The Doorstep Child

by Annie Murray

  ‘No, wench.’ He joked to cover his uncertainty. ‘You are!’

  ‘Oh Jack!’ She wasn’t sure whether to be pleased or cross.

  ‘Yeah, she’s all right,’ he conceded with a brief smile. ‘Looks a good’un.’

  ‘D’you want to hold her?’

  ‘No, you’re all right,’ Jack said. ‘Not now. It’s you she wants, isn’t it?’

  He seemed uncomfortably fascinated as she latched the baby on to feed, wincing at first.

  ‘Hurts a bit,’ she says. ‘But it’ll get easier.’ Then added quickly, ‘Or so they say.’

  Jack nodded, seeming unsure where to look.

  ‘I thought we’d call her Tracy,’ Evie said. They hadn’t talked about it. Jack had never seemed all that interested. She could see that the baby had never felt real to him until now – maybe not even now.

  ‘All right, yeah,’ he said.

  ‘I mean . . . we don’t want to call her after either of our moms, do we?’

  They both laughed then.

  ‘Tracy Harrison,’ Jack said.

  ‘What about a second name?’

  He looked hopeless. ‘I dunno. You choose.’

  Evie thought back. Not after any of her own family, that was for sure. People who had been kind passed through her mind. Mary Bracebridge. Melly Booker and her mother Rachel. Dolly Morrison. Old neighbours from way back.

  ‘What about Rachel?’

  ‘All right, go on then,’ Jack said.

  He didn’t seem to mind either way.

  ‘Oh! So it’s a little lass!’ Bea came into the ward at her energetic speed. She was wearing scarlet trousers and snow boots, and her cheeks were rubbed pink by the cold. Evie felt her friend’s strong arms round her and found herself being kissed. Tears filled her eyes.

  ‘I can’t seem to stop doing this,’ she said, between laughing and crying.

  ‘It’s your hormones,’ Bea said, sinking into the chair and pulling off her scarf and unbuttoning her big navy duffle coat. She rolled her eyes in her comical way. ‘Don’t worry, I was just the same. Like a flaming dripping tap I was. Oh, now it’s my nose instead!’ She groped in her coat pocket for a hanky. ‘It’s so warm in here.’

  Evie laughed again. It felt so wonderful having a friend like Bea. She knew Bea missed her own mother being all the way over here and Evie had tried to do everything she could for her when she had her baby back in August. Bea had had a tiny little girl called Clare and had shrunk back almost instantly to her normal, bird-like size.

  ‘Well done, you!’ Bea was saying. ‘I bet she’s gorgeous. And I’m glad it’s a girl – the two lasses can grow up friends, can’t they? Are they going to let me see her? I suppose it’s not feeding time yet?’

  ‘Not for a bit, no,’ Evie said. Out of everyone she knew she was most eager to show Tracy to Bea. ‘Depends how long you’ve got.’

  ‘Can’t be out too long.’ She pulled another face. ‘I’ve left her with Stan. That’s the blind leading the blind all right. And I’ll have to get back and feed her. She’s a proper greedy guts. But anyway’ – she sat forward and looked into Evie’s eyes with warm concern – ‘how did it go?’

  ‘It wasn’t too bad,’ Evie said. She shared some of the details. Everyone, Bea included, thought that this was her first baby.

  ‘Sounds as if you’re a natural,’ Bea said. ‘Like shelling peas.’ Bea had had a hard time having Clare, though she made light of it.

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that!’ Evie said, her memory of the wrenching pains still fresh in her mind. ‘It had its moments, I can tell you.’

  ‘Well, you look flipping fantastic.’ Bea grinned. ‘Mind you, you haven’t started on the broken nights yet, have you? But eh’ – she was serious suddenly – ‘it’s worth it, isn’t it? I never knew I could feel like this.’

  She was teary and smiling at the same time and Evie was soon the same. Oh yes, she knew all right.

  Bea stayed for a bit but had to get back to feed little Clare.

  ‘Thanks for coming to see me,’ Evie said, still amazed at the kindness she experienced from everyone.

  ‘Oh, I’ll be back.’ Bea winked at her and squeezed her shoulder. ‘And well done again, chuck. I’ll come tomorrow and see if I can meet the little lady. But I’m glad you’re all right, Evie.’

  Evie smiled fondly as she watched Bea depart, wrapping her scarf round her again. She lay back, exhausted. Most of the other women had visitors with them now, husbands and friends. With a pang she thought, I wonder what Jack’s doing. I wish he’d come. Why isn’t he here? She missed him suddenly, with an almost unbearable longing. Surely he must be dying to see his daughter again? So far he had only caught the smallest glimpse of her.

  She was starting to feel really sorry for herself, but a few minutes later she saw Cath coming along the ward and she sat up, immediately cheered. She was also well wrapped against the snowy cold and had brought ginger biscuits.

  ‘I made these for you. They’re probably dreadful, but I never seemed to be able to get enough to eat in hospital!’ she said. Her baby, another boy who they called Joe, had been born in July.

  Evie was touched by the way her friends had come rushing in so soon. They all understood how it felt. They were kind.

  Later she lay back in bed and, once more, began thinking about her life. She had everything she needed. She felt a little bit sore that Jack had not come in again, but he was probably busy at work and having to fend for himself, she thought. He was a good husband, he was making a success of his job, of Canada – and now she had her own baby at last and all these warm-hearted friends who really seemed to care about her. Tears of joy ran down her face.

  The early weeks of Tracy’s life were the happiest Evie could ever remember. Jack was doing well; they had more money than they had had in their lives before, along with their house, their car and a good life with friends in their neighbourhood in Rosette. Above all, Evie had her beautiful daughter.

  Tracy was an easy, happy baby. Evie would not have especially minded if she hadn’t been – having Tracy at all was all that mattered. As it was, the first days back at home were a time of bliss. It was the height of winter, the snowed banked up outside, but she had no reason to go out. Her women friends offered to fetch things from town. They brought round cooked meals and kept her company. They encouraged and petted her, mothered her.

  Over time she had hinted to them more of the truth about her own family. They were shocked to hear even a few of the things she told them and Bea and Cath were protective of her. The two of them had given Evie a present of a rocking chair padded with colourful flowery cushions, which she sat in to feed Tracy. She had it in the bedroom and from it she could see out to the back, the snowy rooftops beyond.

  Jack was at work, but the women were there, in and out. Evie had never felt so loved in her life, and the only shadow was her nagging feeling that she did not deserve this loving shelter, that it would soon be snatched away and she would once more be left out in the cold.

  She was also a little hurt that Jack did not seem all that interested in Tracy. If she talked about her, he would try and seem interested. He would hold her occasionally if Evie handed her over because she needed to do something. Eventually, feeling down about it because she wanted him to feel the way she did, she mentioned it to Cath and Bea, trying to make a joke of it.

  ‘Jack still hardly knows one end of a baby from the other,’ she said. But the joke did not work because she found she had tears in her eyes. Bea patted her arm.

  ‘Don’t fret, Evie. Mine’s no better. It’s just not the same for them. Stan’s a good father really but he just seems to feel he has to work even harder rather than pay us any attention. He spends hours at the hospital.’

  Evie was reassured that it wasn’t just Jack. All she wanted was to devote her days to Tracy. She sat for hours holding her, feeding and kissing her on the rocking chair in their bedroom, in the snowy light coming through the window. She would stare at th
e baby’s plumping cheeks, her down of fair hair and her solemn, roving gaze and was utterly in love. Nothing else mattered. When Jack came home she would wrench her attention to him, do the wifely things of asking after his day and try to listen to the answers.

  But amid the joyful reality of Tracy’s life, there was one sadness she could not escape. For all the hurt she had experienced from her own family, Evie kept thinking about them. It was four years now since she had left home, that terrible, frightening night. She knew she could never forget her mother’s words. But even so . . .

  Rita and Conn must have at least a couple of kids by now, she would muse, as she sat feeding Tracy, rocking gently in the chair. And Shirley, might she be married with children as well? Those kids would all be Tracy’s cousins. And what about Mom and Dad? If she was to go to Mom now with a grandchild born within wedlock, might Mom be different? Might she be nicer and treat her like a proper grown-up person?

  Now Evie was a mother again, she found herself thinking about that woman who was her own mother. Irene Sutton. Mom, who had taken up all the space. Mom, so loud and rough, so easy to anger, so insulting to people when there was no call for it. Why was she like that? They all knew about Dad’s long flutter with Nance because Mom had never let any of them forget it.

  It couldn’t have been easy, Evie found herself thinking. Having me, knowing Dad was carrying on with her, and Nance having a lad by him. Worrying he was going to walk out. God, I’m surprised she didn’t flaming kill him.

  She felt a harsh sort of sympathy with her mother. She imagined if it was Jack and the thought was terrible.

  ‘You’re such a silly moo,’ she muttered to her mother, holding Tracy against her shoulder. ‘Why did you put up with it?’ But Dad always got round her somehow. Twisted her round his fat, hairy fingers, she thought. Mom talked tough but she was terrified of Dad going off.

  Would she ever say this now, if she saw Mom again? Be able to talk to her woman to woman?

  But other memories of her mother and father came fast behind: their almost constant brawling, the drinking, the way neither of them seemed to be able to think anything through or control themselves. Mom’s just like a child, she thought. Like a great big overgrown kid. Loathing, pity and longing mingled in her. Longing for this woman who had blocked out the sky with her bulk. Who was so needy, so childish and impossible but who, in the end, was her mother. If only she could go back there, see them for an hour or two and then escape back here.

  But that wasn’t possible. Some of the other women said that homesickness in Canada could be treated by the ‘thousand-dollar cure’ – the family returning to England for a holiday.

  ‘As often as not,’ Bea told her, ‘they realize they’re better off here. They remember why they left in the first place.’

  She thought about writing home. But no – it was a scab not worth picking again. Mom could barely read anyway. No. She was well off where she was. Here she had kind friends. She was inside, not forever on the outside longing to be let in. Her eyes filled for a moment and she looked at Tracy through crystals of tears.

  ‘You’re my family now, my little darling,’ she said. ‘You and your dad.’

  She sat dreaming of all the lovely things they were going to do.

  As they became more settled in their neighbourhood in Rosette, getting used to the seasons and new Canadian ways, each of them changed. Jack had almost instantly become as Canadian as he possibly could. It was as if he had been born to the life. He was popular and sociable and by the time they had been there just a few months he had lost his Brummie accent, except sometimes at home, and joined in with everything he was invited to by his workmates.

  They had a lot of fun with all their friends. They went fishing and picnicked on the lawns on the banks of Lake Glass in the summer. In winter there was curling and ice hockey games. There was a ski slope on the edge of town and it was a good place to watch the skiing and let the children run about together. Soon, egged on by his workmates, Jack had started learning to ski himself. He would come home with a glowing face, happy as anything. He had never played hockey, but he was a staunch spectator, one of the gang. Evie could see that whereas at home he had never had the chance to do anything in the way of sport, here in active, outdoorsy Canada, he was developing a new sense of himself as a man. And although at times she felt resentful of him going off with ‘the boys’ once again, he was happy, and she was happy with her friends and with Tracy. Life was busy and full.

  Jack often invited people over at weekends and they all sat around and chatted. Some of Jack’s circle were older men, veterans of the oil boom, such as Don Sorenson. Jack loved hearing about roughneck work on the rigs and about the old days. One man, Arthur, had been a wildcat oil prospector round Alberta’s Athabasca River. Everyone knew there was oil there, seeping through all the sediments. You could see and feel it. It was a case of finding the best spots. Once the big strike came in Leduc, just south of Edmonton in 1947, Arthur had gone to work there. Jack never tired of hearing about it. Arthur only had to say something like, ‘Well, course, I remember when the gas well went up in the Turner Valley in ’26. The stuff coming out of there – phoo! It was raining rocks! Burnt for over a month . . .’

  And they were off. The women, who had heard it all before, rolled their eyes and turned to each other to talk about their children and their day-to-day concerns.

  But Evie knew that Jack wished he had been there. How he would love to have been a roving oil prospector, been part of it all at Leduc after they struck oil and whole towns, like Devon, on the North Saskatchewan River, were built to accommodate oil workers. If only he had been part of all this instead of growing up in the confines of a filthy industrial city working in a factory all his life. Jack wanted to be an outdoors man, a Canadian through and through. He would have been happy to be an Athabasca trucker if it meant he could be part of it.

  Most of the women’s lives, with their young children, centred around informal meet-ups in each other’s houses. The children played and learned together. In the winter the mothers wrapped them up like little fat parcels in layers and layers, to venture out into the glare of stacked snow. She found it hard going. It went on so long. She’d get Tracy all dressed up to go and then she’d fill her nappy and you’d have to begin all over again, so that hours passed before you could open the front door.

  Tracy was a solemn, sweet-natured little girl. Even from a baby she looked wise for her years.

  ‘She’s one of those old souls,’ Bea said, watching her as she regarded them all with round, knowing eyes. ‘Look as if they’ve been here before.’

  Evie knew what she meant. Sometimes, the way Tracy looked at her, she felt the child knew her in some way better than she knew herself.

  As Tracy grew, found her legs, started to talk, Evie was more and more delighted by her company. It felt as if, day by day, a small friend was growing beside her. But as she looked at the other women and their growing families, a longing began in her for another baby. The longing grew, day by day . . .

  By the Christmas of 1965, after weeks of feeling queasy on and off, she was certain. Jack took it better than she had expected.

  ‘I knew we should’ve been more careful,’ he said, when she told him at bedtime one night after he had been out with his pals and was tanked up, relaxed and in a good mood. ‘We should’ve had belt as well as braces.’

  ‘But you don’t like belts or braces,’ she said, kissing him.

  Jack reached for her. Even if he did not really want another baby, he was aroused by the thought that he had created one. ‘No, I bloody don’t. Come ’ere, wench. Too late now any road, isn’t it?’

  After all, she thought, it makes no difference to him. She did everything for Tracy and no doubt it would be the same with this one. She fell asleep, blissfully happy.

  Thirty-Eight

  July 1966

  Bea’s face, pink in the summer heat, appeared round the door in the hospital. ‘So I hear you’ve
had a little lad this time!’

  Evie beamed at her wearily from the bed, holding her dark-haired infant boy to her breast.

  ‘Hello, Bea. Yes, here he is, large as life. He’s just having a guzzle, sorry.’

  ‘Don’t talk daft.’ Bea came and sat beside her, smiling at the picture of happiness she saw before her. ‘Oh, I bet Tracy’s excited. She with Cath?’

  ‘Yes. They’re coming in a bit later,’ Evie said. Tracy, skinny, blonde and active like her father, was just about old enough to understand that a new member of the family was arriving.

  ‘What’re you calling him?’ Bea asked.

  ‘Andrew – after Jack’s brother.’ Evie grinned. ‘The nurses keep saying, “Oh, is that after your English prince?” So I said “Who?”’ They laughed together.

  Bea had two children now – a boy and a girl – and Cath three. Along with a number of other women in the neighbourhood, they were Evie’s mainstay.

  ‘He’s darker than Tracy,’ Bea said.

  ‘Umm,’ Evie said. ‘Looks quite like my dad, poor little sod.’ Dark and handsome, she thought, but my God, he’d better not turn out as vain and selfish as our dad.

  She had still not contacted her family, or let them know about their Canadian grandchildren.

  ‘If you have them that easily, you’ll end up with a whole tribe at this rate,’ Bea teased her.

  ‘Well, I s’pose I’ve got to be good at something,’ Evie said, forcing a smile to her face. ‘I don’t seem to be good at much else.’

  She was putting on a brave face, but in truth, she didn’t feel quite right. After she had Tracy she had been perfectly well, but today she felt hot and shivery and her head was throbbing. She had had a very disturbed night and her spirits were dragging low, putting everything in a bad light.

  Sometimes she didn’t think she had made much of a wife, if her husband’s lack of interest in her and the family was anything to go by. Andrew had been born the day before but Jack had not come yesterday evening. He had not yet seen his son. Evie felt deeply hurt and miserable about it.