by Mark Seaman
A Corner of My Heart
Mark Seaman
First published in Great Britain in 2017 by
The Book Guild Ltd
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Copyright © 2017 Mark Seaman
The right of Mark Seaman to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
This work is entirely fictitious and bears no resemblance to any persons living or dead.
ISBN 978 1912362 738
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
For Sandra. Thank you
Contents
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty–One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
About the Author
One
I wrote to my mother a few days ago. I wasn’t going to. I thought I’d come to terms with being adopted and in not wanting to know anything about her or the circumstances of my birth. After all it was she who gave me away, abandoned me at seven weeks old. What could I have done at such a young age that was so awful and would cause her to want to get rid of me like that? And, if I was the result of an unplanned accident then why carry me to full term in the first place? Why hadn’t she had an abortion and simply erased me from her life without bringing another unwanted child into the world? Why bother going through the whole experience of pregnancy, coupled with the physical ordeal of giving birth, if her intention was to let me go almost as soon as I arrived?
I’d never really allowed myself the time to think about these questions in the past, or seek answers to them, especially having been so thoroughly loved and cared for over the years by James and Carol. They’d told me I was adopted when I was younger and I’d never felt the need to know any more than that, or to hurt them by searching for answers to questions that none of us might want to hear.
It certainly wouldn’t have changed our feelings for each other. As far as the three of us were concerned, they were my parents and I was their daughter, so why cause any unnecessary ripples in the calm and settled waters of our happy family unit?
Yet if all of that was true what had caused this sudden change of heart within me, this sudden desire to know the truth?
It was my daughter Jenny who persuaded me to write, not directly but just in something she said one day almost as a passing remark. Jenny’s ten and for most of that time it’s just been the two of us, apart from James and Carol of course.
Gerry was okay and we enjoyed each other’s company, certainly early on, but I knew as soon as I became pregnant that I’d made a mistake. I had no intention of spending the rest of my life with him. He made it clear he felt the same way too.
I hadn’t intended to get pregnant and certainly not by Gerry, who I’d never viewed as anything more than just a boyfriend. I had always said no to him before whenever he had suggested sex, but on this particular occasion I was feeling a bit emotional after a stupid argument I’d had with Mum and Dad about arriving home late from a night out with some friends. I was just being a stroppy teenager with my emotions racing, but at the time I felt I wanted someone to make a fuss over me, to make me feel special, that I mattered and had a right to make decisions for myself, no matter the outcome.
Unfortunately, as it turned out, that someone happened to be Gerry who happily pretended to offer the listening ear and hand of comfort I was seeking. What he actually provided was heavy breathing in my ear and a hand up my skirt. And, more fool me, even though I knew what was happening, I let him continue. Perhaps I did it to get back at Mum as I knew she would be horrified to think I’d been having sex, not just with Gerry but with anyone, especially after I’d promised her that I’d wait for Mr Right. Of course, in retrospect I wish I had listened to that inner voice telling me this was a bad idea and wouldn’t be realised as one of my proudest moments, but at the time I was filled with traditional teenage angst, raging hormones and rebellion all of which determined me to go for it and hang the consequences. Of course, after that first time it then became harder for me to say no whenever Gerry broached the subject of a repeat session, especially if Mum and Dad went out for the evening, leaving us alone in the house.
And so, rightly or wrongly, occasional sex became a part of our relationship.
It still came as a shock to discover I was pregnant though, but as soon as it was confirmed I was determined to have the baby, keep it, and not abandon it as I had been by my own mother. Gerry was relieved when I told him I didn’t want him to have any part in the baby’s upbringing and I knew in that instant that I’d made the right decision, not only about him but for all three of us. Mum and Dad struggled early on when I told them I was expecting, but I think that was more in disappointment really that I’d had sex against their wishes, let alone become pregnant. If truth were told, I’d let them down, failed them, as I had myself of course.
It certainly felt that way, especially when I considered my true feelings towards Gerry and in my having been stupid enough to agree to our having sex in the first place.
“Come on, Mary, it’ll be fine, bring us closer and all that.”
It brought us closer alright, but getting cramp on the back seat of his car, no matter how hurt or rebellious I was feeling, still wasn’t the romantic setting I’d imagined or hoped for when making love for that first time, or in “going all the way” as we used to say whenever I talked to my girlfriends about that great unknown taboo in our formative teenage years. And whilst the settings for our future love making encounters became more comfortable and better planned the truth was I never really felt relaxed or happy about what we were doing.
Mind, once Jenny arrived all earlier disappointment and regret about what I’d done with Gerry was soon forgotten. Mum and Dad couldn’t have been more supportive either once they held her in their arms. And of course, their natural grandparenting skills kicked in alongside an overwhelming sense of love for Jenny just as it had done when adopting me as their daughter some eighteen years earlier. I hardly got a look in in those early days of Jenny’s life when it came to bathing and feeding her.
“Let me do that, Mary,” Mum would say, desperate to be involved and wanting to spend time with this new and precious life that had overtaken their home.
Dad did his bit as well but was quite happy to take a back seat when it came to changing nappies.
“Not sure where to start,” he’d say. “Anyway, you girls are
better at that sort of thing.”
Mum would wink at me as Dad would hand Jenny over to one of us as if she were a fragile parcel of hazardous material about to explode.
“Coward. Honestly, Mary, what would you do with him, eh? Men, they’re all the same. They’re happy enough to get their hands mucky and covered with oil doing something to their precious car but give them a baby that needs changing and they run a mile.”
I felt in those early days of Jenny’s existence that my relationship with Mum and Dad grew stronger as they sought to support me in raising my beautiful daughter, their beautiful granddaughter. Of course, I’d always considered them to be my real parents even though I knew they weren’t. Now though, with the arrival of Jenny and having to think again about my own birth and life to date, all the previous security I had so readily accepted and taken for granted from James and Carol suddenly shifted. For a while I felt vulnerable and unsure about myself along with my place in the world. It didn’t last long though with the ever present love and care poured out on the two of us by Dad and Mum. They encouraged me personally each day in my efforts at motherhood and couldn’t have made more of a fuss of Jen as they welcomed her into their home as an immediate and much loved addition to the family. The only difference now being they were playing the role of doting grandparents; a role they accepted with the same natural gifting and ability they had done so many years earlier when adopting me as their daughter. And although I was feeling an increasing sense of confusion about my own birth mother and place in her life I was, at the same time, aware of a growing affinity and closeness between James, Carol and myself. It was as though our relationship had moved to another and far deeper level, with each of us becoming ever more committed to the other.
I may have given birth to Jenny, but without Mum and Dad’s love, understanding and support I could never have coped. I quickly came to appreciate it was Jenny who provided the glue in completing this family circle and cemented all of our relationships forever as one. I think this was especially true for Mum and I with her not having been able to carry a child herself. Following Jenny’s arrival I feel we both experienced a new, if undeclared, union between us.
“I’ll love her like my own, Mary, you know that, don’t you? Just the same as I have always done with you.”
“Then she’ll be every bit as lucky as I’ve been, won’t she?”
Over the next few years it became increasingly natural for me to share the role of mother with Carol knowing I could call on her or Dad for their help and support whenever I needed it, which I often did, certainly in the early days of Jenny’s young life.
Two
I received a letter from my daughter today. It’s a letter I’ve been praying for and yet dreading receiving in equal measure for the past twenty eight years.
They called her Mary. That’s a nice name, but to me she will always be Rebecca.
The day after she was born I looked out of the window and saw a rose which had been my mother’s favourite flower. It was dark red, almost velvet like in appearance and very beautiful just like my baby and so I decided to name her after my mother, Rebecca. Born of my blood and as fragile as the petals on the rose itself; yes for me, she would always be Rebecca. Even now whenever I see a red rose it reminds me of them both and of the precious link between us.
I felt my hands shaking as I tore open the envelope. What would she say and why was she making contact after all these years? There was no detail about her own life, no expression of warmth or affection in her writing, just blunt and to the point: where was she born, who was her father and why had I given her away and abandoned her at only seven weeks old?
Given her away! Abandoned her! I’d never have done that. I had fought to hold on to my beautiful baby daughter as though my life depended on it right up until the moment they took her from me and out of my life, seemingly forever, in that dark blue car.
I could hardly breathe; a sense of dread and panic overwhelming me as the car pulled away and I struggled to comprehend what had happened, my eyes filling with tears and my heart breaking. I fell to the ground, arms outstretched and pleading for the return of my baby. I screamed her name as loud as I could but that only appeared to make them drive faster in their effort to get away and take my precious baby to God knows where, but always away from me, of that much I could be sure.
The nuns offered no words of encouragement or comfort for my loss, choosing rather to focus on my perceived failings.
“It’s for the best; you’ll come to see that in time. The child will have a much better life than you would ever have been able to provide for her. She’ll be brought up in a proper Christian home, not some back street slum with never enough to eat or real bed to sleep in.”
Of course I hadn’t abandoned her, how could I have done; I was given no choice.
But how could I tell her that or any of what had happened in those first few days and weeks of her life on the single page of a note pad? How could I explain in just a few short sentences all that had happened during the early years of my life that had led to the events of that day? How could I tell her of all the mistakes I’d made and of the sadness I’d carried for so many years that had so cruelly shaped my life and had now resulted in this potentially life changing moment in time for both of us?
She wants to know why I let her go, to get some closure on what happened, but doesn’t want to see me, meet with me, or even speak to me. Even worse, she doesn’t consider me in any way to be her mother apart from the physical act of having given birth to her. She says she is part of a family already and so doesn’t need another mother in her life, certainly not one that had so little regard for her as a baby.
In a way I can understand her professed feelings of betrayal and abandonment, but without speaking to me how will she ever learn the truth. And knowing of her pain now only serves to increase the hurt I felt on the day our lives were ripped apart.
That overwhelming sense of utter loss and despair is something that still consumes me even today. Being told I would never see my child, my precious Rebecca again, along with the years spent alone in not being able to watch her grow into the young woman she is today haunts my every waking hour and often my dreams as well.
And so after all those years of hoping and praying for almost any form of contact with her my prayers are finally answered in the shape of this short and spiteful letter I hold in my hand now.
I’ve spent the past twenty eight years pretty much on my own. I’ve made a few friends here and there, mainly women, but never a soul mate, not someone I could really share my heart and feelings with. There has never been anyone I could trust enough to allow myself to be open and vulnerable with, not since Rebecca was taken from me. The world seemed to lose its colour for me after that, life and everything it had to offer becoming black and white and without purpose.
Whenever I went out I found myself watching other women with their babies and children. I’d notice young girls playing with their friends and wonder if they might be her, my Rebecca?
On April 23rd each year, her birthday, I buy a card and write in it all the things I have been unable to tell her over the past twelve months; how much I miss her, love her, and am thinking about her. I write about how she will have grown and become even more beautiful than the first day I held her, and how a corner of my heart will be forever hers.
I’ve kept all those cards in a box at the bottom of my wardrobe. I get them out occasionally to look at and to talk to, as though she’s there in the room with me.
How do I tell her all of that in the page or two of a simple letter, the story of a life torn apart by her going and a story that she says she doesn’t want to hear? She knows nothing about me, nothing about my childhood and the unhappiness I experienced growing up; a childhood that saw my own parents and brother taken away from me to die in unspeakable horror. If she would just meet with me, and let me explain what it was like gr
owing up as a young Jewish girl during the 1930s in North London and beyond.
We had a good life there. My father worked in a local tailor’s shop along with my mother who helped behind the scenes with the orders and accounts as well as bringing up my brother Joseph and I at the same time. My parents were so happy together and dreamed one day of owning their own tailoring business, with Papa making the clothes and Mama looking after the books and finances. She would laugh and say that he might know how to count the inches on a piece of cloth required to make a suit but that he couldn’t add up the pennies it cost to make if his life depended on it.
“You focus on taking the customers’ measurements and I’ll focus on taking their money.”
Our house was always full of joy and laughter and my brother and I never doubted how much we were loved.
“One day when you have children of your own you will understand how precious they are to you,” Mama told me once. “You would give your own life for them in a heartbeat.”
When Rebecca was born I knew in that instant what Mama had meant. I’ve felt that same all-consuming love for her ever since even though the greater part of our lives have been spent apart. They say after a patient has had an arm or leg amputated they can still feel the limb in place even though it is no longer there.
That’s the way I feel about my Rebecca. She may not be physically with me but when I close my eyes at certain times during the day or at bedtime I can still feel her tiny body nestling in my arms the way she used to in those short weeks we had together in the home before she was taken from me.
It has been a constant sadness and regret to me that we weren’t able to spend those all important early and formative years together as she grew. How different our relationship would have been had we spent that time together as mother and daughter, along with all the love and shared adventures we would have experienced between us.
