Six weeks. That’s all I had with you. Forty-two days. Time we throw away carelessly, wishing the days away, to Christmas, to a holiday, to the end of, to the beginning of, to when we think we’ll be happy. But those precious weeks formed the rest of my life, the moments I had to breathe you in, to draw you deep into my heart, to have enough of you to sustain me forever.
If you asked me now what I was doing during six weeks in the summer last year, five years ago, a decade ago, I’d have to hazard a guess – Danny and I on a week’s holiday in the Isle of Wight? A trip to the garden centre? An afternoon in the park with my granddaughter?
But those six weeks in 1968. I remember every day. Or I think I do. The rational part of my brain knows that’s unlikely. But the emotional imprint on my heart is certain. You arrived at three in the morning on Thursday 13 June. I remember reaching midnight and being glad that you wouldn’t be a ‘Wednesday’s child, full of woe’. It still broke my heart that you’d be a Thursday’s child with ‘far to go’. Far away from me. My stomach twisted every time I thought about it. The nuns repeated the mantra, ‘A baby needs two parents. If you really love your baby, you’ll give him away. You’d be a bad mother. You’ll get over it; move on with your life. You can’t offer the baby what another family can.’
One nun, Sister Patricia, leaned over me when I was in labour, her lips tight and thin as though they lacked the elasticity to expand into a smile. ‘Your pain is God’s punishment for your sin.’
The rebellious bit of me wanted to burst out with, ‘My last baby was far more painful and she was born within a marriage.’ But not toeing the line is what had brought me here in the first place. And I’d promised my mother – trying to make amends for my disgrace – that I’d pretend to be young and unmarried, barely wise enough in the ways of the world to understand how I’d got pregnant in the first place. Bit late to be pulling the whole ‘I didn’t realise I could get pregnant standing up’ trick with a two-year-old daughter at home.
But I wasn’t going to give those nuns the satisfaction of seeing me squirm in pain. They didn’t know you were my second baby and I already knew the truth about childbirth. This time I wasn’t bumbling along expecting it to be ‘like bad period pain’ as my mother had assured me when Louise was born.
I forced myself not to think about Mum and how I’d let her down, news of this pregnancy following shortly after Dad had died, everything about her already frayed and leaden from the shock of losing him. But now wasn’t the moment to think about that. I had forever to sift through the folly that led me here. As the nuns – who’d clearly skipped the scriptures about forgiveness – shoved my feet into stirrups, I sang to myself, silently in my head, to distract me. I don’t know why I chose a hymn, ‘Amazing Grace’, when religion – if that was what this was – disgusted me. Still, those lovely words calmed me, eased your arrival into the world. As soon as you popped out, they tried to take you off to the nursery, but I made such a fuss, screaming and struggling, that they brought a Moses basket and let you sleep next to me.
Sister Patricia’s face screwed up like an old paper bag when she saw I’d won. ‘Don’t think you’re going to get special treatment. Tomorrow he goes to the night nursery.’
There was some tiny comfort in the fact that I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that my baby would never be going to the night nursery. The nuns’ need to enforce a rule would never match my need to keep you close. As soon as they’d gone, I picked you up and cuddled you. Really looked at you, trying to make sure I’d print your little face on my memory forever. The dimple in your chin. That perfect nose twitching with every breath. Your long lashes fanned out on your cheeks, still red and wrinkled as though you were a bit overcooked. Your eyes fluttering about underneath eyelids criss-crossed with tiny blue veins. They’d bandaged my breasts to stop my milk coming in, but I could feel them, heavy and full. I ripped the bandages off. That was one area where nobody, not even the mother who’d give you a much better life later on, could outdo me. Unlike Louise, who’d been a difficult baby to latch on, never quite getting the right position, you were soon sucking away, making little murmurs of satisfaction. Just for a moment, I could imagine sitting propped up with you on my pillows back home, Louise toddling about fetching your nappies, finding your dummy. Then I’d think about Danny, on the other side of the world, and imagine him walking through the door to discover me sitting there with a baby.
A baby that couldn’t possibly be his.
When Sister Patricia and her little posse of crows came to fetch you the next day to whisk you off to the nursery, I refused, tucking myself around you and holding her off as her bony fingers tried to claw you away. Eventually an older nun, Sister Domenica, ran in to see what was going on. She touched my arm, her fingers cool and gentle.
‘Let him go, Paula. It will be easier this way.’ The kindness in her voice almost robbed the fight within me.
I shivered despite the warm air blowing in from the garden. ‘I will give him up. I will. But let him stay with me until then. Just until then. I’m feeding him myself.’
She shook her head. ‘You’re making it much harder for yourself, child. Put him on a bottle.’ Sister Patricia stood behind her, her face bemused as though maternal love was an indulgence, a vanity.
I tensed, defiance coursing through me, anchoring my feet, feeling the muscles in my stomach protest.
Sister Domenica sighed. ‘If that’s what you want.’
Then, as quickly as she’d arrived, she turned on her heel, with a sharp, ‘Out you come,’ to the other nuns. And they never tried to take you away from me again.
Until that day.
Sometimes you’d sleep with your eyes half-open as though you knew you needed to be on guard, as though you knew already that I couldn’t be relied on, couldn’t be trusted to keep you safe. Every night I’d stay awake as long as I could, terrified to sleep in case you’d gone when I woke. I tried to formulate a plan to keep you, going round and round with every impossible option, counting down the weeks, then the days, closing my ears to the screams from the floor above of the other poor girls in labour.
I couldn’t ignore what was coming.
The day I had to sign a form consenting to the necessary vaccinations ‘whilst in the care of prospective adoptive parents… until the Adoption Order is granted’ nearly finished me off. I wouldn’t be there to hold you tight, to reassure you that the pain in your chubby little thigh was for your own good. I wouldn’t be there to press on the plaster, to cuddle you until you stopped crying.
I’d stare out of the window, my heart beating with dread, as almost every day, a different girl would walk to the office at the end of garden, head low over a bundle in a blanket. I’d watch and wait, knowing I didn’t want to see but unable to tear myself away. After ten minutes, sometimes twenty, never longer, the girl would reappear, arms empty. Some of the girls would rush away quickly, the sound of their footsteps echoing on the crazy paving, as though they were being chased. Some would emerge head down, stumbling back towards the home, with the unsteady gait of a drunk. Others walked head high, dry-eyed, a tightly laced corset of numbness holding them in.
Whoever said time goes more quickly as you get older was wrong. I was twenty-two then and those six weeks raced by, a shoal of fish in the shadow of a shark. In comparison, the forty-five years since then have scraped along, out of kilter like a buckled bicycle wheel. I’m sixty-seven today and I don’t feel like celebrating. It’s just another birthday without you.
I still miss you, little one.
The day before I gave you up, my mother came to visit for the first time. I hadn’t expected to see her until I returned home to collect Louise. She’d been looking after her in my absence. Or, as it felt like to me, my banishment, sent away before anyone spotted the bump, first to hide at Mum’s sister’s, my Aunt Margaret’s in Brighton, then to the hell that was the Mother and Baby home in London.
I tried to imagine Mum’s face when she set eyes upon you for the first time: she couldn’t help but love you like I did. I’d dressed you in a little white suit, with a knitted jacket I’d made during the afternoons when I’d finished all my chores. Your eyes were alert, flicking about, making sense of your surroundings.
Or maybe you were just watchful, sensing that no good was heading your way. You would be intelligent, strong and capable, I was sure of that. I carried you down the corridor, stopping to commiserate with the girl who was on her hands and knees scrubbing the floor. That had been my job before I gave birth. Her back would be killing her with the effort of keeping her balance with the weight of her bump hanging down. I scanned the corridor for any sign of the nuns milling about, then I offered her my free hand. ‘Here, stand up for a minute and stretch your back. You’ll find it helps.’
I pulled her up. She had the brightest ginger hair I’d ever seen. ‘A proper carrot top’, my mother would have said. Her head was a mass of tight corkscrews that stood out at jaunty angles. I bet the nuns picked on her. Hair that didn’t look repentant would be reason enough. For a second, though, I was jealous of her. Her baby would most likely have ginger hair, which would easily be spotted in a crowd, whereas I’d be doomed to scanning the population for dark-haired males forever more. Would I even recognise you if you were standing next to me in five years’ time, let alone twenty?
She stood up, pressing her hands into the small of her back. ‘Those bloody nuns are bitches, aren’t they? I’d like to see them down on their knees with their backsides in the air scrubbing these floors,’ she said, in a voice that was far too loud, reverberating down the hallway.
‘Shhhh. You’ll get us in trouble.’
She laughed; a big throaty cackle. ‘What, more trouble than we’re in already? I can’t imagine what that would look like. You from round here?’
I shook my head. ‘South coast.’ I glanced round guiltily. We weren’t supposed to exchange personal information.
‘Don’t tell me, Plymouth? Portsmouth?’
‘Portsmouth,’ I whispered.
‘Me too. Every other girl in here is from somewhere with a naval base. Them sailors have obviously been having a right old time on their leave. Think there’s been a rush of women “visiting their cousins”.’
Despite worrying a nun would come flapping round the corner and send me off to the laundry as a punishment for daring to laugh, I wanted to hug this girl and cling to her, the only one I’d met so far who wasn’t slinking about looking as though she was braced for a blow.
I smiled, her bravado rubbing off on me. ‘I’m “helping my aunt with a bad back”. I’ll let you know what trouble looks like. My mum’s downstairs.’
Her smile faded a little. ‘My mum can’t visit. My dad won’t let her.’
There was only one meagre upside to my dad dropping dead from a heart attack the previous year. I hadn’t had to witness his disappointment that the daughter he’d handed to Danny on that chilly March day three years earlier – ‘You take care of her, she’s very special’ – had done what no wife should ever do.
I shifted you in my arms. Most of all I’d let you down, allowed everyone to see you as a burden, an inconvenience to be hidden away, to lie about, to dismiss. I’d probably never get the chance to explain, but I hoped you were absorbing my love into every cell of your little body, storing it up for sustenance in later life.
‘What’s your name, anyway? I’m Elizabeth. Lizzy.’
I didn’t know and didn’t ask if that was her real name. ‘Paula. Have you got long?’ I asked, nodding at her swollen belly.
‘Not quite sure when I fell pregnant. Might be two weeks to go, might be another month. Haven’t exactly spelt it out to the sisters but it wasn’t a one-off. Never been able to resist a uniform.’
I had to admire her spirit. Half the girls in here acted like it had been an immaculate conception. She was so matter-of-fact, as though there was a bit of her that regretted falling pregnant so soon, before she’d had chance to really enjoy herself. I still felt ashamed of how I’d ended up in here, even though clearly there wasn’t much point in pretending I hadn’t had sex.
She leaned over and peered at you. ‘Let’s have a proper look at him, then. Handsome boy. He’s got eyes just like yours.’
I took so much comfort in that. That you’d have a part of me no one would ever be able to change. That no matter how you grew, what they clothed you in, how they cut your hair, there’d be one bit of your mother you’d carry with you forever.
Lizzy lowered her voice. ‘It’s not today for you, is it?’
I shook my head, the word tomorrow too big, too real, too terrifying to squeeze out. The sound of a nun’s sandal smacking along the corridor signalled the end of our conversation before I had to force out an answer.
I walked on, looking round to see Lizzy stick her tongue out behind the nun’s back. Louis Armstrong’s ‘What a Wonderful World’ was playing in the distance. My brain tried to take refuge in the thought that whoever had switched on the radio would be for the high jump. But a greater, weightier hope obliterated that superficial sanctuary: maybe, just maybe, my mother had turned up to tell me that she’d found a solution; that she couldn’t bear to see her grandson live his life with complete strangers. But even in my wildest, most optimistic imaginings I couldn’t come up with a single scenario that would mean my husband wouldn’t have to know what I’d done. My heart jolted as I imagined the hurt on Danny’s face, grappling to understand why I’d already broken my vows. I couldn’t disagree with my mother when I’d steeled myself to tell her my ‘happy’ news: ‘It’s the wives who are supposed to worry about what their husbands are up to, not the other way round.’
For a minute, the thought of losing Danny made me pause, clinging onto the banister until the fear passed. My mother wouldn’t hear of me telling him the truth. ‘Don’t throw away your future. Do it for Louise, if not for yourself. This is the best way, the only way. Even a good man like Danny isn’t going to take on some other man’s child. Not in these circumstances. You owe it to the daughter you’ve already got to put this behind you and never breathe a word to anyone. I can’t afford to keep you and Louise if he puts you on the streets, not now your dad’s gone.’
I knew she was right. But the price of keeping silent was so unbearably high.
Sister Patricia appeared at the bottom of the oak staircase, a vulture gorging on other people’s tragedies. ‘Let’s hope your mother can see sense.’
You curled your hand tightly around my little finger. A boy with great instincts. I pushed past Sister Patricia and into the reception room, feeling the drop in temperature in that gloomy space, cold even on a sunny July day. I pulled you closer to me as I shivered in my thin summer dress, one I’d worn pre-pregnancy. My appetite had gone and you were such a hungry baby. The other girls were jealous that the weight had already dropped off me. ‘What’s your secret then, Paula? You got some clever diet pills?’
The soreness every time you clamped your little mouth onto my breasts was almost a source of joy. I loved feeding you, those moments when no one could tell me I needed to be doing something else, when it was just you and me, cocooned together. I’d cried when the nuns forced me to put you on a bottle, ten days before you were leaving me. ‘You’ve got to get him ready for his new life. His mother needs to be able to feed him on the way home.’ I couldn’t imagine what she’d look like, who she’d be.
I was your mother.
My own mother sat in a brown leather armchair, a thin shaft of sunshine settling on the purple and pink squares of her blouse, the only bit of colour in the room among the sludgy paintings of Jesus on the cross and wooden crucifixes. My eyes scanned her face as though peering at a portrait of a distant ancestor, trying to identify family traits. Widowhood and a wayward daughter had robbed her of her softness, of her plump face that had always held the promise of welcome, of refuge. Everything about her was pinched and rigid, a framework to exist in rather than a life to embrace.
She gave a little cry and jumped to her feet, locking her hands to her side in case they betrayed her by reaching out for you. Nothing like the memory I had of Mum and Dad jostling through the ward door to get the first glimpse of Louise in the hospital, all jolly banter and ‘she’s got my chin’ jokes. Mum’s demeanour today couldn’t have been further from the industrial-scale knitting of shawls and bootees that accompanied my first pregnancy.
She walked towards me. ‘Susie,’ she said, as though her throat was clogged with emotion she dared not set free. It was so odd hearing my real name again after all this time answering to ‘Paula’. I felt as though she was speaking to someone else. Which she was. I’d never just be Susie, Louise’s mum, Danny’s wife again. Her hands jerked upwards, then fell back down. I forced myself to remember that she was not the enemy, just a woman between a rock and a hard place who would, in other circumstances, have sung you lullabies, soothed you when no one else could, paraded you about the neighbourhood for all to see and admire.
Not secreted us away here.
She studied your face for ages, her lips twitching, trying to put her words in the right order.
‘Louise is missing you.’
I nodded. My heart was so full of grief for you, I could barely recall what it felt like to love a child without a time limit. You had eighteen hours and thirteen minutes left of me. Louise still had a lifetime.
Mum rushed to fill the silence. ‘I got Aunt Margaret to send all the letters you’d written to Danny. One about every week or so, like you said. These are the ones you’ve had back.’ She unclasped her handbag and drew out a sheaf of blue airmail letters, with their Singapore postmarks. I dreaded reading that he was returning early, that I’d have no time to adjust to my old life
‘You hang onto them, Mum. I’ll read them when I get home.’
In less than twenty-four hours, I’d be giving you away forever. I had the rest of my life to work through the madness of trying to conceal another man’s baby from my husband.
Mum tucked a piece of hair under her headscarf. ‘Have you still got your bus and train fares?’
‘Yes.’ It seemed impossible that tomorrow I’d pack the few belongings I had, walk out of those big iron gates, then catch the bus to Victoria for the train back to Portsmouth, as though I’d done nothing more significant than gone on a day trip to the Big Smoke.
‘Don’t forget I’ve told everyone you’ve been giving my sister a hand to run her greengrocer’s in Brighton while she’s had a bad back. Even Eileen next door thinks you’re wonderful for helping out.’ Mum nearly smiled as though she believed her own story.
Then she sat up straight, the words appearing to drain out of her.
Nothing like the mother of the bride, twittering with excitement that her daughter was marrying a petty officer in the navy, patting Danny’s uniform and saying, ‘Doesn’t he look smart?’ over and over again. I was only bloody nineteen. My whole family made it sound as though the plainest girl in the whole of the British Isles had been sitting gathering a thick layer of dust until someone way better than I should have expected had rescued me. Aunt Margaret was the worst: ‘Isn’t our Susie lucky marrying such a handsome chap? And moving straight into a house of her own. Me and Bert rented for years till we had our own place. Hope she’s going to make a good wife. Men like him don’t come along every day.’
I doubted that Danny considered himself lucky, with both his parents dying before he was sixteen, even if he did end up with his own house. Thankfully Dad raised his eyebrows and said in my ear, ‘He’s the lucky one, love. If he doesn’t look after you, I’ll be after him with my shotgun.’
I’d laughed and said, ‘You haven’t got a shotgun.’
He’d looked me straight in the eye and said, ‘Not yet, I haven’t. Let’s hope I don’t need one.’ He’d winked. But there was something comforting about knowing that, at least to my father, the most important person was still me.
Aunt Margaret had looked as if the milk had curdled in her tea every morning I was staying with her. As my bump grew, she tutted every time she looked at it until I barely left my room, the little click of her tongue searing another layer of shame into me. But in the end, I had to be grateful; she’d helped me out.
A bell rang. One of the many. So much to say. But none of it would be any use.
Mum shifted in her seat, her eyes pleading for understanding. ‘If Danny throws you out, I couldn’t afford to keep you, Susie. Not with Louise as well. It’s been enough of a struggle since your dad died. And most of my savings went on paying for your place here, away from Portsmouth…’ Her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘I had to bribe that social worker to sort somewhere, to say you weren’t married.’
Her eyes glistened.
‘Danny’s a good man, a good provider. He doesn’t need to know anything of this.’
‘I know that, Mum. I love him.’ The truth of those three words would have ripped me apart if I’d had any room left for grieving.
She paused, not quite meeting my eye.
‘You didn’t tell the baby’s father, did you?’
‘What do you think? I’m not completely stupid.’
Her face sagged with relief.
‘There’s only you, me and Margaret that knows. You need to let go of this little one now. You don’t want to find yourself all washed up with two babies on your own. You’ve got to think of Louise. She’s done nothing wrong.’
I couldn’t imagine going home, picking her up, smelling that sweet scent of her soft skin. My baby, but not this baby. Yet I’d be there tomorrow. Without the angles of you in my arms, the comforting pad of your bottom in the crook of my elbow, your wispy hair soft against my arm. Maybe holding Louise would fill the space left by you. I didn’t want to insult you by hoping that was possible.
Mum stood to leave. She couldn’t help but tickle you under the chin. You gripped her finger and her eyes filled.
I held my breath, still hoping for a miracle that would allow me to keep you. Family was everything to Mum.
‘It’s for the best, Susie. It gives him a chance at a better life. Breaks my heart too, you know.’
I hugged you to me and walked out. I surprised Sister Patricia who was hovering outside the door. Her eyes narrowed, giving her the appearance of a sly cat, the sort that would purr loudly while preparing to claw your hand to shreds. ‘Everything all right, Paula? Cheer up. Once you leave here, you can forget this ever happened.’
I stalked past her without even stopping to respond.
Eighteen hours, six minutes.
I didn’t want to forget how much I loved you.
I couldn’t face going to meet Danny’s ship, jostling among all the other wives, craning for the first glimpse of his dark hair and kind face. I sent a message with one of my friends that Louise was ill and I’d see him back at the house. Normally, I’d have rushed to the dockyard to be right at the front, jittery with impatience, in a hurry to get home, to separate him from his mates, the shouts of ‘See you later, Danny boy!’, the camaraderie that had replaced us, his little family, in the fifteen months he’d been away. I’d be longing for the time when he’d whisk me round the living room singing along to Engelbert Humperdinck, Tom Jones and The Beach Boys. Some of the wives half-dreaded their husbands’ return, resenting the curbs on their freedom. Others moaned about the extra work – ‘Jesus, all that having to cook a proper dinner every night – no more nipping out to the chippy – and that’s before he starts trying to get his leg over!’
But I usually loved Danny coming home and getting to know him all over again. We’d dance round each other, a bit shy, to begin with. He wasn’t a man to chase me up the stairs and start ripping my blouse off. Last time he’d been home, when Louise had finally flaked out, exhausted by Danny swooping her up into the air and swinging her round, he’d put out a hand to me: ‘Will you run me a bath while I get changed?’ We both knew that we’d end up in bed. Of course we would. We were married and young. But I still felt awkward, oddly nervous of him seeing me naked, of disappointing him, of not living up to the love and longing in his letters: ‘Dragging myself through these last few weeks. Can’t believe how slowly the time is going. Think about you all the time.’ In the end, he’d made me get into the bath with him, soaping my back, running his hands over every inch of my skin until the miles and months between us shrank back down into something manageable. And within a few days, it was as though he’d never been away.
How simple that seemed now. Of course I’d always worried whether he’d still find me attractive, whether I’d match the expectations he’d held in his mind all the time he’d been at sea. Whether he’d feel bored with just us for company, without the banter on the ship, the boisterous camaraderie to carry him through the days. Fretted that I wouldn’t make the most of the time he was home, anxious about how soon he would be leaving again. Those worries seemed miniscule now compared with whether he’d notice I’d had a baby while he was sailing the South China Sea.
Now he’d be home in a few hours, the plan I’d hatched with Mum to keep the baby a secret suddenly seemed insane. Ever since ‘I Love You Because You Understand Me’ had played at the dance hall and Danny had put his hand out to me – ‘Will you do me the honour?’ – it had become our anthem. We did understand each other. We didn’t need to lie. I wasn’t one of those wives who splurged the housekeeping on a new blouse then waved away questions with the words, ‘This old thing, I’ve had it ages.’ I wrote to Danny and told him when I’d been out with my friends.
He’d write back: ‘Glad you’re not too lonely. Must admit to being a bit jealous though. Don’t let any other men turn your head… You and Louise are my life!’
I’d smiled when I read that.
I danced with other men when they asked but never more than twice, three times at a push if they were really good on their feet. I hated sitting out any song with a rhythm. Persistent admirers got frustrated. ‘How can you say you don’t feel like dancing? You can’t keep your hands and feet still.’ But even if they persuaded me, I never looked at any of them the way I looked at Danny.
When he’d arrived back in Portsmouth in June 1967 after several weeks in Scotland at the end of his last commission, Louise was fourteen months old and had learnt to say, ‘Dada’, to Danny’s great delight. With a month of glorious leave stretching ahead of us, we’d soon got back into our rhythm of going dancing every Saturday night, leaving my parents to babysit. Dad had waved us out of the door, ‘Go and enjoy yourselves, make the most of being young.’ I felt like the golden couple on the block when Danny twirled me around to ‘A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You’, his feet light, my skirt swirling. The very first Saturday we’d gone out, the band had asked for volunteers to sing the chorus to ‘What Becomes of the Broken Hearted?’ on stage.
‘Only people who can sing, please, we don’t want to empty the hall.’
Danny had nudged me. ‘Go on, Susie.’
I resisted, hovering between plucking up the courage and sitting down at the side of the hall, but Danny pushed me to the front. The group’s lead singer, Rob, knelt down on the edge of the stage and thrust the microphone at me. ‘What’s your name? And you reckon you can sing? Shall we try her?’ A big roar went up. He sang the opening lyrics, then held the mic to me. When I’d sung the next couple of lines, he sat back on his hee. . .
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