by Rod Jones
‘This topic is not open to discussion.’
‘Well, if I’m to have any say in the matter, then call me Elizabeth.’
Matron’s eyes came alive behind her glasses. ‘Why Elizabeth?’
‘After our new Queen.’
That tickled Matron’s fancy. ‘After Her Majesty the Queen, eh? That’s a good one. So that’s what you think you are, is it? A queen? Well, I’ll tell you something. For one, your name here will be Violet. You seem like a nice quiet girl to me, and your parents seem decent and hardworking. But what you’ve done is lowered yourself. You’re not like some of the street types and the gutter types we get coming in here. But there are consequences to your actions, my girl, and if you think you can come in here with your head held high like a queen, then you’ve got another think coming. You’ll get on your knees like the rest of them and ask Our Lord for forgiveness.’ Matron looked down at a file. ‘How old are you?’
‘I’m twenty.’
‘Where did you work?’
‘Victorian Railways.’
‘What job did you do there?’
‘I worked in the pay office.’
‘When did you leave?’
‘I kept working until people started getting suspicious about me putting on a little weight. My doctor gave me a certificate stating that I was having a breakdown, that way I’d have a job to come back to. But the Railways said I had to present myself to their doctors, and by this time there was no disguising what my problem was, so I resigned.’
‘Well, you see, you had done a very bad thing,’ Matron said.
‘Do you think I am a bad person?’ Anna herself no longer knew the answer.
What Anna would not admit to anyone was that secret place in herself where hope was still alive. If she revealed that, it might be taken away from her. True, when Neil was supposed to meet her in the city, to go to the doctor’s, he had sent a note with a friend, saying that he was ashamed and please don’t tell his parents. But that might just have been a moment of weakness when fear got the better of him. One day soon, the Neil she knew would come back, the pure and good Neil with his smiling blue eyes, and he would tell her he wanted to marry her and take her home and they’d have their baby together.
‘You will give birth to a baby who will have the stigma of illegitimacy all his life. And if it was your purpose to bring about this state of affairs, then I can only think you are a very wicked girl. And yet, I do not believe you to be that kind of girl. Tell me—who was he, this boy?’
‘A man,’ Anna said quietly. ‘He is not a boy.’
She felt uncomfortable talking about Neil, but at least if she talked about him, then she wouldn’t have to talk about other things. Anna knew, even before the battle had begun, that they would try to talk her into giving up her baby.
‘Well, he must not be much of a man, if he gets you in your present situation and then disappears. Where is this man of yours now? Is he prepared to marry you? Is he walking you down the aisle?’
‘It doesn’t make any difference.’ Anna had made up her mind that she was going to keep her baby. No one—not Matron, not anyone else—was going to convince her otherwise.
‘The difference is that you are a resident here and he is let off scot-free. In all likelihood he is, at this very moment, out sweet-talking some other foolish girl into trouble.’
Matron leaned back in her wooden swivel chair, and her face seemed to relax. She was like an employer who, after hours, tried to earn the trust of his worker. ‘Tell me about this boy—this man—of yours. He has a name?’
‘His name is Neil Glass. He is a trainee accountant.’
‘And where did you meet this gallant Mr Neil Glass?’
‘His family own the farm next door at Cockatoo.’
‘At Cockatoo! But I have your address written down here as Brunswick West.’
‘We have a little weekend place up at Cockatoo.’
‘Cockatoo!’ The place name seemed to amuse the older woman. ‘Your Mr Neil Glass is a very helpful neighbour to all the girls in the district, no doubt! A very popular young man with the girls of Cockatoo, I shouldn’t be surprised to learn. Well, then. How many times did you do it?’
‘Do what? It was humiliating for Anna to have Matron ask such personal questions of her: how many times they had done it, whether she had enjoyed it. ‘I don’t want to talk any more. I have a sore throat.’
‘A sore throat! I hope your sore throat is not of the infectious kind. You can imagine how any kind of infection roars through this place, with the girls living at such close quarters.’
‘His family are straightforward, hardworking people. I don’t want to speak ill of him or his family.’
‘A trainee accountant, you say.’
‘That’s right. He works for a firm in the city and does his studies at night.’
‘A pleasant-looking young man, I imagine?’ she asked.
‘He is serious about his studies. But he loves to play sport. He’s tall and strong, very good at football and cricket.’
‘Ah! But he has forgotten all about the poor girl he got into trouble.’
A scalding feeling rose from Anna’s chest into her throat and she breathed pepper.
‘It is not difficult to know what a man wants. All men are prey to the carnal urges. The devil knows very well how to twist a man’s soul by tempting him with a comely girl. The difficult part for the girl is knowing how to avoid giving in. That is a matter of morals.’ Matron’s tone became sharper. ‘Where did it take place, this intercourse with the boy from the neighbouring farm?’
‘In several locations.’
‘You mean the barn, the haystack, and so forth?’
‘Is this really necessary?’
How could she tell Matron that they had done it in the back of a Bedford truck? In the deserted Shire Hall where, just the previous evening, the Cockatoo gang had watched a screening of The African Queen, the steamboat chugging along the vast river?
‘An acquaintance with your circumstances is absolutely necessary. See, here on your file—I am required to make notes regarding your moral character.’ Matron stabbed a finger at some papers on the desk. Anna leaned over to peer at a foolscap manila folder to which was attached a file card with a paperclip. The card was marked BFA. ‘What does that mean?’ she asked, pointing.
‘That’s not something that need concern you.’
‘But this is my file. I have a right to know.’
‘This file is confidential. It is not for your eyes.’ Matron turned back to her desk.
‘What does BFA mean?’
Matron ignored her, but Anna had guessed. ‘There’s a mistake,’ she told Matron. ‘Who marked my child for adoption?’
Matron remained silent.
‘It’s my baby. I’m not signing anything that gives you power to decide what happens to my child.’
‘You think you know it all, don’t you?’ Matron answered without turning. ‘But let me tell you something. You girls are brought in here because of what you don’t know.’
Anna looked away and said nothing. She felt hopeless.
‘If only you had stayed at home and helped your poor mother at her chores like any number of good girls! What age are you now?’ Matron consulted her papers. ‘T
wenty. Well, a girl of twenty ought to know the difference between right and wrong.’
‘I do know the difference.’ Anna felt unjustly accused.
‘My dear, as I like to tell every girl who comes in here, what is at stake is not only the unborn soul you are carrying, but the stain you have put upon your own soul in lying with the boy, this neighbouring farmer boy or this accountant or this excellent cricketer or footballer. You see, God hates pregnant girls. He hates unwed mothers. The only way to cleanse the stain is to repent. I like to think of the Haven as a factory of redemption. Girls are brought in here to cleanse their souls. It’s only through suffering that a girl might come sincerely to ask the Lord’s forgiveness.’
A weight sank through Anna. She realised once again that it was a kind of prison she had been brought to. ‘I’m not signing anything,’ she repeated, in a determined voice.
‘My poor child, the truth is that if you truly repent, then you will come to see that the right thing is to give your baby to a deserving married couple who are unable to conceive of their own. That way, you see, you will be passing on God’s gift to them. An open and generous heart would see the truth in that. You will be doing God’s work.’
God hates pregnant girls. God hates unwed mothers. God wants your baby to go to a good home.
The Salvos seemed to know a lot about how God thought and what God wanted. Anna tried to see the lighter side of it all: Matron was carrying on as though she sat down with Him for a cup of tea every afternoon and had a good natter about the sinners who had been brought here.
But Anna thought she was a person with morals. She knew that there was good and bad, right and wrong, and that what she had done with Neil was both bad and wrong. But it was also more than that. Wasn’t there something pure? Something like love? To the Salvos it was all so cut and dried. The feelings a girl had were made to feel cheap and dirty.
Anna thought she might form a great hatred for Jesus Christ, here at the Haven. She might, instead of being ‘saved’, on the contrary, be filled with anger and plans for revenge. These Salvos really were an army, and the war they were fighting was not against the devil and sin, but against the girls themselves. It was the girls who were the enemies of God. Anna understood now that they were to be deprived not only of their liberty, but also of their personalities. When Matron said that the girls had been brought here to cleanse their souls, she meant, to break their spirits.
If only Anna could keep her nerve for long enough. If only she could grow a skin to protect everything that was precious in her thoughts and feelings, then she might survive and get out of here with her baby.
‘I shall never, ever give up my baby,’ Anna said in a low voice.
Matron’s face went hard. ‘Think of your poor parents. But think above all of your baby’s future. If he or she is to go to a deserving couple who can give him every advantage in life, who can give him an education—’ She paused a moment, then went on. ‘Look, I feel very sorry for you. We can be friends, can we not? Let’s go to chapel and pray together. I’m sure that you’ll come to accept God’s will. You will come to see the wisdom in what I have told you.’
‘So you say. But I don’t believe you.’
‘Ah!’ said Matron, shaking with irritation. ‘I see that the devil has got into you. So stealthy is he, that enemy of Christ; he settles into a poor girl’s soul and even the most experienced Salvationist might miss him. But I can winkle him out, that old reprobate. I can look right into your soul and see him there, Anna. You might think the only blot on you is the babe in your belly, but there is also a stain on your soul. The devil entered you on that first day you gave in to temptation with this excellent accountant and cricketer.’
She added, not unsympathetically, ‘My poor girl! It is something I see all the time. A girl comes in thinking herself just unlucky, whereas luck is the least of it. Almost every day I admit another girl in your position. It’s only the stubborn ones who have to be dealt with firmly. They are the selfish girls who think they might find a way to keep their baby. But I am sitting here before you to tell you plainly—there is no way for you to keep your baby.’
Anna didn’t have to say a word. Matron knew the secrets in her soul. She knew how hard Anna would fight to keep her baby. Maybe there really was a stain on her soul, the devil inside her body. Was she in fact not at all the person she thought she was? Perhaps, after all, Matron was right, and she could never be a proper mother to her baby, and the Salvation Army should give her baby to a real mother. But Anna knew in her heart that the baby inside her was not a mark on her soul. He was part of everything that was good about her.
Matron kept telling her off for a considerable time and Anna felt the back of her throat burn, but she was determined not to cry. ‘You are the stubborn type, but you will come to heel. You see, we have the power of the Lord on our side, and you will repent and ask for forgiveness, one way or another.’
Anna said quietly, ‘My mum told me she is going to stick by me.’
‘Ha!’ Matron hacked out a bark. ‘I’ll tell you what your mother said to me when she came here begging me to take you in. Oh, you should have seen how grateful she was. She actually cried with relief, you know! Promised that your father would come every fortnight to pay your board here straight out of his wages. Your poor mother’s last words to me as she was leaving were, “If you can’t convince my girl to have that child adopted, then tell her she can never come home again.”’
‘My mum would never say a thing like that!’
‘You can think what you like.’ Matron turned back to the stack of files on her desk. Like the rest of the Haven, Matron’s office had dim light globes, though whether to save on the power bills or to keep the place worshipful and sepulchral, the patina of sin on them all, Anna could not decide.
‘If you love your baby then you will give it up for adoption,’ Matron declared, her back still turned to Anna.
On Sunday, Mum and Dad arrived with fruit in a brown paper bag, some barley sugar and magazines. Mum sat with Anna in the downstairs sitting room while Dad went out the back to Matron’s office to pay for her board. As soon as Dad was out of the room, Anna asked, ‘Did you tell Matron that if I don’t adopt the baby out, I can never come home again?’
Mum’s face changed. ‘That’s not what I said.’ But from the look on her face, Anna knew she must have said something like it. Anna felt something inside herself turn hard, bitter. Was there no one she could rely on now?
‘Through thick and thin—that’s what you told me,’ Anna reminded her, her voice straining.
‘And I meant that, too, I really did. I still mean it. It’s just that things are not always as simple as they seem.’
‘Not as simple? I think my situation is pretty straightforward. I am going to keep my baby.’
All the pain of these months came into Mum’s face. She went to put her arm around Anna, but Anna pulled away. Mum said, ‘You know Dad and I love you and we’ll always stick by you.’
‘Through thick and thin,’ Anna repeated. ‘You promised. And now you’re going back on your promise.’
‘No,’ Mum said. ‘We’re going to stick by you.’
‘If you could look after the baby during the day, I could find a job. And there’s the insurance policy with AMP. If we could cash that in, it would keep me going for a while. Or if I could find a job at a place where they have a crèc
he…’
‘Look, Matron did ask for my help to try to convince you. I said I would talk to you—that’s all. I did not say you can’t come home if you keep the baby.’ Mum looked and sounded suddenly very tired.
Anna felt anger surge up inside her. She thought that Mum was going back on what she had promised her, but she wasn’t able to admit it.
‘Anna,’ Mum said, and now her voice was imploring and pathetic. ‘We’re on your side, you know. Dad and I love you so very much, no matter what has happened.’
‘I know you love me. But I want to know if you’ll help me with the baby.’
‘Yes,’ Mum said, at last. ‘I’m going to help you keep the baby.’
Just then Dad came back. Anna and Mum hastily rearranged themselves, as if to conceal the topic of their conversation. He lingered in the doorway with his sheepish smile. ‘How are they treating you?’ he asked Anna.
‘Most of the people are nice.’
‘How’s the tucker? You getting enough to eat?’
‘Brisket and potatoes. It doesn’t change much.’
‘Mum and I and Robert went for a drive up to Cockatoo yesterday,’ Dad told her. ‘The wheat’s coming on, and there are already cherries on some of the trees.’ He did not mention the Glass farm, or Neil, or what his family was up to.
‘What do they call you here?’ Mum asked. Matron must have told them about the other names.
‘Violet.’ Anna made a face. She felt ashamed. She did not even own her name any more, the name that Mum and Dad had given her. ‘I wanted to be called Elizabeth.’
When they were leaving, Mum whispered, so that Dad couldn’t hear, ‘We will stick by you, Anna, I promise. You’re still our little girl.’ Now Anna was determined to believe her. Mum and Dad would let her bring her baby home.
Mum and Dad never missed a single Sunday. Robert drove them, or they caught the tram. Her brother didn’t come in, but stayed sitting in his car, or went off for a drive by himself. Anna supposed he was frightened of the Haven, the atmosphere in there, the feeling of the girls being shamed. He had girlfriends of his own, and maybe he saw their possible futures. For Robert, it must have been like the feeling you got when you drove past the dark walls of Pentridge Prison.
