by Ros Franey
We’re sitting side by side on the long piano stool in the room off the ward. I turn and look at her, but she’s staring at the piano keys.
‘What baby?’
‘Oh Annie, did you not know? I thought the whole congregation of the Mission knew.’ She bows her head.
‘You were going to have a baby?’
She nods.
I don’t know what to say, but the shame is burning off her: I can’t keep silent. ‘That must have been … so worrying for you.’
‘Utterly shameful,’ she says in a very low voice. ‘It is the worst thing … it goes against everything we learn as Christians, but also against … trying to live our lives as good people.’
I don’t contradict her. This must be the greatest transgression, the greatest taboo in the whole Mission; so great that it is simply never spoken of. I have a sudden vivid vision of myself, with all my imperfections rolled into a ball but amounting to nothing, nothing, in comparison with the appalling stain of – unmarried motherhood. ‘I’m so sorry,’ I breathe. ‘And yet—’ I turn to her. ‘You are not a bad person, Millie. It can’t be right to think it.’
But she’s having none of that, and somehow it unleashes her tongue and she’s talking. ‘Oh Annie, it is a sin. In the eyes of God and the Mission and the pastor and the congregation it is a most heinous sin – yes, in my own eyes, too! Think of my poor mother; thankfully my sister was already in Canada, but Mother – can you imagine? – had to leave our home in secret without telling anyone and go to another town where nobody knew her.’
Of course, from my adventure with Nana I already knew they had left home in a hurry, though not the reason why. I’m silently thankful I missed them: if the drama with Nana had taken place just before all this happened, the additional burden would have been unthinkable for them.
Miss Blessing is explaining her mother had to pay double rent for leaving without notice. ‘It gave her severe money troubles – we’re not well off – and for a while we lived in one room, she and I. I was in such a confused state, what with having to leave school just before my final exams and being publicly expelled from the Mission, that for a while I was no help to her. We lived from day to day; I got a little cleaning work, but we were outcasts – it was no less than I deserved, but my poor mother deserved none of it.’ She breaks off, flushed and breathless.
‘Could your brother be of support?’ I ask her.
She looks perplexed. ‘My brother? I don’t have a brother, Annie.’
This is very odd. ‘I thought you did.’ I try and remember who told me about him.
‘No, I don’t know what gave you that idea – unless it’s because we call my sister Edwina “Eddie”? It’s just Edwina and Mother and me. Luckily, Eddie managed to send money after a few months and Mother joined her in Canada. She wanted to stay in Mansfield with me – that was where we’d fled to – but we persuaded her it would be for the best to make a completely new start. The idea was for me to join them when I … after the baby …’ She lapses into silence again.
So she was all alone at this terrible time. ‘If only we had known!’ I say. ‘Couldn’t we have helped in some way?’
‘Ah, but you did, Annie.’ She still can’t look at me. ‘Your father did, and your stepmother, too.’
‘Daddy?’ I stare at her. ‘What did he do?’
She’s silent for a few moments. ‘As the time approached, I needed to go somewhere – to be somewhere – to have the baby. Mr Lang found me a place – it was a sort of a home, a mother and baby home – to do with one of the charities he supports. In the end, that’s what persuaded Mother to go to Canada. I was to be looked after for the lying-in and afterwards—’ She breaks off.
‘He never spoke of it,’ I say, feeling suddenly proud of my generous-minded father, and a little surprised as well. ‘When the Mission could only think about keeping their nose clean and expelling you into outer darkness, he stepped in.’
She nods slowly. ‘And your mother went to our old lodgings and rescued some possessions we’d had to leave behind in the rush.’
The heavy bag! I’m embarrassed to think how wrong I was to have seen it as evidence of Mother’s guilt, when in fact it was Christian charity: Beatrice had been right, as usual.
‘I was grateful to them both,’ Millie was saying. ‘In fact …’ She hesitates. ‘Your – your father is still paying for me to stay here.’
This jerks me into the present. ‘He pays for this?’
She says softly, ‘Well, where else would I be now?’
I can’t help myself. I grip her arm. ‘You’d be out in the world, Millie, leading a normal life! You must leave this place. You don’t belong here!’
She shakes her head. ‘You don’t understand, Annie. I could no more live out in the world now than you could survive in here.’
‘Why not?’ I ask fiercely.
‘Because I’m sick. You have to understand this. My doctor here, Dr Squires, has told me I must stay here for my own protection, you see. He’s very advanced in his thinking: he believes in being completely frank with his patients and he has told me that I will not recover.’
‘How can he know that?’ I burst out. ‘Millie, you’re no more sick than I am! There’s nothing wrong with you. And they must realise, too, if they let you play the piano for the choir, and the harmonium on Sundays!’
‘Ah, but that’s it,’ she explains sadly. ‘If you knew Dr Squires you would understand. He’s a really enlightened man, Annie, a brilliant psychiatrist – and he’s choirmaster of the choir. It was all his idea I should play for them, and play at Sunday services, too. It’s safe for me to do that, he says, because the chapel is part of the hospital and I can be protected there. He can see I need some stimulation in my existence here and has gone out of his way to make life as pleasant for me as it’s possible to be. D’you know, he even arranged for this piano to be brought in? He’s so kind. Well, you’ll understand for yourself when you meet him at the rehearsal.’
I gaze at her. ‘Mildred – Millie,’ I say. ‘Of course I’m just a girl. I know nothing, and he’s a doctor. But, well, maybe you were really sick when you came here. But I don’t believe you’re sick now. I just can’t believe it.’
She sighs. There is a silence, punctuated by muffled noises from the ward outside. ‘There was one nurse in the home,’ she says at last, ‘who took pity on me after my little boy was born. He had been removed at birth, of course, because that is how they do it, but she – her name was Joan – worked nights when most of the staff were off duty and many of the mothers asleep. I was having pain’ – she lays her hand on her breast for a moment – ‘and Joan went and fetched him from the nursery where the babies slept. She brought him to me, secretly. I fed him. I nursed him. I cuddled him for a few precious hours, my lovely son.’ Her voice is breaking, but she doesn’t cry. ‘Oh Annie, I can’t let myself think of it.’ For a while she’s silent, pleating and re-pleating the grey fabric on her knee. I lean forward and rub her back at the top of her spine as Beatrice used to do with me when I was small. After a while she gives a long shaky sigh. ‘This went on for three precious nights,’ she says. ‘Little fellow. He never betrayed me by crying. It was as if he knew we had to be very quiet. But on the fourth evening, Joan was no longer on duty and the new nurse didn’t bring him.’ She breaks off again. ‘I never saw him after that. In fact, I never really saw him at all because it was always dark, but I feel I knew his face. I learnt every bit of it by touch, to keep safe for the future. And in spite of everything that happened later, I was glad and grateful that I had spent this time with him.’
‘They never let you see him?’
She shakes her head. ‘They weren’t being cruel. They said it was kinder that way, that it would be easier for both of us, but I don’t believe it. At least I knew him for a little while and he knew me. Maybe somewhere deep inside he may still know his Mummy loves him. Anyway—’ She shakes her head; says in a falsely light voice, ‘I’m sorry, An
nie. That’s quite enough. We must get to the music!’
Reluctantly, I open the Mozart Requiem, which I’ve been learning at home, and she listens to me play. ‘Slower here,’ she says, indicating an allargando I’ve missed. I nod and circle it with the pencil I’ve been allowed to bring this week. We work on through the movements that the choir are going to sing.
‘You have a very nice touch,’ she says – something that under normal circumstances would make me glow with pride, just as it did when Mother said the same all those years ago.
But I’m not interested in the music today. Time is so short and I want to know what happened next. My fingers tail off along the keys. ‘How long did you stay in the mother and baby home?’ I ask her.
‘Maybe a month? They took him after five days, though. When Joan came back on nights she told me he had gone. It was very quick. A good thing really, as he needed a mother to hold him tight—’ Her voice breaks on the final words. ‘But it was difficult, left in that place with the mothers who still had their babies.’
‘Where did he go? How could they take him from you?’
She says gently, ‘I always knew it would happen. It was explained to me when I went there. And part of it is that you must never be told where he is to go, or who will bring him up. It would have been impossible, of course, to keep him. They didn’t have to remind me I was destitute. I was a fallen woman!’ She looks at me shyly. ‘It was only fair he should be given a decent Christian upbringing. It seemed completely logical at the time.’
‘But you were his mother!’ I, who lost my mother when I was six, feel the pain of it sharply. ‘He should have been with you, no matter what. You weren’t going to be a fallen woman for ever, were you!’
She laughs. ‘But I was, Annie. I am. And I’d no means of support.’
‘My father would have understood! He could have given you an allowance or a job at Roebuck’s, or something.’
She sits very still. She takes a deep breath. ‘I’m afraid it doesn’t work like that. He was doing his Christian duty. He was seeing to it that the child would be given to good, loving parents. I’m sure of that. But it wasn’t his duty to keep supporting me. It wouldn’t have been … respectable.’
I look at her, exasperated, ‘But he still is supporting you, if he pays your keep in here!’
‘That’s different,’ she answers quickly. ‘You see, after they took the baby away, I became very sick. It was a depression that mothers do sometimes get, but in my case – as I began by saying – it was a psychosis. It was extreme, and I’m afraid I let myself believe that I was to blame: for having spent that forbidden time with my baby, you see. I had learnt to love him and I must pay the price. The home couldn’t keep me; I was raving mad, Annie!’ She smiles ruefully. ‘I suppose that’s why I don’t get upset by Flo out there’ – nodding towards the door – ‘I was so desperately sad, just as she is really. And I was angry. I’ll admit I had very unchristian thoughts about the Mission and all it stands for!’
‘I’m very glad you did!’ I break in. ‘How dare they make your situation so much worse? What’s Christian about that?’
‘Well, they are bound by their own strong principles,’ she says. ‘I broke their rules. So I don’t blame them, and I don’t feel anger now. But I’m not a believer any more – well, that’s another story.’
I say nothing. This isn’t the moment to tell her I’m not a believer, either: she has far more cause than I do.
‘Anyway, your father arranged for me to come to Mapperley,’ she continues. ‘I suppose he kind of got stuck with me because I was ill. And if I hadn’t come here I wouldn’t have met Dr Squires, who really did save my life – I do believe that, Annie. So I was very grateful, once I had calmed down and my acute illness had passed.’
‘Did Daddy come and see you in the home – or here?’ I ask. ‘Does he still come?’
She shakes her head. ‘Never. I would not have expected it. It would not have been proper.’
But I have a thought forming in my head: ‘If he came to see you now, Millie, he would see that you are well and that he’s wasting his money keeping you in this place. You’re young: you can take your LRAM and become a piano teacher, just as you said you wanted to be! I can bring him to see you!’
A sudden look of alarm crosses her face. ‘Annie, I’ve told you before: you mustn’t ever mention to him that we’ve met in here! You must never say it! Please, I mean this from the bottom of my heart. I beg of you. Promise me. It will be the end of me if you do.’
I look at her in astonishment. But she is in such deadly earnest I immediately say, ‘I promise, Millie. I swear to you I won’t … But I also swear I’m going to help get you out of here. You can’t waste your life in this place! I promise I’ll find a way!’
She looks at me sadly. ‘Annie, please. There are things you don’t know …’
It’s at this moment Nurse Jennings returns and our meeting is over, though not before I arrange to attend the next rehearsal of the choir so I can see how she works with them. It will be difficult to continue our conversation there, but I will manage it somehow. For now, I need to get away and think. She must be set free from this place, and Daddy – who has been so generous towards her in the face of the Mission’s disapproval – must be the key to it. She’s making my job unnecessarily difficult by forbidding me to speak to him: if he’s paying for her to stay there, what is it that’s so terrible he can’t be told?
I return home, my heart overflowing for Millie and her lost child. As I pass through the yard I notice, as I always do, the dark stain where Nana’s kennel touched the ground. I cannot know what it’s like to lose a baby, but as I squat down within the cramped rectangle, my eyes fill with tears for our faithful dog. She belonged with us, should have lived out her life with us, just as poor Millie’s baby boy belonged with her. Nana died two years before I went away to France. She died when Fred was having his first breakdown, boy and dog sick of a broken heart. No, that’s nonsense. Nana had lived a good life with Maisie and Mr Brown, and she surely wouldn’t have minded not seeing us after Mother said she didn’t want the dog coming home for weekends any more. But we always loved her. Fred and I used to sneak off during the holidays and take her for walks, then, when Nana was older and frail and Fred couldn’t go to college, he would just disappear to Maisie’s. She never mentioned it, but I know that’s where he used to go. I’ve always been very grateful to Maisie for giving him and Nana sanctuary in her home. But now I weep again for our beloved Nana. I wonder what secrets she knew, that she could never tell us.
TWENTY
Friday, August 12
Normally at this time of year we would be setting off on our annual family holiday to Mablethorpe. I have a picture of us three children and Nana crammed into the back of Daddy’s car; one of the two Agnes Langs with Daddy in the front, and buckets, spades, fishing nets, umbrellas and galoshes in the boot. There is a photo in the family album – stuck in with photo-corners, so it must predate Mother’s death – with me in a swimsuit, paddling, Beatrice holding my hand, and Fred digging in the sand at the water’s edge. Nana is not in the picture, but she was there: you can see the end of her tail.
This year, there’s been no mention of Mablethorpe and I’m relieved not to have to go: anyway, I’m far too busy solving the mystery of Miss Blessing.
My first dilemma is how much I can say to Fred of what I’ve discovered. I wonder if he knows about the baby. Quite apart from his illness, I feel it’s improper to speak to my brother of such things, or tell him Miss Blessing’s private business, but she said herself that the whole congregation knew, so maybe it is not such a secret. My chief concern is not to tell Fred anything that could make him worse, for the truth is he has started to get better. He recently won his ‘ground parole’ and is allowed to work in the gardens; so when I visit him now we can walk there together, past other patients weeding the shrubbery and dead-heading the annuals in the circular bed.
‘Well’,
he says when I see him today, ‘what’s the news?’
I frown. I still haven’t decided how much to let on, so I try stalling. ‘We’re definitely not going to Mablethorpe,’ I tell him. ‘Mother said last night she won’t be missing any of the summer Bible circles, so that means we aren’t going away.’
‘And?’
‘Beatrice has bought a new handbag. She got it really cheap in the sales in Marshall and Snelgrove.’
Fred gives me a look. ‘Come on, Annie. Did you go and see Miss Blessing again?’
‘I did,’ I say emphatically. ‘There was a patient called Flo who was in a bad way. You’re right about the strip-cells, you know. Miss Blessing says patients sometimes want to go in there if they’re feeling poorly, but Flo didn’t want to go. I think they had to force her.’
We walk on in silence for a few moments. I’ve realised I won’t be able to avoid the subject but can still not decide how much to divulge. ‘Miss Blessing did say a bit about why she’s in here,’ I begin. ‘She wasn’t well, Fred.’
‘Did she say why?’
I look at him. Something in his expression tells me he already knows. ‘She was in trouble,’ I say, testing the water. ‘Wasn’t she?’ And the phrase suddenly makes me think of that long-ago afternoon walking home from hockey with Marjorie Bagshaw past the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses, two figures up ahead in earnest conversation. Before Fred can answer, I stop and touch his arm. ‘Fred, I’ve just remembered something: about her brother.’
‘I never knew she had a brother,’ he says, stopping too. ‘I thought she had a sister.’
‘That night, Daddy came home early. He said he’d been talking about her brother.’
