Christmas when Audra chanced to hear a strange remark, one that worried her briefly; its true meaning was to baffle her for some time thereafter.
Late one afternoon, knowing that Great-Aunt Frances had come to visit, Audra went looking for her.
She was about to push open the drawing-room door, which was already ajar, when she heard Aunt Alicia mention her mother’s name in the most scathing manner. She did not catch what her aunt said next because Alicia lowered her voice. But Audra stiffened as Great-Aunt Frances suddenly exclaimed in a horrified tone, ‘You cannot punish the children for the sins of the mother, Alicia!’
Instantly, Audra’s hand dropped from the knob and she quickly backed away, not wishing to hear any more, and knowing that it was wrong to eavesdrop anyway.
She crept down the dark passage to the back parlour, where she sat for a while, pondering her great-aunt’s odd remark. Audra knew that it had to do with them – that much was patently obvious. But she could not fathom its meaning. How had her mother sinned? At once she told herself that her mother had not committed a single sin in her entire life. As young as she was, Audra was perceptive and she had long known that Alicia Drummond had always been jealous of her mother’s classical beauty, her charm and her refinement. So much so, she had never lost a chance to demean Edith Kenton during her lifetime. Seemingly she could not resist doing the same thing after her death.
For the next few days Audra continued to wonder why Alicia wanted to punish them, but eventually she managed to curb her worry. She consoled herself with the knowledge that whatever punishment she had had in mind for them, their great-aunt had obviously found a way to put a stop to it.
But as it turned out, Frances Reynolds’s words had apparently meant little or nothing. Certainly they had not been a deterrent to her daughter.
For in the end they had been punished.
Two months later, in February of 1922, Frederick and William were dispatched to Australia as emigrants, and Audra was sent to work at the Fever Hospital for Children in Ripon.
Their fierce protestations and anguished pleadings to stay together had made no impression. They were helpless in the face of their aunt’s determination. And so, against their wishes, and those of their Great-Aunt Frances, they had been forced to do as Alicia Drummond said.
It was a wrenching moment for the three young Kentons when Frederick and William took leave of their sister on that bitter winter morning. Before setting out for London and the boat to Sydney, they had huddled together in the front hall, saying their goodbyes, fighting back their tears.
Audra clung to William. Emotion welled up in her, and her throat was so tight she could barely speak. Finally she managed, ‘You won’t forget about me, will you, William?’ And then she started to sob brokenly and her eyes streamed.
Swallowing his own tears, trying to be brave, William tightened his arms around his adored little sister. She looked so young and vulnerable at this moment. ‘No, I won’t. We won’t,’ he said reassuringly. ‘And we’ll send for you as soon as we can. I promise, Audra.’
Frederick, equally emotional, stroked the top of Audra’s head lovingly, and reiterated this promise. Then her brothers stepped away from her, picked up their suitcases and left the house without uttering another word.
Audra snatched her coat from the hall cupboard and ran out. She flew down the drive, calling their names, needing to prolong these last few minutes with them. They stopped, turned, waited for her, and the three of them linked arms and walked on in silence, too heartbroken to speak. When they arrived at the gates the two boys silently kissed Audra for the last time, and tore themselves from her clinging arms before they lost control completely.
Holding one hand to her trembling mouth, stifling her sobs, Audra watched them stride courageously along the main road to Ripon until they were just small specks in the distance. She wanted to run after them, to shout, ‘Wait for me! Don’t leave me behind! Take me with you!’ But Audra knew this would be useless. They could not take her with them. It was not her brothers’ fault they were being separated from each other. Alicia Drummond was to blame. She wanted to rid herself of Edith Kenton’s children and she did not care how she did it.
Only when her brothers had finally disappeared from sight did Audra drag her gaze away from the empty road at last. She turned back into the driveway and wondered, with a sinking heart and a sickening feeling of despair, if she would ever see her brothers again. Australia was at the other end of the world, as far away as any place could possibly be. They had promised faithfully to send for her, but how long would it take them to save up the money for her passage? A whole year, perhaps.
As this dismaying thought wedged itself into Audra’s mind she looked up at that bleak, grim house and shivered involuntarily. And at that precise moment her dislike for her mother’s cousin hardened into a terrible and bitter hatred that would remain with her for the rest of her life. Audra Kenton would not ever find it in her heart to forgive Alicia Drummond for her cold and deliberate cruelty to them. And the memory of the day her brothers had been sent away would stay with Audra always.
The following afternoon, white-faced and trembling, and fretting for her brothers, Audra had gone to live and work at the Fever Hospital. Since there were no vacancies that year for student nurses she had been taken on as a ward maid.
Audra Kenton’s life of drudgery had begun. She was still only fourteen years old.
She had been awakened at dawn the next morning. After a breakfast of porridge, dripping and bread, and tea, eaten with the other little ward maids, the daily routine had commenced. Audra was appalled at the hardship of it, and she, who had never done a domestic chore in her entire life, had found that first day unspeakable. Balking at the tasks assigned to her, she had asked herself despairingly how she would manage. Yet she had not dared complain to her superiors. Being intelligent, and alert, she had understood within the space of a few hours that they were not interested in the likes of her. She was inconsequential in the hierarchy of the hospital, where everyone – doctors and nurses alike – worked extremely hard, and with conscientiousness.
On her second morning she had gritted her teeth and attacked her chores with renewed vigour, and she had learned the best way she could, mainly by observing the other maids at work. At the end of the first month she was as efficient as any of them, and had become expert at scrubbing floors, scouring bathtubs, washing and ironing sheets, making beds, emptying bed pans, cleaning lavatories, disinfecting the surgical ward and sterilizing instruments.
Every night she had fallen into her hard little cot in the maids’ dormitory, so bone tired that she had not noticed her surroundings or the uncomfortable bed. She was usually so exhausted in these first weeks she did not even have the strength to weep. And when she did cry into her pillow it was not for her state of being or for her mean and cheerless life. Audra wept out of longing for her brothers, who were as lost to her now as her mother and Uncle Peter lying in their graves.
There were times, as she scrubbed and polished and toiled in the wards, that Audra worriedly asked herself if she had brought this disastrous state upon her brothers and herself. Guilt trickled through her when she remembered how insistent she had been about taking those inventories of her mother’s possessions. But generally her common sense quickly surfaced and Audra recognized that they would have been punished no matter what. In fact, she had come to believe that Alicia Drummond had callously determined their fate on the very day their-mother had died.
When Audra had been pushed out of The Grange and sent to the hospital, Aunt Alicia had told her that she could visit them every month, on one of her two weekends off, and spend special holidays
