Marjorie Her War Years

by Patricia Skidmore

  “Exactly. Haven’t you gone down to the scummy pond and seen the floating piles of frog eggs? That’s probably where they get this stuff from; they just scoop it up from the pond and pull off the bits of leaves and twigs and serve it to us.”

  “Oh, they do not. Are we really eating frog eggs, Marjorie?”

  Bunny looked ready to throw up. Marjorie had a sudden idea. Maybe if she could get her to throw up, it would distract the mum and she could get rid of her pudding in the confusion.

  “Yes, silly, of course we are. People eat frog legs, too.” Marjorie grinned at her sister.

  Bunny was looking more and more green. “You’re lying to me, Marjorie.”

  “No, I’m not lying. Eggs are good for us. People eat chicken eggs and chicken legs just like frog eggs and frog legs.” Marjorie tried to keep a straight face.

  “Well, that’s different. I think you’re teasing me.” Bunny turned the other way and refused to listen to her sister anymore, and Marjorie’s hopes of using her as a distraction were dashed.

  Marjorie picked up a slimy prune on her spoon. The thought of it slipping down her throat was enough to make her gag. She played with it on her spoon, wondering how to get out of eating it. The spoons were made of thin metal, and that made them good for flinging things. She held it close to her and pulled the spoon back, aiming high. Bingo! She got it. The prune stuck up on the ceiling. The girls beside her giggled softly.

  Mrs. Read knew something had happened, but she’d missed it. She looked up and down the table. She suspected Marjorie was the culprit, but it didn’t really matter; she’d make an example of her anyway. Marjorie could get even later herself if she was accusing the wrong girl. “Marjorie! Get down here and sit beside me. Should I have you sitting beside me at every meal?”

  “No, ma’am. I didn’t do anything.” Marjorie stood up and grabbed her bowl of pudding.

  “Nonsense. You look guilty. Get down here. Okay, girls, get your dessert done without any further chatter.”

  As Marjorie placed her tin bowl beside the cottage mum, she heard something plop on the table next to theirs. She didn’t look over; she knew what it was. Her prune had become unstuck from the ceiling. As the cottage mum glanced over at the other table, Marjorie saw her chance to say good riddance to the unwanted pudding. She slid her bowl to the edge of the table and let it fall.

  “You clumsy, stupid girl! Look what you’ve done now. Get a rag and get it cleaned up. Now!” Mrs. Read continued, “It’s a good thing you have a tin bowl. We’d have no china left with guttersnipes like you breaking it at every meal.” She stood up and glared at Marjorie. Some of the frog eggs had landed on the bottom of the mum’s skirt. The girls were trying their best to finish their pudding. They found it difficult to eat and suppress their giggles, but months of practice helped.

  The children at the other tables cleared up their dishes. The girls and boys assigned from each cottage grabbed their cutlery and dishes to carry back to their own cottages. The dish duty children raced to wash up so they could get to their classes or afternoon chores. As Marjorie ran to the kitchen for a rag, she heard some of the big boys say that they would be working in the fields this afternoon. Then she heard them say that they liked it much better than sitting in a stuffy classroom. Marjorie was surprised, as she hated working in the dusty fields. She would much rather be in a classroom. Well, really, she would much rather be down at her Whitley Bay sands. Marjorie sighed; those were the best days.

  After school the children lined up at their cottage door, waiting for their mum to assign them their afternoon chores. “It’s a beautiful day, and it’s been quite dry lately, so I think we can get started on our Victory Garden. I want you all to put in a special effort this year. We have a good chance of taking the first-place ribbon this time. We were close last year, coming in second, but nevertheless, that’s the first loser. Right, girls?”

  “Right, ma’am,” they chorused back at her.

  “Okay, then you will need to pull out all the weeds and pile them away from the garden. Then you need to take your spades and forks and turn over the soil. I’ll come out and check on you shortly. Off you go now.”

  The girls ran to the basement to get their gardening tools. They only had an hour before dinnertime, so they would have to work quickly. They had started working in the big fields this past weekend. Last year the weeding in the big garden was back-breaking work. The celery was tough, too, because you had to put up boards to keep the sunlight off the stalks, and the boards didn’t stay up easily. But picking up potatoes after the potato digger was the hardest work. You got dust in your mouth and in your nose and in your clothes. The girls didn’t have to do as much fieldwork as the boys, but still they did enough, and it was not easy. There were fifty-three tons of potatoes dug up last year, and they were all stored away in the root cellar. That was quite a mountain of “taties.” She shuddered to imagine having to peel them all.[3]

  Kenny once told her that the boys stole potatoes and snuck away to cook them in their forts in the nearby woods. They made a small fire and made sure that it wasn’t too smoky, just in case someone looked up there and saw them. They didn’t want any unexpected visitors. He said that the potatoes tasted best when cooked outside. “And anyway, we’re not really stealing, are we, Marjorie? We plant the taties and hoe them and weed them and pick them. It’s kinda like they’re ours, right?” Kenny looked at her with that worried look of his. She assured him that it wasn’t really stealing, not the kind of stealing that sent you to hell. Kenny looked relieved. “Well, I gotta go now. Bye, Marjorie.”

  She had watched her brother run down the boys’ path. He might be small, but he’s fast, Marjorie thought as she stood on the girls’ path, watching him disappear. The best chance she had of speaking to Kenny was by the communal area in front of the dining hall before the pathways went in separate directions. She would never understand why they weren’t allowed to move freely about the farm. These Fairbridge people didn’t seem to trust them at all. They watched the kids like hawks. Sometimes it seemed to Marjorie that she was yelled at before she even did anything wrong. It was like they expected her to make mistakes.

  As Marjorie tried to dig her spade into the ground, she realized that it wasn’t going to be that easy. Weeds had grown into a solid mass. “Oh, this is impossible,” she complained.

  “Use your fork; it’ll be easier.” One of the big girls showed her. Soon the group had a large section of the garden dug up.

  “Look at the size of this worm.” Marjorie held it up so they could all see it.

  “Yuck! Get it away from me!” one of the girls screamed at Marjorie, giving her all the encouragement she needed. She flung it over, and the worm landed on the girl’s head.

  “Marjorie!” Mrs. Read yelled. “Why do you have to do things like that?”

  The girl ran toward the mum. “She threw a worm at me on purpose,” she wailed.

  “I saw everything. You’ll do extra chores, Marjorie!” The mum brushed the dirt off the girl’s hair and led her inside.

  Marjorie had not seen the mum come out. She would never have dared to throw anything, let alone a worm, at one of the mum’s favourites if she knew the mum was watching. She hated that she wasn’t one of her favourites. She missed her own mum — she could always run to her for comfort, and now she had no one. They had even taken away her big sister, who always looked out for her. She wondered what Joyce was doing right now. She would do anything to be with her.

  That evening, after her extra chores were finished, Marjorie didn’t join the rest; instead she stayed downstairs and curled up in a corner of the playroom. She wanted to think. The rest of the girls were listening to the radio with the cottage mum. They had all worked hard in the garden after dinner. Their garden was looking very smart. She hoped they would get first place this year; it would make their cottage mum happy, and when she was happy she was nicer to ev
eryone.

  Marjorie rarely had a chance to be alone, and she needed to be alone to think about her family. They were dim in her memory, more shadows than real people. It seemed like the more memories she had of Fairbridge, the fewer she could remember of Whitley Bay and her family. She missed Joyce the most and still thought of her almost every day. She looked at her picture every night before she went to bed, at least on the nights that she remembered. She wondered if Joyce was still at Middlemore or if they had sent her home or maybe to some other place. Did she still work in the kitchen? Did her mum ever go to see her?

  As soon as she thought of her mum, she knew the sadness wouldn’t be far behind. She blinked really quickly, trying to scare away the tears. She pretended to write a letter.

  My dear Mum,

  Oh, Mum, why did you send us away? Did you know Canada would be like this? It’s so far away, and it’s all trees, trees, and more trees. We’re way out in the middle of a big forest. I’ve only seen the beach a couple of times when we walked for half a day. I miss Whitley Bay and the sands and the smell of the ocean. I’ll never get used to the smell of a farm. I don’t see Kenny very often, and when I do, he has horrible stories to tell me. If you could have seen the welts on his legs last month, you would not send us here. It was days before they got better. He ran a race last month. He came in first for his age group, the twelve-and-under boys. He’s learning to run here because he has to be fast as he’s too little to stand up and fight.

  Mum, sometimes I think it’s not so bad, really, but only because I’ve forgotten what you look like. I don’t remember Lawrence and Jean, either, although I remembered that Lawrence’s birthday is on Valentine’s Day, but I don’t know how old he is. I try to be brave about being here and say nice things about the school because I will get into trouble if I don’t, but I hate it here and I will always hate it here. Nobody cares about us. I don’t think anybody really likes us. Our cottage mum — I hate calling her our mum; she’s not my mum! You are my mum! Our cottage mum doesn’t like me very much. She treats the pretty girls better than the rest of us. They get the treats, and then they march around saying they are better than us, and we can’t do anything about it because we will just get into trouble, and you don’t want to get into trouble here as it simply makes your life horrid. And the mum gets the best plates and the best food. She treats us as if we are her slaves. We have to do everything she says, and when it’s not fair she doesn’t even care, and she even seems happier at those times. We have no one to talk to about our problems. No one listens to us. We just don’t matter to anyone here.

  I hate that you asked us to look after the little ones. Or at least you asked Joyce, and I guess I had to take over because Joyce isn’t here. It’s really, really hard. I’m doing pretty good with Audrey, but I can’t look after Kenny. It’s too hard. If the big boys find out, they just beat him up more. I try, but I mostly don’t even get to see him. Sometimes we can talk, but just a little bit. Sometimes I think he is really sad. Oh, Mum, there is so much that is not good here. Some of the men try to get the girls into their rooms, and we try not to let that happen by never going anywhere alone, but sometimes the new girls don’t understand that you cannot trust everyone. Afterward, I hear crying at night and we cannot do a thing. We have our suspicions, but no one will really talk about it. I wish you could come and get us. I don’t feel safe here, and I’m forgetting things about you because too much time is coming in between us, and I can’t see you or Whitley Bay in my mind very good anymore. Goodbye. Do you still love me?

  Love from your daughter, Marjorie

  Marjorie sniffed back a tear and curled up tightly in the corner. She was convinced that if she were able to talk to her mum, and if she could tell her what this place was really like, she would rescue her and Bunny and Kenny. She remembered the first letter she wrote to her mum shortly after she arrived at Fairbridge. She tried to tell her mum how she was feeling and asked her to get her out of there. She felt so much better about writing down her feelings. Her mum would understand. She knew she would. She would help her. But the cottage mother tore up her letter. It was hopeless.

  That was the last real letter Marjorie wrote. She wrote other letters, saying, “How are you? I am fine,” but she never dared to put her feelings down on paper. Instead, she wrote her real letters in her head. That way she could say exactly what she wanted and not get punished.

  The girls found Marjorie snuggled up in the corner when they came down to wash up and brush their teeth before bed.

  “Marjorie.” Bunny gently shook her sister. “Wake up. It’s time to brush our teeth.”

  Marjorie woke with a start. She wasn’t sure where she was at first. She stretched and stood up. She was feeling stiff. “Hi, Bunny. I guess I fell asleep down here.”

  Marjorie smiled at her sister. She had been having a nice dream about her family. Her mum, Phyllis, Joyce, Jean, and even little Lawrence had come to Fairbridge to take them home. Her mum told her that Fred and Norman were at home waiting for them. She was happy to see her family. The nice feeling stayed with her even after she woke up. As Marjorie brushed her teeth, she realized that it was getting harder to remember her family, especially the little ones, but she had to keep trying. She didn’t know what she would do if they were totally gone from her memory. She needed to cling to the few memories she had left.

  A Partial Eclipse

  A partial eclipse of my mind.

  I’ve hidden the hard thoughts.

  A partial eclipse of my heart.

  I’ve buried the hard feelings.

  A partial eclipse of my soul.

  A part of me is buried and gone.

  I am no longer complete.

  I am a shadow of my former self.

  Chapter 7

  Little Farmers

  The Society must understand that we are not taking either defective or border line children. Much has been said about the large number of splendid children available in the Mother Country. The whole approach to the Department for the acceptance of the Fairbridge Farm School here was based on the claim that only first class children would be sent.

  — Frederick Charles Blair, Canadian Department of Immigration, August 10, 1935

  Marjorie did not understand why they had to move from their cottage. She had been in Attwood Cottage ever since she got to the farm school. She had not realized just how much she had come to think of that cottage as home. She did not like being in Pennant Cottage.

  The cottage mum said that because of the war they had to economize. The farm school had to do their bit for the war effort, so they needed to shut down some of the cottages to save money. Because of the war, they were not sending over many children, but the children who had reached sixteen years of age were still leaving to go into service in homes and farms, and that was leaving empty beds with no one to fill them. But why couldn’t they shut down someone else’s cottage? Why did they have to shut down her cottage? It was not fair!

  The very worst part of the move was their new cottage mother. Marjorie had heard all about her from Kenny. He hated her. And it didn’t take Marjorie long to understand why. Their new mum seemed to hate everyone more than their old one did. The girls called her D. Bitch behind her back, and she was a bitch through and through. She was a hundred times worse than their other mum.

  It took a lot of energy for the girls to keep out of her way. Marjorie’s nightmares returned. Bunny cried at night again. And the cottage bed­wetter, Miss Pissy Pants — that is what their new mum called her — started peeing her bed again. The little girl had not had any accidents for ages, but she started again almost as soon as they moved to Pennant Cottage.

  Their mum was not going to put up with any of it. Marjorie was slapped for waking everyone up with her shrieks, and Bunny quickly learned to stuff her scratchy grey blanket in her mouth to hide her sobs to avoid punishment. But the bedwetter suffered the most. “Oh,
no! I won’t have a bedwetter in my cottage!” Miss Bishop shrieked. “No way, young lady. Get those knickers on your head and clean up this mess.”

  When it kept happening, the mum’s fits grew wilder, and she yelled and screamed out her threats to the poor girl. One morning, after being dragged from her bed, the girl stood shaking in her wet pajamas and peed again, all over the floor. The mum’s rage escalated. It was the worst fit yet! Her speckled red face looked ready to explode. Ever since that morning the mum would sneak into the dorm just before the bell to check if there was a puddle under the girl’s bed. The girls tried to get up earlier to help her get rid of the evidence, but the mum just kept getting up earlier than they did.

  One morning the mum snuck in while it was still dark. Her footsteps creaked on the floorboards and woke Marjorie. She watched Miss Bishop tiptoe into the room. She held a flashlight in her hand, but she held it low so it wouldn’t wake the girls. She shone the light under the bed, and when she saw a puddle, Marjorie heard her suck in her breath. She pulled the girl right out of her cot. Marjorie bolted up. What was she going to do? The commotion woke everyone up. The little girl stood there as if she was in the middle of a nightmare. Her eyes looked wild, like she had seen the Devil. The mum tossed the wet bedding on the floor, and then she pulled up the soggy mattress and strapped it to the girl’s back!

  “There. Maybe that will teach you!” Miss Bishop shrieked.

  The bedwetter didn’t say anything. She just stood there. The mum made her put her pissy knickers on her head and carry her pissy mattress on her back all morning. Luckily, the mattress was thin, so it was not too heavy, but it was awful for the other girls to watch her. Finally, the mum said, “Take it off and put it outside where it can air all day.”

  Tears streamed down her face, but she made no sound as she walked to the back door. The girls had to watch so they could all learn a lesson. As she walked down the stairs, the mum started the chant and the girls knew to follow; they had no choice. “Pissy pants, piss pot, wet your bed, pissy knickers on your head.”