Trust Me (25 page)

Susan gave her the benefit of the doubt at that point and waited patiently to get one from Australia. But Christmas came and went, January slipped past and still no letter, and it was at that point she wrote to Mother Superior asking if she knew the girls’ new address.

Ian looked questioningly at his wife as she opened the envelope and took out a single sheet. ‘It’s from Sister Teresa,’ Susan said, glancing up at him. ‘Shall I read it aloud?’

Ian nodded, and spooned more cereal into Edward’s mouth. He was nine months now, a sturdy little boy with his mother’s soft brown eyes and his father’s appetite, and his hair was finally growing, just a haze of light brown fluff.

Dear Mrs Bankcroft, she read. I am sorry to tell you that Mother Superior died in her sleep two weeks ago, here at the Sacred Heart. She was a good age at seventy-eight, but we all miss her very much. I am standing in for her until her replacement arrives. I am very sorry to hear that Dulcie and May haven’t written to you, I know how fond you are of them, and they of you too. Sadly I have no address for them as they haven’t written to us either. Also I haven’t been able to find any name or address for the organization which arranged for the girls to go to Australia amongst Mother Superior’s correspondence. I believe much of her contact with them was by telephone. When you do find the girls, as I’m sure you will, please remember me to them.

Yours sincerely,

Sister Teresa

Susan put the letter down and looked helplessly at Ian. ‘Can you believe they haven’t even got any record of what organization the children went with? Doesn’t that smack of incompetence?’

‘Well, I suppose the old lady had it all in her head,’ Ian replied, his tone a little chilly. ‘But surely the father will know, Susan? He signed the papers to let them go.’

Susan noted the chill in his voice and knew she was going to get no further support or interest from him. ‘Maybe I’ll drop him a line then,’ she said, then sat down at the table, and took over the feeding of Edward.

It was March before Reg received Susan’s letter. When the warder handed him the envelope with the familiar, well-rounded handwriting at breakfast-time in the dining hall, he beamed in delight. It was the only letter to arrive since Christmastime when he got a very brief one from his brother Ernie.

Reg didn’t even wait to get back to his cell, but ripped open the envelope and read it as he went back up the metal staircase.

Dear Reg,
he read.
I expect you are surprised to hear from me again after all this time, but I felt compelled to write and ask if you have heard from Dulcie and May since they got to Australia. They didn’t inform me they were going, and it was only when I called to visit at the Sacred Heart at the end of last August I learned of it.

I’m quite sure their silence is only due to them having a busy and exciting time in their new school, but I am so anxious to hear how they are faring and wish to stay in contact with them.

Reg stopped short on the staircase, unable to read on for he had a sudden sharp pain in his chest and his head felt as if it was about to explode.

‘Australia!’ he exclaimed. ‘The bastards!’

Another prisoner coming up the staircase behind saw Reg stop in his tracks and clutch his chest and reached out to grab him, thinking he was having some sort of seizure. ‘What’s up, mate?’ he asked. ‘Shall I call a screw?’

Reg came round enough to see he was holding up the traffic on the staircase, brushed off the other man’s hand, muttered something about getting bad news and went on to his cell.

Once inside, sitting on his bunk, he read the letter again, then slumped back to think it over.

It was bad enough when he was told that the convent wouldn’t allow his children to write to him in prison, but he accepted it, thinking perhaps the Sisters were right and it would be a bad influence.

‘The bastards,’ he muttered again, white-hot anger rising inside him. ‘Fucking evil bastards,’ he ranted to himself, hitting the wall of the cell with his fist in the absence of any face to punch. ‘How dare they pack my kids off to the other side of the world and never fucking tell me about it?’

Later that day Reg demanded an interview with the Governor. At five he presented himself at the office, and while he was waiting to be called in, he told himself he must control his temper or he’d get nowhere.

The Governor’s name was Friday, a name that was sniggered about all around the prison. Yet ‘Man Friday’ as he was universally known was a decent sort. He did appear to care about the welfare of the men in his prison, he had been known to bend rules occasionally for deserving cases, he did actually listen properly to complaints, which according to the men who had been in many prisons was very unusual.

At the command to come in, Reg took a deep breath, gave his shoes a quick rub on the back of his trouser legs, and walked in.

‘Taylor, three five four oh, sir,’ he said, standing smartly to attention in front of Friday’s desk.

Friday had the look of an accountant or a bank manager, rather than of a man who had worked his way up through the prison ranks, with his healthy, round shiny face, neatly trimmed moustache and hòrn-rimmed glasses.

‘Well, Taylor, what can I do for you?’ he asked. ‘If it’s a request for more building work I’m sorry, but there is nothing at present.’

‘It wasn’t that, sir,’ Reg said. ‘It’s about my girls. You see, I’ve just found out they were sent to Australia.’

He took Susan’s letter from his pocket and gave it to the man to read. ‘She used to be my Dulcie’s teacher,’ he explained, then went on to add how much she’d done for both himself and the girls.

‘Can they really send my girls away without my permission?’ he asked, trying to control the anger rising inside him.

Friday read the letter through a second time, then sat back in his chair and folded his arms. ‘Would you have given them permission to go if you had been asked?’

‘I don’t know,’ Reg said. ‘I’d have wanted to know a great deal about where they were planning to take them before I made up my mind.’

‘You would probably have wanted to know if you’d be eligible to join them there at the end of your sentence, I expect?’ Friday said.

‘Well, yes,’ Reg said. ‘All my plans for the future are with them in mind.’

‘Maybe these people knew that, and also knew you would never be eligible to emigrate yourself,’ Friday said. ‘They might see that as a selfish reason, and not in the children’s best interests. It is a land of great opportunity after all. Maybe they didn’t want the children to be denied it?’

Reg began to feel irritated that Friday was twisting it to make these people sound right. ‘I don’t see it that way, sir,’ he replied. ‘I see a bunch of people stealing my children away from me. Surely getting twelve years and missing them growing up is enough of a punishment without whisking them away so far I’ll never get to see them again when I get out.’

‘Taylor, this is all me, me, me,’ Friday exclaimed, then sighed deeply. ‘You must forget your own feelings and think how good it is for them. Orphanages all over England are full to bursting point, there are not enough foster-parents to go round. By the time you are free they will be young women. Look at it logically for a moment – out there they will have a good education, they will have chances they’d never get in England. I can understand that you are upset because you weren’t consulted, but surely you want what’s best for them?’

‘But I don’t know that it is, do I?’ Reg burst out. ‘I wasn’t asked or even told that they’d gone. No letters have come from them to me, or to their old teacher. What proof have I got that they are happy?’

‘I expect they have been discouraged from writing to you and this Mrs Bankcroft,’ Friday said, touching the letter on his desk. ‘To save them the pangs of homesickness. I am quite certain that even as we speak they are enjoying a far better life than they ever knew before, and without painful reminders from home they can grow up to be well-adjusted young ladies.’

Reg knew he was on a loser. It was quite clear Man Friday had no idea what it felt like to be banged up in a cell night after night, year after year, without any news of those he loved outside.

‘Can I ask then that you just try to find out exactly where they are, and how they are?’ Reg asked, trying very hard not to let any aggressiveness come into his voice. ‘Surely in God’s name as their father I’m entitled to that information?’

‘How old are the girls now?’ Friday asked.

‘Dulcie’s eleven, May’s coming up for eight.’

The Governor looked thoughtful. ‘Well, Taylor, I’ll make some inquiries. But stop worrying about your children, I’m sure they are in good hands.’

Reg had a strong urge to thump the man for talking down to him, but knowing that would only get him a spell in solitary confinement and that would kiss goodbye to all chance of getting any help, he suppressed it, thanked the man, and allowed himself to be dismissed.

Back in his cell after supper, Reg planned his letter back to Susan. He knew he would have to word it carefully, without one word of criticism of the Welfare workers or the prison, as it would be censored. Yet at the same time he had to be able to show her subtly how distressed he was, for he thought she was the only person who was likely to help him.

Yet as he read her letter again, including the part he had ignored first thing this morning, when she spoke of her husband, baby and new home, he sensed that she was trying to tell him she wanted no further involvement with him personally.

He wrote two letters and tore them up, unable to get the tone right, and finally slumped down on to his bed, thinking bitter thoughts of Anne. He ought to have killed her, she deserved it for telling him May wasn’t his. In those early days after her death he’d tried to convince himself it was her one last lie, and she’d only said it to make him mad enough to throw her out. But once he knew it was Tosh she was having it off with, somehow he knew it was true. If she could let such a maggot screw her in the afternoons and come home again to him, she was capable of anything.

Yet it didn’t make him love May any less, knowing he had no part in her creation. He felt no differently about her than he did about Dulcie. He wished he could wipe all that love he felt for the pair of them out of his heart, it would be so much less painful to be locked in here without it. They were so young when he was taken away from them, they’d probably almost forgotten him by now. By the time they were young women and he was free, he’d be nothing but a man with a name the same as theirs, the man responsible for taking their mother away from them.

It was weeks before Dulcie recovered. For the first fortnight she hobbled about, unable to sit down. Yet courage, she found, was admired above all else in Australia, even by the Sisters. They were far kinder than they had been previously, giving her easy jobs which required no bending or stretching, patting her shoulder when they saw her wince with pain. Sister Ruth, one of the gentlest of the nuns, came into the dormitory each night to smooth some ointment over the weals. Even crusty Sister Anne found a cushion for Dulcie to sit on at mealtimes.

Nothing was said, not a word to indicate that they didn’t think she deserved such a brutal punishment, but their silent kindness made Dulcie realize they approved of her nobility in taking such a beating for a crime she hadn’t committed.

The other girls were sweet to her too, offering to help her dress, supporting her as she limped to the schoolroom. Sometimes she ached to be left alone, to be allowed just to think, for she felt so bruised inside, their compassion made her want to cry. But slowly the wounds healed, and it was good to find she now had a niche in the school, if only as a martyr.

It was May she had the most difficulty with. Dulcie wanted to reject her sister entirely, but she couldn’t do that in case that made the other girls realize she was the real culprit. So when May came fawning round her, Dulcie had to be nice to her, and May was smart enough to make sure she was never on her own with her, for fear of getting an earful.

The weeks and months passed, punctuated by Holy Days when at least the food was better. It was good to stand at the window in the dormitory watching rain after so many months of drought, to sleep at night without the intense heat, to see the grass grow again, and plants suddenly shoot up almost overnight. On May’s eighth birthday it poured incessantly, and the ground around the dormitories became a lake. One of the girls saw a big snake out on the veranda one morning and screamed so loudly that all the old nuns in the convent opened their windows to see what was going on. The snake slithered away in all the confusion, and for days afterwards all the girls lived in fear that it would come into the dormitory at night.

The kangaroos came closer as the vegetables grew in the garden, they stood by the fence like a group of old men considering if they were brave enough to jump it and get in to have a feast. More and more beautiful birds came down into the garden too, and some of the smallest girls were given the job of acting as human scarecrows to save the vegetables from being eaten.

It seemed no time at all before it was summer again, Dulcie’s twelfth birthday, and then Christmas. She could hardly believe they’d been here for fifteen months now, and when she went to Mass and offered up her usual prayer that a letter would come from Susan or her father, she found that this time the thought of them didn’t make her cry.

In January of 1951, Sonia was due to leave St Vincent’s to work on a sheep station. She and Dulcie had become good friends ever since Sonia’s kindness after her beating, and Dulcie felt terribly sad to be losing her. She knew now why the Sisters did their best to break up friendships, for happy children dared to get up to mischief, they plotted against the nuns. Dulcie’s keen mind, blended with Sonia’s daring and a strong desire to rise above their oppressive life, made the perfect partnership. While outwardly appearing to be subdued, willing and sweet-natured, they won trust. Once they had that they were unstoppable.