She decided to talk to her aunt on her own, and she chose an evening when her uncle had gone to have a drink and a game of dominoes, as he did from time to time, with his mates at the local pub. She had put Kathy to bed, and she and her aunt sat one on each side of the fire in the family living room.
‘Aunty … I’ve something to tell you,’ Barbara began. She did not hesitate before she said, ‘I’m having another baby.’
‘Oh!’ her aunt gasped, then she beamed with pleasure. ‘That’s wonderful news. It’s rather soon after Kathy, but I’m sure you’re very pleased. Does Albert know?’
‘No, not yet,’ Barbara replied. ‘Actually, Aunty Myrtle, there’s something else I have to tell you. You see … it isn’t Albert’s baby.’
Her aunt’s expression changed from one of delight to one of horror. ‘Barbara! Whatever are you saying?’
Barbara explained how she had met Nat Castillo and how their friendship had developed over the months. ‘We love one another,’ she said, ‘in a way that I have never loved Albert. I know what you will think about me. I know what you will say – that I have behaved disgracefully and that I can’t be sure that I love Nat … but I do love him; I’m very sure, and so is he.’
Her aunt’s face had blanched and she was grasping hold of the chair arms to stop herself from trembling. Barbara felt dreadful at the effect her news was having. Myrtle did not weep, or shout at Barbara. After a few moments, during which she was trying to compose herself, she said, ‘That’s exactly what I’m going to say, Barbara. You’ve been a silly girl. You’ve behaved very badly, but I suppose I can understand that you might have had your head turned by this young man. A Yank … yes!’ She shook her head despairingly. ‘They’re a long way from home, and who can blame them if they find girls who are willing?’
‘But it isn’t like that,’ Barbara protested. ‘I know the reputation they have, but Nat isn’t like that. He’s a good honest man … and we fell in love.’
‘You couldn’t help yourselves, I suppose?’ Myrtle smiled a little cynically, and Barbara couldn’t blame her.
‘Well, yes … I mean … no. We couldn’t help – can’t help – how we feel about one another.’
Her aunt sighed. ‘You’ve been very foolish and I can’t condone what you’ve done. Nor have we ever encouraged you to tell lies, but there is a way round this. Albert need never know, not if you let him think that the baby is his. I know it’s wrong, but there’s nothing else you can do under the circumstances.’
Barbara shook her head. ‘I’m afraid I can’t do that. The last time Albert came home on leave I was having a period, and so we didn’t … you know. Anyway, I couldn’t deceive him like that. When he comes home the next time I couldn’t trick him into … doing that, then pretending the baby was his. You see, Nat and I, we want to be together, when he comes back, when it’s all over.’
‘And when is he due home again – Albert, I mean?’
‘In just over two weeks. I shall have to tell him, Aunty Myrtle. It’s not going to be easy, but I know I must.’
‘And what about … the other one, Nat? Does he know about the baby?’
‘No, I only found out after he’d gone. He’s somewhere down south now. I don’t know when I shall see him again.’
‘Isn’t it possible that you might be mistaken,’ said Myrtle, ‘about being pregnant?’
‘No, not at all. ‘I’m always so regular, you see. And anyway … I just know.’ Barbara felt instinctively at her breasts, which were already a little tender.
‘I can’t pretend I’m not shocked,’ said Myrtle, ‘especially at you, Barbara. It’s the last thing I could ever have imagined you would do. But I shall stand by you. I’ll help you in any way I can, and I know your uncle will too. I shall have to tell him, of course. We love you, Barbara. We’ve tried to make up to you for you losing your parents, and we’ll do whatever we need to do now, you can be sure of that.’
‘Thank you, Aunty Myrtle,’ said Barbara in a subdued voice. ‘You’ve always been so good to me, and I hate to upset you like this.’
Myrtle thought to herself at that moment, and during the following weeks, that she would not like to be in Barbara’s shoes when she broke the news to Albert. And, despite her disappointment and her annoyance at what her niece had done, she reflected that Barbara’s marriage was by no means the perfect one. Myrtle had come to the conclusion, over the last couple of years, that Albert was not really the right man for Barbara.
The scene with Albert, inevitably, was a bitter one, but poignant and distressing as well. Barbara had never seen Albert so angry or, on the other hand, so dejected and bewildered as he was at first. She had deliberated and agonised as to how to tell him. She decided that the bold approach, telling him straight away that she was pregnant, was not the right one to adopt with Albert. Instead she began in a regretful way, telling him that whilst he had been away she had met someone else and that they had fallen in love.
Whilst he stared at her, open-mouthed with disbelief, she went on to say that she was sorry to hurt him, but she knew now that she had been wrong to marry him, that what she felt for him was affection but not real love.
‘What are you saying, Barbara?’ he cried. ‘That you want to leave me? You want to go off with this other fellow, whoever he is? That you want … a divorce?’ He shook his head decisively. ‘Oh no, Barbara; I shall never let you go. A divorce is out of the question.’ Then, as her aunt had done, he said, ‘You’ve had your head turned by some fancy words, I daresay. A Yank, is he?’ He had guessed correctly, but it might just as well have been an RAF man. There were hundreds of them in the town, even billeted in the same house.
‘Forget him, Barbara. You belong to me; I’m your husband and I love you. Maybe I’m not as glamorous or as young, eh? Is that it? But I love you far more than he ever could.’
She knew then that she had to pluck up the courage to tell him the truth. ‘There’s something else,’ she said. ‘Yes, you’re right; he is an American GI … and I’m expecting his child.’
It was then that Albert lost control of himself. He did not strike out at her physically, but she had never heard such a tirade of abuse as he flung at her, nor had she believed he could use such words.
‘You’re a whore, a trollop!’ he yelled, as he turned white with rage. ‘I said I loved you, and yes, I do – heaven help me – and I suppose I always will. But I despise you, Barbara. At this moment I almost hate you! How could you do this? I don’t know what you are trying to tell me, what it is you want; but if you’re expecting me ever to accept this child that you’re having as mine, then let me tell you that I never will. Go to him, then, your Yank, if that’s what you want. But you are not taking Katherine. She is my child and she stays with me.’
There was a lot more in the same vein before Albert left her alone that night. He went to sleep in an attic room, leaving her alone in the bedroom they shared when he was home on leave, in the Leighs’ boarding house.
She tossed and turned in the bed, lying awake for hours and only falling into a fitful sleep as dawn was breaking. An hour or two later she dressed herself and Kathy and crept out of the house before anyone else was stirring, back to her home next door with her aunt and uncle.
She was left in no doubt about Albert’s feelings. He would never accept the child she was carrying as his, nor did she want him to; this was Nat’s child. But if she and Nat, sometime in the future, were to be together, which was what they both wanted so much, then Albert would force her to leave Katherine behind. And however could she bear to part with her precious little daughter?
Chapter Twenty-Eight
1973
‘So my mother went away and left me, then?’ said Kathy. ‘She deserted me and married this American fellow? At least I’m assuming she married him?’
‘Yes, she did marry him, eventually,’ said Winifred. ‘It sounds dreadful, Kathy, to say that she deserted you; it’s not a word she would have wanted to use. But she real
ly had little choice in the matter; in fact, she had no choice at all.’
Her aunt was trying to explain to Kathy about the circumstances that had led to her father and her mother parting, all those years ago in 1944.
‘There was a dreadful scene when Barbara – your mother – told your father that she was expecting someone else’s child. I wasn’t there, of course, but Albert told us about it the following morning, myself and my mother and father. We were horrified, as you can imagine, and Albert was so very bitter. But I’d always liked Barbara – she was such a pleasant and thoughtful girl – and I couldn’t believe that she would behave like that, have an affair with another man, without it really meaning something. And I guessed she must be feeling terrible herself about everything. She was such a nice girl, she really was. Anyway, I went next door to see her, and she told me about how she had met this American soldier – GIs, they were called – and how they had fallen in love. She was already expecting his child, you see, my dear, and he’d been sent away from Blackpool, down to the south of England.’
‘So … what happened? Did she go off and join him?’
‘No, how could she? He’d been posted down there in preparation for D-Day. He took part in that offensive, although he wasn’t part of the first landings. Barbara didn’t know when she would see him again. Anyway, she stayed with her aunt and uncle, next door, until nearly the end of the year – it was 1944. Myrtle White – she was Barbara’s aunt – had a sister who lived Manchester way, and Barbara went to stay with her until after the baby was born.’
‘And … she left me here?’
‘Like I said, she had no choice. It must have broken her heart to leave you; in fact, I know that it did. But your father wouldn’t let her take you. And even if she had stayed here, Albert had made it very clear that he would never accept the child she was carrying as his. Yes, she left Blackpool in the December of 1944 … and I never saw her again. You were about eighteen months old, Kathy love, and you stayed with your Grandma and Grandad Leigh, and with me, of course. Your father was in the army until peace was declared the following year, so we looked after you.
‘Albert had told her that she must never contact any of our family ever again, and she must certainly not think of trying to get in touch with her daughter – I mean you, Kathy, dear. And eventually he divorced her; they’d been married long enough for a divorce to be possible, and there were grounds for it with her expecting a child by this … Nat Castillo.’
‘You never met him, then?’
‘No, I never met him. I knew they got married, possibly in 1945. I didn’t know all the details, of course; I just put two and two together. I presume that Nat came to find her, wherever she was in Manchester, after the war was over, or he may have been given leave before the end of the war; I’m not sure. The baby would have been born by then. They would have to be married before she went off to join him in the USA. There were strict regulations about that, from what I remember. A lot of girls became what were known as GI brides, but the men had to have married them before they set sail for America. In case the fellow changed his mind, you see, and decided he didn’t want to go through with it after all.
‘As a matter of fact, Barbara wrote to me, just once. She wasn’t supposed to, of course, and I could never let on to Albert that I’d heard from her. He’d have gone mad! She told me that the baby was a little girl, and that she and Nat and the baby were living with his parents in a town called Stowe, in the state of Vermont. I looked it up in the atlas, and it’s in New England, up near the Canadian border. Whether she is still there or not I have no idea; it’s quite a long time ago.’
‘Then … she could still be alive? She probably is. She was younger than my father, wasn’t she? Do you mean to say, Aunty Win, that you’ve known all this time that my mother might still be alive? You even knew her address, but you never told me?’
‘It was the promise I’d made to your father, love. In his eyes, she was as good as dead to him, and that’s what everyone else believed – what we were forced to tell them – that she’d died. I know it was dreadful, and many’s the time I’ve wanted to break that promise, but I knew that I couldn’t. It would have opened a whole can of worms, as they say. Except … I must confess that I told Jeff, after we were married. There’s nothing that I won’t tell Jeff.’
‘And what did he think about it?’ asked Kathy.
‘He thought it was one of the most dreadful things he’d ever heard, that the poor girl had been forced to leave her baby behind; and he felt so sorry for you, that you’d been told lies about your mother. But he had to try and act normally with Albert – I know he found it hard at times, especially as they weren’t very much alike. I’m sorry, my dear; I can’t tell you how sorry I am. Jeff and I knew that it would probably all come to light now.
‘But there’s one thing you must be very sure of, Kathy, and that is that your mother loved you very much. I always told you that, didn’t I? I made a point of telling you that from when you were a tiny girl. It really must have torn her apart to leave you.’
‘But she had another baby girl, you say?’ Kathy couldn’t help feeling resentful and she knew it was obvious in her tone of voice. ‘She probably has lots more children by now. She’ll have forgotten all about me.’
‘The Barbara I knew would never forget you, my dear,’ said her aunt. She smiled reminiscently. ‘I wish I could make you understand what a lovely girl she was. Yes, I know she did wrong, that she behaved very badly – so did hundreds of other girls in that dreadful war – but I believe that she really must have loved this Nat.’
‘And … she didn’t love my father?’
‘Probably not in the way she should have done when she married him. Your father was a good deal older than she was, quite set in his ways when they got married. You must remember that, Kathy. He could be difficult. But he really did love her – he adored her – which made it so much worse when he found out what she’d done. I never thought, to be honest, that they were just right for one another. They might have found that they didn’t get on so well had they ever lived together. They never had the chance to have their own home because your father was in the army when they married. Barbara stayed with her aunt and uncle whilst Albert was away, and then she usually came to stay here when he was home on leave.
‘And then when you were born he was over the moon! He loved you so very much. In fact, I was amazed at the way he fussed over you when you were a tiny baby. That’s why he refused to part with you. The mother is usually given custody when it comes to divorce but … well, I suppose the judge decided that she was the one at fault. So perhaps you can understand now, Kathy love, why your father behaved the way he did when you were a little girl. He was rather moody and awkward and he didn’t find it easy to show you how much he cared for you. He was still grieving over Barbara.’
Kathy shook her head. ‘I’m finding it hard to forgive him for the lies he told me, and her – my mother – for leaving me. It was really you who brought me up, wasn’t it, Aunty Win, not my dad? He always seemed so withdrawn, so unapproachable.’
‘So he was, especially at first. I really wished he would get married again and try to forget how badly he’d been hurt.’
‘He nearly did, didn’t he, to Sally Roberts?’
‘Well, that was as near as he ever came to it. But it wasn’t to be. He was upset about that as well for a while. He always had a lot to say about unfaithful women. Not that I’m saying Sally was like that; she could probably see that it wouldn’t have worked out with your father. No, I’m thinking about Sadie Morris. You remember her, of course, your friend Shirley’s mum? Your dad had a lot to say about that, what a flibbertigibbet she was. I think that was the word he used. She met a fellow who was staying here on holiday and went off with him. It brought it all back to your dad, you see, and his friendship with Sally was coming to an end at about the same time.’
Kathy was silent for a few moments, deep in thought about all she had hear
d. ‘So … my mother was brought up by her aunt, like I was?’
‘Yes, her aunt and uncle. Both her parents had been killed when she was a baby. Ben and Myrtle White; they were really good to her and I know they loved her, just as her real parents would have done.’
‘And what happened to them?’
‘They moved away from their boarding house next door to ours just after the war ended. They gave up the business and went to live in Marton. We lost touch with them because of all that had happened. We didn’t hear any more about them. It was a pity, really; my parents had always been friendly with Myrtle and Ben, but it made it all rather difficult for the friendship to continue. I doubt that they’re still alive now.’
‘They were my – what would they be? – my great-aunt and – uncle, then, weren’t they? And you never saw them again, you say, after they left the boarding house? So they never saw me again either? Didn’t they want to know how I was getting on as I was growing up? I must have lived in the same house as them when I was a baby.’
‘I’m sure they would have liked to keep in touch, my dear, but as I say, it really caused quite an upheaval. No doubt they thought it was the best policy to keep their distance. Your father was so cut up about Barbara, very angry, and deeply hurt as well. And as it was their niece who was the cause of it all I suppose they didn’t want to encounter Albert again. But I’m very sure they must have thought about you a lot.’
Kathy was slowly coming round to grasping the significance of all her aunt had told her. She was filled with a mass of conflicting emotions. Disbelief at first, then shock, anger, sadness, bewilderment … But one thought stood out from the rest.
‘How old would my mother be now?’ she asked.
Time Goes By Page 29
