The Throwaway Children

by Diney Costeloe

  ‘Rita’s in bed, and Daisy is sitting in my room. I’ve given her some mending to finish before I get back. It’ll keep her busy enough.’

  Mrs Manton nodded. She didn’t tell Mrs Watson what her decision had been, but simply walked to the head of the line, gave the signal and they all set out for church.

  Daisy watched the line of girls disappear down the road, and then, tossing aside the sock she was mending, went in search of Rita. Rita was watching from the window as well.

  ‘You all right, Reet?’ Daisy asked as she came into the dorm.

  ‘Yes, course I am,’ said Rita. ‘She put me in Rosie’s bed and told me to stay here till they get back from church.’ She suddenly realized that Daisy ought to have gone with the others. ‘Why ain’t you gone?’

  ‘’Cos she left me in her room with a stack of mending to do,’ replied Daisy.

  ‘Did you see if Ma Gar was with them? I couldn’t see from here.’

  ‘Probably was,’ said Daisy, ‘not sure. Why?’

  ‘’Cos I got to go back to Oak and fetch something… and I need your help.’

  Daisy looked apprehensive. ‘Don’t want to go back there if I don’t have to,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to bump into Ma Gar. I’m going to be in enough trouble for letting you out.’

  ‘Don’t think you will,’ Rita told her. ‘Mrs Watson said things were going to be all right and not to worry.’

  ‘All right for her,’ groaned Daisy, ‘but she ain’t the one going to face Ma Gar.’

  ‘Well, I’m going back anyway,’ Rita said firmly. ‘I got to fetch something.’

  ‘What?’ demanded Daisy. ‘What you got to fetch?’

  ‘Something I hid,’ Rita said, unwilling to say it was Knitty in case Daisy really didn’t come with her. ‘Something of Rosie’s. You going to come and really help me or not?’

  ‘S’pose so,’ agreed Daisy reluctantly.

  They slipped out of the house and hurried over to Oak, hoping that everyone had gone to church. There didn’t seem to be anyone about, and they crept up to the front door.

  ‘It’s locked,’ Rita hissed in dismay. ‘We can’t get in.’

  ‘We come out the back door before,’ Daisy reminded her. ‘P’raps it’s still open.’

  Rita was relieved when the back door opened. Daisy had hoped it that would be locked. She was still terrified of being confronted by Ma Gar.

  Rita led the way back along the passage towards the bathroom. ‘In here,’ she said.

  ‘In the toilet?’ gasped Daisy. ‘What for?’

  ‘You’ll see,’ answered Rita, and pulled the door closed behind them. ‘I hid him in the cistern.’

  ‘Hid who?’ Daisy was bemused. ‘Rita, what are we doing here?’

  Rita climbed up onto the lavatory seat and reached up. She could touch the open-topped cistern all right, but there was no way she could reach high enough to put her hand inside.

  ‘That’s no good,’ she said. ‘Wait a minute.’ She hurried out to the broom cupboard in the passage and returned a moment later with a stepladder. ‘Hold this steady,’ she said, and as Daisy put her foot on the bottom rung, she climbed to the top.

  ‘Reet, what are you doing?’ demanded Daisy.

  ‘Hid something in here,’ panted Rita, balancing precariously on the top step and reaching her hand into the cistern. Her fingers found the sodden Knitty, and grasping him as tightly as she could, she dragged him, dripping, from his hiding place.

  ‘Hey,’ cried Daisy, ‘you’re soaking me.’ She let go of the steps and they wobbled violently and Rita jumped to the floor as they crashed against the wall. The sound echoed round the house, and the girls froze in terror, but no one appeared.

  ‘What are we going to do about this mess?’ Daisy pointed to the pool of water on the floor.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Rita, picking up Knitty and squeezing him so that more water poured from his sodden body. ‘Come on, let’s go.’ Moments later the steps were back in the cupboard and they were creeping into the kitchen.

  As they approached the kitchen door they heard a loud banging. Daisy clutched Rita. ‘It’s Ma Gar,’ she whispered. The banging came again, and then they heard someone shouting.

  ‘Scarper!’ hissed Daisy.

  ‘No, wait!’ Rita grabbed her arm. ‘Listen!’

  ‘Let me out,’ came the shout. ‘I’ll thrash the lot of you, you little sluts. Let me out!’

  ‘Come on, Reet,’ begged Daisy.

  ‘Just a minute, someone’s locked her in!’ Rita exulted. ‘Some brave girl’s locked her in.’

  ‘Yes, and I ain’t going to be here when she breaks the door down,’ Daisy told her, and shot out of the back door. With a gleeful grin Rita turned and clutching the still-dripping Knitty in her arms, scooted after her.

  When they reached Larch, they went back into the dorm. Rita leaned out of the window and gave Knitty another squeeze before leaving him on the outside windowsill to dry in the sun, then she went back along the passage to the kitchen.

  ‘Reet!’ cried Daisy in dismay. ‘What you doing now?’

  ‘Back in a min,’ called Rita, and returned carrying a pointed kitchen knife.

  ‘Cripes, Reet.’ Daisy stared at her friend. ‘What you gonna do with that?’

  ‘This,’ replied Rita, and Daisy watched in horror as Rita pulled the bedclothes off the bed and up-ended the mattress. With sudden vigour, she stabbed the mattress, slitting the worn and faded ticking with the point of the knife. The shabby material ripped apart easily, exposing a thin layer of crushed kapok. Rita reached inside and, pulling out a handful of the stuffing, she took her precious journal containing the picture of Daddy she’d brought from Oak that morning, and slid it into the hole. Carefully she replaced the stuffing and then put the mattress back onto the bed, the ripped side resting on the wire springs of the bed frame.

  Daisy watched the whole process open-mouthed.

  ‘You won’t tell,’ Rita said to her. It was a statement, not a question, and Daisy nodded.

  ‘Course not.’

  ‘When I got Knitty dry, I’ll put him in there, an’ all,’ Rita said. She gave Daisy a grin. ‘You and me’s best mates, Dais. We’ll look out for each other in this place. Now we better get your mending finished, before that lot get back.’

  When Mrs Watson came in from church, she went straight to see how Rita was doing. She found her sitting up in bed, mending a hole in the sleeve of a cardigan. Sitting beside the bed was Daisy, sewing up the hem of some overalls.

  ‘Daisy Smart,’ she exclaimed, ‘I thought I told you to wait in my sitting room.’

  ‘Sorry, miss,’ Rita said before Daisy could answer. ‘It’s my fault, I felt a bit funny, so I asked her to come up and sit with me.’

  ‘Did you, now?’ Mrs Watson said wryly. She was coming to realize that these two girls would stick together, and she found that she respected them for it. She was determined that, if she still had a job at the end of the day, they should be transferred to Larch, so that they would be under her care.

  She was outraged at the way Rita had been punished. She had no problem with disciplining girls who were disobedient, indeed she knew that obedience to authority and conformity to rules were necessary if one was to get on in life, but she also liked to see the sparks of independence and courage she’d seen in Rita, and to a lesser extent in Daisy. It would be wrong to extinguish those. The girls in Larch lived under the same strict regime as those in the other cottages, their daily routine was as strenuous and their work as hard, but they were allowed a certain leeway in behaviour. They were allowed to chat during meals and in the dorms before lights out. Mrs Watson had found some old packs of cards, a snakes and ladders board and a draughts set, and she encouraged them to play games in the living room when they’d finished their homework, sometimes even playing with them. She had collected a small selection of books, and occasionally she read to the younger ones. She had taken the job of house-mother, as Mrs Manton knew, because she was
desperate, but having taken it, she was the sort of woman who gave it her best shot. House-mother. To Delia Watson it was the second half of her title which was important. Since taking up her position, several things about Laurel Farm had worried her. She knew it was no good confronting Mrs Manton head-on, but she did feel that from the inside she might be able to influence and alter some of the practices; they had certainly softened in her own house. She knew the other house-mothers regarded her as soft, but she didn’t care. Her girls usually gave little trouble, and she was always prepared to listen if they came to her, as she had listened to Rita the previous day. This morning, however, she knew that she couldn’t ignore what had happened to Rita. Once she had seen to Rita’s immediate needs, she went straight to Oak to confront Mrs Garfield and what she’d found had sent her straight to Mrs Manton’s front door.

  As she sat in the sun that afternoon, thinking over the day, she wondered, not for the first time, what she would do if Mrs Manton called her bluff. No, not bluff, she told herself. If Mrs Garfield wasn’t sacked, she, Delia Watson, would indeed leave at once and go to the authorities. She’d manage somehow, but what would happen to the girls in Larch if she had to leave? At that moment, one of the senior girls came running up.

  ‘Please, Mrs Watson,’ she puffed, ‘Mrs Manton wants to see you over at her house. Straight away, she said.’

  ‘All right, Diane, thank you.’ Delia Watson stood up. ‘Run back and tell her I’m on my way, will you?’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Watson.’ The girl streaked off like a hare, her bare feet thudding on the path as she went.

  Mrs Watson did not go straight over to central; first she went indoors to check on Rita. She was still sitting up in bed, Daisy beside her, as they both tackled the mountain of mending Mrs Watson had given them.

  Assured now that Rita had in fact suffered no lasting effects from her incarceration, Mrs Watson followed Diane more slowly through the trees. When she knocked on the Mantons’ door it was opened by Joe who gave her a smile, and said, ‘Ah, Mrs Watson, come in. You’ll find my wife in her office.’ He stood aside to let her pass and then stepped out of the door himself, adding, ‘Off to feed the chooks.’

  Mrs Watson went through the house to the office at the back. She knocked on the door, and at the sharp ‘Come!’ went in.

  The superintendent was sitting behind her desk, apparently working on some papers. She glanced up as Mrs Watson came in.

  ‘Ah, there you are,’ she said, ‘please sit down.’

  Mrs Watson took a seat on the upright chair in front of the desk. For a moment neither of them spoke. In the end it was the superintendent who broke the silence.

  ‘I have spoken to Mrs Garfield,’ she began, ‘and she deeply regrets the events of yesterday.’

  I’m sure she does, thought Mrs Watson. But she did not speak, simply sat and waited for her employer to continue.

  ‘However,’ Mrs Manton went on, ‘I have told her that such behaviour is unacceptable and she must leave Laurel Farm by tomorrow evening. In the meantime the girls who live in Oak Cottage will be assigned new places this evening. I hope that this…’ she hesitated, ‘…arrangement will meet with your approval. Of course, no mention will be made of why Mrs Garfield has left, either to the other staff or the children. It will be announced she’s been called away to look after her sick mother.’

  Very generous of you, thought Mrs Watson, but all she said was, ‘Since they are already in my house, I will keep Rita and Daisy in Larch from now on… as agreed.’

  Mrs Manton gave her a long look, as if assessing whether it was worth making an issue of such a small added victory, and decided against it. ‘Agreed,’ she said. ‘If Rita is still in bed, you’d better send Daisy over to Oak to collect their things.’

  ‘I will,’ replied Mrs Watson, adding as she got to her feet, ‘but I don’t expect there’s much for them to bring, do you?’ And with this she walked out of the room closing the door quietly behind her.

  ‘Insufferable woman!’ exploded Mrs Manton to the closed door. ‘Just you wait.’ She got to her feet and went through to her living room, where she flopped into a chair, feeling suddenly exhausted. It had been one hell of a day, she thought, and Mrs Garfield’s reaction to her dismissal had been quite extreme.

  ‘You must see that I can’t continue to employ you—’ she’d begun, but was interrupted.

  ‘I can’t think why not,’ snarled Mrs Garfield, ‘I was only doing what you’d ordered me to.’

  Mrs Manton did not respond but simply told Mrs Garfield that she had to be out of the house by the end of the next day.

  The house-mother had been almost apoplectic. ‘You told me to deal with that child!’ she shrieked. ‘You told me you wanted no more trouble from her.’

  ‘Agreed,’ Mrs Manton said mildly, ‘but I didn’t want her dead, either.’

  ‘But she ain’t dead, is she?’ screamed the woman. ‘She’s alive and well and making accusations about me.’

  ‘You were drunk,’ said Mrs Manton flatly, ‘I saw you myself. I told you, neither Mrs Watson nor I could rouse you. Rita Stevens had nothing to do with that.’

  ‘I did what you told me to do,’ reiterated Mrs Garfield, ‘and now you want to sack me! Turn me off without a reference!’

  ‘I didn’t say that,’ said her employer. ‘But I can’t keep you here. If the authorities heard that you’d been dead drunk while in charge of a house full of children, and I hadn’t sacked you, they’d close us down without a second thought. Both my husband and I are agreed on this—’

  ‘Your husband!’ sneered Mrs Garfield. ‘He’s just a lapdog. He don’t make the decisions round this place.’

  ‘Maybe not,’ agreed Mrs Manton smoothly, ‘but he concurs with them, and this one in particular.’

  ‘You bitch!’ shrieked Mrs Garfield, who, realizing there was no reprieve, gave no heed to her language.

  ‘You will be paid up to date,’ went on Mrs Manton as if she had not spoken, ‘and be off the premises by the time the children get home from school tomorrow.’ She stared across at the enraged Mrs Garfield. ‘And should you need a reference, you may write to me for one.’

  ‘Stuff your reference,’ snarled Mrs Garfield.

  ‘As you wish,’ replied the superintendent, and with her dignity unruffled, she turned and left the room, closing the door gently behind her.

  The relief with which Rita and Daisy greeted the news that they were to stay in Larch Cottage was immense. They were back sharing a dorm with Joan, whom they both liked, and though Rita felt a physical ache when she thought of Rosie, alone in a strange place with strange people, there were times when she was so busy that there was no room for Rosie in her thoughts. Knitty had been retrieved from the windowsill and while the other girls were in the bathroom, had been stowed, still slightly damp, in the mattress.

  Mrs Watson had taken the two girls aside and told them that from now on they would be living in Larch. ‘I’ve given you a little leeway today,’ she said, ‘but from now on I expect complete obedience from you, do you understand?’ She fixed them with a stern eye as she waited for their ‘Yes, Mrs Watson’.

  ‘I hope you do. Tomorrow you’ll be starting school with the others, and I expect to hear that you’re model pupils. Any reports of bad behaviour and you’ll be in more trouble. Understand?’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Watson.’

  ‘Good. Now Rita, you can come and collect clothes for both of you, and then you can get dressed and come down for tea. Daisy, run over to Oak and collect anything of yours and Rita’s that’s there. You needn’t worry,’ she smiled as she saw the look of horror on Daisy’s face, ‘you won’t see Mrs Garfield.’ When Daisy didn’t look convinced she said briskly, ‘Come along, Daisy, do as you’re told.’

  Unwillingly, Daisy went back into Oak, and found a general hubbub as all the other girls were there doing the same thing.

  ‘Which cottage are you going to?’ asked Audrey when Daisy came in.

  ‘Larch.
’

  ‘Lucky you,’ said Carol. ‘We’ve got to go into Pine, with the babies.’

  ‘Better than here,’ Daisy said.

  ‘Where’s Rita, then?’ demanded Audrey as she watched Daisy gather up her toothbrush and flannel from her locker, and then collect Rita’s from hers.

  ‘Back in Larch. She ain’t well.’

  ‘Bet she was there all the time,’ Audrey said belligerently. ‘Bet she weren’t in the cellar at all.’

  ‘She was, too,’ retorted Daisy. ‘I let her out, and then Mrs Watson looked after her.’

  ‘Bit of a sissy, if you ask me,’ Audrey said. ‘She ain’t the only one’s had the cellar treatment. Agnes had it and—’

  ‘Yeah,’ interrupted Daisy, ‘and look at her now. She’s scared of her own shadow.’ She went to the beds that had been theirs and pulled off the single blankets that covered them. Rolling them carefully together, she tucked them under her arm.

  ‘Where’re you going with those?’ asked Carol, watching open-mouthed. ‘You can’t take them, they ain’t yours.’

  ‘Nobody else needs them,’ Daisy pointed out. ‘Nobody ain’t going to be sleeping in here, are they? Take yours to Pine, I would.’

  ‘That’s stealing,’ announced Audrey righteously. ‘You won’t half get it in the neck when they see you walking off with those.’

  ‘Yeah,’ echoed Carol, ‘s’posing we tell!’

  ‘Then,’ replied Daisy as she looked round to check that there was nothing else of use she could take, ‘you’d be just plain stupid.’ As she passed the lavatories she glanced in; one of them had an extremely wet floor. Daisy gave a grin. Reet was a card, and no mistake.

  The routine in Larch turned out to be virtually the same as in Oak.

  ‘Our turn first in the bathroom,’ cried Sandra, as they hurriedly stripped their beds, folding the bedclothes neatly as they’d been taught back in Laurel House. ‘Come on, you lot, get in there before the other dorm do.’

  When she’d washed her face and hands, Rita remade her bed, tucking the extra blanket in carefully, hoping it wouldn’t be noticed if there was dormitory inspection. Rita and Daisy had each been given one of the grey checked frocks that all the girls wore to school, and they put them on, leaving the grubby weekend overalls in a basket, ready for someone to launder later on.