Yet angry as she was at being caught unawares, Dulcie had given her the chance of escape she’d dreamed of for so long, and she knew she had to take it.
‘If only!’ she sighed, remembering the plan she’d made before Noël was born, and hastily forced a pair of shoes down the side of the case.
She had intended to give a false name when she was admitted to hospital, then after the birth slip out and abandon Noël there. Yet for some reason she still didn’t understand, she couldn’t go through with it. She wished to God she had! There would have been a hue and cry, but she’d have been safely off up on the Gold Coast, free of Arnie and the hell she’d ended up in. Eventually Noël would have been offered for adoption. Rudie and Dulcie would never have found out about him, or how low she’d sunk.
She had had everything anyone could possibly want when she first arrived in Sydney. Rudie’s cottage in Watson’s Bay was heaven come to earth, long blissful days on the little beach, by night he’d taken her out to parties, dinners and night-clubs. He knew everyone who was anyone, he was fun, generous and loving. The only thing missing was that she couldn’t return his love.
If only she could have admitted it to him, she could have kept his friendship if nothing else. But she couldn’t, and she wasn’t brave enough to find a place of her own either, and in continuing to lie to him, she found she had a noose around her neck which was slowly strangling her.
When she realized she was pregnant it was like being plunged back into the Dark Place. She felt the exact same terror she’d felt that night, the same sense of hopelessness. Even if she wasn’t locked up in darkness, evil images flashed through her mind constantly, making her sick and shaky. The baby inside her and Belinda, her doll, became one and the same. She had nightmare visions of Sister Teresa taking a hammer to her baby’s skull and visualized brain and blood spilling out on to the floor. The snake she’d felt wound round her that night came back, constricting her so tightly she couldn’t breathe. She vomited every time she ate, and at night she was afraid to close her eyes for the relentless nightmares. Sometimes it was Reverend Mother who came to her, she’d feel that sluglike tongue in her mouth, her fingers pushing up inside her. Other times it was Nev, pushing her down into a pit of snakes and spiders which slithered and crept all over her.
How could she tell anyone how she felt? Certainly not Rudie. To admit to such appalling visions would surely get her locked up in a lunatic asylum, and she knew he could never begin to understand her horror at bearing his child. It was in utter desperation that she ran to Arnie Guthrey, a man she had met in King’s Cross at a party not long after she arrived in Sydney. He was the only person she knew who could help her to get rid of this loathsome thing growing inside her, and she’d believed once that was done she’d be her old self again.
Arnie, whom Rudie knew only by reputation, had casually mentioned that he owned a strip club in The Cross, drove a flashy pink and white Cadillac and managed a rock and roll band, all of which made him interesting to her. She wasn’t physically attracted to Arnie, he was small and wiry, with sallow skin and slicked-back hair, given to wearing sharp suits and chunky gold jewellery, but they struck up an instant friendship.
At weekends May often went to King’s Cross and while Rudie was talking to his arty friends she’d explore and go into some of the coffee bars where she often ran into Arnie. Maybe it was because he was something of a rogue and wasn’t part of the set Rudie mixed with that she found herself confiding in him. Long before she became pregnant she told him how she’d only picked Rudie up at Kalgoorlie because she thought he was rich. It felt good to have someone with whom she could be herself. Arnie laughed when she admitted the lies she had told Rudie, about how she used to shop-lift and take money from men in hotels. He said that if she ever left Rudie he’d take care of her, and she believed him.
Arnie did try to get her an abortion, but her pregnancy was already too advanced. He made good his promise to her at first, he let her stay in his flat in The Cross, and later on they moved to a larger one in Surry Hills so Rudie wouldn’t find her. She already knew by then that Arnie’s main income came from vice and drugs and she had also heard he was a very dangerous man to cross, but she stupidly believed he cared too much for her ever to hurt her in any way, and that he’d support her until she could get the baby adopted.
But she was quite wrong. Within just a few weeks he blackmailed her into prostitution by saying he’d go to Rudie and tell him the truth about her if she didn’t comply.
She soon discovered there was a whole world of difference between having sex with a man she’d selected herself and being forced into it with men Arnie found. Right up to her eighth month she had to endure a living nightmare of perversion and cruelty, for Arnie found disgusting men who got a kick out of kinky sex with pregnant women. He beat her up when she complained, and she couldn’t run away because he took all the money she made.
‘If only you’d stuck to your plan,’ she murmured to herself as she forced the lid of the case shut. When she held Noël in her arms for the first time she was completely overwhelmed by emotion, and like a fool she’d allowed herself to believe in happy ever after. But Arnie had her back with men within three weeks. He’d get some young girl to mind Noël, then drive her to the hotels where he’d made arrangements with a punter, sometimes as many as four or five in one night.
The landlord in Surry Hills got wind of what was going on, and they were thrown out. The same thing happened in the next place, and finally Arnie dumped her in this rat-hole in Forbes Street, and it was there she met the other girls he managed. Almost all of them had started out as she had, imagining he cared for them. He didn’t need to keep her in a decent place any more, he even let her keep some of the money she earned, for she couldn’t run from him easily with a baby in tow.
But now Noël was safe with Dulcie, and Rudie knew everything, there was nothing to stop her fleeing. By the time Arnie called round here at eight tonight, to give her the orders for the evening, she would be on the train for Brisbane.
May humped the case down on to the floor and looked around the room. She had washed all Noël’s remaining clothes and nappies and hung them up to dry, she’d even cleaned the room thoroughly. One of the most shameful things about today had been Dulcie seeing her living in such squalor, May hoped that when she came back to look for her, at least that one image would be wiped out.
She glanced at herself in the mirror, wishing that Dulcie could have seen her like this too, instead of looking like a dirty slut. Her hair was washed now, hanging in soft silky waves to the shoulders of a smart black suit Rudie had bought her when she got her first job in Sydney. With stockings, high heels and just a touch of makeup she looked like an elegant secretary. Maybe her eyes had lost the sparkle they once had, and her body wasn’t quite so firm, but no one would take her for a prostitute.
Going over to the kitchen counter she leaned on it to write a letter.
Dear Dulcie, I’ve gone. It’s the only thing I can do. You do what you think is best for Noël, because he’d have no chance of a decent life with me. I was telling the truth when I said he was Rudie’s son, and please tell him I’m sorry that I wasn’t what he believed I was. I’ve got our mother’s bad blood, I can’t help it. I expect I’ll come to a sticky end too. I hope you get to be happy, you deserve to be. I said some cruel things today, and I won’t take them back because they were all true. But I said them because I love you and I hoped they would make you stop and think before you ruin your life for other people.
May XX
She looked at the letter for a few seconds, suddenly realizing it was the first time she’d ever managed to write exactly what she really thought to Dulcie. There was a whole lot more she wanted to say, especially as she knew this would be her very last letter to her. But if she wrote what was in her heart, Dulcie would move heaven and earth to find her, believing she was worth saving, and she didn’t want that.
Chewing on the pen for a few moments, she realized she had to formalize her sister’s position about Noël.
P. S.,
she wrote.
I wish to make it known I want you, Dulcie Rawlings, nee Taylor, to be legal guardian to my son Noël Taylor. All decisions about his future must be made by you.
Dated 2 September 1961.
Signed May Taylor
May first propped up the note on the counter-top, but then, realizing Arnie had a key and might very well come in and take it, she added another postscript:
Noël’s clothes are clean and dry back in the flat, I’m enclosing a key for you to collect them. Kiss him for me.
Then she folded it up, slipped it into an envelope with her key and Noël’s birth certificate, and addressed it to Dulcie c/o the Sirius Hotel, The Rocks, Sydney, and put it in her pocket to post on the way to the station.
She paused at the doorway, looking back. She noted the threadbare curtains, the bed settee that never closed up properly, and her eyes welled up at the sight of Noël’s little matinee jackets, bootees and romper suits on the clothes-horse. Dulcie would never know she’d chosen those things with care and love. Or that on so many nights she’d come back here and taken him into bed with her, just to smell his baby smell, touch his smooth skin. He had been her downfall, yet maybe if things had been different he could have been her saviour. She felt ashamed now that his name had sprung from a drunken joke:
There’s no ‘ell on earth like a new baby.
She should have given him a proud name, James, Edward or even Rudolph. But it was too late for that now.
Dulcie was giving Noël his bottle at eight the following morning when she heard Nancy coming up the stairs. Tucking the baby under her arm, she opened the door to see the older woman bringing her a breakfast tray.
‘I thought I’d bring it up,’ Nancy said, looking anxious. ‘How was he during the night?’
‘Slept right through from the last feed.’ Dulcie smiled.
Nancy put the tray down on the table by the window. ‘Let me finish with the bottle and wind him,’ she said, holding out her arms for him. ‘You eat your breakfast and read the letter that’s just come for you.’
‘A letter?’ Dulcie exclaimed, handing over Noël and the bottle. ‘It can’t be from Ross, I only gave Bruce the address the first night I was here.’
As soon as she saw May’s writing she instinctively knew it was trouble. She ripped open the envelope and blanched as she saw the key and Noël’s birth certificate and read the note hurriedly.
‘Oh no!’ she exclaimed. ‘She’s gone.’
The room began to spin. All those small anxieties yesterday and Rudie’s doubts about May’s intentions whirled about her in a mad dance.
‘She’s gone?’ Nancy repeated. ‘Gone where?’
Silently Dulcie handed her the letter, but held the key in her hand staring at it. She couldn’t believe May would do this to her. Looking after Noël for a few days was one thing, but just to dump him on her and run off was something else altogether.
‘I played right into her hands, didn’t I?’ she said glumly as Nancy gasped and let the letter fall to the floor in shock.
Dulcie slumped down at the table and with trembling hands poured herself some tea. ‘What am I going to do, Nancy? I can’t just keep him. Did she really think by writing that stuff on the end of the letter she would make it right? Am I supposed to just take him back to Esperance and expect Ross to be delighted?’
Both women fell silent, overcome by the seriousness of the situation.
‘She must have been desperate,’ Nancy said at length. ‘You said yesterday she talked about taking him to the Sisters, well, maybe she was afraid to do that herself. I suppose we ought to be grateful she didn’t just abandon him somewhere. Also, if she’d run off without a word the police would have had to try and find her before they could allow anyone to make any decisions about him. At least she’s given you the authority to act on his behalf.’
‘But I don’t
know
what to do, and I can’t understand how she can be so callous!’ Dulcie exclaimed, beginning to cry.
‘She did leave him with the one person who could be trusted to care for him,’ Nancy said gently. ‘Don’t judge her too harshly, Dulcie. We don’t know what she’s been through since she left Rudie. My mother always used to say you have to walk a mile in someone’s else’s boots before you can judge them.’
But Dulcie continued to cry. She was stunned, frightened and overawed by the enormity of the responsibility her sister had thrust on her. Yet as Nancy’s words began to sink in, and as she looked at her sitting there calmly feeding Noël, she realized the woman was quite right. They didn’t know what May had been through in the past months – much of what she’d said yesterday could have been bravado. No one would live in such squalor out of choice, and when she thought back to that room she realized there had been no comforts there, no sign of any wealth.
‘What did you think of May when you first met her?’ she asked through her tears.
‘I liked her,’ Nancy said evenly. ‘Rudie asked all of us over to his house one Sunday, not long after they got back from WA. We spent the afternoon on the beach swimming with the kids, then went back for an early supper at Rudie’s place. I thought she was a bit secretive, she didn’t say anything about her past, but she was a good hostess, looking after us all, making us laugh a great deal. Of course she was very beautiful too, and I think most of us are drawn to attractive people.’
‘You didn’t suspect her of anything odd then?’
Nancy shook her head. ‘She seemed to be everything Rudie had said – ladylike, amusing, sweet-natured. If we did have a worry it was only because of the age difference between them. Later on, nearer to the time she disappeared, I had a few niggling anxieties: she appeared distant, kind of preoccupied and snappy with Rudie. But then everyone has their moments like that.’