Out of the Silence

by Wendy James

  I always think of Harry with kindness, for he has proved to be a faithful friend and without his letters, which are so full of stories and jokes, I do not know how I would get through the days. Even though he only sends his allotted letter each month, he writes a little of it every day so they are always inches thick – almost a parcel – and they take some reading, and then rereading, and if there is a need to get a smile up on a day that has gone particularly bad, hearing about one of Harry’s larks is bound to cheer me.

  At the end of each of his letters he always reminds me that he is waiting for my release, that he still stands by his offer and will for ever if he needs to, there being no other girl for him but me. I write back most times without mentioning his statement, but eventually I feel bound to say something, as he is looking like spending his life waiting. He is a young man raring to make his fortune, as young men do, and it is foolish of him to be waiting for a woman who will never return his affections. So I think it best that I am as blunt as I can be. I write to tell him that he is to stop waiting, for there is no possibility of me marrying him. That although I am fond of him and for all we are good chums, chums is all we ever will be – it not being right that people marry where there is not love, as I have seen happen so often in my life (I give him as an example his own sister and Mr Ralph). I remind him, too – as if he needed reminding – that I am not the Maggie he once knew, but a sentenced criminal, a woman of bad character, and that even if I were to be released in the near future, it would be too much to expect any man to take on a woman with such a stain, such a history, even if there was love on both sides. And to do so without love – impossible.

  He makes no mention of what I have said until the very end of his next letter, where he writes something that I think is quite curious and do not understand for some time. ‘When my sister first met Mr Ralph,’ he writes, ‘she thought that the sun rose and set in him; and once she had her mind made up that he was the man for her, there was nothing that anyone in our family could do or say to persuade her otherwise. Love, it seems, is not constant or predictable. Nor is it necessarily a guarantee of future happiness.’

  Once every quarter we are allowed a visitor and generally Mrs Ralph will take the trouble to travel over to see me. She brings fruit and books and papers, which are always confiscated, and tries hard to amuse me with tales of the strange folk from the hotel, or Harry’s shenanigans, or Ling’s latest temper tantrum, but after a while her stories peter out and we are left in silence. There is something in the air between us – invisible but solid – and neither of us knows what it is, or what to do about it, only that there is no way back to the old easiness, no way at all. I know she would like me to protest at each visit’s end that she need not return if she is too busy, or if it is too much for her. But I cannot. Instead I beg, ‘Please, Mrs Ralph, you will visit again?’ and she is trapped.

  Her visits are such a variation in my dull life, and such a reminder of a better time, that even if it pains her to be here and we sit saying nothing, still it is better than no visit and I cannot let her off.

  Though I am able to receive a letter every month, I cannot send more than one letter every quarter. It is hard, then, to know who to reply to, and even harder to know what to write. It is such an effort to find anything worth mentioning, and however hard I twist and tug at the day’s events, there is nothing at all to tell (‘Today I washed a hundred shirts and hung them out to dry’). After the first couple of attempts, when my letters are returned from Brooks Guesthouse with ‘Not known at this address’ printed large and dark on the front of the envelope, I give up writing to Jack.

  But I do not give up thinking of him. Sometimes I shock myself, the way my thoughts run, considering where I am and why. But to have my thoughts run to pleasure rather than pain brings relief. Far better to remember Jack’s hard lips, his beery breath, his fierce noises, his hard, calloused fingers, than the soft milky lips of my little Jacky, his fluttering kisses at my breast.

  One month a letter comes from Dad. I am shocked. Not so much because it is a letter from Dad, the first I have received, but because I do not immediately recognise his handwriting. It has become shaky and dim – an old man’s hand. It is a short enough letter – he writes to let me know he will be in Melbourne on the 16th of next month and will come to visit me then and hopes that I will forgive him for not visiting earlier, but as I may have heard he has not been well, on top of having the extra work to do now that both the boys have gone. He hopes too that my behaviour in prison is above reproach (though having always been a good, honest girl from a respectable Christian home, really he is quite confident in this regard) that being, he has heard, sometimes a way of obtaining an early release. He says that if there is anything I would like from home – any old dresses or mementos or whatnot – I have only to let him or Doll know and he will bring them with him as long as they can be carried in his port. He is and always will remain my loving father.

  There is a dream I often have here. It is not a dream of strange unaccountable events, but really a remembering. It is not some great dramatic event in my life that you would think I would dream of, but a little moment, a moment I had really almost forgot. It is years ago, I am ten, maybe eleven, and Dad has taken me down to the river to fish. It is a sunny day in spring, which is the best time of the year for trout, and I’m sitting cross-legged and barefoot on the riverbank. Dad doesn’t care that my dress is hitched up in an unladylike way and is likely to get muddy, but I know there will be trouble for us both when we get home, though less trouble if our catch is good – Ma having a weakness for trout. We’re sitting quietly, Dad puffing away on his pipe and checking his lines every now and then, and me carefully threading the worms for him, which is a task I enjoy: not having a weak stomach like Doll, I can ignore the wriggling and the ooze. For no particular reason I ask him why it is called the Kiewa, our river. Does it mean something? He takes out his pipe and says he believes it is from the language of the blacks, who once lived further down the valley, and that it means ‘sweet water’.

  ‘Sweet water? How can water be sweet?’

  ‘It’s because it’s from up high,’ Dad says. ‘It’s water from the snow melting. It hasn’t had to travel far, or come from another river, so it’s pure. Sweet. As if it’s come directly from heaven.’

  ‘But that isn’t what the blacks would have meant, is it? Miss Jeffries has told us they were heathens, that they didn’t believe in heaven.’

  ‘Oh, I think they understood well enough about heaven, heathens or not. I don’t think there’d be many people who didn’t have some idea about heaven,’ says my father, smiling.

  And this is where the dream is different to the memory.

  In my memory our conversation ends here. Dad goes back to his pipe and I go back to my worms. But in the dream he holds out his hand and pulls me to my feet, leads me to the water. In the dream he says, ‘Here, Maggie, taste. It’s the taste of heaven,’ and he is scooping out water for me. I drink from his cupped hand as easily as if it had been made for just that purpose. And it is sweet, that water, the coolest, sweetest drink there ever was.

  And every time I dream that particular dream, when I wake I am weeping. It is not sweet that I taste, but salt. Hell, not heaven.

  Olive Gaffney tells me that I am required in the visiting room. It’s a few days away from the 16th and I have kept in my mind all these weeks that Dad will be visiting, so I am not yet expecting any other visitor. Still, I am very glad to get out of the laundry and away from the endless whispered conversation of Mary Farnsworth, who is telling me again how her grandfather was a personal friend of the Duke of Norfolk and how she would never have had to stoop to embezzlement if only her pa had not been done out of his inheritance, which is a story I have heard more than a dozen times and am heartily sick of. Unlike others here – and this includes some of the wardresses – I am not taken in at all by the silly cow’s talk of being a lady, having seen her spit upon the floor when she thinks n
obody is looking, which is not how any decently brought up young man, let alone lady, behaves, as any fool knows. So when I get to the visitors’ room I am not prepared to see Ma there, and wish myself immediately back in the laundry, suddenly more than pleased to suffer Mary and her story. But, of course, I haven’t this choice and must face what I must face.

  She is sitting with her back to the door, which is just as well as I would not have her see my shocked expression, which I know would only have provoked her in the same way a red rag is guaranteed to provoke a bull. So it is not until Mrs Roberts, who is fussing about the room, notices me and says, ‘Ah, here she is, Mrs Heffernan,’ that Ma turns towards me.

  She doesn’t smile and she doesn’t stand. She stays sitting, her head slightly to one side, her curranty eyes hard on me as if I am a heifer she is considering purchasing. I do not move toward her, but stay stock-still in the doorway. Neither of us makes a sound.

  Mrs Roberts looks from one to the other of us. ‘I think I’ll leave you ladies. I’m sure you’ve plenty to say to one another. I’ll send Olive in with some tea, Mrs Heffernan. And our girls in the kitchen have prepared scones for elevenses today, I believe.’ She nods to Ma, and gives me a small smile as she rushes off.

  ‘Well,’ Ma says slowly, ‘Margaret.’

  ‘Mother.’ I try to shape my lips into a smile, but they are suddenly stiff and will not move where I bid them.

  ‘You look ill.’

  ‘I have a cold,’ I shrug. ‘It’s nothing.’ I take the seat opposite her and sit with my hands in my lap. I wish I had thought to bring some mending, as it would give me somewhere to look. Instead I stare down at my fingers.

  ‘You’ve lost weight,’ she says. ‘Too much. Whatever looks you had you’ve lost ’em.’ This time I manage a smile.

  ‘I don’t suppose that’ll put me at any disadvantage,’ I say. ‘Not here, at any rate.’

  ‘No.’ She sighs. ‘It’d have been a blessing if you’d been as plain as your sister. Less trouble, when all’s said and done. It’s a curse – look at your Aunt Annie. Brings nothing but trouble.’

  I say nothing. Even here she has that effect on me. I can think of nothing to say, though, which as it turns out is not a real problem, Ma always having something to go on with.

  ‘Well, Margaret Cecelia,’ she begins, still considering me from her seat. She sits clasping her bag – it is new, I do not recognise it anyway – a huge carpet bag. She clutches it to her as if it is likely to be stolen away at any moment, which is not such a silly thought, I suppose, from Ma’s perspective, her being in a prison and surrounded as she would no doubt be thinking by all manner of thieves, and worse. ‘Well,’ she says, ‘You will be pleased to know that I have written a letter to Miss Goldstein on your behalf.’

  ‘Yes, I’ve read it,’ I say. ‘I didn’t know I had been dropped as a baby. You’ve never told me that, and I don’t remember it.’

  ‘You’d hardly remember would you, miss? You were only an infant. I hope you’re not inferring that I’m lying—’

  ‘No, of course not, Ma. It’s just that you’ve never mentioned it before now.’

  ‘I’ve never needed to, have I?’

  ‘I suppose not.’

  Olive breezes in with the tea at that point, and I am glad of the interruption. She is her usual self, blathering on about this and that, asking questions and not waiting for a reply, but starting up with the next thing that comes into her head, which is fortunate as neither Ma nor I are in any mood to join in her chitchat.

  ‘And who was that?’ says Ma when Olive’s gone, looking as if she trod in something foul.

  ‘Her name’s Olive, Ma. Olive Gaffney.’

  ‘She’s one of the … one of the prisoners, is she? She has a certain look about her, doesn’t she? I suppose most of the women here are imbeciles?’

  I can’t bring myself to answer and, though Ma has ruined my appetite, I eat my scone, as it is better to be chewing than speaking.

  Ma sets her teacup carefully in its saucer; draws herself up to speak. ‘Your father,’ she says, in that voice I remember so well, a voice that means that she’s about to get to the point, to say the thing that’s been eating her up. ‘Your father wanted to make this trip. I believe he wrote to you to tell you he would visit? Is that true?’

  I begin to murmur vaguely that he may have writ something of the sort, not wanting to put Dad on the spot, but she is not concerned with my answer and goes on: ‘Your father is a broken man, Margaret. I think you should know – I want you to know – that you have broken his heart. What you have done … It has destroyed him.’

  She looks hard at me. This time she is waiting for a reply, but I have none. What reply can I make?

  ‘You were always a difficult child, Margaret, but I had not imagined – I had not thought I would ever have to see a child of mine in such circumstances. You have shamed us all. A prison, Margaret. It was humiliation enough to discover that you had a secret courtship with that … scoundrel – if indeed the rumours are true and he was the father. But this … My daughter in a prison. I … There are no words …’ She sags, but it is only for a moment. Almost immediately she has pulled herself up straighter than ever. She clutches tight to her bag, glares.

  I can’t look at her. I look down at my hands again. In the past months they have aged ten years. Once smooth and white, soft, now they are red, puffy, calloused, the nails ragged. I would like to be able to hold out my hand to my mother and have her take it, have her exclaim at the alteration, and at the change in me. To hear her ask, ‘What happened? Why? How?’ And then to hear her say that none of it matters; nothing, save that she loves me, her daughter, and she always will.

  She stays barely more than half an hour, though Mrs Henderson has said she should take her time, that there is no need to hurry. She is here just time enough to crumble the scones she has been given, to pour more tea and to remark that perhaps prison is not as bad as she had imagined, that she had fancied it worse and that it seems we are treated decent enough, though the tea is a little stewed.

  ‘Yes,’ I agree. ‘The tea is a little stewed, though more often it is too weak.’

  ‘Well, you should be grateful that you are given tea at all. I have no doubt things could be much more difficult.’

  ‘Yes,’ I say, ‘no doubt they could be.’

  ‘Well,’ she says, ‘I suppose you shouldn’t complain, and if they work you hard that will be a good lesson, considering what you have done.’

  And that is as close as she gets to mentioning the reason I am here. As close as she will ever get.

  Nobody has ever asked what needs to be asked: how could you do such a thing? I wait and wait for it, but the question never comes. I see in their expressions – wardresses, visitors, even the other prisoners – and the way they look at me as if seeking the answer in my face, especially those who have children. I see it in the way they avoid contact with me, as if what I have done is contagious. It doesn’t matter that they do not ask, there’s no need. It’s a question that I ask myself.

  A question that I can never answer.

  Life in the prison is lonely. It is difficult to strike up a conversation with anyone when we live under the rule of silence; it is hard to get up a proper friendship under these circumstances. In the end it is the wardresses that we get closest to, though this could not really be described as true friendship. We depend so much on them, they have such power, and it is hard to imagine how much difference the kinder wardresses can make to our miserable lives. Sometimes just a smile or a laugh is enough. It is like being a child again – such a lot hinges on such a little act.

  We are allowed to keep photographs of our families in our cells and every now and then some woman will smuggle a picture she has just received into the workroom, and the image of her husband or children will be passed amongst the rest of us and quietly exclaimed over, often while the woman sits weeping over the changes she cannot witness in person. I wish now that the matron
had let Harry take that photograph in the hospital, for already I have lost all the details of my baby’s face.

  I cannot remember his features, but the feel of him is always with me. He is a warmth in my side, an ache in my arms, a stinging in my breast. Sometimes at night when I lay awake I can feel him inside me again, safe – a little foot kicking away, caught up under my ribcage, or perhaps they are his tiny fingers tickling and teasing a place that lies just beneath what was once my heart.

  Every so often we are visited by prison reformers. Ministers, doctors, wide-eyed ladies. Such visitors are easy to pick: the governor and the wardresses turn all friendly and polite – even those who in general can be relied upon to treat us as if we were nothing more than lumps of wood smile at us kindly. I ordinarily try to avoid being interviewed – the questions are always the same and the atmosphere is always uncomfortable, particularly when I tell them why it is that I am here. But on one occasion (it has been more than a year since I last heard from Miss G. or Miss Hamilton) when Mrs Henderson asks for volunteers I am first to put up my hand. The visitor is a minister from down south, a youngish man and a little nervy, his face half hidden by gingery whiskers. We are taken into the sitting room and given tea and cake, which is a rare treat. He asks the usual questions: are we treated well? Is the food adequate? Is the work too hard? Is there ever any violence between warders and inmates? Do I feel that my spiritual needs are being met? When he is done with his questions he asks whether there is anything I’d like to say. ‘Well, sir, there is something. I believe there have been some petitions and so on regarding my release, and I was wondering if you would be kind enough to make some enquiries—’

  ‘My goodness!’ he interrupts. ‘I almost forgot. I wanted to ask you about the little library. What a wonderful facility! I was most impressed – so many bibles. Why, there must be almost one for each prisoner – I saw shelves and shelves of them. And such good, improving books – histories and sermons – why, you could become quite the scholar while you’re here.’ He is excited. ‘Do you make good use of it?’ he asks.