In Her Mothers' Shoes (9 page)

‘Forget it. Okay? It’s not going to happen. I’m not accepting any responsibility for you getting yourself into trouble. You’re on your own.’

And with that, he turned around, stomped off into the shed and slammed the smoko room door behind him.

She couldn’t recall the journey through town and up the hill homewards. She couldn’t even remember going through the tunnel, always her favourite part of the journey. It was going through the tunnel that Peter had kissed her for the second time, only stopping seconds before the tram emerged out the other side.

She remembered pausing at the back door and using a hanky to wipe off as much as she could of the lipstick and powder before taking off her shoes – her mother’s shoes, which she’d unwittingly kept on the whole way home – hiding them behind her back and tiptoeing past the closed door to the sitting room, where her mother was chairing the council meeting. If her mother had caught her then, she wouldn’t have known what to say; she was all out of excuses and all out of fight. But she needn’t have worried; the door remained shut. Avoiding the creaky stair, she’d stripped off the dress – she’d never worn it again – returned her mother’s shoes to the neat shoe tree in her wardrobe, and soaked herself under the hot shower, hoping to wash away the dirty feeling Peter had left her with. Then she’d crawled into bed and stayed there the rest of the day, missing dinner even, saying she felt sick again. She remembered the cool of the sheets against her hot, flushed cheek, the saltiness of the tears as she fiercely wiped them dry.

The sheets on the narrow little bed at Fitzgibbon House felt just as cool, just as crisp as her own, but the pillow was hard. She opened her case and pulled out Mr Ted, holding him tight. He looked cross; he didn’t seem to like it here any more than she did.

Chapter 4

Christchurch. 1950

There was remarkably little to unpack when it came down to it.

Lizzie lifted her case onto the grey blanket stretched across the bed and began to take out her few belongings. She set her one family photograph in its frame on top of her cupboard along with her brush, her well-read copy of
Wuthering Heights –
the only book she’d managed to squeeze in her bag – her felt-covered sewing kit and, presiding over it all, Mr Ted. She looked along the two neat rows of beds – the other girls had left soft toys on their bedside tables, so Mr Ted should be safe.

Out came the Cellophane packet holding the three pressed flowers she’d saved from the posy Peter had picked for her from behind a picket fence near the tram stop – but she hesitated before placing it on the dresser. Instead she slipped it to one side of the top drawer; it was too precious to expose to others.

She hid her paintbrushes and paints at the back of the cupboard and her art book under the mattress as it was too big to fit inside. Finally, she folded her clothes away into the drawers, placed her long nightdress under the pillow and was done.

She took off her skirt and blouse, packed them away too, then unhooked the ugly grey uniform and pulled it on over her slip. She didn’t need a mirror to know that she looked a frump; it was shapeless and voluminous, with plenty of room for a bulging stomach as the baby grew inside her. The front hung down well below her knees and the sleeves reached her elbows.

Despite a weak sun streaming through the windows, the room was still chilly and she shivered. She would need to put on the spencer her mother had made her bring. She hated spencers, but she could see it might have a use here, where she didn’t know anybody and it didn’t really matter what she looked like.

She found the bathroom block, with row upon row of communal showers and poky little toilet cubicles. They were spotless – probably because the girls had to clean them daily.

The dining hall seemed vast – a great cavernous, high-ceilinged room panelled with light-coloured wood half-way up the wall, the top half painted the same sickly yellow as the hallway. It was empty, save for about half a dozen girls, wearing the same grey work-smock she’d donned in the dorm, behind a servery down the far end. One was holding an enormous teapot above row upon row of white cups and pouring a steaming brown liquid into them in a continuous stream, moving the teapot from one cup to the next without a pause. Following her was a girl with a second teapot whose continuous flow seemed to be hot water. This second girl looked up when Lizzie came in, said something to her companion, put down the pot and beckoned her over. As Lizzie approached, she could see both girls were heavily pregnant, much more advanced than she was.

‘You must be the new girl,’ the girl said, resuming the pouring. ‘Welcome to Fitzgibbon House for Wayward Girls.’ Both girls laughed at this and Lizzie smiled at the joke. ‘I’m Drusilla,' she added, ‘but everyone calls me Dru. And this is Patricia.’

‘Pat,’ the tea-pouring girl said, pausing from her duties.

‘Elizabeth, but everyone calls me Lizzie.’

‘Hello Lizzie. How far gone are you?’ Pat said.

‘Just four months,’ she said.

‘We’re thirty-six weeks,’ Pat said ‘They put you in groups so you’re with other girls at the same stage as you.’

‘When you get more advanced, you get taken off the garden and the laundry and get lighter duties,’ Dru said.

‘Like the kitchen,’ said a third girl approaching the servery with a large cardboard box out of which she proceeded to scoop a handful of biscuits then placed one on each saucer, rarely avoiding the slopped tea. ‘It’s a lot easier than the laundry, I can tell you.’

‘They start you on laundry when you first come in.’

‘I can’t wait,’ Lizzie said without enthusiasm.

A bell rang somewhere, a bit like the fire alarm bell they used to ring at school for fire drill.

‘What’s that?’ she asked, alarmed.

‘You’ll see in about thirty seconds,’ said Dru.

The three girls behind the counter continued their duties until all the cups were full and a biscuit sat on each saucer.

Suddenly the door behind them burst open and a high-pitched chattering, shrieking and clattering horde of young women – all dressed in grey smocks – burst into the dining hall and headed as one towards the servery.

‘Here, take this.’ Pat thrust a cup, saucer and biscuit at Lizzie. ‘Take it up the front and they’ll tell you where to sit.’

‘Thank you.’ Lizzie did as she was told, wondering who ‘they’ was. It proved to be Miss Mayhew.

‘Ah, Elizabeth, I see you’ve found your way to the dining room, well done. You’ll be with the new entrants, on the table up the front here.’ She indicated the centre table in a row of three. ‘There are six tables, one for each dormitory. You will take all your meals together at the same table. Each month, your dormitory moves to make room for newer arrivals. Is that clear?’

‘Yes, Miss Mayhew.’

‘Good.’

Lizzie slid onto the bench seat at the table Miss Mayhew had indicated and put her cup down in front of her.

‘You can’t sit there, that’s Jessie’s seat.’ A tiny girl, dwarfed by her enormous smock, and much younger than her – fifteen at the most she guessed – was looking fiercely at her.

‘Oh, sorry. I didn’t know.’ She picked up her cup and went to move to the next place. ‘Is this all right here?’

‘Yes, that’ll do. That’s Anahira’s place. She won’t care.’

‘Oh no, really, I don’t want to upset anyone. Just tell me where to sit.’

By the time she’d got up and moved to the other side, the bench seats were all full except for the empty space which was clearly where she was supposed to be.

‘Raisin biscuits. Yum.’ One of the girls seized the biscuit and wolfed it down.

The tiny girl inspected her biscuit and pulled a face. ‘There aren’t any raisins in mine.’ Quickly, she snatched a biscuit from the girl next to her and put hers in its place. ‘There are now.’

The girl whose biscuit she’d stolen started to snatch it back then stopped. ‘Poor Pearl,’ she said, pulling a mock-sympathy face. ‘We can’t have you feeling disadvantaged, can we?’

Pearl punched her on the arm, making the other girl wince.

‘You’re so sensitive, Pearl,’ one of the other girls said.

‘Yes, take it easy Pearl,’ another girl said, wagging her finger across the table at her.

Pearl looked sulky and turned away.

‘So who’s the new girl?’ the tallest one asked.

Tripping over her name, wanting to make a good impression and aware that she was coming across as shy and hesitant, Lizzie introduced herself to the others and tried to remember who was who as Jessie recited their names. She had the most trouble trying to pronounce the name of the Maori girl, Anna-something – she’d never met a Maori girl before, though didn’t want to admit it. She remembered Jessie easily – Lizzie’s maternal grandmother had been called Jessie – and warmed to her at once. Jessie, the tallest and the oldest, at nineteen, was from Dunedin where she’d been doing her first year of medical studies and was desperate to return as soon as her baby was born. To her, this place was a temporary impediment in a promising career, whereas Christine – who wasn’t at morning tea because it was her turn to stay behind and mind the laundry – wanted to be a nurse and loved babies, Jessie told her. Margaret, or Meg, a year older, was from a farm near Geraldine but had been at Teachers’ College in Christchurch when ‘it’ happened; Anna-something, the Maori girl, came from a well-off farming family up Gisborne way; and little Pearl, the prickly one who’d been so insistent about where everyone sat, was from Wellington, like herself, but from near the top of the Hutt Valley, where Lizzie had to admit she’d never been.

‘You’ve never been over our side of town? You haven’t lived!’ Pearl said, coming out of her sulk. ‘I can see we’re going to have to educate you.’

Lizzie hoped being ‘educated’ didn’t mean being subjected to the sort of treatment the girls meted out to newcomers at boarding school.

She’d already been appalled at the lightning speed with which the girls had devoured their single biscuit and slurped at their tea, although she had to admit she was starving herself. All she’d had on the boat was the sweet dry biscuit the ancient stewardess had brought before dawn with tea in a cup so thick there was hardly any room for the milky tea. With no breakfast, Lizzie felt like scoffing the extra biscuit herself, but held back, mindful of her mother’s words about first impressions. She’d reminded her how much it had cost to send her to the home – ‘so you’ll be with girls your own class, no riff-raff’. Despite their shameful circumstances, all these girls must be from families who were comfortably off – even Pearl and the Maori girl, whose presence surprised her considerably. If her mother could see her now, sitting next to a Maori girl. She’d be so shocked. Lizzie permitted herself a smirk as she finished her tea. There’d been no Maori girls at Marsden that she knew of. In fact, Lizzie didn’t even know what they were until she was about six and her mother said to her one day in the tram, ‘There’s a Maori woman getting on.’ She’d stared at the woman and her unfamiliar brown skin until her mother had told her it was rude. It wasn’t until she was in an older class at primary school she’d seen two other Maoris and they’d been so unusual the other kids had laughed at them.

The alarm bell rang again.