As the Crow Flies

I must have been one of those rare children who loved going to school from the first day its doors were opened to me. The classroom was a blessed escape from my prison and its warders. Every extra minute I spent at the local school was a minute I didn’t have to be at St. Hilda’s, and I quickly discovered that the harder I worked the longer the hours I was allowed to remain behind. These became even more expandable when, at the age of eleven, I won a place at Melbourne Church of England Girls’ Grammar School, where they had so many extracurricular activities going on, from first thing in the morning until late every evening, that St. Hilda’s became little more than the place where I slept and had breakfast.

While at MGS I took up painting, which made it possible for me to spend several hours in the art room without too much supervision or interference; tennis, where by dint of sheer hard work and application I managed to gain a place in the school second six, which produced the bonus of being allowed to practice in the evening until it was dusk; and cricket, for which I had no talent, but as team scorer not only was I required never to leave my place until the last ball had been bowled but every other Saturday I was able to escape on a bus for a fixture against another school. I was one of the few children who enjoyed away matches in preference to home fixtures.

At sixteen I entered the sixth form and began to work even harder: it was explained to Miss Benson that I might possibly win a scholarship to the University of Melbourne—not an everyday occurrence for an inmate from St. Hilda’s.

Whenever I received any academic distinction or reprimand—the latter became rarer once I had discovered school—I was made to report to Miss Benson in her study, where she would deliver a few words of encouragement or disapproval, before placing the slip of paper that marked these occurrences in a file which she would then return to a cabinet that stood behind her desk. I always watched her most carefully as she carried out this ritual. First she would remove a key from the top left-hand drawer of her desk, then she would go over to the cabinet, check my file under “QRS,” place the credit or misdemeanor inside my entry, lock the cabinet and then replace the key in her desk. It was a routine that never varied.

Another fixed point in Miss Benson’s life was her annual holiday, when she would visit “her people” in Adelaide. This took place every September and I looked forward to it as others might a holiday.

Once war had been declared I feared she might not keep to her schedule, especially as we were told we would all have to make sacrifices.

Miss Benson appeared to make no sacrifices despite travel restrictions and cutbacks and departed for Adelaide on exactly the same day that summer as she always had. I waited until five days after the taxi had driven her off to the station before I felt it was safe to carry out my little escapade.

On the sixth night I lay awake until just after one in the morning, not moving a muscle until I was certain all sixteen girls in the dormitory were fast asleep. Then I rose, borrowed a pen torch from the drawer of the girl who slept next to me and headed off across the landing towards the staircase. Had I been spotted en route, I already had an excuse prepared about feeling sick, and as I had rarely entered the sanatorium at any time during my twelve years at St. Hilda’s, I felt confident I would be believed.

I crept cautiously down the staircase without having to use the torch: since Miss Benson had departed for Adelaide, I had practiced the routine each morning with my eyes closed. Once I had reached the principal’s study, I opened the door and slipped in, only then switching on the pen torch. I tiptoed over to Miss Benson’s desk and cautiously pulled open the top left-hand drawer. What I hadn’t been prepared for was to be faced with about twenty different keys, some in groups on rings while others were detached but unmarked. I tried to remember the size and shape of the one Miss Benson had used to unlock the filing cabinet, but I couldn’t, and with only a pen torch to guide me several trips to the cabinet and back were necessary before I discovered the one that would turn one hundred and eighty degrees.

I pulled open the top drawer of the filing cabinet as slowly as I could but the runners still seemed to rumble like thunder. I stopped, and held my breath as I waited to hear if there was any movement coming from the house. I even looked under the door to be sure no light was suddenly switched on. Once I felt confident I hadn’t disturbed anyone I leafed through the names in the “QRS” box file: Roberts, Rose, Ross…I pulled out my personal folder and carried the heavy bundle back to the principal’s desk. I sat down in Miss Benson’s chair and, with the help of the torch, began to check each page carefully. As I was fifteen and had now been at St. Hilda’s for around twelve years, my file was necessarily thick. I was reminded of misdemeanors as long ago as wetting my bed, and several credits for painting, including the rare double credit for one of my watercolors that still hung in the dining room. Yet however much I searched through that folder there was no trace of anything about me before the age of three. I began to wonder if this was a general rule that applied to everyone who had come to live at St. Hilda’s. I took a quick glance at the details of Jennie Rose’s record. To my dismay, I found the names of both her father (Ted, deceased) and her mother (Susan). An attached note explained that Mrs. Rose had three other children to bring up and since the death of her husband from a heart attack had been quite unable to cope with a fourth child.

I locked the cabinet, returned the key to the top left-hand drawer of Miss Benson’s desk, switched off the pen torch, left the study and walked quickly up the stairs to my dormitory. I put the pen torch back in its rightful place and slipped into bed. I began to wonder what I could possibly do next to try and find out who I was and where I’d come from.

It was as if my parents had never existed, and I had somehow started life aged three. As the only alternative was virgin birth and I didn’t accept that even for the Blessed Mary, my desire to know the truth became irrepressible. I must eventually have fallen asleep, because all I remember after that is being woken by the school bell the following morning.

When I was awarded my place at the University of Melbourne I felt like a long-term prisoner who has finally been released. For the first time, I was given a room of my own and was no longer expected to wear a uniform—not that the range of clothes I could afford was going to set the Melbourne fashion houses afire. I remember working even longer hours at university than I had done at school, as I was apprehensive that if I didn’t pass my first year general papers, they would send me back to spend the rest of my days at St. Hilda’s.

In my second year I specialized in the history of art and English while continuing with painting as a hobby, but I had no idea what career I wanted to pursue after leaving university. My tutor suggested I should consider teaching, but that sounded to me rather like an extension of St. Hilda’s, with me ending up as Miss Benson.

I didn’t have many boyfriends before going to university, because the boys at St. Hilda’s were kept in a separate wing of the house and we were not allowed to talk to them before nine in the morning and after five o’clock at night. Until the age of fifteen I thought kissing made you pregnant so I was determined not to make that mistake, especially after my experience of growing up with no family of my own.

My first real boyfriend was Mel Nicholls, who was captain of the university football team. Having finally succeeded in getting me into bed he told me that I was the only girl in his life and, more important, the first. After I had admitted it was true for me too and lay back on the pillow Mel leaned over and began to take an interest in the only thing I was still wearing.

“I’ve never seen anything quite like that before,” he said, taking my little piece of jewelry between his fingers.

“Another first.”

“Not quite.” He laughed. “Because I’ve seen one very similar.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s a medal,” he explained. “My father won three or four of them himself but none of them’s made of silver.”

Looking back on it now,

I consider that this particular piece of information was well worth losing my virginity for.

In the library of the University of Melbourne there is a large selection of books covering the First World War, biased not unnaturally towards Gallipoli and the Far East campaign rather than the D Day landings and El Alamein. However, tucked away among the pages of heroic deeds performed by Australian infantrymen was a chapter on British gallantry awards, complete with several colored plates.

I discovered that there were VCs, DSOs, DSCs, CBEs, OBEs—the variations seemed endless until finally on page four hundred and nine I found what I was searching for: the Military Cross, a ribbon of white watered silk and purple horizontal stripes and a medal forged in silver with the imperial crown on each of its four arms. It was awarded to officers below the rank of major “for conspicuous gallantry when under fire.” I began to hypothesize that my father was a war hero who had died at an early age from terrible wounds. At least that would have explained his perpetual shouting as something that had been brought on by so much suffering.

My next piece of detective work came when I visited an antiques shop in Melbourne. The man behind the counter simply studied the medal, then offered me five pounds for it. I didn’t bother to explain why I wouldn’t have parted with my prize had he offered me five hundred pounds, but at least he was able to inform me that the only real medal dealer in Australia was a Mr. Frank Jennings, of Number 47 Mafeking Street, Sydney.

At that time I considered Sydney to be the other side of the globe, and I certainly couldn’t afford to make such a long journey on my tiny grant. So I had to wait patiently until the summer term when I applied to be scorer for the university cricket team. They turned me down on account of my sex. Women couldn’t really be expected to understand the game fully, it was explained to me by a youth who used to sit behind me in lectures so that he could copy my notes. This left me with no choice but to spend hours of practice on my ground strokes and almost as many on my overhead smash until I was selected for the ladies’ second tennis team. Not a major achievement but there was only one match on the calendar that interested me: Sydney (A).

On the morning we arrived in Sydney I went straight to Mafeking Street and was struck by how many young men who passed me on the street were in uniform. Mr. Jennings himself studied the medal with considerably more interest than the dealer from Melbourne had shown.

“It’s a miniature MC all right,” he told me, peering at my little prize through a magnifying glass. “It would have been worn on a dress uniform for guest nights in the regimental mess. These three initials engraved down the edge of one of the arms, barely discernible to the naked eye, ought to give us a clue as to who was awarded the decoration.”

I stared through Mr. Jennings’ magnifying glass at something I had never been aware of until then, but I could now clearly see the initials “G.F.T.”