Oranges and Sunshine: Empty Cradles (30 page)

On my next visit to Western Australia, early in 1992, I had many child migrants to see, but Desmond wasn’t one of them. I did have news for Don – his mother was alive.

I was musing about the twenty dollars, which Desmond still hadn’t paid, when another child migrant, Alan Osborne, invited me to dinner at his home. Alan and his wife Carol had asked me many times before and I’d refused so often that it was becoming embarrassing. In the end I agreed and he arranged to pick me up at 6.00 p.m. from the hotel.

Alan rang me that morning. ‘A slight change – we’re going out.’

I complained that I didn’t want to eat out.

‘No, no, you’ll enjoy it. I’ll collect you. By the way, there’s a surprise for you.’

I kept arguing with him, suddenly full of trepidation. I don’t appreciate surprises, particularly in Perth where I’ve never felt comfortable.

Alan picked me up from the hotel and we drove to his house first. While he changed, I wandered through the garden with Carol. By then I’d convinced myself that the surprise was possibly the place he’d chosen for supper. When I heard the crunching noise of tyres on the gravel drive, I knew that it was a large, heavy car. I didn’t even look around. I didn’t have to think twice.

McDaid! I thought. The evening suddenly had all the ingredients of a major disaster. Dealing with Desmond needed a structured, formal setting, not an evening at a restaurant.

‘Mrs Humphreys, Mrs Humphreys,’ Desmond said enthusiastically, waving an envelope. ‘I’ve brought you twenty dollars. Here’s the money.’

I struggled to smile.

‘I’ve booked us into a lovely restaurant. It’s the best in Perth. By the river, of course. Good table and the best seafood in town.’

‘I don’t eat seafood,’ I said. ‘Ever.’

‘Oh! Well, we’ll have to change our plans.’

Desmond disappeared inside and made arrangements to go to an Italian restaurant.

I had to brace myself for what I predicted was going to be one of the worst nights of my life. The women sat in the back of the car – a quaint Australian tradition – and off we went with mixed expectations.

I looked out of the window at the river, totally speechless, listening to Desmond and Alan talking. Carol sensed my disquiet.

As I anticipated, the restaurant was very impressive and Desmond was indeed a ‘regular’. This was his territory and he took charge, asking for his favourite table.

I sat next to Alan. Desmond was directly opposite me making an elaborate performance of selecting and tasting the wine before we ordered our meals.

As the conversation developed, it was punctuated by Desmond ordering new bottles every twenty minutes. His glass was no sooner filled than emptied.

The evening was worse than I had expected. So much so that halfway through Alan asked if I wanted to leave. ‘Why bother?’ I said. ‘Desmond’ll be on the floor any minute.’

Surprisingly, Desmond bore no trace of a hangover when I saw him the following day. This was to be our first formal interview.

Desmond sat down in the hotel room, unbuttoning his suit jacket. ‘I don’t think you like me very much, Mrs Humphreys,’ he said.

I was slightly taken aback by this direct approach.

‘I don’t know about the man,’ I said, ‘but I think there’s a hurt little boy in there somewhere that I’m sure I would like. I guess we’ll have to spend some time finding him.’

We talked for nearly two hours, the first of many such meetings. I wanted to discover the other side of Desmond’s personality, the side hidden by that brash exterior. I wanted to help him see that there were no hidden agendas, there was no need to try to impress me.

I hoped that he could recognize the child within himself and slowly remove the mask which he presented to the outside world.

In the end, it was his sense of humour which enabled us to work together. He looked at the world in a very dry, ironic way.

By the end of the meeting, Desmond’s entire demeanour was transformed. He spoke with a new softness and a gentleness when he described his loneliness. He’d never married – never felt the need – but he had never lost the feeling of inner isolation, despite his many friendships and his social
bonhomie
.

‘I feel content. It’s like at night, I can get to my toilet without the lights on. I can find my way around in the dark, but I’m aware of my loneliness in those moments.’

* * *

Over the next three months I saw a fundamental change in Desmond. We had developed a relationship built on trust and respect. Given his experiences, he didn’t trust easily, which was understandable.

I steeled myself for the long haul, for although we found his mother within several months, my work with Desmond would continue for a long time to come.

To use Desmond’s own words, ‘Margaret, within five minutes you saw through the bullshit. You saw the real person.’

Perhaps he also meant that I recognized his pain.

Desmond and I were both born in the same year – 1944. I found this coincidence enormously significant. It brought our two lives into stark contrast. I grew up in a loving family surrounded by warmth and attention, while he was the son of a struggling single mother in Ireland who asked for help. Desmond was raised in institutions that rarely showed him love, warmth or humanity.

We came into the world in the same year, we listened to the same songs, enjoyed the same dances, watched the same films, yet our lives could not have been more different. This made me realize that it could so easily have been me on that boat to Australia, or any of my school friends. A slight change in our circumstances and it could have been any one of us.

Child migrants were not necessarily poor, deprived, working-class kids. They came from all sections of society and from many different walks of life. It’s wrong to think of them all as impoverished and abandoned by their families. This myth must be exposed, just as labels like ‘orphans’ cannot be accepted at face value.

I telephoned Desmond several times from England, giving him progress reports, and each time he expected to hear his mother on the line. I knew, however, that the approach to her was all important.

I asked Desmond to write a letter to help me describe him to his mother. When I read it, I was amazed. This is a nice bloke, I thought. When am I going to meet him?

The end of the search is enormously difficult for a child migrant. Their fear of rejection is profound, and Desmond was no exception. ‘What if she says no? What if she doesn’t want to see me?’ he asked.

He no longer had to live with the fear that his mother had died, he knew she was alive; but after forty years, he couldn’t bear to think that she could reject him.

Desmond flew to England, arriving on a Thursday morning and taking a train straight to Nottingham. I arranged for him to spend two nights in a hotel because I wanted to be sure he was prepared for the reunion. On the first evening I gave him a photograph of his mother. He stared at it for a long while – noting all the similarities.

It took a lot of discipline and self-control for Desmond to wait those two days but he said to me, ‘I’ve lived with this hope for so long; I can wait a little longer.’

On the day we left to meet his mother, I arranged to meet Desmond at his hotel. As I crossed the lobby, he rose from a chair and smiled. He lifted his hand and clasped mine. It was the first time he had shaken my hand.

Each time I flew into Australia, and for weeks before I left home, I would begin to prepare myself for what lay ahead. There were child migrants to see for the first time as well as those I already knew who desperately waited for news of their families.

My bags were full of photographs, greeting cards and letters. Sometimes these were written by mothers or fathers, brothers or sisters. At other times I carried a small heirloom like a ring, a watch or a necklace. Often families wanted their newly discovered relative in Australia to have some small object as both a memento and a sign of acceptance.

I never let the bags out of my sight. They were always under my feet or in my arms.

When the plane circled Perth, I would look down and see the lights and imagine everybody asleep. I would think of all the people whose lives would change over the next few days.

When I arrived in March 1992 I had news for two brothers who had been to Bindoon. I would have to tell them their mother had died but that they had two sisters in England. I had with me photographs of their mother, whom the brothers had never seen, and also their father.

For a former Tardun boy, I had similar news. His mother had died, but he had a brother in England, who had sent photographs, a long letter and his mother’s favourite brooch.

For a Geraldton woman, I was able to say that her mother was very much alive in the North of England. In my bag I had photographs of how she looked both years ago and also more recently. There was a very long, loving and accepting letter from her mother.

There was more, but never enough. Still there were too many people waiting for news. And whatever the outcome, there would be joy and pain, regret and despair.

When I arrived at the Parmelia Hilton, I immediately unpacked. As always, I tried to make my room more welcoming by putting up photographs and rearranging the furniture.

On my first Sunday there was a picnic at Pinjarra, outside of Perth, where the Fairbridge Society once had a farm school. The Old Fairbridgians had invited me to a barbecue and I was looking forward to meeting up with them as a group.

There were probably thirty families at the barbecue and their many children danced and played on the grass. The farm school had become a series of holiday cottages rented out to the general public and each building bore an English name.

By late afternoon I began feeling light-headed and weak. I thought it was the effects of too much sun. I’d been working from seven in the morning till eleven every night since I arrived on the previous Thursday.

When I got back to the hotel, I still felt weak and tired and I cancelled two of my evening appointments. I’d never done that before.

My face was absolutely white and all I could do was lie on the bed, feeling terrible.

Eventually I fell asleep and woke at about one in the morning. The bed and my bedclothes were soaked with blood. Disorientated by exhaustion and loss of blood, I had no idea what to do. I could hardly walk to the bathroom.

I thought I was dying: I’m going to die in Perth.

I didn’t know any doctors. I didn’t know the nearest hospital. I was alone and vulnerable in a city where I’d never felt safe.

I rang my close friend, Susan, who lived in Melbourne and whom I’d known ever since I first went to Victoria. It was three in the morning.

‘It’s Margaret. I’m in Perth.’

She sensed my anguish. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘I’m sick. I don’t know what’s wrong. I’m haemorrhaging.’

The fear in my voice was impossible to hide. Susan knew it was serious. To her I had always been this incredibly controlled, capable woman, who is never flustered and always in command of the situation. Now I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t even organize a doctor.

‘Have you rung for help?’

‘No. I don’t know who to call. I don’t want anybody to know I’m ill.’

‘Right,’ said Susan, whose husband is a dentist, ‘I’m going to ring my own doctor and see if he knows somebody in Perth. The best. Stay calm. You’ll be fine. Don’t move off the bed.’

‘I can’t move.’

Susan rang me back within ten minutes. ‘There’s a specialist who’s on his way back to Perth from a conference in Melbourne. He’ll be home by now. Call him.’

She gave me his home and hospital numbers. I eventually spoke to his wife.

When the doctor arrived, he gave me a wonderful smile but took one look at me and said, ‘Margaret, you have two choices. Either I take you to hospital or you go by ambulance. Can you get to my car?’

Within an hour I was at the women’s hospital and he was quietly reassuring me that everything would be fine.

‘I’ve got appointments,’ I told him anxiously. ‘There are people coming to see me. They’ve waited a lifetime. I can’t stay here, I’ve got work to do.’

‘OK, OK,’ he replied, humouring me.

I was frightened that he would tell me that I had to go home to England.

‘Margaret, you’re not well enough to go home.’

The specialist stopped the bleeding but he warned me that this was only temporary. He still had to discover what had caused the haemorrhage.

‘You can’t stay at a hotel. Have you any friends here?’

‘I’ve got hundreds of friends, but I’d like to go to the house in Melbourne.’

‘All right, I’ll make sure you’re fit to fly.’

A few hours later I telephoned Merv. I didn’t want him to worry, but he dragged the information out of me.

‘You’re coming home, Margaret. No buts, no questions.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Don’t tell me you can’t. Come home, get well again and then go back. Don’t worry about the cost of another air fare. It’s not important.’

‘No, really, I can’t come home. I’m not well enough to fly all that way.’

When I arrived in Melbourne, Harold picked me up from the airport. ‘You look bloody terrible,’ he said. ‘Are they someone else’s clothes or do you like the baggy look?’

I smiled weakly.

‘Take me to the house. I’m not my best.’

I wouldn’t tell him what had happened. I didn’t want any of the child migrants to know that I was sick. I knew they’d make a big fuss and feel responsible. I wanted to carry on as normal.

When we arrived at the house in Canning Street, the child migrants in Melbourne had put fresh flowers in the vases and filled the fridge with food as they always did. There were welcome cards everywhere. The bed was made up for me.

Harold was putting the kettle on when Susan arrived.

‘You look terrible,’ she said, putting her arm around me.

‘Yes, people keep telling me that,’ I joked.

‘Oh, you poor thing. Are you any better?’

I shook my head.

We began arguing over where I was going to stay. Susan wanted me to go with her. But the child migrants had gone to so much effort getting the house ready, I told her I was staying there.