The Mothers

by Rod Jones

  ‘She looks strange, doesn’t she?’ said one of the others. ‘Do you believe she really used to be in the circus?’

  ‘No, she’s a little fibber,’ replied Vera.

  ‘Well, I heard her say that in the yard. She said her whole family used to be in the circus.’

  There were children leaving the orphanage and others arriving all the time. Usually they left when they turned fourteen and were old enough for Mr Butler to find them employment somewhere. There were also those whose family circumstances had changed and one or both parents were able to keep them now. Often the arrivals were all from one family—three, four or five brothers and sisters whose father or mother had died.

  That night, the new girl sat at Molly’s table. Her name was Bonnie Marconi. Molly had never met an Italian before. She had a dark complexion and her black hair fell naturally into tight crinkle curls.

  ‘Did you used to be in the circus?’ Molly asked.

  ‘The circus? No! I just told the others that to keep them off my back. They were teasing me and saying that I look funny.’ Bonnie had three little brothers and one older sister. They had been sent here after their father died. Their father had worked on the railways, she said.

  ‘How did he die?’ Molly asked.

  ‘He just got sick.’ Bonnie missed her mother terribly. ‘I am just waiting for the day when we can all go home again,’ she told Molly.

  ‘Mum says that this is home for the time being.’

  Molly heard Bonnie crying during the night. ‘Stop crying. You’ll make yourself sick,’ she whispered. She felt sorry for Bonnie.

  Molly and Bonnie were soon best friends. When it was Molly’s turn to be breakfast monitor, it was natural that Bonnie should help. They warmed themselves by the kitchen radiator while Mrs Field was in front of the stove. Steam rose from the big pot of porridge and misted the windows. It was warm and comfortable, waiting in the kitchen. Both girls were quiet. Bonnie had a dreamy look in her eyes, her mouth relaxed, her lips protruding. Molly knew that Bonnie was thinking of home.

  Her own memories of her mother and sister and brother had to be kept safe at the bottom of her heart so that she would not always be thinking of them and feeling the hurt of being away from them. But sometimes one of those hoarded memories escaped and Molly felt it burning her throat and stinging her eyes.

  She tried to pretend everything was all right, but as she got through her days, she felt self-conscious and foolish and above all she wondered if she had been tricked: as if somewhere—up in the sky, in heaven?—an unseen audience was silently laughing at her. Molly felt that she must be sillier than other girls to allow this calamity to happen to her.

  But the companionship of Bonnie gave her strength. If I have a friend, Molly thought, then I mustn’t be completely silly and useless. ‘Bonnie?’ she asked one day. ‘Do you think we have been sent here because we did something wrong?’

  Bonnie looked thoughtful. ‘We might have,’ she said. ‘Do you mean like the sins they teach us about at Sunday school?

  Molly had never been to Sunday school before coming to the orphanage. This was just one more way in which she felt inadequate; one more secret she had to keep, even from her friend.

  ‘What sin did you commit?’ Bonnie asked, when Molly hadn’t answered.

  The heat of injustice rose to Molly’s face. ‘That’s just it,’ she said. ‘I don’t know. If only I knew, I might be able to understand.’

  ‘I didn’t come here because of a sin,’ Bonnie told her. She had already turned eight, and knew life better than Molly. ‘The only reason we had to come here was because our daddy died.’

  Molly put her arms around the other girl and held her tightly, and they became even better friends after that.

  Molly soon got used to life at the orphanage. There was a chook shed where Mr Butler let the girls and boys collect the eggs as long as they promised to be careful and not break any. The chook shed smelled like things that had gone bad. Some of the eggs were brown, some speckled, and some had streaks of broken yolk and tiny downy feathers on the outside. At the front of the chook shed there were windows made with wire. When she was inside, the wind came through the wire, and just under the corrugated roof there was a gap with blue sky. Molly was always frightened she would break an egg or disappoint Mr Butler.

  All the children loved Mr Butler. He told them at assembly that it was his duty to set out to win the children’s love and confidence.

  One of the older girls told Molly that Mr Butler had taken up his post three years earlier and that, thanks to him, many changes and improvements had been made. The boys now wore pyjamas instead of the cotton nightshirts they used to have to wear; and they had normal haircuts, not the shaven heads that used to make the orphanage boys stand out at school. On Sundays now, the girls were allowed to wear shoes instead of boots. Mr Butler had mirrors put in all the bathrooms and dressing rooms so they could see how they looked. And there was Miss Armitage, who came one afternoon a week to teach the girls needlework.

  The first thing Molly made was an apron with plain stitching. She learned how to tack up the hem, then to finish the job with small neat stitches. She wore a thimble so as not to prick her fingers. Molly often made mistakes and had to unpick her work. She went on to make a nightgown, another apron, a plain pinafore of navy blue cotton, and also learned how to darn and mend, and, later, how to embroider and how to do fancy work.

  One afternoon, Molly and Bonnie found themselves alone inside the Cottage Home. Mrs Field was on an errand, and the other girls were playing in the garden. Idly, the girls began going through the cupboards to see what they could find.

  Under the patterns in Mrs Field’s sewing cupboard, Molly found a typed sheet of paper. ‘Bonnie! Look at this!’ she cried.

  Prices for Children’s Funerals

  Coffin and Conveyance to Brighton Cemetery

  Children under 4 years £2-0-0

  Children under 7 years £2-10-0

  Children under 10 years £3-0-0

  Over 10 years, rates to be arranged

  ‘If I die, Mum will have to pay two pounds ten shillings,’ Molly said.

  ‘No. She will have to pay three pounds,’ Bonnie told her. ‘Only children under seven cost two pounds ten.’

  ‘So Mum could have saved ten shillings if I had died last year.’

  ‘Don’t talk about dying.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It might come true.’

  Molly folded the piece of paper, replaced it under the patterns, and the girls went outside. She felt guilty that she had seen that list. But why should she feel guilty? She tried to forget about it, but late that night, as she lay sleepless in her bed, she wondered how many children had died at the orphanage. She was certain that Mum and Teddy and Olive would cry at her funeral. Still, she felt bad because Mum would have to pay for her even when she had died.

  When Molly had arrived, the hall was still being built. Now it was finished, it also served as their gymnasium. There were games organised there after school. She liked the smell of the rubber mats that were placed on the other side of the vaulting horse. The Roman rings hanging from the ceiling were tied to the wall when the hall was used for a
n assembly. The superintendent’s cottage was finished too, and Mr and Mrs Butler moved from their old quarters in the administration building.

  Mr Butler bought a washing machine, so the older girls would no longer have to do the laundry by hand. There was a new hydro extractor and a rotary gas iron in the laundry, and he purchased coke-burning hot water services for each of the Cottage Homes. Mr Butler even had the name changed from the Melbourne Orphan Asylum to the Melbourne Orphanage, and had a radio installed. He told the children that it cost a hundred pounds. The master radio set was in the senior boys’ cottage and the programmes relayed through loudspeakers in each of the other cottages. The girls complained that they never got to choose the programme.

  Molly held her breath every time the monitors distributed the post around the Cottage Homes. But months had passed and Molly had not received a single letter or postcard. She didn’t expect to hear from her old friends at Kensington State School: she had left suddenly and never had a chance to say goodbye. Mum was ashamed of sending her to the orphanage, and didn’t want anyone to know.

  One day when she came in to dinner, Bonnie asked, ‘Did you find your letter? I put it on your pillow. You weren’t here when the monitors came.’

  Molly raced upstairs, nearly colliding with Mrs Field. She recognised Mum’s handwriting: Molly Fairweather, C/Melbourne Orphanage, Dendy Street, Brighton, S.5. Mum wrote that she missed her and that she promised to visit as usual the following Sunday. It was just a short note, but it made Molly feel special finally to receive a letter of her own.

  ‘Did Robert Hepper really run away?’ Bonnie asked.

  ‘Yes, he did. Lillian said so,’ Molly told her.

  ‘Well, Lillian wouldn’t know. Lillian makes things up. Do you remember that time she said her father had let her drive his motorcar to a birthday party? Well, it turned out she had done nothing of the sort.’

  ‘Really? How can Lillian be so wicked as to lie like that?’

  ‘It’s in her nature. My mother says that when a girl tells lies it is a sign of a wicked nature.’

  Molly often heard stories of children who had run away. Usually they’d been given permission to stay with their mum for a holiday, and their mum had found them a job to earn money and hadn’t brought them back. Molly happened to be sitting on one of the seats outside the administration building the following afternoon, when Robert Hepper was brought back. He expected to be punished, but after some time in Mr Butler’s study he came out quite cheerful, not crying at all, and he went back to his cottage.

  Molly loved school. She was nine and in fourth grade. In the playground, her teacher, Miss Ormond, was strict to all the other children, but nice to her own class. Molly loved the routines. Miss Ormond had made her a monitor and Molly took her duties seriously, going into the classroom early to clean the blackboard while the others were lined up in twos outside.

  So Molly let out a groan when, on one of her Sunday visits, Mum told her that she would be going home at last the following week.

  ‘I thought you’d be pleased!’ Mum said.

  ‘What about the Lincoln Mills?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t have to go to that old place any more!’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I stopped working there ages ago! Didn’t I tell you?’

  ‘Where do you work now?’

  ‘I don’t have to work.’ And just then, Mum looked guilty. Over the past few months, her appearance had changed. She wore dresses in the new, looser style that made her look younger. She smiled more, too.

  Molly had read about falling in love in magazines, and overheard the older girls whispering about it.

  Mum said, ‘I thought you’d be happy to come home to me and Teddy and Olive.’ But after nearly two years, the orphanage was Molly’s home. She was happy here among her friends. Her dormitory wouldn’t be her room any more. She would not see Miss Ormond or Bonnie or Mrs Field.

  Several times at school that week, Molly started crying. Miss Ormond asked her what the matter was. Molly’s group was to put on the play the following week and the realisation that she would not be here to participate was the thing that upset her. But it wasn’t just the play; it was the feeling that she would be missing from her familiar world, the everyday life that was hers. It was all she knew now.

  On the Friday afternoon, Miss Ormond organised a going-away for Molly. At lunchtime while the children were playing in the yard, Miss Ormond decorated the classroom with coloured streamers, and there were plates of cakes she had baked and bottles of Ecks lemonade. At the end of the party, Miss Ormond made a speech and gave Molly a present, wrapped in bright paper and tied with a pink ribbon. Mum’s presents were never wrapped in such magnificent paper! Molly opened the present in front of the class. When she saw what it was, she felt like crying with happiness. A brand new Bible, with her name inscribed on the first page. Miss Ormond had signed her name and written, ‘Remember us, Brighton, 1928’.

  Suddenly it was Molly’s last day. In the morning, girls came up to say their goodbyes. All her friends made an appearance, except Bonnie.

  She found Bonnie sitting by herself in the storeroom. ‘Have you been hiding up here all this time?’ she asked Bonnie. She could see Bonnie had been crying. They had been friends for so long, but now Molly was going away, it was difficult to talk to each other.

  ‘I’ll miss you.’

  ‘Please, don’t cry!’ Molly said. ‘I’ll come and visit you.’

  ‘It won’t be the same.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because if you come and visit, you won’t be one of us any more.’

  ‘Oh, give me a kiss!’ Molly stretched out her arms and Bonnie allowed herself to be hugged and gave Molly a kiss on the cheek.

  ‘Now, see, that’s better, isn’t it?’ Molly said.

  Bonnie laughed and nodded, and tried to look cheerful, even with her blotchy face.

  Molly was going home to her family. But she was also leaving her family.

  Molly

  FOOTSCRAY, 1928

  MUM AND BILL Williams fetched her from the orphanage in Bill’s car and drove to the house in Eldridge Street.

  It felt strange that Mum and Teddy and Olive had moved into Bill’s house when, all the time she had been at the orphanage, Molly had continued to think of them still living in Eastwood Street, Kensington. Before that, the family had lived in Seddon. And before that? There was no before that. Teddy and Olive took her for a walk and showed her the house in the next street, Empire Street, where they said they used to live before she was born, but it didn’t mean anything to Molly.

  At one end of Eldridge Street was a rope works; the ammunition factory was at the other end. There was a lane at the back of Eldridge Street, above the quarry. Inside the fence, next to the lane, Bill kept his chook run. He sold chooks and turkeys to people from all over Footscray.

  Bill had black glossy hair with a part down the middle. His thin lips gave his face a cunning look, though he was always gentle and considerate towards Molly. Mum sometimes said, ‘That Bill Williams! He’s a bit of a rogue.’ She also said, ‘Bill doesn’t let his left hand know what his right hand is doing.’

  Inside the house everything was a variation on brown. Walls, wainscot, doors, blinds, the wooden floor—all of it was beige, brown, fawn. Along the hallway was the sitting room where, soon after she arrived, Teddy mad
e her try his cigar and she was nearly sick trying to spit out the taste.

  Molly went to Footscray State, her third school. She was in the fifth grade. In the afternoons, the kids all played together in the street. The girls played hopscotch and jacks, and the boys had their bags of marbles. Molly quickly learned the names of the kids; she had already forgotten some of the children at the orphanage. She remembered Bonnie, though, and they wrote letters to each other for a while. But then, for no particular reason, the letters stopped.

  When Molly told the kids at school that she had lived in an orphanage for two years, and when she saw the dark cloud pass over their faces, she was quick to assure them that she had been happy there. None of them believed that a child could be happy at an orphanage, even though she told them about the swimming pool, the cows in the paddocks, the big garden, the trips to the beach.

  There were times when Molly felt that she didn’t really belong either at school or at home. Maybe this feeling came from living in the orphanage—she couldn’t be sure. Her name was Fairweather, just like her brother and sister. But there was something different about her. She was blonde, while Olive and Teddy had dark hair. Their skin was darker too.

  Olive was seventeen, Teddy nineteen. Teddy still worked in the sewers. Olive had a job at the Spotswood Bottle Works. ‘I work on the line that makes beer bottles,’ she told Molly. ‘There are these big American machines that make the bottles. Once the bottles have been pressure-tested, my job is to sort them into crates lined with newspaper.’

  Mum stayed home and looked after the house, because now she had Bill to earn money. He worked as a slaughterman at the Angliss Imperial Freezing Works and he had his chicken business as well.

  Bill took Molly to the meatworks one day and showed her around. The first things she noticed were the bad smell and the lowing of cattle in the yards. It seemed to her like a miniature city. It had its own train track and siding. Bill showed her where the cattle trucks came in from the country, the yards, the chute where he worked, the rails along the passages where the lambs and sides of beef were pushed to the chillers. There were also skin-drying sheds, the boiling-down works, the cannery and meat-preserving works. She was shocked by the sound of the gun, and the way the cow’s legs suddenly collapsed at the top of the chute. The men secured chains around the poor thing’s legs, then it disappeared inside.