In Her Mothers' Shoes (12 page)

Meg stopped digging and stretched her back, hands on her hips. ‘I feel like an old woman,’ she groaned. ‘Its so hot today.’

‘Imagine what it’s going to be like in two or three months,’ Lizzie said.

‘I won’t be able to bend over a spade, that’s for sure.’

‘Look over there – the southerly’s arriving.’ Anahira was approaching along the row of silver beet and pointing towards a bank of threatening grey clouds creeping over the Port Hills and piling up in the southern sky. ‘We’re in for a cold night.’

‘It’ll be a relief after this heat,’ Meg said.

‘Lucky we’re not here through the winter,’ Lizzie said. ‘Imagine how cold that would be.’

‘I’ve heard they get icicles
inside
the windows in the dorms when there’s a big frost,’ Anahira said.

‘Well I’m glad I missed that. I’m planning to be well out of here long before the frosts start,’ Lizzie said. ‘It might get cold in Wellington, but it doesn’t get
that
cold.’

‘We’d better pack up, the rain is going to start soon,’ Anahira said. ‘I’m blowed if I’m going to wait until they tell us to come in.’

‘They won’t notice if we’re out in the rain,’ Christine said. ‘I’m packing up.’

‘Hadn’t we better wait, though? We’ll get told off if we go in now,’ Lizzie said.

‘Yes, and we don’t want to lose any privileges on Christmas Eve,’ Anahira said. ‘I’ve spent all week making up for my last crime.’

‘I know, I had to go to the shops for you,’ Jessie said.

‘It was so unfair being grounded for something as minor as being late for chapel. I reckon Miss Mayhew picks on me because she doesn’t like Maoris.’

‘She doesn’t like me, either,’ Christine said. ‘She’s always finding something wrong with the way I do things.’

‘Let’s face it, Miss Mayhew doesn’t like any of us,’ Jessie said. ‘She thinks we’re all evil sinners.’ She looked up at the approaching bank of clouds. ‘The storm’s getting closer. I’m going to go in. Has anybody seen Pearl?’

‘No, she went to the sick room during afternoon tea,’ Christine said. ‘She was looking awfully pale.’

‘I noticed that, too,’ Jessie said. ‘We can go and see how she is when we go in.’

‘We’ve got enough potatoes for one day, anyway,’ Lizzie said. ‘I’m coming with you Jessie.’

Pearl wasn’t in the sick room when they went in. She wasn’t in the dormitory either, or in the bathroom or toilets.

It wasn’t until after they’d scrubbed the soil off their hands and changed into their ordinary clothes that they had a chance to look for her again.

‘I don’t know where she’s gone,’ Lizzie said after searching through the corridors and meeting the others as arranged in the girls’ large sitting room.

‘Well, she’s not in here,’ Jessie said. ‘I wish she wouldn’t do this. She’s always going off on her own.’

‘You’d think she doesn’t like our company,’ Lizzie said.

‘We all need to have time to ourselves,’ Christine said, ‘but the rest of us don’t disappear for hours at a time.’

‘And make ourselves so hard to find.’ Meg folded her arms and looked annoyed.

‘There aren’t many other places she could be,’ Anahira said. ‘I’ve looked in the showers and toilets. That’s where she was last time.’

‘She must have found somewhere new.’ Jessie scanned the room, as if she might be hiding behind the curtains or under the window seat.

‘Well, she can’t be outside, look at it.’ Christine pointed at the window.

The back lawn was being swept by squalls of wind-blown rain; the empty washing lines swayed, caught by the fierce gale, and the rain pounded down, bouncing off the concrete paths and covering the grass with puddles. In the distance, the oaks bent with the wind.

‘D’you think we’d better tell Miss Mayhew?’ Meg said.

They looked at each other, dismayed. To tell Miss Mayhew anything was a kind of defeat.

‘It’s nearly tea time,’ Jessie said. ‘We’d better tell Matron.’

‘I think we should have one last look before tea,’ Anahira said. ‘You know what Matron can be like. She hates being disturbed after five o’clock.’

‘That’s because she’s got the gin bottle open,’ Jessie said. ‘She tries to hide it, but she doesn’t fool me.’

‘Well I’m not going to be the one to go to her,’ Meg said.

‘Me neither,’ said Lizzie. ‘I think Anahira’s right. We should look again.’

‘All right.’ Jessie looked at the wall clock above the door of the big sitting room. ‘There’s still twenty minutes before tea.’ She turned back to them. ‘Anahira, it was your idea to have another look. You go around the back, and make sure you check the garden sheds.’

‘But it’s pouring with rain. And anyway, we were in there putting the tools away before we came in.’

‘Doesn’t matter. Get a raincoat and look again.’

‘Oh, all right.’ Anahira pulled a face.

‘Meg, you go round the front as far as the gates – and have a look up and down the street if you can get out there without Miss Mayhew having a fit.’

‘Yes, Jessie.’

‘Christine and I will do the south end of the building,’ Lizzie offered.

‘Good. I’ll check the dormitories, all of them. And the bathrooms. I know we’ve all been in there since we came in, but I’ll look again.’

They spread out, Lizzie and Christine checking all the doors along the corridor and looking behind the two that opened – the storeroom, stuffed with cleaning equipment, stacks of linen, toilet rolls, flour, sugar and other dried goods, but no Pearl; and the examination room, where Lizzie endured the cold hands of the maternity nurse during her monthly check-up. Pearl wasn’t in there either, nor behind the curtain where the nurse kept her instruments.

That left the laundry.

‘She can’t be in there,’ Christine said. ‘Nobody goes there in the afternoons, it’s out of bounds.’

‘It’s probably locked anyway,’ Lizzie said. ‘I’ll see if it is.’ She tried the handle and the door opened. Without the electric light, it was hard to see anything; the high window slits only cast a dim light from the overcast sky. She flicked on the light switch and froze.

‘No!’ It came out as a scream.

‘What is it? What’s the matter?’ Christine pushed past her through the door and, at the sight that confronted them both, she too let out a piercing wail.

Not five yards away, Pearl was lying in the corner against the wall, a small pool of blood trickling from between her legs. Her eyes flickered recognition and she held her hand out towards them.

‘Pearl, are you all right?’ Lizzie could see that she wasn’t but didn’t know what else to say.

‘I’ll get Matron.’ Christine fled.

Lizzie ran over to her friend and tucked herself in to kneel behind her, cradling her tiny body close. She didn’t know what else to do so kept on saying ‘It’s going to be all right, Pearl. Matron’s coming. It’s going to be all right …’

After a few minutes, her knees hurt from the weight of Pearl pressing on her thighs and she sat on the cold floor, her legs out to one side. They brushed against something sharp. Gripping Pearl with one arm, she bent over to remove the sharp object and found Pearl’s pink plastic number ten knitting needles beside her, covered in blood. What were they doing there? Then she realised and had to take in several gulps of air, her heart racing, her ears ringing. She heard footsteps. Quickly, she pushed the knitting needles away out of sight.

‘Whatever’s going on here?’ Matron had arrived. Christine was close behind.

‘Run quickly and get the stretcher out of the sick bay, Christine. Get one of the other girls to help you.’

She turned to Pearl. ‘I’ve called the doctor for you. He’ll be here in a few minutes.’ Then she turned to Lizzie. ‘You’ve done a good job, sitting with her. But you can go. I’ll take charge now.’

‘But is she going to be all right?’

‘Yes, I expect so.’

‘And the baby?’

‘No. It’s too late for the baby. Now run along. This is no place for you. It’s tea time. You don’t want to miss out.’ This was said firmly, brooking no argument.

Lizzie ‘ran along’ as she was told, all the way to the dormitory where she flung herself on the bed, dry-eyed, drained of feeling, exhausted, shattered.

In the still of that moment she felt a fluttering in her belly; the baby had started to kick.

Chapter 6.

Christchurch, March 1951

In her thirty-eighth week, Lizzie changed her mind and sought an audience with Matron. Jessie told her she was mad. Christine and Anahira said it was worth a try and they wished they had as much courage.

‘I’m sorry to trouble you, Matron.’ She sat, as instructed, in the hard-backed wooden chair in front of Matron’s desk, trying to hold back the fear that was threatening to make her voice quaver. ‘But I’ve decided I’d like to keep my baby when it’s born.’

‘Have you, now?’ Matron’s normally stern expression turned even sterner.

‘Yes. I’m old enough to look after a baby and I plan to do so.’

‘And have you consulted your parents about this?’

Lizzie had prepared for this. ‘No. I’m of legal age now. I’m eighteen. I don’t have to consult them.’

‘Indeed. That may be your opinion, but I’m afraid it doesn’t hold in this instance. You see, you signed a form saying you were giving your baby for adoption, and that’s what will happen.’

‘But . . .’

‘There is no but. It’s quite simple. Do you want me to show you the document you signed?’

‘No. Er . . .. yes.’ Lizzie thought she was going to be sick. She hadn’t signed anything about giving up her baby. How could Matron say such a thing? Was she trying to deceive her?

Matron sighed and went to a tall wooden filing cabinet in the corner behind her desk. After a few moments rifling through the top drawer she produced a sheet of paper and thrust it at Lizzie.

Lizzie scanned the page. Beside the typewritten questions was a series of handwritten answers, each one in her mother’s neat hand. At the bottom of the page was her signature. Just above it was a paragraph that stated quite clearly that she, Elizabeth Cecily Hamilton, was giving up all rights to the baby after it was born. She gasped.