The Throwaway Children Read online

  ‘Oh, absolutely, Edward,’ replied Emily, suppressing a smile. The last thing she wanted was Ned meddling in her affairs. ‘I’ll ask you for nothing else, I promise.’

  The next morning Martin Fielding collected Emily and they drove out to Russell Green to look at the house she had found. Laurel House. As soon as she saw it, Emily was sure it would suit her perfectly. It was a substantial, rather ugly Victorian house standing in a large garden, the front of which was surrounded by the high laurel hedge that gave the house its name. Built in grey stone, its bleak exterior was made even more austere by a squat tower at one end. In the 1920s someone had added a brick-built wing, making the house an ‘L’, and providing some much needed kitchen space. At the back was a much larger garden, with a shaggy lawn and overgrown kitchen garden, beyond which was an orchard, surrounded by a high stone wall. Clearly it hadn’t been lived in for some time.

  The heavy door creaked open reluctantly and they stepped inside. Immediately Emily began assessing Laurel House’s possibilities. Taking a notebook and pencil from her handbag, she began to make notes, already seeing the house as it would be, once it was furnished ready for the children.

  The entrance hall was wide and high with a staircase that rose to the floor above in a broad sweep. Downstairs there were several reception rooms, including a morning room and a study. The old kitchen had been turned into a laundry, and from it a door led down into a large cellar that ran the length of the house. Emily did not venture into the cellar, merely opening the door and peering down into the gloom, but she was pleased to know it was there, offering plenty of storage space. The kitchen in the new wing was adequate and as she wandered through the empty rooms, Emily became certain that this was the house for her orphanage.

  ‘We’ll buy it,’ she announced to Martin. ‘It’s perfect. We can easily accommodate at least thirty children in here. Maybe more.’

  ‘My dear Emily, we can’t rush into this, you know,’ Martin said, concerned. He thought it a dreadful house, grey and forbidding. Much time, effort and money would have to be spent on it to make it habitable. ‘We need to consider long and hard before we decide. There may be other houses that would be even better. It would be stupid to buy the first one we saw.’

  Emily turned on him at once. ‘Martin,’ she said briskly, ‘we’ve agreed to use the trust money for an orphanage. This house provides all we need, there is no point in waiting.’

  ‘It will take a while… all the legalities of setting up a charity,’ Martin pointed out.

  ‘That’s your job,’ she said cheerfully. ‘You sort out the legalities, and all the other paperwork. That’s why Father made you a trustee. You arrange the purchase of the house, I’ll get the work started.’

  It had all taken longer than Emily had envisaged, but she spared no one in her determination to get the orphanage up and running. She did not squander money on furnishing the place. She had the walls painted, but kept to dark colours that wouldn’t show the dirt. She bought metal beds with thin mattresses, which were now crammed, six to a room, in the five bedrooms upstairs. Long wooden tables and hard wooden chairs furnished the dining room, the erstwhile drawing room, and two second-hand sofas and some ancient easy chairs were in the newly designated ‘playroom’. In the kitchen were a heavy duty kitchen table, a deep Belfast sink and a solid fuel range. There were several cupboards set against the walls and some shelves which housed an assortment of pots and pans.

  Emily proudly showed Martin a new gas cooker standing in the corner. ‘Two stoves, you see? Plenty of room to cook for thirty children.’

  ‘Who’s going to do the cooking?’ Martin asked.

  ‘Oh, the children will prepare their own meals,’ Emily said. ‘Under supervision of course. But the whole point is that it will be part of their training, you see. We’re going to teach these creatures to become useful citizens.’

  The orphanage had opened a few weeks later, with fourteen children and a live-in staff of four. Three, the matron, the cook and a housemaid, lived in bed-sitting rooms built into the loft above the kitchen, and the superintendent in a small flat at the top of the tower. The children were sent from an overflowing home several miles away.

  Over the years the home had been run with strict discipline and at minimal cost. The children cooked, cleaned, mended and tended the garden. They were fed and clothed and went to the local schools until they were fourteen, when they were found a job and expected to hand in their pay packet at the end of each week. At sixteen, if they had a job, they were allowed to leave the house, and most of them did. Many of them went into service, where they lived in, all found, and were only paid minimal wages. A few chose to stay at Laurel House and go out daily to jobs in shops, or as live-out domestics, but they were expected to hand over half their pay packet to the orphanage for their keep.

  The numbers grew, the home always full, and Emily Vanstone considered buying another house. She was actively looking for something suitable, when she received a letter that turned her attention to Australia. Her cousin, Daphne, had married an Australian service man, Joe Manton, after the war, and gone to live in Carrabunna, a small town north-west of Sydney. It was she, writing to Emily, who mentioned a nearby farm school that took children from the slums in England and taught them to be farmers.

  I thought you might send some of your orphans here, Daphne wrote. It’s a beautiful country and it would be a new start for them, away from evils of the city.

  ‘Australia?’ snapped Edward when she told him.

  ‘Yes. Fairbridge and Dr Barnardo’s have been doing it for years.’

  ‘Yes,’ scoffed her brother-in-law, ‘but they are large and well-known societies, not a small orphanage like yours.’

  ‘We may be small, Edward, but we are well respected,’ retorted Emily, adding in a more conciliatory tone, ‘due, doubtless, to your patronage.’

  ‘But, Emily,’ Amelia said, staring at her sister in amazement, ‘will the parents let you send their children to Australia?’

  ‘Most of my children don’t have parents,’ replied Emily, ‘and the parents of those who do signed legal guardianship over to me when they put their children in my care. Martin drew up all the papers, and we made sure they were watertight. I am their legal guardian. I can send whoever I want wherever I want. It’s all arranged. The house is bought and I’m going over to get it all set up.’

  ‘You’re going to Australia?’ Edward was incredulous.

  ‘Certainly,’ agreed Emily, ‘I leave next week.’

  Emily Vanstone had sailed for Australia, and when she returned six months later, the EVER-Care migrant home was ready to receive its first children. Though she’d had to change her ‘farm school’ idea, something she had realized that Daphne and Joe were in no way equipped to run, she had set out the principles on which the Australian home was to be organized. She had no doubt that the children who were sent there would benefit from the same firm regime as at Laurel House. Law-abiding, hard-working citizens would emerge… and be a credit to her and the EVER-Care name.

  Laurel Farm, Carrabunna, was established. Though not a farm as such, it sought to feed itself as far as was possible, and the labour was supplied by its inmates. For three years Emily had, without any consultation, sent children from her orphanage twelve thousand miles across the world to a new country and a new life. She had never again visited the Australian EVER-Care home, leaving the running of it to Daphne and Joe Manton, in whom she had complete confidence. However, she liked to have her finger on the pulse of all her enterprises and she kept in close contact by letter. Then Hitler intervened and the child migration scheme was put on hold.

  The war changed everything. There were even more children needing a home, children orphaned by the war, and EVER-Care accepted them all. The flow of children continued, not least because Emily Vanstone had a new admirer: a new member of the congregation at the Crosshills Methodist Church. Miss May Hopkins. Miss Hopkins was the social worker for the local council in charge of
children’s affairs. She admired the zealous and philanthropic Miss Vanstone greatly, and whenever she had children to place in care, it was to the EVER-Care home at Laurel House that she turned first.

  The end of the war had also brought a change of government and with it plans for a new welfare system. Things began to change. There was a shift in public thinking and the new Children’s Departments were expected to explore other ways of providing care for needy children. Different arrangements were to be made and the newly appointed Children’s Officers were placing such children with foster families rather than residential homes like Laurel House. Miss Hopkins was expected to do the same. Public opinion on the child migration scheme had changed too. People began to think that perhaps children as young as three should not be plucked from all that was familiar and shipped off to the other side of the world. English children should be brought up in England. Sir Edward Sherrington’s thoughts that the riff-raff should be sent somewhere else, preferably as far away as possible, were no longer publicly expressed.

  Miss Hopkins did not agree with the changes, and whenever possible she still sent girls in need of care to Laurel House. From what she’d just said on the phone, it sounded to Emily as if she might soon have two new inmates for Laurel House.

  5

  Rita lay in bed, listening. She could hear the sound of Mum’s voice downstairs, high and excited. There was the rumble of Uncle Jimmy’s voice as he replied, but Rita couldn’t hear what they were saying.

  When Uncle Jimmy had come home, Mum had put a plate of sausage and mash on the table and said, ‘Here’s your tea, love. We must talk later. Got things to tell you… you know.’ She nodded her head. ‘You know,’ she repeated.

  ‘What things?’ asked Rita. Why was Mum nodding and smiling like that?

  ‘Nothing to do with you, Miss Nosey Parker,’ said her mother. ‘Now, you girls go out to play till bedtime.’

  Listening to the voices downstairs now, Rita knew they were talking about the things that had nothing to do with her, and she wondered what they were. She crept out of bed and edged halfway down the stairs. She dared not go any further or she’d have no hope of escaping if Uncle Jimmy came out unexpectedly. She strained to hear what was said, but she could only hear snatches… something about the baby.

  Mum was asking about going to an office. Had he been as he promised? Rita couldn’t hear Uncle Jimmy’s answer, but her mother sounded pleased. Then he said something else, and Rita heard Mum say, ‘Yes, I went, I said I would.’

  Uncle Jimmy’s voice again and then Mum said, ‘The welfare woman said just fill in the forms, and I…’ then the clatter of china drowned her next words. Rita strained to hear but the scrape of a chair on the kitchen floor made her scurry upstairs. She was just in time as the kitchen door opened and Uncle Jimmy came out.

  ‘Jimmy, where are you going?’ Mum’s voice was quite clear now.

  ‘Out for a pint.’

  ‘But what about the forms? I need your help with them. We’ve got to decide.’

  ‘We have decided,’ answered Uncle Jimmy. ‘You fill them in. I’m going for a pint.’

  Rita heard the front door slam and her mother’s plaintive ‘Jimmy!’ to the empty kitchen.

  Rita lay in bed thinking about what she’d heard. The baby. Well, she knew Mum was having a baby. It was growing in her tummy and making her very fat. She wasn’t at all sure how the baby was going to get out. When she’d asked, Mum had said that when the time came the nurse would come and the baby would be born. Rita knew there must be more to it than this and she talked to Maggie down the street, who had a new baby brother.

  ‘The nurse came,’ Maggie told her, ‘and she pulled him out through Mum’s belly button.’

  ‘Did you see him come out?’ asked Rita in wonderment.

  ‘No,’ Maggie admitted. ‘I was sent round my nan’s.’

  Rita had given Maggie’s answer a lot of thought since. She couldn’t quite believe that a baby could get out through a belly button, but what other explanation was there? Now, she wondered, was it something to do with the welfare woman Mum had mentioned? Did you have to go to the welfare office and fill in forms for the baby to be able to come out? Mum had decided it was time to fill in the forms so that the baby could be born.

  As Rita finally drifted off to sleep, she thought, I’ll ask Gran. She’ll know.

  The opportunity to ask came the next afternoon. It was Thursday, and Gran was waiting for them at the school gate in Capel Street as usual. On the way home Gran let them stop at the playground where they went on the swings, laughing as she pushed them higher and higher. Rita loved the tall slide and was soon scrambling up the ladder to the top.

  ‘Look at me, Gran,’ she called. ‘I’m very high!’

  ‘So you are, love,’ Gran cried, ‘and too high for you,’ she said to Rosie as she ran to climb up behind her sister. ‘Come on, love. I’ll push you on the roundabout.’ Moments later Rita was there too, clinging to the bars of the little roundabout and scooting it with her foot to make it go faster.

  Lily stood back and watched the two little girls shrieking with excitement, carefree on a warm afternoon and love for them welled up inside her, threatening to spring as tears from her eyes. Her beautiful granddaughters, growing up like so many after this dreadful war, with no father in their lives.

  Does that matter? wondered Lily. Of course it matters! she admonished herself. Every child needs a dad, but must it be Jimmy Randall?

  As they walked on to Gran’s house Rosie skipped trustingly beside her, swinging their joined hands.

  ‘What’s for tea?’ she asked.

  ‘Have to see what we can find, won’t we,’ answered Gran. ‘How does bread and dripping sound?’

  ‘Yippee!’ cried Rosie twisting away and dancing backwards along the path. She beamed at her grandmother and said, ‘I love coming to your house, Gran. I wish it was always Thursday.’

  When they were sitting at Gran’s kitchen table eating the promised bread and dripping, Rita said, ‘Gran, when it’s time for Mum’s baby to be born, how does it get out of her tummy?’

  ‘Well,’ said Gran, ‘when it’s time, the nurse will come and the baby will be born.’

  ‘But how does it get out?’ persisted Rita. ‘Does Mum have to fill in forms for the welfare woman?’

  ‘Welfare woman?’ Gran sounded puzzled. ‘What welfare woman?’

  ‘Mum said the welfare woman had said she just had to fill in the forms.’

  ‘Start again, Reet,’ said her grandmother, frowning.

  ‘I heard Mum and Uncle Jimmy talking about the baby. Mum said she’d been to see the welfare woman, and all she had to do was fill in the forms. She asked Uncle Jimmy to help, but he said they’d already decided and that she could do it.’

  ‘When was this?’ asked Gran, a frightening suspicion invading her mind. She immediately pushed it away. No, it was impossible. Mavis would never… would she? No, certainly not. Rita must have got hold of the wrong end of the stick. ‘When did you hear all this?’ she asked.

  ‘I was in bed, and I heard them talking down in the kitchen,’ Rita said, ‘only I couldn’t hear properly so I went out onto the stairs, and that’s what I heard them say.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have been out of bed,’ said Gran sternly. ‘Eavesdroppers never hear any good of themselves.’

  Rosie looked up from her dripping sandwich. ‘What’s an eavesdropper, Gran?’

  ‘Someone who listens to other people’s conversations when they should be in bed,’ answered Gran. ‘Like your naughty sister.’ She turned her attention back to Rita. ‘I expect your mum was talking about the forms she has to fill in to get a ration book for the baby when it comes. Now, eat your tea and then we’ll have a game of snap.’

  ‘But how does the baby—’ persisted Rita.

  ‘I’ll tell you all about it another time,’ Gran cut in hastily. ‘There’s no time now if we’re going to play snap before you have to go.’

 
That evening, Lily sat in her kitchen and considered what Rita had said. The child was no fool. If she said she’d heard them talking about filling in forms for the welfare, then that’s what they’d been saying. But why on earth would Mavis be talking to the welfare? She didn’t need anything from them. And what had Mavis and Jimmy already decided? Perhaps they’d finally fixed a date to get married. Rita had said that Jimmy was going to the registry office yesterday to find out. They’d certainly need to fill in forms for that. Perhaps that was it. That must be it. Rita had got confused about two different parts of the conversation and misunderstood; after all, she’d said that she hadn’t heard it all.

  Still, Lily thought, I’ll talk to Mavis tomorrow and find out what’s going on. I suppose it’s for the best if they get married with a little’un on the way, but I don’t like that Jimmy. I don’t like him and I don’t trust him.

  Next morning she went round to Ship Street early to catch Mavis before she went to work. Mavis looked flustered when she opened the door and found her mother, yet again, on the step.

  ‘Mum,’ she groaned. ‘What are you doing here?’ She didn’t say ‘again’ but it was in her voice.

  Lily gave her a broad smile and said as she eased herself into the hallway, ‘I just came to see how Jimmy got on with the registry office. You said he was going on Wednesday, and I wondered if he’d got a date. Have you got the kettle on, love? Let’s have a cup of tea and you can tell me all about it.’

  Mavis sighed, led her mother into the kitchen and topped up the teapot. When she’d poured tea for each of them, she sat down across the table from Lily and forced a smile. ‘Jimmy went, like he said he would,’ Mavis said. ‘We have to fill in the forms and then I have to show them Don’s death certificate.’

  ‘So lots of forms, then?’ suggested Lily, relief in her voice. That’s what Rita overheard, she thought.

  ‘Well, we tell them we want to get married and they put the form up on the noticeboard outside the registry office. Then after three weeks we can get wed. We want to get married next month, before…’ Mavis laid a protective hand on her bump. ‘Jimmy’s taking the forms back and he’ll book us in for a date then.’