“Yes, Father. I’m very sorry, Father. I know it was wrong to steal. It was... I was just…” My voice trailed off and I resumed kicking tufts of grass.
Beat me, please. I deserve it. I’m really sorry. Just don’t stop me playing football. I couldn’t bear it.
“Hush, son. I know,” said the Father. “Hunger can be very hard to resist, and those pies really do smell good, don’t they?” He walked resolutely to the counter and reached in his pocket for some coins. He placed one on the counter. “One nice juicy pie, please, with plenty of sauce.”
He dropped another coin on the counter. “And this is for the pie the boy took. I forgot to give him lunch money. He was really hungry and he couldn’t find me to ask. He is a good lad and he knows that next time he must come and find me, or remind me earlier to be sure to give him his money.”
The pie man thanked him and passed across a soggy–topped paper bag. The Father passed it to me, smiling.
“Next time, son, come and tell me they didn’t give you a decent lunch, eh? You can’t play football on an empty stomach, but the pie man has a family to feed. If you take his pies without paying he won’t have any money to pay his bills and look after his children. Do you understand?”
I nodded silently, disbelieving.
“Go on, then. Get that into you and enjoy it. But don’t tell anyone about this, right?”
I nodded gratefully, slid back the soggy brown wrapper and bit eagerly into the crisp, brown pastry. My head was spinning. Doubt. Fear. Suspicion. An unidentifiable expectation.
Surely this can’t be the end of this? Why doesn’t he punish me? Because he’s planning to tell Mother. That’s why. He knows she will punish me harshly. He knows she will stop me playing football.
Two hours later, Father Joseph urged his white Falcon up the steep orphanage driveway and into the kitchen courtyard. He had been chatting idly about the afternoon games, asking me what I thought of that player’s moves or this team’s chances of making the finals. Not a word about pies or stealing. I sat on the edge of my seat, one hand on the doorhandle, my eyes focused hard on the grey mat beneath my feet.
The Father reached across and laid a big, soft hand on my head, waving lightly to ruffle my curls. “Well, an away game next week, eh? I’ll have to get here bright and early. Will Sister Anne be back to give you a proper breakfast?”
“Yes, Father.”
“Good. I won’t have to remember to give you money for pies then. But you be sure to tell me any time you don’t have enough lunch. The Sisters don’t play football, so some of them don’t understand --- like I do --- how much energy a young fella needs to run and kick. You let me know if you are hungry, OK? Now off you go. I’ve got work to do.”
“Thank you, Father.” I lifted the chrome handle, pushed on the door and slid out of the seat, landing with a gentle thud on the asphalt.
The Father grinned knowingly at me as I slammed the car door and ran to the playground.
#
Three weeks later, on a Friday, Father Joseph came to take me to a late– afternoon training session, but a solemn–faced Mother had told me I couldn’t go today. I worried that perhaps, after all, he’d told on me for stealing a pie, but there had been two games since and several training sessions, and he’d shown no anger or desire for retribution. Anyway, why would he come if he’d told and knew she wouldn’t let me go? The puzzle was quickly solved when the Sister lined us all up and marched us up the stairs to the dormitory.
“There’s a prowler,” she said in a conspiratorial whisper. “A peeping tom peering in at the windows and trying to force the doors. We must keep you locked up here for your safety.”
The Sister was moving from door to door and window to window checking locks and glancing furtively outside to see if the intruder was still stalking. She locked the dormitory door and ordered us to sit quietly on our beds.
I guess we ought to have been frightened. Perhaps the smaller boys were. I wasn’t. I couldn’t conceive of a reason why a peeping tom would want to hurt small boys, but the Sister said he might be a violent criminal or an escaped prisoner on the run. She seemed quite terrified.
We remained in lockdown for over an hour. The Father was in the parlour, sipping tea and chatting. He told me, later, he saw the man head towards the orchard out back and return munching an apple. He lay down on the lawn to take a rest, and then he shook his head wearily, turned, and walked down the long driveway towards the cemetery, where he turned and was lost from view.
The Father said the man looked harmless, but very weary. He didn’t tell me then, but I learnt some 18 years later, the man had knocked on the door and introduced himself, asking to see his son and daughter. He said he’d been told this was where they were sent when they were taken a few years before. The nuns said he was misinformed.
No Paul or Jennifer Wilson had ever lived here. Footnote6
~~~~
9: MY SISTER’S DEFENDER
MELBOURNE, JUNE 2010
A sporty white Merc coupe with the Hertz logo emblazoned on the number–plate frame eased into the Melbourne cul de sac. Paul and Ern left the Roller in Dubbo and flew to Melbourne for their meeting with Jen.
Ern parked the rental car in front of a stylish Cape Cod with two small dormer windows on either side of its dominant red–brick chimney. A carved green hedge edged a pocket-handkerchief front garden in which a sprinkler pulsed, spraying glistening streams to soak the path to the front door. The spit caught Ern, painting a dark, damp smudge on the outer left leg of his jeans. A slightly embarrassed Jennifer Wilson --- now Schwarzer, and showing a single streak of grey in the wave over her forehead --- answered the doorbell offering a towel. Ern declined.
She cut a svelte little figure, dressed casually in tight–fitting blue jeans and sky–blue cashmere sweater, hair a veil of silk hanging loose to well below her shoulders, and a clean, clear complexion with finely carved, classic features. Paul embraced her, but it seemed insincere --- dutiful, but reserved. Ern was mildly disturbed by the greeting, for he knew Paul adored her.
Jen was reticent. Paul had warned Ern she would be. She had married well and left her childhood far behind her. The memories were buried deep, denied. The past had never happened. But when Paul reminded her of an incident when she was barely eight years old, Jen’s eyes clouded, her lips twitched, and her hand crept to her throat.
“The piano,” she whispered. “Sister Cecilia said I had talent. She wanted to teach me to play and she told me I should practise. I was playing ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’. I didn’t think I was doing wrong. Sister Agnes came in and stood for a few minutes to listen, then she strode across and slammed the lid down. It caught my fingers and I screamed. She ordered me to stand there and not move until she returned. I didn’t know where she went. It never occurred to me to fear a beating. Not until the Mother appeared in the doorway holding her strap.
“It affected me. The... the purposelessness... the irrationality. Beatings were common, and often brutal, but not like that one.”
A hesitant smile played at the corner of her lips and her eyes warmed a little as she turned to look at Paul. “My big brother exacted revenge. He was my protector. They hardly let us speak to each other, but I always knew he was there, watching out for me. Doing what little he could. Loving me.”
Paul took up the story then, and her eyes grew cold and distant listening to him. She was fighting the memories down, pleading with her subconscious --- and her brother --- to allow her to forget.
“I threw the strap down the well,” he laughed. “I remember it was the belt off a Singer sewing machine. They’d used it for years. It lay on the corner of the Mother’s desk and the Sisters would send us into her office to advise her of our misdemeanors and tell her we needed help to mend our sinful ways.” The laughter ceased and a shadow fell across him. “Now and again, she would emerge from that office dangling it by her side, and our little world would freeze under a stifling blanket of fear. Time would
stand still until she barked a name. Then she’d make a ceremony of beating someone publicly. She seemed to enjoy inflicting deep humiliation as well as physical pain. I’m sure she delighted in the scared faces of those compelled to watch the awful scene.
“I remember one time, not long after I went there, she had a real party humiliating me after early morning church. They often made us go down to the orphanage chapel in pyjamas. Apparently some idiot senior girl reckoned I exposed myself. I guess maybe my pyjamas didn’t cover me up very well when I moved in certain ways. I was a little kid… uninhibited, I suppose. Certainly not yet conscious of any ability to offend females by exposure. The Mother called me a filthy pervert and made a big ceremony of thrashing me in front of all the girls. I think that was when I first decided those nuns were perverted --- even insane, perhaps. I remember repeating ‘You stupid bitch’ over and over under my breath while she was thrashing me.”
NOVEMBER, 1958
She beat Jen on a steamy afternoon in November. I had been out in the paddocks with Bill, the handyman. I relished opportunities to help him with the gardens or the animals. He worked me like a slave, but it relieved the awful boredom of the playground.
I think I was taking fruit or vegetables to the kitchen. I remember coming around a corner near the laundry and seeing a black–faced Mother, her precious strap dangling from a tightly gripped fist, striding towards the main hall. Sister Agnes was beside her, ruddy face twisted in malicious anticipation. Several of the older girls lingered near the laundry door. I saw one push a wayward curl from her forehead with the back of a soapy hand. A cloud of white froth decorated the bobby pin dangling near her left ear.
My sister was cowering near the door of the hall. I was hanging back in the shadows, so I didn’t even notice her until I heard the Mother shout her name.
“Jennifer Wilson. Come here at once.”
The Mother waved the strap menacingly. A lump rose in my throat, blood rushed to heat my cheeks and my forehead throbbed. I wanted to lunge forward and come between the monster in black and my baby sister, who was inching slowly forward, trembling violently. But I stayed back, pressing against the wall to avoid being seen.
“This disobedient girl presumed to enter the main hall without permission and touch the piano,” she announced to her small audience. “Now, we all know, don’t we, children, that we are forbidden to touch the piano?”
“Yes, Mother,” the other girls chorused dutifully.
“And we all know, don’t we, children, the penalty for disobedience?” “Yes, Mother.”
“Jennifer?” she demanded, having observed that my sister had not joined the chorus.
“Yes, Mother,” Jenny stammered meekly, “but Sister Cecilia is giving me music lessons, and she told me I should practise.”
“Indeed?” the Mother frowned. “I shall have to speak to Sister Cecilia, but she doesn’t make the rules here. I do. And I have made the rules very clear. And I have also made it very clear what happens to children who disobey me, have I not?”
“Yes, Mother,” she stammered again, barely completing the response before the first sharp blow fell across her lower legs.
I gasped as Jenny screamed. I pressed my lips together, clenched my fists and squeezed my eyes shut tightly. Hot, sour vomit rose in my throat and I swallowed in panic. I wanted to stop the witch; to snatch the strap and flog her; shield my baby sister. I should gladly take the flogging for her, but like a coward, deeply ashamed, I stood stock still and listened as the strap whistled through the air and snapped against her legs, buttocks, back and arms.
Again, again, again and again.
Jenny’s screams gave way to pathetic broken sobs. She was lying on the ground, curled in a ball to try to shield herself. Deep red grooves on her upper arm marked where the Mother’s huge hand had gripped it, fingernails digging into the flesh to draw traces of blood.
The witch was finally done.
“Anyone else who thinks of disobeying me can be assured of similar punishment,” she declared in a stern voice, glaring at the girls in the laundry doorway. “Jennifer! Get up and go up to bed immediately. Get back to work, girls, unless you want a lesson in diligence.”
The girls scurried. The Mother stood akimbo, wearing a satisfied smirk,
while Jenny struggled to her feet and limped up the stairs to her bed.
I saw her later in the dining room, at tea time. Her eyes were red and swollen and there were scald tracks on her cheeks. Her legs and lower arms blazed with thick red welts. Here and there, a thin line of recently dried blood marked where her skin had broken open.
Cold rage gushed through me like a torrent, making me choke and gag on my food, causing me to unbalance when I stood. I fought to look away as I left the dining hall. Hate bubbled up inside me like simmering lava in an about–to–erupt volcano.
I lay awake for hours, plotting revenge.
The next morning, I watched and waited until certain the nuns were all in the kitchen taking morning tea. I crept out of the playground, across the courtyard, down the hallway and into the front office, pleading with the door not to creak as I pushed it open just far enough to squeeze through. The strap was in its usual place on the corner of the desk. I took a firm grip on it and ran as fast as I could down to the back paddock and the brick–rimmed well, dropped it in, and watched with pleasure as the monstrous device somersaulted its way to the deep, black bottom. Then I turned, dusted my hands, and walked resolutely back to the playground to seek out Benny Carmichael and pretend we had been playing together all morning.
The old handyman saw and told. I had really liked Bill until that day, and I was hurt by his betrayal.
There was no mystery, for me, in the Mother’s angry entry to the dining room at lunchtime. I saw the looks of surprise on some of the other boys’ faces and I noticed some of them cringed, no doubt examining their conscience for hints of any sin committed that might have been detected. I knew my sin. I waited expectantly for my name to be called and looked curiously to see what device replaced the strap. The witch had removed the thick leather belt she wore around her habit.
I tried to close my ears to her angry tirade. And then it started: the swishing and slapping noises and the heavy burning swipes as the welts rose red and angry, promising deep blue–black bruises.
“Cry!” she commanded. It took every ounce of courage and determination not to.
“Cry, you worthless scum!” She brought the strap down hard on the small of my back. I winced, but gritted my teeth hard.
“Your defiance will bring you to a sorry end, boy, just like your worthless father and mother and all the other filthy vermin they might produce to contaminate the world of decent people!” She spoke staccato, punctuating each phrase with yet another savage lash. I lifted my feet from the ground, but when she felt my weight, she released her savage grip on my upper arm. I fell to the ground and curled in a ball. The blows did not cease.
Breathless, she dropped the strap at last. Exhaustion overcame her so she could not stomp regally back to her refuge. She struggled to the door and leant against it, panting. The Sisters commanded the children to march back to the playground. Sister Anne helped me up. With tears in her eyes and tenderness in her voice, she gently guided me up the stairs to bed.
Pain gripped and mauled me, sinking its fiery sharp teeth into every muscle and joint. It exploded in my brain, the physical seizures and aches competing with the knifing pain of public humiliation, and the deep gut– wrenching torment of the Mother’s condemnation of me, and of the parents I adored and so desperately craved to return to.
I would not allow myself to cry. I would not let her break me. I would show her --- that vicious, devil woman.Tomorrow, I would begin my plan to exact my revenge.
~~~~
10: FOSTER CHILD
BINGARA, DECEMBER, 1959
Marion Bennett stood just four feet 11 inches tall when her hair was up and her high heels on. She was barely adequately curved to be rec
ognisable as a woman when she wore her gardening overalls and tucked unruly ginger hair under her husband’s old hat. But her arms were long enough to hug five children all at once, and her heart was big enough to love as many as she could squeeze into the tiny cottage she shared with her gruff six–foot–one truck–driving husband and their own three offspring.
Marion Bennett chose me to spend Christmas, 1959, with her family. She picked me up from St Patrick’s on a blistering afternoon in mid–December and took me to her little house on the edge of Bingara, in the north–west. There, I shared a bedroom with her two sons, while Connie Lewis, a five– year–old St Patrick’s girl, shared a bedroom with her six–year–old daughter.
“Best clothes on tomorrow morning, children,” said Mrs Bennett cheerfully as she gathered up the empty dinner plates on my first evening in her home. “We are going shopping for new clothes.”
And after a pause, “You were very quiet at dinner, Paul. Is everything all right?”
“Yes, thank you, Mrs Bennett,” I replied, taking care to enunciate my words clearly and display my best manners. The Sisters had warned me that invitations to holiday with good Christian families weren’t issued lightly, and my behaviour and manners must be perfect or I would never be allowed to go again. Not with this family, or with any other.
Dinner at the Bennetts’ house was a noisy affair. There was no ‘silence at mealtime’ rule here. Mr and Mrs Bennett quizzed the children about activities and friends and what they had learnt today. When they ran out of questions, there were jokes and riddles, and Mr Bennett told tall stories. I wasn’t accustomed to being permitted to speak during meals and was mindful of the risk that I might unintentionally speak out of turn, or say something that displeased. Anyway, I was busy enjoying the delicious food. We dined on beef stew and dumplings, followed by cold rice pudding with homemade ice–cream. I couldn’t remember the last time I had eaten so well.
The Pencil Case Page 8