Oranges and Sunshine: Empty Cradles (20 page)

I wrote her a small card:

I am a social worker based in Nottingham. I would like to discuss something with you of a rather delicate and confidential nature. I’d like to travel to Hastings on Monday arriving at about eleven o’clock. Would it be possible to meet you at your home? If not, I’d be prepared to meet with you anywhere
.

I gave her my home telephone number and stayed close to the phone all weekend. When she didn’t ring, I kept wondering, Have I got the right lady? Has she got the letter? Perhaps she’s on holiday?

Finally, on the Monday, with a great degree of apprehension I got on the train in Nottingham at six in the morning.

When the train pulled into Hastings, I was quite anxious. I took a taxi and told the driver to park at the end of the road. It was a quiet street in a beautiful area, full of large trees and well-kept bungalows.

As I walked to the door, I still had nagging doubts.

I knocked and the door opened immediately.

‘Hello, come in,’ said an elegant, well-spoken lady, smiling warmly. She looked much younger than I expected. I knew from the marriage certificate that Pamela’s mother was in her seventies.

I was a little taken aback. I wanted to establish my credentials and show her my identity card on the doorstep but she was insisting: ‘Come in, come in. You’ve come a long way, haven’t you? Haven’t you come a long way from Nottingham? Are you in a car, dear? Come on in.’

She introduced herself and I met her husband. We all sat down and had tea in china cups. We talked about the weather, the trains and about everything except the business at hand.

How am I going to stop this? I thought.

‘Would you like more tea, dear?’ Betty asked. ‘Would you like to stay here tonight?’

Finally I managed to say, ‘Did you receive my letter?’

‘Oh yes, dear. Yes, I got your letter. Why has it taken you so long?’

She was looking at me all the time, studying my face. Suddenly it hit me: She thinks I’m Pam. She thinks I’m her daughter.

I glanced awkwardly at her husband.

‘Is there anywhere we can go and talk together?’ I asked Betty.

‘Don’t worry about that, dear,’ she said. ‘I told my husband everything last night.’

They sat there smiling.

‘You see, your letter came on Saturday morning while I was in bed and he brought it up to bed with my cup of tea. I looked at this letter with the strange handwriting and I thought, This is about my baby. I don’t know why. I just looked at it. I looked at it for ages and ages and then my husband said to me, “What is it?”

‘I don’t have any letters that come just for me, you see. He said, “It’s not your birthday.” Because it looked like a birthday card, you see. “It’s not your birthday, and who do you know in Nottingham?”

‘I wouldn’t tell him. And I read your card and kept it to myself all day, but I told him last night. “I’ve got something to tell you,” I said. I explained to him that before we married I had a baby and my mother had intervened and my little girl had been adopted.’

Betty still thought I was Pamela and I had to stop her talking for long enough to gently explain that I was a social worker from Nottingham who worked with adults who had been adopted as children. Betty couldn’t hide her disappointment – she wanted so much for me to be her daughter. As I explained, she nodded occasionally, beginning to understand that I had news for her but had to be sure she was the right woman.

She said, ‘Ever since adopted people have been able to find their families, I’ve been waiting for this. My daughter was adopted, as you probably know. Where is she? When can I meet her? Is she with you?’

I took Pamela’s birth certificate from my case and handed it to Betty.

‘Is this your daughter?’

‘Yes, it is.’

I knew it was going to be difficult to break the news about Pamela’s childhood. It had to be handled carefully. I had to let Betty set the pace; let her ask the questions.

‘Have you met her? Do you know her?’

‘Yes, we’ve met. You look very much alike.’

She smiled broadly and said, ‘Well, where is she?’

‘Pamela is living in Australia.’

‘Why did you call her Pamela? Her name is Elizabeth.’

I wasn’t ready to explain the details – more importantly, Betty wasn’t ready to hear them.

‘How did she get to Australia?’ Betty asked.

‘Pamela has been in Australia since she was very young.’

‘Well, when did she go there?’

‘As a child.’

Betty’s look of astonishment turned to sadness. ‘I saw something on the news the other day. It was about children going out to Australia on boats. It was awful …’ She paused and simply looked at me. ‘Please tell me it’s not that.’

The next few minutes were very emotional, and very personal.

Betty needed time to absorb what had happened and gather her thoughts. Her husband disappeared into the kitchen, preparing lunch and setting the table.

Betty took a deep breath and began explaining what had happened to her as a nineteen-year-old, living in London. She had been educated abroad and graduated from a finishing school. When she became pregnant, her mother was horrified and didn’t approve of her boyfriend, despite the fact that he wanted to marry Betty. Instead, they decided they would bring the child up together – mother and grandmother.

‘But that became very difficult, and when the baby was only a few months old my mother announced, “I’m going to take this baby to the nuns.”’

Betty was told that her daughter would be adopted by a loving couple, who would raise her as their own.

When I left Hastings, late that afternoon, I was thrilled to have found Pamela’s mother, yet terribly sad. Here was proof of a case where a mother had not given consent for her child to be migrated. She had placed her daughter for adoption in England. Of this I had no doubt.

That day my fear and apprehension had been for Betty, now I felt the same emotions when I thought of Pamela, at home in Adelaide. How was I going to tell her?

I flew to Australia on 25 November. The last person I spoke to before leaving was Betty who had sent me a letter for Pamela, along with some photographs and a small gift.

Apart from these, I was loaded down with family details for thirty child migrants. In some of these cases, Yvonne and I had also managed to find and visit their families. I was bringing with me photographs, letters and family mementos.

The production crew from Domino Films was due to meet me in Sydney, several days after I arrived. They had already been filming in Canada and Zimbabwe.

As I cleared customs and emerged into the arrivals hall at Sydney Airport, I saw a familiar face which was totally out of place.

‘Harold!’ I said. ‘What on earth are you doing here? You live in Melbourne!’

‘Well, I’ve come from Melbourne to meet you.’

‘When did you fly in?’

‘I haven’t flown.’

‘How did you get here?’

‘I’ve still got my old banger.’

I wouldn’t have trusted that car to go to the end of the road and back, and he had driven it over 500 miles, through the night, to meet me.

‘That’s lovely, Harold,’ I said, ‘but why have you done it?’

‘I’ve come to give you a lift.’

‘Where to?’

‘To your hotel.’

‘How long are you staying?’

‘Just for a cup of tea.’

‘Then you’re going back?’

‘Yeah.’

So Harold chauffeured me to the Sheraton and saw me to my room. We had a cup of tea and dinner, and later that evening he climbed back into his van.

‘Why did you do it?’ I asked. ‘This is awful.’

He said, ‘Well if you can come 12,000 miles to help us, surely I can come from Melbourne to bloody Sydney to pick you up?’

The following day I began meeting child migrants and telling them of the search for their families. I was painfully aware of the sensitivity of the subject. These people had spent decades with nothing and I couldn’t simply drop information on them. It had to be done with great care and many would possibly need counselling for a long time before and afterwards. I had just a few weeks before going home again – a situation that was totally unsatisfactory.

When Joanna arrived with her film crew, I had another dilemma to sort out. Her first question was, ‘Have you found anybody’s mother?’

‘Yes, I have,’ I replied, watching her face light up. ‘But it’s not that simple.’

Joanna wanted a reunion to complete her documentary but I had reservations about exposing families and former child migrants to the camera. A reunion was such an emotional time that I felt it was a gross intrusion to film such a private moment. I explained to Joanna that it was up to the parties concerned to make the decision whether they wanted it filmed.

‘Is it anything to do with Pam?’ she persisted. ‘We’re going to spend a long time with her next week, filming in her house, talking about her childhood. Should we at least tell her you’re coming to see her?’

‘You can tell her that much. Also ask her to sign a contract with you. I want you to promise that if she wishes anything at all to be withdrawn from the film, you’ll comply.’

I arrived in Adelaide two and a half weeks later. The roses in Pamela’s front garden were glorious – and so English. Inside the house the film crew were helping Pamela put up her Christmas decorations. They were obviously getting on well.

‘It’s lovely to see you again,’ Pamela said, ‘but I’m sure you’ve got other people to see who are more important than me. Anyway, come and have a cup of tea.’

Much of what happened next was captured in the documentary. I started by getting Pamela to describe again some of her feelings about being a child migrant.

‘I’ve always felt that I’m less than other people who can talk about at least an auntie or an uncle,’ she said. ‘I can never say that. There’s always an emptiness for me, and it never really goes away. I love my children but they don’t completely fill that gap. I felt as if I was robbed, not having anybody that I was related to. Deep down I’ve always thought, maybe one day I might be able to find out something, but nobody seemed to care. They’d say, it’s awful but there are people worse off than you – and there are.

‘If I only had a sister or an auntie or an uncle … but it’s such a long time ago … and there were millions of people killed in the war. I’m sure mine were amongst them.’

When Pamela stopped talking, I finally felt it was time. ‘I’m going to tell you another story now,’ I said gently. ‘In some ways it’s similar to yours.’

I handed Pamela a birth certificate. As she put on her glasses I noticed that her hands were shaking.

‘You’ve been able to find out about her?’ she said.

‘I have.’

‘You haven’t? Oh!’

She was on the verge of tears.

‘You can see that this lady was born in 1916,’ I went on. ‘She could only have been a young girl when she was having a baby, and her mother would not let her marry the father of the baby.’

‘How can mothers do that? But they do, don’t they? How could she do it?’

‘Very difficult days in London, they didn’t have proper accommodation, they had to find jobs, they had to keep themselves, they had to survive, they were on their own, and this baby was going to be born. This baby was born in hospital and this young mother wanted to keep her baby, so she took the baby home to a flat with very little furniture, hardly any money, and the mother said to her daughter, “This isn’t the way I want my granddaughter brought up.” War was impending “I’ll take this baby to the convent where we’ll ask the nuns if they’ll look after her for a short time.”’

Pamela interrupted. ‘Fancy telling me that I was left in the hospital. Why would they tell me that?’ Pamela asked. ‘The nuns said my mother walked out of the hospital, leaving me there. I was told that, so I believed it. That poor woman.’

‘That poor child,’ I said.

‘Who was responsible for this?’ she asked. ‘Was it the nuns? Nuns don’t make these decisions? Who did these things?’

‘Perhaps we’ll never know.’

I continued my story. ‘Pamela, while you were growing up in Australia and getting married and having a family, there was a woman on the other side of the world who has never stopped thinking about you. You were the great loss in her life.’

Pamela’s jaw dropped.

‘Is she still alive?’

‘She is.’

‘I can’t believe it! I couldn’t be that lucky! What’s she like?’

‘She’s lovely.’

‘I’ve got a mother!’

There was a long silence, and then I heard a sound behind me.

‘What’s that?’ I said, turning around.

The film crew was in tears.

So was Pamela. We had to stop filming.

Later that evening, Pamela took me to one side and showed me the letter that Betty had given me to carry out to Australia. It was very moving.

Dear Pamela
,

Can you ever forgive me for causing you so much unhappiness in your life? Even now I cannot make it up to you as we are so far apart. But you have always been in my thoughts
.

Betty ended the letter:

You would like Hastings. It is on the South Coast and we live not far from the sea. I can tell you much more after I hear from you, which I hope will be soon
.

In fact, I can hardly wait for you to get in touch, and thank you, Pamela, for trying so hard all these years
.

With love from your Mum
.

I was dreading going back to Perth. The memories of my last visit were still too vivid and came flooding back as I drove from the airport into the city. I felt physically sick.

When I arrived at the hotel and walked into my room there was already a pile of telephone messages stapled together like a book and bunches of flowers still in cellophane wrapping. More were being delivered all the time.

I was tired. No, I was exhausted. There were literally dozens more child migrants who wanted to see me and this time I didn’t have David to support me. I was on my own.

I rang Merv to tell him I’d arrived safely but found myself saying, ‘I want to come home. It’s chaos. I can’t get any sleep.’

Over the next two days I began a new round of interviews with former child migrants, many of whom had been brought to Australia by the Christian Brothers and had gone to one of four orphanages run by the Order.