Empty Cradles (Oranges and Sunshine) Read online

  There was a brief moment when we both simply looked at each other. I was wondering whether to be formal or informal with her but didn’t get the chance.

  Before I could say a word, she said quietly, ‘I know why you’re here. You’re here about my baby.’

  We walked down the narrow passageway with the dog nipping at my ankles. ‘Come into the kitchen, it’s warmer,’ she said. As I passed the living-room I noticed a bed, and assumed that she had trouble tackling the stairs.

  She tried to make a cup of tea but her hands were shaking too much to fill the kettle. She let me take over as she needed to sit down. As I arranged the milk and sugar, I saw that Vera was still looking at me, waiting for confirmation that I’d come about her baby. I wanted to reassure her but first I needed to be certain of my facts.

  ‘Vera, can you tell me when your baby was born?’

  ‘Of course I can. How could I forget it?’ she said, as she gave me the date of birth.

  ‘And where was she born?’

  ‘Of course I know that,’

  Again the information matched.

  Peering over my shoulder she said, ‘Have you got her with you? Is she here? Has she been happy with her family? Have they looked after her? She’s all right, isn’t she?’

  It was clear that Vera had no idea that Madeleine was in Australia. I didn’t want to tell her. I had to deal with her anxiety. Her questions kept coming, and suddenly she began to sob. Her whole body was shaking.

  For a long time I sat holding her hand and she told me about her life, especially the sad times.

  ‘I tried hard to keep her but my baby was placed for adoption. I was working, trying to get money together, but I wasn’t well after the birth. I just couldn’t cope.’

  Finally she asked, ‘Well, what’s happened to her? Where is she?’

  I took a deep breath. ‘I don’t know all the answers. All I can tell you is that Madeleine seems happy, but she is desperate to find her family.’

  ‘Did her new family treat her well? Did they love her?’

  ‘I’m sorry, but it looks as if she wasn’t adopted. For some reason which I don’t understand, Madeleine went to Australia as a young girl where she lived in a children’s home.’

  Vera’s whole body stiffened. Her lips narrowed and her knuckles grew white. She suddenly turned away from me and I saw her shoulders begin to shake. Her whole face was buried in a large white handkerchief.

  ‘How could they?’ she sobbed. ‘How could they?’

  6

  After waiting more than forty years, Madeleine finally met her mother on a Saturday morning in January 1987. Although I’d brought them together and both needed the security of my presence, I couldn’t intrude on such a private moment. I took Madeleine to her mother’s house in Harrogate and then left them alone together while I found a quiet corner in another room.

  There were countless emotions that mother and daughter had to work through. The experiences of a lifetime were distilled into a few days and hours. It was difficult to imagine how it felt for both of them. For Vera the joy at being reunited with Madeleine was tempered by an enormous sense of guilt. Even though Vera had little choice but to give her baby for adoption, and had played no part in her being sent to Australia, I knew it would be difficult for her not to accept the burden of responsibility for these decisions.

  Seeing them together, I had mixed feelings. On the one hand, I felt enormous satisfaction at having helped achieve this reunion, but I also felt sadness. It was not what they’d found that touched me, but what I could see had been lost. Madeleine could never recover her childhood while Vera’s faith had been shattered.

  What would it be like for Madeleine going back to Australia, leaving her mother behind? Would she go back fulfilled, with a sense of identity and family, or confused and bewildered about her past?

  Something wonderful had happened but it might only serve to remind Madeleine of everything that had been taken away from her. Until then, she simply hadn’t known what she had missed both as a child and as an adult. She had always believed that she was an orphan. Some nameless, faceless person had told her that.

  Somebody had sent her overseas and denied her even the most basic truths about herself. She had no foothold on the world; not even a birth certificate to tell her that she belonged to a family and a country.

  Why had Madeleine been sent overseas? What could justify such an act? Why send a four-year-old from a children’s home in England to another in Australia? What was the reason for all these lies?

  The Australia House official had implied that many children had been involved when he mentioned that files were in Canberra. Indeed, Madeleine remembered travelling to Australia with other orphans.

  When I explained all this to Merv, he was intrigued. He has a very analytical mind and cannot leave a question hanging unanswered. With very little prompting, he decided to see if Nottingham University library held any answers.

  Meanwhile, I still had my full-time job with Nottinghamshire Social Services and the fortnightly meetings of the Triangle group.

  Marie also wanted to find her mother but I knew that I couldn’t start that search without Harold. Their relationship had to be resolved and I needed to know if both brother and sister would take the journey together. This meant talking to Harold face to face, not across the oceans.

  ‘Is there any chance Harold would come to England?’ I asked Marie at the next Triangle meeting.

  ‘I don’t know where he is,’ she said. ‘He’s disappeared and is somewhere in the Northern Territory working with the Aborigines. He has a friend in Melbourne and I’ve been sending letters to her in the hope she can forward them to Harold.’

  ‘I need to talk to him,’ I explained. ‘I would like to know if he also wants to find his mother.’

  ‘Oh, he does, I’m sure he does. His letters used to talk about almost nothing else.’

  Marie felt as though she’d abandoned Harold. She had promised when they last met, on that troubled Christmas Eve years earlier, that she would visit him in Australia. But as time passed, Harold began believing that Marie was never coming. He’d given up on her and his depression had deepened.

  Eventually, one day he took all his paintings to the banks of the Yarra River in Melbourne and, one by one, threw them into the murky water, watching them float away. Then he packed a few possessions and disappeared.

  ‘He thinks he’ll never know me properly,’ Marie said, looking from face to face in the circle of armchairs. ‘He says that I’ll never keep my promise to go out there. But wouldn’t it be lovely – so lovely – to see him again?’

  ‘So what’s stopping you, for God’s sake?’ someone asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she shrugged shyly.

  ‘I know that if I had a brother in Australia, I’d be out there – with or without my husband,’ someone else declared.

  Marie smiled defensively. I could see the panic on her face.

  ‘Does your husband have brothers and sisters?’ somebody asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Does he see them?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘Why can’t you be with your brother then? What’s the difference?’

  I suggested that Marie write a letter to Harold, care of his friend in Melbourne. ‘Tell him I would like to meet him. Perhaps I can help him. But there’s only one way to get him out of the desert, Marie. You have to go to Australia. He’ll come out to see you.’

  ‘I can’t do that!’ said Marie.

  ‘Why not?’ the group chorused.

  ‘I can’t afford it.’

  ‘Look, life is short. You’re miserable,’ somebody said. ‘You won’t feel any better, and nor will Harold, until you see each other. Think, Marie – the only person Harold really wants to see is you!’

  And then, before Marie had time to voice an objection, somebody declared: ‘And if you can’t find the money, we’ll buy the ticket for you.’

  I was astonished. There
was so much warmth and care for each other and a clear appreciation of how important it was for Marie and Harold to meet again. For the first time since she’d joined the group, Marie went home from a session looking relieved. It was as if a huge burden had been lifted from her shoulders.

  The more I thought about Harold Haig and the possibility that there were others like him, the more I realized that I needed time and money to investigate. I had talked to many social-work colleagues, all of whom reacted with disbelief. The Civil Servants at the Home Office and the Department of Health didn’t seem to know what I was talking about.

  I applied to the Winston Churchill Trust for a fellowship to solve this puzzle but was turned down. Finally, I decided to try the British Association of Social Workers and explained my problem.

  ‘Look,’ I told the press officer, ‘I want to find out how many of these children were sent to Australia and what happened to them. The only way to do that is to go there.’

  Even as I spoke, I thought the whole idea sounded fanciful. Who would believe that British children had been shipped to Australia without parents or guardians?

  As I expected, the Association couldn’t help in a direct way, but the press officer sat down with me and discussed the options. There weren’t many. ‘Have you thought about going to Fleet Street?’ she asked. ‘Even if only a few children were shipped out, it sounds awful.’

  The very thought of dealing with journalists filled me with horror. Social workers and the media have an uneasy, sometimes downright hostile, relationship, and I worked to a strict code of professional ethics, especially regarding confidentiality. More to the point, I didn’t know if I had a story for a newspaper to investigate.

  ‘I have a few journalist contacts,’ said the press officer. ‘If you like, I can talk to them.’

  ‘But I can’t give them names – I can’t break the confidences of clients,’ I told her.

  ‘Just talk to them in general terms. There’s no harm in that. It’s the only way.’

  I left it in her hands and several days later she rang to say she’d had a tentative discussion with a journalist who worked for the Observer.

  ‘She’s the health correspondent and I’ve always trusted her. She wants to meet you.’

  Annabel Ferriman was waiting for me when I arrived at the Observer offices near Blackfriars Bridge. We had a long talk, but it was clear that I had too few details to convince her editor that there was a possible story.

  ‘There isn’t enough,’ Annabel said. ‘I need more evidence than just two cases to get the paper interested.’

  ‘How do I do that?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, what about placing an advertisement in some Australian newspapers asking people to come forward? If you get a positive response, then maybe we can do something.’

  Annabel’s suggestion was a good one. Regardless of how I got to Australia, I still had to find out if there were others like Harold and Madeleine.

  On 10 January 1987, the first ad appeared in the Melbourne daily, The Sun. It read:

  Would anyone who was sent as a child without parents to Australia from Britain in the 1940s and 1950s, and who was put into a children’s home, please contact Margaret Humphreys, a British social worker, who would be interested in researching their past.

  A fortnight later, during the morning scramble to get the children to school, the first letter arrived. I sat at the kitchen table, nervous about opening it.

  Dear Margaret,

  I’m writing in answer to your advert in Melbourne’s The Sun. A friend of mine is one of these children sent out to Australia from London on the liner Asturias arriving at Sydney on the 13th March, 1950.

  To date I have gathered a lot of information about my friend including a newspaper photograph of these children when they arrived in Australia. My friend’s main reason for this letter is to see if it is possible to trace any of her relatives in England.

  Since her arrival in Australia she has spent the greater part of her life in institutions and, as a result of this, she has been able to make few real friends.

  If you can help please write to me and I’ll pass it on.

  During the next week a dozen more letters came through the door, and I grew more and more alarmed. I told Annabel that the response was confirming my worst fears. I couldn’t say what was in the letters because of confidentiality, she simply had to trust me that the contents were very disturbing.

  At the same time, Merv had managed to unearth some interesting information from the University library and the Public Record Office at Kew in London.

  ‘They were known as child migration schemes,’ he told me. ‘And they involved most of the major charities. It’s not just Australia. Children were sent to Canada, New Zealand and Rhodesia – most before the war but thousands afterwards as well.’

  Merv showed me his notes.

  Child migration had operated periodically since the seventeenth century. The first shipment involved 100 children sent to colonize Virginia in 1618. Most of them were the equivalent of today’s street kids.

  The schemes were also popular towards the end of the nineteenth century but, unfortunately, the references were brief and short on detail. We needed more. Merv suggested we look at the histories of several of the charities that appeared to be involved: Dr Barnardo’s, the Catholic Church and an organization called the Fairbridge Society.

  Annabel Ferriman came to see me in Nottingham and I showed her this background information and gave her a general summary of the letters from Australia. She went back to talk to her editors, and several days later she called me to say that the Observer had decided to send her to Australia to research the story.

  ‘We can give you the air fare,’ she said. ‘We leave in a fortnight.’

  Although I still had reservations about working with a journalist, at least I now had the chance to meet Harold and get answers to my questions. The problem was, of course, that Harold was somewhere in the bush and unlikely to break his self-imposed exile for a social worker from England.

  I needed Marie. When she heard of my plans, she knew that the challenge had been issued. A week before I was due to leave, the Triangle group had another meeting in the attic room. Marie arrived, looking far more confident than I’d ever seen her.

  ‘I’ve booked my annual leave,’ she said. ‘I’ve paid for my ticket. I’m going.’

  7

  The Australian Customs Department has an unusual ritual for overseas visitors. After the 747 had touched down, several uniformed men came aboard and began walking down the aisles with an aerosol spray-can in each hand. I coughed into my handkerchief as the fine mist of insect repellent, or some such poison, permeated the aircraft. I was told it was something to do with quarantine regulations, which made me feel as welcome as a dose of foot and mouth disease. I had visions of arriving at the baggage hall and watching my suitcases submerged in sheep dip before they’d allow me through.

  It was early in the morning and the immigration hall was crowded. Somebody had sandpapered my eyes. I knew I looked frightful but I was too tired to care. But even lack of sleep could not diminish my first impressions of Sydney. Taking a taxi from the airport, we headed north, passing several golf courses with sprinklers spinning on the fairways. Slowly the red-tiled roofs and houses of suburbia gave way to terrace cottages which reminded me at times of Nottingham – except for the bougainvillaea growing in the gardens, and the beach towels draped from the window sills.

  Our driver gave us a running commentary in fluent Australian. I was barely listening as we turned into William Street and first saw the skyscrapers. It reminded me of pictures I’d seen of New York, and Manhattan’s impenetrable skyline. Regardless of how much I dislike large cities, I could not help admire such handiwork. There was something dynamic and exciting about it, the pulsing heart of the city.

  There wasn’t time to waste and I set about contacting people who had responded to the newspaper ad and arranging times when I could see them. Meanwhile
, Annabel started her own investigations, calling charities and government departments which might shed some light on the child migration schemes.

  Early next morning Annabel and I took a taxi to the nearby Paddington District and knocked on the door of a tall, smartly dressed woman in her forties who held out her hand in greeting.

  Sandra Bennett explained how she had lived in the Nazareth Children’s Home in Coleshill, near Birmingham, until she was sent to St Joseph’s Orphanage at Rockhampton in Queensland when she was eleven years old.

  ‘The culture shock could not have been greater,’ she told me. ‘In England, we were in a town. We saw people on our way to school; we could go out and buy Granny Smiths – five for a penny. But in Australia we were surrounded by scrub, bushland, the wild. There was just the orphanage in the middle of nowhere. Everything was self-contained. There was the school, the church and the convent. That was considered all that was necessary.’

  Sandra sat on the edge of a chair with her hands in her lap, rarely raising her eyes. Now a nurse, she described the conditions of her childhood as ‘like something out of Dickens’. ‘We wore unbleached calico and ate peas and mince every day,’ she said. ‘We were allowed potatoes at Christmas. I used to steal roast potatoes from the convent. The nuns had better food.

  ‘We slept in a huge dormitory with thirty-two people. The “wets” – those who wet their beds – slept on the outside and the rest on the inside. We had to clean up the wet beds first thing in the morning and then scrub the floors. We had to draw our own water from the pump, which was full of frogs and snakes. It would have been all right if you had a sense of adventure and had been prepared for it, but we didn’t come from that sort of environment. Everything was absolutely and completely different.’

  ‘Did you ever marry?’ I asked.

  ‘No. And I think that can be put down to a loveless upbringing. It made me unable to trust anybody.’

  Sandra said that to compensate for her loneliness she would like to find out if she had any family remaining in Britain – though she thought that her mother was almost certainly dead. ‘I know she was forty-four when she had me.’