by M J Lee
And Vera began to cry.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
October 4, 2017
Manchester International Airport, England
‘Now, have you got everything, Vera?’
Vera checked her carry-on bag. ‘The knitting’s here with the plastic needles, and my crosswords, my new book and the Sudoku Jayne gave me.’
‘What about water? Do you have plenty of water?’
‘Don’t worry, Vera’s flying Business. I’m sure they’ll give her water if she asks for it.’
‘After I have the champagne too, of course.’
‘Don’t drink too much. You know what you’re like when you drink champagne.’
She put her arm around Robert. ‘No wonder you kept wanting me to drink the bubbly on the cruise.’
Her father blushed. ‘And don’t forget to leave your seat every hour to walk around. You don’t want to get any of that deep-vein thrombosis on the long flight.’
Vera was finally going to see Harry for the first time. For the last two months, they had emailed, called or talked to each other every day since that first phone call back at the care home.
Harry had told her all about his life; the lost decade after he left Bindoon, working occasionally on isolated farms but spending more time drunk or in jail for petty theft. How Miss Anstey had saved him all those years ago by helping him get to sea. How he had learnt all about engines from a multitude of Friedrichs. Finally, going back to Perth in 1979 and setting up his company, starting small and gradually expanding.
‘I did try to find Mum, you know,’ he said to her on one of their calls. ‘It was 1978 and I was on a ship that had just docked in Southampton. I took a train up to London and visited the sisters at the home we stayed in before we left for Australia.’
‘What happened, Harry?’
‘Well, I was shown into a big parlour. All the homes had a big parlour for guests. After about an hour, the Mother Superior, a Sister Agnes, saw me. I asked to see my records. I wanted to find out if Mum was still alive. Anyway, this sister told me all the records were gone. They’d been thrown away. She was a sour-faced old cow.’
‘You know, they weren’t thrown away. We found them in the local diocese.’
‘I don’t know why they didn’t give them to me or at least help me with the search.’
‘You didn’t go to Oldham?’
‘After meeting Sister Agnes, I wanted nothing to do with the church any more. My ship was leaving a couple of days later so I went out to the movies, watched Watership Down and remembered all the rabbits I killed at Bindoon. You know, for a moment I nearly went back on the drink. But something stopped me. I was one of the lucky ones.’
‘You never went back to Bindoon?’
‘Nah, couldn’t face the place. Oh, I read all about it; the fake apologies from the brothers, the Royal Commissions, the redress schemes and all the rest. But I wanted nothing to do with them. I was tempted when Kevin Rudd made his apology, at least I thought he meant it. But I didn’t. Harry Britton was dead. They’d taken my childhood and I was never going to get it back.’
‘You never married?’
‘No, couldn’t let anybody get close to me, especially women. Didn’t really know what to do with them. I’ve always been a bit of a loner. Loved my job, though, and the company. I guess it was my family.’
‘Well, you’ve got a real family now.’
‘I wish I could have met Mum before she died.’
‘She thought of you every day.’
Then he coughed. ‘Neither of us is getting younger, Vera. Why don’t you come out to see me in Australia? Maybe together we can go back to Bindoon. I can’t do it on my own, but with my family, I’m sure I could face it.’
Of course, Vera had said yes. Robert wanted to go but decided to stay this time, to allow his health to get better.
Now she had checked in and they were standing outside the entry point for passenger security.
‘You’d better not be late.’
‘Is it time? I’d better get going.’
Robert hugged her close. ‘I’ll miss you.’
‘Me too.’
Jayne moved away, leaving her father and her step mother to say goodbye to each other.
‘Call me when you get into Perth, don’t worry about the time.’
‘I will.’
‘And say hello to Harry for me.’
‘I will.’
They gave each other one last hug. Vera’s eyes were damp with tears. She gathered all her bags, waving to Jayne. ‘Bye, look after your dad for me.’
Jayne waved back. ‘I will. See you in three weeks.’
And Vera marched into the departure area, ready to face the obstacle course of the security and passenger checks all on her own.
Robert stood there, his arm still waving as she turned right and vanished into the belly of the beast. ‘I’m going to miss her.’
‘We both are.’
Chapter Fifty-Nine
October 4, 2017
The road back to Buxton, Derbyshire, England
Jayne drove slowly down the A6, careful to avoid the speed traps, roadworks and narrow lanes.
Her father sat next to her, saying very little. For once, she wasn’t listening to the Manchester whine of Liam Gallagher.
‘Don’t worry, she’ll be back soon.’
Her father smiled. ‘I wasn’t thinking of Vera, I know she’ll be back in three weeks. I was thinking of you.’
‘Me?’
‘You solved the search for Vera’s vanished brother pretty quickly.’
‘I was lucky, Dad. I think a couple of pints of cider helped. I also remembered what you told me when I was young.’
‘What was that?’
‘When you have a problem, sometimes it’s best to forget about it and relax, do something else, then the answer will come to you.’
‘I said that?’
Jayne took her eyes off the road for a second and nodded.
‘Sounds a bit wise for me. But I’m glad you remembered it, Jayne, even if I don’t.’
‘It worked for me. I went to sleep that night and the memory of that picture in the paper, of Harry standing with Claire Anstey, came back to me. I thought that if I ever had a problem I would go back to a person I trusted and loved. It was obvious the two of them were very close. Luckily, Duncan managed to find her.’
‘Luck had nothing to do with it, lass, you’re very good at your job.’
After the compliment, the conversation lapsed into silence. They were racing down the Buxton bypass when her father spoke again.
‘You know I’m not getting any younger, Jayne. This illness, well, it’s got me thinking.’
‘Thinking is bad for you, Dad.’
‘Listen to me. It’s time you researched your own family. You must be the only genealogical investigator who doesn’t know where they came from.’
‘I’m not sure, Dad. I…’
‘And I’m not going to be around forever. If you need any help with people, places or photographs, then we’d better do it together whilst I’m still here and can still remember.’
‘Don’t talk like that, Dad.’
‘But it’s true. Look at Vera, her mum only told her about Harry when it was too late.’
‘I know, but…’
‘No buts, Jayne. It’s time and you know it. I’ve still got all your mum’s stuff in a suitcase.’
‘Like Charlie?’
He laughed. ‘I don’t throw anything away either.’
Jayne stared through the windscreen of the BMW. They were going into Dove Holes before the descent into Buxton itself.
‘Let me think about it, Dad. Honestly, I don’t know if I’m ready.’
‘You’ll never be ready, love, you just have to do it.’
‘Sounds like the philosophy of your life.’
‘Aye, it is. Just do it. Nike nicked that from me, you know.’
Jayne laughed. ‘How do you fancy a jam
roly-poly at Wetherspoon’s before we go back to your place?’
‘Sounds perfect, love.’
She pressed down on the accelerator as they crossed the bleak hills above Buxton. One day she would have to look into her family. Perhaps her father was right and the time was now, she had already put it off too long.
She didn’t know what she would find, but that was the beauty of family history; there were always secrets waiting to be discovered.
Perhaps it was time to discover her own past.
Historical Note
Between 1869 and the end of the 1960s, around 130,000 British children, both boys and girls, and some as young as four years old, were sent to the former colonies. This is a best guess, as nobody has come up with an exact figure yet.
They were part of a child migration scheme involving children from problem families and single-parent families, illegitimate children and children whose parents had abandoned them. Despite their description at the time, very few of these child migrants were actually orphans. The majority still had at least one parent still alive in the United Kingdom.
Until 1987, the plight of these children lay buried beneath a shroud of official blindness, bureaucratic incompetence, official secrecy and downright lies. At this time, Margaret Humphreys, then working for Nottingham Council as a social worker, became aware of the children by accident when a case she was working on revealed their existence. She went on to form the Child Migrants Trust, which is still the leading charitable organisation for these children.
My own knowledge of their plight came by accident too. I was researching in Manchester Central Library one summer’s day, on June 30, 2016, when I came across an exhibition in the foyer of old inmate books, dated 1894, from a children’s charity.
One of the books was open at the page for Mary Nettleship from Ardwick in Manchester. Her story was sad but unfortunately typical. Her mother had died and her father was an alcoholic. She and her sister were placed in a care home at the ages of 9 and 12. On May 9, 1895, both sisters were sent aboard the SS Vancouver, bound for Canada. There was a picture in the book taken of Mary, wearing a long black dress, with short, cropped hair and a lonely look in her eyes. On the next page were two reports from a Canadian inspector, detailing that Mary had been placed with a Canadian family in Adolphstown, Ontario to work as a domestic. She had also been separated from her younger sister.
My curiosity was aroused. How had a young girl from Manchester ended up across the Atlantic? How had her father allowed this? (In the book it stated that he couldn’t be found.) Had he given permission? Why were the sisters separated? What happened to young Mary?
A week later I was in London to meet with my editors and publishers at the HarperCollins summer party, being held in the Victoria and Albert Museum. By chance, I noticed the museum had an exhibition on child migrants. I went back the following day and spent the afternoon looking at the exhibits.
The seed for the book was planted that day, and I spent the next two months researching the history and personal stories of the child migrants.
The more I researched, the more I became perturbed by their experiences of transportation to Australia.
The Australian Commission into the Child Migrants concluded that between 7,000 and 10,000 children were sent to the country in the post-war period, mostly in the 1950s. The organisations involved were the Catholic Child Welfare Society, the Fairbridge Society, Dr Barnado’s, the Salvation Army and the Church of England.
In a difference from Canada, most were not sent to people’s homes or adopted. Instead, they were placed in institutions to be ‘trained’ as farmers and domestics before entering the workforce at the age of fifteen. Again, most were boys and girls, aged between four and fourteen at the time of transportation.
My book is a novel, and all the main characters are creations. However, I have tried to remain true to the experiences of the child migrants.
Harry’s early life with the Sisters of Mercy is based on contemporary memoirs and notes. The voyage out to Australia uses a wonderful book by David Hill, The Forgotten Children, as its main source, plus a host of archival material from government reports, Royal Commissions, oral histories and memoirs from the child migrants themselves.
The speech of welcome given to Harry and the child migrants in Perth is actually an earlier speech given in 1938 to a group of children by the Archbishop of Perth. But there are other examples in the post-war archives of the church’s involvement in the White Australia policy, and a desire to increase the population of young Catholics in Australia.
Harry’s experiences in Bindoon Boys Town are shocking but unfortunately confirmed by the memoirs and evidence presented at a number of Royal Commissions.
Emotional, physical and sexual abuse were all rife in the institution. The migrants were used as child labour to build the place itself; long hours of work were accompanied by severe beatings. Emotionally, they received little or no affection or love, and were treated as objects rather than children.
Sexual abuse was also commonplace in the Boys Town. Several of the former brothers were convicted of the abuse of children, but others were not charged with any offence.
As a consequence of their treatment, many of the residents have reported the inability to form relationships with other human beings as a consequence of their treatment at Bindoon. Many have also experienced problems with alcohol, drugs or an inability to settle in one place.
One of the most painful things to do is watch the children arriving in Fremantle in the newsreels of the period, seeing the smiles on their faces as they looked forward to a new life in a new country and knowing what actually awaited them.
As a Roman Catholic myself, I have no desire to excoriate the church. In truth, the abuses of children and child migrants were systemic in government homes and in other charitable institutions, both in the United Kingdom and Australia. However, the treatment of the child migrants in the four Christian Brothers institutions in Western Australia was particularly cruel, calculating and abusive.
Kevin Rudd’s apology on behalf of Australia in 2009 sums up my feelings on the subject.
‘We come together today to deal with an ugly chapter of our nation’s history and we come together today to offer our nation’s apology. To you, the Forgotten Australians, and those who were sent to our shores as children without their consent... we are sorry. Sorry that, as children, you were taken from your families and placed in institutions where you were so often abused; sorry for the physical suffering, the emotional starvation, and the cold absence of love or tenderness of care. Sorry for the tragedy, the absolute tragedy of childhoods lost, childhoods spent instead in austere and authoritarian places where names were replaced by numbers... The truth is, a great evil has been done. The truth is, this is an ugly story and its ugliness must be told without fear or favour if we are to confront fully the demons of our past.’
And what happened to Mary Nettleship, the young girl who started me on this path?
I researched her history as far as I could through the documents available in Canada. She worked as an unpaid domestic until she was eighteen, and then she married a carpenter, with whom she had four children. She settled down in Toronto to bring up her family, but unfortunately died of heart disease in 1929, aged just 42. Her husband died later in the year, leaving their children as orphans. Was her death precipitated by her early life and the domestic labour she endured from twelve years of age? We will never know.
And what of Mary’s younger sister?
I have been unable to find her after the census of 1901. Did she marry? Did she die? I have not been able to find out what happened to her so far.
Perhaps, I will be able to discover the truth one day. So that she will not be forgotten like so many of the other migrant children from the cities of Great Britain.
As ever, any errors in the book are mine and mine alone. I don’t believe any writer can do justice to the experience of the child migrants, but their story needs to
be told.
As David Hall says in his book, ‘Every childhood lasts a lifetime.’
This is true for all of us.
If you enjoyed reading this Jayne Sinclair genealogical mystery, please consider leaving a short review on Amazon. It will help other readers know how much you enjoyed the book.
Other books in the Jayne Sinclair Series
The Irish Inheritance
When an adopted American businessman dying with cancer asks her to investigate his background, it opens up a world of intrigue and forgotten secrets for Jayne Sinclair, genealogical investigator.
She only has two clues: a book and an old photograph. Can she find out the truth before he dies?
The Somme Legacy
Who is the real heir to the Lappiter millions? This is the problem facing genealogical investigator, Jayne Sinclair.
Her quest leads to a secret buried in the trenches of World War One for over 100 years. And a race against time to discover the truth of the Somme Legacy.
The American Candidate
Jayne Sinclair, genealogical investigator, is tasked to research the family history of a potential candidate for the Presidency of the United States of America. A man whose grandfather had emigrated to the country seventy years before.
When the politician who commissioned the genealogical research is shot dead in front of her, Jayne is forced to flee for her life. Why was he killed? And who is trying to stop the details of the American Candidate’s family past from being revealed?
In her most dangerous case yet, Jayne Sinclair is caught in a deadly race against time to discover the truth, armed only with her own wits and ability to uncover secrets hidden in the past.
