Frank's sister followed in mother's footsteps as a pianist and was so accomplished that he could never tell the difference between her playing and his mother's. The parsonage resonated with piano music from early morning to late evening and there would not be a single composition of Beethoven, Bach, Mozart etc. that they did not play.

 

It gave Frank a passion for music, which he often said enriched his life more than he could say. His mother kept playing until she died aged 88 - nothing could have stopped her. Her music was later to play a vital role in a sort of crisis Frank ran into during the war.

 

 He explained: "We had got used to most of the inconveniences involved in naval warfare - bombs, torpedos, sea-sickness etc., but suddenly the Japs loosed their kamikazes on us and it was quite disturbing.  Casualties in ships and men were very high and eventually my own ship was damaged, so we were sent back to Australia for repairs. We all went on leave while the ship was in dock and at the end of the leave I stayed a couple of days with my mother in her Neutral Bay flat.

 

I was a bit of a mess, about 60 kg and miserable, because I felt I just could not go back. I had used up what little reserves of courage I ever had. I didn't tell mother, of course, but she must have known something was terribly wrong, because the afternoon before I was due to return to my ship she took me into the lounge room and started to play her piano.

 

 I sat nearby and the music simply poured out. She played and played and kept playing. It was quite late when she stopped and all she said was: “you should feel better now". The funny thing is that I did. Somehow or other the music must have recharged my little battery and I went back to my ship next day feeling much better.

 

 I had always felt a bit ashamed of myself for that lapse, but recently I read in the Sydney Morning Herald an article about an admiral who had retired, and he said the worst part of the war for him was the kamikaze attacks.  He said his ship had been hit and had limped back to Australia for repairs and he then felt he could not return to the war zone.  I feel a lot better about it now that I know I was in the same state as a bloke who went on to become an admiral. The Navy were very understanding about things like that - if you said you felt you could not carry on they would give you a shore job.

 

 Both my parents were gifted writers. I recall that my father’s style resembled Thackeray, Carlyle and Galsworthy, with delicately balanced sentences. Mother’s style was relaxed and fluent, and throughout the war she wrote to me every week, sometimes just bringing me up to date on family matters but quite often she would wing off into a treatise on various aspects of music, which often reached me in the strangest places.

 

Once we were anchored in a New Guinea harbour where an active volcano ashore was showering us with pumice. We had just got some mail and I sat on the quarter-deck with volcanic ash dropping onto Mother’s latest letter in which she admonished me for saying I thought Mozart was too superficial.

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