‘If the thief doesn’t confess right now I shall punish you all,’ Mother said. ‘There will be no supper until this is cleared up.’
There was complete silence again, so quiet it sounded as if everyone was holding their breath. A minute passed, then another, still no one spoke out.
‘Down on your knees then,’ Mother said, her dark eyes glinting as if she was going to enjoy watching their discomfort. ‘You will remain there until I have the culprit, even if I have to keep you here all night.’
A low groan from everyone was the only answer. The schoolroom floor was made of bare splintery boards, and even ten minutes of kneeling on it was a painful ordeal.
Dulcie had a graze on her knee and as soon as it came in contact with the floor it began to throb. She looked up at Reverend Mother’s face, saw the malice in her eyes and knew that she meant what she said – however long it took, she would make them stay here.
The clock on the wall said half past five when they first came into the room, and as Dulcie knelt there she watched the second hand going round. After only fifteen minutes she felt she could scream with pain, but Reverend Mother sat down on a chair by the window, calmly watching them all, from time to time getting up and walking along the rows of girls, making sure no one had slumped back on to their heels. Small groans and sighs started, shuffling sounds as girls tried to pull their dresses down to kneel on, but thin cotton didn’t act as a cushion, and by the time an hour had passed, many of them were in real distress.
Mother went out for a while, Sister Ruth relieving her. When she returned she asked if anyone was ready to own up, and pointed out that the longer they left it, the more severe the punishment would be.
It was just after half past six, when Angela, one of the five-year-olds, started to cry and everyone craned their necks to look at her, that Dulcie suddenly realized to her horror that May was the culprit.
She was only a few feet away from Dulcie, in the next row, two girls along. Dulcie had glanced at her right at the outset when Mother was speaking about the toffees, but then she’d had a wide-eyed, innocent look. Anyone else would have thought the present expression on her face was purely the result of discomfort, but Dulcie had seen that particular furtive expression too many times to be fooled. May was biting her lower lip and twiddling her hair, eyes darting around the room as if trying to weigh up if anyone could possibly know it was her.
It was Dulcie’s guess she’d snatched the tin as an act of bravado to impress her friends. She’d probably hidden them away intending to share them out later, but she was a little pig for sweets, and had doubtless eaten them all. Had anyone else known about this, they would have accused her by now, for not even the most loyal friend would stay quiet under these circumstances.
While Dulcie thought May fully deserved punishing, she knew that this would be a caning offence – at least six strokes on a bare bottom. On top of that May would be punished further by the other girls afterwards for putting them through all this. That could involve anything from being burned with a hot iron, having her head held down the lavatory and the chain flushed, or being sent to Coventry indefinitely. Dulcie was certain that might very well push May back to the way she’d been at the Sacred Heart after Sister Teresa’s cruelty.
When Reverend Mother slapped Angela for crying, Dulcie knew they really would be here all night, because May would never own up herself, no matter how much pain she put others through, she just wasn’t made that way.
Dulcie felt she had to stop it all now. She was frightened of being caned, but it was the thought of what the older girls would do to her that really terrified her. Yet she couldn’t let everyone else suffer now for something May had done.
Taking a deep breath, Dulcie stood up. ‘It was me who took the toffees, Reverend Mother,’ she said. ‘I’m very sorry.’
There were gasps of surprise from everyone. Dulcie didn’t dare look at them, but kept her eyes on the older woman who looked as if she was about to have a fit.
‘You, Dulcie!’ she exclaimed. ‘Why?’
‘Because I’m greedy, Mother,’ Dulcie said, suddenly feeling her insides turning to jelly. ‘I’m so very sorry. Can the others get up now? None of them had anything to do with it.’
Reverend Mother hesitated for a moment, her eyes narrowed in suspicion, but then made a gesture for them all to get up and said they were to go and get their supper. Some of the girls could barely stand, and they hobbled out, many of them looking back at Dulcie in puzzlement. May paused in the doorway, looking stricken with fear, but then she scampered quickly away.
Dulcie was trembling with fright, she had cramp in her legs and her back was aching from being so long in one position. Reverend Mother looked hard at her. ‘I don’t believe you,’ she said. ‘You are covering up for someone. Tell me who it is!’
Dulcie hadn’t expected to be interrogated, she thought she’d just be caned and that would be it. Was she going to be forced to kneel again until Reverend Mother got the answers she wanted? Dulcie knew that would soon crack her.
‘I did take them, Mother,’ she insisted. ‘I don’t know why. I just did it on the spur of the moment without thinking. It was very bad and I’m sorry.’
‘Would you swear on the Bible it was you?’
Dulcie gulped. She hadn’t expected that either. Yet why should she be afraid to swear it? God hadn’t been looking after her so well, and she was only protecting her sister.
‘Yes, I will,’ she said defiantly.
Reverend Mother opened the cupboard under the blackboard and pulled out a Bible. ‘Come here,’ she said sharply. ‘Put both hands on it and swear.’
Dulcie almost backed away. The big black Bible with its gold cross was sacred. She might be struck down by a stroke of lightning for lying even in its presence. How could she put her hands on it?
Yet she did, the leather felt cool and soft, and she just hoped God knew her motives were pure. ‘I swear on this Bible I did steal the toffees,’ she said.
‘You will stay in purgatory for all time if you lied,’ the woman reminded her. ‘Is saving another girl punishment worth that?’
Dulcie pictured May’s face as she had been that morning after Sister Teresa had finished with her, and decided she’d take the chance on purgatory. ‘It was me, Mother,’ she said.
Reverend Mother turned away for a moment and went over to a stool kept by the window. It was like a piano stool, with handles on both sides, but no padding on the seat. ‘In that case take down your drawers and lean over this,’ she said.
Dulcie bit her lip tightly as she slid her drawers down to her knees, and offered up a plea to God that he would understand, then bent forward, holding the two handles, and waited.
She heard Reverend Mother go to the cupboard under the blackboard, a faint rustle of something, then her footsteps on the wooden floor as she came towards her.
‘It’s not too late to admit who you are shielding,’ she said.
‘It was me, Mother,’ Dulcie said once again.
The woman pushed her hands away from the handles, so she was bent double over the stool, then pulled up her dress, folding it back so it came right up over Dulcie’s shoulders.
There was a swish through the air, bringing with it just a little breeze, then it hit her, and right away Dulcie knew this was no ordinary cane, but the switch she’d heard about from several of the older girls. They said it had about a dozen leather thongs fixed to it, and at the end of each one was a metal stud.
Her buttocks seemed to explode, as though the skin was already broken open, and she caught hold of the stool legs involuntarily. The second and third blows were even more painful, yet she forced herself not to scream. She lost count of the strokes after that, for the pain was so terrible there was no sensation of a pause between each one, it just seemed to go on and on, like being forced to sit on top of a fire. She tried to scream, but no sound came out, and it was only as she was on the point of passing out with the agony that she realized that was what the woman was waiting for, because she grabbed her by the hair, jerked her head back, and when she saw tears streaming down Dulcie’s face she half smiled maliciously.
‘I know you didn’t take them,’ she rasped, out of breath from her exertion. ‘Don’t think you can lie to me, Dulcie Taylor, and get away with it. I shall be watching you now till the day you leave here. One step out of place and I’ll come down so hard on you that tonight’s beating will seem like nothing.’
There was one more stroke, as a finishing touch, and she heard the woman walk away without another word.
Dulcie never knew how she managed to get up off that stool, pull her drawers up and get out of the classroom. When she reached the veranda, it was all she could do not to fall on to the floor and scream with pain, yet somehow she managed to fumble her way along the walkway to her dormitory. It wasn’t just her bottom that hurt, but her whole body, each step like a hundred knives going into her. She concentrated all her effort on reaching the bathroom, but as she bent over to turn on the cold tap in the bath, she felt herself growing faint and her legs buckling beneath her.
She came round to find Sonia, one of the oldest girls, dabbing at her face with a cloth.
Sonia was very plain, with ginger hair and masses of freckles, but she was very tough and the undisputed leader here at St Vincent’s. Abandoned as a baby, she’d never known anything but orphanages, yet they hadn’t entirely subdued her fiery nature. She was the only one who dared answer the Sisters back, it was said she’d once punched Sister Anne for beating a five-year-old.
‘Strewth, you’re a brave kid,’ she exclaimed. ‘We all know it wasn’t you that nicked the toffees. But your bum’s gonna take a long time to get better, and tonight you’ll think you’re in hell.’
Sonia propped Dulcie up against the washbasin and first soaked her drawers with water to make their removal easier as they’d already stuck to her skin. ‘Hold on tight while I whip them off,’ she said. ‘And don’t you dare scream or Sister Anne will belt me for helping you.’
It was all hazy after that, for Dulcie was engulfed in such red-hot agony she could focus on nothing else. Yet even through that fiery haze she was aware of Sonia tenderly bathing her bottom, slipping a nightdress over her head, then putting an arm around her waist, leading her into the dormitory and laying her face down on the bed.
‘You poor kid,’ she heard the girl say as if from a long way off. ‘Whatever did any of us do to get to end up in a place like this?’
Dulcie hurt too badly to be surprised to see May creeping into the dormitory later. While Dulcie often took a chance on being caught out in the Junior dormitory just to spend a few minutes with her sister, May never reciprocated. ‘Does it hurt terribly?’ she asked in a whisper. ‘Look, I brought you an orange.’
An orange was like finding a lump of gold, and under any other circumstances Dulcie would not only have been wild with excitement, but curious as to where May got it.
‘I don’t want that,’ Dulcie managed to say through her pain. ‘The only thing that would make me feel better is if you were to admit to me that you stole the toffees.’
‘But I didn’t take them, Dulcie,’ May said.
‘You did, May,’ Dulcie replied weakly. ‘Admit it to me if no one else. I took this punishment to save your skin. Lift up my nightie and look!’
She heard May gasp as she lifted it, and knew it must look as terrible as it felt.
‘I’m sorry she did that to you,’ May whispered, putting one small hand on her cheek. ‘But it wasn’t me, I swear.’
Dulcie closed her eyes to dismiss her sister. Having sworn on the Bible herself, she knew that May swearing meant nothing either. Right then she wished she’d let her sister take her own punishment, she deserved it.
That night, once all the other girls had fallen asleep, Dulcie wept into her pillow. All the girls had been kind to her, each one had pledged to help her in any way they could. Dulcie felt some relief that they believed she didn’t know who the real culprit was and that she’d taken the blame to save them all further punishment.
While their admiration and gratitude might make her future life here at St Vincent’s better, that was no comfort now as she lay there in such agony. She wished she could just die in the night, for she knew that tomorrow she would be forced to get up and face all the usual jobs.
Yet she had another four years until she was fifteen and old enough to go to work. How was she going to survive that?
As Dulcie was crying in her bed, back in England Susan was just picking up the morning post from the doormat.
‘Anything interesting?’ Ian asked as she came back into the dining-room. Edward was sitting up in his high chair, his father spooning cereal into his mouth.
‘All bills except one, that’s from London,’ Susan replied as she flicked through them. ‘I think it might be from the Sacred Heart. Let’s hope they’ve found out where the girls are.’
She had been astounded, when she visited the convent at the end of August, to find Dulcie and May had been sent to Australia. Mother Superior had invited her in, given her tea, and said she was under the impression that Dulcie had written to inform her. The woman spoke in such glowing terms about what she called the Child Migration Scheme that by the time Susan left she was thinking that perhaps it was for the best.
But once she got home to Yorkshire and dug out Dulcie’s old letters to read again, she began to have qualms about it. Dulcie liked writing letters and she was good at it, always putting in anything interesting or unusual which happened. So why hadn’t she mentioned Australia if she’d been for a medical and an intelligence test?’
The most likely explanation was that she was told not to for some reason. But why?
The more Susan pondered on that, the fishier it became. Dulcie knew she was going to visit her at the end of August, and even if she was too excited about going away to write a sensible letter, she would have written something before she left. Unless of course she had and Mother Superior for some reason of her own had seen fit not to post it.