‘What does it all mean?’ Jessica asks Moishe and Runche. She is holding onto Mary’s hand and they are seated on a park bench munching corned beef sandwiches and drinking lemonade. Richard Runche looks longingly at the pub across the street. He hasn’t had a drink for almost two years now, yet what he refers to as the ‘clarion call of claret’ still sounds cleanly and clearly in his ears.
Moishe grins, nodding towards Runche. ‘The old man has caught them flat-footed. They had thought to argue the case on a point of law, to stonewall it.’ ‘Stonewall?’ Mary asks.
‘Whatever we say, whatever we prove, they would point to the law of the land. Keep to the one point, that the law allows them to remove mixed-blood children from their families for their own good without necessarily having to prove anything, that’s stonewalling,’ Moishe says.
‘And now?’ Jessica asks.
‘Well, we’re going on an issue of incompetence — an inability, if you like, to carry out the law. If the law allows that it may take mixed-blood children from their parents the assumption must be that it is for the ultimate good of the children.
That the children are better off than they might be if left with their own parents.
We have set out to prove that this is not the case, and the suspected murder of Millie Carter and the implication that the police inquiry was plainly aborted has, well .. .’ Moishe tries to think of a suitable word, ‘set the cat among the pigeons.’
‘But can we do that? I mean, with Millie Carter? You heard what Mr Codlington said — what’s it got to do with Mary’s kids?’
Runche grins. ‘Get away with it? I don’t know, my dear. It depends very much on the judge. It is clear that there is a case for a miscarriage of justice with regard to Millie Carter, but whether it can be married to our case remains to be seen. We are still in a most tenuous situation. Fraught, most fraught.’
The court is reconvened and the judge turns to Richard Runche KC. ‘The counsel for Mrs Mary Simpson will explain more clearly why he believes the plaintiff’s children are placed in a situation which is likely to endanger their lives. He must do so to my satisfaction or I shall discontinue this line of questioning, which I should point out remains only just within the parameters of this case.’
Knowing himself to be on a warning, Runche decides to take a slightly different tack and not to pursue the Millie Carter murder any further by calling Mrs Roberts to the witness stand. He begins slowly.
‘Your Honour, how strong yet fragile is the human condition. We can take starvation and hardship and all manner of physical pain and we may still recover, but if it is done to our heads and our hearts, that cannot be repaired. If we are loved we can endure. If we are hated we will soon perish in spirit. It is when we are young that the love will nourish and the hate will most effectively destroy.
‘Man’s greatest wickedness is the abuse and malevolent manipulation of the young, innocent mind. The child, in particular the orphan or institutionalised child, has no means at its disposal to resist, nor does it possess sufficient maturity to question the authority or to discover the truth for itself. Children are in no position to argue, they have no one of equal status to contradict the authority of the voices railed against them, and they are subject to arbitrary punishment if they show the slightest resistance to the lies and half-truths inculcated in their tender young minds. These children are the true victims of our white supremacist society. Millie Carter is believed to have shouted out, “Me mother’s a blackfella and she loves me!” And for this, for this cry in the wilderness, this child crying out in pain, she was lashed to a bell-post and flogged and left all night to be found dead in the morning. For God’s sake!
‘Do we honestly believe that children can recover from such an experience? That every child in that Girls’ Home will not believe that the same could happen to them? That they won’t be filled with terror so that their minds are forever numbed? Your Honour, my client, Mrs Simpson, loves her children and wishes them to grow up as decent and caring human beings. The Aborigines’ Protection Board has placed them in a position of terror and anxiety where they believe their very lives are threatened.
‘No democratic government, no matter how callous, can stand by and allow this to happen, to condone the control of children through fear, no matter how rigorously the statutes which control the right to steal children from their mothers are written into the law of the land.
‘As long as there are good men and women on this earth, as long as freedom prevails in our land, we will be judged on how we regard our children. How we treat those who cannot defend themselves. A child is not a half-caste, or a quadroon or an octoroon, or white or black, it is a small heart that can be made to trust and love or one that can be made to beat in terror and fear. Colour or breed or race doesn’t change this. We do. We control this love or we create the fear.
‘i ask this court to release my client’s children from this bondage of terror. Your Honour, I don’t believe it is necessary to bring yet another witness to the stand to prove what I believe has already been proved. The authority entrusted by the government to undertake the task of caring for half-caste children is patently unable to adequately undertake for their welfare.’ Runche pauses and looks about him. ‘I rest my case, Your Honour.’
The judge turns to Francis Codlington. ‘I now ask the counsel for the defence to make its reply.’
Codlington paces the court grim-faced, then he looks up. ‘Your Honour, what a shame that my learned colleague did not make his concluding speech in front of a jury. Why, I confess myself almost in tears, such mawkish sentimentality is wasted on so few of us. I do not propose to bring any witnesses into this court. I do not even propose to cross-question those witnesses my learned colleague has produced in an attempt to confuse the matter in hand with quite another. However, the law of this land remains inviolable, aloof from the cheapening of emotions. It is the will of the majority of the people and it is the wise counsel of the elders of our land — those men who have been chosen by us to carry out our wishes.
I shall put my trust in it and only it.’
Codlington pauses. ‘I am appalled by my learned colleague’s imputation that it is the wish of our people to persecute the children of this glorious land, whether they be white, black or brindle. It is precisely because we care about our children that we do not wish them to be harmed by an environment of drunkenness, malnutrition, sexual and physical abuse. The law will not tolerate this happening to our children regardless of their colour.
‘Now, it is common knowledge that for the most part the half-caste children of this land live in squalor, with disease and malnutrition their constant companions. Their parents do not have the sensibilities the white race enjoy and are quite devoid of responsibility. If we allow their children to come under their influence we will end with a race of wild people who put us all in danger. The half-breed has a dozen children to the single child of the full-blood and the handful of children in a white family. They simply breed like flies without regard for how they will feed the fruit of their pernicious loins. If we allow them to remain on the outskirts of society, on the fringes of our towns and cities, we will soon be overrun by this tide of human vermin. We must find a solution and this we have done.
‘The solution is a fair and honest one — it is even a generous one. We will take their children, these misbegotten children, and assimilate them into the white society. In this way we will give them every opportunity to succeed in life and we will have the satisfaction of knowing that they have been well fed, housed and educated at our expense in the hope that they will adopt Christian ways and live decent and honest lives. That they will marry white men and women and, in the long run, breed a race of people as white as any on God’s glorious earth.
‘Do we honestly believe that we can afford the process of selecting these children by giving their mothers and fathers — that is, if the father may even be found — the benefit of the doubt? What shall we do — examine the parents and if they obtain a pass-mark allow them to keep their children? It is far better to spread a wide net and to gather in a few innocents while bagging a majority of the guilty. The law is not infallible, it will make mistakes, but are they not affordable in the light of the splendid consequences planned for the mixed-blood children of this land?’
Codlington turns to Justice Blackall. ‘Your Honour, I rest my case and put my trust in the laws of this land. They have made the British people the greatest on earth and it is a marvel that we are prepared to share the bounty of our civilisation with people of a lesser one so that their children might benefit.’
Codlington seems well pleased with himself. Runche has not interrupted with a host of pernicious objections so that the flow of his oratory and, he tells himself, his damned fine common sense have been allowed to prevail. The day in court, which on several occasions looked blighted and where he has been wrong-footed by a man whose reputation as a drunk is only slightly less notorious than his reputation for incompetence, has been rescued by his own acuity. Codlington believes that, by relying on the solid foundations of the law and his belief and trust in the system, he has once again got himself out of the deep water into the murmuring shallows.
Justice Blackall gives notice that he will give his verdict at half past four and retires to his chambers.
Jessica is a bundle of nerves and Mary remains silent. There is too much resting on the outcome for her even to hope and she sits on the park bench outside the courthouse in a state of numbness.
Moishe wonders if they have got it all wrong. Maybe they should have fought the case along similar lines to the magistrate’s hearing at Narrandera, he worries. The logic he had used there was irrefutable and he had felt at the time that had the magistrate possessed the power to release Mary’s children he would have done so. Codlington’s stonewalling had been impressive and Moishe knows that it was an accurate summation of the prevailing opinion of white Australians. Had they taken a wrong turn in trying to prove that the government institution, with the power of the law behind it, was abusing its power? Governments are not prone to censure their own instrumentalities, he knows only too well, and especially if the work of those instrumentalities is approved by a majority of the people.
Runche for his part feels weary and he would sell his soul for a bottle of claret. He has been preoccupied with the case for nearly two years and he has lost the vanity that makes a barrister believe he can win against the odds. It has only been Jessica’s burning desire for justice that has kept him going. He’s always known that they’d only get one chance, that they would make history or disappear entirely. Runche now tells himself that David very seldom triumphs against Goliath and that they’ve probably used the wrong tactic — that they should have brought the case of Millie Carter to trial and by winning it perhaps exposed the Aborigines’ Protection Board more effectively and thereafter petitioned for a change in the law. How tired he is, how weary of it all — his bones ache, his mind is empty and he thinks only of the oblivion promised in a bottle of cheap claret.