They sat there smiling.
‘You see, your letter came on Saturday morning while I was in bed and he brought it up to bed with my cup of tea. I looked at this letter with the strange handwriting and I thought, This is about my baby. I don’t know why. I just looked at it. I looked at it for ages and ages and then my husband said to me, “What is it?”
‘I don’t have any letters that come just for me, you see. He said, “It’s not your birthday.” Because it looked like a birthday card, you see. “It’s not your birthday, and who do you know in Nottingham?”
‘I wouldn’t tell him. And I read your card and kept it to myself all day, but I told him last night. “I’ve got something to tell you,” I said. I explained to him that before we married I had a baby and my mother had intervened and my little girl had been adopted.’
Betty still thought I was Pamela and I had to stop her talking for long enough to gently explain that I was a social worker from Nottingham who worked with adults who had been adopted as children. Betty couldn’t hide her disappointment – she wanted so much for me to be her daughter. As I explained, she nodded occasionally, beginning to understand that I had news for her but had to be sure she was the right woman.
She said, ‘Ever since adopted people have been able to find their families, I’ve been waiting for this. My daughter was adopted, as you probably know. Where is she? When can I meet her? Is she with you?’
I took Pamela’s birth certificate from my case and handed it to Betty.
‘Is this your daughter?’
‘Yes, it is.’
I knew it was going to be difficult to break the news about Pamela’s childhood. It had to be handled carefully. I had to let Betty set the pace; let her ask the questions.
‘Have you met her? Do you know her?’
‘Yes, we’ve met. You look very much alike.’
She smiled broadly and said, ‘Well, where is she?’
‘Pamela is living in Australia.’
‘Why did you call her Pamela? Her name is Elizabeth.’
I wasn’t ready to explain the details – more importantly, Betty wasn’t ready to hear them.
‘How did she get to Australia?’ Betty asked.
‘Pamela has been in Australia since she was very young.’
‘Well, when did she go there?’
‘As a child.’
Betty’s look of astonishment turned to sadness. ‘I saw something on the news the other day. It was about children going out to Australia on boats. It was awful …’ She paused and simply looked at me. ‘Please tell me it’s not that.’
The next few minutes were very emotional, and very personal.
Betty needed time to absorb what had happened and gather her thoughts. Her husband disappeared into the kitchen, preparing lunch and setting the table.
Betty took a deep breath and began explaining what had happened to her as a nineteen-year-old, living in London. She had been educated abroad and graduated from a finishing school. When she became pregnant, her mother was horrified and didn’t approve of her boyfriend, despite the fact that he wanted to marry Betty. Instead, they decided they would bring the child up together – mother and grandmother.
‘But that became very difficult, and when the baby was only a few months old my mother announced, “I’m going to take this baby to the nuns.”’
Betty was told that her daughter would be adopted by a loving couple, who would raise her as their own.
When I left Hastings, late that afternoon, I was thrilled to have found Pamela’s mother, yet terribly sad. Here was proof of a case where a mother had not given consent for her child to be migrated. She had placed her daughter for adoption in England. Of this I had no doubt.
That day my fear and apprehension had been for Betty, now I felt the same emotions when I thought of Pamela, at home in Adelaide. How was I going to tell her?
I flew to Australia on 25 November. The last person I spoke to before leaving was Betty who had sent me a letter for Pamela, along with some photographs and a small gift.
Apart from these, I was loaded down with family details for thirty child migrants. In some of these cases, Yvonne and I had also managed to find and visit their families. I was bringing with me photographs, letters and family mementos.
The production crew from Domino Films was due to meet me in Sydney, several days after I arrived. They had already been filming in Canada and Zimbabwe.
As I cleared customs and emerged into the arrivals hall at Sydney Airport, I saw a familiar face which was totally out of place.
‘Harold!’ I said. ‘What on earth are you doing here? You live in Melbourne!’
‘Well, I’ve come from Melbourne to meet you.’
‘When did you fly in?’
‘I haven’t flown.’
‘How did you get here?’
‘I’ve still got my old banger.’
I wouldn’t have trusted that car to go to the end of the road and back, and he had driven it over 500 miles, through the night, to meet me.
‘That’s lovely, Harold,’ I said, ‘but why have you done it?’
‘I’ve come to give you a lift.’
‘Where to?’
‘To your hotel.’
‘How long are you staying?’
‘Just for a cup of tea.’
‘Then you’re going back?’
‘Yeah.’
So Harold chauffeured me to the Sheraton and saw me to my room. We had a cup of tea and dinner, and later that evening he climbed back into his van.
‘Why did you do it?’ I asked. ‘This is awful.’
He said, ‘Well if you can come 12,000 miles to help us, surely I can come from Melbourne to bloody Sydney to pick you up?’
The following day I began meeting child migrants and telling them of the search for their families. I was painfully aware of the sensitivity of the subject. These people had spent decades with nothing and I couldn’t simply drop information on them. It had to be done with great care and many would possibly need counselling for a long time before and afterwards. I had just a few weeks before going home again – a situation that was totally unsatisfactory.
When Joanna arrived with her film crew, I had another dilemma to sort out. Her first question was, ‘Have you found anybody’s mother?’
‘Yes, I have,’ I replied, watching her face light up. ‘But it’s not that simple.’
Joanna wanted a reunion to complete her documentary but I had reservations about exposing families and former child migrants to the camera. A reunion was such an emotional time that I felt it was a gross intrusion to film such a private moment. I explained to Joanna that it was up to the parties concerned to make the decision whether they wanted it filmed.
‘Is it anything to do with Pam?’ she persisted. ‘We’re going to spend a long time with her next week, filming in her house, talking about her childhood. Should we at least tell her you’re coming to see her?’
‘You can tell her that much. Also ask her to sign a contract with you. I want you to promise that if she wishes anything at all to be withdrawn from the film, you’ll comply.’
I arrived in Adelaide two and a half weeks later. The roses in Pamela’s front garden were glorious – and so English. Inside the house the film crew were helping Pamela put up her Christmas decorations. They were obviously getting on well.
‘It’s lovely to see you again,’ Pamela said, ‘but I’m sure you’ve got other people to see who are more important than me. Anyway, come and have a cup of tea.’
Much of what happened next was captured in the documentary. I started by getting Pamela to describe again some of her feelings about being a child migrant.
‘I’ve always felt that I’m less than other people who can talk about at least an auntie or an uncle,’ she said. ‘I can never say that. There’s always an emptiness for me, and it never really goes away. I love my children but they don’t completely fill that gap. I felt as if I was robbed, not having anybody that I wa
s related to. Deep down I’ve always thought, maybe one day I might be able to find out something, but nobody seemed to care. They’d say, it’s awful but there are people worse off than you – and there are.
‘If I only had a sister or an auntie or an uncle … but it’s such a long time ago … and there were millions of people killed in the war. I’m sure mine were amongst them.’
When Pamela stopped talking, I finally felt it was time. ‘I’m going to tell you another story now,’ I said gently. ‘In some ways it’s similar to yours.’
I handed Pamela a birth certificate. As she put on her glasses I noticed that her hands were shaking.
‘You’ve been able to find out about her?’ she said.
‘I have.’
‘You haven’t? Oh!’
She was on the verge of tears.
‘You can see that this lady was born in 1916,’ I went on. ‘She could only have been a young girl when she was having a baby, and her mother would not let her marry the father of the baby.’
‘How can mothers do that? But they do, don’t they? How could she do it?’
‘Very difficult days in London, they didn’t have proper accommodation, they had to find jobs, they had to keep themselves, they had to survive, they were on their own, and this baby was going to be born. This baby was born in hospital and this young mother wanted to keep her baby, so she took the baby home to a flat with very little furniture, hardly any money, and the mother said to her daughter, “This isn’t the way I want my granddaughter brought up.” War was impending “I’ll take this baby to the convent where we’ll ask the nuns if they’ll look after her for a short time.”’
Pamela interrupted. ‘Fancy telling me that I was left in the hospital. Why would they tell me that?’ Pamela asked. ‘The nuns said my mother walked out of the hospital, leaving me there. I was told that, so I believed it. That poor woman.’
‘That poor child,’ I said.
‘Who was responsible for this?’ she asked. ‘Was it the nuns? Nuns don’t make these decisions? Who did these things?’
‘Perhaps we’ll never know.’
I continued my story. ‘Pamela, while you were growing up in Australia and getting married and having a family, there was a woman on the other side of the world who has never stopped thinking about you. You were the great loss in her life.’
Pamela’s jaw dropped.
‘Is she still alive?’
‘She is.’
‘I can’t believe it! I couldn’t be that lucky! What’s she like?’
‘She’s lovely.’
‘I’ve got a mother!’
There was a long silence, and then I heard a sound behind me.
‘What’s that?’ I said, turning around.
The film crew was in tears.
So was Pamela. We had to stop filming.
Later that evening, Pamela took me to one side and showed me the letter that Betty had given me to carry out to Australia. It was very moving.
Dear Pamela,
Can you ever forgive me for causing you so much unhappiness in your life? Even now I cannot make it up to you as we are so far apart. But you have always been in my thoughts.
Betty ended the letter:
You would like Hastings. It is on the South Coast and we live not far from the sea. I can tell you much more after I hear from you, which I hope will be soon.
In fact, I can hardly wait for you to get in touch, and thank you, Pamela, for trying so hard all these years.
With love from your Mum.
18
I was dreading going back to Perth. The memories of my last visit were still too vivid and came flooding back as I drove from the airport into the city. I felt physically sick.
When I arrived at the hotel and walked into my room there was already a pile of telephone messages stapled together like a book and bunches of flowers still in cellophane wrapping. More were being delivered all the time.
I was tired. No, I was exhausted. There were literally dozens more child migrants who wanted to see me and this time I didn’t have David to support me. I was on my own.
I rang Merv to tell him I’d arrived safely but found myself saying, ‘I want to come home. It’s chaos. I can’t get any sleep.’
Over the next two days I began a new round of interviews with former child migrants, many of whom had been brought to Australia by the Christian Brothers and had gone to one of four orphanages run by the Order.
Men described how, instead of going to school, they had been made to load trucks with rocks as they cleared paddocks at Bindoon. The bricks were made by hand, as were the terrazzo slabs.
One boy who tried to escape had his head dipped in a forty-four-gallon drum of liquid lime. This seemed difficult to accept, but it was not for me to investigate. Another told of getting half a mile down the road when he was picked up by a brother on horseback. ‘I was put into a cold shower and flogged for hours,’ he said.
During each interview, I would ask the men, ‘Wasn’t there anybody you could tell?’
They would shake their heads.
A middle-aged man described how he went to confession at Bindoon and told the priest about being sexually abused.
‘The priest asked me who did it, and I told him the brother’s name. But a few days later this brother found me and beat me. He obviously knew what I’d confessed. You know what upset me most?’ he asked.
I shook my head.
‘It wasn’t the beating. No, that father broke the sacred seal of the confessional. There was no-one left to trust, ever.’
I was pleased when Joanna arrived, if only for the moral support. But there was little she could do to lessen the constant barrage of pain and hurt I was facing.
Unbeknown to me, the film crew had made a decision to film at Bindoon. Joanna had decided that this wasn’t going to take place until I’d left Australia. Even if I had known, I wouldn’t have gone with them. There were too many dreadful stories about Bindoon and it was the last place in the world that I wanted to see.
The day before I left Perth, Merv phoned and said that a social worker had called the house about a client of hers who was in hospital. This man had been telling his doctor for a year that he was put on a boat as a child and sent to Australia, then allegedly deported back to Britain at the age of fifteen. Nobody would believe his story.
However, he heard David Spicer talking about the Child Migrants Trust on radio and his social worker rang to talk to me.
‘Can you try and find his family?’ Merv asked. ‘He thinks he might have sisters still in Australia.’
‘You must be joking,’ I said. ‘You can’t imagine what it’s like here. The phone hasn’t stopped ringing. I can’t look for anybody now. I’m getting on a plane tomorrow.’
‘All right, all right,’ he said. ‘I’ll write it all up and wait till you get back.’
I put the telephone down and it rang again. It was reception.
‘There is a lady down here; she hasn’t got an appointment, but she’s desperate to see you,’ the girl said. ‘She won’t take no.’
I found this woman pacing the foyer. ‘My brother’s been missing for years! Bloody years!’
‘I’m very sorry,’ I said, ‘I can’t see you now. Come back this afternoon and we’ll have a cup of tea, is that OK? What’s your brother’s name, by the way?’
She told me. I thought somebody was playing a joke on me.
She repeated the name.
‘Right, sit there!’ I said. ‘Don’t move!’
I ran straight to my room and looked at the notes of the details Merv had given me. It was the same name. I called Merv to make sure.
It was a week before Christmas and here was this woman who for all these years had been parted from her brother and suddenly she seeks help and within minutes somebody tells her exactly where her brother is and how to contact him. I thought to myself: They’ll think I’m a bloody miracle worker.
When I told her the news, she asked, ‘
What should I do?’
‘Well, if it was me, I’d go out and buy him a Christmas card! I’ll make sure he gets it.’
As she left and I returned to my room, I kept thinking of a saying my mother liked to use whenever something unexpected and pleasing happened. She would tell me, ‘Margaret, God moves in mysterious ways.’
The next morning – my last in Perth – I was packing and arranging for the flowers in my room to be sent to a local hospital, when the telephone rang.
A man’s voice said, ‘You’re not welcome in Perth and you’d better not come back.’
It was difficult to know if it was an Australian voice; I’ve always had difficulty with accents. But the person was quite well spoken. The voice was calm, not angry. There wasn’t a hint of agitation.
He hung up after making this one bold statement.
I was shocked rather than frightened. It was just so unexpected. Yet something broke deep inside of me.
It was six days before Christmas – a day that seemed to epitomize ‘family’, and I knew that thousands of former child migrants had never had a true family Christmas. They had everything taken from them: their toys, their names, their birthdays, their brothers and sisters, their identities, their childhood, their innocence. Everything. The more I thought about it, the emptier I felt. It came to the point where I didn’t know how I was going to relate to anybody. How could I tell them what had happened to these children? How could I begin to describe it – even to Mervyn?
19
I slept for twenty-four hours and woke up at about seven o’clock on the night of 21 December.
Wandering downstairs, I slumped in a lounge chair in the sitting-room and Merv offered to make me a cup of tea. The television was on but the programme was interrupted by a news flash.
A grim-faced announcer said a 747 had crashed over Scotland. They were searching for survivors.
‘Where is it?’ asked Merv, coming in near the end.
‘Near Lockerbie,’ I said, feeling numb and disorientated.
Somehow, on top of everything else, it was just too much.
I sat for a long while staring at the television until Merv put his arm around me, worried that I was too quiet.
Empty Cradles (Oranges and Sunshine) Page 16
