PHENOMENA: THE LOST AND FORGOTTEN CHILDREN

by Susan Tarr

  Malcolm vividly remembered those patients frozen in their beds or outside against a wall or under a tree. Now there was plenty of heating for the laundry, kitchen and the engineers also. Everyone benefited from the steam the boilers produced. The wards were heated that way and all their water too. The boilers were stoked each night with wood chopped by the attendants, and they were stoked with coal. Sometimes the water was almost boiling when it surged along the pipes then churned through the taps into the baths.

  He told Dick of Cynthia who used to cry all the time and tidy furniture, how she might have been sent home once she became normal after her operation. But Cynthia was scalded to death in a bath of boiling water. A patient had forced her into it and held her down. Tears burned his eyes as he outlined the new policy of encouraging the patients to dress in clothes more like those worn by normal people, how Cynthia had been given her new outfit.

  She’d worn a floral scarf to cover her shaven head and some lipstick to make her even more normal after her lobotomy. She no longer annoyed everyone with her incessant tidying. She no longer spoke or cried either; she stared around at her bright new world from her big startled eyes.

  The other woman wanted Cynthia’s new scarf.

  Malcolm stayed on the bench with Dick. Generally Dick was a cheerful character, but now he knew about Cynthia his mood was sombre.

  “Aside from you, me best mate is old Jim,” said Dick. “The blokes at Clifton House are me family.”

  But now Malcolm wanted to talk to Jack about what he remembered of the coal and grit at the station.

  “Dick, I’ll see you later, right.”

  “I remember my father and me on the train.”

  “Slow down, son. Take it easy.”

  Malcolm talked about how the train approached Seacliff Railway Station, the white plumes of steam over the back of the on-following trucks with the passenger carriage tagged on. Steam hissing impatiently beneath the iron wheels, the screech of brakes on iron tracks.

  His father had said, “Out you get for a spot of exercise. Don’t trip on that step. We’ll soon sort that silly old boot out. And when you’ve finished you sit on that bench beneath the sign. Bella and I will exercise our legs too. Off you go now. Off you go.”

  He recalled his excitement when his father and Bella described the new life they would have in Christchurch, becoming a new family.

  Even as the strangers left with most of their furniture and all of his mother’s things – the delicate china tea set and fancy tiered cake plate; even as the Salvation Army collected her clothes, packing them in her own suitcase as if she were going on holiday, along with her mirror and music box, he had still been elated.

  While they poked through the house or continued to rummage, one grabbed the calendar from the kitchen wall, and his eyes fixed momentarily on the date, 1927, with a circle around the day his mother had died. Bella did that.

  Someone commented on his bedroom and the lack of sunlight on that side of the house, the damp mildew patches on his wallpaper, how the paper was peeling off. They noted the gaping hole his father had punched through the wall. One adult glanced at the boy then down at his boot.

  Yet he was still elated. The death of his room – his first ever bedroom – despite that he was in high spirits. He watched the final burning of things. Bella called it rubbish. As the bonfire raged in the backyard well into the night – burning photographs, his mother’s unfinished watercolours of church spires and verdant countryside, her hard-bristled paintbrushes, her scrapbook, nighties, horsehair clothes brushes – he was racing around, poking the fire with a broom handle, laughing hysterically.

  After the clamouring confusion, leaving the dead house behind to the slam of the front door, there was new hope ahead for him. New friends at a new school to replace those he lost, like Big Billy and his tiger’s eye, spinner marbles, vain promises to write.

  He packed his most treasured possessions in his suitcase; his marbles, lead soldiers and storybooks. And his lucky farthing. His too-small clothes had gone off with the ‘calendar’ people.

  “We’ll get you all you need in Christchurch.”

  “Even real boys’ shoes, Daddy?”

  “Even real boys’ shoes.”

  “Brown!”

  Never again would he wear ugly black boots, boots that robbed him of saying goodbye to his mother before she went to live in heaven.

  On the Dunedin Railway Station platform some people were stepping forward to greet the exiting passengers. Some stepped down before the train had even stopped, down onto the platform with a little running skip. Malcolm moved among the throng of busyness, standing enthralled at the sight of the train engine in the stained glass window above the entrance that seemed always to be coming toward him no matter where he stood.

  He jumped when his father jerked his arm.

  “Into the tearoom. Choose something or go without.”

  He was the only child waiting on the platform, gripping his father’s hand lest he be drawn under the wheels of the train, down into the steam and noise. And later, when the train chuffed through the Mihiwaka Tunnel north of Port Chalmers, the adults leapt to close windows against steam-laden air and billowing soot. Once through the darkness, the train crept higher through beach settlements clinging to the hills above and below the railway track.

  He put his head a long way out the window.

  “Look, Daddy!”

  His words whisked away. Far below, the heavy sea pounded against the rocks and farther along past Doctor’s Point. He leaned his body out off the window to view the engine as the train snaked along the tracks. Now they were crossing the mud flats of Blueskin Bay, the tangy air swishing across his face, making his eyes stream.

  Bella scowled as he put his mouth against the rattling window, licking off the salty condensation. Endless hours of rickety-rackety travel on the serpent’s tail.

  Again, he asked about new shoes.

  “Whatever colour you want.” His father spoke offhandedly. “In Christchurch.”

  “Not black. Not boots. Just regular shoes.”

  Bella mimicked Not black, not boots, just regular shoes, a smirk on her face.

  He no longer cared when she pulled faces. He was getting new shoes in Christchurch, and they would be brown, regular boys’ shoes.

  So for now he exercised by waving his arms about and walking the length of the platform. Then he sat on the bench beneath the sign and spelled out Seacliff Railway Station, waiting, like his father told him to. On this family day of adventure and new beginnings his father wore his tight wedding and funeral suit. Bella wore her red and black dress, black gloves, and red high heels that matched her handbag and her red lips and her cigarette butts.

  He huffed and crossed his arms, suddenly annoyed.

  “Not again,” he muttered to no one in particular.

  His father and Bella were arguing. They always argued. Not like before, while his mother was fading away in her bed, while Bella sat on the kitchen table and chewed bubblegum. She used to make bubbles that burst across her cheeks encasing her mouth in a glistening pink spider web.

  Back then his father told Bella she was ‘quite a girl.’ And when she had her birthday and his father gave her chocolates and nylons, he told her she was ‘quite a big girl now.’ He told Malcolm to show her more respect because Bella was a grownup. He told Malcolm blowing bubblegum bubbles was a dirty habit and he’d get the belt if he caught him at it.

  Then his father would go check on his mother, supporting her head as she drank the medicine from a spoon. It’s to calm her nerves and imagination, he’d said, before sending Malcolm to the dairy – not the one on the closer corner, the one farther down the hill – to buy sugar. But he had counted seven bags of sugar in the cupboard in the kitchen.

  “Daddy, we’ve got lots of sugar now.”

  “Don’t question me, boy.” Whack! “I’ve warned you about not respecting your elders.”

  Yet each time he got back with a new
bag of sugar his father patted his head and said he was a good boy at heart. But he still wanted to know why they needed more sugar, and why his father was in a good mood when he returned from the dairy, and why Bella smirked and played soldiers with him for a while, her hair reeking of his father’s pipe tobacco.

  After his mother had gone to heaven, Bella started to sulk. His father would smile a lot and be nice to her, but she’d pout and stomp off to her room. Sometimes she cried; maybe she missed his mother too. Then his father would check she was all right behind the shut door. Much later Bella would come out to make dinner, and they’d be happy again.

  Until the arguments started over, even before he went to bed. They said mean grownup things to each other until his father took off to the pub. Then Bella was nasty to Malcolm. She poked him in his chest with her pointed red fingers, pushing him backward down the passage into his bedroom. She’d flick his cheek with the tea towel, or flick it across his bare legs. She’d smooch his face up tight in her perfumed hands and squeeze his cheeks and mouth until it hurt and he couldn’t cry. She’d make him stay in his bedroom until his father returned.

  “Do your homework, you stupid idiot. And keep out of our way. We don’t want you, understand? Nobody does. You’re a nuisance, imbecile.”

  “I hate you!” he bellowed back. “You’re not Mummy. I wish you were dead!” And he stuffed his idiot hands into his imbecile eyes to kill the stupid tears there.

  His father eventually came back and asked where the boy was.

  Bella called out gaily, “He’s been in his bedroom doing his homework for ages. He’s no trouble at all. He’s a lovely boy, aren’t you, Malcolm?”

  Now Bella stood on the platform at the Seacliff Railway Station, her hands firmly placed on her hips and her feet set apart. Her chin jutted high and her fiery hair fluffed out around her face in the breeze. He’d seen her paddies before. He stifled a laugh, thinking Oh, my word, what a face. His mother said a face to curdle milk.

  Sometimes he was scared of Bella.

  Right now he thought she was plain silly. They were on their way to Christchurch, their new life. He grinned inside, careful not to let his mouth betray him. Sitting on the bench, he watched his father and his cousin fix tight smiles to plastic faces so anyone passing would think they were happy.

  Like tigers, more like, Malcolm thought. Faces like birthday tiger masks.

  He started to giggle.

  Bella had been horrid to him ever since he’d come home from Portobello. She’d tell his father Malcolm is no trouble at all. Yet when they were alone she called him a dumb cripple or loony and hurled his boots around the room so they left Nugget streaks down the wallpaper.

  What he wanted to know was when Bella was grumpy with his father, what did she call him? For sure, his father was grumpy right back, like now, hands stuffed deep into his trouser pockets making fists. He kept walking in tight circles, first away from her, then back to angrily face her. Occasionally he’d throw a sharp word or two at her.

  Anyone would know his father was grumpy.

  Toot! The northbound train for Christchurch. Toot!

  Bella flounced onto the train. His father yelled at her, words drowned by the urgent sound. Toot! Toot!

  There goes Bella, he thought, amused. Better wait for me and Daddy or there’ll be big trouble. The steam train’s wheels started to slowly turn, shackled together with steel, like his boot. Chug-a-chug-a-chug. Gathering speed, groaning, huffing and chuffing as it drew away from the platform, faster, past the water tank leering down from its tall spindly legs.

  Malcolm, still wearing the traces of his smile, turned his face toward his father. His eyes and mouth widened in dismay as he watched the man race along the platform and grab the handrail with one hand, to swing his body onto the bottom step of the train.

  “Hey! Wait for me! Daddy! You forgot me-e-e!”

  But his father didn’t look back. One twist of the door handle and he was sucked inside the carriage.

  A voice wailing, “Daddy, what about me? It’s me, Daddy. It’s your Malcolm. You forgot me-eee.” Confused, the boy waited, expecting them to wave out of the window, or call out goodbye.

  My suitcase…I haven’t got my marbles…my soldiers…

  The train rumbled and roared, picking up speed as it passed the Presbyterian Church, over the cattlestop, around the corner. Gone from sight, with a long mournful too-ooot.

  Well after the last whistle, he pictured his suitcase in the string luggage rack, his books and things, and Christchurch where he would have got new clothes and new brown shoes like a normal regular boy. Not like now when his ugly black boots caused only bad things, like making him miss saying goodbye to his mother, like Bella calling him a cripple, an idiot boy, like making his father forget him. He looked along the dusty tracks, listening to the wind in the telegraph wires, the wind blowing from place to place past him and there he was, in between, listening to the moaning wind.

  He felt again a familiar burden of sadness or loneliness as if something had begun or happened that he knew nothing about. A sadness that had no relationship to him; it belonged to the world.

  It was dark when the lights were turned off and the Station Master came to him. The grownup stood there for some time as Malcolm stared down, still bewildered, at the broad polished shoes. Then the grownup sat beside him, looking hard at the talcum powder tin in the little boy’s clutched hand.

  “Is it your mum’s, lad?”

  When Malcolm didn’t answer, the man leaned back, stretched his legs out and rolled a cigarette.

  “What’s your name, then?” The Station Master’s voice was gruff but kindly.

  He stared toward the dark ocean water that reflected the rising moon and the far hills where the train had come from, above the pounding water on the rocks, until he couldn’t see anything more out or beyond.

  “Guess you’ll be coming home with me.” The man patiently puffing on his cigarette. “Big boy like you must be, what, five or six, huh? Maybe seven?”

  He stood, tucked his newspaper beneath his arm, and offered his hand to the boy, who didn’t move. He put the newspaper down and reached both his hands out and lifted him beneath his armpits to stand on the seat. Turning around, over his shoulder, he said, “Climb on my back, lad. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.”

  It was raining now so Malcolm pushed the talcum powder tin deep into his pocket before he climbed onto the stranger’s back. That’s how he rode to the house alongside the railway tracks. On the Station Master’s back.

  Mrs Roger was a wee woman who wrapped her hands in and out of her pinny before rolling it up in a ball in front of her. She darted shy smiles at Malcolm as she scrambled some eggs for their dinner.

  “It’s raining,” she said to the man.

  “It started raining before. Just a shower.”

  To Malcolm he said, “Sit here a while, lad. You warm up by the fire.”

  Then he made a phone call in the dimly lit passage, boisterously cranking the telephone handle, talking to the operator in a clear voice. Though he’d kicked the door shut, Malcolm still heard. The man was saying something about it being another case, remarkably like that of young Donna. Did her parents ever make contact? Malcolm heard him exhale sadly.

  When he returned to the kitchen, he said, “She’ll be right, lad. Eat your tucker, then.”

  Malcolm stared forlornly at the plate of cold scrambled eggs.

  “Not hungry?” the man said. “You look healthy enough. So they fed you, did they?”

  Mrs Roger asked brightly, “A glass of fresh milk?”

  When Mr Roger had eaten his eggs and a stack of toast, he sat in an armchair by the fire.

  “Come over here, lad. Nothing to worry about. You’ll be fine and dandy.”

  Malcolm got down from the table and went over to stand in front of him. When Mr Roger pulled him onto his knee before getting out his tobacco tin and rolling a cigarette with Zig-Zag rolling papers, Malcolm gulped and looked
away. Cold sweat made his neck prickle. He shuddered.

  “So you got a daddy, then?”

  Mr Roger breathed out a small puff of smoke before making circles in the air.

  Malcolm yawned. He should be sleeping in the high-up place in the train’s compartment with the blinds against the window tap-tap-tapping in time with the clacking of the huge wheels.

  Mr Roger said, “Your daddy smokes hand-rolleds?”

  And his pipe, Malcolm thought. Don’t forget his pipe.

  Mrs Roger ran a deep bath.

  “To help you sleep,” she said. “And some cocoa.”

  Mr Roger lifted the boy off his knee and led him into the steamy bathroom. Malcolm stood rigid as a pencil when Mr Roger knelt to unfasten his tight boots. He stared at them as they lay on the shiny linoleum. And his eyes still dragged back to them when Mr Roger peeled off his tight woollen school jersey, checking the faded label inside.

  With the shirt and singlet off, Mr Roger drew a slow breath. He traced his fingers down the bruises and scars that covered most of the boy’s body. He turned him this way and that, whistling through his teeth. Wide red welts raced across the small bottom, only the edges showing signs of healing. Cigarette burns. Pinch marks. Cuts, bruises and scabs.

  Lifting the boy into the bath, Mr Roger said sadly, “So you have got a daddy.”

  No, the boy whispered silently.

  There was an old lady who swallowed a horse she’s dead of course

  CHAPTER 28

  Regular Brown Shoes

  Malcolm stood still while the staff looked him over. One tall man said the boy might be eight years old. A nurse disagreed. While he was a big boy, he was probably only six. Seven? They agreed on seven years old, and the tall man wrote something on the paper.

  The noises, the smells and the vast concrete floors terrified Malcolm. Strange other children, not at all like Billy or the boys at his school, made weird noises, grunted, or scuttled over to pick at his tight clothes. One boy spent most of the time in a corner of the dayroom. He was cowered down, head butted into bony knees, arms wrapped tightly around his thin body. A tiny ball, constantly mewing.