‘No,’ she said pushing him away with both hands. ‘I want to go.’
He moved so quickly it took her by surprise. One minute he lying beside her leaning up on one elbow, the next he was on top of her, and his hand was groping up her thigh.
‘Stop it,’ she shouted. But his mouth came down on hers and he thrust his tongue into her mouth at the same time as his fingers were pulling her knickers to one side.
The combination of the slug-like tongue and his finger insinuating its way inside brought back all the nauseating memories of Mother. She bucked under him, got her mouth free and screamed. But he clamped his hand over her mouth and stifled it.
‘You know why you came up here with me,’ he growled at her. ‘And you’re going to get it. Scream and I’ll land you one.’
It was like being held in a vice, his whole body was pressing down on her, and even though she managed to get her hands free, she couldn’t push him off. Worse still, she found he had opened his trousers at some point, for she could feel his penis hot, hard and smooth against her leg, and as she tried to buck under him, he thrust it hard against her.
‘Open your legs, you bitch,’ he muttered at her, and letting go of her mouth for a second, he grabbed her legs, pulling her knickers off, and then prised them apart, managed to force it inside her.
May did yell out, but only momentarily, for he clamped his hand back on her mouth and bit into her neck as if to remind her he’d hit her. It hurt so much, stones were digging in her back, she felt like she was being crushed by his weight, and still that gigantic thing of his was boring into her as if it was tearing her apart. ‘Poms are all shit,’ he hissed at her. ‘The men are faggots, the women are slags. I knew you were a slag the moment I saw you, so I’m giving you what you wanted.’
May was so stunned by the rapid progression from loving attentiveness to this brutality that she stopped fighting him. She felt the same way she had done that night in the Dark Place, rigid with fear, hurting inside and out and unable to understand why her actions warranted such a brutal punishment.
He was making loud grunting noises that appeared to be getting louder all the time. Then he let out a kind of low bellow and was finally still. He rolled off her immediately, and May just lay there transfixed with horror at what had happened. She couldn’t see his face in the darkness, just the white of his shirt and a flash of his teeth, which suggested he was grinning at her.
But in a second he was up on his feet and looking down at her, and in that moment she realized he had her handbag in his hand.
‘So let’s have the money you wanted to flash around,’ he said, and she heard the clasp click open.
May tried to get up, but every bit of her hurt, and she wasn’t fast enough. She saw him snatch something from her bag, then he flung it back at her.
‘Pom slut,’ he snarled, and with that loped off into the darkness.
May crawled on her knees to her bag, and as she moved she felt something wet and sticky run down her leg and all at once she fully understood what it was he had done to her.
It was that thing which made babies! She had heard the girls at St Vincent’s giggling about it so often, smugly believing she knew so much more about it than they did because Mother had told her. But Mother hadn’t said it was ugly and shameful, or that a man could force it into her against her will, she’d wrapped it all up with pretty stuff, like love, weddings and honeymoons.
Blinded by tears, May staggered back in the direction they’d come earlier and once she came to a path and a lamp she opened up her bag to look inside. He had taken the roll of pound notes, but the key of the front door was still there, and her small-change purse with about five shillings in it. Her cigarettes were there too, and she lit one immediately to try to stop shaking.
She looked down at her dress and saw it was badly crumpled and stained with grass and dirt. What was she going to do?
Slumping down on to a seat, she dragged desperately on the cigarette and tried to think. She was used to feeling very alone, she’d been that way since Dulcie left St Vincent’s. But this was worse, much worse, and her mind was woolly, the way she felt the time she’d had a tooth taken out with gas. She sat there crying for some time, hoping that someone would come along and she could tell them she was hurt. But no one came and eventually she began to walk on down the path to the road.
Once she’d got there, she recognized it was the same road the buses ran along to and from town. She had also come to see that asking someone for help would only make her predicament worse. They would call the police, and what would they think of her if she said she went off into the park in the dark with a man she’d only met that day, and that the only thing she knew about him was his Christian name? They would want to take her home too, and once Mrs Wilberforce knew she had lied about where she was going that evening, she’d be bound to sack her. That was likely to mean she’d be sent to the reformatory, where they sent all troublesome girls. Or worse still, she’d be sent back to Mother.
It was lucky that a bus came along very quickly, and as it was almost empty she slunk into the first seat, and using the small mirror in her bag checked her face. It surprised her to see it didn’t look any different, she had expected the horror she’d been through would be reflected back at her. There was a mark on her neck where Nev had bitten into her, but her hair covered it for now, and she thought her uniform dress would come up high enough to conceal it.
But when she thought what that evil bastard had done to her, white-hot anger flowed through her. She’d trusted him, yet he’d humiliated her in the worst possible way and robbed her. And he’d got away with it.
As the bus got nearer to Peppermint Grove, she also remembered with horror that he might very well have made her pregnant too. ‘I’ll kill myself if that’s the case,’ she thought, tears starting up in her eyes again. ‘It’s bad enough being a little bastard myself, without giving birth to another one.’
It was four days later when May found that she wasn’t pregnant. When she saw the usual monthly blood, she sat down on the toilet and cried with relief and even offered up a hasty prayer of thanks.
She had been through hell, trying to work and respond as normal to Mrs Wilberforce, while all she really wanted was to stay in bed and hide from the world. The fear of pregnancy had expanded in her mind till she couldn’t think of anything else, and when she tried to go to sleep at night she would relive the ordeal over and over again.
The worst of it was the self-recriminations. Maybe if she hadn’t lied to him about who she was, he might not have been that way. Or maybe he knew she was lying and he did it to teach her a lesson? Why wasn’t she strong enough to say she didn’t want to walk in the park? And surely she wasn’t a slag just because she’d spoken to someone on the beach and bought him a couple of glasses of orange squash?
Yet even though she felt relieved that at least she wasn’t pregnant, the hurt inside her wouldn’t go, it had cast a black shadow over everything. Everything seemed as soiled as her pink dress – her body, her mind, the view of the garden from her bedroom window, even food didn’t taste or smell the same. Ugly thoughts kept popping into her head, she wanted to lash out at someone, and she felt even more alone than she had back at St Vincent’s.
She found herself hoping something bad had happened between Dulcie and Ross, or that one of the Wilberforces’ sons would meet with an accident, just so Mrs Wilberforce would look as miserable as she felt. She stole a five-pound note out of one of her friends’ handbags one afternoon. The group of women came round every Monday afternoon to play whist in the dining-room, but they all went out in the garden for a while, leaving their bags by the table. May opened them all and looked inside, and a nice crocodile one contained so many notes she guessed it wouldn’t even be noticed. It didn’t wipe out the misery inside her, but at least she felt she was striking back in some way. She made up her mind that no man would ever hurt her again, and that in future she would always have the upper hand.
Chapter Seventeen
‘You shouldn’t have to be doing this for me,’ Betty said as Dulcie prepared to give her a blanket bath. ‘I could ask Bruce to get a nurse in, or get them to take me into hospital. I’m spoiling your life.’
Dulcie assumed Betty was thinking about her postponed wedding. ‘Don’t be so daft,’ she laughed, as she folded back the towel covering Betty and began to wash her chest, neck and arms. ‘We aren’t in a tearing hurry to get married. I’m only just twenty-one, remember. Besides, you’d hate it in hospital, and I doubt we could get a nurse to stay out here. And I like taking care of you.’
Betty had become ill fifteen months earlier. At first it was just mild stomach pains, loss of appetite and listlessness, then the pains got worse and finally she was taken into hospital in November for tests, where they found she had cancer of the womb. A hysterectomy was performed immediately, and she returned home in December. Knowing she would need careful nursing for some time, Dulcie put off the wedding, and although Betty made a good recovery from the surgery, later in the year it was found the cancer had spread throughout her body. Now it was January again and there had been no celebrations for the New Year of 1959, because they all knew that she had only a couple more months to live.
Dulcie looked down at Betty lying on the bed, and her heart welled up with love and sympathy for her. She had lost so much weight, her once plump cheeks were hollow and flesh hung in folds around her neck and beneath her eyes. It was doubly hard for a woman who had always been strong and healthy to accept she couldn’t beat this, and though for a very long time she had fought it, making herself get up and do little chores even when she was in severe pain, now she was too weak even to turn herself in bed. Yet her mind was still as active as it always had been, and she focused it on others, worrying that she was becoming a nuisance and a hindrance.
But she wasn’t a nuisance, for she had retained her good humour, her interest in everything and everyone. She never complained, she was always delighted when anyone called to see her, and touchingly grateful for any little kindness.
When she and Dulcie talked about milestones in the last year, the one that always made them laugh most was their embarrassment when Betty first needed help with bathing. Dulcie had never seen an older woman naked before, and Betty admitted that even Bruce hadn’t ever seen her that way in their entire married life.
Betty would laughingly remember how Dulcie once stuck a soapy flannel in her mouth because she had her eyes shut. Dulcie would tease her back with the reminder of the time she put both legs in one knicker leg because she wouldn’t let Dulcie help her, and how she tried to hobble out of the bathroom like that.
Laughter had taught them how to cope, and they found the embarrassment disappeared. Now they were comfortable about it all, blanket baths and bedpans were just another part of the routine, like the medication and bed-making. But the one thing Betty could not accept was that Dulcie was overworked and she was spoiling her life.
Dulcie was speaking the absolute truth when she said she liked looking after Betty. She hated to see her so thin – her weight had dropped from around twelve stone to eight, and her legs and arms were like sticks. It grieved her to see a woman who had once loved her food unable to eat more than a few mouthfuls. But Betty hadn’t lost her sweet nature or her patience, and she was always far more interested in hearing the gossip, talking over old times or discussing things in the news, than she was in herself.
If Dulcie hadn’t grown to love Betty so much, perhaps she might think herself overworked, for she ran the house alone now, doing all the cooking, cleaning and laundry, and had to get up during the night to turn Betty, give her medication and bedpans. She couldn’t have a day off, the only breaks were when Bruce sat with Betty, and then she had shopping and other errands to run. Yet she didn’t feel hard done by in any way; for the first time in her life she felt needed, cared for and appreciated. What she did here seemed so very little in return for all the kindness that had been shown to her in the past.
Dulcie rinsed and dried Betty’s top half and covered that up with a dry towel. ‘The bottom bit now,’ she said, moving the basin of warm water further down the bed and removing the lower towel. ‘Now, suppose I move your bed over to the window afterwards?’ she said as she put soap on the flannel. ‘You’d be able to look at the garden and see Bruce and the men when they’re over by the barn.’
‘You are such a kind girl,’ Betty said, her voice quivering with emotion. ‘Too kind sometimes. You should think of yourself more often. I hear you singing along to that pop music sometimes and I think you ought to be off to Sydney, going to dances and parties, buying lovely clothes and being taken out by men who could give you all the things you deserve.’
‘I don’t want to go to dances and parties.’ Dulcie smiled as she soaped the old lady. ‘I’ve got everything I want right here.’
‘That’s just because you don’t know what you’re missing,’ Betty said.
Dulcie rinsed out the flannel and wiped off all the soap. ‘You haven’t seen much of the world yourself, and you don’t think you’ve missed anything,’ she said reprovingly.
‘It was different for my generation,’ Betty said firmly. ‘We had the two wars, and the Depression in between, and we didn’t know what was happening elsewhere in the world. But you read, you watch the television, you listen to the wireless. You know so much more about what’s on offer than I ever did,’
Dulcie dried her carefully, then massaged her legs and feet with some cream. ‘I’m going to turn you over on your side now,’ she said. ‘Can you roll over if I give you a push?’
Once she’d exposed Betty’s back and bottom she washed and dried it carefully, checking for bed sores, then fluffed talcum powder on it. ‘No sore places,’ she said. ‘But once you’ve got a clean nightie on I think you ought to stay on your side for a bit.’
‘You always change the subject when I get serious.’ Betty wiggled a finger at her. ‘You see, I worry about what will happen when I’m gone. You’ll be all alone here with the men, they aren’t much company, you know! You need women friends. I couldn’t have survived out here without mine.’
Dulcie hated it when Betty spoke of going. It was she who asked the doctor point-blank how long she had left, she said she needed to know so that she could put her house in order. Her courage and lack of self-pity was admirable, maybe it was sensible to face it and get everything done or said that she found necessary, but Dulcie found it distressing.
‘Maybe I’ll join your Country Women’s Association,’ she said, slipping the clean nightgown over Betty’s head and carefully easing it down over her.
‘That’s for older women,’ Betty said. ‘You need friends your own age, not a bunch of old biddies talking about jam and their grandchildren.’
‘I’ve got Ross, remember,’ Dulcie reminded her. ‘We will get married before long.’
‘I’m not so sure Ross is right for you any more,’ Betty said with a sigh.
‘Of course he is,’ Dulcie said in surprise. She pulled up a chair by the bed and sat down so she could look right at Betty. ‘What makes you say that?’
When lying on her side, the looseness of Betty’s flesh on her face was most noticeable – she had joked one day that Dulcie ought to make a few tucks in it, the way you did with a too large garment. Even her eyes had faded to the colour of duck eggs, and there was never any sparkle in them any more.
‘I don’t think he’s warm enough for you,’ she said, reaching out and taking Dulcie’s hand. ‘You need warmth to blossom, Dulcie, without it you’ll just shrivel up. You get it from me and Bruce now, but I’m afraid you’ll find it suddenly colder when I’m gone.’
‘But Ross loves me, I love him,’ Dulcie insisted. ‘He’ll be different once we’re married.’
‘I don’t think so, dear,’ Betty said gently. ‘He’ll look after you all right, I don’t think he’ll ever become a boozer or a wife-beater, but there’s no passion in him.’
br /> Dulcie blushed. ‘That comes after the wedding surely?’
‘It should be there from the start, from the first kiss,’ Betty said, her eyes suddenly damp. ‘You’ve seen each other every day for over two years, yet I’ve never seem him kiss you impulsively, hug you, run to you. I put it down to shyness for a long time, but it’s more than that.’
‘He’s different when we’re alone together,’ Dulcie said. Yet even as she said it, she knew that wasn’t entirely true. He hadn’t once tried to go any further than kissing, the way she had been told most men did. On several occasions she’d tried to instigate something more, and each time it had been him who backed away, saying that must wait until they were married.
She had always thought this was consideration for her, and fear they might go too far. But just sometimes it did feel like rejection.
‘I’m only speaking out because I’m so fond of you, dear, and because there isn’t anyone else to point these things out to you,’ Betty said, squeezing her hand. ‘I want you to think hard before you commit yourself to marriage, ask yourself if everything really is right. Think about Bill and Pat Masters, that was a marriage which went wrong because they weren’t suited.’
‘Bill was just a brute,’ Dulcie protested. ‘Poor Pat never had a chance with him.’
‘He was, but you were still a child when you were there,’ Betty said. ‘You’d had no experience of life, or people. You could only have seen it from Pat’s viewpoint. There are always two sides to every story.’
‘I don’t see that going over all that stuff will help in any way,’ Dulcie exclaimed. ‘I’m nothing like Pat, and Ross certainly isn’t like Bill.’
‘I didn’t say they were like you and Ross. I just want you to think about what you saw there, in the light of what you know now. You may well find something there which strikes a chord within you.’
‘It’s time you took your medicine now,’ Dulcie said, getting up and opening up the pill bottle and laying out the five different ones Betty had to take, and pouring a glass of water.