The Throwaway Children

by Diney Costeloe

  ‘Come along, you two,’ chided Miss Carson, ‘get writing. You haven’t got all day.’

  ‘Don’t know what to put, miss,’ grumbled Daisy. ‘We only just got here.’

  ‘Then write about how you came,’ suggested Miss Carson. ‘I don’t really mind what you write about, as long as you write something for me to read.’ That made things easier, and Rita wrote about the ship and the journey out from England. Having recorded most of it in her journal already, the words began to flow and she was still writing when the bell rang for the dinner break, and she had to hand the work in.

  The girls were all collected into the hall where tables and benches had been set up, and there they sat, eating their sandwiches. Some of the local children went home for their midday meal, but there were one or two from outlying farms who joined the Laurel Farm girls. One of them was a boy from their class called Patrick, a large freckle-faced boy with flaming red hair that stood up in an untidy tuft on the back of his head. When he’d entered the classroom, Daisy recognized him at once from the earlier football game. Now, she went over and sat down next to him.

  ‘Hallo,’ she said. ‘I’m Daisy. Can I come and play football with you afterwards?’

  Patrick looked at her with undisguised astonishment. ‘Football’s for boys,’ he said at last.

  ‘I can play,’ Daisy said, although she’d never kicked a football in her life. ‘I’m good at football.’

  ‘Well, you ain’t playing with us,’ Patrick said decidedly, ‘we don’t play with girls and we don’t play with “homies”.’

  ‘I ain’t a “homie”,’ Daisy told him hotly, not at all sure what he meant, but knowing it wasn’t complimentary.

  ‘Course you are,’ he returned. ‘All you lot from Laurel Farm’s “homies”. Wouldn’t be in a home otherwise, would you? Stands to reason!’

  ‘I ain’t a “homie”,’ repeated Daisy. ‘I just live there for now.’

  ‘’Spect you’ll live there forever,’ Patrick said. ‘My ma says you wasn’t wanted in England and you ain’t wanted here, neither.’ He turned his back on her and as soon as he’d wolfed down his sandwiches, he ran outside, leaving Daisy sitting by herself.

  Rita went over and sat down beside her. ‘Told you,’ she said.

  ‘Can’t even pretend we don’t come from Laurel Farm, can we,’ Daisy said bitterly, ‘not when we’re all dressed like this.’ She held out the skirt of her dress, looking down at its dull grey checks in disgust.

  ‘Never mind, Dais, Miss Carson said it’s PT this afternoon,’ Rita reminded her. ‘You’re good at that. Let’s go and play tag in the yard, now. Come on!’

  Rita was right, the first lesson that afternoon was PT, the only lesson for which Daisy showed any enthusiasm. Miss Carson led them out into the yard where she had placed bean-bags to mark a makeshift race track. Two children, Daniel and Frances, were appointed team captains and told to pick up teams. At first Daniel simply chose boys, and Frances, girls, but there were more girls than boys in the class, so in the end Daniel had to select a girl. He looked across at the four girls left, the three new girls and Carol. Patrick, already chosen, nudged him and pointed out Daisy. He shrugged; it clearly didn’t matter to him which girl, they were all equally useless at running. He pointed a finger at Daisy.

  ‘Her,’ he said, and Daisy went across and stood with the boys’ team. Rita was chosen by Frances, Joan went to Daniel, and Carol, flushed with mortification at being chosen last, to Frances.

  ‘We’ll have a relay first,’ Miss Carson told them. ‘When I blow my whistle it’s twice round the circuit,’ she indicated the bean-bags, ‘and then touch the next one to go.’

  The children lined up ready, and when the whistle went the first pair raced off round the makeshift track, encouraged by shrieks from their teammates. As the race progressed it was clear that it was going to be a close finish, the girls’ team in the lead. Then it was Daisy’s turn, the last to go for Daniel’s team. She was off like a hare, her feet pounding the yard as she chased after Carol, lumbering along half a lap ahead of her.

  ‘Go on, Daisy!’ screamed Joan, the only one in her team who knew her name. Immediately the boys joined in, and soon the whole team was bellowing, ‘Go on Daisy!’ as she overtook the stumbling Carol and hurtled over the finishing line, several yards ahead. Daniel’s team cheered, delighted with their victory. Daisy, flushed with success, grinned round at her team-mates, but none of the boys spoke to her.

  Joan went over and clapped her on the back. ‘Well done, Dais. You won.’

  Carol, red-faced and hot, glowered at her as she finally crossed the finishing line.

  ‘Why do we always get Carol?’ one of the other girls was heard to ask. Miss Carson looked across to see who had spoken, but couldn’t tell.

  ‘Remind me next time that Carol will be a team captain,’ was all she said, and Carol gave her grumbling team a look of triumph. Next time she’d be doing the choosing.

  There were several more races before they went back inside for the last lesson of the afternoon, and Daisy ran flat out in all of them, never flagging, so that Daniel’s team won every one. The boys all cheered for her as she was running, but once the race was over they ignored her.

  ‘You was great!’ Rita enthused as they went back inside. ‘You was faster than anyone else, even them boys.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Daisy glumly, ‘but they still don’t want me.’

  At the end of the afternoon, all the Laurel Farm girls lined up together for the walk home. Miss Carson had set them some spellings to learn for homework, but Daisy was more worried about the tables she had to master before the next Monday.

  ‘Which ones do you know?’ asked Rita as they waited for some of the older girls to appear.

  Daisy looked uncertain. ‘Twice times?’ she offered.

  ‘Say it then.’

  ‘What, now?’

  ‘Yes, now,’ insisted Rita. ‘Come on, I can’t help you if you don’t try.’

  Daisy shrugged and began to chant, ‘Twice one is two, twice two is four…’ She got to the end without a mistake, and Rita punched her cheerfully on the arm.

  ‘Well, that’s one you don’t have to learn,’ she said. ‘Now the three times.’ Daisy managed to get through it, and all the way home they chanted the fours, in time with their marching feet.

  ‘If we do that each way, every day, you’ll soon learn them,’ Rita told her as they came in through the gate.

  Tea was the main meal of the day, and Mrs Watson was in the kitchen to supervise the preparation. She made sure that the vegetables brought in from the garden were properly washed and peeled, and though the mince for the cottage pie was extremely fatty, it was the best she could get, and properly cooked. After tea she set them all to do their homework, and when Rita had learned her spellings, Mrs Watson tested her.

  ‘The Watchdog’s OK,’ Daisy said, as they lay in bed, warm under two blankets. ‘We’ll be all right here in Larch.’

  ‘Hmm,’ agreed Rita, smiling at the nickname Daisy had given Mrs Watson earlier in the day. It was a good one, she thought. Mrs Watson had certainly watched over them. She just wished Rosie was here for her to watch over too.

  26

  After the first week at school, the days began to run into each other. There was a sameness about each day which made for extremely humdrum living. The routine was unchanging, and despite the severity of the regime, everyone knew what was expected of her, both at Laurel Farm and at school.

  In Larch, Mrs Watson didn’t mind how they passed their short leisure hour at the end of the day. Most of them sat around and chatted, or played the games that Mrs Watson had scrounged from somewhere. Rita used the time to read, and it wasn’t long before she had devoured the few books on the living room shelf. Every evening she sat up in bed and wrote her journal. She enjoyed recording the events of each day. She wrote about school and things that had happened at Laurel Farm, but she also wrote about the people around her, the other girls an
d the staff. And she wrote about Rosie, letting her sadness seep onto the page and ease the ache of her loss. Sometimes she wrote stories. She often thought of Paul Dawson, from the ship, and wondered if he was still writing stories as well. He had finally let her read some of his before they reached Sydney, and she’d thought they were very exciting.

  Now that she didn’t have to hide what she was doing, she tried her hand at similar stories. Rita thought they weren’t as good as Paul’s, but she enjoyed writing them, letting her imagination roam across the remembered places of home and the new and unfamiliar landscape that surrounded her now. Her stories were a means of escape from the gritty, grey days that made up her life, and she was never happier than chewing the end of her pencil trying to find the exact word she needed.

  Rita had settled into school particularly well. She enjoyed the work, and though she was nothing like as keen as Daisy on the physical exercise, she was happy enough to join in the PT classes with everyone else. Miss Carson had quickly spotted that Rita was an intelligent child, with an enquiring mind; it delighted her, and she set out to foster that intelligence. Rita, Miss Carson saw, enjoyed learning for the sake of it, and it wasn’t long before she was encouraging her to borrow books from the school bookshelf. She also noticed that Rita wrote well. From the first day, when she’d written about her journey out from England, Miss Carson had realized that this child had a creative talent which should be nurtured, and she encouraged her to continue recording her thoughts and ideas.

  Mrs Watson had spotted Rita’s potential as well, though she never singled her out for any special attention. Rita might be bright, but she was treated the same as everyone else. She knew Rita missed her sister, but there was nothing Mrs Watson could do about that; Rosie’s adoption was something else that Rita must accept and get used to.

  One evening a few weeks after Rita and Daisy had moved into Larch, it was Rita’s turn to do the ironing and she was warming the iron when Mrs Watson came in and said, ‘Ah, Rita. I’ve some ironing to be done as well. Please come and fetch it now.’

  Rita didn’t look very pleased. She thought there was enough in the basket already, but she obediently set the iron aside and followed the house-mother. There was, she knew, never any point in arguing with the Watchdog.

  When they reached Mrs Watson’s quarters, Rita followed her inside, and was surprised when she closed the door behind them.

  ‘I’ve got something for you, Rita,’ she said, ‘but I’d rather the others didn’t see it.’ She fixed Rita with a firm gaze. ‘Can I rely on you for that?’

  Rita, who had no idea what she was going to be given, nodded. ‘Yes, Mrs Watson.’

  ‘Not even Daisy?’

  Rita hesitated. She and Daisy had become inseparable. They had been close friends before, but since Daisy had rescued Rita from the cellar, and Rosie had been taken, Rita had shared everything with Daisy, and to Daisy it seemed that at last she had the sister she’d always wanted.

  ‘I’m sorry, Rita,’ said Mrs Watson, ‘but I must insist. If I give you this, you mustn’t show it to Daisy, all right?’

  ‘All right,’ Rita said, but she crossed her fingers behind her back.

  ‘Well, I’m going to trust you,’ said the house-mother. ‘Here you are then,’ and she handed Rita an envelope.

  The letter had arrived that morning. Mrs Watson had been on her way into Carrabunna to buy some notepaper and stamps, and as she walked to the gate, Mrs Manton had shouted after her, asking her to collect the mail. When she got to the post office, she bought her own stamps and then asked if there was any post for Laurel Farm. Miss Drew, sitting as always behind the counter, swivelled round on her chair and reached into the Laurel Farm pigeon hole.

  ‘Here you are,’ she said. ‘Not much, but there is one from England addressed to two of the kiddies. They’ll like getting that, won’t they?’

  ‘I’m sure they will,’ agreed Mrs Watson, even as she doubted they’d ever see it. She thanked Miss Drew and took the small bundle of letters. Glancing through them she found that all but one were addressed to Mrs Manton, most looking like bills. Only one was for anyone else, and that was addressed to Miss Rita and Rosie Stevens. Mrs Watson stared at the envelope for a moment before tucking it into her bag with the rest of the post.

  She finished her errands and then walked slowly back up the lane to Laurel Farm, thinking hard. A letter for Rita… and Rosie. Too late for Rosie, but Rita? Who would have sent it, and how did they have the Carrabunna address? She knew that it was never given out. It was one of Miss Vanstone’s strictest prohibitions. Once a child had been taken in by the EVER-Care Trust, she lost all contact with anyone from her previous life; all ties cut, no further contact with friends or extended family. It was one of the things that Delia Watson most disliked about EVER-Care. To her it indicated a lack of humanity. She knew that many of the children in their care were, perhaps, better off at Laurel Farm, but she felt that cutting them off from everything known and familiar was cruel, leaving them with no roots or sense of identity. But, now, here was this letter for Rita.

  It’s got the right address on it, she thought, so Miss Vanstone must have allowed it to be sent. She took it out of her bag again and leaning on a field gate, scrutinized it once more. The names, Miss Rita and Rosie Stevens, were written in a neat hand, but the address underneath was an untidy scrawl, obviously written by someone different. It had a line of stamps all along the top, the postmark that cancelled them was London, and the date, over six weeks ago.

  Mrs Watson had a lot of time for Rita. She knew her to be a courageous little girl, who had braved all that her short life had thrown at her. She thought of what Rita had told her about her family; that her mother had remarried, a baby brother, something about a grandmother? So, who could have written? The address was certainly written in an uneducated hand. Could it be the mother’s? If so, surely the child had a right to read what her mother had written.

  What am I going to do? she wondered. But in her heart she already knew. ‘The address is right,’ she spoke aloud, trying to convince herself, ‘so it must have been given to the person who wrote the letter, and the only one who could have done that was Emily Vanstone. In which case, I can give it to Rita.’

  If she gave the letter to Mrs Manton, she would insist on opening the letter first and might not pass it on. Rita might never know someone in England had written to her.

  But, if I give it to Rita directly, Mrs Watson thought, and don’t mention it to anyone else, there’s no reason why Mrs Manton should ever know. Her decision made, Delia Watson put the letter back into her handbag, but in a different compartment from the rest of the post.

  Her chance to give the letter privately to Rita came that very evening. She knew a moment’s hesitation, as the girl waited expectantly. Was this a mistake? But looking at Rita’s eager face, she stuck to her earlier decision and reaching into her bag, passed the letter across.

  Rita took it, staring at it in surprise. ‘Who’s it from?’ she asked.

  ‘How should I know?’ asked Mrs Watson briskly. ‘I haven’t opened it. It’s your letter.’

  Rita tore the envelope and extracted the letter. She took one look at the signature and gave a little cry.

  ‘Well?’ Mrs Watson couldn’t contain her curiosity.

  ‘It’s from my gran,’ whispered Rita, holding it out for the house-mother to see. Mrs Watson did not take it, but she could see that the letter was written in the same neat hand that had written Rita’s name on the envelope.

  ‘Well, you’d better read it then.’ Mrs Watson spoke more gently this time, and turned away, so that Rita could do so unobserved.

  ‘She thinks we’ve been adopted, me and Rosie,’ Rita said quietly when she’d read the letter. ‘She thinks we’re together somewhere, but she don’t know we’ve gone here.’ She passed the letter over. ‘You read it,’ she said.

  Mrs Watson glanced through the short note. Rita’s quite right, she thought as she read it again. This
grandmother has no idea they’ve been sent to Australia.

  Mrs Watson felt a wave of relief; at least now she knew that Miss Vanstone had indeed sanctioned the letter. She handed it back and said, ‘Did you know your grandmother had been in hospital?’

  Rita looked up. ‘Yes, she got run over and they took her down the General. We was living with her then, but when she was hurt, Auntie Carrie, next door, looked after us till Mum come home from her honeymoon.’

  ‘I see,’ responded Mrs Watson quietly. She waited for Rita to go on.

  ‘And when Mum come home, she was took to hospital to fetch the baby, so we was took to Laurel House.’

  ‘It looks as if your grandmother hasn’t been told you’re here,’ Mrs Watson said carefully.

  ‘No, she ain’t,’ snapped Rita. ‘She’s been told a lie. She’s been told we’re adopted, me and Rosie. She thinks we’re together, and,’ her voice broke on a sob, ‘she’s told me to look after Rosie, and I can’t!’

  The look of total misery on the child’s face pierced Mrs Watson’s own carefully preserved carapace, and for the first time since she had laid her son in his coffin she pulled a child into her arms and held her close.

  For a moment Rita stiffened, about to push her away, and then she relaxed and allowed herself to be held.

  After a moment Mrs Watson released her and sitting down on a chair, waved Rita to another. ‘Sit down, Rita,’ she said. ‘We’ll have to have a think about what we’re going to do next.’

  Rita sat, still clutching Gran’s letter in her hand, and looked bleakly across at her house-mother. ‘She don’t know where we are,’ she said flatly.

  ‘You could write and tell her,’ suggested Mrs Watson. ‘How about that, Rita?’