Beyond the crushing wave.., p.17
Beyond the Crushing Waves, page 17
“Come on, you layabouts!” called Max, poking his head through the front door. “Time for breakfast. We eat in the Hall each morning. Forrest shuts the door, so if you’re late, you miss out.”
Harry rose with a sigh and followed Max. They trotted along a dusty path between evergreen trees, short, pale shrubs and in the midst of scattered groups of children, all headed in the same direction.
Where was Mary in all of this? What did she think of their change of circumstance? She’d begun to look happy on the ship. She wasn’t the pale, skinny street urchin she’d been that first day he came across her at the Fairbridge house. She’d grown taller and fuller. Her sister had as well. They seemed like different girls. He hated to imagine them with their shining blonde locks cut in the short, off-kilter style the girls at Molong all sported.
“How long have you lived here?” asked Harry, catching up to their guide.
“Since I was four. They told me we were going on a picnic.”
“How old are you now?” Harry jogged alongside, then slowed his pace to match Max’s.
“Ten.”
He didn’t look ten. More like eight in Harry’s opinion. Still, he seemed sturdy enough.
“When will you leave?” Harry asked. How long would they all be forced to stay in this godforsaken place?
“Sixteen or so. You’ll attend school with the rest of us until about fifteen. The primary school is at the back of the village. That’s where you’ll start. Then you’ll be a trainee and learn how to farm. After that, you’ll be sent to a farm to work for a farmer.”
“We’re all to be farmers?” asked Harry. He’d known it was a farm school, but hadn’t fully understood what now seemed a stark certainty — his dreams of working with books, in an office, would never come to pass if he couldn’t finish school. He was to be a labourer, a farm worker.
“Of course. Farm labourers, anyway,” shot back Max with a puzzled look in Harry’s direction. “What’d ya think — you were coming here to study ballet?” He laughed to himself as he climbed the steps to a long building. A clamour emitted through the doorway when he pulled it open. “Welcome to Nuffield.”
The noise in the dining hall was deafening. Fifty or so children scurried about, finding their seats at rows of tables. More filed in through the large timber door every moment. Max led Harry to one of the tables. Each table had a strip of stained and wrinkled linoleum along the centre. Tin plates and bowls were scattered along each side of the table, clearly thrown in place by someone with little regard for order.
“This one’s for Brown Cottage boys,” said Max, sitting on one of the long bench seats. Harry sat opposite him on another long bench seat.
One by one, seven other boys found their way to the same wooden table, and the rest of the group settled at the other tables. It was easy for Harry to pick out the other children he’d travelled with on board the Strathaird. Their clothing was newer, tidier, and of higher quality with a variety of colours and cuts, unlike that worn by the Fairbridge kids.
At the end of the hall stood one long, horizontal table. Behind it sat the adults, including Mr and Mrs Forrest. Their table was covered with a white tablecloth, china plates and cups, silverware, and glasses. Girls hurried from the kitchen with steaming plates of food to set before them.
Devon sat at one end of the Brown Cottage table, the tallest of the group, and the children on either side sat in order of height with the smallest boy at the other end. Max disappeared, then returned soon after, hefting a large steel bowl. He carried it down the line of boys, spooning porridge into each individual tin bowl. Another boy followed him with a hard piece of bread slathered in butter and honey, and still another boy trotted after him with mugs of milk for each child.
A buxom woman in full skirts waddled to the head of the table. She sat at the end of their table where it was set with a white tablecloth, china plates and silverware. A teenaged girl brought her a covered tray and placed it on the table in front of her, then flicked open a napkin to set in the woman’s lap. The tray held a plate with strips of crispy bacon, soft-boiled eggs, and toast, along with a bowl of cereal and a small pot of tea, with a china cup and saucer beside it.
The principal, Mr Forrest, stood to read a prayer of thanksgiving. When he finished, all the children chanted, “For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful, through Jesus Christ’s sake. Amen.”
Harry’s stomach grumbled and he stared at the cold, watery porridge in his bowl with a hint of suspicion. It’d been months since he’d eaten the gruel at Barnardo’s. His system and taste buds had grown accustomed to the finer life. His stomach dropped as the realisation dawned that his time of living in opulence was well and truly over.
Harry’s curiosity over how his life would look at the Fairbridge Farm School didn’t take long to be satiated. After breakfast, most of the children marched off to different parts of the village, according to Max they all had work to do. He and Max were assigned to the garage. He still wasn’t sure exactly what they expected him to do at the garage, and since there were no adults on duty there to tell him, he wandered around and did his best to look busy.
The bigger kids were hard at work on an old bus and seemed to be tinkering with its engine. The garage was an old, weathered timber shed with a rusted tin roof. It also housed two tractors, several pieces of farming equipment that Harry didn’t recognise, the canvas-covered truck that’d brought the children to the farm the day before, several cars in various states of repair, a few rusted-looking motorcycles, bicycles, and gardening implements.
Harry had never looked inside an engine, let alone fixed one before, so he thought it best if he stayed out of the way. Devon stood bent over, his torso half hidden from view by the side of the bus. Harry watched out of the corner of his eye, curious about the boy who stood two heads taller than him and had thick, muscular arms on full display, as he’d taken off his shirt to work.
“How old is he?” Harry asked Max.
Max shrugged. “Fourteen, I guess. He’ll be a trainee soon.”
“What does that mean exactly?”
“It means he’ll be leaving school for good and learning how to manage a farm. Then, it’ll be goodbye Devon. All the better for the rest of us.” Max lay back in the dirt and picked at a piece of grass.
“I thought we were supposed to finish school and get a good education. At least, that’s what the ladies who told us about this place said.”
Max laughed out loud. “Yeah, not gonna happen. If you’re as lucky as the rest of us, you’ll be able to write a letter to your sweetheart by the time you leave school, but not much more than that. Education isn’t exactly a priority for them when it comes to us Fairbridge kids. They want us for farming, so that’s what they push us into.”
They lazed in the bleached grass outside the open garage doorway surrounded by rusted machinery and pieces of farm equipment or the remnants of engines long since fallen silent. Harry scanned the landscape through half-lidded eyes. Flat farmland stretched away from them in every direction. Brown and dusty, it baked under the relentless heat of the sun. Trees clustered in clumps, their leaves dust covered. Bent and squat, they seemed to shrink away from the pale blue sky so bright that Harry could barely look up for a single moment without blinking. It was a harsh land, so dry that the blades of grass at his feet crackled when he crushed them between his fingertips as Max prattled on about an upcoming athletics carnival, and how he planned on winning the fifty-yard dash this time around with a training schedule that involved regular sprints throughout the day. Just as soon as this blasted heat let up.
Max was thrown into shadow, making him sit bolt upright. Harry squinted to find Devon standing over them, hands pressed to his hips. His face was masked by the light behind him, but Harry recognised impatience in his stance.
Devon levelled a kick at Max’s leg. The boy winced. “Get up, lazy bones. I’m not doing everything by myself.”
Max climbed cautiously to his feet. “Isn’t that how you like it best?”
Devon loomed over Max, and his eyes narrowed. “Might as well be, with useless louts like you on service with me.” He clouted Max over the back of the head. Max ducked, but not far enough, and Devon’s fist sent him sprawling. Devon leapt on him then, striking him over and over in the stomach, the jaw, the nose. Blood spurted from Max’s nose, and he began to sob.
“Hey!” shouted Harry, bounding to his feet. Anger heated him from within like fire in a pot-bellied stove.
Devon’s gaze shifted to Harry’s face as he stepped away from Max. “Yeah, you got something to say, newbie?” Max scuttled like a crab out of Devon’s reach and behind a burned-out car chassis overgrown with grass.
Harry had spent most of his life in institutions. He’d known boys like Devon, and he understood the dynamics of the situation. If he didn’t take a stand now, he’d regret it for the rest of his time at the Fairbridge farm. He’d be known as a coward, a wuss, the kind of boy who could be pushed around. Besides, he hated the way Devon had bullied Max, even if somewhere deep down, he knew Max should’ve been pulling his weight. The beating reminded him of the countless other bullies he’d faced in his short life.
“Leave him alone,” he snarled, squaring his stance and readying himself as heat and adrenaline thrummed through his veins. His heart beat impossibly loud in his ears, every one of his senses magnified.
The punch, when it came, seemed out of the blue. It struck in him the jaw and sent him staggering backwards as stars danced before his vision.
“You’ve gotta learn your place around here, newbie.” Devon shook his head, the briefest smile lingering over his lips before he spun on his heel and marched back to the bus.
Harry pressed a fingertip to his lip, and it came away covered in blood. He straightened his back, stuck out his chin and watched Devon retreat into the shadows of the garage. Max rushed over to him with his eyes red-rimmed.
“You okay?” he asked, wiping the blood from his nose with the back of his hand.
Harry dipped his head. “You?”
“Fine.”
Harry inhaled a quick breath. “Seems like he’s got a temper.”
Max tipped his head to one side, his lips pulling into a wide grin. “I guess he’s not the only one, huh? You’re crazy. You’ll fit in bloody well around here.”
Harry noticed the pull of swelling in his lips as he smiled. He fingered the place gingerly.
“Thanks,” added Max. “For stepping in. Not sure how long he’d have kept it up.” He grimaced, pressing a hand to his rib cage.
Harry shrugged. “No bother.”
Max threw an arm around Harry’s shoulder as they walked back into the garage together. “Come on, mate. Let me show you around the inside of an engine.”
20
December 1953
Mary
A kookaburra perched on a tree branch nearby eyed Mary and Lottie as they worked in the garden. In the distance, a crow cawed. The kookaburra took flight, flapping away over the sun-bleached grasses where sheep grazed idly, their woolly coats clipped and dusty.
Her bare knees smarted, buried as they were in the rocky soil. She wore the khaki uniform of shorts and shirt that all of the Fairbridge children wore. She’d found them on her bed that morning after a cold shower that stole the breath from her lungs and woke her up quick smart. A frantic search revealed her new clothing from London was gone. Her suitcase full of all of the wonderful things they’d purchased on their trip to town all those weeks earlier had never made it to the cottage from the back of the truck. Neither had Lottie’s. The loss left a gaping hole in Mary’s heart — she’d been so excited to own a suitcase full of beautiful new clothing, things she’d never thought she would have. She could only hope the clothes she’d taken off that morning would show up again, freshly washed and pressed. Although she had her doubts, given the state of dress of every other child at the farm.
She plucked a weed from the garden bed, tossed it aside and wiped the sweat from her brow with the back of her hand. Beside her, Lottie pushed a trowel into the dry ground, turning it over to reveal the dark brown soil beneath. She glanced up at Mary, streaks of dirt on her forehead and cheeks.
Mary smiled and reached out to wipe Lottie’s cheek, but left a darker streak of mud instead. “Oh, sorry. I made it worse.”
Lottie rolled her eyes. “Never mind. I’m covered from top to bottom.”
“Me too. And I’ve never been so hot in all my life.” Mary sighed as a trickle of sweat wound its way down her spine. “To think we were frozen to our depths only a few short months ago, longing for some sunshine.”
“Well, we’ve got sunshine,” replied Lottie with a giggle, swatting away a dozen flies that’d landed on her the moment she was still.
“We certainly do.”
A blond-headed boy drove a horse and cart up to the edge of the fenced garden. He halted the horse, then he and another boy leapt down, pulled shovels from the back of the cart, and shovelled manure from a towering heap in the cart to a pile at one end of the garden bed. She watched as she worked, wondering at their wiry, tanned frames. They were all that way — the Fairbridge kids. Wonky haircuts, wiry tanned limbs, freckled faces. Finished, they threw their shovels into the wagon. As one of the boys spun around to climb onto the driving seat, he winked at Mary, then headed back in the direction from which he’d come. Her face flamed at the attention, and she forgot for a moment what she was doing as the horse plodded off, dragging the cart and the boys behind it.
“Stop your lollygagging! Get back to work,” shouted a tall, wiry girl, her eyes boring holes into Mary.
Mary arched an eyebrow but returned to her weeding, waving at flies listlessly every few seconds. The flies were relentless— that was the first thing she’d learned after sunrise. They were inescapable, like a never-ending swarm that followed her wherever she went. Inside the cottage, in the dining hall, outside in the garden—it made little difference.
Already she’d learned to wave a hand in front of her face regularly to dislodge the ones buzzing around her eyes, nose, and mouth. The rest she left alone unless they stung her, which the largest ones seemed intent on doing. The sting was painful too, and it didn’t fade until long after the fly was gone. She did her best to swat those ones. Lottie was already deathly afraid of them and had run circles in a panic the last time one landed on her small, pale leg.
Her younger sister adjusted her position where she sat, clutching at the too-loose shorts that kept shimmying down her hips every time she moved.
“My knees hurt,” she whinged.
Mary shushed her.
“But I don’t want to sit in the mud, and my nose is getting sunburnt —I can feel it. Besides, my head is kind of funny, wobbly or something. Can’t we go back inside?”
“What do you mean, your head is wobbly?” asked Mary with a frown. She threw another weed on the growing pile.
“I don’t know. I can’t think properly, and my eyes hurt.” Lottie whimpered and pressed muddy fingertips to her temples.
Mary scanned the garden, looking for the wiry girl who seemed to be in charge of the group. The girl wasn’t in sight, so Mary led Lottie over to the side of the garden shed and sat her down in the shade of the tin roof where it hung over the edge of the shed. Lottie leaned her back against the shed’s wall with a sigh. Mary fanned her face with both hands.
“Wait here. I’ll get you a cup of water.”
By the time Mary returned from the kitchen with a cup of water, Lottie’s colour had improved. She gulped down the water and offered Mary a smile.
“Better?”
“Much,” she replied.
Mary helped her sister stand. The girl in charge was back and watched them through narrowed eyes, her hands pressed to her thin hips. Long, spindly legs stuck out of too-short shorts, and her kneecaps knocked together as she walked. She marched in their direction and hissed when she came close.
“Get back to work before the gardener, Crew, sees ya. He’s coming this way, and you won’t wanna attract his attention if you know what’s good for you.”
The girl kept walking as though she hadn’t spoken a word to them, making her way down the length of the garden and shouting a word here and there to the girls who squatted in the dirt. Mary shoved the cup into her shorts pocket and hurried Lottie towards their place in the garden. But it was too late. A man strode from behind the garden shed and shouted at them.
“Hey, you two layabouts. Come here!”
Mary hesitated, drew a deep breath, then glanced over her shoulder. He stared directly at them. There was no mistaking whom he’d addressed. He was a tall, lanky man with short-cropped brown hair. A cigarette dangled between thin lips, and small piggish eyes glinted black in the sunlight beneath a battered wide-brimmed hat. He beckoned her over. She took Lottie by the hand and led her sister slowly to him, taking his measure as she went. Her experience living in council housing, navigating the streets of London’s East End virtually on her own since she could walk, gave her a sense of people. And she didn’t like the look of him.
“Yes, sir?” she said, being sure to keep a respectful tone to her voice.
“Why are you two shirking? I saw you there, sitting in the shade like lady muck, sipping water while everyone else works.”
He leaned forward, and the ash from the tip of his cigarette narrowly missed landing on Mary’s nose as it fell.
“We weren’t…” She drew a step backwards, pulling Lottie with her. Crew reached out and grabbed her by the shoulder as he leaned down, hauling her up to his level.
“Don’t you dare talk back to me. Do you hear?”
She nodded, mute.
“I asked you a question.”
“My sister felt faint. I thought it would do her good…”
“You thought you deserved to rest when you’ve not long since started. Let me show you how it is around here, little girl. Every last one of you needs to learn the same lesson when you get here. All start out lazy and irresponsible. But you soon learn.” His eyes gleamed as he spoke.
