He would listen to their tales about how they’d been treated like princes coming over here on the ship, and he supposed it would be hard to bear hunger and ill treatment after that. Maybe that’s why so many of them cried in bed at night, and wet the bed.
Ross was used to working day in, day out, first light until dusk. He was used to hot summers and he supposed he’d eventually grow used to the cold winters, though it had been something of a shock when he first got here because it had never been so cold at Clontarf. He didn’t expect wounds and injuries to be treated, he’d learnt a long time ago to live with hunger and the absence of any kind of affection from adults. He stiffened when the dairy door opened, expecting that it was Brother Keaney checking up on him, but it was Brother Dawe, known to all the boys as ‘Honk’ because of his large nose.
‘Put some beef into it,’ Dawe said after a moment or two of watching him turn the handle of the churn. ‘Or you’ll be here all night.’
‘I think it’s nearly there,’ Ross said, not daring to turn his head to look at Brother Dawe.
There was no reply to this, and it unnerved Ross to be watched in silence. A few minutes passed with Ross trying desperately to turn the handle faster, and then in desperation he glanced round, and to his horror saw the man was standing there with his soutane unbuttoned, fondling his penis, looking right at Ross.
Ross couldn’t run out – Dawe was standing against the closed door – he didn’t dare say anything either. So he just turned back to his churn and turned the handle even faster.
‘Come here and make some cream for me,’ Dawe said in a low voice.
Ross said nothing, but his heart was pounding in terror. He heard the man step closer, and sweat began to run down Ross’s face. Dawe was so close to his back now that Ross could feel his breath warm on the back of his neck, and he tensed, knowing something terrible was going to happen.
Dawe put his hand on to Ross’s thigh and slowly slid it up beneath the leg of his shorts. The boys at Bindoon were not issued with underpants, so it was only a second before he had his hand on Ross’s penis.
‘Please don’t, Brother Dawe,’ Ross whimpered, his bowels loosening with terror.
‘It’s your duty to obey me, you little maggot,’ Dawe said, and squeezed his penis tightly, making Ross squeal with pain. ‘One more word out of you and I’ll see you are up for a thrashing on Sunday morning.’
On Sunday mornings Brother Keaney always called boys out for a public thrashing after church – sometimes his victims didn’t even know what they’d done wrong. Ross had already received two such beatings, which had left him hardly able to walk, and he wasn’t anxious to get a third.
But all at once, before Ross could make any further protest, Dawe had the buttons on Ross’s shorts undone, and they fell down to his knees. Before he could even cry out, Dawe was bending him over a stool and parting his buttocks.
Ross knew it was a sin to play with yourself, Dawe himself was always ranting about this and accusing boys of doing it. He had heard older boys talking of fucking girls too, and of queer men doing it to other men, but until that moment when he felt Dawe push his erect penis against his anus, he hadn’t really believed any of it.
He screamed out with pain, for it felt as though he was being torn apart, but Dawe put one hand across his mouth, and with the other pressed down on his neck.
The effect was like being strangled, and the more he tried to move, the harder Dawe’s hold became on him. But aside from the agony of being penetrated, the fear of dying from strangulation, there was also the man’s verbal abuse.
‘This is all you’re good for, you dirty little shit,’ he said. ‘A good shagging will sort you out. You came from the gutter and you’ll end up there too.’
Ross was close to passing out with the pain, and the animal grunting noise Dawe was making grew louder and louder as he forced himself harder and harder into Ross. Then suddenly the grunting stopped, he was released and pushed to the floor like a pile of rubbish.
Dawe wiped himself on a cloth which he then flung down on top of Ross. ‘Get up and get that butter made, or you will be up for the Sunday thrashing,’ he said as he strode out the door.
Dulcie could hardly believe what she’d been hearing, and the sight of her tough husband pouring it out with tears streaming down his face like a six-year-old was too terrible for words. There had been moments when she was confused by what he said, especially at the beginning when he was speaking of his sore hands, the stone bruise on his foot and the English boys. But by the end of the story she realized why all that was important, he thought he was worth nothing in the first place, he accepted everything that was done to him as his due. Yet that brutal, criminal act had pushed him into utter darkness where there could be no hope of salvation.
She tried to comfort him, but he kept on talking and crying and she heard how in the next few years he lived in constant fear of Dawe. He would be ordered to clean his room, and it always resulted in either forced anal or oral sex. Dulcie didn’t even know what the latter meant, but Ross told her graphically that Dawe forced him to take him in his mouth. He said that he bled from his back passage all the time, that once a part of his bowel had started to come out and Dawe pushed it back in with a stick.
Sadder still was that Ross told her that however disgusting he found it, he tried to make himself believe the man loved him because he sometimes gave him cake, fruit, sweets or cigarettes afterwards.
Dulcie had never been so afraid. Stephan had said if she pushed the right buttons the truth would come out, but she wished now she hadn’t. They were on a lonely road some eighty miles from Perth, and she didn’t know what she was going to do. Ross was distraught, how could she take him back to Joan’s like that?
She had water in the car, warm now from being in the sun all day, but that was all she could offer him.
‘I’m so sorry, Ross,’ she said. ‘I wanted to know what happened to you there, but I never dreamed it was anything like that.’
He gulped the water down, but a few moments later he opened the car door, leaned out and was violently sick. She knew then there was nothing for it but to drive him home to Esperance, for there was no hope of continuing their holiday.
After all that talking and crying he went completely silent. He got out of the car, urinated and climbed into the back and lay down. Dulcie took that as a signal she had to make all the decisions, and she drove off back to Perth.
It was five in the afternoon when she got back to Subiaco, leaving him in the car. She hastily explained that Ross was ill and she was taking him home, packed their cases and left hurriedly.
At eleven o’clock the following night, Dulcie drove into the farmyard. Ross was still curled up in the back of the car where he had remained for the whole journey, only getting out to relieve himself a couple of times. He had refused to eat anything, drank nothing but odd sips of water, and he hadn’t spoken at all.
John came running out of the bunkhouse at the sound of the car and the dogs barking. ‘You’re home early,’ he said. ‘Something wrong?’
It was such a relief to know she wasn’t alone with this problem any longer and she hoped that familiar surroundings might bring Ross quickly back to normal.
‘Ross is ill,’ she said, nodding towards the back seat, willing John not to ask too many questions. ‘Can you help him into the house?’
‘What’s wrong with him?’ John asked, peering curiously into the back where Ross still lay curled up and seemingly unaware he was home.
‘I don’t know exactly,’ she said, putting her finger to her lips to silence any further questions. ‘I’m dog-tired. I drove all through the night and today. Let’s just get him to bed for now.’
John was marvellous. He leaned into the car, hooked Ross over his shoulder and pulled him out. Then he carried him over to the house and into the bedroom.
‘Shall I take his clothes off?’ he asked, looking at Ross lying on the bed staring blankly at the ceiling and back to Dulcie in bewilderment. ‘He smells a bit high!’
‘I expect I do too,’ she said wearily. ‘You go, I’ll see to him.’
It was another hour before Dulcie finally got into bed beside Ross. She’d stripped off his clothes, washed him and put clean pyjamas on him, but he still had said nothing. He didn’t even seem to know her, or where he was.
The last thing she thought before sleep overtook her was that if he didn’t come out of this, she’d be responsible.
‘He’s still in bed!’ Bruce exclaimed the following evening when Dulcie went over to his house briefly. She had slept right through until nine that morning, then once she saw Bruce going into his house alone, she’d slipped out to tell him what had happened. She didn’t give him any detail, only that Ross had been severely upset by going back to Bindoon, and he appeared to be in shock. She collected some eggs, milk and bread, then went straight back for she was afraid to leave Ross alone. But although he’d drunk a cup of tea later, and asked how they got home, he had lapsed back into silence since.
‘I don’t know what to do, Bruce,’ she said, beginning to cry. ‘He isn’t speaking, he won’t eat. He’s just lying there.’
‘Should I call the doctor?’ Bruce asked. ‘This is a new one on me, I’ve never known Ross to have anything wrong with him.’
‘Maybe he’s making up for all the time he was sick as a boy and he still had to work,’ she said. ‘We can’t call the doctor out now, it’s not as if he’s got a temperature or he’s vomiting or anything.’
She couldn’t tell Bruce what had really caused it, it was too horrible and sickening. Throughout the long drive home her mind had churned it over and over, just like that butter Ross had been making, and she fully understood now why he couldn’t make love, and she blamed herself for forcing it out of him.
‘Couldn’t you call that shrink in Sydney that had the bright idea of taking him back there?’ Bruce said.
‘It’s too late to call now,’ she said. ‘Besides, the number’s back in our house.’
‘It’s not too late when it’s an emergency,’ Bruce said, looking sharply at her as if suspecting she was holding something back from him. ‘I’ll come over with you while you get it, I’ll stay with Ross while you make the call. You never know, he might respond to me. I was the one who found him in the barn after all.’
Dulcie felt she had no choice but to make the call then, and Stephan didn’t sound the least annoyed to be called so late. He said he’d just returned home from visiting friends. Haltingly Dulcie explained about the trip to Bindoon, and the state Ross was in now.
‘What happened, Dulcie?’ he asked. ‘Something did happen, didn’t it? Or he told you something. Please tell me, I can’t help unless you do.’
Dulcie began to cry. ‘He was raped by one of the Brothers,’ she blurted out before she could lose her nerve. ‘It went on for several years.’
There was absolute silence for a moment, then Stephan sighed deeply. ‘Oh Dulcie, I feared it might be something like that. I wish I had been wrong.’
She felt just a slight sense of relief at telling him. ‘What do I do now? Should I call a doctor?’
‘Wait a couple of days, sleep is a great healer,’ he said soothingly. ‘If he’s lying awake, try and get him up, encourage him to eat. It’s quite likely he doesn’t remember he’s told you about it, to him it will almost certainly seem like he’s had a mere mental flashback, and I expect he’s had those before. Once he begins to talk again, tell him that he told you, try and get him to speak of it again. Admitting such terrible things happened is half the battle.’
‘What’s the other half?’ she asked.
‘Dealing with it. You will remember I told you he has to learn to put the blame for it on to that Brother, and let go of his guilt and shame. Sadly that’s often the hardest part. You might find he has bursts of extreme anger, he may become clinically depressed. His local doctor will be able to help with that,’ though I can’t recommend you tell him the whole story, not unless you are very sure of him, for if Ross comes up against disbelief, it could set him back badly.’
Dulcie had no intention of telling the local doctor, but she felt indignant that Stephan should suggest Ross wouldn’t be believed, and said so. ‘Surely anyone who had heard what I heard would want to string that Brother up?’
‘I’m afraid when there is a choice between believing an orphan boy and a man of the cloth, the cleric wins hands down,’ Stephan said quietly. ‘The Christian Brothers have a unique place in the history of the country and in the affections of its people. I personally would like to see this Brother prosecuted and sent to prison. Ideally I’d like that orphanage and all others thoroughly investigated, so that no other child has to suffer cruelty or abuse. But it would have to be a very brave man to start that particular ball rolling, he’d need a great deal of back-up from other old boys too. I don’t somehow see Ross, from what you’ve told me about him, as that man.’
‘No, nor do I,’ she said regretfully. ‘But it’s a terrible thought that even as we speak it might be happening to other helpless children.’
‘Look after Ross for now,’ he said gently ‘I will pass a discreet word around to people I know who do have influence in such matters. Ring me again in a few days to tell me how things are progressing.’
The next few weeks were agonizing for Dulcie. She was run ragged with all her usual duties, and needing to keep going over to check on Ross. She did eventually manage to bully him into getting up and dressed to sit in a chair, but he just stared out of the window vacantly. The doctor wasn’t a great deal of help, he gave him some pills and a tonic, but that was all. Bruce, John and Bob were all sympathetic towards him up to a point, but mental illness was way out of their comprehension. Dulcie sensed that their sympathy was slowly turning to resentment as they struggled to do Ross’s work too, and if he didn’t snap out of it, the way they expected he should, then a mental institution would be the next step.
She felt as if the weight of it all was solely upon her shoulders. She was responsible for taking him to Bindoon. She had the hideous images in her mind she couldn’t share with anyone else. She took on the guilt that the other men were doing his work, and lived with the fear that if he was taken to an institution, he’d never get out. Yet over and above everything else a small voice at the back of her head kept whispering that this was her punishment for allowing herself to dream of a life with Rudie and Noël.