In the ten months Dulcie had worked for them she had blossomed. With Betty’s encouragement in all things from cooking to gardening, her confidence had grown. Reading newspapers and books and listening to the wireless had given her a far better idea of what was going on in the world. Yet after sleepy little Esperance with its gravel roads, Perth was huge, bewildering and very exciting.
The streets were so busy with cars and buses, so many people jostling in the wonderful department stores, and such a huge array of clothes to spend her money on. Yet it was the phenomenon dubbed ‘teenagers’ she’d read about in the press that impressed her most. Back in Esperance, girls and boys of that age were called ‘young people’ or ‘kids’ and there was no sign that anyone considered them to be an important group. Here in Perth there were milk bars with juke-boxes, something she’d only ever seen in American films at the picture house in Esperance, and these places appeared to have been designed purely for these ‘teenagers’.
She was too bashful to go into one, but she loitered by the windows as if waiting for someone and just looked. The girls had mid-calf-length dresses, wide belts cinching in their waistline, and wedge-heeled shoes. Most had far longer hair than hers, waving on to their shoulders, they all seemed to be smoking, and the few that wore hats favoured the kind that looked like a wide band of feathers. Later she heard ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ by Carl Perkins wafting out of the doorway of a record shop, and looking inside she saw dozens of teenagers just hanging around tapping their feet as they listened to the music.
She had of course heard rock and roll music on the wireless, and read about Elvis Presley in magazines because many churchmen were saying he was a bad influence on the young. But none of that had appeared relevant to her until now. All at once it took on a new light – this was her generation, one that didn’t dress or behave like their parents and had an entirely new taste in music. The more she looked around her, the more evidence she got that her age group were valued consumers. She saw teen bras, teen handbags, dress shops exclusively for the young where they sold Capri pants, pin-up girl sweaters and the wide belts she’d seen so many girls wearing.
She bought herself a pink spotted dress with a wide white piqué collar and a fashionable longer-length gored skirt, and a belt to go with it. She would have been happy to spend her entire holiday just looking in shops and watching people, but Bruce and Betty wanted to show her the sights of Perth.
They took her to vast King’s Park, reminiscing about their courtship, for a boat ride down the wide Swan River, and to Cottesloe beach where Betty had spent so much time as a young girl. But today they were on their way to St Vincent’s to see May.
Since early this morning Dulcie had been suffering from butterflies in her stomach. However much she wanted to see May, she was nervous of what this impromptu visit might throw up. May might not be pleased to see her, Reverend Mother could be nasty, and she was afraid that all the ghosts of the past would come back to haunt her again.
As they turned into the road approaching the convent, Dulcie leaned forward from her position in the back seat. ‘That’s it,’ she exclaimed, pointing to the building at the far end of the road.
‘But it’s lovely,’ Betty said in some surprise.
As Dulcie had so seldom come out of St Vincent’s during her time there, the outside view of it now took her back to the first time she saw it on her arrival. It
was
lovely, with the golden-red of the brickwork, the fancy design around each of the gothic arches on the ground floor, and the matching windows on the chapel attached to it. Recent rain had revived the lawn after the hot summer, the pines and the Moreton Bay fig tree looked even taller and more majestic than she remembered. To anyone approaching it for the first time it looked so serene. Only the arched sign above the gate which said St Vincent’s Orphanage gave any hint that children lived here too.
‘That’s only the convent and the chapel,’ Dulcie said quickly. ‘The orphanage buildings are all hidden, they aren’t so lovely.’
Her heart was racing faster as Bruce got out of the car to open the gate. He looked almost comic wearing a suit and tie, for the jacket was too tight across his shoulders, the sleeves and trouser legs just a little too short. There was no mistaking what he was, city men didn’t have such craggy, weather-beaten faces, or such broad shoulders. Yet if the Sisters jumped to the conclusion that he was just another ignorant bushman who held nuns in awe, they’d be in for a shock. Bruce was nobody’s fool.
Dulcie took a small mirror out of her handbag to check her appearance as Bruce drove in up the drive. She’d had her hair cut again just before leaving Esperance, and with her new dress and white court shoes with a two-inch heel she felt she looked sophisticated enough to impress May. She was tempted to put on the lipstick she’d bought just yesterday, but Reverend Mother might just see it as a sign she had become fast.
‘We’ll stay with you for as long as you want us to,’ Betty said as they all got out of the car. She looked very attractive too in a pale green dress and a matching hat, but then Betty always dressed well, even at home. ‘If you want us to disappear, ask me what time we are expected back for tea. We’ll make some excuse then and wait out here for you.’
Bruce moved closer to Dulcie and picked a loose hair off her collar. ‘Don’t let Reverend Mother make you nervous,’ he said, his blue eyes gentle with understanding about what this visit meant to her. ‘We won’t stand any nonsense from her, so neither must you.’
Dulcie rang the convent bell, glancing over towards the orphanage building as she waited. They had timed their arrival purposely, so they couldn’t be fobbed off with excuses like May was in school and couldn’t be brought out to see them. It was almost four now, and the bell for the end of lessons would ring any minute.
The door was opened by Sister Agatha and her eyes widened in surprise. ‘Dulcie!’ she exclaimed. ‘Oh my goodness, how grown-up you look!’
Dulcie had no bitter memories of this Sister – while she was never exactly kind, she wasn’t cruel either, just a fat old nun who wheezed when she tried to hurry. Yet all the same she immediately felt very small and cowed, just the way she’d always been in any Sister’s presence.
‘May I see May?’ she asked. ‘This is Mr and Mrs French who I work for. We came to Perth unexpectedly, so we couldn’t arrange a visit in advance.’
As she nervously introduced Bruce and Betty to the Sister, she saw the old nun looked flustered. Dulcie guessed what was running through the woman’s mind. Whenever visitors were expected the shoes and hair ribbons were dished out, soft toys and dolls placed on the children’s beds, even special food put out in the kitchen. Sister Agatha probably realized there was no time now for such preparations.
The school bell rang loudly, instantly breaking the tranquillity of the place. There was the sound of a hundred chairs scraping backwards, and footsteps on the wooden boards outside the classrooms.
‘Dulcie knows the way, we’ll just go and find May ourselves,’ Bruce said. ‘No need to trouble yourself.’
‘I’m afraid I can’t let you do that.’ Sister Agatha began to wring her hands. ‘Reverend Mother is most particular that she sees all visitors first.’
‘That’s fine,’ Bruce grinned. ‘Just take us to her then. My wife and I have been longing to meet May, Dulcie’s told us so much about her, and this place.’
A look of consternation flitted across the old nun’s face. Dulcie thought it was lucky she had opened the door rather than one of the others. Sister Agatha was slow-witted, any of the others were capable of coming up with a first-class excuse for why it wasn’t convenient now.
Bruce was across the threshold immediately without waiting to be asked in, Dulcie and Betty stepped after him and they followed the nun down the corridor. Once Sister Agatha had knocked on Reverend Mother’s study door and got a reply, she couldn’t make out the woman wasn’t there because they’d hear everything.
‘Wait here,’ Agatha said in a trembling voice. ‘I’ll just see if she’s available.’
The moment Agatha was at the study door, Bruce began to walk down the corridor too, beckoning for Betty and Dulcie to follow.
Agatha looked panic-stricken when she saw them coming, but by then Reverend Mother had called out for her to come in.
‘It’s Dulcie Taylor and Mr and Mrs French, they want to see May,’ she said.
Before Reverend Mother got a chance to make any reply, Bruce was at the door and walking in.
‘G’day, Reverend Mother,’ he said. ‘My wife and I are just up from Esperance for a visit and we’ve brought young Dulcie to see her sister. We thought it would be a good time now, school’s over and it’s not tea-time yet.’
If Dulcie hadn’t been so scared she might have burst into laughter. Bruce was nothing like the usual male visitors here. They were always fawning little men, dragged reluctantly along by their do-gooding wives. The force of Bruce’s expansive personality filled the small room, just as his shoulders filled the doorway, and although Reverend Mother was tall, she had to look up to him.
‘It is usual, Mr French, to make an appointment first,’ she said, her voice like ice.
‘I’m not a usual sort of bloke,’ Bruce grinned. ‘Farmers don’t go in for appointments, and anyway one little girl seeing her sister can’t interfere with anything, can it?’
The head nun looked shaken, but she composed herself quickly.
‘Dulcie!’ she exclaimed, as if seeing the prodigal daughter in front of her. ‘How lovely to see you again. What a young lady of fashion you’ve become!’
‘She’s as bright as a button too,’ Bruce butted in. ‘Best thing we ever did was take her on. Don’t know what we’d do without her now.’
‘I’m very glad to hear that,’ Reverend Mother said. ‘I hope your wife agrees with that glowing testimony?’
Dulcie had a sharp and sudden memory of this same woman beating her until she thought she was going to die. She’d looked at her then with child’s eyes, seeing a tall, handsome woman, and often pondered on why if she was cruel she wasn’t ugly too, for those things went together in her mind.
Now, as an adult, Dulcie found she was neither as tall nor as handsome as she remembered. She was just another nun on the wrong side of forty with piercing dark eyes and a sallow skin. Yet even more pleasing was to see that this time it was she who looked frightened. Not of Dulcie maybe, she still looked at her in the same disdainful way she always had, but of Bruce.
‘I more than agree with my husband’s views,’ Betty said. ‘I can’t begin to tell you what Dulcie means to us both. You must have been very sorry when she left here?’
‘She was always one of my smarter ones,’ Reverend Mother replied. ‘Yes, I was sorry when she left, but then it was time she took her place in the world.’
‘We’ll just go and find May now,’ Bruce said in a firm tone. ‘Don’t trouble yourself to come out, Reverend Mother, I’m sure Dulcie knows the way.’
‘I cannot allow that,’ Mother said, her voice rising slightly as if panicked. ‘I’ll have May brought in here, you can talk to her with me.’
This was exactly what Dulcie had been afraid of. To be forced to talk to May in front of the head nun would make the visit almost pointless. She shot a look of appeal to Bruce.
He half smiled and lifted one bushy eyebrow. ‘To me that smacks a little of a prison visit! Are you afraid she might tell us something you don’t wish let out?’
‘No, of course not, but we have rules,’ she said hastily, clearly unable to come up with anything stronger.
‘Rules are made to be broken,’ Bruce smiled. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll come and speak to you when we’re through. Thank you so much!’
He had taken his wife’s and Dulcie’s arms, nudged them out the door and followed before the woman could come back with anything further.
They found May out in the playing-field beyond the dormitories. She could have been about to join the other girls who were engaged in starting a game of rounders, but Dulcie knew by the way she was standing with her back against one of the dormitory walls that this was unlikely.
As Dulcie called her name, May first stared in disbelief, then once she realized her eyes weren’t deceiving her, she hared across the grass to them and threw herself into Dulcie’s arms.
‘Is it really you?’ she said incredulously. ‘I never thought I was ever going to see you again.’
‘I didn’t dare put that we were coming visiting in my last letter in case Mother found some excuse to stop me coming,’ Dulcie said, and quickly introduced Bruce and Betty.
May shook both Bruce and Betty’s hands but turned again to Dulcie looking puzzled. ‘Last letter?’ she said. ‘You haven’t written once since you left.’
‘Don’t be silly, May,’ Dulcie said a little sharply, imagining her sister wanted to make herself look hard done by in front of Bruce and Betty. ‘I’ve written dozens of letters to you. Before I changed jobs you always wrote back too.’
May looked bewildered now. ‘I kept on writing to you for ages, but you didn’t reply. What do you mean, changed jobs? When was that?’
Betty said how often she’d seen Dulcie writing letters to May, Bruce joined in and said he’d taken them to the post office. While Dulcie was quite prepared to believe May hadn’t got any of these, she couldn’t accept that her sister hadn’t got the ones she sent from Salmon Gums. She mentioned specific things she’d written to May, including her descriptions of the lambing and the harvest, but May only looked blank and remained adamant she knew nothing of this.
Fortunately Dulcie had the last two letters she’d received from May in her new handbag. She had brought them with her to prove to Reverend Mother how long it was since she’d heard from her sister. She pulled them out and gave them to May. ‘Look, you sent me these, but you didn’t say in either of them that you hadn’t heard from me,’ she pointed out.
May read one of them and looked puzzled. ‘I didn’t write this,’ she said. ‘It looks a bit like my writing, but it isn’t.’
Bruce, who had been listening carefully to all this, moved closer. ‘Do you swear you haven’t had one letter from Dulcie, not in over two years?’ he asked. ‘This is really important, May, we can’t make a complaint until we’re absolutely certain.’