Trust Me (78 page)

Ross stopped the car suddenly in front of a large bronze statue up on a plinth which stood right in front of the school. It was of a Brother, his arm paternally around a small boy’s shoulder.

‘That’s him, the bastard,’ Ross hissed. ‘Fucking Brother Keaney. So-called friend of orphans. See, he’s got boots on, but the boy’s got none, at least they got that right. But how dare they honour him with a statue!’

Dulcie had heard a great deal about this Irishman Keaney from Ross. He got his first blow from him as a six-year-old at Clontarf orphanage in Perth, where Keaney was once the Superior. Even there this six-foot-two, eighteen-stone man was building, using children as labourers – in that case his construction work was a large chapel. Then he went on to Tardun, yet another orphanage where he played a part in settling boys on their own farms.

‘Park up the car,’ Dulcie said, anxious to get out and look around. ‘You can look at that again later.’

Ross drove on and they left the car by some outbuildings. It was very quiet, the current boys at the school were clearly in class or out working on the vast area of farmland surrounding it. Flies bombarded both of them, a sharp reminder to Dulcie of her time at the Masters’ place in Salmon Gums. There were of course a great many flies at Esperance too at this time of year, but not in this quantity because of its position near the coast.

‘They were more torture,’ Ross said as he flapped them away. ‘They’d cling to your eyes, nose and mouth, and feed on sores or broken skin. But you got used to it.’

Dulcie didn’t think she could ever get used to it, but she was distracted then by a Brother coming towards them, out of the building Ross had said was the dairy. He wore a long black soutane, his head bare. Ross stiffened, his face blanching, clenching and unclenching his hands.

‘Do you know him?’ she whispered.

‘Yes, it’s Brother Casey,’ he whispered back.

Dulcie knew instinctively that Ross was unlikely to be able to speak coherently to this man, so she stepped forward. ‘G’day. I’m Dulcie Rawlings,’ she said, ‘Ross’s wife, he’s just brought me here to show me round his old school.’

Brother Casey did not look frightening, he was well over sixty, slender with white hair, walking with a stick, and his smile was welcoming. ‘I’m pleased to meet you, Mrs Rawlings,’ he said, shaking her hand. ‘And how are you doing, Ross?’

‘Fine, sir,’ Ross said, his voice cracking with nervousness. ‘Just up from Esperance on a holiday.’

‘Are you farming?’ Brother Casey asked. His sharp blue eyes kept darting to Dulcie. She wondered if he had been cruel to Ross, and if he was going to say anything about him absconding.

Ross nodded. ‘A big spread down on the coast. I manage it now.’

This wasn’t strictly true, but Dulcie could perfectly well understand his need to boost his image.

‘I’ve got some chores to do,’ Brother Casey said. ‘But you can show your wife around. You’ll find some changes since you were here.’

‘Where are all the boys?’ Dulcie asked. ‘It’s very quiet.’

‘Some are in class, some out working. But a bunch of them have gone out camping in the bush, they won’t be back till tomorrow.’

He abruptly turned and walked away, and it was only then that Dulcie realized he wasn’t in the habit of welcoming old boys, and hoped they’d leave quickly.

‘Was he one of the cruel ones?’ Dulcie asked as the man disappeared back into the dairy.

Ross shrugged. ‘They all were, but he never laid into me. He only came here in my last year. But I want to go now, there’s nothing I want to see.’

He was still very pale, and Dulcie was astounded that a man who could stand up to anyone normally should be made so fearful by one old man.

‘But there’s a lot
I
want to see,’ she said firmly ‘So come on, show me around.’

He took her over to the Technical Building and she peered through the windows. In one room there were some boys doing woodwork, but most of the other rooms were rather bare classrooms, much like the ones at St Vincent’s. He took her up the flight of steps into the impressive two-storey main administrative building, pausing nervously under the arched entrance.

‘See that,’ he pointed to a mosaic ahead of them on the marble floor. ‘I lost most of the skin on my fingers doing that.’

It was cool after the searing heat outside, the yellowish-gold floor so clean and shiny it looked wet. The mosaic was a circle of pale blue,
Fratres Scolarum Christianarum De Hibernia
in red lettering inside it. A green cross with a white star at its centre took up the space in the circle. Beneath this was a design like a blue ribbon,
Boys’ Town
in red set into it.

‘What does the Latin mean?’ she asked.

‘Buggered if I know,’ he shrugged. ‘To me it means
Welcome to Hell.’

She bent over to feel the mosaic. It was so smooth that it was difficult to imagine that each tiny piece of marble had been placed there by the hand of a small boy.

Yet as Ross took her into the building she saw for herself how he came to know so much about building, and indeed was such a perfectionist in his work. Marble pillars, graceful arches in blues, creams and greens, it was all so incredible. He had previously told her there were two Italian stonemasons working under Father Urbano, the architect who directed the boys in their work. For these men he had some affection, for they had been kindly towards the boys, yet all the labouring – and Dulcie was overwhelmed by the sheer size of the place – was done by the boys, the Brothers working merely as overseers.

There was so much she wanted to know, what the rooms upstairs in the building were used for, how many Brothers were there in Ross’s time, and how many now. She wanted to know if it was still a cruel place, to see close up, perhaps even speak to some of the boys, but Ross was growing more and more agitated. He kept speaking of other boys by name, describing atrocities that were done to them as if it had all happened yesterday, and he barely let her see the beautiful chapel before dragging her outside again.

‘John had a wheelbarrow full of cement fall on top of him,’ he said, pointing up to the dome on the roof. ‘He was badly hurt, the lime was burning his eyes, and all the Brothers did was stick him head-first into a tank of water.’

‘Show me where you slept,’ she said. It was hard for her to believe this peaceful and beautiful place had so much horror attached to it. There were flowerbeds, palms, well-kept lawns. Beyond the school buildings were vineyards, paddocks with cows and sheep, others planted with crops. The shady verandas in front of the dormitories and the Brothers’ rooms had all the serenity of cloisters in a monastery.

Yet as Ross led her along them he was trembling. He spoke of bed-wetters being forced to stand there for hours wearing a sack-like dress to humiliate them, of Dawe, the Brother he mentioned most frequently, whacking them over the head with a strap to wake them in the mornings. Dulcie couldn’t imagine it ever being cold here, but Ross talked of the winters when they shivered under one blanket, of walking in bare feet on frosty ground to milk the cows, of the hunger pains they suffered continually.

He paused outside one room, glancing fearfully at it. She caught hold of his arm and found it was stiff with terror, his hand icy cold. ‘What happened there, Ross?’ she asked gently. ‘Tell me.’

He kind of shook himself and strode on away from the place. Dulcie ran after him, knowing in her heart his secret lay there. But he wouldn’t stop or speak to her.

She saw a few Brothers, mostly younger than the one they’d spoken to earlier, and she guessed they had come here since Ross’s time as they showed no recognition, only faint curiosity. A young boy of about fourteen was weeding a flowerbed, he looked up and smiled as they rushed past him, and though Dulcie wanted to stop and speak to him, she had to follow Ross.

Ross didn’t stop until he came to a huge tomb, close to the statue of Keaney. His face was purple with indignation and his eyes almost popping out of his head as he saw the inscription on it. ‘They’ve even buried the bastard here! I don’t believe it!’

He struck the tomb with his clenched fist, skinning his knuckles, then turned to Dulcie, so agitated he was shaking. ‘Look, they gave him an MBE. Can you believe the Queen would award that to a man who beat and starved little kids! He ought to burn in hell.’

Dulcie knew that Ross had run away from here in 1953, and as she’d seen a plaque in the grounds commemorating the day the school was officially opened in October of that year, she’d assumed Keaney died before then. On his tomb the date of his death was given as 1954, and perhaps as Ross never read newspapers, he’d never known the man had died.

She looked up at the statue of Keaney and tears ran down her cheeks as she remembered Ross’s tales of how this big bully of a man and his friends would have drunken parties, and he would get some of the boys in to sing to them. How shameful that a bunch of grown men of the cloth and local dignitaries should eat and drink the profit made from foodstuffs grown by boys who never received anything more than watery soup, bread and porridge.

She too felt it was disgusting that he’d been honoured by the Queen, especially as she knew the kind of trickery Keaney had used to convince the majority of Australian people he was some kind of saint.

The whole property had been called Mount Pleasant, and the benevolent owner, a widow called Catherine Musk, gave it to the Christian Brothers with the intention that the Brothers were to use it to place needy boys and orphans on their own farms. She undoubtedly gave Keaney the responsibility for clearing the land and building a school because she believed him to have all the qualifications and heart for the formidable task.

The Brother became a living legend known as
Friend to the Orphans,
for his charismatic, expansive personality had endeared him to the Australian public and he wasted no time in plucking their heart-strings to make them dip into their wallets to give generous donations for this new project. It was truly remarkable what he achieved, Dulcie could see that just by looking around her. She could well imagine why people called him a genius. But then they didn’t know that he achieved it purely through brutality and terror.

Perhaps now Bindoon did live up to what it was intended to be, a college to train boys in agricultural work. But for those boys like Ross who came in the early days there was no real schooling, many never learned to read and write. It was like a concentration camp where the only real skill they learned was survival. Yet some hadn’t even learnt that, for she knew some boys had died here, and she suspected that most of the old boys, like Ross, were haunted by the cruelty they’d experienced at the hands of the Brothers.

An odd sound from Ross brought her mind back from Keaney to her husband. She saw he was now sitting on the grass, his legs up tight to his chest, arms clasped round them.

She sat down on the grass beside him and tried to comfort him, but he was as stiff as a board, as though every muscle in his body had seized up. ‘Tell me what’s wrong,’ she asked, but there was no reply, just plaintive sobs, and she realized she must get him away from here before someone came over to them.

‘Can you walk to the car?’ she asked, standing up and pulling at his arm. There was no response, it was as if he’d been struck deaf, dumb and blind.

‘I’ll go and get it and bring it here,’ she said, thinking the sight of the car might bring him round, and she ran off to get it.

He was still in the same position when she drove back, he didn’t even turn his head to look at her.

‘Ross, get up and get in the car,’ she ordered him sharply, pulling at his arm again. But his hands were still locked round his knees and he appeared to be almost in a trance.

She was scared now, very aware this was all her doing. ‘Get up, Ross, or I’ll have to get one of the Brothers,’ she said, and slapped him lightly on the shoulder. Again no response.

‘Brother Dawe’s coming to get you,’ she said in desperation. ‘Look, he’s coming now.’

To her surprise it worked, he leaped to his feet, jumped into the passenger seat of the car and slid down in the seat as if trying to hide himself.

She drove away quickly, her heart pounding with fright. Bruce had been apprehensive about this trip, he’d even suggested it might knock Ross off his rocker, but she hadn’t believed that. Now she wondered if it had – he was still crying, but he’d bent his head down on to his knees and she couldn’t see his face. She drove until she was right out of the drive and on to the road back to Perth, and only stopped again when she saw a small parking place covered with shady trees.

Turning off the engine, she turned to him and made him sit upright. ‘It’s okay now, we’re well away from there,’ she said.

He let her hold him tightly, leaning his head on to her shoulder, but he continued to cry.

‘Tell me what happened,’ she begged him, caressing his hair and winding the auburn curls around her fingers.

It was a long while before he began to speak in a whisper, and at first it made no sense to her. There was something about making butter in the dairy. But as he began to make a turning motion with his hand, she realized he was talking through something that had happened a long time ago.

Ross was unaware that he was now a grown man, or that he was in a car with his wife. He had slipped back to when he was twelve, his stomach ached with hunger, his arm almost dropping off with turning and turning the churn handle, but until he had made the butter he knew he couldn’t hope for any supper.

He had a painful stone bruise on the sole of his foot, and he could barely put it down on the cold stone-flagged floor, his hands were red raw from making bricks all day. Keaney had caught him with some stolen grapes from the vineyard an hour ago, whacked him over the head with his big heavy stick, and ordered him in here to make the butter as a further punishment.

Yet dejected as Ross felt, there was nothing particularly unusual about his situation. From as far back as he could remember he had never received any real kindness from any adult, and he didn’t expect it. He counted himself more fortunate than the English boys who had arrived recently. They had turned up in smart little suits, socks, shoes, even caps and ties, and looked in horror at the Australian boys with their ragged shorts and shirts and bare feet. It made him smile to see them hopping around on the hot ground once they’d been stripped of their good clothes, and he even enjoyed their shock at discovering they wouldn’t be getting lessons, only doing building work.