Street Kid: One Child’s Desperate Fight for Survival. Judy Westwater

me. Now, as the nun led me through the polished hall, I wondered if I was going to be given bread and jam again. Instead, I was put in a large room and told to stay there and play. I didn’t understand what I was meant to do: I’d never been told to play before. I wanted to go back to the shop and hide under my table in the kitchen. Instead, I crawled into a gap between a bookcase and a piano and hid away there.

      It wasn’t long before a bell rang. The bell had always been my signal to return to the yard so I jumped up, ready to flee. But before I could do so, the young nun came back.

      I tried to wriggle past her, but she took me firmly by the hand.

      ‘You’re to stay here now, Judith. At the orphanage.’

      The nun then led me firmly by the hand down a long corridor to a huge echoey hall. It was full of children, all making their way to long tables laid with cutlery and glasses, jugs of water, and plates of bread. I was taken to a seat at one of the tables. There was another nun at the head of the table standing behind her chair, hands clasped in front of her. I didn’t know what I was meant to do, so I sat down. Seeing the plate of bread, and being used to scavenging for any food I could lay my hands on, I reached over and snatched a slice, hastily stuffing it into my mouth.

      I felt a hand yank me up by the back of my collar. ‘That is not how you behave here, Judith.’ The nun looked at me, sternly. ‘And the rest of you, be quiet.’ At that, all heads ducked down, eyes lowered.

      I stood up, instinctively realizing that I’d better copy the other children. Then a much older nun spoke from the table at the top of the room.

      ‘For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful.’

      There was a murmured ‘Amen’ before everyone drew back their chairs and sat down. I did the same. Some older girls then brought bowls of stew and potatoes to the tables. They ladled it onto plates and I waited until the nun at the head of my table raised her fork to her mouth before I dared move. I had never used cutlery before so I dug in with my fingers, stuffing the stew and potatoes in my mouth. The other children stared.

      ‘Judith, you will not behave like that here,’ she said. ‘It’s certainly not the way to show our Lord how grateful you are.’

      I didn’t know what a lord was, or what grateful meant.

      After dinner, I was taken to the nursery by the nun who’d brought me back from the shop. The room was white and bare except for twenty cots standing against the walls. She took me over to one of them.

      ‘That’s your bed, Judith.’ She handed me a nighty. ‘Now, get undressed.’

      I did as I was told and the nun took my clothes away and brought me some others from a cupboard at the end of the room, putting them on the chair beside my cot. She waited while I got under the covers and then left the room without a word. I hunkered down so that only the top of my head showed above the covers. I wrapped my own arms around me for comfort, imagining they were Mary’s, and my breathing slowly steadied until finally I fell asleep.

      The next morning, the nun came in at first light and I got dressed with the others while she put the little kids on their potties, five of them in a row. I was confused by the clothes the nun had put out for me, having no idea in what order to put them on. There was a huge pair of woolly pants with a pocket in the front, then something that was a bit like a vest with buttons. I watched another girl and copied her, putting a checked blouse on top of that, followed by a blue pinafore.

      The rest of the day seemed to pass in a blur of bells and corridors, and nuns giving me instructions that I couldn’t understand. I didn’t know how to play with other kids and felt uncomfortable being near them. I was little more than a wild animal, used to fending for myself alone, and the orphanage was a very frightening place to me. Here, you weren’t allowed to act alone; you were always part of a large group of children. The nuns only knew how to herd the flock, and shepherding was at the very core of their belief system. From the first, I was both a threat and a challenge to them. A feral, alert-eyed, lone wolf, snatching food and hiding away.

      In the playroom, the nun couldn’t work out why I crouched in the corner alone all the time and was frustrated that I wasn’t playing with the other kids. She kept dragging me out of my hole, saying, ‘Will you sit down and play.’ But I didn’t understand what she was saying. I only knew how to scurry and scavenge, and hide from strangers in my hole.

      After supper in the evening, three of the older girls took us to the washrooms. We all got undressed and stood there naked and shivering before being lifted into an enormous bath. I was almost panting with fear at being handled by the girls and having to sit naked with five other children and fought like a wildcat, trying to get away. I couldn’t see over the sides of the bath at all. When one of the big girls got a flannel, rubbed it on a giant green block of soap, and started to scrub me all over I panicked when the soap got in my eyes and mouth.

      The nun’s at St Josephs were an order of Franciscan missionaries who staunchly upheld their vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. They believed they were setting us on the divine path and controlling our baser instincts when they punished us. They didn’t have any understanding of the psychological trauma feral children face, and so, to them, my behaviour was seen as deliberate disobedience; my habitual silence, insolence; and my fierce independence, obstinacy.

      In the years immediately after the war, orphanages were spilling over with children and the nuns were needed at home to look after them. Many no doubt felt bitter that their dreams of travelling to a distant land as missionaries hadn’t come to anything, and perhaps that made them act more harshly towards us.

      About five months after I’d arrived at St Joseph’s, I was moved out of the nursery. By now I was used to my cot and the playroom and moving into the Juniors was a whole new challenge. We had to go to school and attend chapel three times a day, and there was a tough set of routines to learn.

      It was an icy January day, four months before my fifth birthday, when I was first taken up to the girl’s dormitory. I wasn’t prepared for the sheer scale of the room. There had been only twenty of us in the nursery, but this room must have had at least a hundred beds. Each was just a chair apart from the next, and instead of the white eiderdowns we’d had in the nursery there were tough wool blankets. On closer inspection, I realized that my blanket was in fact an army greatcoat. There were no toys on the beds, nothing at all to distinguish one from the other. Further along, some of the beds had curtains round them. I later discovered that these were for the older girls. At the far end of the room was the ‘cell’ where the nun on duty slept.

      That first night I felt small and lonely under my army greatcoat. I could hear the little blonde girl in the next bed crying. I lay there looking at the stars – tiny pinpricks of twinkling light in friendly little groups – through the window and wondered if I belonged up there in the sky with them, if they were my real family, and if they were watching over me. Then my thoughts turned to my mum and sisters and I wished I had Mary and Dora here beside me, one on each side, holding me safe.

      When morning came, I didn’t feel a whole lot better. From the moment I opened my eyes, it was a mad rush and, as hard as I tried, I couldn’t keep up with the others. First there was chapel, then breakfast and chores. After that, everyone gathered in the hall and started lining up in a crocodile. Each girl was with a partner. I stood on my own, awkwardly, panicking slightly. Then Sister Cecilia came over.

      ‘Don’t just stand there, my girl, you’re holding everybody up.’ She beckoned to one of the other girls. ‘Mary, come over here and line up beside Judith.’ The girl came over to stand next to me. She waited until the last minute before putting her hand in mine. I didn’t like having to stand with her either; I always felt much safer on my own.

      Out in the street, we walked past the alleyway that led to the yard in which I’d spent so many long days. I felt almost homesick for it now.

      ‘Hey, scaredy-cat!’ It was the girl behind me. Oh no, she means me. I didn’t turn round.

      A foot deliberately trod down the back of my sandal so that I tripped forward.