with a rather uncertain future.  
In a later chapter you will fid out exactly why I am so certain that on sight my father was determined that Ruth would be his wife, they would have a long and sometimes very difficult courtship.   Father left the ‘Edinburgh Castle’ on the 28th of December 1925
                                                              
Nothing in the papers my father left gives any clue as to why he decided to join the Royal Navy as a Reserve officer, had he had it in mind all along or was it by the persuasion of the Company?   During the years of depression many officers found themselves ‘on the beach’, the British government decided to try to alleviate the situation by taking in more officers as reserve officers.   In this way shipping companies were relieved the expense of paying their men whilst the Navy gained well trained officers for free.   I know this understandably was the cause of not a little discontent and some hostility to the reserve officers by the permanent commission officers of the Navy.  
Geff left the ‘Edinburgh Castle’ to undergo his initial training as a probationary sub-lieutenant in the Royal Naval Reserve.   He had applied in September 1925 and began his basic training at Devonport on the 4th of January 1926.   It must have been a proud day for Claude, only eight years after leaving H.M.S. ‘Sagitta’ as a Reserve A.B. he was returning, but this time wearing an officer’s uniform and an Extra Master’s certificate in his pocket.