Mother of Ten (2 page)

Word
was sent to my father at the timber workers’ camp about what had happened to
Maxie’s hand. He came home as soon as he heard. Bobby and Maxie were excited
about his return, jubilantly anticipating the punishment he would inflict on
me.

When
our old green truck rattled down Duggans Road and turned into the gate, Bobby,
Maxie and I raced to greet Dad, clambering onto the back of the truck as it
slowed down. Mum stood on the veranda outside the kitchen door, wiping her
hands on her apron. With her head slightly to one side as was her habit and a
quizzical smile hovering on her lips, she waited for the truck to pull up. Out
stepped my father, tall with thick dark hair and deep brown eyes. The sleeves
of his shirt were rolled up to reveal the muscles of a bushman under tanned
skin. We all clamoured around him. He lifted me up over his head and bounced me
on his hands while my brothers eagerly broke the news about what I had done.

“Look
what June did to Maxie, Dad,” said Bobby.

“She
stabbed me,” said Maxie, holding up his bandaged hand.

The
clean white dressing the doctor had wrapped his injured hand in the day before
was already a grubby grey. Maxie and Bobby were severely disappointed because
on this occasion my father did not punish me.  All he did was look from
Maxie’s hand to my mother as he placed me gently back on the ground. Later,
when we were all out in the yard I heard him talking to Mum about me.

“She’s
just learning to stick up for herself, love. You said yourself she rarely says
boo to her brothers—just runs away and hides when they tease her. She’s got
four brothers now so she’ll have to learn to hold her own. Might of gone a bit
overboard this time but the boys musta given her good reason.”

Dad
had just finished chopping a pile of wood while we watched, the sun glinting on
the blade as he swung the axe high over his right shoulder. His right hand slid
smoothly along the wooden handle to rest next to his left hand as the axe came
back down. The blade sliced the mahogany log expertly along the middle to
expose its red wood. Bobby and Maxie stood side by side as they observed their
father. Balancing two-year-old Georgie on her left hip, my mother stood close
enough to the woodheap to stop the older boys should either of them show any
sign of moving too close to where Dad was working with the axe. I stood next to
my mother with one arm clutching Kevin tightly around the middle to restrain
him.

We
had watched as the mahogany pieces fell from the chopping block and lay in the
sawdust next to the pile of ironbark my father had previously cut. Then he
swung the axe one last time and brought it down hard so that it was embedded in
the chopping block. He pulled a much-used handkerchief from his overalls
pocket, wiped the sweat from his brow and glanced across at Mum, grinning. With
a playful look in his eye he returned the handkerchief to its pocket and
gripped her around the waist with both hands. She threw her head back and
laughed.

“Put
me down, Dad.”

“I
won’t drop you, Mum. You’re as light as a feather.”

He
held her close. Their eyes locked for a second before she laughed again and
released herself from his grasp, her face flushed.

“Not
in front of the children, Dad,” she said as she smoothed her apron. “I thought
you wanted a smoke, anyway.”

He
smiled, eyeing her with admiration, and leaned his tall, muscular body up
against the water tank.

“You
know who you remind me of?”

Mum
shook her head.

“Greer
Garson. That’s who. You’re the spitting image.”

“Stop
your nonsense, Dad,” she said.

She
laughed off the compliment but I could tell she was pleased. With her long hair
curling away from her face and rolled up at the back, she did look a little
like a 1940s film actress.

I
watched and observed; a silent five-year-old. I loved to study my father,
taking note of his every movement as though he were a work of art. I guess it’s
a thing girls do at a certain stage of their lives.

He
reached into the pocket of his khaki shirt for his packet of tobacco and took
out a slip of cigarette paper before returning the packet to his pocket.
Holding the strip of white paper in one hand he dipped his free hand into the
tobacco, pinched out a clump, placed it on the paper, and spread it along the
middle before deftly rolling the tobacco into a cylindrical shape. He then
rolled the paper around the tobacco, licking along each edge and pressing the
edges together to form a rough cigarette. Reaching into his pocket for his
matches he placed the cigarette between his lips then struck a match against
the side of the match box. He held the flame to the tip of his hand-made
cigarette until the end burned red. Shaking the match to ensure it was
completely extinguished, he threw it to the ground and returned the box of
matches to his shirt pocket.  This procedure was always done in a state of
silent concentration so Mum waited. When he had finished, she resumed the
conversation about me.

“Yes,
she did go overboard and it could have been a lot worse. She needs to learn
restraint. She can’t let her temper get the better of her like that.”

My
father drew on his cigarette and exhaled a cloud of smoke into the air.

“Don’t
worry, Mum. It’s not likely to happen again. I bet Maxie’ll be treating her with
more caution from now on, and young Bobby too.”

He
grinned at me and winked. “Eh, Brigid?” he said.

Brigid
was his pet name for me. I don’t remember him ever calling me June. I thought
that Brigid was a name all fathers called their daughters. Funny, the ideas we
get in our heads as kids!

 I
hoped he was right about Maxie and Bobby. Having so many brothers was not
exactly a dream come true for me. I had discovered they could be challenging to
say the least although my brothers were no different to most young country boys
of the day. Living out on the Bonang Highway we were isolated by poverty, lack
of public transport and lack of communication technology. Having little social
interaction with other families meant I had no girls on which to model myself. Instead,
I fought fiercely to be one of the boys.

However,
to Bobby and Maxie I was just an annoying little girl they did not deign to
take seriously. They often indulged in the apparently hilarious sport of
teasing me; their primary goal being to provoke a reaction. Often my response
was to run away in tears and hide in the hayshed where I always had a book
hidden somewhere in the musty bales. By the time I finished the book and
emerged from the hayshed my brothers’ deeds were long forgotten. This was not entirely
satisfactory to Bobby and Maxie so they continually sought strategies that
might provoke a more entertaining reaction. Sometimes they would achieve
gratification when I exploded in a furious rage and cried and screamed and
threw things at them. They would laugh uproariously and dodge the stones or
sticks that came their way and, satisfied that their sport had resulted in the
desired outcome, would wander off supremely triumphant.

The
long summer holidays when there was no school created conditions ripe for
sibling tensions to simmer. They had simmered to boiling point the day I
‘killed Maxie’s hand’.

Looking
back, I think my mother must have despaired of ever moulding me into a
‘typical’ girl. I was a bush urchin with hard soled feet from running around
without shoes who loved climbing trees and chasing lizards.

Like
the creatures of the bush, I could make myself almost invisible and was often
an unnoticed silent observer listening to my parents’ conversations.

“I
don’t like you being here on your own when I’m away,” said my father one
evening as he and my mother prepared to share a pot of tea. He removed his worn
navy beret, once part of his Australian army uniform, and ran his fingers
through his thick black hair disturbing curled shreds of sawdust. Tossing the
beret up onto a coat hook, he grinned when it landed on its target. As he sat
down, he lifted the enamel mug Mum had just filled with hot tea.

“I’m
all right,” said my mother. She drank her tea from a floral china tea cup,
which had a chip on the rim. My father’s enamel mug was much more practical but
Mum liked to drink from pretty china cups, even chipped ones.

“It’s
not as if I’m completely on my own. The kids are here.”

“That’s
what I’m thinking about,” said Dad. “There’s always some sort of emergency with
kids. You have no way of getting into town in a hurry if you don’t have a car
here.”

“Stop
worrying, Dad.”

Husbands
and wives often called each other Mum and Dad in front of their children in those
days. I assume it was to ensure the children did not develop the
‘disrespectful’ habit of calling their parents by their given names. It became
a habit so that they often forgot to use other forms of address even when the
kids were not present or perhaps in large families there was always a risk of
children overhearing their conversations.

“It
would help if we had the telephone on,” continued my father.

“And
how are we going to afford that?”

Dad
leant back, moving his shoulder blades against the wooden back of the chair to
scratch his back.

“I
could speak to Mum and Dad. They might be able to lend me some money. 
They’ll help if they can.”

Mum
released a deep sigh. “You already owe them money. It’ll just prey on your mind
if you owe them more.”

“I
know. But.....well, it preys on my mind leaving you and the kids here when I am
out at the camp.”

“Well,
women have managed on their own in the middle of nowhere in this country for
years. If they can do it, I can do it.”

Her
words were brave, but her tone held an underlying sense of helplessness. Dad
reached across the table and touched Mum’s hand.

“You
know I wouldn’t leave you here on your own if I could help it.”

“I
know.”

As
a child, it never occurred to me that my mother, the woman who so efficiently
handled our childhood emergencies, the woman who was a constant nurturing
presence in our lives, carried a painful secret buried deep within her. I first
came upon her hidden anguish when I was three years old.

The
day had turned cool. Mum slipped a cardigan over my shoulders. She helped me
put my arms in the sleeves and was about to finish off the process with an
embrace when I pushed her away, flinging a defiant look at her. How dare she
treat me like a baby? My wrath melted, however, when our eyes met briefly for I
was looking into two deep wells of pain.

Mum
quickly recovered herself and applied a smile to her face. As the years passed
I saw that smile again from time to time. It was not her usual smile which
spread easily across her face, radiating to her eyes to linger there like
sunlight dancing on an emerald ocean. This smile was a facsimile, a brave
attempt at the original that lacked its joie de vivre.

That
I have never forgotten this incident is indicative of the impact it had on me although
as a kid I did not know why it was significant. I think my child’s instinct
told me my mother’s reaction was not only out of proportion to the event but
also out of character. Mum was not an emotional person and had a reserve that,
apart from the usual mother’s anger at naughty children, was usually unruffled
only by laughter.

After
that day, my mother never tried to hug me again. It wasn’t until I discovered
her secret that I realised why my rejection of her during a normal childhood
developmental stage of independence had caused the anguish that was submerged
in the depths of her being to charge to the surface.

Before
I continue, in chapter five, the story of our lives out on the Bonang Highway,
further background information is necessary.

In
Whisper My Secret
I wrote about my mother’s heartbreaking forced
separation from her first three children; all under the age of five. Growing up
in a family of seven kids I always thought of Mum as the mother of seven when
in actual fact she was the mother of ten.

 As
revealed in
Whisper My Secret,
my mother Myrtle Webb became pregnant in
1938, at the age of eighteen, to Henry Bishop (Keith Dopper). He was an older
boy who lived in the house next door to the flat where Myrtle and her widowed
mother lived. Henry and Myrtle married in haste. They had three children
between 1939 and 1941: Bertie (Kenny), Audrey (Valerie) and Noel (Allan).
However, their marriage was not a happy one.

By
this time Australia had become involved in World War Two and Henry Bishop was one
of the many young men deployed overseas with the AIF (Australian Imperial
Forces). Henry’s mother, Agnes (Eva), who did not approve of her
daughter-in-law, made up her mind that Myrtle was an unfaithful wife. This
woman’s imagination sparked unkind and spiteful gossip. Agnes and Henry
eventually used Myrtle’s sullied reputation to have the marriage dissolved.
Henry obtained legal custody of their three children but placed them in care.
Myrtle was not to be reunited with them. It was during this turmoil that Myrtle
and George met.

Despite
the tragedy of losing her three children, the trauma of her marriage breakdown
and the shame of an unjustly tarnished reputation, Myrtle started a new life
and a new family with George in Orbost. Apart from those two, no one else in
our family and no one else in Orbost knew about Myrtle’s previous life.

Although
Myrtle was a significant distance geographically from her first three children,
I am confident her emotional attachment was strong. Having no knowledge of what
it was like in the orphanages, she probably took comfort from believing her
children were being well looked after. This was a time when it was generally
believed that children could be ‘better off’ in a Home. Placing kids in a Home
was often seen as an appropriate course of action when times were difficult for
families or even simply because both parents had to go out to work.

Myrtle
was powerless to change what happened but appears to have done all that she
could to maintain contact with her children and let them know she still cared
about them. The overwhelming powerlessness to change a situation that robbed
her of her right to be a mother to her kids must have deepened her grief at
being separated from them.

Other
mothers who have suffered similar experiences and professionals who work with
them would not find it surprising that Myrtle kept this traumatic event secret.
However, that was something that took me a long time and a lot of research to
appreciate. When I learned that people suffering shock and unbearable loss
develop a survival mechanism called ‘a false self’, I began to understand. This
false self is disassociated from the self that experienced the trauma thus
enabling the person to remain sane and continue their life. I can see how my
mother must have done that, or something very close to it.

The
traumatic impact that separation from their children has on mothers has been
explored through several recent government Inquiries in Australia and other
countries. In the words of Jacki, a mother whose child was taken from her at
birth: 
‘
I
thank God that I was one of the stronger mothers who survived the ordeal to go
on and have a relatively 'normal' life, devoid of any mental problems, drug
taking, drinking, prostitution or suicide attempts. I have, instead, been
married for 31 years and was fortunate enough to give birth again...’ (
Releasing
the Past: Mothers’ stories of their stolen babies
)

Like
Jacki, Myrtle managed to continue living a ‘normal’ life without succumbing to
drugs, alcohol, depression or any of the other tragic consequences often
suffered. I believe that the survival strategy of creating a false self, as
well as the love and support she received from my father, enabled her to do so.

Ironically,
my mother was herself a child whose parents were forced to give her up. This
was another secret that my siblings and I knew nothing about until after her
death when we found, amongst her papers, the private adoption agreement between
her biological parents and her adoptive parents.

Mum
was born Millicent Myrtle Mills on January 18, 1920 in Culcairn in the Riverina
region of NSW. Established in 1880, Culcairn was not a large town but was an
important service centre for smaller towns in the area, such as Walla Walla
where Myrtle’s parents were living at the time of her birth.

Myrtle’s
biological father, Alick Harold Mills, was a twenty-six year old bricklayer
originally from Melbourne, Victoria. He married nineteen-year-old Vera Myrtle
Allison Johnson from Rutherglen, Victoria in 1919. I am not sure why they moved
to the Riverina. Alick Mills may have been attracted by work opportunities as
the region had prospered in the late 19th and early 20th centuries due to the
success of its wool and agricultural industries after pastoral settlement by
Europeans in the 1830s.

However,
the hope of work and prosperity was evidently not fulfilled because less than
six months after Millicent Myrtle’s birth in January 1920, Vera and Alick were
forced to give up their daughter as they were, according to the adoption
agreement, ‘unable to support the [said] infant’. 

I
don’t know how this situation arose but I assume Alick was unable to get enough
work to support his family. Whatever the reason, a legal agreement was entered into
with a couple in Lavington, near Albury, NSW: James Jacob Webb and his wife
Etti (Antonia Maria). Albury, then a country town, is now a major regional city
situated 160 kilometres from the source of the Murray River near Mount
Kosciuszko; an area that was once part of the Wiradjuri nation.

The
love Alick and Vera had for their daughter is reflected in two of the
conditions of the agreement that stated they were to be given access to her ‘at
all reasonable times hereafter’, and if the adopting parents were to die while
Millicent Myrtle was still a child, Alick and Vera were entitled to custody of
her.  

So,
at the age of four and a half months my mother became Myrtle Webb, the daughter
of James and Etti Webb.  James Webb was a devoted husband and father who
owned a fruit and vegetable orchard. He was twenty-four when he married Etti,
five years his junior, in 1905. When they adopted Myrtle, they had been married
for fifteen years with no children of their own.

Myrtle’s
life as the daughter of James and Etti Webb was, as far as I can find out, a
contented one. She attended Lavington Public School and seems to have had a
happy childhood and been brought up in a nurturing environment. She developed
close relationships with her cousins Henrietta and Lily (Rose), two of the five
children of Anne and Reginald Sutherland; Etti’s sister and brother-in-law.

When
I met Lily on my quest to discover what happened to cause Myrtle to be
separated from her first children, she told me how the three girls would often
meet when their parents went into the township of Albury for shopping. Later,
as teenagers and young women they attended the local Saturday night dances
together. On these occasions Myrtle would stay over at the Sutherlands. The
girls would whisper to each other long into the night, recalling the evening’s
shared fun. These dances must have been family affairs because the girls
started attending when Lily was in her early teens. Although Myrtle was older
then her two cousins, there was only a few years difference in their ages so
all three girls would have been considered too young to go out without a
chaperone. The gowns Myrtle wore to these dances were later confiscated by me
as a kid. It must have pained her to see those marvellous taffeta and satin
creations, probably made by her mother, reduced to a child’s ‘dress-ups’ but
she shared them with me willingly.

Perhaps
it was at one of the local dances that my father, George Rowley, first met Lily
after he arrived in Albury with the Australian Army. George was twenty years
old in March 1941 when he left his hometown of Orbost to enlist. Thousands of
army and other services personnel were sent to Albury which straddles the
border of Victoria and NSW. About eighteen kilometres from Albury at Bonegilla
on the Victorian side was one of Australia’s largest military camps.

As
far as I can work out from the hand written records of the Australian Army,
George arrived in Bonegilla around August 1941. He was not a man who liked to
dance so I imagine he stood awkwardly on the sidelines in the dance hall
watching the lovely young women and their partners swirl around the floor. Lily
told me George ‘set his cap’ at her but she was too young to be ‘serious about
men’. Myrtle would not have been attending the dances at this stage, certainly
not regularly, as she was already a young mother of two, with a third child on
the way. However, when George later met Myrtle his heart was lost and he never
wavered in his love for her.