by Rod Jones
Anna could see the bulge of her rings through the fabric of her ivory-coloured gloves. She carried a tan handbag, like a satchel.
Anna kept changing the nappy, doing up the safety pin securely, as if this visit might have been some trick to see if she were competent in the duties of motherhood. Kim chortled happily.
The woman’s body seemed to sway ever so slightly in Anna’s direction. Her mouth looked sensual, vulnerable. Her eyes didn’t leave Anna for a second. Far from putting her at ease, the woman’s friendly tone filled her with alarm. Why did Miss Coutts feel the need to be nice to her? If Anna didn’t know better, she might have thought Miss Coutts was flirting with her.
Miss Coutts, it was. Not Major. Not Brigadier, like Matron. That suit of hers was more frightening than any uniform. And Anna knew without having to be told that this was the woman she had heard about from the other girls, the one they called the Consent Taker. She guessed that Miss Coutts had papers for her to sign in that handbag.
She picked up Kim from the changing table and held him close to her.
Anna preferred an open enemy like Matron, not the nice ones who wanted to be liked. Miss Coutts had a smile that radiated warmth and understanding. It was kindly, but it also meant something like, ‘We’re not finished yet, young lady.’
The following day Miss Coutts was back, wearing a turquoise chiffon dress this time. Her manner was more brisk and businesslike. ‘I don’t have to tell you how hard life would be as an unmarried mother. You would feel people judging you every day of your life. Deep down you must know what’s really best for your baby and yourself,’ Miss Coutts told her.
Anna gazed out the window; the Edinburgh Gardens were tired in the February sun. Miss Coutts’s voice was pleasant, not accusing. ‘If you gave it some more thought, you would realise that you are being very selfish. Your son would go through life bearing the stigma of illegitimacy.’
Anna felt suddenly very tired, and she understood that it wasn’t Miss Coutts who was doing this to her, but the future. It was the weight of the life that lay ahead.
‘Don’t think of yourself. Think of your baby.’
It was as though she had been drugged, and in that state everything Miss Coutts said sounded reasonable. Anna tried to fight the hypnotic pull of fatigue, but she was feeling more feeble every second. She managed to say, ‘But I can’t see what is wrong with wanting to keep my baby.’
‘If you listen very hard, I am certain you will hear a little voice in the corner of your brain telling you otherwise. And that voice is the voice of your conscience.’ She added quietly, ‘God wants babies to go to good homes.’
How dull and slow Anna felt! If she didn’t lie down, she would keel over! And still she heard Miss Coutts’s words, but they came as if from a long way away and Anna could not make any sense of them. The sounds flowed by her, then suddenly the woman’s voice was very near. ‘Anna, I have come here this afternoon to ask you to give him up for adoption. You may not be aware that there is a legal requirement that consent papers cannot be signed during the first five days after the birth of a child. That five-day period has now elapsed.’
Anna felt the blood rushing to her face. And to think she had believed her victory already won! Only now did she realise why she had been given her period of grace. She felt such a fool.
‘The question is not whether you love him too much to do it,’ Miss Coutts was saying. ‘It is whether you love your baby enough.’
Anna did not have the strength to answer. She hadn’t changed her mind, of course. But Miss Coutts had somehow prised open a gate for doubt to creep in. She had to conserve her strength. She must not allow that supernatural power of Miss Coutts to steal her will.
‘Look, if you don’t sign,’ Miss Coutts said, ‘your baby will be taken from you. He will be made a ward of the state, since you can’t support him. The choice is yours—an orphanage or a deserving couple.’
‘But I can support him. I’m going to get a job.’
‘And who will look after him while you’re at work?’
‘My parents are sticking by me.’
‘We’ll see about that.’
At visiting time on Sunday, Anna carried Kim down to the sitting room for Mum and Dad to see him. There were several pregnant girls sitting in the wood-panelled room, talking with their visitors. A couple of the older women stared rudely at Anna and her baby. They might have felt she was setting a bad example for the other girls.
Dad hung around the doorway, then made himself scarce, as usual.
‘I want to go home, Mum,’ Anna said.
‘They won’t let you go home until you sign the papers.’
‘They can’t keep me here like a prisoner!’
‘They won’t let you go home with the baby. Look, love. It’s for the best. Life’s hard for an unmarried mother. A married couple will be able to give him opportunities in life that you can’t. Don’t think of yourself. Think of your baby.’
Mum reached out to hold Kim, but Anna wouldn’t hand over her baby. ‘You promised, Mum!’
Mum started to cry. ‘It’s your father who’s put his foot down. I’ve begged and pleaded with him, but it doesn’t do any good. You know your father. Once he’s made up his mind, there’s nothing we can do to change it. We just have to go along with him. He won’t let you bring the baby home.’
‘But I have nowhere else to go,’ Anna moaned.
‘I’m sorry,’ Mum said.
So Dad was the one betraying her! She wondered how many Sundays he had been slinking off and plotting all this with Matron.
Anna had to work in the laundry again during the day, but she was able to sneak up to the nursery on the pretext of changing Kim’s nappy. She whispered to him, all the schemes she had come up with during the morning. They would escape. Where would they go? She would take him to the shack at Cockatoo. Hang on. That wouldn’t be any good. There were the neighbours to think of. The Glass family could see right into their front garden. They would know that someone was staying at the shack and come to investigate.
She would think of something else. She would come up with another, better plan. The grease-streaked face of Charlie Allnut appeared to her again. I don’t blame you for being scared, Miss, not one little bit.
One day when she was in the nursery, a doctor called in to enquire how she was going—not Doctor Jericho, one of the others. He closed the door and told her he had come to have a talk. She already knew what he was going to say.
Over the next few days, others tried, too. The nursing sisters. They were stubborn; they never gave up. If you really love your baby you will give him away to a proper decent family with a mother and a father to support him.
Still Anna refused to sign the consent papers.
Anna had heard about girls who gave consent while they were still under the effects of anaesthetic, even though Matron was supposed to wait the five days after birth. Others revoked their consent but were not given back their babies. She had heard about babies being taken away even though the mother had not given her consent at all.
‘I have no intention of giving him up for adoption,’ Anna repeated, every time they spoke to her about it. The only weapon she had at her disposal was her own stubbornness. She kept telling them of her plans to take him home to live with Mum and Dad, to find a job, to find a house to rent—she had to keep repea
ting it, otherwise all was desolation.
And so six weeks passed, and still Anna was in the Haven, and still she refused to sign. From the moment she had seen that BFA on her file on Matron’s desk, Anna had known this test would come.
Miss Coutts came to see her in the laundry nearly every day, usually late in the morning. Always the same conversation. One day, Miss Coutts lost her patience. ‘You are under twenty-one. We are legally entitled to get your father or mother to sign the papers in your place.’
Anna knew it was a trick. If this were really so, they would already have asked Mum or Dad to sign them, weeks ago. Anyway, it would be her twenty-first birthday in a few weeks and they’d no longer have any power over her. If only she could stay the course…
‘You are not married, Anna,’ Miss Coutts said. ‘You would only be a bad mother and your baby would never forgive you.’
‘I will not be a bad mother! And I will find a way to support him!’
‘We shall see what the Child Welfare has to say about that.’ Miss Coutts smiled. She must have used this threat many times in the past. ‘How on earth do you think you could look after a baby?’
‘I will find a way,’ Anna said.
‘You are a silly girl!’ Miss Coutts finally lost her temper. ‘If you really love your baby you will give him up for adoption.’
Just then, Matron charged into the laundry. She was angry that Miss Coutts had had no success. ‘Look here,’ she railed at Anna, ‘you just sign the papers right now, girl! Do what’s best for your baby! What decent man would ever want to marry a woman with a bastard child? Is that the kind of start in life you want to give your son—to be a bastard?’
She was marched across the courtyard to Matron’s office. Matron had the relinquishment form all typed up and ready. Or maybe she kept a pile of forms by the Roneo machine.
CONSENT TO ADOPTION ORDER
I, Anna Louise Ross, the undersigned of 36 Hope Street, West Brunswick in the State of Victoria, being the Mother of Kim Ross who was born at The Haven Hospital in the State of Victoria on the 5th day of February, 1953, hereby state that I understand the nature and effect of an adoption order for which application may be made, and in particular I understand that the effect of such an order will be permanently to deprive me of my parental rights. And I hereby consent to the making of an adoption order in respect of the said infant.
In witness whereof I have signed this consent on the 25th day of March, 1953, at North Fitzroy in the State of Victoria.
(Signature) A. Ross
Signed in the presence of—(Signature) Matilda Mummery
(Address) 75 Alfred Crescent, Nth Fitzroy
(Occupation) Salvation Army Officer, Matron
A dull comfort was creeping through her body; her thoughts were lost in a fog. Matron took the papers and the fountain pen from her hand, and it was only then that Anna realised the enormity of what she had done.
As if in a trance, she went upstairs to her dormitory, empty at this hour. She lay on the bed; her head sank into the pillow and sleep overcame her, rich and deep, a release from the agonies of these past weeks, but also a kind of death.
They had defeated her in the end. Anna could never say, as she had heard other girls say, that there was coercion or duress. It was her own fault. There was no one else she could blame.
She told herself stories. It had been another girl who had signed the papers. Even though it was her own hand that held the pen, a ghostly power had traced her name, the name of her baby. ‘It will be for the best,’ they had all said. But she had felt removed from those actions, and wondered now if in fact she had been drugged.
Anna got out of bed and went to find Matron. She came across her in the foyer.
‘I’ve changed my mind,’ Anna told her. ‘I’m going to keep my baby, after all.’
‘It’s too late. I have a lovely couple lined up for the baby. I’ve just come from speaking to them on the phone.’
‘But you can’t do that!’
‘You’ve signed,’ Matron said, and turned on her heel.
Anna went to the nursery. For a little while, at least, she still had her baby to love and attend to. She spent every moment she could with Kim now, his tiny hand locked around her finger. It was as if she were in another world, as she stared into his face stamped indelibly with her own features, and those of Neil. She would always be wondering about this child.
It was going to be another hot day. Melbourne in March—there was something in the heat so early in the morning that made the day ahead seem endless. How could she ever get through such a day? She had Kim in her dormitory room. She had been told to get him ready.
Go to the window. See if they’re here yet.
Nothing. Just the trees in the Edinburgh Gardens, tossing their heads and laughing. Maybe that was all God was—the will behind things that made the trees nod and laugh at her?
Eleven o’clock passed and still they hadn’t come to take him. Anna had desperate thoughts. The impossible seemed true. They’ve changed their minds. They’re not coming for him, after all. She would get to keep him.
But then one of the Salvation Army trainees, a girl named Bronte, appeared at the door, and Anna could tell by the compassionate look on her face that the moment had arrived. Bronte was carrying a parcel wrapped in brown paper and tied with new string, which she placed gently on the bedspread, her face solemn.
Suddenly Anna couldn’t breathe. Tears filled her eyes and the world blurred. The truth had been there all along, hiding at the back of things. It didn’t laugh at her or flaunt its cruelty. The truth was standing there, solid as a house. She had thought it had gone away when she had looked out the window. She had thought that everything was going to be all right, after all.
But here was the brown paper parcel. Here was Bronte still standing by the side of her bed.
To make her dress him in other people’s clothes—this, too, was part of the ritual, and Anna couldn’t work out if it was designed as a further punishment for her, or something that simply happened, without her feelings being taken into consideration.
With a sheepish smile, Bronte turned and left the room. Anna sat on the chair for a long time with Kim in her arms. She looked at the brown-paper parcel but she wasn’t able to touch it.
A minute passed, or a year.
Bronte came back. She jollied Anna along, untying the string, unfolding the brown paper. ‘What beautiful clothes they are,’ she sang.
And it was true. They were beautiful baby clothes, and that made Anna feel better. The cream woollen jacket had been hand-knitted in pearl, with blue embroidery across the front.
Anna took over from Bronte. As her fingers touched her baby’s soft skin for the last time, as she pulled the miniature singlet over his head, put on the embroidered jacket, the knitted booties, she knew that he was going to a good home.
Bronte folded the brown paper around the old clothes, the ones that Mum had brought in, and quickly looped the string around it without tying a knot. And then it was just Anna, in a chair, alone. Bronte was gone. Kim was gone. She hadn’t seen them leave the room. In her mind, he was still there on the bed in front of her, dressed in those beautiful new clothes. She wanted to remember him like that, alw
ays.
She didn’t know how much time had passed. The angle of the sunlight looked different through the window. So. He was gone.
The other girls stayed away from the dormitory. They were respecting her privacy, or maybe they were just busy at their jobs, because it was Saturday and they had to work. It was Anna’s day, not theirs.
But then she realised that he would probably still be downstairs with Matron. The couple would have to sign papers and the rest of it. There was still time. She could charge downstairs, burst in and tell them she had changed her mind.
But it was hopeless.
For a moment Kim materialised again on her knee, his precious warm weight, the smell of his skin and his hair, a living spirit in this cold carbolic world. And then his smell went away too, and she knew then for certain that he was really gone, that he wasn’t coming back.
She went across to the window, opened it and stepped over the low sill onto the upstairs balcony, looking down into the street, hoping for a last glimpse of him.
There was only one car parked in Alfred Crescent that Saturday. She could see it had yellow number plates, not black. So, they must have come from New South Wales, she thought. They’ll be taking him to Sydney with them.
Molly
ESSENDON, 1958
MOLLY BROUGHT HER face close to the dressing-table mirror and applied her lipstick. ‘If you’re a good boy, we’ll go to Hearns Hobbies afterwards,’ she said.
‘Will I get a present?’
She turned away from the mirror, wound down her lipstick, and smiled at him. ‘Maybe.’
‘An Airfix model?’
‘We’ll have to wait and see.’
Two months after her fortieth birthday, Molly still had her slim figure. Her blonde hair was cut short and curled in a soft, stylish wave. She made her own fashionable dresses from printed Butterick patterns, run up on her Singer sewing machine. Other women often admired her clothes and told her she looked young for her age. Even when she was just going to the bank or the grocer, she put on high heels and make-up. Molly wanted to be the perfect wife.
