Georgia (2 page)

Sister spun round, her hands reaching up to her veil, eyes scanning, ears straining for the sound of wings or cooing. Jennifer, the youngest child in the dormitory, stood with her thumb in her mouth, her pyjama jacket almost reaching her thin, scabby knees.

Every girl was poised expectantly, breath like smoke in the cold air, eyes alternating between the hesitant nun and Georgia. Bravery vanished as the big woman turned slowly. Each girl blanched under her inspection, fingers hastily fumbling for buttons, eyes downcast. At best she was as sour as a crab apple, angry, she was dangerous.

‘Come here, girl.’ Sister’s voice echoed round the bare room. Her chins were quivering ominously, her face turning puce.

Georgia cast one frantic look at Pamela, hoping she had the sense to move now, then sauntered over to Sister.

Sister caught her shoulder with one hand, her other swung out and hit Georgia with her full strength across the face.

Georgia stumbled back against a bed rail catching her side with a crack. A rustle came from Pamela’s bed on the other side of the room. Georgia gritted her teeth, willing Sister not to turn and catch sight of the girl. But Sister’s sharp ears had picked up the sound too. She wheeled round and at the same time her nose twitched furiously. The hasty dressing was halted. Ten mouths dropped open in horror, Jennifer sucked vigorously on her thumb. Pamela just stood by her bed. Pyjamas steaming, fists covering her eyes, whimpering and shaking with fear.

She was a quiet, nervous child, still in the throes of grief from losing her mother. Straggly brown hair, a slight squint and a tendency towards fatness hadn’t endeared her to anyone other than Georgia.

‘Seven years old and you still wet the bed,’ Sister’s bellow caused yet another trickle to splash on to the floor. ‘You are worse than an animal, even they don’t lie in their own filth!’

One claw shot out, grabbing the terrified child who didn’t have the sense to run, and with the other she boxed her ears so hard that Pamela fell to the floor.

The sheer force of Sister’s attack made Georgia spring forward. ‘Don’t you dare!’ she yelled, lungeing at the black habit. She saw one heavy black shoe swing forward to kick the helpless child and she pummelled her fists against the nun’s wide posterior. ‘She can’t help it. You only make her more frightened. Leave her alone you bully!’

The other children hopped from foot to foot on the icy lino. One of the older girls caught hold of Jennifer and began helping her to dress, anxious to get her out of the way.

Sister turned and caught Georgia by the wrists. Her face was purple now, her thin lips curling back.

‘Get downstairs and fill the coal scuttles,’ she roared, spittle spraying the child’s face. ‘You won’t get away with this insolence.’

Georgia backed away to her pile of clothes. If she said another word it was quite likely Sister would lock her in the cupboard they used as a punishment cell. Bread and water only, crouching in that black hole until bedtime, without even a blanket to wrap round her. She couldn’t help Pamela any further and she wanted her breakfast.

Later, as Georgia knelt in the outhouse shovelling coal, she could hear Pamela crying in the bathroom. It wasn’t even screams of anger, just a wail of distress.

She could picture the scene. Sister Agnes would have her standing in a bath of cold water, scrubbing at her with a brush. Pinching, slapping and all the time lashing her with jibes about her bedwetting.

There’d be no breakfast for her. While the other girls ate their porridge, Pamela would be alone in the laundry, crying as she struggled to wash the sheets. Why did Aggie think punishment would make her stop doing it? Even Georgia knew Pamela couldn’t help it.

‘Aggie’s evil,’ she chanted to herself as she wielded the shovel, banging it down hard on the coal, pretending Sister Agnes was under it. ‘Why doesn’t someone stop her?’

Georgia was always being punished, if she dawdled coming home from school, if she talked during meals or giggled in the chapel, so much so that it hardly concerned her any longer. She learned to accept that Sister Agnes would never like her, along with accepting she was a different colour from the other girls. It even amused her when Sister called her ‘Devil’s spawn’; it reminded her of tadpoles in the tank at school.

She had mentioned it to Sister Mary once and her laughter had banished any sinister thoughts.

‘You are like a little tadpole,’ her blue eyes twinkled. ‘But you’ll change into a beautiful woman, just you wait.’

Until she was five or six there had always been the possibility she might be adopted one day. Most Sundays couples came to St Joseph’s looking for a child to love. Some old, some young, some rich with cars and fur coats, some ordinary like the other girls’ mothers at school. But they all had one thing in common, they wanted pretty blonde girls with blue eyes, the younger and sweeter the better.

There had been times when Georgia tried the ploys the other girls used. Climbing on to laps, tugging at clothes, beguiling smiles, letting her eyes fill with tears, but all she ever heard was the same remark.

‘She’s a nice little thing, but we couldn’t cope with mixed race I’m afraid.’

Georgia sighed deeply as she hauled the two heavy coal buckets across the yard and down the stone steps into the kitchen. She was resigned to staying here until she was fifteen and found a job. At least she had school.

Most of the other girls hated school more than the convent. They were singled out as different from other children, not only by the way they were shepherded across the busy main road by one of the nuns, but by their badly fitting clothes, heavy shoes and lack-lustre hair. But to Georgia every day at school was an adventure, a chance to see the outside world, to learn about things and places, to feel normal.

She liked the pictures on the walls and growing beans in blotting paper, mixing powder paint and making puppets, the percussion band and stories. But most of all she liked Miss Powell and her music.

Miss Powell was the headmistress. She had a kind of glamour in her dark suits and white frilly blouses, her blonde wavy hair swept up at the back. But when she sat at the piano and played, that was the very best.

Hymns, sea shanties, folk songs, beautiful haunting melodies that made pictures in Georgia’s head. Without Miss Powell perhaps Georgia would never have found she could sing!

Singing made her feel good. She could forget the convent and Sister Agnes, her dark skin and the people who didn’t want a mixed-race child. When she sang people looked at her and listened, even her own teacher who grumbled because she didn’t learn her multiplication tables looked proud of her.

‘You’ve been given a very special gift Georgia.’ Miss Powell had smiled down at her the day she picked her to be Archangel Gabriel in the school nativity play. ‘I’ve chosen you because your voice can do justice to the beauty of Christmas. I want everyone to be as proud of you as I am.’

That afternoon in December when she had stood on the stage wrapped in a white sheet with a tinsel halo, hearing applause ringing out round the assembly hall, had been the best moment in her life.

‘In the Bleak Mid-Winter’ seemed so appropriate now as she rinsed the coal dust from her hands before joining the other children for breakfast. Her cheeks were icy, her hands and thighs chapped with the cold, and right now Sister Agnes was plotting her punishment.

When Sister Agnes didn’t retaliate immediately after the usual Saturday breakfast of porridge and boiled eggs, Georgia put punishment out of her mind. Keeping warm outside in the playground was more important than worrying what might happen later.

St Joseph’s gave the impression of being a large country house. The gravelled drive, the sweeping lawn, the walled kitchen garden and the old knarled trees were all from a more elegant period.

In fact the large house was only a stone’s throw from Grove Park station in South London. Minutes away were rows of shops and a street busy with cars and buses.

Three floors, with basement and attics, it was too large to heat adequately. The once gracious drawing and dining rooms were now draughty dormitories. Only Mother Superior’s sitting room held any comfort. Even the small chapel on the first floor was gradually becoming dingy through lack of maintenance.

The garden was beautiful in summer. The children ran on the grass, chasing each other around the trees. There was the smell of the flowers, the big bushes they could hide behind, and long days with little supervision.

But now in February it was torture. The wind whistled through thin gaberdine raincoats, catching sore places on bare legs, nipping at ears and fingers. If they played with the snow brushed up round the playground it soon made them colder. All they could do was huddle closer to the walls. Twenty-four girls from four to twelve waiting for the bell to ring for dinner. Pale, pinched faces, gazing longingly at the steamy laundry where the older girls were privileged enough to be up to their elbows in soapy suds or sweating over hot irons.

‘She’ll call you in soon.’ Susan Mullins a carroty-haired eleven-year-old with freckles moved closer to Georgia. ‘Are you scared?’

The word had even spread to the bigger girls about Georgia’s run-in with Aggie. It was almost worth being punished to see their approval. But however big and tough she felt here surrounded by admiring friends it didn’t stop the need to keep going to the lavatory, or the moments of panic when she saw a nun’s face at the window.

‘No,’ Georgia gave a wobbly grin. ‘I’ll get a knife and cut off her wart, then she’ll bleed to death.’

The door of the playroom opened just before tea-time. Georgia was curled up on one of the old settees reading an ancient comic, younger girls were racing around the big empty room, while older girls huddled in a corner by the hot pipes.

‘Georgia,’ Sister Mary’s voice made her jump. ‘Mother Superior wants you.’

Sister Mary was the youngest of the nuns. Perhaps in her mid-thirties, but it was difficult to put an age to her. She was tall and slender, with a smooth, unlined face. She had the appearance of a china doll, dainty fair eyebrows set above eyes like summer skies, and rosy lips over small white teeth.

Yet despite Sister Mary’s youth, she was tough enough to act as a mediator between them and Sister Agnes. Her rippling laughter, her understanding of children, her gentleness and soft voice gave each child a feeling of security. She had trained as a nurse. During the war she had been close to enemy lines and the older girls speculated why anyone so pretty had chosen to enter a convent instead of marrying and having children of her own.

The other girls from the middle dormitory were looking at Georgia in horror. Pamela’s eyes filled up with tears, she clutched Georgia with her small podgy hands.

‘It’s all my fault,’ she whimpered. ‘You’ll get a beating now, just for sticking up for me.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Georgia said reassuringly, slipping an arm round the smaller child. ‘I’m not afraid of her. Besides, I might be able to tell her how cruel Sister Agnes is to you.’

‘You’re so brave,’ Pamela sighed, her good eye on Georgia, the other one on the window. ‘I wish I could be like you.’

A statue of the Virgin Mary stood at the turn of the stairs, with a small night light in front of it. Georgia genuflected, screwing her eyes up tightly as she made a quick plea for mercy.

The wide hallway was very dark. It was oak panelled, the only natural light came from the window on the staircase, and a lone candle under a picture of the Sacred Heart. It was no use looking at the front door and considering escape. Even if she could reach the big bolt at the top she couldn’t get far in the snow with only plimsoles on her feet and no coat. Instead she screwed her hands into fists, wiped her nose on her jumper sleeve and knocked at Mother Superior’s door.

‘Come in!’ Mother Superior’s faint old voice crackled from within, like ancient parchment.

Georgia turned the brass knob with two hands, opened it just a crack, and tentatively put her head inside.

Mother Superior sat by a blazing log fire, her back to the window, a small, bowed figure in an oversized winged armchair.

‘Come on in, no one’s going to bite you.’

To Georgia’s surprise the tone was almost jovial, but then Sister Agnes was probably lurking behind the door.

Georgia slunk in, eyes down on the carpet, hands still holding the door.

‘Close that door,’ Mother Superior snapped. ‘We don’t want to freeze.’

It was the ‘we’ that made Georgia glance up. A lady was sitting on the settee further back from the fire, looking at her. Mother Superior was wearing the smile she usually only reserved for Christmas and visitors.

Georgia closed the door carefully, arranging the heavy wool curtain over it to keep the draughts out. She had seen this lady before once or twice at school, yet she wasn’t a teacher. Had Georgia been so bad they needed outside help now, to punish her?

Mother Superior reached out one tiny, bony hand, in a gesture that said Georgia was to come closer. She was rumoured to be eighty. Whether this was true or not Georgia had no idea, but she certainly was very wrinkled; not just around her eyes, but all over her face, as if she had shrunk a foot or two and all the spare skin remained.

‘Mrs Anderson is a children’s officer. She’s come here to talk to you.’

Georgia stood uneasily on the hearth rug, her stomach churning with fear. She knew what children’s officers did, they were the ones who came and took girls away when they wouldn’t behave. Yet for all that, Mrs Anderson didn’t look fierce. She had that same look of authority Miss Powell had, and she sat as serenely as if she were in her own home. Her face was round and her hair cut almost like a man’s, but her smile and pink cheeks were distinctly feminine.

‘Hallo Georgia,’ the woman got up, taking Georgia by surprise as her strong, clear voice filled the room. ‘I don’t suppose you remember me, but I saw you at the Christmas play.’

‘You’re going to take me away?’ Georgia stuck out her small pointed chin defiantly. ‘I didn’t do anything but try and help Pamela. Sister Agnes is cruel and mean.’