Telling Tales

by William Taylor

  ‘Do you hear that, Mum? Thinks he’s going to school. Geez, have we got a surprise for him.’ Darcy Pearson chuckled happily.

  ‘To the best of my knowledge, you’re fourteen years of age, not far off fifteen. There’s no school for you, boy. You’re here as our farm worker and that’s what you’ll be doing,’ said Mrs Pearson. ‘By the time you’ve settled in here and learnt the ropes, you’d be of age to leave and no one would mind.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘But nothing. Let that be an end to it. Goodness, gracious, whatever next?’ The woman barked a laugh. ‘We don’t have our worker going to school. We asked for a good strong boy for farm work…’

  ‘Yeah, and look what we got, a skinny little runty weasel,’ said Darcy, continuing to enjoy himself.

  Mr Pearson grunted. ‘Not to worry. We’ll get our money’s worth out of the little blighter, or my name’s not Clarrie Pearson.’

  ‘Before I was rudely interrupted…’ Mrs Pearson started again. ‘Let’s put an end to this school nonsense. You’re here as a worker, boy, nothing more and nothing less, even though our Darcy tells me you didn’t bring suitable work clothes. I’m willing to concede the authorities might not have told you, what with things as they are in the mother country…’

  ‘They told me I’d be going to school in New Zealand,’ said Jake. ‘That’s what they told my Dad and they told me.’

  At which point Mr Pearson stood, scratched his belly and looked down on Jake, then lifted his hand and swiped him across the head. ‘You’ll learn one lesson quick, lad, and that’s don’t answer the wife back. Get that into your thick skull. Understand?’

  Darcy Pearson giggled happily. ‘Don’t you worry, Dad. I’ll be helping him understand. Hell’s bells, I’m looking forward to the responsibility.’ He grinned at Jake, this time with menace in his smile.

  Jake swayed on his feet. A wave of nausea hit him in the gut and it took what meagre strength he had left to stay upright. Above all, he was tired. He was very tired. This day had brought him much too much. Even the scant comfort offered by the scraps of grey blanket and the stained mattress in his room out the back would be better than this. But they hadn’t finished with him yet.

  The story of Jake, Land of Milk and Honey, was published by HarperCollins in 2005. I wrote it back in 1997, at the time of the House of Commons inquiry into what had happened to these children, almost all of them by then in their fifties and sixties. There was a small amount of media coverage at that time, and the stories of a very few were told here and there. In the dozen years since, this episode in our history has become forgotten again. It was the second of my novels to be consigned to a bottom drawer for a number of years, and I owe a debt of gratitude to HarperCollins for publishing them both. Mind you, Land of Milk and Honey was the only one to go twice to the same firm! As publisher Lorain Day said to me, quietly on the second occasion, and possibly a little wryly, ‘Times have changed…’

  It had an initial double rejection, quite simply because several of the scenes in the book are very hard to stomach. Brutal in the extreme. To be true to my story, true to what had happened to many of these poor waifs and strays, there was no way that I could tone it down and retain any degree of integrity. Indeed, what I write in the book is somewhat mild in comparison with what many endured. Jake does, eventually, land on his feet, find in this land of ours at least a reasonable portion of both milk and honey. This did not often happen. More than a handful of these souls died in servitude, although not, to the best of my knowledge, in New Zealand. No one to hear, care, much less help. Very many of the boys, like Jake, ended up on farms. They weren’t taken in in order to give them a good home and a reasonable start in life; they were there to work. And work, they did! In the years following World War II, New Zealand suffered a shortage of farm labour. British ‘war orphan’ boys were the cheapest of solutions.

  The House of Commons report goes into some detail about what has happened to these children in the years since. It is largely a litany of disaster. Alcohol and drug addiction, inability to sustain marriage, inability to parent satisfactorily and to bond with their own children, crime—petty and serious—and incarceration: alienation in all its forms. Tiny beacons of success just here and there. One of the greatest travesties in the aftermath was the inordinate difficulty of many to secure citizenship in the land of their ‘adoption’. The poor buggers simply could not prove who they were, often where they had come from, birth certificates were non-existent, records had not been properly kept by the agencies responsible for their despatch overseas. Sometimes the cost of meeting this red-tape crap was prohibitive. Some redress was made following the Commons inquiry and its recommendations, but this came too late for many.

  All in all, my Jake was far too fortunate—I should have made the story more consistently bleak in a way that it had been for so many. However, there is still enough there that allows a reader to get a general idea. I don’t think the book will ever reach a wide audience, but so long as some young people here and there do sit down and absorb what it has to say about a sorry chapter in our history, I am content. Well, reasonably content. I’m fully aware that some school librarians, teachers and parents may well see this book as too hard-hitting, too brutal and too disturbing. My only response would be that there are some things that shouldn’t remain hidden from our young, no matter how distasteful. Protecting our children doesn’t mean that we should keep them blindfolded from reality.

  When HarperCollins re-published The Blue Lawn, Lorain Day had asked if I had any unpublished stuff littering up my home that might be of interest to her firm. I replied in the negative. It was a week or so later that I remembered my story of Jake, got back in touch with her, told her the general thrust of the story, and, of course, about its initial rejections—including that of her own firm. She asked to see it, although making no promises. Obviously she liked it!

  Not everyone has. I guess it is one of my don’t-touch-with-a-bargepole, not-very-nice books for the young. Land of Milk and Honey received mixed reviews—indeed they were extreme reviews. It was either quite extravagantly admired or I was castigated as almost a purveyor of filth. I continue to believe that it was not for the quality of the writing that it was totally ignored by both of our children’s book awards in the year of its publication.

  I treasure the letters I have received from one particular reader of the book, and I have stayed in contact with him. I knew in my heart that I had ‘got it right’ when he told me that I had virtually told his story. I think he was amazed that someone knew his story and had felt strongly enough about it to sit down and write it. Richard arrived in New Zealand in 1950 at age thirteen or fourteen. He treasures a photo of the group of ‘war orphans’ of which he was one. The youngest child in the party is a little girl of around four years, clutching her teddy-bear to her. He tells me that she still has her teddy, a woman in her mid-sixties. I imagine it represents one tangible link to a sad past. Richard himself laboured for several years on a Wairarapa farm. He was stunned to find out, inadvertently at around seventeen, that he was free to leave whenever he pleased. Obviously no one had ever told him he wasn’t indentured for the rest of his natural life!

  I cannot forget these people, most particularly as the little bewildered kids they must have been, so many of them wondering what the hell they had done wrong, done so wrong that it had been necessary to exile them from their homeland.

  Around twenty years ago, a Norwich social worker, Margaret Humphries, almost by accident stumbled across this episode in British history. Helping those who suffered to trace their roots became her life’s work. She recounts her efforts, particularly those in Australia, in a remarkable book: Empty Cradle is well worth reading. She was honoured by the Australian nation for her work. It is an interesting commentary that, to date, she has not been honoured in the United Kingdom.

  In Land of Milk and Honey I do provide my boy, Jake, with a happy ending. Indeed, a bit of a fairy tale, really, compared with
what proved to be the lot of most of these souls. I am happy to have written the book.

  VIII

  It was a pleasant autumn or early winter evening and I had made the boys their favourite Sunday night snack of what seemed to the cook to be a pile of about 200 pancakes—each! My sons had good appetites. Robin would have been around thirteen; Julian, obviously, a year younger. It was one of those warm and convivial evenings, the night drawing in, the fire warming the living room. I can see us all now as we disposed of our pancake mountain. It seemed the right moment to me: ‘I think it’s about time I had a serious chat to you guys.’

  ‘What about?’ asked Julian, possibly justifiably alarmed that some misdeed of his was about to be uncovered.

  ‘It’s time I had a talk to you about, er…sex.’

  I can see Robin now as he looked at me. ‘Well, we don’t know all about it yet, Dad, because we’re not all that old, but if you need to know anything or need advice, you can just ask us. We might be able to help.’

  So much for my puerile effort to be a better father in this respect to my two sons than my old man had been to me!

  I had one or two distinct advantages in being a solofather. Single-parenthood is no bed of roses for anyone—mother or father. A single custodial parent always feels a greater sense of guilt whenever anything goes wrong compared with that felt by a conventional two-parent couple. Alone, you are far more sensitive to finger-pointing or overt or covert criticism. That you imagine much of this doesn’t lessen the feelings at the time. However, I was significantly luckier than any poor soul struggling to raise a family on a Domestic Purposes Benefit. Making ends meet was a problem I did not have to face. My successive jobs as principal of National Park, Pukerua Bay and Ohakune schools came with increasingly adequate salaries and virtually free housing. Of greater advantage than this was that my sons came to work with me. While they may not have appreciated this, or seen the situation as advantageous, it certainly meant they were seldom more than a stone’s throw away from dad. When the time came for them to go to high school—Ohakune’s Ruapehu College—this was almost within sight of my office at the primary school. Poor little buggers! At home with Daddy. At school with Daddy. Thirty years on and it’s a wonder we are still so close.

  My chosen career, and one or two of the paths I took from that career, was hardly designed to strike great chords of joy in the hearts of one’s male offspring. That my two boys coped as well as they did is to their credit more than mine. It can’t be all that easy as you grow into adolescence, and all that entails, when your father is the principal of the school and then becomes mayor of the town.

  The over-riding concern of this particular solo-parent in caring for his children was neither cleanliness nor godliness, nor was it in the instilling of right and proper values. Clothing them was no great problem. Harnessing them periodically to vacuum cleaner, lawn mower or washing machine could be accomplished by minimum force or, failing that, outright blackmail. The memory uppermost in my mind of those child-rearing years was, quite simply, feeding them.

  My two sons had hearty and healthy appetites. They would eat anything and everything providing it was in sufficient quantity. Quality was not always a concern. I do not remember thinking very often about what may constitute a ‘balanced diet’. One of them would arrive home from school and daily polish off the better part of a packet of Weetbix—and not the small packet, either. The other had daily ‘afternoon tea’ of a can of spaghetti in tomato sauce. They would have plenty of room left over for what was always a substantial dinner. Both were perfectly willing to assist in the very regular supermarket shopping—providing they had the final say on the contents of the trolley. It was significantly easier and much cheaper to do the shopping by myself.

  Unsatisfied by a single, albeit substantial, main-course meal, both became rapidly adept as dessert cooks. Robin’s apple crumble, apple pie, pavlova or lemon-meringue pie were all remarkably better than my efforts—and all before he was thirteen! They were both particularly fond of full-scale roast dinners, providing their plates were not overloaded with anything green. They didn’t get them every day, and, should any publisher express an interest, I am perfectly happy to oblige with my ‘100 Ways with Minced Beef’. Even today I am a dab hand with a wide variety of Bolognese, lasagne or even cannelloni-type dishes—the basic mince mixture is always the same. My expertise with scones is renowned. You can have them any way you like, providing they are plain, cheese, date or sultana! Pikelets, muffins, superb sponges…the list is endless. I owe much to my sons: they trained me well. I imagine I nourished them quite well, because neither required many trips to the doctor—unless they had broken some bit of their bodies.

  I was definitely a negligent parent in some respects. Robin, the more competitively sporting of the two, would complain that I seldom turned out to watch him play on a Saturday. Well, how the hell could I? Housework needed attention now and again, and a weekly mountain of laundry will only partly do itself. I have yet to find a washing machine that will re-load with the second, third or fourth load that needs washing.

  Clothing the two of them was no great problem. Keep it simple, keep it washable, and don’t buy stuff that might need ironing. I think I made only one disastrous mistake in those years before they could fully select and purchase their own gear. Our couple of trips to England so that they could spend time with their mother were both made at Christmas, and we would stay for about a month of our long summer holiday—in the middle of the Northern Hemisphere winter. On one visit I shopped for the boys at Harrod’s January sale. Oh, what an error in judgement and a complete waste of money! The stuff I bought for them was great, all designer labels of course, and, thank God, a fraction of the original ticket-price on the garments. Just as well, really, because they refused to wear any of it when we got home. Most of it got given away, and I have some doubts that any of it got worn, at least with any enthusiasm on the part of the wearer.

  I think it was on this same visit that I determined my sons required at least a modicum of cultural immersion. This involved significant transactional dealings with the two of them; as mentioned earlier, the pay-off of two Star Wars sittings in return for enduring the Royal Ballet being one of these. I think the National Gallery was in return for half a day in Hamley’s, the toyshop that was not holding a sale! God knows what Westminster Abbey would have cost, and thank God the royal family was not slated for any personal appearances.

  It’s a sad commentary on my own life and living that I used my boys equally as much as they used me. It was not that I would ever have stood a chance of getting much slave labour out of them—although they did work hard painting the exterior of the little cottage we bought in National Park, a coat of paint that exists until the present day. Certainly it was well-paid-for labour! It was rather that I used them as a shield and an excuse for shutting out completely any form of social or personal life over and above that required of my job. No matter the quality of a marriage or the relief felt when it is over, it is not easy to again pick up the warp and weft of a single life. It’s an uphill battle for the newly single, whether from widowhood or divorce. You have become used to being half of a couple and, alone again, it seems everyone in the world around you is one of a pair. I was pathetic. I can remember accepting an invitation to a party. No big deal, I would have known quite a few of those attending. I drove around the block three times, four times, maybe more…and then drove home. Gutless.

  I guess I will be a solo-parent for the whole of my life but, in truth, I really only did ten years of hands-on servitude before the boys were more or less on their own two feet and moderately independent. Around halfway through that stretch of time, I realized, slow learner that I have always been, that I had to make a life for myself that didn’t necessarily involve the kids. I jumped in off the deep end.

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ I can remember saying. ‘It’s good of you to think of me, but I’ve only lived in the town for little more than a year.’ I was b
eing invited to allow my name to go forward for election to the old Ohakune Borough Council. To be honest, I was flattered, but the last thing I wanted was to stand for election and bottom the poll—which, to my mind, would have been the rightful outcome for a Johnnie-come-lately.

  The blandishments continued. My total lack of knowledge, much less experience in anything to do with local government, was apparently no impediment; indeed, I was told, it might well work to my advantage. In the end I gave in and agreed to stand. The main reason I succumbed was not so much any grandiose idea I had about electorally serving my new community, but rather that I knew, as principal of the town’s school, I did have some obligation to join in the life of the town. I had not harboured any burning ambition to join Lions, Rotary or the golf club, but at least if I showed myself willing to serve the town outside my school I could not be said to be holding myself aloof from the place.

  There were sixteen nominations for the nine-seat council. Convinced that I would poll in sixteenth place no matter what I said or did, I made a single election promise. I would see that trees got planted around the perimeter of the town dump (this was back before refuse transfer stations had been invented). Clearly the modesty of my single promise worked to my advantage and I polled third-highest. The trees got planted. The dump has long been closed, but the trees are still there. My promise has kept on growing!

  That should have been an end to it rather than a beginning. I chaired the finance committee. (Will the great advantages of my two years with the ANZ Bank never end?) I dutifully attended meetings; one main council meeting, and several committee meetings per month. It was all quite interesting and certainly a change from school and home. I looked forward to seeing out my three-year stint and would have likely taken on a further term before, in the normal run of things, it would have been time to move on further up the teaching ladder. However, things did not go according to this plan.