Geraldine Battersby, 1949–2014
If you rang Jesuit Publications at its Victoria Street Richmond home during its initial decades, chances are you'd hear a familiar voice. If it was the superbly efficient, ever-loyal Nomeneta Schwalger, you knew your business would be dealt with promptly and effectively. If Geraldine Battersby answered your call, her telephone manner was so impressive you'd think you were going to be connected to the Pope — or at least a cabinet minister.
I used to ring sometimes for the sheer joy of hearing Geraldine switch voices as soon as she realised who it was. We'd often compared notes about Catholic educated 'ladies' and their elocution tones (my mother had a telephone voice as formidably professional as Geraldine's), and wondered what all that meant. Not hypocrisy. Certainly not pretension. Rather, an ability to adapt, instantly, to circumstances. To meet every occasion with a confident, reassuring front.
Perhaps it was a technique picked up from the many Irish Mothers Superior we'd known during our lives and convent educations. And if there was a touch of hauteur about it, there was also a dignity to Geraldine's professional manner that was wholly genuine, and a mark of respect for the person she was addressing.
The corresponding wonder was that Geraldine could change in the flash of an eye. And her eyes did flash. She understood irony and she was gifted with laughter — a gift she shared, liberally. My memories of working with her over so many years are freighted with laughter — at folly, at shared pleasures, at the bemusing, dreadful, wonderful ways of the world.
We watched a kerbside drug bust from our upstairs Victoria Street window one day and celebrated the birth of a daughter to one of our staff the next. We were a family, loving, occasionally dysfunctional, but held together by the essential goodness and dedication of women like Geraldine and Mrs Irene Hunter, who came as a volunteer and stayed, keeping us decent, and in her quiet way, making sure our feet were on the ground.
Geraldine's way wasn't quiet, but it was grounding in related ways. She had an acute sense of class: Eureka Street, she would sometimes chide us, was produced by university (over-educated?) scruffs from one post code and read by proper citizens from another.
We didn't mind. She remembered our birthdays, followed our romances and knew the names of our children. She was there for the occasional long