by Joy Rhoades
‘Struth,’ he said, his eyes wide. ‘That’s rough on Dais, eh.’
Kate put a glass of milk in front of him. At least her father wasn’t being difficult about it. He’d said nothing when she’d told him.
‘Look. Maybe once the baby is born, she can come back. Or even go back to her family. I don’t know.’ Either way, it would be without her baby. The Matron had said that much on the phone.
‘Family? Matron tolda her family’s all dead, eh.’
Kate knew from the Matron that Daisy had been taken from her family because her mother had had a sixth child, so the Matron’s lie must have been to help Daisy start again completely. To cut the ties. She shook her head. ‘Anyway, what’s your homework? What reading do you have?’
‘Bugger the homework.’ He gave his school case a solid kick that sent it under the table into the next kitchen chair with a bang, got up and left. The fruit bonbons she hadn’t even tried to give him, knowing he’d think it was a bribe.
A knock at the gauze door interrupted her train of thought. It was Ed, with his hat in big hands and a furrowed brow, looking out of place. He never came inside the fence.
‘Can I’ve a word, Mrs D?’ He glanced through the gauze door towards the laundry. Well might he look guilty.
‘C’mon then.’ Kate went out and walked back to the fence, to get out of earshot of the house. Ed followed.
‘All right. What do you have to say for yourself?’
‘Can ya let her stay, Mrs D? She’s only a kid. A good kid.’
Kate was shocked. ‘She must go, now she’s in bother. You know very well the Welfare Board is strict about these things.’
He looked down at the hat in his hands. He was probably worried about his child. Bit late for that. Angry as she was with him, she respected Daisy’s desire to protect him. He didn’t deserve it. And Kate couldn’t afford to lose him, either. ‘Look, it’s awful but there’s no use crying over spilt milk.’
‘Spilt milk? Mrs D, that’s rough.’
‘You’ve got some gall, Ed Storch. You’re not a tenth of the person Daisy is. I don’t want to hear about this again. You understand?’ She left him, her plait thumping against her back as she walked.
Late that afternoon, Kate waited at the truck with Grimes. Gunner moved about their feet, not wanting to be left behind. When the dog jumped up, putting his paws on her skirt, she roused on him. ‘Get down.’
‘It’s that bloody Canali, I tell ya,’ Grimes muttered.
‘She said it wasn’t; she was clear as clear.’
‘Ya can’t trust the Abos.’
Puck barked from beyond the truck as Daisy came round the side of the house with Harry. He carried her small string bag that held all of her possessions: a comb, a tiny hand mirror Kate had given her, and the spoon she’d brought her back from Sydney.
Grimes frowned, unhappy with Harry. ‘I’ll git er into the tray.’
‘Let’s take the car. She can travel with us.’
Grimes looked at Kate as if she’d hit him. ‘In the car?’
‘She’s expecting, Mr Grimes.’
‘She’s a bloody boong, is what she is. I’m not drivin an Abo about like Lady Muck.’
He was right. Eyebrows would be raised in town to see an Aboriginal – man or woman – in the car with them. If Grimes wasn’t there, she’d have done it.
‘All right then. In the tray.’
Gunner leapt all over Daisy when she came out of the gate, and she stopped. He put his paws up on her stomach. ‘Gunner, ole fella,’ she said as she rubbed his ears. The dog licked her hand, his ears down. Could he know? He dropped to the dirt and she squatted, rubbing his tummy, his tail flicking against the ground.
Harry stopped at the back of the tray, head down, his eyes and both hands on the handle of the string bag he carried for Daisy.
‘See ya, Harry,’ she said, and pinched his arm. He wouldn’t look at her, and Kate suspected he was crying. Daisy climbed up into the tray, and Harry handed her the bag. He went off towards the grid, to Luca who was already there. Kate wondered where Vittorio was and hoped he wasn’t the culprit. Ed was nowhere to be seen, either.
At the grid, Harry stood with Luca, waiting. As the truck passed, they waved, slowly. Kate looked in the side mirror and each kept a hand in the air until she could no longer see them in the vehicle’s dust.
The Longhope Domestic Training Home for Aboriginal Girls was about two miles east of the town. It couldn’t be seen from the main road. Then, once you turned off, it came into view. A long building, the old house might once have been grand. Now it needed a lick of paint. Its garden was gone, replaced with a cleared paddock and a dog-netting fence.
‘Be hot with no bloody trees,’ Grimes said as he turned the truck into the narrow track.
Kate had collected Daisy from the Home almost six months before, but she didn’t remember it looking as desolate then. A deep verandah ran along the front of the house. That was empty too, bare of any furniture, and its two pairs of doors were closed, blinds drawn. For just a second in Kate’s line of sight, a verandah pillar was caught between the doors, like a nose on a face, a face with its eyes shut tight.
Grimes paused the truck at the gate. It was manned by a rangy fellow sitting on a chair in the sun, hat propped over his eyes, arms folded on his chest. He got up and came across to the truck.
‘Afternoon,’ he said, lifting his hat, with an appraising smile for Kate.
‘We come to see the matron,’ Grimes said before Kate could speak. ‘Bringin one of em back.’
‘Ere? She’s not gunna be pleased.’ But he waved them on.
Grimes brought them to a stop in a gravel area at the front of the building.
Kate got out quickly and went round to the back of the truck. She stifled a gasp. Daisy was huddled in the very corner of the tray, her face hidden in her elbow.
‘C’mon, Daisy. Let me help you down,’ Kate said softly. She didn’t want Grimes to see the child like this.
When Grimes’s door slammed, Daisy found her bottle. She got to her feet, picked up her bag and climbed down out of the truck. On the ground, she took her eyes up from the dirt to look at Kate, who couldn’t speak for fear of crying. Then Daisy straightened up and pulled back her shoulders, her face hardening with her stance.
A woman in a nurse’s uniform appeared at the top of the verandah steps. Matron McAdams. She was short and Scottish, with a stiff smile and a brisk manner.
‘Afternoon,’ she said, in her soft brogue. ‘Come inside for the paperwork, please, Mrs Dowd.’
Grimes stepped back to allow Kate to go before him up the stairs. The matron stared at Daisy. She must have sensed her resolve. ‘Don’t you look your betters in the eye, girl.’
Daisy turned away but didn’t lower her eyes. Kate inhaled, shocked at what lay ahead for Daisy. And she had done it.
‘Face the wall. And leave the bag for Mrs Dowd. You know you’re allowed no personal effects.’
Daisy lowered the bag to the floor by Kate’s feet and turned to the wall.
The room that served as the matron’s office was small, with two visitors’ chairs. Doors opened out onto the verandah and beyond that a flat area of cleared dirt.
‘Sit, sit,’ the matron commanded, smiling. ‘Thank you for ringing ahead. Not all do, you know. They just drop them off as if we were the RSPCA,’ she said as she sifted through the bundles of files on her desk. ‘And I had no chance to tell you, Mrs Dowd. You were so quick when you rang. Straight to Armidale Girls’ Home would have been best. Now the girl will be taken there first thing tomorrow.’
‘Armidale Girls’ Home? But that’s a reform school, isn’t it? For delinquents?’
‘Yes. Black, white or brindle, that’s where they go.’
‘Daisy’s not delinquent, Matron. She’s expecting.’
‘Well, that’s the procedure when this happens.’
Kate had heard bad things of that Home, of heavy punishments. ‘Do they keep them
separate from the girls who are in there, you know, the ones in for reform?’
The matron shrugged. ‘I don’t know about that. Many of our girls find themselves there sooner or later.’
‘Because they’re expecting? Do many of your girls get pregnant?’
The matron nodded unhappily. Kate shook her head. She should have been more vigilant. There was little noise from elsewhere in the Home. Kate’s eyes moved to the window and the dirt yard just outside. The high dog-netting fence separated the yard from what looked like a small cemetery, with twenty or so simple wooden crosses.
‘I didn’t know Longhope had another cemetery, Matron.’ Kate realised once she’d spoken that it must be for the Aborigines. It had never occurred to her to think about where they were buried.
‘Oh, that’s for the Home,’ the matron said, looking at the papers in front of her.
‘But aren’t there only children here?’
‘Some of the littlies just seem to give up when they arrive. Even sleeping in a bed is a shock. They can’t cope with the discipline, the routine. And the flu always takes a few. Not up to it. Sad, but there you are.’ She shrugged.
Kate wished Daisy were further down the corridor so she couldn’t hear this.
The matron sifted through a set of papers. ‘Ah, here we have it.’ She opened a file. ‘But first things first. Is the father white? Single? He should be encouraged to consider marrying her. The intent is to get as many of these girls settled into white society as possible.’
‘Daisy won’t tell us who’s responsible.’
The woman’s face softened. ‘Ah. That’s a shame. Some of these girls are harder to help than others. But I see now why you’d want to get her off the place.’
Kate didn’t understand. She said nothing, watching as the matron took a typed sheet of paper from the file, spun it around to put it in front of Kate and pointed to a dotted line at the bottom. ‘If you can sign here, please, for the girl.’
‘It’s Daisy. Her name’s Daisy, Matron.’
The woman leaned back from the desk and smiled sadly. ‘I know her name, Mrs Dowd. I choose not to use it. This work – to break the natives’ simple, stubborn nature – is not always easy. But perhaps her baby will have a chance in life, even if poor Daisy has squandered hers. The baby will be put up for adoption, if it’s pale.’
Kate swallowed. She wondered about Daisy’s family at Broken Hill, 750 miles to the west. They probably didn’t even know where she was – and this woman had told Daisy her family were dead. What was Kate doing?
The matron nudged the paper across the desk to Kate. It was headed Note to File: Return of Daisy Nunn. The first paragraph read: Reasons for return: refusal to work, lack of moral fibre/fornication. Absconding. Underneath, Kate’s name was typed, with a line for her signature.
‘Daisy never refused to work, Matron. And she never ran away. I wouldn’t want the wrong things to go on her record.’
‘Mrs Dowd, you bring me a girl in the family way. She can hardly work now.’
Kate opened her mouth but the matron held up her hand and spoke softly. ‘We do not always succeed here at the Home. These native girls are amoral, not immoral. We face that burden in our teaching.’
Kate sat, pen still above the paper.
‘Mrs Dowd?’ The matron pushed the paper a little. ‘Come along. These are the rules.’ Kate put the pen onto the paper and forced her hand to sign.
‘The AWB will probably let you have Daisy back, after the baby is born and adopted out.’
‘The AWB? I thought it was called something else?’
‘It was. It used to be the Aboriginal Protection Board. But a certain amount of rabble-rousing by the blacks in the cities about rights and whatnot meant the Board had to show they were doing something.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘So now it’s the Aboriginal Welfare Board. Anyway, you can have this girl back in due course, or another would be available sooner. In a couple of months.’
Kate could not think of anyone else in Daisy’s place. Still, she didn’t want to have her near Ed again, either.
A bell rang and the matron stood. ‘I must get on.’
‘Until now, we’ve had no trouble with Daisy. Please, you’ll take care of her, Matron? She’s a good girl. Really.’
‘I’m sure God will help her see the right path.’
Outside in the corridor, Daisy stood, as before, facing the wall, head up. Grimes didn’t look at her as he went out, down the steps to the truck.
‘Come along then, girl.’ The matron walked away down the corridor.
Kate swallowed as Daisy pulled herself up to her full height and went after the matron.
‘Daisy,’ hissed Kate.
She stopped and glanced back.
‘Your family. They’re alive. You know that?’
Daisy nodded, once, and followed the matron along the corridor.
‘Daisy,’ Kate called again. But this time the girl did not look back, the soft plip-plop of her shoes receding with her. She turned the corner and was gone from sight, leaving Kate clutching the little string bag with shaking hands.
Kate returned to find Harry in the kitchen with her father, the boy sitting at the end of the table with a bikkie in his hand.
‘Hullo,’ she said, trying to sound normal. Harry got up, took his school case and left.
‘Daisy get off orright?’ her father asked, mouth full. He was leaning against the kitchen bench, in socked feet, munching an Anzac biscuit.
‘It’s awful, Dad. That place. And what’s worse is that she’s going on to the Armidale Home,’ Kate said. ‘She was something to see, though. Her head up.’
He started to laugh. ‘Head up? Bear down, more like it.’
She frowned. He had such rough talk, nowadays. Her father shrugged. ‘Well, maybe you should of done nothing. Just let em come for her.’
Kate shook her head. ‘A girl who gets in the family way has to go back. It’s part of the arrangement when they’re given to you. The Board have a lot of rules. Administration. I suppose they have to have.’
But her father didn’t hear; he had gone. Now the house was unusually quiet – no Daisy, no Harry – so Kate got up and went to her room. The truck was due soon, to collect her. With joining under way, the ewes and rams needed to be checked, and Kate was enlisted as another pair of eyes. Even a girl could do that. She would have been pleased to avoid it today. She didn’t want to see anyone, certainly not Ed.
When the truck’s horn sounded, she went outside. Luca and Vittorio stood in the back of the tray. They did not acknowledge her. She climbed into the cabin, pulling the heavy door closed after her, and Ed moved the truck slowly off. He said not a word throughout the drive to Riflebutt, registering his disapproval, which was pretty rich, but still a weight of guilt clung to Kate.
Ed braked to a stop at the Riflebutt trough, the big Southern Cross windmill above it clanking over the bleating of the ewes, pumping the water that brought the flocks back to these corners.
Out of the truck, Kate looked up at the turning blades. Right now, with her heart full of grief for Daisy, she found some relief in the sight, the windmill sail turning evenly in the light breeze, gunmetal blades against a bright blue sky. Her father said there’d been windmills for more than a thousand years.
‘Orright,’ Ed said to Kate and the two POWs, ‘better have two of us in Bullant, and the other pair in Riflebutt. Ya know what ya lookin for. The rams won’t stop to eat’n that makes em weak, so see they’re orright. The ewes too’ll be strugglin on this pasture. An them young rams might avoid the maidens. Got that?’
Luca nodded. Vittorio looked blank.
‘Watch ya step round the rams, eh. They’ll be workin so shouldn’t mind ya.’ Ed climbed through the fence into the Bullant paddock. Vittorio followed him, and Kate cursed under her breath. She’d have given anything to avoid watching sheep mating with Luca.
‘See yez back here in half an hour,’ Ed called as he moved off into the ewes.
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Luca put a boot on the lower wires of the Riflebutt fence and pulled the top wire up to hold a gap open. ‘Signora.’
Kate climbed through, glancing at the muscles in his forearm, inches from her nose. She could smell him, that mix of sweat and soap. Even sad as she was, she liked it, his smells. Such a good sort, even with his Signoras and his bloody Eye-tie English. Kate suddenly thought of Daisy at the Home, and felt bad for thinking about Luca.
She moved away across the open ground towards the flock of ewes gathered in an arc from the water trough, and kept a wary eye out for rams. The smell of fresh dung was heavy in the air, despite the breeze. At least that got the lovely Luca smell out of her mind. She waded into the mass of ewes, moving through them, ewe to ewe, looking for any who limped or hobbled. They looked out of condition, their wool dull and dusty. Kate prayed the drought would break soon, to bring rain and then pasture. Engrossed as she was, though, whenever she paused she thought of Daisy.
Luca whistled, one sharp note, and pointed to the left. The young ram Basil was moving forwards into a hollow on the edge of the flock closely followed by a ewe. Kate went towards them, trying to get a look at the ewe’s ear. The ram froze as the ewe sniffed his hindquarters, then he turned to do some sniffing of his own. The ewe stood still. From the ear notches they knew she was a maiden. Kate heard Luca behind her but still she watched the pair to see if Basil would do the job, or give up.
The ram scrambled to mount the ewe, and she bleated as he fell off.
‘Try again,’ Kate said softly. ‘C’mon, Basil.’
The ram sniffed some more. Then he had another go, and Kate was pleased, both with the young ram, and because maybe this time the ewe might ‘catch’. An empty ewe cost money.
Basil fell off again, and the ewe started to walk away, but the ram chased her, and mounted quickly as she moved along, his hind quarters in a two-legged walk.
Behind her, Luca laughed softly. Kate didn’t acknowledge him. She really didn’t want to talk about joining with him.
The ewe stopped and Basil stayed on. He’d done it. When Kate turned, Luca had gone, moved off to the far side of the flock. She knew that he disapproved of her taking Daisy back to the Home. Should she have waited for them to come for her? She’d been so sure it was the right thing to do, until she saw the Home and the matron again.