by Liz Trenow
‘There’ll be records,’ she said, firmly, straightening her back. ‘If the baby died they would have had to register it as a stillbirth. If he lived, there will be a record of adoption. I will ask to see the records for that year – what was it, nineteen eighteen?’
‘Eleventh of November nineteen eighteen. How can I forget it? Armistice Day. But it brought me no peace, and that’s a fact.’
‘Perhaps if we can find out for certain what happened, you might feel happier?’ Nora said. ‘I’ll find out, promise. Leave it to me.’
On her next visit she turned up late and breathless, with a great smile splitting her face.
‘Sorry to be on the drag,’ she said. ‘I was with the medical superintendent, and he was running behind.’ My mouth was gaping, I was that astonished. The superintendent? He was just a name, a kind of God, you never saw him and he controlled your life from on high. Then the breath stopped in my chest when I remembered her promise.
‘You’ve found out about …?’
The smile faded for a moment. She took off her coat and sat down beside me.
‘I’m so sorry, they have checked for me. But they haven’t got any records going back that far, they say, because the place where they were stored got hit by the bomb. But I haven’t given up yet. In every town there’s an office called the Registrar of Births and Deaths where all these things are supposed to be recorded. I’ll go there next time.’
I hadn’t really hoped for anything, so it wasn’t much of a blow.
‘It was something else I wanted to ask him,’ she said, with a twinkle like she was about to give me a present.
‘Tell me then.’ There have been that many setbacks in my life, I can live with just one more, I thought.
‘Your psychiatrist has told them there is no reason for you to stay here any longer. You are ready for life in the community, he says, if someone will sponsor you.’
‘“Sponsor”?’ Sane or not, my brain was struggling to keep up with this extraordinary turn of events. ‘What does that mean? Money?’
‘No, you ninny, someone you can live with, who will look after you and keep an eye on you,’ she said, still beaming. ‘So? Who do you think that might be?’
I studied her face closely, wondering whether she had been drinking – she was laughing now, and her words made no sense.
‘It’s me, don’t you see?’ she said.
I shook my head.
‘I’ve offered to be your sponsor. I would like you to come and live with me – not that I think you’ll need much looking after once you’ve adjusted to life outside. We can look after each other. I’ve got me pension and they say you’d be due some kind of allowance money, too. Sam’s offered to do up the second bedroom for you – it’s small, mind, but you’ll get used to it soon enough. What do you think?’
What did I think? It was like being in a dark room when someone opens a door and there’s a brilliant light coming through it, enticing and wonderful, but so bright that it blinds you, dissolves your ability to think, like the bleach they used for sheets in the laundry. Through that door was an unknown world which, even with Nora by my side, felt terrifying. I’ve heard that these days they prepare you for leaving, with counselling and what they call ‘life skills’, but in them post-war years when everyone was still making do, and rationing still causing problems, they was obviously only too keen to get rid of us.
Nora was waiting for me to reply. Well, I couldn’t speak for happiness but I managed to croak something like, ‘I can live with you? Really? I can leave here? Do you really mean it?’ I didn’t believe it, to be truthful.
‘I really do,’ she said.
There’s a long pause, and then the sound of someone blowing her nose …
And that’s how I came back into the world. Not before time, mind, in me late fifties already, I was. Better late than never, eh? Been making up for lost time ever since. Oh, we’ve had some good times, dearie, believe you me. Been on coach trips all over, seen the sights. We don’t have much money but it don’t stop us having fun. Honest, I never knew there was so much in the world. And it’s all down to my lovely Nora. Poor old Nora.
She coughs a bit and sighs.
‘You said she wasn’t well. How is she now?’
Still in hospital. They’re doing tests, but I’ve got a funny feeling about it.
‘I’m sorry to hear about that, Maria.’
I think I’m done now, dearie, if you don’t mind. Shall we turn that thing off?
The final tape clicks off.
Patsy Morton research diary
Finished interviews with Queenie/Maria and had to say goodbye for the last time. It made me quite sad because there’s no reason for us ever to meet again. Still, I need to stay emotionally detached and maintain my ‘objective distance’, as Prof would say. I also really need to finish the rest of the interviews and try to get my research findings sorted out into some kind of order to show him – getting urgent now as looks like my funding will dry up next year.
Thankfully no more complaints from Dr Watts – he seems quite happy for me to meet the other staff and patients on my list – but he might not like my conclusions. Too bad, I have to tell it as I find it. Academic rigour, and all that.
Besides, the past is past, and the place is closing. Why should he feel it necessary to defend what went on there?
Excerpt from medical notes, Patient M.R., November 1952
Miss M.R was discharged from hospital into the supervision and care of Mrs Nora Kowalski of Bethnal Green, London. She was visited by a community mental health visitor four weeks later and is considered to be doing well, without medication. No further visits necessary. Local mental health services have been informed.
Chapter Fifteen
As the cassette player shuddered to a halt and fell silent for the final time I kept my eyes closed for several minutes, reluctant to let Maria go. After listening for more than two hours, it felt as though I knew her personally, as if she were part of the family. Knowing that there was no more to hear was like a small bereavement.
After the initial excitement of hearing her voice, a profound sadness had settled on me. She was so convincing, the way she talked so powerfully credible, yet the medical notes told another story: she was suffering from delusions, a fantasist who heard voices and lived in a world of romance and intrigue. Even though she wasn’t educated in a formal sense, Maria was obviously naturally bright, so I had no doubt that she would have been perfectly capable of concocting a convincing yarn. It was almost impossible to disentangle truth from fantasy.
That she had been a seamstress in service at some large house – perhaps even Buckingham Palace – seemed credible enough. At least that might explain how she’d got hold of the royal silks. But her claim to have been seduced by the Prince of Wales sounded so much like the romantic delusion of a young, impressionable girl. From what I’d read, he had a penchant for high-society ladies, so why would he have bothered to seduce a servant girl?
On the other hand, why would she claim that the prince had seduced her? So that the child would be adopted as a royal heir? Surely she could have seen that this would have been a serious miscalculation and understood the potential consequences?
So I might have found my Maria, but she was still a mystery.
Just as the professor had warned, the tapes had not made for easy listening. My hands had moved instinctively to cup my own belly as she described the birth of her baby, spoke of her love, and the pain of her loss: ‘It’s a love so total it fills you up, drenching your whole body like wet sponge, so there’s no room for feeling anything else.’ The words were so heartfelt, and yet nowhere in the medical notes was there a single mention of any pregnancy, or a baby. Was all of that just a fantasy, too? Perhaps most of the story was true, or just delicately embroidered, like Maria’s elegant stitching?
But wherever the truth lay, I loved her descriptions of how she had made the quilt, and how she had designed the individual frames. Ea
ch concentric section had been created to represent or commemorate individuals she had known: her lover – whoever he was – the lost baby and the hospital visitor who befriended her and helped bring back her speech. Her history was held in the fabrics she’d used, the designs, and the appliquéd figures. It was the patchwork of a life – the metaphor pleased me – and now I understood the meaning of that little verse. She’d stitched the quilt for a baby, and had added those lines just in case the child should one day turn up to claim it.
Coming to a greater understanding of all this, discovering how precious it was, how important to her, I now felt the quilt’s loss even more, like a sharp ache in my chest, each time I thought of it. Recovering it became suddenly much more vital, and more urgent.
It was well after five and the offices were now deserted, so I left a thank-you note with the tapes and the professor’s diary on Sarah’s desk and walked in a daze through the bleak university squares back to the distant, wind-swept car park, with Maria’s voice still running through my head.
In the car I rang Jo. It went to voicemail and I remembered that she and Mark were still away in Morocco. My head was bursting with questions, and I really needed someone to talk to. Ben’s reply came back almost at once. No problem. I’m at 24 Burton Close, CL3 2RX, about 10 mins drive from uni.
‘It’s just a temporary stopping place,’ he said, welcoming me inside. ‘All I could afford after my marriage ended. It’s got a small spare bedroom for Thomas and it’s close to his school.’
He certainly wasn’t showing any signs of putting down roots: the single downstairs living–dining area was sparsely furnished with chain-store basics and barely a decorative item in sight: no side lights, just a bare bulb hanging from a central cord, no photos, no cushions, or ornaments of any kind, except for two Tate Modern prints Blu-Tacked to the wall: a brilliant colour swirl of Jackson Pollock and a Californian blue Hockney swimming pool.
‘Like your choice,’ I said, meaning it.
‘I should get round to giving them proper frames, but I never seem to have the time. You must think I’m living like a student, just sticking up posters on the wall.’ He laughed with that deep rumble that had made me feel so safe. ‘Anyway, what brings you to Eastchester? You look like the cat that’s got the cream.’
‘I’ve been to see your Professor Morton. The one who wrote the book. And I’ve found my quilt-maker.’
‘In person?’ he laughed. ‘The oldest woman in the world, and still quilting?’
‘That’s what it feels a bit like, weirdly. I’ve been listening to her voice for the past couple of hours.’
‘Result! Come in and tell me everything. Wine?’
‘Just one glass then,’ I said.
Over slices of reheated day-old pizza washed down with several glasses of a surprisingly good Pinot, I described everything I could remember of Maria’s account, what Patsy had written in her diary, and the medical records that she had transcribed. It all sounded even wackier in the retelling, but he listened without interrupting, his expression sympathetic but not fixed, and didn’t even raise his eyebrows when I mentioned the palace and the prince.
‘What’s your gut feeling?’ he asked, when I finally stopped.
‘My head’s still reeling. She was so convincing, but her psychiatrists and medical records give another picture.’
‘Isn’t that what they say about fantasists? They’re very convincing liars.’
I shook my head, as if it would help the pieces fall into place. ‘But none of this really matters any more, because the quilt’s still gone.’
‘Did you get in touch with those shelters yet?’
‘I’ve emailed and sent my sketch, but no replies so far.’
Ben steepled his hands in that characteristic pose, pressing the tips of his fingers to his lips as he deliberated. The gesture was so unselfconscious, so human. I caught myself rubbing a fingertip to my own lower lip and experiencing, for a moment, an alarmingly strong desire to pull those fingers away and kiss him. I gave myself a mental shake. Listening to those tapes all afternoon must have left me a bit deranged.
He leaned forward to open his laptop, interrupting my reverie.
‘Let’s check a few facts to see how much of Maria’s story stands up. For a start, we can see if the Prince of Wales’s dates fit,’ he said, tapping away.
We soon discovered that Edward VIII was born in June 1894, so he would have been a few years older than Maria. The same website outlined his naval training and short stint at Oxford, all of which she had mentioned, as well as his notoriety as a womaniser until meeting Wallis Simpson and embarking on the famous affair which led eventually to his abdication from the throne.
‘I suppose there’s no way of checking whether someone called Maria Romano really worked at Buckingham Palace?’
He shook his head. ‘Very unlikely. Palace records are strictly confidential.’
‘What about whether she ever had a baby? I can’t believe she would have spoken with such sadness if her pregnancy was all just a fantasy. Can we check at the registry office?’
‘Good plan. I can pop down on Monday, if you like?’
‘That’d be great, to confirm it either way.’ A few weeks ago I’d have hesitated, fearing he might still be after a newspaper story. Now I could see that he was as curious about the mystery as I was, and just as keen to discover the truth. ‘It would prove her point about making the quilt for the lost child, and why she stitched that verse into it. I can’t think why else she would have done that.’
‘What was the name of her friend, again?’ he asked.
‘Margaret?’
‘No, the one who rescued her.’
‘Nora Kowalski? Why?’
‘It might be worth checking the register of voters for Bethnal Green. It’s not a very common name.’
I paused for a long moment, trying to remember what Maria had said about Nora’s son and grandson. Ben glanced at me curiously, frowning a little. Then he sighed loudly and shook his head, abruptly slapped down the lid of the laptop and rested his hands on the lid, palms upwards.
‘What’s the problem?’ I said, laughing at his petulant expression. It was seriously endearing.
‘How long is it going to take you to get it?’ he burst out, suddenly. ‘I am not doing this for the bloody newspaper. I am doing it because I like you. Isn’t that enough? Or am I getting too involved? Would you rather I just backed off?’
‘No, it’s not that at all.’ I nearly laughed again but stopped myself at the last minute. He’d got completely the wrong end of the stick. ‘It’s just that …’
‘You still don’t trust me.’
‘No, Ben. It’s the very opposite,’ I managed to gabble, before allowing instinct to take over. I leaned forward, put my hand to the back of his head and pulled his face towards mine. I caught a look of surprise in his eyes, but he didn’t resist.
In the morning I panicked. What could I have been thinking? This man, who I barely knew, was dozing peacefully beside me with a childlike smile on his face. Still, the sex hadn’t been bad at all, I remembered hazily, considering he’d apologised several times for being out of practice.
We ate a bachelor’s breakfast of white sliced toast, cheap jam and instant coffee, making slightly stilted conversation while skirting around the fact that we’d ended up in bed together. I started to clear the table, taking the dishes to the sink.
‘Do you have to leave?’ He hugged me from behind.
‘I have to go some time,’ I said, enjoying the comforting warmth of his body in spite of myself. ‘We’ve both got lives to get on with, my mother to visit, your son to see, football to watch, whatever.’ In the window I could see our reflections, his large frame dwarfing my own, hair falling forward as he bent down to rest his cheek on the top of my head.
‘Before you go, let me take you to see what’s left of Helena Hall?’ he asked. ‘It won’t take too long and I think you’ll find it interesting. It’s just down
the road from here.’
After ten minutes’ walking we emerged abruptly from the soulless maze of new-build houses into an area of greenery: unkempt parkland studded with mature pines, oaks and spreading copper beeches that had obviously once been planted as part of a large estate.
Passing between high red-brick gate posts and the ruins of what must have been the gate-keeper’s lodge, we followed the unmarked tarmac road as it wound between shrubberies of laurel and rhododendron, past several handsome Edwardian houses set in their own gardens, and one particularly impressive building that, Ben said, had been the medical superintendent’s residence. No wonder Maria had been impressed with the fact that Nora had talked to him, the person she referred to as ‘a kind of God’.
Although the houses were obviously still inhabited and reasonably well maintained, their surroundings were shabby with neglect. A small wooden hut with peeling white paint must have been a cricket pavilion, and the swathe of overgrown grassland in front once a perfectly-manicured pitch. Nearby, broken down chain-link fences surrounded ancient tennis courts, with the remains of their nets hanging limply between rotting posts like ancient cobwebs, reminding me of the ‘airing courts’ in which Maria had felt like a caged animal. Each turn of the road revealed another relic of what had once been a thriving community, now abandoned to nature.
As we turned the corner, our route was abruptly blocked by an enormous, shiny metal fence, three metres high and topped with ferocious-looking spikes, reaching out on either side as far as the eye could see. In front of us was a gate plastered with fierce instructions: DANGER, NO ENTRY; WARNING, 24-HOUR CCTV IN OPERATION; KEEP OUT.
‘I think they’ve made their point,’ I said.
‘Kids were getting in and setting fires,’ Ben explained. ‘Wait till you see this.’
Pushing through the undergrowth, we emerged into a clearing where it was possible to see, through the metal uprights of the fence, an expanse of grass that must have been a wide lawn, and a weedy gravel driveway leading to an enormous building. It really was a mansion, in red brick with white painted pillars around a high doorway at the top of grand entrance steps. Above the entrance loomed a tall, square clock tower.
