‘It’s the lights,’ I said. ‘The Christmas lights.’
‘What about them?’ he asked.
‘Can we turn them off?’
‘But why? What’s the matter? It’s Christmas.’
‘I can’t cope with Christmas this year.’
It all seemed so trivial to me. It was sad, really, because normally Christmas was such an important time when the whole family was together. We’d almost hibernate for a week, performing the annual rituals and overindulging.
In the hallway, the Christmas lights were brightly lit and I thought, I can’t take this.
Merv turned them off and I could sense him wondering, How do I tell the children that Christmas has been cancelled?
I think he expected that in an hour or two the lights would be turned back on and everything would be back to normal. But as I sat in the hallway, staring blankly into the darkness, I think he realized that I was shaken and absolutely exhausted.
Tears were streaming down my face. I just couldn’t stop them.
Ben arrived home from a neighbour’s house and walked into the hall. He saw me and looked up at Merv. ‘Daddy, why is Mummy crying? Why is she sad?’
I heard Merv tell him, ‘Mummy’s upset about some of the friends she’s left in Australia.’
‘Why?’ Ben asked.
Merv was at a loss. Finally he explained that some of them, as children, had not had happy Christmas Days with their families.
The festivities did go ahead, for the children’s sake, but for me the season passed in a slow-motion haze. Little things would trigger the tears. Often, when I looked at Rachel and Ben, opening presents, or sitting on Merv’s knee, the tears would just flow. Small details became magnified in my thoughts. I thought of the tremendous loss and misery caused by the terrorist bomb on the Pan-Am flight. And also the loss and misery that I’d witnessed throughout that year in Australia, Canada and Zimbabwe.
I didn’t want to be with people. Apart from Merv and the kids I didn’t even want to be with members of the family. Above all, I couldn’t bear anybody to touch me. People would come and put their arms around me and I’d freeze, but I couldn’t tell them why. I didn’t know.
The local vicar lived just across the road from us and every year he and his wife invited all the neighbours for carols around the piano. The kids would make up their own songs or read a piece of poetry they’d written specially for the occasion. The whole road went along and it was all very wonderful. This year, however, I sat in the kitchen thinking, I can’t go across the road!
‘Don’t let the children go, Merv!’ I said.
Merv looked at me hard. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘while you’ve been away they’ve been writing their Christmas poetry and Rachel is going to play the piano.’
‘No, no! They can’t go.’
‘But you don’t have to be there. If you like, I won’t go with them – they can go on their own.’
It was totally illogical, but in my mind I wanted to blame this lovely, kind-hearted vicar for all the sins of the Church and the role it played in sending innocent, vulnerable young children to the far side of the world and then failing them, time and time again. The discovery that children had been abused by members of the clergy shook my spiritual foundations for a long while afterwards.
The children did join our friends and neighbours, and I stood in my bedroom, in the pitch black, and watched them singing in the vicar’s front room. All my neighbours were congregated there, around the piano, celebrating Christmas Eve. And I thought to myself, they are all nice Christian families, leading good Christian lives. If only they knew.
Merv came up to comfort me and I said to him, ‘I’ll never speak to anyone on this road again!’
‘Why not?’
‘I don’t know why not!’
Merv shook his head. ‘What happened to those people is disgraceful, Margaret, but you can’t blame the whole world for it.’
I knew what he was saying was true, but my feelings were so raw and open. There was nothing rational about them; very little in the past few months had seemed rational.
The next day I was getting in my car and my next-door neighbour came up with a broad smile as he shouted, ‘Did you have a good holiday?’
Did you have a good holiday!
I stared at him in disbelief and said, ‘Yes, bloody wonderful!’
He thought he’d misheard me somehow.
‘I hear they’ve got good beaches in Australia?’ he persisted.
‘How the hell would I know?’
Merv came out and saved the situation.
It was a terrible few weeks. I showered many times a day. I’d go up for a shower, get changed and I’d be all right. Then half an hour later, I’d go up and have another shower.
Eventually, Mervyn arranged for me to see a professor of psychology at Nottingham University. I wanted an explanation for my desperation and anger.
There is a growing realization that professionals need skilled debriefing after being involved in traumatic events. I was no exception.
The professor told me that some of my feelings were similar to those of a rape victim. I had been exposed to so much emotional pain and suffering, that it had traumatized me. He was also concerned that I had gone through this experience primarily on my own.
It took time before I could accept my experiences in Australia and let them become part of me. Eventually I could laugh at my own extreme reaction – and hoped my neighbours would understand.
One of my first priorities was to organize official approaches to the various charities and government agencies that were responsible for the child migration schemes. I wanted to keep them informed of exactly what I’d discovered in Australia, Canada and Zimbabwe.
Surely, I thought, they couldn’t possibly know how drastically wrong their schemes had gone for so many.
I was confident that when I showed them my evidence they, too, would be outraged and immediately swing into action. I expected that the files of individual child migrants would be made available to the Trust to help find families and that we would get desperately needed funds to expand our work.
This sense of urgency was heightened by a distraught phone call and then a letter from Christine, the Old Fairbridgian that David and I had met at the reunion in Molong.
Judy Hutchinson had kept her promise regarding the Fairbridge files, as it appeared that Christine had indeed been sent a copy of her file.
This horrified me. All along I’d tried to stress to the charities that these files contained very sensitive information which needed to be imparted with some forethought and common sense. Child migrants were going to need counselling before, during and after being given information which had been deliberately kept from them for so long.
Sadly, this advice was ignored by the Fairbridge Society, and Christine experienced the consequences. She was simply sent her file through the post.
Christine knew that she’d been adopted; I had managed to discover this, and had broken the news to her when I was last in Australia. But now she learned that her adoptive parents had rejected her – a shocking realization for anybody, let alone a child migrant whose feelings of abandonment are already so profound.
The file also revealed that Christine had been IQ tested at the age of eight in the UK and was found to be extremely intelligent; so bright, in fact, that it was recommended that she be fostered in England and not be sent abroad.
Unfortunately, that recommendation came too late. Christine had already been earmarked for Canada. When she missed that boat, they found her passage on another – this one to Australia.
I now faced a bizarre situation where some charities refused to release files or acknowledge they even existed and others were handing them out with little thought to the consequences.
David Spicer, as a trustee of the Child Migrants Trust, wrote letters to all the major charities and agencies, including the Department of Health. I wanted to make sure that no other child migrant receiv
ed their file in such a way. It was also time that the various organizations involved began to accept their responsibilities to the children they sent overseas.
We were greeted with almost total silence. I found it difficult to understand.
Eventually we heard from the Catholic Church which said that it was unwilling to share its confidential records with any other organization working on behalf of former child migrants.
Despite this lone response, I still didn’t want to criticize the charities and agencies involved with child migration. I knew that these organizations hadn’t purposely got together and said, ‘Let’s ruin the lives of thousands of children.’ I simply believed that very little thought had been given to the long-term implications. Perhaps they genuinely believed they were giving the children a new start, and that the end therefore justified the means.
Whatever their motives, time was running out for everyone concerned. Already former child migrants had missed meeting their mothers by only a few years. They were too late, death had intervened, and with each passing day, more opportunities for reunions were being missed.
Pamela Smedley had lived in Australia since she was eleven years old, but had no documentation to prove it. To visit her mother in England she needed a passport. Not a difficult document for the ordinary citizen to organize, but then, ordinary citizens have birth certificates and all the other bits and pieces of paper that define who they are and where they belong.
We managed to get Pamela a birth certificate and finally a passport.
In February, I met her at Heathrow airport and we travelled by train to Hastings. She and her mother had been speaking on the telephone and writing letters, but both were extremely nervous.
As we got out of the cab, Pamela said, ‘Margaret, you’ll have to hold me up. I can’t get to the door.’
She was almost paralysed and needed a comforting arm.
It was such a private moment, I didn’t want to be there. I felt I was intruding. I decided that when we got inside I would disappear into the kitchen, out of the way.
Betty had been waiting at the window for the cab to arrive. As we came up the drive I caught a glimpse of her at the curtain. Betty’s expression told me that she’d been waiting for more than a morning; a lifetime.
The door opened and I disappeared, along with her husband, and left mother and daughter together. I put the kettle on and chatted to Betty’s husband. We both knew we were surplus to requirements.
When I took the tea into the sitting-room, Pamela and Betty were side by side on the settee holding hands. They were totally absorbed with each other.
Betty took Pamela’s hand and led her to the window.
‘Is this your daughter, Betty?’ I asked.
‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘Oh yes.’
‘How do you know?’
Betty studied Pamela’s face the way a parent looks at a newborn baby – that intense, enraptured look as if marvelling at all creation.
During lunch, I thought of how quickly things had happened. Only weeks earlier I had told Pamela that her mother was alive and here she was sitting down and having her first meal at her mother’s table.
By mid-afternoon, the long journey and intense emotion began to show on Pamela’s face. She was tired and needed to sleep.
‘Your bed’s through there, Pam,’ Betty smiled. ‘You’ll like it – there’s lots of lovely teddies and toys. Go on in, get yourself all ready.’
She glanced at me, then called out, ‘Look, I’m going to call you Elizabeth, do you mind? Or Lizzie – do you mind Lizzie? Just give me a shout when you’re ready, because I’m going to come in and tuck you in.’
Betty brought me another cup of tea and said, ‘I won’t be a minute. I’m just going to go and tuck my Lizzie in.’
Domino Films decided to call the documentary, Lost Children of the Empire. It was due to go out at 10.30 p.m. on 9 May 1989.
A fortnight beforehand, the Granada publicity machine cranked into action. Press releases were sent out and I was expected to do a series of radio, television and press interviews to publicize the programme.
I went from one studio to the next, explaining the importance of the documentary. A couple of nights before Lost Children went out, I was booked to appear on the Wogan show and Granada were thrilled with their publicity coup.
Terry Wogan was on holiday and Sue Lawley was fronting the show in his absence. She was fascinated by the subject and even wanted to read an advance copy of the book that accompanied the documentary.
It was all arranged, but at the eleventh hour my appearance was cancelled and later I discovered that my replacement was Shirley Temple, who was in town publicizing her autobiography. Sadly, she was considered more newsworthy than the plight of the thousands of child migrants. Their stories had been sunk by the good ship Lollipop.
I felt even more disappointed when several days later I saw the BBC were broadcasting a half-hour programme on the history of Barnardo’s and the efforts of the charity to get away from their old-fashioned, nineteenth-century image.
The programme made absolutely no mention of the child migration schemes. That part of Barnardo’s history was strangely missing.
Lost Children of the Empire was a powerful and balanced documentary. I felt it would generate tremendous anger and disbelief in the general public. Some would need counselling; others might come forward to provide vital information – teachers, nursery staff and child care officers who remembered the child migrants leaving Britain.
I talked to Granada and they immediately arranged to provide phone-in lines at its Manchester studios. These were staffed by experienced counsellors who had volunteered to help the Child Migrants Trust.
At midday all the phones were in place and a technician threw the switch to test them. Every phone rang. Granada had been trailing Lost Children all week, and the numbers had been published in the TV Times. Already people were trying to get through.
Fifteen of us sat watching the programme that evening, including George Wilkins and Harold Haig. As the end credits rolled, every telephone rang and we ran to our seats.
The response was incredible. People were distraught. There was anger and outrage at the way British children had been treated, resentment at the involvement of charities with household names, and guilt that this could have happened in the twentieth century.
Many ex-servicemen called, incensed that they had fought a bloody war only to see children treated like this in peacetime. Other callers demanded to know who was responsible for sending them. Who allowed them to be treated like this?
Mothers wanted reassurance that their children had not been sent overseas. Teachers said they remembered children going missing from their classrooms. Former child care workers said they had been assured the children were going to good homes in Australia and felt betrayed. People who spent their youth in children’s homes remembered their friends being taken away. One man said the only reason he wasn’t taken was that he had chicken pox.
We finally turned the help-lines off at about three in the morning. I felt shattered. Nothing could have prepared me for such a response. Lost Children had pricked the conscience of a nation.
I also felt immense relief. I had worried all along that people wouldn’t believe me; that they would doubt that this tragedy had happened.
I remember asking migrants, ‘Why didn’t you tell somebody about this?’
And often they’d look directly at me and say, ‘Who would believe us?’
Now the world did know. The world did believe them. The burden had been shared, along with the responsibility. Surely no government committed to family values could turn its back on these people. Nor could the charities deny their needs.
I was wrong.
Five weeks later, I finally sat down at a table with the major organizations involved in child migration and asked for their help. The Trust had written regularly to each of the charities, keeping them informed of our work, but it was obviously the documentary that
spurred them into action. A director of Barnardo’s invited me to attend a meeting at the Commonwealth Institute in Kensington, London.
The charities represented included the Salvation Army, Barnardo’s, the Fairbridge Society, the Children’s Society, National Children’s Homes and representatives from the Church of England and Roman Catholic Church. An observer from the Department of Health also attended.
The 16 June meeting began in the morning, but David and I had been invited to join them in the afternoon. This didn’t fill me with confidence. I wondered why it was necessary to exclude us from the morning’s discussion. Instead of feeling welcome, I felt as if I was about to be given a dressing down for having blotted their copybooks.
It seemed bizarre really. These charities are all about ‘families’. They promote themselves on a Christian family model. They should be delighted that child migrants were finding their families after so many years. They should have been thanking the Child Migrants Trust for pointing out this tragedy.
But as David and I travelled down to London on the train, I felt this would not be the case.
‘I feel like a lamb going to the slaughter,’ I said to him.
When we arrived, everybody present was sitting down around a large conference table. There was a studied avoidance of eye contact and much shuffling of papers.
Mike Jarman of Barnardo’s was chairman and as he showed us to our seats he tried to introduce a note of joviality into the proceedings.
‘We’ve been talking about you,’ he said with a tone of mock reproach.
I sat and stared at them, my face expressionless. I didn’t say a word.
After an interminable silence, Mr Jarman began the meeting by telling me that there were people around the table who felt very hurt. He looked at me and there was silence. I looked around the table at each face in turn. At the two representatives from the Church of England. At the Monsignor from the Catholic Church. At Lady Dodds-Parker and Miss Judy Hutchinson from the Fairbridge Society. At the Colonel from the Salvation Army and the director of the Children’s Society. All of them.
Empty Cradles (Oranges and Sunshine) Page 17
