‘I suppose not,’ she said reluctantly. ‘But I’m not stupid. I wouldn’t let anyone take me off somewhere.’
The policeman sighed. ‘These bad men aren’t stupid either. They have dozens of different ways of persuading girls,’ he said. ‘Sometimes they work with a woman, she might offer you lodgings or a meal. There’s a street called Hay Street, that’s where girls end up, and almost everyone of them started out just like you, a little innocent sucked into something evil.’
‘Well, can’t I go somewhere else then?’ she asked. ‘Somewhere there aren’t bad people.’
The policeman sighed deeply. ‘The way I see it, there’s really only one solution and that’s to go back to the Masters.’
‘Oh no,’ Dulcie exclaimed. She clutched hold of his arm in her fear. ‘Please don’t make me do that, they’ll be twice as nasty because I ran away.’
‘Hear me out first,’ he said, patting her hand. ‘I take you back there, and I talk to them, give them a warning they’ve got to treat you better. Then you write a letter to St Vincent’s, explain how unhappy you are and ask that they give you permission to find another job or that they find one for you. That way no one can punish you by sending you to the reformatory.’
‘But I can’t bear to go back there, I’d sooner die,’ Dulcie said, beginning to cry.
The policeman put his arm around her shoulders. ‘I’m sorry, love, I wish I could think of some alternative, I really do. If I take you up to Norseman as I really should, it will be taken out of my hands, they’re tough bastards up there, used to troublemakers from the gold mines in Kalgoorlie, so I don’t want to do that. But I’ll ask around in Esperance, see if I can find someone who needs a bright girl like you. I’ll come by from time to time too and check you’re all right. Bill Masters will go easier on you after I’ve spoken to him.’
Dulcie could see she had no choice. Although the policeman hadn’t said as much, she knew that if she refused to do as he said, he’d have no alternative but to take her to the police station in Norseman.
Sergeant Sean Collins kept stealing glances at the girl as he drove her back to the Masters’ place. Her expression was one of abject misery, and judging by the way she wasn’t crying or pleading with him, he suspected it was a state she’d been in all too often before. On his last trip to Perth a few months ago a policeman friend had spoken about hearing rumours of cruelty in orphanages run by both the Christian Brothers and the Sisters of Mercy. He said he had tried to get senior police to investigate, but was told in no uncertain terms that the Catholic Church was outside police jurisdiction. As a Catholic himself Collins found it hard to believe that nuns and priests should treat children badly, but now he knew that Dulcie, a completely inexperienced child, had been sent out to work on such a remote farm, without checks being made on the prospective employers, he wasn’t quite so sure they were all they seemed.
Collins knew all about back-breaking land-clearing, he’d come over from Ireland at eighteen in 1920, and it was the only work he could get until he eventually got into the police force. He felt sorry for Dulcie and believed everything she had said, but he couldn’t do anything more for her than he’d already offered. Hundreds of immigrants arrived every day in the big ports, not just from England but from all over Europe, and the migrant camps set up for them were bursting at the seams. People with a trade or profession had little trouble finding work. For willing, strong young men who were prepared to go wherever work was available, there was more than enough too. But for the rest, Australia often proved a great disappointment, a harsh, strange land of vast distances, extremes of temperature, prejudice and hardship. For a young, pretty girl like Dulcie it could also be very dangerous.
‘You stay in the car while I go in and speak to them,’ Collins said as they drove up to the Masters’ homestead. It was almost six now and he could see the black truck parked up outside. ‘Don’t take it into your head to start running again. If they refuse to be reasonable I’ll take you back with me.’
She gave him a look which said she hoped that would be the case, and it made a lump come up in his throat.
Collins went straight round the back – people in the outback didn’t stand on ceremony, even the two dogs barely glanced his way. He rapped on the screen door and it was opened by Jake, whom he’d known for some years.
‘G’day, Jake,’ he said. ‘Can I have a word with Bill?’
‘How yer doin’, Sean?’ Jake said, grinning and showing off his protruding teeth. ‘You’re a long way off your patch! Come on in.’
‘When you hear about a runaway kid you don’t care if it isn’t your patch,’ Collins said as he followed him in.
He was almost overcome by the heat in the kitchen, and by Pat when she turned at the stove to face him.
Her baleful look was enough to turn milk sour, but what really shocked him was her appearance. He’d only met her once before, that was just after Bill married her and was working up at Norseman. She wouldn’t have been described as a pretty woman even then, but she was attractive and stylish with a good figure. She looked like a skeleton now, her face gaunt and her eyes dead.
‘G’day, Pat,’ he said, trying to disarm her with a wide smile. ‘Sorry to call when you’re having your meal.’
Bill was surprisingly courteous. He got Collins a chair, introduced his cousins Bert and Ted, and asked if he wanted a beer. He said their meal could wait a little longer.
Collins had met Bill on innumerable occasions. Before the war when he worked on several different properties all around this area he was known to be something of a larrikin. A bit boastful, too hot-headed sometimes, getting himself into fights when he got drunk. When he returned after the war, that seemed to have gone, he was quieter, didn’t seem to laugh any more the way he used to. He once told Collins that all he wanted was a farm of his own, a wife and a few kids, so when he married Pat, Collins was glad for him. Then he got this place, and everyone predicted he’d fail as so many others had around here. Yet Collins hoped they were wrong. Bill was a hard worker, he was determined too, but perhaps if things were going badly, that was why he was taking it out on Pat.
Collins took the bottle of beer gratefully and launched straight into his reason for calling.
‘It’s about young Dulcie,’ he said. ‘I picked her up waiting for the bus to Kalgoorlie. I want to hear your side of what happened today.’
‘She said the kid got into a blue and kneed her in the belly,’ Bill said, looking round at his wife. ‘Didn’t strike me as the kind that had it in her!’
Collins picked up that Bill didn’t believe his wife. ‘That’s exactly what she told me she did do,’ he said. ‘But she only did it because your wife struck her first.’
‘You hit her?’ Bill turned towards his wife and scowled. ‘Whatcha do that for? She’s a good kid, never gives any lip, works like a dog.’
‘She had it coming to her. She spilt a pan of water outside and then blamed Sly,’ Pat retorted. ‘You say she never gives any lip, you should’ve heard what she said this morning.’
Collins didn’t know who was worse, a man who thought a fifteen-year-old should work like a dog, or a woman who would clout someone for something so trivial. It was also shocking that they clearly hadn’t made any attempt to find the girl after she ran away – a twenty-mile walk in hot sun for someone without a hat or water could have proved fatal. In carefully chosen words Collins pointed this out to them.
‘She’s a good kid,’ he finished up. ‘You know that orphanage kids who run away have to be taken in. I don’t want to do that to her, she don’t deserve it. Now, how about taking her back and treating her right?’
‘Whatcha mean? Treating her right!’ Bill said, his low brow furrowed with a frown. ‘We pay her ten bob a week, she gets her bed and board. What else does she expect, bloody French lessons, tennis in the afternoon?’
‘No, of course she doesn’t,’ Collins retorted. ‘She just wants what is fair, a proper meal, not leftovers, a decent room to sleep in, not a shed, to be treated kindly.’
‘I had it a darn sight worse than her on the property they sent me to,’ Pat burst out. ‘I was only fourteen and I had to milk twenty cows at five in the morning. In the winter it was so cold I couldn’t bend my fingers.’
At that outburst Collins understood Pat a little better. Maybe she was an orphan herself, and while anyone would expect that would make her more compassionate to someone in the same position, he knew all too well this wasn’t so. Brutality begets brutality, children who receive cruelty will often be crueller still themselves.
‘You give her leftovers?’ Bill looked at his wife in astonishment. ‘You said you put her dinner and yours back till we’d finished.’
‘I do. She’s lying,’ Pat said but she gave the game away by blushing and looking away.
Bill looked at his wife, then back at Collins. ‘I’ll see she gets decent meals. She can sleep in the house too. But I can’t make the work easier, farm work is hard, you know that.’
‘There’s such things as a rest at midday,’ Collins said persuasively. ‘Taking her into town with you once in a while. She’s just a kid, a bright one at that. I reckon if you treat her better, she’ll repay you over and over.’ He looked up at Pat who was still glowering at him. ‘Come on, Pat, give it a go, she could be company for you, a mate. I know you’re sore at her for kneeing you, but at least it shows she’s got a bit of spirit. I reckon if you took the trouble to talk to her you’d like her. I haven’t been with her for long, but I do.’
Ted leaned forward and put his elbows on the table. ‘Give it another go, Pat,’ he said. ‘It’s lonely for you out here, and hell, things have been better since she came. Look at the floor! The windows ! All clean and nice. You’ve nearly got the vegetable patch ready for planting now. You always say you haven’t got time to go into town, but you will have if she stays.’
Collins thought it was sad that a relative of Bill’s had to say the kind of things a husband should. But then he supposed if he’d married a woman as sour as Pat, perhaps he wouldn’t have much time for her either. Yet even though it was clear the men all agreed Dulcie should stay, and perhaps Pat might come round too, he knew in reality he wouldn’t be leaving the poor kid with a much better deal. The truth of the matter was that this job stank as much as the men did.
‘Fair enough,’ Pat said with a weary sigh. ‘She can come back. But I’m warning you all, any lip from her and I’ll kick her to hell and back. Now, get her back in here so I can dish up this meal.’
Dulcie was in bed by eight that evening. In the second bedroom, with sheets on the bed too. Yet it was only a minor victory, as was the plateful of mutton stew, she reminded herself. Pat hadn’t apologized for anything, she hadn’t even said anything that sounded as though she intended to be nicer. But at least she didn’t feel quite so alone now. Sergeant Collins had said he would be calling in again. She would write to Mother at St Vincent’s and ask permission to find another job. Bill had even slapped her on the back and said she was a good kid. She felt she had to try to like it here, at least for a bit.
Chapter Eleven
‘Jake’s just brought the post up, there’s a letter for you,’ Pat said as Dulcie came in with a load of wood for the stove. ‘I’ve made you a cup of tea too.’
It was the first week in April, but it had suddenly turned cold, with a heavy grey sky. Dulcie put the box of wood down and warmed her hands on the stove.
‘Cold?’ Pat asked.
‘Ummm,’ Dulcie said. ‘I was hot while I was chopping the wood, but by the time I’d got the chooks in their house I felt like a block of ice. But at least there aren’t so many flies about now.’
She sat down at the kitchen table and Pat silently handed her a mug of tea and the letter. Dulcie knew immediately it was from Reverend Mother, her sloping handwriting was very distinctive.
Dear Dulcie, she read. I am disappointed to hear that the job in Salmon Gums is not to your liking, but jew of us find our first job exactly what we hoped it to be. You have to remember that positions for untrained girls are few and far between. I do not know at present of any other suitable for you, and advise you that you must just accept what you have and learn as much as you can. I am afraid that I cannot give you permission to seek another one yourself either. It is our duty to St Vincent’s girls to deter them from foolhardy changes which could damage their future prospects. I am quite sure that you wrote to me in a moment of despondency and that it’s passed now anyway.
Sincerely yours,
Reverend Mother
Dulcie dolefully put the letter back in its envelope. She hadn’t really expected the woman to show any real concern, but she was disappointed that she couldn’t find herself another job. She picked up her tea and wrapped her hands round the mug to warm them.
‘It wasn’t what you hoped for, was it?’ Pat said suddenly.
Dulcie looked at the older woman in surprise. Firstly, her tone had none of its usual brusqueness and secondly, she rarely asked questions about anything which might lead into a conversation. Had Pat guessed that she’d written to Reverend Mother asking to be moved, and that this was the reply?
‘Come on! I’m not bloody stupid,’ Pat said. ‘It’s from St Vincent’s, isn’t it? They won’t let you leave, will they?’
Dulcie felt very embarrassed. ‘No, they won’t.’ She hung her head expecting Pat to say something nasty.
Pat didn’t come back with a sharp reply and when Dulcie looked up, to her astonishment the woman had a sympathetic expression. ‘I wish she had said you could, for your sake,’ she said. ‘I’d miss your help. But it’s no life here for you.’
Dulcie just gawped stupidly. In the three months she’d been here this was the first time Pat had ever said anything which implied she had even the slightest concern for her.
It had got a little better after she ran away, though only in as much as she got better food and slept inside, but Pat had remained just as surly, right until the hot weather broke in mid-March and it finally rained. That day was memorable because it was as though someone had given Pat a miraculous pill which instantly cheered her. She had called Dulcie out on to the veranda, smiling at the rain. ‘We’ll be able to plant the veg now,’ she said. ‘When the lambs are born there’ll be new grass for the ewes.’