A Woman of Courage (10 page)

‘Was she hurt?'

‘Just frightened. Nothin' wrong with her. I tell you, girl, my nerves won't put up with much more of this. Think I might put her in care till you're on your feet again. Just temporary, like. What you say?'

‘I wouldn't want nothing like that –'

‘Just till you're on your feet again,' Grandma said.

The streets were a mess, debris everywhere and people shuffling, faces white with shock. Smoke from the smouldering ruins made Grandma cough as she walked home.

Can't stand no more, she thought. As for the kid… When this lot is over Audrey will be wanting to settle down. Only natural, innit? What chance will she have of that? Stands to reason, no bloke'll want to be saddled with someone else's brat. There'll be fingers pointin', too, you can bet on it. She won't never 'ave no life. Reckon I'll put Hilary into care anyway, then it'll be up to Audrey what she wants to do about it when she gets out of hospital.

She took young Hilary to the Waifs and Strays shelter in Peckham Road.

‘'Er mum's in 'ospital,' she said. ‘One o' them dratted flyin' bombs. Might be best if someone was to adopt 'er. Best for all concerned.'

I hope I done the right thing, she thought as she walked to the bus stop.

4

‘You done what?'

‘I did it for the best. I couldn't 'andle 'er by meself, with you in the hospital –'

‘I tole you I didn't want that!'

‘The best for both of us,' Grandma said. ‘You want to find yourself a nice bloke when this lot's over. Stan's dead, Audrey. You got to move on.'

‘I'm gunna fetch her.'

‘You'd be better off without her. You know that as well as I do.'

‘I'm gunna fetch her.'

But the official, oozing sympathy, was rock hard in his determination to carry out what he considered his mission. ‘I am sorry, Mrs Brand. The child is no longer here. She was put up for adoption. Her grandmother said –'

‘Never mind what she said. I'm her mum and I never give you no permission! I want her back.'

‘I'm afraid that won't be possible.'

‘You mean you can just steal my child and I got no say?'

‘I can assure you everything was done perfectly legally. And it is not the Society's policy to reveal the name of the adopting parents. I can assure you Hilda will be very well looked after.'

‘Hilary!'

‘Excuse me?'

‘Her name ain't Hilda. It's Hilary.'

‘So it is. I do beg your pardon.'

‘But you won't tell me where she is? Her own mother?'

‘I am afraid not.'

1

A time of fear, of being lost. She knows no one and nothing. She understands nothing. She has no idea what is happening to her or why. She goes where she is taken. There are other children. She does not know them. She does not speak.

A girl, bigger than she is, speaks to her. ‘Hello.'

She eyes her suspiciously and does not answer. She is wearing her little coat with the buttons. She clutches the bear she's had all her life. They are hers. They, the little frock and her hat, are all she has.

A big hand, not unkind but determined, tries to take the bear from her. She makes a protesting noise, clutching it tight. She hears two grown-ups talking.

‘We'd best get rid of that filthy thing.'

‘Leave it.'

‘But it's unhygienic.'

‘Leave it, I said.'

She goes on a train. She does not know what it is. She has never been on a train before or even seen one – not knowingly, anyway. It smells different. It is noisy, like all this new swaying unfamiliar world. Part of her wonders when she will be going home; another part thinks that Mum and Grandma and the house and sleeping in her bed and waking up in the morning to the familiar light through the familiar curtains have all gone and will never be coming back.

After the swaying rattling train there is a stern-faced building behind a low box hedge. The building is of brown brick with lines of windows on either side of a central door. Inside the building are long dark echoing corridors with rooms containing many beds in rows, many children Hilary does not know. Shadow-like she stands in the corner of the room and looks about her. The children are not her friends. She clutches her bear. The bear is her only friend. She does not want to stay here. She decides she will walk home.

She gets fifty yards before she is caught and brought back. She looks up into the red face of the woman who caught her and now lifts her, feet dangling, and shakes her in furious hands. The woman's thin-lipped mouth is round and red with rage.

‘Where you think you're going? Running away? Don't you dare try that trick on me! Getting me in trouble! You get back indoors now!'

And carries her back inside the brown brick building and sets her down, sending her on her way with a clip around the head for company.

Eighteen months later she tries again. She is five now so gets further but the result is the same. The hard hand stings.

‘Nasty little brat! Bundle of trouble, that's what you are!'

That's it. She does not give up but desists. For now. Maybe the chance will come again, maybe not. If it does she will take it. In the meantime she waits. Time passes.

2

Hilary was nine when she was befriended by Miss Anderson, a student teacher. Miss Anderson, very hot on causes, believed her role was to unearth and nurture hidden talent. She thought she had discovered something in Hilary the other teachers had not: a sense of curiosity and a will to accept challenge.

‘That one will take on the world, in time,' Miss Anderson told a friend. ‘And win too, I wouldn't wonder.'

She showed Hilary a moth-eaten book containing a picture of an ancient map with funny, old-fashioned writing.

‘See what you can make of that.'

Hilary was up to the challenge, although it took some time. That was another of her qualities, Miss Anderson thought. When she wanted something she worried at it until she found the answer.

When Hilary had deciphered the archaic writing she took the book back to the student teacher.

‘Have you worked it out?'

‘It says:
Here be dragons
.'

‘Well done!'

‘But what does it mean?'

‘In the old days there were unexplored parts of the world. When the people who drew the maps didn't know a particular area that was what they used to write.'

Hilary pondered, frowning. ‘I don't get it.'

‘Because they thought unknown places might contain dangers: savages and wild beasts.'

‘That's just an excuse, isn't it? Like they're saying the reason they don't know something is because it's too dangerous to find out.'

‘That's right.'

‘I'd like to go to those places,' Hilary said. ‘But, miss…'

‘What?'

‘Are there really dragons?'

‘Of course there are.'

‘With fire coming out of their mouths?'

‘Maybe. Who knows?'

‘Cor! You think I'll ever get to see them?'

‘I think if you make up your mind you'll be capable of doing anything you want.'

3

‘Brand!'

‘Yes, miss?'

‘Pack up your things, you lucky girl. You're off on an adventure.'

Hilary had learnt to be cautious of Miss Trimble.

‘What sort of adventure, miss?'

‘You'll find out.'

She and a lot of other kids were taken first on the train to another place. It was much nicer than the Middlemore Home but they weren't there long and afterwards she remembered little about it, just a nurse in a white coat poking her about. She remembered what happened next, though. Again the train. Then…

‘Cor!'

It was a big boat with two funnels.

‘We going on that?'

‘You certainly are.'

‘Going where?'

‘Across the ocean. All the way to Australia.'

‘Is it far?'

‘The other side of the world. But you'll like it there. Lots of sunshine. Oranges growing…'

‘Will we be able to pick them?'

‘As many as you can eat. Come along now.'

4

There were lessons on board, just like in a real school. When she got the chance Hilary escaped to the deck and looked out at the ocean. Every day they had to sing a hymn at the morning service, the boys on one side of the room, the girls on the other. Hilary looked around at the faces – some scared, some lonely, some cheeky with you-can't-do-nuthin-to-me looks. Like her, none of them knew where they were going.

‘Thy seas are found around us…'

One of the little ones thought it was
Icy frowns around us
but Katy was only five so you had to make allowances.

‘Miss…' A boy with his hand up.

‘What is it?'

‘The seas and the ocean? Are they the same thing?'

‘Don't be stupid! Of course they are.'

‘Only asking.'

‘Well, don't.'

Miss Hammett was a nasty little thing.

The ocean gave Hilary a funny feeling. It was so big, so mysterious. No way to know what might be out there. Miss Anderson's face floated in her memory. She'd been kind – one of the few. But Miss Anderson was gone. Everything she'd ever known was gone.
Here be dragons…
Right. There were days she was scared but mostly she was thinking, Here we go again. It seemed that all her life she had been moved on. She began to wonder whether she'd ever been a real person at all, but one thing cheered her up and kept her going.

At the home they'd told her Mum was dead. Killed in an air raid – that's what they said. Hilary didn't believe that. She could see Mum's face now. She stood beside her on the
Ormonde
's deck. Together they watched the sea and the smoke blowing back from the ship's funnels. Mum's fingers were warm, wrapped around Hilary's hand. At night she came to her in her bunk amid all the other kids. Hilary smelt her clean-Mum smell; saw her eyes shining in the darkness. Her smile. How could she be dead?

One of these days I shall find her, she told herself. In the meantime… She tried to think of herself as a heroine setting out into the world to do wonderful things.
Here be dragons…

‘I'll kill them,' Hilary told Mum that night in the swaying darkness, the sounds of the sleeping children all around them. ‘You see if I don't.'

5

The land was flat and featureless, barely breaking the sea's horizon, but later there were cliffs with sand dunes beyond them, and the dunes glowed red and gold and copper in the sunlight. Not a tree, not a moving thing, no sign of life at all.

Hilary hung on the rail, watching. There it is, she thought. At last. She felt apprehension – yes – but also excitement. A new place. A new life. I'll fight, if I have to. I'll be OK.

There were people all around them when they came ashore. People shouting, rushing this way and that. Confusion.

‘Where are we?'

Wherever it was, it was very different from the empty land Hilary had watched from the
Ormonde
's deck.

‘Australia.'

‘Where in Australia?'

‘Station Pier Melbourne, you stupid child,' nasty Miss Hammett said. ‘How many times have I got to tell you?'

‘Is this where we're going?' Looking around at the docks, the warehouses, the people.

‘You are going to the Lady Northcote Farm School in Bacchus Marsh.'

‘Is it nice?'

‘You'll find out, won't you? When you get there.'

6

‘We'll have no messin',' Captain Barnstable said. ‘That's the first lesson you got to learn. Any messin', you're looking at trouble. Get it?' And slammed his big stick on the surface of his desk with a wallop that made the children jump.

Captain Barnstable was a scowl with whiskers, red and ferocious, and a button nose set between eyes the colour of slate.

‘You get along with me, we'll be right. Any tricks and I'll grind you to dust.
Get it
?'

It made them wonder what they'd come to. They'd been told they were being taken to a place called Something-Marsh so Hilary had expected they'd be living in some kind of swamp. She couldn't imagine it but there was nothing she could do but sit in the rattle-bang of a worn-out truck for what seemed like hours and try not to think.

‘If it's a marsh there'll be frogs,' said a girl called Agnes. ‘I like frogs. I had a tadpole in a jam jar once. That grew into a frog.'

‘What happened to it?'

‘It escaped.'

It was something to cling on to; certainly there wasn't much else.

If there were frogs there might be snakes, Hilary thought. Snakes were a different matter, but she didn't say anything; Agnes was the nervous type, a year younger than she was, and it didn't take much to set her off.

The way things worked out it didn't matter anyway because where they were taken wasn't a marsh or a swamp or anything like that. It was a farm with grass and cows and a horse or two with cottages set well apart from each other, some for girls, others for boys. Captain Barnstable and a woman called Wilmot, who had scragged-back black hair turning grey and arms like hams, were in charge. They ordered them about all the time. The town called Bacchus Marsh was a few miles off and in any case was out of bounds.

‘There's a lock-up there,' mean-eyed Mrs Wilmot said. ‘Oldest in Australia. With rats. Catch you there, they'll stick you in one of their cells.'

With the rats? Agnes looked scared and no wonder. But the food at Northcote Farm wasn't much and after a week or two they were that hungry that some of the kids were beginning to wonder whether it might be possible to
eat
rats.

‘Yuck!' said some, especially the girls.