Empty Cradles (Oranges and Sunshine)

by Margaret Humphreys

  * * *

  Over the next three months I saw a fundamental change in Desmond. We had developed a relationship built on trust and respect. Given his experiences, he didn’t trust easily, which was understandable.

  I steeled myself for the long haul, for although we found his mother within several months, my work with Desmond would continue for a long time to come.

  To use Desmond’s own words, ‘Margaret, within five minutes you saw through the bullshit. You saw the real person.’

  Perhaps he also meant that I recognized his pain.

  Desmond and I were both born in the same year – 1944. I found this coincidence enormously significant. It brought our two lives into stark contrast. I grew up in a loving family surrounded by warmth and attention, while he was the son of a struggling single mother in Ireland who asked for help. Desmond was raised in institutions that rarely showed him love, warmth or humanity.

  We came into the world in the same year, we listened to the same songs, enjoyed the same dances, watched the same films, yet our lives could not have been more different. This made me realize that it could so easily have been me on that boat to Australia, or any of my school friends. A slight change in our circumstances and it could have been any one of us.

  Child migrants were not necessarily poor, deprived, working-class kids. They came from all sections of society and from many different walks of life. It’s wrong to think of them all as impoverished and abandoned by their families. This myth must be exposed, just as labels like ‘orphans’ cannot be accepted at face value.

  I telephoned Desmond several times from England, giving him progress reports, and each time he expected to hear his mother on the line. I knew, however, that the approach to her was all important.

  I asked Desmond to write a letter to help me describe him to his mother. When I read it, I was amazed. This is a nice bloke, I thought. When am I going to meet him?

  The end of the search is enormously difficult for a child migrant. Their fear of rejection is profound, and Desmond was no exception. ‘What if she says no? What if she doesn’t want to see me?’ he asked.

  He no longer had to live with the fear that his mother had died, he knew she was alive; but after forty years, he couldn’t bear to think that she could reject him.

  Desmond flew to England, arriving on a Thursday morning and taking a train straight to Nottingham. I arranged for him to spend two nights in a hotel because I wanted to be sure he was prepared for the reunion. On the first evening I gave him a photograph of his mother. He stared at it for a long while – noting all the similarities.

  It took a lot of discipline and self-control for Desmond to wait those two days but he said to me, ‘I’ve lived with this hope for so long; I can wait a little longer.’

  On the day we left to meet his mother, I arranged to meet Desmond at his hotel. As I crossed the lobby, he rose from a chair and smiled. He lifted his hand and clasped mine. It was the first time he had shaken my hand.

  27

  Each time I flew into Australia, and for weeks before I left home, I would begin to prepare myself for what lay ahead. There were child migrants to see for the first time as well as those I already knew who desperately waited for news of their families.

  My bags were full of photographs, greeting cards and letters. Sometimes these were written by mothers or fathers, brothers or sisters. At other times I carried a small heirloom like a ring, a watch or a necklace. Often families wanted their newly discovered relative in Australia to have some small object as both a memento and a sign of acceptance.

  I never let the bags out of my sight. They were always under my feet or in my arms.

  When the plane circled Perth, I would look down and see the lights and imagine everybody asleep. I would think of all the people whose lives would change over the next few days.

  When I arrived in March 1992 I had news for two brothers who had been to Bindoon. I would have to tell them their mother had died but that they had two sisters in England. I had with me photographs of their mother, whom the brothers had never seen, and also their father.

  For a former Tardun boy, I had similar news. His mother had died, but he had a brother in England, who had sent photographs, a long letter and his mother’s favourite brooch.

  For a Geraldton woman, I was able to say that her mother was very much alive in the North of England. In my bag I had photographs of how she looked both years ago and also more recently. There was a very long, loving and accepting letter from her mother.

  There was more, but never enough. Still there were too many people waiting for news. And whatever the outcome, there would be joy and pain, regret and despair.

  When I arrived at the Parmelia Hilton, I immediately unpacked. As always, I tried to make my room more welcoming by putting up photographs and rearranging the furniture.

  On my first Sunday there was a picnic at Pinjarra, outside of Perth, where the Fairbridge Society once had a farm school. The Old Fairbridgians had invited me to a barbecue and I was looking forward to meeting up with them as a group.

  There were probably thirty families at the barbecue and their many children danced and played on the grass. The farm school had become a series of holiday cottages rented out to the general public and each building bore an English name.

  By late afternoon I began feeling light-headed and weak. I thought it was the effects of too much sun. I’d been working from seven in the morning till eleven every night since I arrived on the previous Thursday.

  When I got back to the hotel, I still felt weak and tired and I cancelled two of my evening appointments. I’d never done that before.

  My face was absolutely white and all I could do was lie on the bed, feeling terrible.

  Eventually I fell asleep and woke at about one in the morning. The bed and my bedclothes were soaked with blood. Disorientated by exhaustion and loss of blood, I had no idea what to do. I could hardly walk to the bathroom.

  I thought I was dying: I’m going to die in Perth.

  I didn’t know any doctors. I didn’t know the nearest hospital. I was alone and vulnerable in a city where I’d never felt safe.

  I rang my close friend, Susan, who lived in Melbourne and whom I’d known ever since I first went to Victoria. It was three in the morning.

  ‘It’s Margaret. I’m in Perth.’

  She sensed my anguish. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘I’m sick. I don’t know what’s wrong. I’m haemorrhaging.’

  The fear in my voice was impossible to hide. Susan knew it was serious. To her I had always been this incredibly controlled, capable woman, who is never flustered and always in command of the situation. Now I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t even organize a doctor.

  ‘Have you rung for help?’

  ‘No. I don’t know who to call. I don’t want anybody to know I’m ill.’

  ‘Right,’ said Susan, whose husband is a dentist, ‘I’m going to ring my own doctor and see if he knows somebody in Perth. The best. Stay calm. You’ll be fine. Don’t move off the bed.’

  ‘I can’t move.’

  Susan rang me back within ten minutes. ‘There’s a specialist who’s on his way back to Perth from a conference in Melbourne. He’ll be home by now. Call him.’

  She gave me his home and hospital numbers. I eventually spoke to his wife.

  When the doctor arrived, he gave me a wonderful smile but took one look at me and said, ‘Margaret, you have two choices. Either I take you to hospital or you go by ambulance. Can you get to my car?’

  Within an hour I was at the women’s hospital and he was quietly reassuring me that everything would be fine.

  ‘I’ve got appointments,’ I told him anxiously. ‘There are people coming to see me. They’ve waited a lifetime. I can’t stay here, I’ve got work to do.’

  ‘OK, OK,’ he replied, humouring me.

  I was frightened that he would tell me that I had to go home to England.

  ‘Margaret, you’re not well e
nough to go home.’

  The specialist stopped the bleeding but he warned me that this was only temporary. He still had to discover what had caused the haemorrhage.

  ‘You can’t stay at a hotel. Have you any friends here?’

  ‘I’ve got hundreds of friends, but I’d like to go to the house in Melbourne.’

  ‘All right, I’ll make sure you’re fit to fly.’

  A few hours later I telephoned Merv. I didn’t want him to worry, but he dragged the information out of me.

  ‘You’re coming home, Margaret. No buts, no questions.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Don’t tell me you can’t. Come home, get well again and then go back. Don’t worry about the cost of another air fare. It’s not important.’

  ‘No, really, I can’t come home. I’m not well enough to fly all that way.’

  When I arrived in Melbourne, Harold picked me up from the airport. ‘You look bloody terrible,’ he said. ‘Are they someone else’s clothes or do you like the baggy look?’

  I smiled weakly.

  ‘Take me to the house. I’m not my best.’

  I wouldn’t tell him what had happened. I didn’t want any of the child migrants to know that I was sick. I knew they’d make a big fuss and feel responsible. I wanted to carry on as normal.

  When we arrived at the house in Canning Street, the child migrants in Melbourne had put fresh flowers in the vases and filled the fridge with food as they always did. There were welcome cards everywhere. The bed was made up for me.

  Harold was putting the kettle on when Susan arrived.

  ‘You look terrible,’ she said, putting her arm around me.

  ‘Yes, people keep telling me that,’ I joked.

  ‘Oh, you poor thing. Are you any better?’

  I shook my head.

  We began arguing over where I was going to stay. Susan wanted me to go with her. But the child migrants had gone to so much effort getting the house ready, I told her I was staying there.

  ‘All right. First thing in the morning, I’m picking you up. We’re going straight to the hospital.’

  ‘Look, Susan, I have to be at work on Saturday. I can’t cancel the—’ I stopped. There was no point in arguing, Susan was adamant.

  The consultant sensed immediately that I was a long way from my home and my family. He tried to be reassuring as he gave me a thorough medical.

  ‘How long are you going to be in Melbourne?’

  ‘Nine days.’

  ‘Well, I want you in hospital.’

  ‘I can’t. I’ve got work to do. People to see.’

  I was determined, but the doctor wasn’t about to be overruled.

  ‘You’ve lost a lot of blood. I need to know what’s going on inside you. You have to be admitted.’

  I tried to protest.

  ‘Listen, Margaret, you’re bleeding to death. Do you understand me? You have no choice. I’ll arrange your admission.’

  The next morning I was admitted for tests and allowed to go home that evening with Susan. Again and again I stressed to her that I didn’t want any of the migrants to know. They had their own problems. This was mine.

  For the next nine days, at meetings in Melbourne and back in Perth, I was constantly asked what was wrong. I told people that I was tired and nothing more. But they knew it was more serious. For the first time I realized that I was very important to them and that they cared deeply about me.

  * * *

  When I arrived back in England at least the bleeding had stopped but my problem was one of sheer exhaustion. I was half a stone lighter and my hair was falling out in large clumps. After five years of working long hours, my body was trying to tell me something.

  My family and colleagues were obviously concerned, and for the first time I began to feel despondent. I had failed to convince the British government of its responsibility toward the child migrants. The trustees convinced me that it was through no fault of mine, but I kept asking myself how much longer the Trust could struggle to survive financially.

  I was at home only a few weeks, and still catching up on my sleep, when Penny Chapman, the television producer, telephoned. Her drama, The Leaving of Liverpool, was to be broadcast nationally by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) on 8 and 9 July.

  ‘No!’ I cried. ‘You can’t mean it. I’ve only just left Australia. What about my family? The office?’

  I knew it was pointless complaining. Penny had no idea what I’d just been through. I simply would have to drop everything and go back. Merv smiled weakly. This would be my fourth trip to Australia in twelve months. If this went on, I’d come home one day and he’d ask, ‘Have you had a nice year, dear?’

  Shortly afterwards, the head of drama for the ABC called and said there was going to be a major launch for the television drama in Sydney and they’d like me as a guest. I told her, ‘Hang on, I deliberately kept right out of this. I don’t know anything about the drama.’

  She said, ‘The tapes are on their way. You can look at them before you arrive.’

  Sure enough a courier delivered the video cassettes to my home. I didn’t want to look at them, especially when the kids were around, so I had to find a time when they were out of the way. Finally, two days before my departure, I got up at five o’clock on a dark, cold morning and turned on the television.

  I knew I couldn’t sit through five hours, I had no time, but I thought I’d watch enough to get a feel for the drama. Unfortunately, ten minutes was all I lasted. I couldn’t bear it – the music, the laughing kids skipping through the streets of Liverpool carrying a Union Jack, the playground scene where they were beaten with canes.

  I knew all those children – I knew them now as adults. But here, vividly portrayed, I saw their childhoods. They were singing familiar songs in the streets, and skipping just as I had done as a child. It was no different. The same as all of my generation.

  I ran upstairs, trying to get as far away as possible.

  ‘I can’t go! I can’t!’ I said.

  Merv grabbed me by the shoulders, looked at me and said, ‘Don’t snivel! Don’t you dare snivel. You’re going on that plane. You’re going.’

  And he was right. I shouldn’t snivel. How dare I get upset when I think of what the former child migrants have been through.

  ‘OK!’ I said. ‘I can’t watch the rest of it, but I will go.’

  Merv smiled. ‘Good. But not on your own – not this time.’

  Until then, I hadn’t even considered how I was going to get to Australia. This was an unexpected trip and the Trust simply didn’t have the money to pay for the air fare.

  Nottinghamshire County Council had generously renewed my secondment for another two years but the Child Migrants Trust had received no funding from the Department of Health, or any other department, since the £20,000 they had provided in 1990. Every application since then had been refused.

  I argued that for the first time in over 100 years the child migrants and their relatives now had an agency specifically designed to meet their needs, but the Trust had only managed to provide ‘a basic level of service to a particularly disadvantaged group of clients’.

  When all else failed, I asked the British government to match the commitment of the Australian government which had provided us with £23,000 a year since 1989. We were only asking to employ one social worker for a year.

  Again we were refused.

  I wrote to the Department of Health in April 1992:

  Time is running out for many thousands of former child migrants if they are to be enabled to meet their relatives before their parents die …

  The history of child migration is not one which casts either governments or voluntary agencies in a positive light. It is a history which few wish to repeat and its many flaws and occasionally tragic consequences are often explained away as the result of a mixture of good intentions and ignorance.

  This sad chapter in our history of child care policy can either be extended or r
eversed. It is clear that the Australian government has made a positive commitment to confront the results of a policy which failed to protect the interests of this vulnerable and disadvantaged group of children. The opportunity for the British government to make a similar commitment is in your hands.

  On 13 May, the application was refused.

  Eventually, I approached my local bank manager, explained the situation to him, and he allowed me to take out an overdraft to pay for the flight to Australia.

  The trustees were worried about my workload and were relieved when John Myles, the Trust’s most experienced researcher, volunteered to accompany me and managed to find the money to buy himself a ticket. Everyone at the Trust had been working horrendous hours and few had taken any leave for over two years. We all knew that The Leaving of Liverpool would trigger another barrage of enquiries from former child migrants and increase the workload.

  From my point of view, I was more worried about the pain and anguish it would cause when the migrants saw the horror of their childhood dramatized before them. They would grieve for the child within each of them.

  Before I left, I had a call from Frances Swaine, a lawyer working for Leigh, Day & Company, in London. This was the firm that had been preparing a case on behalf of a child migrant and had since had many requests for legal advice.

  Frances intended to go to Australia to interview migrants, and wanted her trip to coincide with the screening of The Leaving of Liverpool. The publicity for the drama would help raise public awareness that a legal campaign was underway.

  As always, I left for the airport when the children were at school. I never want them to see me leave. I say goodbye in the morning and by the time they get home from school, I’m gone and Merv takes them out for dinner as a special treat.

  John and I caught the three o’clock train from Nottingham to St Pancras and then the underground to Heathrow.

  We flew direct to Melbourne and stayed that first night at the house in Canning Street. There was no social worker there because David had finished his contract and I was still looking for a replacement.

  That night, I managed to watch a little bit more of The Leaving of Liverpool.