The Throwaway Children (30 page)

‘Oh, yes,’ cried Edna, clasping her hands together in delight. ‘Yes, we’d love to see them.’

‘Are they the sort of girls we’d want?’ Gerald sounded doubtful. ‘I mean, well, English girls? We don’t want a slum kid.’

‘They’ve been living in our Belcaster home for some time,’ Daphne told him. ‘They are perfectly well behaved… we allow nothing else. But of course if you don’t wish to—’

‘Oh we do, we do,’ interrupted Edna. ‘Of course we do, don’t we, Gerald? We’ll come and see them as soon as they get here, just tell us the day.’

They were coming tomorrow. If they were going to choose one of the new arrivals, Daphne wanted it done and dusted straight away. Daphne considered the girls who had just arrived. Rosie Stevens seemed the obvious choice, but you never knew. She would bring the three youngest girls in for inspection, and Rita. She’d bring Rita in as well. She was pretty sure, from Edna’s enthusiasm, that they would take one of the three youngsters, but there was just the possibility that when they saw the Stevens sisters together, they might take both, and that would not only relieve her of one of the problem kids Emily had landed on her, but would also ease the overcrowding their arrival had caused.

If one of the other girls was adopted by the Waters couple, that information would be added to her file, so that records were kept straight, but there would be no mention of the adoption fee that would be paid. That would be a matter purely between Gerald Waters and Daphne Manton.

Rita lay in bed staring up at the ceiling; grubby white-painted boards sloping from a ridge, meeting the grubby white-painted walls pierced by an uncurtained window. This dreary room was her new dorm. Here she’d crept miserably into bed last night, and here she would go to bed tonight and every night stretching away into the future. She shivered under the thin blanket she’d been given, and the metal springs of the bed creaked beneath her. The grey light of a new dawn seeped through the grimy windows, doing nothing to lighten the austerity of the room, but allowing Rita to see the others, asleep in the other beds. Daisy, lying on her back, was snoring lightly; the two other girls, Audrey and Carol, whom they’d met yesterday, were both buried under their bedclothes, not even their heads showing.

When Rita and Daisy had been dismissed by Mrs Manton, Audrey from Oak had taken charge of them.

‘It’s over here,’ said Audrey, when they’d picked up their luggage, and she led them away through a clump of trees to a small cottage squatting in a patch of garden, behind a wooden fence. The word
Oak
had been scratched onto one of the palings. Audrey led them up to the front door.

‘Mrs Garfield’s our house-mother,’ she warned them. ‘Watch out for her. She’s mean.’

Inside the cottage they found themselves in a small entrance hall from which a short passage led off to the right. Audrey pointed to a door directly ahead of them. ‘That’s the living room. We eat in there, and do our homework and stuff. Kitchen’s here.’ She waved at a door on her right. ‘Bathroom and toilets here. Dorm’s at the end.’

She led them along the narrow corridor to a small room at the end. ‘You two’re in here with me and Carol.’ She pointed to a metal-framed bed in the corner. ‘That’s mine. ‘Yours is under the window.’

Two more beds, identical to Audrey’s, stood, unmade, under the window. Each had a strip of mattress, on top of which was folded a sheet and a grey blanket. There was no pillow and no quilt.

‘Them’s your lockers.’ Audrey indicated two wooden lockers standing against the wall. ‘You can put your stuff in there.’

‘Where’s Carol, then?’ demanded Daisy.

‘Cooking breakfast. You hungry?’

‘Starving,’ admitted Rita. ‘Will it be soon?’

‘’Bout ten minutes,’ said Audrey. ‘Better get your skates on, or you’ll be late, and then old Ma Garfield’ll be at you.’ She looked at the two new girls standing, hesitant, and added, ‘I’ll come back and get you in ten minutes.’

‘This is worse than Laurel House,’ said Daisy, plonking her case on one of the spare beds. ‘Ma Garfield? What a name for a mother! Ma Gar! Ma Gar, that’s what I’ll call her.’

Rita laughed, her first laugh since she’d walked down the gangplank at Pyrmont. ‘Trust you, Dais, giving her a nickname!’

‘Bet it suits her,’ maintained Daisy, opening her case. ‘And the one what fetched us, I call her Spider. Good name, don’t you think?’

‘Yeah, just right,’ agreed Rita. ‘Or Witch. She looks like a witch, don’t she?’

Daisy, who liked to do the nicknames, said, ‘Yeah,’ grudgingly, adding, ‘but I like Spider better.’

Rita put her case on the other bed and went to look through the open window. It was full daylight now, and she could see across a kitchen garden to some ramshackle buildings beyond. Several girls were already out there carrying buckets and she guessed they were feeding chickens.

‘That’ll cheer Rosie up,’ she said.

‘What will?’

‘Chickens. There’s chickens. She loves chickens.’

‘You ready?’ Audrey had reappeared at the door.

‘Nearly,’ said Rita, pulling all her things out of her case and pushing them into her locker. She hadn’t very much, but even so it was difficult to make the locker door close.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Audrey. ‘Most of that stuff gets took.’

‘What d’you mean?’ demanded Daisy, who had just managed to close her own locker.

‘All them clothes you brought, get taken in. Used for everyone.’ She glanced down at the socks and sandals the two girls were wearing. ‘And you only wear shoes for school and church. They’ll get took off you as well.’

Rita remembered the cloakroom, the wire lockers with the shoes inside. She looked down at Audrey’s dirty, angular feet. Did everyone really go about barefoot here, and only put shoes on when they went to school?

‘But they’re new,’ she stammered. ‘We only just got them.’

Audrey shrugged. ‘You’ll see. Come on, it’s time for breakfast, and if you’re late you won’t get none.’

Mrs Garfield was waiting for them in the living room. She looked at her watch as they came in and glowered at Audrey. ‘You’re late. Where’ve you been?’

‘Mrs Manton said to show the new girls,’ Audrey replied. ‘They’re here.’

‘So I see,’ sniffed Mrs Garfield. She turned her attention to Rita and Daisy, and Audrey slipped thankfully into a place at the table.

‘What’re your names, then?’

‘Please, Mrs Garfield,’ answered Rita, ‘I’m Rita and this is Daisy.’

‘She got no tongue in her head?’ demanded the house-mother. Rita reddened and said nothing.

Daisy looked up at Mrs Garfield and said, ‘I’m Daisy Smart.’

‘Smart, are you? Well, don’t you get smart with me!’ snapped the house-mother. She turned towards the table where six other girls were already standing, waiting behind their chairs. There were two empty spaces.

‘Well…’ Mrs Garfield waved a hand, and Daisy and Rita hurriedly took their places.

Mrs Garfield sat at the head of the table with a pile of tin bowls in front of her. Into these she dished porridge from a large tureen. They ate in silence. Rita and Daisy put their spoons into the glutinous mess in front of them, and despite their hunger – they had had nothing since the egg sandwiches at the station the day before – they found it hard to swallow. All round them was the clatter and scraping of spoons as the other girls shovelled the grey mess hungrily into their mouths. Fixed by a baleful stare from the head of the table, Rita and Daisy struggled to finish their portions, but, remembering Audrey’s warning, they finally managed clean plates.

This was the only communal room in the cottage, and looking at its dirty white walls and grimy windows, the utilitarian furniture and the cold stone hearth, Rita found it dismal in the extreme. Were they really going to spend the rest of their lives here at Laurel Farm in this dreadful cottage, eating this disgusting food? The prospect was too awful.

Are all the cottages like this, Rita wondered, or just Oak?

When everyone had finished the porridge, Audrey came round the table with a large jug of milk, filling the mugs that stood beside each place. The milk was good, and everyone drank thirstily. Then the meal was over. The whole thing had taken less than twenty minutes.

Mrs Garfield stood up. Though she’d sat at table, she had eaten nothing. ‘Get cleared up and ready for school,’ she said to the room at large, adding, almost as an afterthought, ‘New girls don’t go today. You’ll start on Monday. You’re not to leave the house without permission. I’ll see you in here in half an hour when the others have gone.’

‘And when she’s had her breakfast,’ muttered Audrey as the house-mother disappeared through a door beside the fireplace.

‘Don’t she have meals with us?’ asked Daisy.

‘What do you think?’ scoffed Audrey. ‘No, she goes back to her own rooms and has bacon and eggs.’ She waved towards the door through which Mrs Garfield had disappeared. ‘She lives through there… and you don’t want to get called in there, I can tell you!’

Just like the Hawk, Rita thought miserably. There was no escape from people like the Hawk… or Ma Gar, and this time the nickname did not make her smile, it made her shiver.

Another girl approached them and Audrey said, ‘Here’s Carol. Carol, these are Rita and Daisy. They’re in with us. You two better get your beds made,’ she added turning back to them. ‘Ma Garfield’ll be round to check the minute we’ve gone.’

‘Ma Gar!’ said Daisy.

‘Hey, that’s clever,’ cried Carol. ‘Ma Gar!’

‘Yeah, well, don’t let her hear you call her that,’ advised Audrey. ‘Told you, she’s real mean.’

It seemed only moments later that the cottage emptied, and Rita and Daisy were left alone. All the other girls disappeared over to the main building, which Audrey told them was known as ‘central’, to put on their shoes, ready for the walk to school. A strange silence settled over the cottage, and Rita felt they ought to be talking in whispers.

Remembering Audrey’s warning about having things taken away from them, Rita pulled everything out of her locker. The picture of Daddy that had travelled safely all the way from England, she slipped into her journal notebook and then slid both of them under the mattress. She’d have to try to find somewhere better later. There was nothing else that was particularly precious except her rose-patterned dress and she wasn’t sure if it would still fit. Anyway there was nowhere to hide it. Reluctantly she laid it aside. It would have to take its chances. The rest of her new clothes she folded carefully and put back in the locker.

‘Let’s have a proper look about,’ suggested Daisy when they’d made up their beds with the scant bedclothes provided. So they walked back along the passage, opening doors and looking into rooms. The room next to them was also a dorm. It was identical to their own except that this one had five beds. Each bed was neatly made, night clothes tidily folded and laid where a pillow might have been, each locker-top completely clear. The bathroom held two baths and two basins, but it had no door. Anyone could look in. The two lavatories had doors, but no locks.

‘We better go back to the living room,’ said Rita. ‘Your friend Ma Gar’ll be after us.’

‘All right,’ agreed Daisy, and they went back to where they’d eaten their breakfast. They found the table cleared and the chairs upended.

Daisy wandered over to the window. ‘Look, Reet,’ she said, ‘there’s a man in the garden.’

Rita hurried over and peered out through the grubby glass. ‘Who is it, d’you think?’

Daisy shrugged. ‘Dunno. It’s not that Colin, is it? P’raps he’s the gardener.’

‘Ah, there you are.’ Mrs Garfield’s voice cut through the air like a knife. The two girls spun round, each of them wondering how long their house-mother had been standing there. Had she heard their speculation about the man in the garden?

‘Please, Mrs Garfield,’ Daisy asked, ‘who’s the man in the garden?’

The house-mother gave her an icy stare, as if incredulous at such curiosity, but then she said, ‘That’s Mr Manton, the superintendent’s husband. He’s in charge of outdoors. He oversees the work outside, maintaining the garden and looking after the animals.’

Rita was about to ask what sort of animals, but something in Mrs Garfield’s expression made her change her mind.

‘Now then,’ began their house-mother, ‘I’m going to tell you what happens round here, so pay attention. I shan’t tell you twice. Oak Cottage is your home now, and you’ll be expected to look after it properly. You’ll help with the cooking and cleaning, all the usual daily chores. You go to school every day, but when you get back there’ll be the afternoon jobs to be done.’ She looked at them sharply to make sure they were still paying attention. ‘You’ll have homework, and then after tea each day, you go over to central for prayers and notices. At weekends and in the holidays, you’ll be helping outside. All the cottages have vegetable gardens. We have to grow as much of our own produce as we can. That’s what Mr Manton is in charge of. There’s not much money for extras here, so you all have to pull your weight.

‘You can start in the kitchen,’ said Ma Gar briskly. ‘There’s the washing up to finish and then potatoes to peel. Come along,’ she snapped. ‘I’ll have to show you.’ She led them across the passage into the kitchen. A scrubbed wooden table filled much of the room, and shelves, stacked with cooking utensils, lined two of the walls. An old range stood against a third, and under the windows was a deep sink, now filled with unwashed breakfast bowls. There were two more doors leading from the room; one, Mrs Garfield told them, went to the vegetable cellar where they would find the potatoes, the other out into the garden.

‘Wash those breakfast things,’ she said, ‘and then fetch potatoes from the cellar and peel enough to fill that pot.’ She pointed to a saucepan that stood, empty, by the range. ‘You can go outside and look round when you’ve finished, but there’ll be more jobs to do later,’ adding as she stalked out of the room, ‘We’ve no time for idleness here.’

‘We’ve no time for idleness here!’ mimicked Daisy. ‘You all have to pull your weight!’

‘Oh Dais, you are a one!’ giggled Rita, keeping an anxious eye on the door, afraid Ma Gar might come back unexpectedly. Her laughter died away as she looked round the kitchen and saw the chores awaiting them. ‘I got to go and find Rosie,’ she said. ‘I got to see she’s all right.’