Fay Read online

  F A Y

  Dulcie Stone, MBE

  FAY

  Copyright © DULCIE M. STONE

  First published as printed book 2005 by

  The Australian Institute on Intellectual Disability

  Canberra, Australia

  Published as eBook 2013 by Dulcie M. Stone

  ISBN: 0-9586960-4-7 (pbk.)

  978-1-925112-43-6 (epub)

  978-1-925112-44-3 (mobi)

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by photocopying or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage or retrieval systems, without permission in writing from both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to any persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  The author asserts her moral rights.

  Front cover artwork: My Friend Meg by Leah Smith

  Reproduced by kind permission of the artist.

  Distributed by Palmer Higgs Pty Ltd

  www.phbooks.com.au

  For Chris Malady

  and all my friends

  at St Thomas Primary School, Drysdale.

  About the Author

  Dulcie Stone has won acclaim as an author, educator and campaigner for people with intellectual disability. Her first novel I laugh, I cry, I feel was an International Year of the Disabled selection at the Bologna Book Fair, 1981. Of her last book, Chance’s Children, Geelong Advertiser critic Spencer Leighton wrote: ‘Dulcie Stone is a hard hitting writer who tells a chilling story with dramatic realism.’

  In her eightieth year and still in-class teaching, her educational ideas are gaining wide recognition. Of her non-fiction book Switching on the Light, Hilary McPhee, currently Vice Chancellor’s Fellow at Melbourne University, says: ‘Your remarkable book is a work of major importance.’

  Prominent among the many honours and awards for her work are the M.B.E (Member of the British Empire), an International Woman of the Year (1996-97), Outstanding People of the Twentieth Century Selection and a Papal Blessing which she shares with her husband David.

  Chapter One

  Glenlea Day Training Centre for Retarded Children.

  Glenlea. December 1974

  ‘Fay!’

  ‘Yes, Miss Turner.’

  ‘It’s time for you to go to speech therapy.’

  ‘Yes, Miss Turner.’

  ‘She hasn’t even finished drying the dishes!’

  ‘Be quiet, Trixie.’

  ‘But, Miss!’

  ‘Trixie!’

  ‘It’s not fair.’

  ‘Trixie!’

  Trixie slammed a wet plate onto the sink.

  ‘Trixie!!!’

  Clem took the tea towel from Fay. ‘Don’t worry about her. She’s shitty today.’

  ‘Clem! We do not swear in this room.’

  ‘Shit!’

  ‘Clem! You will apologise at once!’

  Clem’s face, marked with the unmistakable features of Down Syndrome, glowered.

  ‘No? We’ll see about that!’

  ‘Bloody hell!’ He threw down the towel. ‘Do them yourself.’

  ‘Young man! You will do as you’re told!’

  Grimacing disgust, Clem left the kitchen.

  Miss Turner raced after him. ‘Clem! Come back here! At once! Clem!’

  Already halfway across the outdoor quadrangle, he stopped.

  Miss Turner screeched after him: ‘Clem! Come back!’

  Turning away, he stomped doggedly on.

  ‘Clem!’ The teacher caught up with him.

  He stopped.

  ‘You will apologise at once!’

  His lower lip pouted.

  ‘Open your hand.’

  He ignored her.

  She raised her hand. ‘You’re a very naughty child. Do as you’re told!’

  His hand opened.

  She slapped it. ‘Perhaps now you will apologise for your behaviour.’

  ***

  From his classroom window, Mark Withers watched. It was farcical. Adele Turner was losing it. She seemed incapable of controlling her group of young teenagers. Every day there was something equally unsettling. No wonder most of his class were craning their necks to see what was happening. They were as concerned as he was.

  ‘It’s okay,’ Mark reassured. ‘Get on with your work.’

  In the quadrangle Miss Turner was standing beside Clem, her hand again raised. ‘You will stand here until you apologise.’

  Clem said nothing. Instead, he defiantly walked to the sandpit, glared back at his teacher, planted his stolid legs firmly onto the cement surround, closed his eyes and stood hunchbacked under the searing sun.

  Mark Withers winced. It was going to be a long wait. Clem’s considerable vocabulary did not embrace apologies. He opened his classroom door. ‘Everything all right, Miss Turner?’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Withers.’

  ‘If you’re sure. It’s very hot out…’

  ‘It’s under control, Mr Withers. Thank you.’

  Closing the door, he went back to his class.

  Though continuing their work, they were restless. It wasn’t hard to guess what they were thinking. They’d be trying to read his face, to assess what he was thinking about the debacle outside. Some of them had been in Miss Turner’s class last year. Some had been with the teacher he’d replaced, a middle-aged woman he knew almost nothing about. Except she’d apparently not been too different from Adele Turner.

  Of course the kids were watching. They were watching to see what he thought of Adele Turner’s treatment of Clem. And they were waiting for the moment when he finally lost patience and did as Miss Turner was doing. For them, it had to be inevitable; it was the way things were. They’d spent nearly a year with him and yet they were still mistrustful. They had a right to be. It was the end of the year. They’d be waiting to see how tiredness and summer heat affected him.

  It was a question he didn’t know the answer to himself. How would the tiredness and the heat and the strangeness of this new experience affect him? It was the end of his first year teaching in a Day Training Centre for Retarded Children. Not that these kids were children, they were teenagers. Young Clem, standing stubbornly outside in the hot sun, was fifteen and definitely not a child. He’d probably be moving into this room next year, along with a few others from Miss Turner’s group. How would they adjust to his very different way of managing a classroom?

  He’d told himself they must know by now that he’d never resort to physical punishment. If only it were that simple. The problem was, it wasn’t. It wasn’t simple at all. Physical punishment, verbal abuse, sickening condescension, misguided goals, inflexible minds, naïve thoughtlessness. In his few months in this building he’d seen them all – and hated them with a passion.

  Compared to Adele Turner’s habit of destructive psychological humiliation, physical punishment itself was just another comparatively low rung on a very tall ladder of abuse. It wasn’t just that she resorted to hitting, it was the fact that she frequently used it as a deliberate tactic to rob her victim of dignity. Bad as it was for any child, it was totally unacceptable for Clem to whom dignity was paramount.

  So why was he still here? Why hadn’t he walked away? Good question. Its answer was as complex as everything else in his life. It had to do with why he’d come here. With his marriage. With his deep love for Jenny. With his need to be loved. With his mother back in Melbourne. With his brother Jason, born with brain damage and buried at nineteen. And, admitted only in the deepest pits of doubt and self-examination, it had to do with an absolutely irrational conviction that he belonged here. Why? That question had not yet found its answer. Perhaps…

  ‘Mark? Are you okay?’

  Startled, he stopped beside Pete
r. ‘I’m sorry, Peter. What did you say?’

  ‘You look funny,’ Peter frowned. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Okay. Thank you, Peter.’ He could manage no more.

  ***

  Across the quadrangle, Trixie whispered. ‘Clem’s right. I bet she had a fight with her boy friend last night.’

  ‘She hasn’t got one,’ Meryl stuttered. She’s t-too nast-ty.’

  Sweeping the floor in calculated slow motion, fourteen-year-old Don came to his teacher’s defence. ‘She’s all right. I get in a bad mood too.’

  ‘Don’t we know.’ Trixie giggled.

  Hurrying in, Miss Turner’s eyes immediately flew to the clock. ‘Fay! Look at the time! What will Mrs Ryan say! You’ve kept the speech therapist waiting. Time is money, dear. Get along quickly!’

  Fay started for the door.

  ‘See you.’ Trixie and Meryl called to Fay, who was already out of sight.

  ‘She don’t talk much.’ Don found this impossible to believe. ‘She hardly ever talks!’

  ‘Not like you.’

  ‘She’s shy.’

  ‘She’s a good girl.’ Miss Turner defended her favourite. ‘She does as she’s told.’

  ‘Not like us.’ Trixie nudged Meryl.

  ‘You’re good sometimes,’ Miss Turner conceded without humour. ‘Let’s finish these and get back to our room before Fay gets back.’

  ‘Can we cook again tomorrow?’

  ‘Look for yourselves.’ She pointed to the timetable on the wall above the sink.

  ‘I can’t read it,’ Don wailed.

  ‘I can.’ Trixie shoved him away.

  ‘I want to!’

  ‘Children!’ Miss Turner’s washed blue eyes were desperate. ‘I don’t know why you’re all so naughty today.’

  ‘I can read best.’ Meryl squinted at the timetable through the thick lenses that magnified her near-sighted eyes.

  Miss Turner ushered them into a half circle. ‘We’ll let Meryl show us how.’

  The group watched as Meryl’s stubby fingers ran down the chart, reached Wednesday, located the ‘time’ column, and eventually stopped. ‘There. We are on cooking roster again tomorrow.’

  ‘I’m sick of this.’ Don set broom and dustpan to one side.

  ‘Finish the floor, Don.’

  Resuming his deliberately slow movements, Don complained. ‘We never used to. Damned cooking and sweeping. All this sissy stuff.’

  ‘No!’ Trixie was surprised. ‘We didn’t.’

  ‘We do now.’

  ‘We do t-too.’ Meryl echoed.

  ‘We do now. That’s right.’ Attempting to avert further trouble, Miss Turner re-consulted the clock. ‘Finish up now, children. Make sure you leave everything just as you found it. It’s time to get back.’

  Thankful to be leaving the domestic block, which was not universally popular, the group of early teen children followed their teacher across the quadrangle.

  Reaching Clem’s rigid back, Miss Turner stopped. ‘Clem! Are you ready to apologise?’

  His only answer was an overly dramatic straightening of the hunched back.

  ‘No? I’ve got lots of time.’ She started after the class.

  Having predicted the outcome of her stopover with Clem, the group was already entering the classroom adjacent to Mark Withers’. It was unseasonably hot, the sun pounding the bald windows.

  ‘Can I go out and pull down the sun blinds?’ Don started back to the open door.

  ‘No.’ Miss Turner went to the blackboard. ‘Take your seats. We’ll get on with preparing our recipes for tomorrow.’

  ‘I’m hot!’ Don stood his ground.

  ‘Don!!!’ Miss Turner’s voice verged on hysterical.

  Don grimaced, slammed the door and resumed his place.

  ‘You’ll break the glass!’ Trixie shrieked.

  ‘You’ll b-break the glass.’ Meryl echoed.

  ‘Yes, Don. You’ll break the glass. But you’re right.’ Miss Turner recanted. ‘It is too hot. You may go outside and pull down the blinds.’

  The sun successfully thwarted, the class resumed work. For the next half hour they turned the pages of their cooking books, painstakingly located pictures of the ingredients for the small buns they were to make, and worked together to compile the list Miss Turner was writing on the blackboard.

  Finally, she set down the chalk: ‘There. We have it all written out. No one is to touch the blackboard. We’ll get the things when we go shopping in the morning.’

  ‘Not again! It’s too hot!’

  ‘I like shopping.’

  ‘I do t-too.’

  ‘Close your books, children. It’ll soon be home time.’

  ‘What about Clem?’

  ‘Don’t interrupt.’

  ‘But Clem’s…..’

  ‘Trixie! Do I have to repeat myself? When it’s home time, I want you to walk quietly to the bus. Yesterday you made so much noise. Mrs Ryan was very cross. We have to mind our manners. We have to learn to be grown up.’

  ‘I’m fifteen,’ Trixie preened.

  ‘Me t-too.’

  ‘Enough.’ Miss Turner sighed. ‘Fay! There you are.’

  Creeping into the room, head down and shoulders hunched, Fay sidled to her desk.

  ‘How was your speech lesson today?’

  ‘Did you learn any new words?’

  Neither answering their queries, nor in any other way acknowledging her class mates, Fay took her place at the desk.

  ‘I go to speech too.’

  ‘Yeah, Trixie,’ Don snorted. ‘They should teach you to shut up.’

  ‘How was it, Fay?’ Miss Turner crossed to Fay.

  ‘She don’t talk,’ Don insisted. ‘You’re wasting your time.’

  ‘She’s a good girl.’ Trixie mimicked Miss Turner.

  ‘She’s a good girl,’ Don tittered.

  ‘She’s a good…’ Meryl began.

  ‘Stop it!’ Miss Turner’s plump face was suffused, her pale frizzed hair awry. Under her armpits the material of her summer smock was wet with sweat.

  The class, obeying, was suddenly silent. Until, stealthily creeping into the hot air, was the disruption of muffled giggles.

  Losing the remaining remnants of her composure, Miss Turner started for Trixie. ‘I warned you!’

  ‘Miss!’ Meryl sought to distract her. ‘Clem’s going to miss the b-bus.’

  ‘Clem!’ Wheeling an abrupt about-turn, Miss Turner strode to the door.

  ‘She forgot him.’ From their classroom windows, Clem’s friends watched.

  From the window of the next-door classroom, Mark Withers watched. He couldn’t help it. Clem’s determination was mesmerising. He itched to go out there and persuade him to give in. He couldn’t; it would only make things worse. Because Miss Turner would win this battle. Somehow, she’d find a way. She usually did. Meanwhile poor Clem was risking a serious case of sunburn, or worse.

  At the sound of Miss Turner’s approach, Clem’s flagging back again stiffened.

  ‘Clem!’

  The teacher crossed to him.

  He struggled to remain rigid.

  ‘I’ve never seen such a stubborn….! What is it with you?’

  His lower lip pouted.

  ‘If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were deaf.’ She grabbed at his hand.

  He clenched his fist.

  ‘Open your hand.’

  Trying to turn away, he swayed. The sun had done its work.

  She raised her hand. ‘You’re a very naughty child. Do as you’re told!’

  His shaking hand opened.

  She slapped it. ‘Perhaps now you will apologise for your behaviour.’

  His lip trembled.

  ‘Clem!’ Slap.

  His eyes filled with tears.

  ‘Clem! You will apologise!’ Slap.

  ‘Sorry.’

  Miss Turner placed a perspiring arm around Clem’s shoulders. ‘That wasn’t so bad, was it?’

  Cringing
from her, yet imprisoned by her embrace, Clem shrunk into himself.

  ‘We must learn to behave, Clem.’ She freed him. ‘Come along. It will soon be bus time.’

  Sickened, Mark Withers watched Clem’s cowed figure obediently follow his teacher indoors.

  Chapter Two

  The Glenlea Day Training Centre for Retarded Children had been opened five years ago, in 1969. From 1966 until the opening of the grand new building, children with intellectual disability had been minded for a few hours, three days a week, in the small Scout hall next to the fire station.

  Before that, Glenlea children with intellectual disability had been acutely disadvantaged. They had been without help, without education, without training, without opportunities for improvement - other than those the immediate, and occasionally the extended, family had been able to provide. Some families, after weighing up the life-changing costs, had uprooted themselves and relocated to places where their disabled member might benefit from appropriate educational and medical services.

  Banished to the township of Glenlea’s outer rim, The Centre was isolated in the middle of a broad area of sparsely inhabited grazing land, only intermittently interspersed by clusters of low-slung and almost invisible farm buildings. Set well back from the highway that led to the high range of mountains over-looking the valley of Glenlea, the building was a flat-roofed U-shaped block of bland cream bricks. Double gates at both ends of a high fence allowed entry and exit via a semicircular driveway. Between the front entrance and the fence was a spectacular rose garden, tended at weekends by a small band of parents.

  A row of windows, looking outwards from the foyer and front administration area, saw clear to the township’s encircling river and the distant foothills which softly curled up to the mountains. Broad wide windows, looking inwards from the two rows of classrooms, faced onto the central bitumen quadrangle which contained the sandpit, wooden seats, a basketball ring and a few stunted shrubs.

  The Centre housed one principal, four teachers, one teachers’ aide, one parttime secretary, and thirty-eight children. Of the staff, only Principal Mrs Ryan and Mark Withers were in any way certificated educationalists. Adele Turner had once been a kindergarten assistant, Judith Clancy a trained nurse and Fran Allison was a country-bred woman whose children were in their teens. Ruth Payne, the aide, had a much-loved older sister with a physical disability. Part-time secretary, Eunice Morris, had once been a bank teller. Her ten hours per week were flexible, and arranged according to the needs of Eunice and her Principal. It wasn’t a perfect arrangement because, as in almost everything else, fiscal limitations prevailed.