Marjorie laughed as Fanny Apple threw her snow to the ground. “Yuck! Gross! I was enjoying it until you said that.”
Marjorie was still chuckling when she said, “My chores this week are kindling and firewood.”
Girls on firewood duty had to get up at a quarter to six to get the fire going so the cottage would be warm when it was time for everyone to get up. They also had to ensure that the cottage’s woodbins were filled for the furnace and the cookstove and the cottage mother’s sitting-room fireplace.
“C’mon, Bunny. You gotta help me, too. I’ll split kindling if you stack it. Let’s hurry so we can be done before lunch.”
As the three girls started walking back to their cottage, Marjorie asked Fanny Apple, “What are your chores?”
“This week I’m on cottage cleanup. I like that better than laundry duty. How about you? I hate laundry duty. Except I hate cleaning up the cottage mum’s rooms more. It’s not fair! She should clean up her own mess, especially her bathroom. It’s not fair that she has a bathroom all her own while the rest of us have to share ours. You know why I hate laundry duty?” Fanny Apple looked to see if Marjorie was paying attention.
“Why?” Marjorie was listening.
“Because I hate all the ironing and the mountains and mountains of stinky boys’ laundry.” Fanny Apple laughed.
“Do you remember last winter when we hung some clothes outside to dry and they froze solid? We stood them up in the laundry room, and they stayed standing until they warmed up and fell over.”
Marjorie scooped up a handful of snow and sucked on it.
“I don’t believe you.” Bunny looked at the two of them.
“Yeah, it’s true. I remember that. Frozen solid, and they stood up all by themselves. When the heat got to them, they fell over.”
Bunny still looked unconvinced.
“It’s true, Bunny. Really. Marjorie, were you on laundry duty when we had a bunch of blouses hanging on the line and some of the boys started throwing rocks at them, and because they were frozen the rocks went right through them?”
Fanny Apple grabbed another handful of snow.
“Yes! Those creeps. We had to mend the holes!”
Marjorie laughed, remembering the laundry matron trying to catch the culprits.
“Yeah, they are creeps. They never have to work in the laundry. Still, I’m glad they never got caught.”
Fanny Apple tagged Marjorie and said, “I bet I can beat you back to the cottage.”
The two girls ran off. Audrey yelled for them to wait up for her, but they pretended not to hear.
That evening Marjorie snuggled into her cot and thought that it had been a good day. The cake had a big dip in the centre, but it still tasted great. Audrey opened her present, turned the shell around, and put it against her cheek. At first it seemed like she didn’t like it, but then she whispered, “Whitley Bay. It’s like I have a piece of Whitley Bay.” A thank you was not necessary. She didn’t need to say anything else; the tear that escaped down her cheek told Marjorie all she needed to know.
Marjorie took Joyce’s picture down from her shelf. One of the girls in the picture had arrived at the farm school just after Bunny. So had one of the boys. Why not Joyce? The paper was starting to curl at one corner. Her mum had sent the picture of Joyce shortly after Audrey arrived at Fairbridge. It was the first letter that Marjorie had received from her mum since she left Whitley Bay. She was so excited that she was shaking when she pulled the letter out of the envelope. She was surprised that it wasn’t sealed, but she was in a hurry to see what her mum had to say. It was impossible to read, though, as there were several big black lines crossed through her letter. She asked her cottage mum who had opened her letter and put the black lines all over it.[2]
“It’s hard to read with the black lines on it.”
Marjorie passed the letter to her cottage mum, who helped her to read it: “The end part goes like this: ‘I hope you are well and that you look out for your little brother Kenny and little sister Audrey. I visited Joyce at Middlemore after Audrey left for Canada, and she gave me this photograph for you. She doesn’t want you to forget her.’ Then she says, ‘Love, Mum.’”
Mrs. Read handed Marjorie back her letter.
Marjorie looked at it again. She could read those parts; she had hoped the mum could tell her about the blacked-out parts. She looked at the envelope. The place where her mum had written her address had solid black lines through it as well. The cottage mum didn’t answer her about the black lines, and Marjorie knew that if she had to ask twice she wasn’t going to get an answer.
Marjorie’s sister Joyce, third girl from the right, at the Middlemore Emigration Home. Photo sent to Marjorie while at the Fairbridge Farm School, circa 1938, from her sister Joyce. She never let go of it.
She held Joyce’s picture up to the light. It was a little out of focus, but her sister looked just the same as she remembered her. She would have to keep the picture safe because she was forgetting Joyce bit by bit, just like the rest of her family. She tried hard to remember all their faces, and it was scary because their features had faded and were becoming more and more unrecognizable. Sometimes she felt that her memories were all she had to cling to, and they kept her from feeling so alone … but there were times when the memories were too painful to hold on to and the loneliness took her breath away.
She talked to Joyce — in her mind, of course, not aloud — and she wrote imaginary letters to her. They were her private letters that the cottage mum could never see or read, so she couldn’t tear them up or put black marks all over the paper. She told Joyce that they had a good day for Bunny’s ninth birthday. I mean Audrey. Joyce probably didn’t know that they called Audrey Bunny now. As she wrote her letter, she imagined Joyce reading it, and it took some of the loneliness away.
She tried to be happy for Joyce because they had let her stay in England, but it was hard. Had Joyce gone back home, or was she still at Middlemore? It would be nice to have a picture of her mum and the rest of her family. Kids should know about their families. Maybe she should write a real letter back so that she could ask her mum to send her some more pictures.
Chapter 4
Exiled: A One-Way Ticket to Nowhere
Prince of Wales: “It is this great migratory stream which forms a personal flesh and blood link that will stand, I think, any strain put upon it.”
Leopold Amery, secretary of state for dominion affairs: “We had boundless material resources and we had human resources, but they could only be wedded effectively if they were properly distributed.”
— The Times (London), January 27, 1926
“Marjorie, wake up.” The low voice echoed loudly in the midnight dorm room. “Marjorie! You’re sleepwalking again. Get out of my bed.” The little girl yawned as she pushed Marjorie away.
“Whisht! Will you be quiet? You’ll wake up the cottage mum, and then we’ll all be in trouble. Just help her back to her bed. She probably won’t even wake up,” an older girl whispered through the darkness.
“I can’t do it.”
“Little kids!” The girl groaned as she pulled back her covers and got out of bed. “Yikes! This floor is cold. How can it not wake up Marjorie?” She took Marjorie by the shoulders and gently but firmly led her back to her cot and tucked her in. “Now stay there!” she warned, but Marjorie just snuggled further under her covers without waking up.
The 6:45 a.m. wake-up call from their cottage mother was right on time. The girls began to stir in their sleep. Marjorie grimaced. “It can’t be time to get up already,” she mumbled to no one in particular, her face firmly planted under her cover.
“Well, if you would stay in your bed and not walk around all night, you would probably have a better sleep.” The head cottage girl was the one to break the news to Marjorie that she had been walking in her sleep again last night.
“Oh, no! Not again. Really?” Marjorie hated it when the girls told her that. “Did I wake the mum up?”
“No, and you’re lucky because you woke all of us up,” Bunny told her sister. “I watched you walk around, and you couldn’t find your own bed, so you just started to climb into her bed.” Bunny laughed and pointed to a bed on her side of the room.
“It’s not funny! I got that far without waking up?”
Marjorie had not walked in her sleep for ages. She’d thought for sure that she was over it. She hated that it had happened again last night. It annoyed everyone. The cottage mum had a fit the first time she caught her, and they all got into trouble. Ever since that first time, she knew the girls tried to get her back to bed as quietly as possible, before she woke the mum up.
“I’m sorry,” she told them. “I don’t do it on purpose.”
Marjorie used to lie awake for hours, telling herself not to sleepwalk. She would have to start doing that again.
She sat up and stretched. There was that odour again. It had taken her a long while to realize what it was. It was like a baby’s wet nappy. Yuck! Middlemore had some bedwetters, too, but that dorm was larger and the smell didn’t get as strong as it did in this room. Marjorie was thankful that she didn’t have that problem. All she had was sleepwalking and nightmares, and that was bad enough. Having the mum catch you with a wet bed was the worst. She watched as the girl hurried to hide the evidence. Most days she was successful because all the girls helped her.
That morning it was Marjorie’s turn to get the tin dishes and cutlery ready to take to the dining hall for breakfast. She recruited Bunny to help her.
“Bunny, do you still miss our family?” Marjorie looked at her sister to see what she would say.
“Sometimes I do, but I hardly ’member them anymore. You and Kenny are my only family now. Do you miss them? I miss Joyce the most, because she was really nice to me when we were at Middlemore, just the two of us. I don’t think Joyce can be happy that we’re here and she isn’t.” Bunny looked back at her sister. “I’m glad you’re with me. I hated it when I was coming over here and I didn’t have anyone with me.”
“I still miss them. The first year that I was here, before you got here, it used to make me feel really sad. Now I sometimes just feel mad. I feel mad at Joyce because she stayed at Middlemore. But I miss her so much. I feel mad at our mum because she sent us away. I feel mad when the cottage mum is mean. But mostly I just feel afraid because I don’t know what to expect. Did you know that it was Lawrence’s birthday last week?”
“Our Lawrence?”
“Yes, our Lawrence. I feel mad when I remember things like that. I didn’t think about them for a long time, then, when it was Valentine’s Day, I remembered about Lawrence’s birthday. I don’t remember what he looks like, and I don’t remember how old he is now. He could be four or five. And I think about Jean and Phyllis and Fred and Norman. Do you think they remember us?” Marjorie felt the old prickle of tears coming for her. She stared up at the corner of the ceiling for a bit. That seemed to help to stop them.
“I don’t know. I wonder if they’re still living in the flat on Whitley Road.” Bunny was beginning to feel sad. Marjorie could hear it in her voice.
“Probably not, but I don’t know. When Mum sent me the letter with Joyce’s picture, the place where the address should be was blacked out, so I couldn’t tell what it was. I bet they moved again.”
“Are you hungry?” Bunny patted her tummy. “I’m empty.”
“Let’s hurry. I’m starving, too. I’ll race you to the dining hall.”
The rest of the Attwood girls were right behind Marjorie and Bunny. The girls in charge of getting the food from the kitchen were heading to the table as Marjorie and Bunny set the cutlery and dishes in their proper places. Mrs. Read sat at the head of the table, sipping her tea. The girls served her first. She had a lovely china plate filled with bacon and eggs and toast. Marjorie looked at her tin plate and at her toast. No eggs or bacon. She took her spoon and started eating her porridge. Yuck! She hated porridge, but she was hungry.
Marjorie picked up her glass of milk. Mrs. Read was looking away. This was her chance. She took a mouthful and squirted a long stream of the milk through the gap between her two front teeth. It went clear across to the next table. The girls at her table choked back giggles.
“Marjorie!” The mum scowled at her. “Bring your things here and come sit beside me. You,” she said, pointing at the little girl next to her, “move down the bench and make room for her.”
“But, ma’am, what did I do?” Marjorie tried the innocent look; it was always worth a shot. Without replying, the mum pointed to the seat beside her. Marjorie stood up and gathered her things. She wondered how the mum knew who it was. She had been so careful not to be seen.
As Marjorie ate her porridge in silence, she contemplated being a cottage mum when she grew up. It would be better than being a farmer’s wife. Cottage mums got their own rooms, a sitting room, a bedroom, and their own bathroom. The mum was the boss of the cottage. You got the best food and good dishes. You never had to tidy up your own rooms. You got your breakfast served to you in bed on Sunday mornings!
Oh! Marjorie choked as she tried to suppress a giggle and bits of her porridge sprayed across the table. The image of her cottage mother licking her lips with delight last Sunday morning as she took a spoonful of her soft boiled egg was still fresh in her mind. Marjorie had mixed a booger into the top and she stood transfixed, wanting to see if she could tell and hoping that she could not. She reprimanded Marjorie for breaking the yolk when she cut open the top, but that was all.
“Marjorie! For goodness sakes! Do you want to go eat in the piggery? One more outburst and that is where you will find yourself!”
“Yes, mum. I’ll be good, mum.” Marjorie looked away. Maybe she didn’t want to be a cottage mum when she grew up. Sometimes the children spit on her food too — just little spits so that she couldn’t tell. Yuck. No, not a cottage mum. What if everyone hated her and messed with her food?
Morning classes started at 9:00 a.m. The dishes were returned to the cottages, washed, and put away, ready for lunch in the dining hall. Morning chores were finished by 8:45, and the dining-hall bell signalled time for school. The girls went to their lockers for their notebooks and sewing supplies before sitting down. Their sewing class would be first, then their cooking class. The girls were making their own aprons and service uniforms. Marjorie pulled out her apron. It was almost finished. She would be able to start her uniform soon.
Promotional photo of a cottage mother and her girls learning to sew. Note how young the cottage mother looks (top).
Fairbridge Farm Day School (bottom).
At 3:30 p.m. sharp the bell rang. Books were closed and children headed back to their various cottages to work on their afternoon chores.
Marjorie was on cottage dinner duty. Bunny stuck close and helped the best she could. Marjorie hated making meals in the cottage. They always had to get the key from the cottage mum for the supply cupboard. It just seemed wrong to keep everything locked up if this was supposed to be their home. Sometimes it seemed that no one trusted them.
The girls looked forward to having some free time after their dinner. Maybe a group of them would go to the gymnasium and play there. No! She recalled that tonight was movie night! Movie nights were the best nights. They had movie nights once a month in the wintertime. One of the day school teachers ordered in movies from the National Film Board.
The Attwood girls sat around their large cottage table. They had to be extra polite because the mum’s sister was visiting for the night. Mrs. Read was telling her sister that her girls were placing high for the competition between the cottages this month and if they would only try a little harder they might come in first for a change.
The girl sitting beside Marjorie let out a loud burp. A lit
tle twitter went down the line of girls.
“Marjorie, not at the table!”
“But, mum, it wasn’t me! I’m always blamed. It’s not fair.” Marjorie was indignant. She didn’t do it this time, but she usually got the blame, and she hated that.
“Enough! You mannerless little guttersnipes! Don’t you know how to behave?” Mrs. Read turned to her sister. “I have tried my best with them. They have no idea what good manners are. I think it’s a lost cause. You can take them out of the gutter …”
“But you can’t take the gutter out of them.” The sister finished the sentence and they gave each other a knowing nod.
The girls were still giggling. “Quiet, the lot of you, or you won’t be going to see the movie.” Mrs. Read’s tone left them with little doubt that she would have them in bed at six o’clock if they continued to misbehave.
It was a good evening. Marjorie was able to talk to Kenny while they put on the second reel. He seemed to be doing okay; at least that’s what he told her. She asked him what chores he had for this week, and he told her he was on barn chores. He told her that the sheep in the bottom field were having the last of their lambs. It was cold going out at night to check on them. One of the babies died, and they found it with all this slimy stuff on it. He said cleaning up the barn was okay in the winter, but last summer it was hard to be inside when it was so hot. He just could not stand it.
“Marjorie,” he whispered, “I don’t want to be a farmer. I hate seeing dead baby animals, and I hate the smell. I will never like farming. I’m just not a farmer.” Marjorie told him that she understood how he felt and they would have a hard time trying to make them into farmers. “As soon as I’m old enough, I’m getting out of here.”
“If you get outta here, will you take me with you?”
“Of course I will, and Bunny, too.”
Then he told her that one of the boys tried to run away last night. “The boy is in big trouble,” Kenny whispered, “Marjorie, I think he ran away because someone did something bad to him.”[1]
Marjorie Her War Years Page 7
