Out of the Silence

by Wendy James

  The infant’s clothes and napkins are supplied. Mothers are given fabric for their own clothing, as required. Mothers are not given any allowance, but small amounts of money will be supplied when necessary. Each girl is allowed one free day each month and on that day no work is to be done. Permission may be granted for outings on these days. On no account are any visitors to be allowed on the premises without specific authorisation from Mrs Cameron herself.

  I quickly read through the blue pamphlet:

  Mrs Cameron’s Guide to the Care of Infants from Birth to Twelve Weeks of Age

  Feeding

  From birth to six weeks feeding should be every two hours. The first feed of the day will be at 6 a.m. and every two hours thereafter. Feedings are not to exceed twenty minutes – this may be from either one breast or both. Babies who are asleep must be woken for feeding.

  After the sixth week babies will be fed at three-hourly intervals.

  Mothers’ nipples are to be washed after each feed with a solution of warm soapy water and then carefully dried.

  After the sixth week there are to be no feeds between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m.; infants who cannot be comforted during this time without resort to the breast should be taken to the night nursery.

  If the infant frequently regurgitates milk – a problem most likely caused by excess fat in the milk causing indigestion – the intervals between feeds should be lengthened, and barley water given ten minutes before each feed. The mother should eat less solid food and avoid meat where possible until digestion settles.

  NB The mother’s emotional state may have some effect on the milk – uncontrolled emotions such as grief, excitement, fear, passion, worry or fatigue may cause the milk to disagree with an infant or even cause acute illness – such emotions should be avoided.

  Sleeping

  Infants at this age require twenty hours of sleep per day – this must be regular – in order to encourage good habits of behaviour.

  No rocking or nursing to sleep – babies are to be wrapped (see diagram below for swaddling methods) and left.

  On no account is the babe to sleep in with the mother, this is an all-too-frequent cause of infant death.

  Dress and Hygiene

  Bedrooms are to be aired for at least six hours daily in summer and four in winter.

  Nappies are on no account to be reused without washing (even when only wet).

  Babies to be bathed daily, after 10 a.m. feed.

  Infants’ lips and mouth to be cleaned with absorbent cotton after each feed.

  Infants are to wear a flannel singlet at all times, summer and winter.

  Abdominal band to protect organs to be worn up to six months by all babes; until first birthday if infant is frail and abdominal wall thin.

  Exercise and Discipline

  From birth babies require between 15–30 minutes of screaming each day to exercise and develop the lungs.

  After the sixth week regular training of bowels shall commence. Babies are to be held out twice daily, after 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. feeds. It may be necessary to tickle the child’s anus, or insert a small piece of soap, in order to expedite matters.

  From the second month all babies require 15–20 minutes of free kicking. Napkins are to be removed and babies laid on mat provided.

  Babies under six months should not be stimulated or played with.

  Babies should not be kissed – germs from saliva may be responsible for the communication of diseases such as tuberculosis and diphtheria.

  Mrs Cameron was right – I cannot see the sense in all these rules. I’m not convinced that following them will do anything but make life more difficult than it should be. Even the nurses at the Women’s, who were very strict in their ways, did not have any set rules when it came to the babies, only that they were to be fed and cleaned and kept as quiet as possible. Their advice as to feeding was always sensible and took into account your particular situation. Every two hours! My Jacky sometimes goes four or five hours without a feed, and at other times he cannot get through a single hour. As to sleeping, I was forever bringing him into bed with me at the hospital and no one there seemed to see anything wrong, it being the quickest and easiest way to settle him. And though the promise of a full night’s sleep is already appealing, I don’t fancy leaving my Jacky to cry it out for hours, in the charge of some unlucky girl (who I can imagine would be hard pressed not to put a pillow over the face of any baby who decided to wail the entire night). I have never met a child under eighteen months who was out of nappies, and the thought of bowel training at two months would make me laugh, if only it was a joke. I imagine that this is a lot of nasty work for no real reward.

  I can only guess that these ways of rearing babies must have some benefit when it comes to the running of the household here, but I cannot for the life of me imagine what this might be.

  I look about me at the small space that is to be mine and Jack’s for the next twelve months. It is clean and not uncomfortable, but it is only a few feet wide, the walls are makeshift and thin, and I know I will be able to hear all the moaning and snoring and bawling that goes on on the other side of the partition. I think of the long dull days ahead of me – the laundry, which of all housework I most despise, and the company, which from what I’ve seen and heard so far is not likely to be all that agreeable.

  I think of the letter to Ma that I still have in my port and wonder whether Mrs Ralph is perhaps right and the best thing for me to do would be to confess to Ma what has happened and see how she takes it. And then there is Harry’s offer: why am I in such a place when a good solid man is offering me his name and a return to respectability? But, though I know that I am in some ways crazy, I cannot think of marrying Harry.

  After Jack, no Harry will ever make me content.

  I am sorting the clothes from some girls’ boarding school ready for washing – undoing buttons and emptying pockets – when I discover a little note screwed up into a ball in the pocket of a pinafore. It is the type of secret note that girls like to pass to their friends in the middle of lessons, the same kind of note I once desperately wished to receive and did not. ‘Sarah Prosser,’ it says, ‘You say you are my frend then why do you ingore me and always tolk insted to Kate Cosby signed your dearest friend forever signed Elinor Ruth Fawcett.’ The way it is so prettily decorated all round with love hearts and forget-me-nots makes me smile, so instead of dropping it into the garbage pail as I should, I fold it up and put it in my own pocket. And it is then I recall that I have a letter – one that Mrs Ralph had given me on her last visit to the hospital – that I have forgotten to read.

  At the first opportunity, which, being as we are no better than slaves in this place is not until after ten at night, I find my unread letter at the bottom of my port and am eager to read it before the baby is awake again. My Jacky, I have no doubt, would be content to suckle whether I chose to read or knit or sew, or even dance about the room for that matter – he being a real little leech – but any such activity is frowned on by Madam C., who insists that we must not be otherwise occupied during nursing, or baby will not take sufficient nutrition and, moreover, says she, we must not be setting such a bad example for the development of the infants’ own concentrative powers.

  The letter is from Doll. It is very long, eight pages front and back, and would probably seem dull if I did not believe it to be the final news of my family owing to the fact that I am never likely to see them again, as there is no escaping the fact that they will have to be told soon and I will no doubt be cast from their bosom for eternity. And as usual with Doll’s letters, it is not only dull, but annoying: her writing is so terrible – big and untidy with dramatic swirls, the ink all smudged and smeared – it is difficult to make out the words. Her spelling is awful, too, which is noticeable even to me who has never been known as a champion speller. Mostly she writes about day-to-day happenings: ‘Tom has been in big trouble with Ma and Dad (of course mainly Ma) he took out our buggy on Sunday while they was at Church and did
not ask permison and to make matters worst Nutmeg cast a shoe and he did not notise and kept walking her and now she will likely be lame, and to make bad matters even worst he was out trying to impress Laura Kennedy who Ma thinks is no better than she ought to be, though I think she is a good enough sort of girl a bit of fun anyway which as you no is sorley needed here.’

  And: ‘I went into town Teusday with Dad and their was a sale on at Jack and sons and I bouht six yards of fancy ivory lace for my glory bx. also 6 yards grey satin strip for a skirt for good that I now you would want if you could only see it and only 10s the lot. Even Ma thouht it was a real bargain, though she is not sure that the satin is really top quality.’

  And: ‘Sunday night we had roast mutton and then the next it was mutton hash and tonight mutton friters so you see sister dear the food here is the same as always I hope your meals is a bit more exiting at Heanys anyway.’

  It is really a letter full of nothing – so much like Doll’s conversation that I am surprised to find myself enjoying it, perhaps because I have not had to put up with her chattering for the past months – and I read it without expectations of discovering anything of uncommon interest or importance. So I am brought up short when I read: ‘I suppose you will be VERY interested to know that I have heard that a Certian Person (of the male persuisan) has recently gone to Melbourne and (I have had to work hard to find this infomation for you so I hope you are greatful) this Certian Person is staying at Brooks Gesthouse in Preston. I am not sure how he comes to be in Melbourne as it is all a bit hush hush whenever his name is mentioned and I cannot find this out.’

  Brooks Guesthouse! It is only a few blocks away from Ralph’s, and I have walked past it countless times in the past few months. The first thought that comes into my head is that Brooks is not the sort of place I can imagine Jack choosing to stay: it is a very quiet, well-kept establishment where families from the country often stay, and not a place to attract a knockabout lad like my Jack Hardy. But it does not take me more than a moment to come to the obvious conclusion. It’s clear that Jack must have finally got my letters – that he’d found out where I was working; that he’d chosen that particular place to get nearby me, but that something dreadful must have happened. Doll’s letter is dated more than a fortnight ago, after all – something dreadful must have occurred to stop him contacting me.

  Then I recall that terrible accident on Burns Street a week or two ago – a bolting horse dragged a man for over two blocks before anyone managed to stop the horse, and he broke both his legs and some ribs – and immediately I am convinced that this poor fellow (wasn’t he from the country, didn’t I hear that from someone?) is my Jack, come to save me, but prevented from doing so by calamitous bad luck. I am so certain that this is the case that I am ready to rush out then and there. It is only when the baby wails for a feed that I come to my senses and remember that I am not a free woman now; that I cannot just rush off on a whim in the middle of the night, but I must wait for the morning and daylight.

  It is the longest night ever, without me experiencing, I’m certain, a single wink of sleep. Oh, the babe is good enough: he wakes often, but he is a placid little thing – as long as his stomach is full he’s easy enough to keep quiet, not like some of the brats here who are squalling half the night and their mothers cursing and moaning without any consideration for anyone else. But they are straw mattresses that they give us to sleep on, which I’m not used to, and with the most scratchy of sheets, and it’s a dreadful hot night and Matron will not have a window open at night on account of the babies. None of this would really be enough to keep me awake – but the thought of tomorrow keeps me from sleeping and I suffer all the night from what my mother would call a feverish mind.

  There is the relief in having some reason to leave this place, which after only five days I am so thoroughly fed up with – there is not one moment of idleness here, of time that is not accounted for. Every waking moment there is some rule or other to be following, some place we should be, something we should be doing. If it’s not laundry work, it’s classes or prayers. Most of the girls here are utterly miserable, and their babies too – we are stopped from feeding them when they need feeding much of the time, and forced to feed them when they would rather be sleeping, and then half of the day they are left with just one or two of the girls to act as nurses. It is not so bad for me – my Jacky is an easy, sleepy chap – but some of the other poor babes certainly enjoy more than their allotted half hour of crying. Already I am wondering how I will last a full year, which despite what Mrs Cameron has said to the contrary, is no doubt designed to be a year of punishment, as sure as if we had been sent to prison.

  And, of course, my head is full of my darling Jack. I cannot stop myself from conjuring up the day ahead: imagining how our meeting will go (my eyes fill with tears whenever I think of him laid out on a hospital bed, smiling with relief through the plaster and bandages) and the anticipation of introducing our baby boy to him: ‘This is your son. Look, he has your fingers; this dimple in his chin is yours, and the rosy cheeks, and see how he gazes out at me with your very own eyes – see Jack, see what we have made,’ and how he will explain to me how it is that he has not been able to reply to my letters, how indeed he did not receive them until it was too late, but that he rushed here straightaway he got them and found where I was – and how could I ever have believed the gossip? That he was only doing his best, trying to get enough money set aside so we could make a good start, he and I … But it looks like I’ve made a good start without him, anyway. Our beautiful little Jack, what a perfect cherub, he’s just sorry I’ve had to bear all the worry and pain alone, but that’s all over now …

  And so I’ve got these images in my head, and with these and the heat, and the noise of the other babies, and my own little Jacky waking now and then, I toss and turn and fret and worry the whole night away, half mad with excitement.

  I am up before the sun, knocking at Mrs Cameron’s door, ready to go. There is no light showing under her doorway so I knock loudly, knowing that I will have to wake her. Finally the door opens a little and her eyes blink out at me.

  ‘Maggie Heffernan,’ she says, ‘What on earth do you want?’

  ‘I need to speak to you, ma’am,’ I say. ‘It’s urgent.’

  ‘It can’t be that urgent. I can see that you’re well and your boy, too, even though you have roused him unnecessarily. Go back to your room, and come to me after morning prayers.’

  ‘I have to go ma’am,’ I say. ‘I’ve had news and I have to leave.’

  ‘Leave? What do you mean?’ She swings the door open fully and stands there in front of me, hands on her hips. I had hoped that this early she would be a little less frightening, that she would be sleepy, soft. But even in her nightdress she is as upright and severe as ever.

  ‘I’ve just come to tell you I’m leaving. I’ve had news from this one’s grandmother,’ I say, ‘and I’ve got to go.’

  ‘What do you mean, news?’ she asks me.

  ‘She’s coming here today, Mrs Hardy, that is – my little Jacky’s grandma. She’s meeting me in town, at Menzies,’ I say. ‘She’s buying me lunch and then she’s going to take the boy back with her.’

  ‘You’re giving her the child?’

  ‘She’s quite well-to-do; she’ll be able to care for him better than I can.’

  ‘That she will not,’ Mrs Cameron is wide awake now. ‘There’s no one can care for an infant better than its own mother. You can care for the child perfectly well here. You are sheltered, fed, clothed. It’s good useful work that you’ve been given here, and a Christian start to the child’s life. Your place is with your child.’

  ‘Oh, nothing’s decided yet,’ I say quickly. ‘I’m not saying I’m giving him to her for good. It’s just temporary, until I get myself settled. I might even go to Sydney with her …’

  ‘I see,’ she says slowly. And I know that she does indeed see, that she hasn’t believed one word that I have said.
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br />   ‘Some trouble has been gone to to get you a place here, Maggie. I’m not sure you appreciate that. I must warn you that if you leave, whatever your circumstances, you won’t be able to come back. Your bed and your position will be taken immediately. We have a list of girls you know – desperate cases like yourself.’ All at once Mrs Cameron’s starch seems to have gone right out of her. She seems small, old, tired. ‘I just hope you’re sure of this – this fellow, my dear.’

  ‘Yes,’ I lie. ‘Yes, I’m certain, it’s all been arranged. It was all just a – a misunderstanding.’

  ‘I see,’ she says again. ‘A misunderstanding.’ Sighs. ‘So many misunderstandings.’

  ‘And I thank you for all your kindness, ma’am,’ I say in a rush, her sad looks and soft words making me uncomfortable and wishing more than ever to be gone. ‘I do appreciate it.’

  ‘Make sure you take some food with you. If you can wait a half hour or so cook will be up and I’ll have her pack you something. And it would be best to have breakfast before you leave. You’ve not only got yourself to think of now, have you?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am, I mean, no …’

  ‘Well, then,’ she touches Jack lightly on the cheek. ‘I’d best go and prepare for the day. I will keep you both in my prayers.’

  By rights after my wakeful night my head should feel full of sand, but somehow I feel more awake, more alive than I have for months – as if some strange fog has lifted. All at once I am full of my old confidence, my old lightness, and there is nothing – not the already stifling heat of the day, not the prospect of a three-mile walk to the station with the weight of the swaddled babe on one arm and my bundle of belongings on the other, not even the uncertainty of my future – there is nothing that can oppress me. I am young, after all, and full of such strength and energy. What long strides I take, how briskly my heels click-clack along the pavement, how broadly I smile at every passer-by and, every now and then, at my sweet little Jack.