The Delinquents by Criena Rohan Page A

bitterly, and Lola had been dressed like a fashion plate and acting as though the world were at her feet. She had had an American on a Pioneer boat to look after her then, and her mother had not stopped her going. She had merely said:
    ‘I just don’t seem to succeed with you however I try; but if you strike trouble wire for money to come home.’
    But her mother had told the Welfare that she was uncontrollable and that she should be put in a home for twelve months—it would give her a chance to learn an interesting trade. Without her mother’s betrayal she would probably only have got three months for a first vag. She had her mother to thank for an extra nine months’ claustrophobic hell while every fibre of her body and soul cried out for the freedom of the streets.
    The vocational guidance officer had asked her would she like to take up dressmaking, or a commercial course, or nursing or hairdressing or weaving. Lola had said she would like to learn the guitar and the vocational guidance officer had given her a long spiel about how she should try to break away from the rock and roll crowd, and Lola had not listened. She decided he was a fool and she was right. Finally, to pacify him, she took to thumping away dispiritedly at a typewriter.
    ‘It may come in handy some day,’ she told the girl in the next seat. ‘When I’m writing my book: “Bastards I have known.” ’
    ‘What’s it going to be about—men?’
    ‘Men and social workers.’
    ‘Shit! Some bastardry,’ said the girl in the next seat.
    And then in January came the riot. It was a famous riot, long remembered in the annals of delinquency, and Lola never forgot it in all her life. For when the glorious hysteria and violence was over, and the laundry windows were broken and the bedding burned in dormitory A, and the Matron had had her false teeth smashed by big Daff from the ’Gabba, and the police had been called in and order almost restored, Lola found she was lying on a strip of torn lawn, and she had a black eye and a broken wrist and she was having a very messy miscarriage. Big Daff sat down beside her, exhausted, and took her head in her lap.
    ‘Shit! you’re a mess, kid,’ she said. ‘You can go. I’ll give you that; but you have to spot too much weight. You’re too titchy to blue on.’
    ‘What happens now?’ whispered Lola and then fainted clean away.
    ‘Now,’ answered Daff, watching a party of policewomen and attendants approach, ‘Now we pay very dearly for Horrorhead’s false tats. Look what you’ve done to my friend,’ she told the policewomen. ‘You frigging great animals.’
    That was the end of all efforts to teach Lola Lovell a useful trade. They sent her to a convalescent home and patched her up, and then she came back to Jacaranda Flats and sat around dazed and shocked for a few months more. They let her out when she had done nine months because they were sorry for her and because they thought she was hopeless anyway. She was paroled in the care of the famous Mrs. Westbury. The newspapers called her Auntie Westbury, ‘the motherly little lady who has been Auntie to two generations of delinquent girls…’
    ‘I always have my girls to live with me,’ she told reporters regularly. ‘Half the battle is won if you can just show those poor street rambling kids how much better a life a woman can have right in her own home, and how happy you can be instead of chasing out after cheap thrills around the milk bars and places like that.’
    She was a beaming little lady with a large motherly bosom and a face like a pretty doll. She welcomed Lola with high tea and a terrifying array of cakes (all home-made by Auntie Westbury’s own little plump hands) and the best painted china and many lace d’oyleys.
    ‘They sent me a full report, dear,’ she told Lola. ‘I have it right here.’ She patted her pocket and gave Lola a look like a little bright-eyed bird who is being triumphant over a particularly succulent worm.