The girls were escorted into a large room. There were several washing tubs along one wall. Large drains ran down the centre of the floor. Laundry, hanging on racks suspended from the low ceiling, dripped silently. Little rivulets made their way to the drains and disappeared. Even though there was a large wood boiler crackling away in one corner, the dampness of the room nipped at their bare legs and sent a chill through the children.
Sister said, “Okay girls, they are all yours. Clean them up.”
Marjorie jumped when a voice shouted out at them to take their clothes off. The children stood still as three big girls walked towards them. For a brief second the sisters hoped for some friendship, as the girls appeared to be about Phyllis’s age, but they soon found out that they were meaner than any schoolyard bullies they had ever encountered.
They slapped the frightened hostages and called them “filthy heathens,” as they removed their clothing, tossing everything towards the boiler. Marjorie reached out for her dress. It was a present from her last birthday. But one of the girls slapped her again. She stood there stunned and shivering in the cold February morning. Audrey whimpered and reached out for her doll. Marjorie started to tell them how important that doll was to Audrey, but she stopped when she saw Joyce. She shook her head and mouthed “No.”
Trembling with the cold and her anger, Marjorie looked to see if there was a way to scoot out and get Audrey’s doll. They couldn’t do this to them. What right had they to take their things? She stepped forward, but one of the girls abruptly stopped her. Slam! A hard metal thing landed on her head, knocking her off balance. Her shorn hair soon fell to the floor. It was the same for Joyce and Audrey. Marjorie wiggled, trying to get away, but the cutter snarled that she better keep still because if she got poked with the scissors, it would be her own darn fault. The girl cutting Joyce’s hair yanked at a clump and told her to watch it or she would cut her ear off. Audrey stood still, too terrified to move.
All three “cleaners” laughed at the sisters as tears streamed down their cheeks. When it was over, their tormenters stood back to admire their handiwork. They praised their good work, and told the sisters that they now looked quite bonny.
Marjorie stared at her sisters’ spiky short hair. She reached up to feel her own. Before she could, one of the bullies began to scrub her scalp with horrible smelling black soap. Some of it got into her eyes and it stung. She cried and wiggled trying to get free, but all she got for her effort was another slap and a mouthful of the vile stuff. Then, without warning, cold water rushed down her back. She sucked in her breath and tried to stop from crying out. They scrubbed her skin until it screamed. Audrey sobbed loudly. Marjorie glanced at Joyce. Her miserable face frightened her. Why were they doing this to them? What had they done wrong? Joyce cried out and asked what they had done with their brother. But they told her it was none of her concern. But he was their concern, Marjorie sobbed to herself, he was their brother.
After a thorough scrubbing, the sisters stood shivering while combs ploughed through their hair. A chorus of “ow” echoed off the clammy walls. A slap on the head warned them to shut up. “We have to get all the nits and dickies out — afterall cleanliness is next to godliness. It is bad enough that we have to put up with you lot for a couple of days, but we don’t want to catch the vermin you carried as well.” Marjorie’s comber sneered at her when she tried to get away again and gave an extra hard yank at what was left of her hair.
Quietly, the three sisters put on the clothes they were given. The rough material scratched at their raw skin. They wanted their own clothes back, but the girls laughed and asked if they were daft. “We’ve burnt them,” they mocked, as they pointed to the boiler and said that they were not even good for rags. When Audrey cried for her doll, she was told that she was really a thick one. “Can you not hear properly? We burned that too.” Audrey’s wail brought shrieks of laughter.
The Arnison sisters spent the rest of the afternoon in the kitchen scrubbing dishes and peeling vegetables. Audrey started to say that she was tired and hungry, but cook stopped her, telling her that if she was hungry, then she better get used to working for her food. “Get your chores done first. You will be fed when it is time,” she told her. Cook softened slightly when Audrey’s tears slipped down her cheeks. But she quickly demanded the tears to be wiped away and assured Audrey that she was telling her this for her own good.
Joyce watched her little sister. Her odd haircut and her funny fitting clothes made her almost unrecognizable. She had always come to Audrey’s rescue; it was second nature to her. She told the cook that Audrey was just little, that she had just turned seven. She offered to finish peeling Audrey’s potatoes for her.
Cook would have none of it. She turned to Joyce, and told her that now she would have extra chores and maybe that will teach her not to coddle her little sister. Audrey needed to learn to fend for herself. She looked squarely at Audrey, then at Joyce, and warned that she will not be helping her little sister if she always did her work for her. “She needs to toughen up or she won’t survive.”
The sisters looked at each other. What was the cook saying? What did she mean? The fear in their eyes came spilling over. It had been growing steadily throughout the day. They had no one to turn to and no one seemed to care how they were feeling. Quietly they went back to their chores, sucking back their tears.
Marjorie fell into her cot that evening, numb and exhausted after the long day but unable to fall asleep. Audrey hiccupped as she sobbed. Joyce tried to comfort her. She was crying for her doll and could not seem to understand that it was gone for good. She kept asking Joyce to go look for it. Marjorie’s own tears were flowing, but like her mum and now Joyce, she too was learning to keep them silent.
Marjorie thrashed about, trying to get comfortable in her unfamiliar bed, searching for a spot on her lumpy mattress not soaked with salty tears. Would she ever see her family or Whitley Bay again? It felt like she had been away for ages, not only since this morning when her mum and Phyllis put them on the train. It was impossible to make sense of everything. Where were they? Who were those strange men last week? They must have made their mum do this. They had seen her upset before, many, many times, but this was very different. Her mum was afraid. She had heard it in her voice.
As Marjorie lay in her cot, she thought about how she had run back upstairs that day, hoping her mum would tell her what those men wanted. All she got from her mum was a sharp retort making it clear that she did not want to talk about it. The sound of her voice stopped Marjorie in her tracks. Phyllis was standing behind her mum and she put up her hand and shook her head, as if to say “Don’t say a word.” Marjorie would have to wait until she got Phyllis or Joyce alone.
Marjorie finally got a chance after they had settled in their bed that night. But her sisters could not tell her very much. Joyce whispered that one of the men shouted at their mum and said that she had no choice but to sign the papers. Phyllis said he passed a letter to their mum. It was supposed to be from their father and he said it gave him permission to take the children. Joyce said that letter really made their mum cry. Phyllis asked to see the letter, but her mum said no. She told Marjorie that their mum just kept shaking her head and saying, “He was our last hope and now even that is gone.”
Phyllis told them that when their mum wouldn’t agree to sign the papers, it made the man really mad, and then he yelled and said she better do as she was told, or they would take away all of us, even the babies. Then he said that she was fortunate that the society wanted her children. He told her that we would be much better off anywhere but here.
What society? And why did it want children? Phyllis didn’t know but she wished that she had closed the door and locked it and not let those horrid men into their flat. They all knew that their mum did the best she could.
Phyllis choked back tears as she admitted